Events- upcoming!

The Beginning of the End for Gov’t handouts for Solar? Let’s hope so!

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Solar energy users angry about end of tariff

LOCAL solar users are keen to take back control of their power generation.

The disdain raised by solar users comes after the State Government last week confirmed their position in axing the eight cent feed-in tariff on solar panels from July 1.

Retail businesses will hold the responsibility for offering tariffs after the mandated eight cent tariff paid to PV Solar owners will end on June 30.

Ross Atkin, a Gladstone solar user, says everyday households are being punished for using renewable energy.

“Solar installation does not mean wealthy,” he said.

“I installed solar to save money and for a more sustainable way of living.

“It just seems there are huge generalisations being made on behalf of the government in regards to solar.”

Mr Atkins was supported by 250 other Queensland solar users who are voicing a desire to ‘go off the grid’.

Solar Citizens national director Lindsay Soutar said last Friday that the Queensland Government would have more than 600,000 angry solar voters to contend with at the next election.

We Need Protection for our Children, BEFORE the Wind Turbines are Erected!

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‘I need to protect my child from wind farms’

Credit:  By Celine Naughton | Irish Independent

 

Whenever Jenny Spittle’s children visit their grandad in England, 12-year-old Billie comes home tired, complaining of headaches, earache, dizziness and hearing buzzing noises. Billie has autism and her mother is convinced her symptoms are brought on by the towering pylons and wind turbines located near her grandfather’s house. Now Jenny lies awake at night worrying about plans to build a wind farm close to her home in Co Westmeath.

“I see what she’s like after a week with her grandfather and wonder how she’ll cope if we have these things on our doorstep,” she says.

Like many autistic children, Billie is hyper-sensitive to sound and light. She hears sounds at frequencies that are inaudible to most people, and Jenny is afraid she will find the sound of wind turbines close to home intolerable.

“It’s not easy raising an autistic child, yet while I’m busy trying to organise psychotherapy, speech and language, occupational therapy and all the other kinds of supports she needs to help her cope with everyday life, I also have to make time to protest against pylons and wind turbines,” she says. “I can’t afford to wait until they’ve been built to voice my objections. I have to protect my child.”

Thirteen years ago, university lecturer Neil van Dokkum and his wife Fiona moved from South Africa to an idyllic part of Waterford with their two sons. Their youngest, Ian, had been diagnosed with autism and part of the reason for choosing to make their home in such a remote location was to give Ian the peaceful environment they felt he needed in which to thrive. Then, six months ago, Neil heard about the proposed construction of pylons in the area from a neighbour. The news set off alarm bells for him and his family.

“Ian is incredibly sensitive to electric noise and certain types of light,” he says. “He will start crying and become very agitated. It is a source of emotional trauma for him. My wife and I discovered the extent of this sensitivity when we installed energy-saving light bulbs in our kitchen. When Ian walked in, he put his fingers into his ears, screwed his face up tight and said: ‘Blue light off, please Daddy. Blue light off!’ I was sitting directly under the light and had not noticed anything. Ian was standing at the door, about four metres away, and he couldn’t bear it. Can you imagine how he will be affected by pylons carrying 400kV power lines? Like many other parents of autistic kids and indeed children with other intellectual disabilities, we deliberately moved to the country so as to be away from the city with its high levels of ambient noise, including electrical noise, and disturbance. At night, it can be so quiet here that I can hear the cows crunching grass in the field opposite. Can you imagine how that silence will be shattered by clanking pylons? More specifically, how my son’s silence will be shattered by the electrical noise coming from those cables? How will he be able to sleep with that noise? And how will the rest of my family sleep as Ian becomes highly agitated when awakened by this distressing noise?

“The other concern I have is flight risk. Ian, like many autistic children, has no sense of danger and will run away and on to the road at any opportunity. He is not running away from anything, but sometimes seems to feel the need to rush into an open space. Again, the countryside, with its minimal traffic and quieter roads, is far safer than a city with all those vehicles. Even so, my property is fenced and gated, not to keep people out, but rather to keep my son in and safe. My deepest fear now is that the electrical noise coming off cables and pylons will disturb him so much that he will attempt to run from it. And if he can’t get out, he will bang his head against the wall out of sheer frustration. The potential consequences are too painful to even contemplate, and if the proposed construction of pylons across the countryside goes ahead, selling our house would be impossible, so we are effectively trapped.

“If the Government were to abandon its slavish adulation of the wind industry and pursue the biomass option, converting Moneypoint power station to biomass boilers, it could save over three billion euro. Imagine how many state-of-the-art facilities for people with intellectual disabilities could be built with that sort of money.”

A Department of Health spokesperson says: “According to international literature, no direct health effects have been demonstrated in persons living in close proximity to wind turbines. However, it is agreed that there is a need for additional, well-designed studies in this area. The Department of Health advises that anyone who believes they are experiencing any health problems should consult their GP promptly.”

In its draft development plan, Westmeath County Council required any new wind farm development to implement a setback distance of 10 times the height of the turbine from residential dwellings, but the Department of the Environment intervened. Under Objective PWin6 of the plan, a turbine measuring 180m, for instance, would be sited at least 1.8km away from any house, while according to the Department’s wind energy guidelines, a distance of 500m is deemed sufficient. Minister of State for Planning Jan O’Sullivan wrote to the council instructing it to reexamine the setback distance.

“We received over 5,600 submissions from constituents who supported PWin6, which would have kept the setback distance in place,” says Westmeath County Council chairman Peter Burke. “We informed the Minister of State that we felt the Department’s guidelines were not adequate and she appointed an inspector to carry out an independent review.”

Last month, that inspector’s report recommended against the inclusion of the PWin6 objective on the grounds that it “would be contrary to section 28 of the Planning and Development Act 2000.”

At the time of writing, the Department’s final decision on the matter is pending.

—

Safety first: Are turbines and pylons dangerous?

Now that Ireland’s plan to export wind energy to Britain has been scrapped, the public has been left a little breathing space to focus on a simple question: Are wind farms and their related pylons and overhead power lines safe or not?

The Department of Health’s Deputy Chief Medical Officer, Dr Colette Bonner, has said that older people, people who suffer from migraine, and others with a sensitivity to low-frequency vibration, are some of those who can be at risk of ‘wind turbine syndrome’.

“These people must be treated appropriately and sensitively as these symptoms can be very debilitating,” she commented in a report to the Department of the Environment last year. We asked Dr Bonner for clarification.

