Wind Turbines….Nothing More than “Novelty Energy”!

September 13, 2015 / 1957chev / Leave a comment

Wind Power: Just an Ugly ‘Hood Ornament’ on the Conventional Power System

September 14, 2015 by stopthesethings

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As time marches on, the ability of the wind industry to ‘hood’-wink power punters is running into a deluge of ‘unhelpful’ facts: here’s some more from Michigan Capitol Confidential’s Jack Spencer.

Renewables Just a Hood Ornament on Fossil Fuel Power System
You can’t have renewable energy without fossil fuels backing it up
CapCon
Jack Spencer
4 September 2015

General Electric Co. and the Environmental Protection Agency know better than most that renewable energy sources — which are the recipients of billions of dollars of taxpayer largesse in many forms — are in the end dependent on fossil fuels. In a document submitted to the EPA on June 25, 2012, GE urged the agency to keep this fossil fuel dependency in mind when considering emissions standards:

“However, if flexible generation assets, such as gas turbines, are not available, these renewable technologies will not be deployed. In other words, gas turbines are an essential component of renewable energy sources’ ability to penetrate the market.”

Nevertheless, the public remains mostly unaware of the degree to which the heavily subsidized or mandated renewable energy sources, including wind and solar, rely on fossil fuels. More than half the electric generation nominally credited to wind power is actually produced by fossil fuels, mostly natural gas. And on the rare occasions when renewable energy advocates are forced to admit the fossil fuel dependency, they refer to it as only “backing up” the renewable source.

GE, the huge multinational corporation, has been described as President Barack Obama’s “favorite corporation.” It has contributed heavily to Obama’s political campaigns. And like all other large corporations it is vulnerable to the administration’s regulatory arms. So it is not a company one would expect to state so unambiguously facts that the administration would prefer to downplay, such as descriptions of why renewables are dependent on fossil fuels.

Nevertheless, here’s another example from the GE document:

“Renewable power, especially from wind and solar, will be expected to fluctuate hourly and even minute-to-minute with changes in wind speed, cloud cover, and other environmental factors. With this generation mix, electric supply must be available to quickly compensate for the combined variability of demand and fluctuation in the renewable supply.”

The GE document is titled: “Comments of the General Electric Company: Proposed standards of performance for greenhouse gas emissions for new stationary sources: Electric utility generating units.” The document includes a great deal of technical information and is available for public viewing.

However, as is typical of such documents, it omits the percentage of electricity attributed to the “renewables” that is actually generated by the fossil fuel component. When this information is repeatedly denied to the public it is fair to ask: “What are they trying to hide?”
CapCon

Jack Spencer is on the right track, but the missing answer as to GE’s love of wind power is staring him in the face – as his following pieces detail.

GE isn’t backing the wind power fraud to sell wind turbines – these things are being slapped together in workshops in China and India at a fraction of the cost of the American built GE units.

GE’s real interest in wind power is about selling thousands of fast-start-up Open Cycle Gas Turbines (OCGTs) – which are being rolled out any where that there is any significant wind power capacity.

OCGT peaking plants are essential to covering the inevitable, but wholly unpredictable collapses in wind power output that occur almost every day, and for days on end (see our posts here and here).

Whether or not GE sells wind turbines (and it hasn’t sold many in Australia) – as long as these things are being speared into rural communities, GE still gets to sell OCGTs – a market in which it dominates.

In an effort to flog its gas turbines, GE advertised heavily in The Guardian – under the banner “Powering People” and in The Australian – where, earlier this year, GE “sponsored” numerous “features” under its banner “Powering Australia” (see our post here).

OCGTs are used – along with gazillions of gallons of gas, diesel or kerosene that run them – to plug the ‘gaps’ in wind power output around the globe: they’re a daily occurrence; total; and totally unpredictable.

We’ll let Jack off the leash again, as he homes in on the fact that wind power’s really just a ‘gas’.

How Wind Energy Creates More Dependence on Fossil Fuels
‘Any informed student of wind energy … understands that’
CapCon
Jack Spencer
2 March 2015

Truth has a habit of emerging from unexpected places. An article in the Daily Kos about the desire to end dependence on fossil fuels for energy needs reveals a “nasty little secret” about wind energy: It relies on fossil fuels. That’s a message wind energy opponents in Michigan have been trying to get across to the news media and the public over the past few years.

The article is part of a series titled “Getting to Zero,” by Keith Pickering, and is written with the premise that global warming is a dire and immediate threat. It states, “If civilization is to survive, we need to get to zero emission of fossil carbon, and we need to get there rapidly.” Overall it paints a pessimistic portrait of efforts to reduce carbon emissions from human sources.

A major aspect of the article’s pessimism about actually “getting to zero” pertains to wind energy. The following paragraphs serve as an example:

Wind farms are dependent on the weather to work, and most of the time they’re sitting idle or underperforming because the wind isn’t strong enough to turn the blades. The capacity factor (CF) for wind varies by location, but Iowa is pretty good, so let’s assume a CF of 35 [percent]. Nuclear has no such dependency and can operate around the clock.

In the [U.S.], nuclear plants have an average CF of 90 [percent].

So when we factor CF into those prices … most of wind’s advantage is wiped out by just that factor alone.

Over the long term it gets even worse for wind, because nuclear plants today are engineered for a 60-year lifetime, and wind generators are engineered for a 20 or 25 year lifetime. … That means that wind is cheaper than nuclear in the short term, but more expensive in the long term. Then there’s the backup problem. … When the wind dies, the lights still have to stay on. Right now that’s done with natural gas. …”

According to Kevon Martis, director of the Interstate Informed Citizens Coalition, a non-profit organization concerned about the construction of wind turbines in the region, what the Daily Kos article shows is that people knowledgeable about the technology understand that wind energy depends more on fossil fuels than on wind, no matter their views on contentious issues like global warming.

“Any informed student of wind energy, regardless of whether they are on the left or the right politically, understands that, far from freeing Michigan ratepayers from fossil-fueled electricity, wind energy actually binds us to fossil fuels at roughly a two-parts-fossil one-part-wind ratio,” Martis said. “Properly understood, wind energy should always be called ‘fossil-wind.’ What’s sad is that the vast majority of Michigan residents and probably members of the news media as well are not aware of this information. That situation needs to be remedied.”

In its assessment of wind energy, the Daily Kos article states: “Wind-plus-gas-backup is certainly better than gas alone, but it’s not the endpoint of a fossil-free grid, and it never will be.”

One of the strongest arguments against wind energy is the assertion that “natural gas alone” would produce fewer emissions than when it is combined with wind. That’s because having to switch natural gas generation on and off, literally at the whim of the way the wind blows, is less efficient and therefore less clean.

However, a news media and public that mistakenly believe wind energy is just wind, rather than two-thirds fossil fuels, cannot be expected to comprehend or participate in such a debate. Restricting important facts or (as some still insist) “alleged facts” about wind energy to the province of “experts only” is an affront to transparency and an obstacle to open public discourse. The Legislature owes the people of Michigan a hearing or series of hearings on this issue.

David Wand, deputy director of strategic communications with the American Wind Energy Association, did not return a phone call offering him the opportunity to comment.
CapCon

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Natural Gas to Wind Energy: You’re Nothing Without Me
Energy from windmills is mostly backed up by fossil fuels
CapCon
Jack Spencer
11 April 2015

Wind energy in Michigan is approximately two-thirds fossil fuels (predominantly natural gas) used in a less than efficient way, coupled with one-third wind. Most people are unaware of that reality and misinformation flourishes as a result.

Case in point: a new study claims to provide comparisons between wind and natural gas by treating them as if they were two totally separate and distinct forms of energy generation.

The University of Michigan and Lansing-based consulting firm 5 Lakes Energy are touting a joint study based on a “model” produced at the university. The stated purpose of the study is to provide policymakers with a “tool” to help them choose between wind and natural gas. Unfortunately the model upon which the study was based is so flawed that the only “tool” it brings to mind is a toy hammer used in an attempt to force a square peg into the proverbial round hole.

The outputs of the model and resulting study attempt to justify the expansion of wind energy (the term “renewables” is used — but that means wind) in Michigan to meet energy demands resulting from the impending closure of coal plants. Its main argument is that wind energy would be a wise choice because natural gas prices are likely to fluctuate.