“Presently the World Health Organisation does not classify Wind Turbine Syndrome as a disease under the WHO international classification of diseases,” she said. “Current research in the area suggests that there are no direct health effects of wind turbines. However, there are methodological limitations of many of the studies in this area and more high quality research is recommended.”

Side by side with the controversy over wind farms comes concern over the high voltage pylons which distribute the electricity generated by the wind turbines to the national grid. Chief Medical Officer in the Deptartment of Health, Dr Tony Holohan, has stated that he does not think there is a health risk associated with people living in vicinity of pylons.

But not everybody agrees; according to British physicist Denis Henshaw, people have every reason to be concerned. Emeritus professor of human radiation effects at Bristol University and scientific director of the charity Children with Cancer UK, he recently told a public health meeting in Trim, Co Meath, that high voltage power cables are linked “beyond reasonable doubt” to childhood leukaemia and other diseases.

“It has been shown again and again that there is a definite risk of childhood leukaemia and other diseases near these lines,” he says. “The link is so strong that when a childhood leukaemia occurs near these lines there is a greater than 50pc chance that the leukaemia is due to the line. This raises the prospect of legal action for corporate manslaughter against those involved in putting the line there. The Irish government and EirGrid need to take care of their citizens and acknowledge the known health risks in people near these lines.”

A spokesman for EirGrid says: “We’re not doctors, but having taken advice from experts at the World Health Organisation, along with the chief science adviser and the chief medical officer, it is clear to us that there is no evidence to link overhead lines with adverse health effects.”

The Government report ‘Health Effects of Electromagnetic Fields’ 2007 says: “Given that there is still uncertainty about whether longterm exposure to extremely low frequency magnetic fields could cause childhood leukaemia, use of precautionary measures to lower people’s exposure would therefore appear to be warranted.

“As a precautionary measure, future power lines and power installations should be sited away from heavily populated areas to keep exposures to people low.”

Source:  By Celine Naughton | Irish Independent | Published 9 June 2014 | www.independent.ie

Asthma NOT Caused by CO2. You’ve got to read this!

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Johns Hopkins proves up the Hygiene theory of Asthma? Big surprise?

Posted on June 9, 2014 by 

So for years the decline of air pollution has been associated with an increase in Asthma.

 

Idiots from the green left all the way to the White House, say more air pollution regulation will decrease asthma.

Now they conflate one target with another, calling carbon dioxide carbon pollution. Acting like reducing carbon dioxide emissions will reduce asthma.

LIES LIES LIES.

Bob Greene, my comrade here at JunkScience just put up a fine example of how stupid the fanatics can be–ignoring the evidence and suppressing the proper interpretation of the decline in air pollution/increase in asthma phenonmenon.

The news article discussed the research finding from a group at Johns Hopkins Med School.

Dunn notes are in perens.

Thanks for putting this up, Mr. Greene.

It is really important stuff to know.
Too-Clean Homes May Encourage Child Allergies, Asthma: Study
Exposure to a little dust, dander in infancy might prime tots’ immune systems, research finds

Too-Clean Homes May Encourage Child Allergies, Asthma: Study
By Dennis Thompson
HealthDay Reporter

FRIDAY, June 6, 2014 (HealthDay News) — Cleanliness may be next to godliness, but a home that’s too clean can leave a newborn child vulnerable to allergies and asthma later in life, a new study reports.

Infants are much less likely to suffer from allergies or wheezing if they are exposed to household bacteria and allergens from rodents, roaches and cats during their first year of life, the study found.

The results stunned researchers, who had been following up on earlier studies that found an increased risk of asthma among inner-city dwellers exposed to high levels of roach, mouse and pet droppings and allergens.

“What we found was somewhat surprising and somewhat contradictory to our original predictions,” said study co-author Dr. Robert Wood, chief of the Division of Allergy and Immunology at the Johns Hopkins Children’s Center in Baltimore. “It turned out to be completely opposite — the more of those three allergens you were exposed to, the less likely you were to go on to have wheezing or allergy.”

(Dunn note: I have known about the hygiene theory of Asthma for many years, and an allergist at Johns Hopkins is “stunned” to find out this basic immunological phenomenon? Desensitization is the bedrock of allergist treatment and he didn’t know what???)

About 41 percent of allergy-free and wheeze-free children in the study grew up in homes that were rich with allergens and bacteria. By contrast, only 8 percent of children who suffered from both allergy and wheezing had been exposed to these substances in their first year of life.

The study was published June 6 in the Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology.

The findings support the “hygiene hypothesis,” which holds that children in overly clean houses are more apt to suffer allergies because their bodies don’t have the opportunity to develop appropriate responses to allergens, said Dr. Todd Mahr, an allergist-immunologist in La Crosse, Wis., and chair of the American Academy of Pediatrics’ Section on Allergy & Immunology.

Prior research has shown that children who grow up on farms have lower allergy and asthma rates, possibly due to their regular exposure to bacteria and microbes, the researchers noted in background material.

(Dunn note: another well known thing. Now do you think the green machine thugs are going to pick up on this if it jeopardizes their case against air pollution?)

“The environment appears to play a role, and if you have too clean of an environment the child’s immune system is not going to be stimulated,” Mahr explained.

As many as half of all 3-year-olds in the United States suffer from wheezing illnesses, and recurrent wheezing and allergies are considered a risk factor for asthma in later life, researchers said. According to the American Lung Association, asthma remains one of the most common pediatric illnesses, affecting about 7 million American children.

The new study involved 467 inner-city newborns from Baltimore, Boston, New York City and St. Louis. Doctors enrolled the babies in the study while they were still in the womb, and have been tracking their health since birth, Wood said.

Investigators visited the infants’ homes to measure the levels and types of allergens. They also collected dust in about a quarter of the homes and analyzed its bacterial content.

They found that infants who grew up in homes with mouse and cat dander and cockroach droppings in the first year of life had lower rates of wheezing at age 3, compared with children not exposed to the allergens.

Wheezing was three times as common among children who grew up without exposure to such allergens, affecting 51 percent of children in “clean” homes compared with 17 percent of children who spent their first year of life in houses where all three allergens were present.

Household bacteria also played a role, and infants in homes with a greater variety of bacteria were less likely to develop allergies and wheezing by age 3.