The idea here is that wind energy should be seen as a hedge against the possibility that natural gas prices could increase. It is basically an attempt to use the old “don’t put all your eggs in one basket” analogy. This is persuasive only when one ignores the fact that wind energy is 65 percent natural gas, which is precisely what the model does.

For those who understand that a dependable blend which includes wind energy must contain mostly natural gas, the analogy of “not putting all your eggs in one basket” used to promote the study is ludicrous.

“The operative word is ‘or,’” said Tom Stacy, an electricity generation analyst and independent regulatory and policy consultant who signs his correspondence “Ohioan for Afford Electricity.” He explains that the “eggs in one basket” warning doesn’t make sense. “There is no ‘or.’ It is either 100 percent gas or 65 percent gas plus 35 percent wind.”

“The catch,” he continued, “is that compared to the cost of the natural gas basket, consumers are forced to pay triple for baskets because the wind basket costs twice what the gas basket does, yet the gas basket is still required to hold 65 percent of the eggs.” He continued, “The end result: For our dozen eggs, we pay for three baskets when we could have paid for one. In exchange we get four free eggs. The problem is the extra baskets cost far more than the eggs.”

Although fortified with the usual officious-sounding phrases and sprinkled with expert-speak acronyms, the 5 Lakes study is rooted in the popular, but inaccurate, fantasy that wind energy is what wind supporters wish it could be, rather than what it actually is. At one point the study report reveals its imaginary basis with the following statement: “If we choose the natural gas path and natural gas prices rise, we may regret that we are stuck using expensive natural gas when we could have had free wind or solar fuel.”

Free wind? That phrase alone seems contrived to deceive the uninitiated and validate the green faithful. Again, since wind is so unreliable, wind energy has to be backed up by natural gas 65 percent of the time. Under that circumstance — obviously — the cost of wind energy will always largely reflect the price of natural gas. What’s more, the impact of any natural gas price change on wind energy is really more that 65 percent, because natural gas, when hooked up to wind energy, is put to a less efficient use. This is due to the requirement that it be constantly adjusted for when the wind is or is not blowing or not blowing enough. It is exactly the same dynamic that takes place with an automobile’s use of gasoline when driving in city traffic as compared to coasting down the open highway.

In the real “power pool,” wind is not physically paired with just natural gas; it is also paired with coal. The example used in this article gives wind the benefit of the doubt by only using natural gas, and not coal, as the balancing source in the hybrid. The average emissions intensity of coal plus wind is far higher than for gas plus wind. In other words, coal gets terrible “city mileage MPG” compared to natural gas and the pairing of wind with coal results in the excessive inefficiency of stop and go traffic.

The flawed and dishonest premise of the 5 Lakes Energy Study marks it as just the latest attempt by wind energy advocates to promote their product by masking wind energy’s true nature. Wind energy is a less than 30 percent add-on to natural gas. Its effect on emissions, as compared to just natural gas alone, is debatable and at best minimal. The failure of the study to acknowledge this spoils all of its conclusions and suggestions.

A glance at a list of 5 Lakes Energy principle founders reveals more than one official from the administration of former Gov. Jennifer Granholm. Michigan Capitol Confidential emailed the following questions to Douglas Jester, the author of the report on the study, and later to other 5 Lakes Energy officials. They were: Are you denying that wind energy is primarily fueled by natural gas? Why does your study appear to have not accounted for this reality? Is there something we are missing here that you should make us aware of?

Thus far, there has been no response to these questions.
CapCon

Europeans Regret….Wind Energy is a Bad Deal, No Matter Where You Go!

September 11, 2015 / 1957chev / Leave a comment

Europeans Lament their Wind Power Fiasco

September 11, 2015 by stopthesethings

Hurrah! Windfarms produce whopping ONE PERCENT of EU energy
The Register
Lewis Page
27 July 2015

The colossal, hugely expensive windfarms that are spread across huge areas of Europe’s land and sea, which are projected to drive up household energy bills by more than 50 per cent in coming years, have achieved … almost nothing in terms of reducing EU carbon emissions.

We here on the Reg energy desk only noticed this particularly this week because of a chirpy press release that flitted past us just the other day, claiming that “wind energy provides 8 per cent of Europe’s electricity.”

Hey, we thought, that sounds almost like it’s getting somewhere! So we looked into it. The eight per cent figure comes from the latest Wind Status Report (pdf) from the EU Joint Research Centre, and sure enough, it’s claimed therein that all those massive wind farms produced no less than 238 terawatt-hours of the 2,942 TWh of ‘leccy used in the EU nations last year.

That’s eight per cent, right enough – and that’d be a noticeable bite out of EU carbon emissions, maybe even one worth tying an energy-prices ball and chain round the ankles of the European economies.

Except it isn’t, of course. Like most developed economies, the EU nations use the great bulk of their energy in non-electric forms: we burn fuels to run transport, to provide heating and cooking and hot water, to power most of our industry. And this accounts for most of our energy use and carbon emissions.

By the most recent figures available, in fact, the EU is using around 1,666 million-tonnes-of-oil-equivalent of energy from all sources every year:that’s 20,710 TWh. Wind electricity makes up just over one measly percentage point of that. Solar? About half that again, for a total renewable-‘leccy contribution of around 1.5 per cent and a roughly corresponding CO₂ reduction.

The large majority of the “renewable energy” figure claimed by the EU is produced by optimistic accounting on biomass and renewable-waste, much of which is dubiously renewable at best. Even the proper renewable electricity figures are not to be relied on, particularly in southern Italy where the Mafia is well known to be heavily involved in the industry.

Actual renewables, despite their horrific expense, are not even scratching the surface of real-world modern civilisation’s energy requirements.

Comment

It really is getting clearer and clearer. Bill Gates is right: top Google engineers are right: global-warming high priest James Hansen is right: theUN IPCC is wrong. The renewable energy technologies of today simply cannot provide the power needed to keep the lights on, not at any cost.

Anybody who thinks that carbon emissions are a big threat to humanity – or alternatively, anybody who thinks that becoming ever more dependent on Russian gas and Middle Eastern oil is a bad idea, for instance – needs to get their head around this and move on. The current, cripplingly expensive schemes which crank up the price of energy and channel the resulting cash to windfarms and solar panels need to be scrapped – they will never achieve anything useful.

Perhaps the money saved could be spent on R&D instead, to find some new source of low-carbon energy. But in fact, such a source already exists; the problem is really one of public understanding, rather than a lack of low-carbon energy in the world.
The Register

Windweasels are Definitely a Despicable Bunch of Miscreants!

September 9, 2015 / 1957chev / Leave a comment

Scottish Council Demands Copy of Noise Report for Non-Compliant Wind Farm & Its Operator Predictably Runs for Cover

September 9, 2015 by stopthesethings

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One of the slickest moves wind weasels ever made was to have their team write the so-called “wind farm noise guidelines” – which deliberately exclude all reference to the real bane of wind farm neighbours – incessant turbine generated low-frequency noise and infrasound:

Wind Turbine Infrasound: What Drives Wind Farm Neighbours to Despair

Three Decades of Wind Industry Deception: A Chronology of a Global Conspiracy of Silence and Subterfuge

And the next slickest was to write the planning ‘rules’ – designed to have the operators themselves cook up the so-called “compliance data”, which they then hand over to the gullible country bumpkins that work on local Councils; untrained dimwits who simply accept whatever’s dropped on their dreary little desks, by the operator’s highly-paid, pet acoustic consultants.

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Some might liken it to handing over security detail at your backyard hen-house to ‘Le Renard & Co’.

That wind power outfits might pull just one or two punches in their obvious commercial interest, might come as a shock to some. However, the same malevolent approach to the manufacture of helpful ‘evidence’ – and the deliberate concealment of the unhelpful stuff – has been adopted all around the globe.

In Australia, Spanish wind conquistadors, Acciona have been turning in fabricated noise data, ever since its Waubra wind farm kicked into gear in 2010.

The operator knows full well that it cannot, and will never, comply with the noise conditions of its planning consent; so does the local Council and the Victorian Planning Department – all of which are sitting on a damming document prepared by an independent consultant, Heggies – which they steadfastly refuse to hand over to their dozens of victims, for obvious reasons:

Victorian Planning Department involved in Waubra Wind Farm Non-Compliance Cover Up

The same ‘method’ has been applied to two other Victorian public health disasters: Macarthur and Cape Bridgewater.

Here’s more of the same from the Highlands of Scotland.