Children free of wheezing and allergies at age 3 had grown up with the highest levels of household allergens and were the most likely to live in houses with the richest array of bacterial species, researchers found.

(Dunn note: When do I hear an apology from those who have made all these false claims about asthma. Asthma is an allergic disease air pollution is not the cause of asthma. Robert Phalen PhD air pollution specialist at UC Irvine, says that we need dirtier air to reduce asthma, not cleaner. I agree.)

“The combination of both — having the allergen exposure and the bacterial exposure — appeared to be the most protective,” Wood said.

Both Wood and Mahr cautioned that these findings need to be verified, and that parents shouldn’t make any household decisions based on them.

For example, parents shouldn’t adopt a dog or cat assuming that its presence will help immunize their kids against allergies and asthma, Wood said. At the same time, they shouldn’t ditch their family pet, either.

“We would not take any of this as information we could use to give advice,” Wood said. “Please don’t get an intentional cockroach infestation in your house. There’s no reason to think that would help.”

There are a number of other factors that could influence the likelihood that an inner-city kid will develop asthma, including tobacco smoke, high levels of household stress, or even exposure to the same sort of potentially beneficial allergens too late in life, past their first birthday, Wood said.

“This is by no means a simple story,” he said. “There could be a lot of factors going on.”

(Dunn note: they are pretending like this is realy new and revolutionary stuff. This is old news.)

Mahr said the findings could someday lead to treatments that would help infants build up resistance to allergies. “I can see someone coming up with a spray. You’d spray the crib that the kid sleeps in every so often, and let the kid crawl around in it,” he said.

(Dunn note: That’s what allergists do, they desensitize people–why is he, why is this group being so hesitant about something well known in the immunology and allergy community. Why are you acting like this is revolutionary talk?)
More information

Find out more about indoor allergens at the American Academy of Allergy, Asthma & Immunology.

SOURCES: Robert Wood, M.D., chief, Division of Allergy and Immunology, Johns Hopkins Children’s Center; Todd Mahr, M.D., allergist-immunologist, La Crosse, Wis., and chair, American Academy of Pediatrics’ Section on Allergy & Immunology; June 6, 2014, Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology

 

The “Dumbing down”, of our Children….It must be stopped!

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Reform Math Must Be Destroyed Root and Branch

By Bruce Deitrick Price

The Education Establishment went way too far, and this has presented the country with a unique opportunity for real improvement of the public schools.

As never before, parents across the United States will tell you emphatically that they hate Common Core, and they especially hate Common Core Math.

The Education Establishment will try to maneuver around this revulsion.  Compromises will be offered.  The same dumb ideas will be repackaged as something new and wonderful.  The challenge is to refuse to compromise.  Sometimes a good thing, compromise is now the biggest threat to genuine reform.

Our Education Establishment has been selling inferior goods for more than half a century.  They know how to bait and switch, and how to lie.  Ordinary citizens stand little chance against these cunning maneuvers.  So let’s keep it strategically simple.  Go for total victory.  Reform Math should be discarded, inane root and goofy branch.

By way of background, Reform Math comprises a dozen separate but similar math curricula created in the 1980s.  The most hated of these is Everyday Math  (Mathland used to be the most hated, but it has been buried, which is what we need in every case.)  Here are some of the other titles: College Preparatory Math, Connected Math, Core-Plus Mathematics, Discovering Math, Number Power,  Interactive Mathematics, Investigations Math, Trailblazers, Chicago Math.

But why did the experts create so many basically interchangeable programs?  The answer is that when a community learned to hate one of them, the experts could say, Okay, you win; let’s try this one.  And they bounced the people sideways from one bad program to the next.  If you like cynical, you have to love this.

During the 1960s, the Education Establishment watched New Math, in development for a long time, crash and burn in a few years.  Parents laughed it out of town; schools went back to real arithmetic.  Apparently, the Education Establishment did not want that same scenario repeated.  So they cloned a dozen math programs.  In that way, parents never really had a chance during the last 30 years.  If they didn’t like Tweedledum, they got Tweedledee.

Now the Education Establishment is cycling all of these crummy Reform programs forward under the banner of Common Core, thus the phrase Common Core Math.

The common denominator of all these inferior programs is an artificial complexity, and an emphasis on learning concepts and “meaning” without actually being able to do problems.  These programs teach algorithms that parents don’t know.  A tremendous separation is created between the generations.  Parents are rendered irrelevant.  The children are frustrated to tears.  In a few years, in all of these Reform curricula, the kids end up dependent on calculators.

The short-term effect is that fewer kids become skilled at math.  The long-range effect is that millions of students are discouraged from studying algebra, calculus, physics, chemistry, etc.

So there is a sick joke here.  The Education Establishment promises to help children understand the meaning.  At the end, the children don’t know meaning, method, or anything else.  Even if there is such a thing as the meaning of math, you would surely want to teach children how to count, add, and subtract first.  Later, when the children feel comfortable with basic arithmetic, you could explain deeper aspects.  The essential perversity of all Reform Math programs is to introduce the complex ahead of the simple.  It’s a bulletproof way to confuse little children, and our Education Establishment keeps exploiting it.

Clearly, the all-pervasive problem is that we can’t trust our so-called experts.  They are ideologues first, educators second, and therein lies the tragedy.  These pretenders design curricula to achieve ideological goals.  What we need from now on are curricula that achieve educational goals.

Almost no homeschoolers or private schools use Reform Math curricula.  These programs are used when ideologues can gang up and bully the public.  (Full disclosure: I’ve spoken to an elite  private school that uses Investigations.  Keep in mind that these are highly motivated students, very involved parents, and very dedicated teachers.  They can make anything work.)

The favorite programs outside of Reform Math are Singapore Math and Saxon Math.  Both teach children how to do arithmetic in a systematic, logical way, with mastery throughout.  So that’s the answer.  Reject all varieties of Reform Math.  Instead, use Singapore Math, Saxon Math, or the equivalent.

John Saxon was particularly proud that students using his textbooks moved on, in far greater percentages, to algebra, calculus, etc.

Looking back at the sweep of American secondary education, the big event was the introduction in 1931 of an unworkable reading method known as Whole Word.  The Education Establishment got away with it.  Whole Word was in control in most communities until the end of the 20th century, and schools were turning out functional illiterates by the million.  We have to suspect that our elite educators saw this as the paradigm: a school pretends to teach something but makes sure that the children don’t learn it.  Whole Word does that.  New Math and Reform Math do that.

If you want to be really depressed about all this, keep in mind that the National Science Foundation pumped $100 million (your tax money) into subsidizing hundreds and hundreds of professors as they drew up equally disastrous Reform curricula that would fundamentally undercut the study of science!  Meanwhile, the National Council of Teachers of Math gushed approval of every little anti-math gimmick.  All these front groups, pretending to be independent and impartial, keep pushing bad ideas on the public.  The same pattern repeated itself with Common Core, which was supposedly given to us by the National Governors Association and the Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO).

So many credentialed experts; so many billions of dollars; so many secret intentions.  The Education Establishment has everything but curricula that let children become good students.  We may not be able to fire these faux-educators.  But we can systematically eliminate the kind of poisons they like to inject.  We can systematically take the attitude that the Education Establishment has proven itself incompetent, if not malicious, and from now on, whatever they’re selling, we don’t want it.  In particular, Reform Math.

CODA: parents must fight back.  Laurie Rogers has just posted  “The Myth of the Helpless Parent,” a wonderful short guide to fighting a corrupt system.

Bruce Deitrick Price explains education theories and methods on his site  Improve-Education.org.

Aussies Are Talking About DownWind, & Tim Hudak, and Wishing him Well!

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Sun New’s “Down Wind” sends Wind Industry Into Tail Spin

June 9, 2014 by  3 Comments

down wind

Canada’s Sun News was among the first news outfits worldwide to grasp the scale and scope of the great wind power fraud; and the associated harm inflicted on hard-working rural people. Exposing the wind industry for what it is, Sun has produced a truly ground-breaking documentary on how wind power outfits have fleeced power consumers for $billions, while happily destroying the lives hundreds of farming families across Ontario (see our post here).

The documentary, “Down Wind” went to air on 4 June and has sent the wind industry and its parasites into a panic stricken tail spin. Not used to an “untamed” media challenging their lies, treachery and deceit, the industry’s chief spin doctors have launched a bitter defence, replete with all the usual guilt-soaked waffle about giant fans “saving the planet from cataclysmic climate change”. Never mind that the wind industry has yet to produce a shred of actual data that wind power reduces CO2 emissions in the electricity generation sector – probably because the actual evidence shows just the reverse (see this European paper here; this Irish paper here; this English paper here; and this Dutch study here).

Down Wind, which runs for 96 minutes, can be purchased as a file and downloaded or as a DVD (here’s the link).

Here is a detailed synopsis of Down Wind from wolfhillblog.com.

Dirty secrets of the Ontario Liberals’ wind power scam: What you need to know from DownWind, the Sun News documentary
Wolfhillblog: Fauxgreen
8 June 2014

THE ONTARIO LIBERALS’ GREEN ENERGY ACT HAS DONE SERIOUS AND IRREVERSIBLE HARM TO PEOPLE, WILDLIFE, THE ENVIRONMENT

  • Rural people in Ontario living in the midst of 50 storey-high industrial wind turbines have been badly hurt, even seriously and irreversibly harmed, with respect to mental and physical health and safety, property values (loss of 10-48% or even 100%), livelihood, way of life, community harmony. Some families have had to leave their homes on the advice of doctors.
  • Farmers have noticed that wind turbines drive out earthworms due to electrical surge charges and vibrations. This reduces the quality of the soil. “Food production will go down.”
  • The wind turbines’ concrete bases, of which some of the material is toxic, go 50 feet down, far enough to hit aquifers.
  • Livestock productivity, such as that of dairy cattle, is adversely affected.
  • Birds are slaughtered by wind turbines.

THE LIBERALS HAVE PRESIDED OVER ABROGATION OF DEMOCRATIC RIGHTS AND BULLYING BY WIND COMPANIES

  • “The provincial government wants these things and they’re going to come no matter what we do.”
  • “(As high as) 140-50 storey buildings – you don’t even have that in Toronto. We’re talking 1,800 turbines up and down the shoreline (of Lake Huron), on some of the most productive farmland in all of Ontario. My God, what are you people thinking? Don’t tell us from your condo that the green thing is so great that we’re going to force it on you.”
  • The Liberals’ Green Energy Act supersedes/overrides 21 pieces of legislation including the Clean Water Act, acts that protect the Niagara Escarpment and Oak Ridges Moraine, the Heritage Act.
  • All Ontario government ministries have turned a deaf ear to complaints and concerns communicated to “every arm of the Ontario government when they asked for help. The wind companies do whatever they want.”
  • The Liberals’ Green Energy Act strips municipalities of their planning powers. More than 80 communities have declared themselves to be unwilling hosts.

THE SYSTEM IS RIGGED AGAINST WIND TURBINE VICTIMS

  • There have been more than 20 Environmental Review Tribunal hearings of appeals and all of them were dismissed. One was allowed but appealed in Ontario Divisional Court where the wind developer prevailed. “The process they’ve created is so imbalanced and so weighted in favour of the wind turbine companies it’s as if they wrote the legislation. It’s embarrassing.”
  • Wind turbines “are imposed on people and they are getting no choice. That begs the question of whether it’s Charter-compliant, whether it complies with constitutional principles to put these people through these things without being assured of a certain level of safety. No one should be subjected to a reasonable risk of harm.”

WIND POWER IS FAR FROM CLEAN

  • “When they talk about displacing coal-fire power plants in Ontario with wind, that’s not actually what happens. As they add wind capacity to the system, they are displacing nuclear and hydro and those are non-emitting sources. And you have to remember that whenever you see a wind turbine, there is a gas-fire power plant running in the background to balance out the load fluctuations. So it’s always a wind and gas combination. They’re replacing emissions-free hydro and nuclear with a combination of wind and gas and we’ll actually end up with higher emissions of pollution …”
  • “So you’re paying for a wind turbine to turn, and you’re paying for a gas plant to idle. You’re paying double most of the time. It’s asinine.”

THE LIBERALS HAVE USED JUNK SCIENCE TO MISLEAD THE PUBLIC

  • Air pollution levels in Ontario have declined steadily since 1974, but the Liberals claimed in 2009 when the Green Energy Act came into force that there was a rising air pollution crisis. “But they knew perfectly well that air pollution had been trending downward right across the board.”
  • Most particulate matter emissions come not from coal power generation, as the Liberals claimed, but from construction, industry, agriculture, and most of all from dust from unpaved roads.
  • “There’s no question that there’s been an effort to demonize coal.”