Angus Council may pull plug on Ark Hill windfarm
The Courier
Graham Brown
5 September 2015

Angus planners are on the brink of instigating enforcement action against the operators of the district’s largest windfarm.

The patience of council chiefs is running out over a demand for a noise monitoring report for the eight-turbine Ark Hill windfarm, near Glamis, where the 266-foot structures have been operational since spring of 2012.

A deadline of Friday was set for operators Green Cat Renewables to give an update on the noise monitoring report previously requested by the authority last November.

Residents in the area around the Strathmore site have complained about turbine noise since the windfarm became operational and they said the company was “giving Angus Council the run around”.

Following crunch council discussions within the past week, concerned residents were told that the close of business on Friday was set as the deadline for the operators to give a firm indication of when they plan to submit the monitoring report, or face enforcement action.

The ultimate sanction available to the council is to shut down the windfarm.

One resident said: “These problems have gone on since the turbines went up and they affect our lives, our pets and livestock in the fields around Ark Hill.

“There are so many things which can make a difference to the noise from the turbines, and quite often it is when there is little or no wind.

“People in the area suffering health problems are starting to link them to the windfarm and yet all this time we are still waiting on this noise report.

“The council are not at fault here, they have asked Green Cat for the report and it has not been produced — they are being given the run around.

“No-one can say that there’s not a problem here and it needs to be sorted.”

A council spokesperson said: “Angus Council understands that the wind turbine operator has completed noise monitoring and data gathering at the site and is in the process of preparing a finalised report.

“We have requested a clear timescale for the submission of that report and hope to have clarity on the matter shortly.”

Green Cat Renewables were contacted but made no comment.
The Courier

What? A non-compliant wind farm’s operator running for cover? Who ever heard of such a thing?

Wind Industry RUNS & HIDES as World Wakes Up to the Great Wind Power Fraud

The fact that wind weasels and inconvenient truths are unlikely to appear on the same stage anytime soon, is – these days – pretty much common knowledge – as the following comments to the article above attest.

Anonymous

Green Cat has been dragging its feet for months producing the monitoring report. What have they got to hide?

If anyone has any doubts about the excessive noise visit the site and listen for yourselves.

Disgraceful behaviour from this company.

A public apology from Green Cat would be appropriate. While residents suffer – some without a good night’s sleep – they have dragged their feet in resolving the noise problem.

An appalling stare of affairs.

Concerned Observer

How stupid is this. Has Angus Council learned nothing from the Seed Crushers fiasco in Arbroath?

Asking the offender to provide information is like asking someone to jail themselves – stupid, just plain stupid.

The correct way for noise monitoring is:

1 – the council commission an independent noise monitoring report before any development takes place for which the applicant pays the council.

2 – the noise level above that, then established ambient level, is included in the planning consent as a condition and included in the Environmental Impact Assessment.

3 – the operator is required to keep a noise monitoring log at pre-determined times as part of the planning consent (something like a set date of each month).

4 – any breach is checked against that log.

5 – any continual complaints are investigated by the council, once again commissioning an independent noise monitoring report chargeable to the owners of the site.

6 – any breach of the planning conditions are then rectified by the issuing of an enforcement notice.

Angus Council is at fault here for not applying strict rules to the planning consent and relying on the owners to hang themselves. SEPA who are equally as useless operate in the same way as the council.

It is about time the Scottish government clamped down on the shoddy practices of enforcement and to lackadaisical planning conditions, without any firm pre permission conditions and agreed methods of implementation. Green Cat are at fault, Angus Council are at fault, the Scottish government are at fault. Good luck to the residents but honestly – you are not going to get anywhere now the turbines are up and running and the operator remains responsible for providing evidence.

Tom Harris, Exec. Director of Int. Climate Science Coalition, Talks to John Counsell, of CFRA, in Ottawa.

September 8, 2015 / 1957chev / 2 Comments

Tom Harris speaks on Radio, to John Counsell, of CFRA Radio Stn., in Ottawa

I believe this is one of the all time biggest frauds perpetrated on people world-wide. Wealth transference, from rate payers, to governments and rich investors. We are not improving our environment, in any way. There is no net benefit to wind or solar, over traditional energy sources, burned cleanly, especially hydro and nuclear, which are rejected in favour of this “novelty energy”! The corruption inherent in this incestuous relationship between governments and the renewables industry, has to be investigated. It is a scam! We are being robbed blind. Energy poverty is a reality for many people. Shellie Correia

Eric Jelinski – A Canadian Energy Engineer, Tells the Truth About Wind Turbines….