BILLIONS OF YOUR DOLLARS WASTED ON LIBERAL BOONDOGGLES

  • Ontario electricity costs are the highest in North America as a result of the the Liberals’ Green Energy Act.
  • “Wind turbines don’t run on wind, they run on subsidies.”
  • They replace power that costs 3-5 cents per kilowatt hour (kwh) with wind power that costs 13.5 cents per kwh to generate.
  • “Nobody was building wind turbines in Ontario until the government started throwing money at it. It’s not cost effective. Wind turbines can’t compete on a wholesale market without a lot of government support.”
  • Wind companies get 20-year contracts to sell wind power at far above market rates.
  • “The system has to buy power whenever wind companies produce it” whereas standard power producers (nuclear, hydro) have to compete on the wholesale market.
  • Ontario lost $1 billion selling excess power in 2013 to neighbouring jurisdictions – “How stupid is that?”
  • The cost of the Green Energy Act to date is $4-5 billion, or 70 times the cost of retrofits recommended in 2005, to get equivalent environmental benefits. (Some estimates say the Green Energy Act costs so far are closer to $8 billion.)
  • Before the Green Energy Act, Ontario had a few large power plants with the grid optimized to source the power. “Now we have “tiny, little unreliable” wind facilities that required a new grid, putting an “extra cost to get something we already had – it increased the costs of having what you had before.”
  • “There were far smarter ways of creating energy. If we had done nothing except put the most advanced scrubbers on our coal plants we would actually have had as clean air as we do today.”

THE LIBERALS FAILED TO PERFORM DUE DILIGENCE, OR UPHOLD ITS FIDUCIARY DUTY

  • The Liberal government has to date done no cost benefit analysis, and no health study.
  • The much-anticipated Health Canada two-year, $2 million research study of the adverse health effects of wind turbines is due in December of this year. However, it will apparently not establish causation or have conclusive results.
  • The 550-metre set-back for siting industrial wind turbines from homes, established by the Ontario government, is arbitrary and was not based on any research.

HYPOCRISY, DISHONESTY

  • In her current election campaign ads, Liberal leader Kathleen Wynne says she believes “government should be a force for good in people’s lives.” In her campaign she claims “I believe there is only one good reason to enter politics, and that is to help people,” yet the documentary showed her not to have had the basic decency to stop to listen when she was approached by industrial wind turbine victim Norma Schmidt.

FLAGRANT CONFLICT OF INTEREST – LIBERAL FRIENDS CASHING IN

  • Mike Crawley, erstwhile president of the Ontario Liberal party, a former senior aide to former premier Dalton McGuinty, was at the same time CEO of a major wind developer that was proposing four or five projects in Ontario. In 2004 he was awarded a contract worth $475 million, in addition to others.

LIBERALS GOT IN BED WITH GREEN NGOS, WIND INDUSTRY, BAY STREET LAWYERS TO WRITE THE GREEN ENERGY ACT

  • “They all sat down and worked up the language they wanted in the legislation and built a campaign around it. You got the complete package: the PR side, the legislation drafting, the program to re-educate the public service, the whole momentum going, the Toronto Star editorial page cranking out a regular drumbeat – coal bad, wind good.”

FEAR AND COWARDICE – INDUSTRY INSIDERS ARE AFRAID TO SPEAK OUT

  • People in the system have not dared to speak out.
  • “There were people in the power generation sector who understood that the government numbers were not correct and did not add up, but they were effectively muzzled. The people that work in the power sector know that this is a crazy system. These wind farms are displacing hydro-electricity, which is just a waste on every level. The hydro-electricity plants don’t generate any air pollution emissions. They give us reliable, predictable base load power and now we let (them) sit idle. So people who work in the sector, they can see what is going on and they know that this is a waste but for understandable reasons they are not about to make a big noise about it because they could lose their jobs if they do.”
  • “Our electricity system, to the people that run it, has become a joke, and they dare not raise a finger to oppose it.”
  • “The electricity industry professionals will see the wasted generation … and their response is ‘so long as we have a blank cheque to keep the lights on, it’s all good’.”

THE LIBERALS “HAVE GOT TOO MUCH INVESTED TO ADMIT THE ERROR”

In the upcoming Ontario election on June 12, any vote for the Liberals would appear to be one in favour of propping up a government that has proven itself to be working to enrich its cronies with the province’s treasure, not one that is interested in the welfare of the people it is mandated to serve, or in nurturing the economic health of the province. Progressive Conservative leader Tim Hudak has promised to repeal the Green Energy Act if elected.
Wolfhillblog.com

In Tim Hudak, Ontario has been given a choice; and a chance to redress the lunacy currently being delivered by the hard-green-left (see our post here). We wish them luck on 12 June – sanity can’t some soon enough.

tim-hudak

SILENT AUCTION & YARD SALE…..June 13th & 14th! the Original MAWT!

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the Original, MOTHERS AGAINST WIND TURBINES TM, Presents…

 

SILENT AUCTION AND YARD SALE…..June 13, 2 – 7 pm

And                 …..June 14, 8 am – ?

7522 SILVER STREET, (East of Allen’s Corners)

We will have a large variety of items, including:   a new crib mattress,

Craftsman spin saw,  clothing,  books,  decorative and household items,

tools, and other miscellaneous treasures.

We have some amazing articles available, in our silent auction!

You won’t want to miss this!

For more info, Call:  Susan Smith – 905-957-3541

Proceeds going to support local Children’s issues, as well as to

McMaster Children’s Hospital!

We’ve Known this All Along, But Now, They’re Going to Prove it!

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McGuinty government changed

green energy rules

to benefit Liberal-linked firms,

court filing charges.

“The treatment of Mesa in this case is just another episode in a saga of maladministration, scandal, political interference, manipulation and contempt for the rule of law that dominated Ontario until the resignation of the Premier [McGuinty] early in 2013,” a court filing states.

Jason Kryk/Postmedia News/Files“The treatment of Mesa in this case is just another episode in a saga of maladministration, scandal, political interference, manipulation and contempt for the rule of law that dominated Ontario until the resignation of the Premier [McGuinty] early in 2013,” a court filing states.

A U.S. wind power developer that is seeking $653-million in damages under a NAFTA challenge accuses the government of Ontario of manipulating Green Energy Act rules to benefit the interests of Liberal-connected firms, according to court documents obtained by the National Post.

The court filing, recently made public in the case that pits Mesa Power, a Texas-based developer owned by U.S. financier T. Boone Pickens, against the government, alleges Ontario replaced “transparent” criteria for the selection of energy projects with “political favoritism, cronyism and local preference.”

Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

Chip Somodevilla/Getty ImagesU.S. financier T. Boone Pickens

At issue in the NAFTA arbitration are changes made to the Green Energy Act in 2011. They allowed wind developers a brief window in which they could change the location at which their proposed projects would connect to the transmission grid. NextEra, a multinational renewables firm that was represented to the government by lobbyist Bob Lopinksi, a former senior staffer in the office of Dalton McGuinty, changed their connection points and was eventually awarded more than $2-billion worth of power contracts. Mesa Power says in its court filing that the change effectively bumped its projects out of line, costing it sunk costs and lost future profits.

“The rules were changed to suit one applicant to the detriment of another,” the court document claims.

“The rules change was also specifically designed with NextEra in mind,” says the 243-page NAFTA document called the Memorial of the Investor. It was filed last year but released publicly last month. “On a number of occasions,” the document says, “the Minister of Energy’s Office took explicit steps to ensure the process was being executed to the benefit of NextEra.”

“NextEra also gained assistance through the Ontario Premier’s office,” the filing alleges. “The Premier’s office injected itself into the [Feed-in-Tariff] program, and began expressing its political preferences for matters that where entirely within the regulatory realm of the [Ontario Power Authority].

The Mesa Power document also claims that NextEra “had direct access to the Premier’s Office.” It says that NextEra met with former McGuinty aides Jamison Steeve and Sean Mullin in October, 2010. Both men would later be involved in the negotiations surrounding the cancellation of gas-plants in the greater Toronto area and the payments to the affected firms.

Opposition critics of the Green Energy Act have long contended that the governing Liberals used explosive growth in renewable energy since 2009 to steer contracts toward favoured firms and Liberal insiders. Various companies have also taken the government to court over the frequent changes to the Feed-in-Tariff program, but the government has maintained that it is allowed to make policy changes even if they negatively impact green-energy investors. Ontario also lost a WTO ruling that found the “domestic content” requirements in the Green Energy Act discriminated against foreign-owned firms and were a violation of trade agreements.

“The treatment of Mesa in this case,” the court filing says, “is just another episode in a saga of maladministration, scandal, political interference, manipulation and contempt for the rule of law that dominated Ontario until the resignation of the Premier [McGuinty] early in 2013.”

Ontario, which is represented at the NAFTA tribunal by the government of Canada, says in its filing that “there is no evidence to support the claimant’s allegations.”

“In managing and implementing procurement processes, decision-makers are often forced to make adjustments at key junctures … to best satisfy the policy objectives of government,” the government filing says. “Such adjustments often result in winners and losers …  as changes operate to the benefit of some and detriment of others.”

The government response dismisses claims of “wrong-doing” and says the changes that impacted Mesa Power were “nothing more than a commercial consequence of legitimate policy choices.”

A decision on the NAFTA arbitration is expected in the fall.

National Post

If Wynne Told the Truth, This is What You’d Hear!

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Wynne’s Budget Fortells Biggest Ontario Cuts Since Harris

By Ari Altstedter  Jun 3, 2014 8:48 AM ET
Photographer: Galit Rodan/Bloomberg

Kathleen Wynne, premier of Ontario, center, arrives to speak at the Bloomberg Economic… Read More

Premier Kathleen Wynne is presenting Ontario’s June 12 election as a stark choice between her Liberal economic stimulus plan and her main rival’s vow to cut 100,000 government jobs.

Yet Wynne’s own budget documents show this year’s spending surge will be followed by the deepest freeze in two decades.

After boosting program spending by C$3 billion ($2.8 billion) this year, the Liberal Party leader plans to hold the line the next three years in a bid to eliminate the deficit. Given population growth, a 2017 Liberal government would drop spending by the most per person since former Premier Mike Harris won election on deficit elimination in 1995.

“She’s not talking about war with the public sector unions, but that’s what those numbers imply to me,” said Bryne Purchase, a professor of policy studies at Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario, and former deputy minister of finance during the Harris years. “I think the reality is a lot of strikes in the public sector.”

Wynne, 61, has been walking a tightrope since becoming Premier in 2013. She relented on wage concessions Liberal predecessor Dalton McGuinty was demanding from public sector unions, particularly teachers. Meanwhile, she has pledged to eliminate the deficit after letting it grow this year to fund a fresh round of stimulus spending.

Photographer: Galit Rodan/Bloomberg

Hudak is proposing immediate and deeper cuts to balance the books. Under the… Read More

Deeper Cuts

“We’re dealing with a situation that requires at this moment that we make investments to ensure we have the steady economic growth that we need,” she said in a leader’s debate. She has spoken little about the spending restraint that subsequently flows from her budgetary promises. The premier has contrasted her plan with Progressive Conservative leader Tim Hudak’s, who is proposing immediate and deeper cuts to balance the books. Under the Conservative platform, the deficit would be eliminated one year earlier.

Wynne and Hudak will meet at 6:30 p.m. for a televised debate along with New Democratic Party leader Andrea Horwath.

Hudak, 46, was first elected under the Harris small-government banner at a time when the province also was grappling with a large deficit. Harris cut welfare payments, fired nurses, closed hospitals and provoked a teachers’ strike.

Under his government, per capita spending fell by C$387 per person between 1995 and 1998, before adjusting for inflation, according to Statistics Canada data. When inflation is taken into account, Harris’ cuts would have amounted to C$533 per person today, the data show.

Less Draconian

The Liberal budget is less draconian yet takes the province in the same direction.

Under the Liberal plan, program spending will rise to C$119.4 billion this year and peak at C$120.2 billion in two years before returning to this year’s level in 2017-18.

The budget would reduce spending per capita by about C$179 below 2013 levels, according to Bloomberg calculations drawn from forecasts in the Liberal budget presented May 2 and the Ontario ministry of finance’s population projections.

The lower per capita spending won’t mean a reduction in services, according to Susie Heath, a spokeswoman for the campaign.

“As part of meeting our targets, we have provided no additional funding for compensation within the budget,” she said in an e-mail. “Any modest wage increases that are negotiated must be absorbed by employers within available funding and within our fiscal plan.” ​

Hudak is casting doubt on Wynne’s willingness to follow through with cuts. “That looks to me like a short-term pitch to win votes, but very poor fiscal management,” he said in a May 27 interview at Bloomberg’s Toronto office. “They simply don’t have a plan to balance the budget. They haven’t put a single idea on the table.”

Wary Unions

Ontario’s large public sector unions have largely refrained from attacking Wynne. Some are wary, though, of what will happen after the election, especially given past skirmishes with McGuinty over his efforts to tackle the persistent deficit.

“The nurses of Ontario already took a two year wage freeze, I believe we have done our duty,” Linda Haslam-Stroud, president of the Ontario Nurses’ Association, a union with more than 60,000 members, said in a May 27 phone interview. “The government that’s going to be in play is going to have to take a long hard look at how much they believe they can continue to squeeze out of the hospitals.”

Although he prefers Wynne’s spending freeze to Hudak’s cuts, James Ryan, head of the Ontario English Catholic Teachers Association, which represents 45,000 teachers, said the zero wage growth would impose a de facto pay cut thanks to inflation.

Credit Rating

“It would be incredibly unlikely that we would agree to a freeze for that long,” he said in a May 30 interview. “The government may have to change its plans in the future.”

On the other side of the equation, debt rating agencies could penalize the province for a failure to formulate and stick to a credible deficit-reduction program, creating an even bigger drain on government finances.

“Ontario has a really tough program-spending challenge to meet, and the question with their credit rating is, are they actually going to have the resolve to meet that,” Robert Kavcic, an economist at Bank of Montreal, said. “There’s basically zero public sector wage increases built into that budget.”

Ontario’s credit rating was downgraded in 2012 by Moody’s Investors Service as debt grew and the economy worsened. Now, two out of four major rating firms have Ontario at the bottom rung of the AA range. Standard & Poor’s is leaning toward a downgrade with a negative outlook on its rating.

Cost Controls

In the U.S. bond market, falling from the AA to the A range for a foreign government means borrowing costs almost 1 percentage point higher on average, according to Bank of America Merrill Lynch data. A 1 percentage point increase would cost Ontario an additional C$400 million a year in interest payments, according to budget documents.

At C$10.6 billion, interest payments on the province’s debt load accounts for the majority of the estimated C$11.3 billion deficit last year, the documents show.

The Liberal deficit-fighting strategy pairs cost controls with increased revenue from higher taxes and a stronger economy with a search for C$1.25 billion in savings over the next three years, which the party hasn’t identified yet.

The Liberals have already succeeded in making services more efficient, placing more pressure going forward on reining in wage costs, said Michael Yake, the Moody’s analyst covering Ontario.

“You can find efficiencies relatively easier at the beginning because that’s when the programs perhaps weren’t being well managed,” he said in an interview. “Once the low hanging fruit, once those easy items to identify have been captured it becomes harder where else to find efficiencies.”

With 50 percent to 55 percent of each ministry’s budget going to wages that will put more pressure for departments to chose between fewer staff or lower wages, he said.

We Desperately Need a Conservative Gov’t to Repair Damage Done by Liberals!

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National Post editorial board: A Conservative government for Ontario

National Post Editorial Board | June 7, 2014 12:01 AM ET

We believe Mr. Hudak is the principled, competent, strong-willed and compassionate fiscal conservative Ontario needs.

Tyler Anderson/National PostWe believe Mr. Hudak is the principled, competent, strong-willed and compassionate fiscal conservative Ontario needs.

It is difficult to overstate just how richly the Ontario Liberals deserve to be removed from office. It is difficult even to know where to begin.

As managers of public services they are, in the most charitable interpretation, famously inept. Witness the scandal at ORNGE, the non-profit set up to run the province’s air ambulance service, which soon devolved into a byzantine scheme to redirect public money into various private wallets. Witness the scandal at eHealth, which the auditor general found to have spent $1-billion comprehensively bungling efforts to create an electronic health records system. Witness former premier Dalton McGuinty’s signature green-energy initiative, which has seen electricity rates skyrocket even as the province exports electricity at a huge loss.

Indeed, Ontario’s Liberals are incredibly cavalier with public money. Witness the disbursement of some $30-million in grants to multicultural organizations, many with Liberal ties, in many cases based simply on ministers’ requests. (Who can forget the Ontario Cricket Association asking for $150,000 and getting $1-million?) Witness, most egregiously, the epic squandering of $1-billion to cancel two locally unpopular gas-fired power plants — plants Mr. McGuinty had unctuously defended against NIMBYism until he decided a few Liberal seats might be at risk, at which point he eliminated them with the stroke of a pen and his office busied itself covering up the matter. (Police are investigating. On Thursday they served a court order for documents at Queen’s Park, and confirmed they had questioned Mr. McGuinty.)

Simon Hayter for National Post

Simon Hayter for National PostViolence breaks out between white residents of Caledonia, native protestors and the O. P. P. at the Native barricade in Caledonia on Monday, May 22 2006.

When violent aboriginal protesters occupied the town of Caledonia in 2006, Mr. McGuinty’s government instructed the provincial police force to stand down, and eventually caved to the thugs outright — buying the land, and embattled homeowners’ silence, on the public dime. (During the 2011 election campaign, he told the National Post’s editorial board he was proud of how he handled the issue.)

And if a decade of amoral, path-of-least-resistance ineptitude isn’t enough, just consider the bottom line. In 2004-05, the first full year of Liberal governance, Ontario’s net debt per capita was $11,373. Today it stands at $19,881, an increase of 75%. As a share of GDP, Ontario’s debt has risen from 27% to 39%. Among large provinces, only Quebec can play in that league — and on Wednesday Premier Philippe Couillard unveiled a budget that sets the stage for the tough choices that province will need to make to keep the bond raters at bay.

When Conservative leader Tim Hudak pressed Ms. Wynne for specific examples of how she would cut spending, she could only stammer something about more government investment

We can hardly say the same of the budget Ms. Wynne tabled on May 1, and which she promises to reintroduce within 20 days of reelection. It maintains the Liberal promise of a balanced budget by 2017-18. But it does so while significantly inflating projected deficits in the meantime, completely abandoning Mr. McGuinty’s late-days commitment to belt-tightening — notably a wage freeze for public sector workers — and offering precious little explanation as to how it would manage to get spending under control. In a damaging segment of Tuesday night’s leaders debate, when Conservative leader Tim Hudak pressed Ms. Wynne for specific examples of how she would cut spending, she could only stammer something about more government investment.

It’s not even clear we can expect any improvement from Ms. Wynne on the ethics file: She is currently defending the emergency $300-million bailout of a failed government-backed office building project in downtown Toronto as just another real estate deal. And having promised never again to direct public money toward partisan purposes, she abruptly committed billions to a subway project into east-end Toronto, replacing a light rail project the Liberals had supported — conveniently enough, right in the middle of a local byelection campaign.

The sensible alternative to re-electing the Liberals yet again is clearly Mr. Hudak’s Progressive Conservatives. Mr. Hudak has mounted an unusually and admirably blunt campaign premised on Ontario’s desperate need for austerity. He promises to balance the budget in two years. His platform, wisely, is focused entirely on job-creation. But instead of throwing money at businesses to create jobs they might or might not have created anyway, as the Liberals do proudly, Mr. Hudak proposes a more egalitarian sort of incentive — lowering Ontario’s corporate tax rate from 11.5% to 8%, wrestling down electricity costs (in part through winding down the Liberals’ green energy policies) and cutting regulation.

THE CANADIAN PRESS/Cole Burston

THE CANADIAN PRESS/Cole BurstonTeachers carry picket signs outside then-premier Dalton McGuinty’s office on Wednesday, Dec. 12, 2012 in Ottawa.

Mr. Hudak also promises, though not in so many words, war with Ontario’s public sector unions. He proposes paring the public sector workforce significantly through attrition, contracting out and eliminating needless middle management — though he notes that this would serve merely to take us back to 2009 staffing levels. He promises a two-year wage freeze, across the board, no exceptions — not even for the Ontario Provincial Police Association, which has responded with a shameful hissy-fit attack ad campaign. He would shutter the College of Trades, a needless level of union-friendly bureaucracy, and return regulation to the government’s direct purview where it belongs. And he would scrap the outrageous arbitration framework that awards public sector contracts with no consideration of the government’s ability to pay.

Notwithstanding some of the glitches in Mr. Hudak’s campaign materials, he brings a common sense perspective to governance that Ontario desperately needs — and not just on the baseline fiscal issues that are critical for Ontario’s future. To take just three examples: In opposition, the Tories have supported imposing limits on third-party election advertising, the lack of which allows the labour movement to vastly outspend the parties themselves in a thinly veiled campaign for the Liberals; placing skill, commitment and other professional qualities above seniority as criteria for hiring teachers; and adding a dram of competition to Ontario’s bizarre and sclerotic liquor retail system.

In short, we believe Mr. Hudak is the principled, competent, strong-willed and compassionate fiscal conservative Ontario needs.

National Post

No End In Sight, To Liberal Scandals and Corruption!

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News / Ontario Election 2014

Ontario auditor general investigating government loans to MaRS

Ontario’s auditor general is investigating provincial government

loans to MaRS, but says the probe was planned before the $317 million

bailout erupted into an election issue last week.

Ontario auditor general Bonnie Lysyk is auditing Infrastructure Ontario’s loans program, including loans to the MaRS research organization.

FRANK GUNN / THE CANADIAN PRESS FILE PHOTO

Ontario auditor general Bonnie Lysyk is auditing Infrastructure Ontario’s loans program, including loans to the MaRS research organization.

By:  Queen’s Park Bureau, Published on Thu Jun 05 2014

WELLAND, ONT.—Ontario’s auditor general is investigating provincial government loans to MaRS, but says the probe was planned before the $317 million bailout erupted into an election issue last week.

A letter from auditor general Bonnie Lysyk to New Democrat MPP Gilles Bisson — who asked for a probe last week fearing an abuse of tax dollars — reveals an examination has been in the works.

“As it happens, we are currently conducting an audit of Infrastructure Ontario’s loans program and the scope of that audit includes the loan made to facilitate completion of the MaRS Phase 2 building, the subject of your concerns,” Lysyk wrote in a letter dated Tuesday.

“The results of our audit will be published in our annual report this December,” added Lysyk.

“You have raised a number of questions that we will consider in drafting the chapter covering this audit.”

The brand new building, also the subject of concerns from the Progressive Conservatives, is on the southeast corner of College St. and University Ave., across from Queen’s Park.

NDP Leader Andrea Horwath applauded the auditor general’s probe Thursday during a campaign stop in Welland.

“I’m glad the auditor general is doing an investigation. It’s good she’s doing that,” Horwath told reporters at Giant FM, a classic rock radio station, where she promised to extend the Ontario ombudsman’s powers to include hospitals, long-term care and the troubled ORNGE air ambulance service along with closing a loophole allowing “partisan” government ads online within 30 days the election.

MaRS, which stands for medical and related sciences, is a registered charity set up as an innovation and research hub. The organization was in danger of missing payments on a $234 million loan made by the province in 2011 to finance the new building, with the money to be paid back with rental income from tenants.

But finding tenants has been difficult and the building has a 69 per cent vacancy rate, with internal government documents stating MaRS was a risk of “default, foreclosure and fiscal writedowns” over the building’s poor finances.

Liberal Leader Kathleen Wynne’s campaign has said no deal to buy the building has been finalized. The matter was to be discussed on May 13 at a Treasury Board meeting that was delayed by the election call that has voters heading to the polls next week.

Wynne downplayed the issue at a campaign stop in Mississauga.

“The auditor general, in the regular course of preparing her report, was already looking at some of the Infrastructure Ontario issues,” she said.

Wynne’s campaign issued a statement accusing Horwath, who is third place in the polls, of attempting to “revive her struggling campaign by deceiving reporters” about a process in which the auditor general conducts value-for-money audits of a wide range of government programs.

Bisson said last week the Liberal plan was tantamount to “secret payments on the eve of an election” and comparable to former premier Dalton McGuinty’s decision to scrap gas-fired power plants before the 2011 election that reduced his Liberals to a minority.

“This kind of abuse of tax dollars during an election is precisely what we saw from Dalton McGuinty, and it’s exactly what we are seeing now from Kathleen Wynne,” he added.

“The same Liberal government pegged the relocation of the gas plants at $40 million before the auditor general revealed the true cost was $1.1 billion.”

In a news release Thursday the NDP said the bailout makes little sense because the government’s spring budget — which Horwath and Conservative Leader Tim Hudak refused to support, plunging Ontario into an election — pledged to eliminate one million square feet of office space.