September 8, 2015 / 1957chev / 5 Comments

Top Canadian Energy Engineer – Eric Jelinski – Slams the Great Wind Power Fraud

by stopthesethings

Provided they haven’t got their trotters in the wind industry subsidy trough, engineers are quicker than most, when it comes to rumbling the great wind power fraud.

Practically minded, and with heads for real numbers, engineers are able to pick apart the complete pointlessness of trying to rely on an energy source that will NEVER be available on demand (can’t be stored) – is entirely dependent upon the weather – and is, therefore, not a generation “system” at all: “chaos” and “system” are words that come from completely different paddocks; and which mean completely different things (see our post here).

And engineers, who build “systems”, don’t like “chaos”.

Google’s top engineers – Stanford PhDs, Ross Koningstein and David Fork – came out and recently tipped a bucket on the nonsense of attempting to run 21st Century economies using a ‘technology’ that was dumped way back in the 19th Century (see our post here).

Now, one of Canada’s leading energy engineers, Eric Jelinski has come out swinging too.

An Engineer Speaks
Windfarm Action
27 January 2015

The following was written by Eric Jelinski, P. Eng., a Canadian engineer who specializes in energy production. Gas plants. Nuclear plants. Wind & solar energy. He explains to his township (Clearview Township, Ontario) why wind energy is folly.

I am writing to express my objections to the installation of Industrial Wind Turbines in Clearview Township, Ontario, Canada.

My wife and I moved here to retire on 50 acres, building a house, market garden, as well as taking many other initiatives to become part of the vital social fabric.

It is bad enough that under Ontario Premier McGuinty, the social fabric in big cities like Toronto is in need of repair, as it happens, in part because those “50,000 jobs” in renewable energy have not materialized, and there is little productive activity for many of the youth in the cities. Guns and drugs are very much part of the social fabric in some neighbourhoods.

What gives McGuinty, with his Toronto constituent Members of the Provincial Parliament (MPP’s), the moral right to tell us in Clearview that we must accept wind turbines “or else”?

One way to stop the wasted energy and environmental impact of urban sprawl is for big city MPP’s to clean up their own yard and make cities safer and more habitable. While they listen to those who object to new gas plants, and cook up a new “plan of the month” for public transport, why do they ignore the issues with wind turbines?

My background is nuclear and chemical engineering, with over 30 years combined working at each of the nuclear plants in Ontario. I teach nuclear engineering at University of Toronto and Georgian College (Power Engineering) in Owen Sound for the purpose of training the next generation of staff who will design plants and work them safely.

I know nuclear reactors and how e=mc² gets us the energy. I know chemical reactors, e.g. to make gasoline from crude oil, and refining metals. I know solar and wind energy going back to the 1970’s, as energy and exergy are my major fields of study.

The application of Ontario’s “Green Energy Act” is in violation of principles in engineering, where we teach engineers to anticipate unintended consequences and not proceed with implementation until consequences and risks are taken into account.

The Green Energy Act is an abomination that is creating a living hell for almost everybody in rural Ontario, and the provincial government is ignoring the data of emerging health issues, property value issues, setbacks and zoning, impacts on fowl, fauna, and fish, impacts on local weather such as the dew point and foliar uptake by plants that is important in particular to alleviate heat stress on biota.

I have seen firsthand one of my neighbours from the 1980’s near Ripley forced out of his farm home due to wind turbines in Huron Township. Others are putting up with the impacts.

The energy available from wind in Ontario is borderline minimal compared to other countries and areas of the world. 25% to 30% is the capacity factor.

The wind is not available when we need energy the most, i.e. summer air-conditioning and winter heating. The shoulder seasons have the most wind here, yet this is when air-conditioning and heating demands are minimal.

The power equation for wind results in 8 times the energy for a doubling of wind speed, and the excess energy has to be “dumped.” Storage systems are available, but prohibitively expensive. Hythanation is possible, but wind turbines are not economic for hydrogen production given the added infrastructure relative to the cost of natural gas.

Wind turbines use 5 to 7 times the amount of concrete and steel vs. say a nuclear plant on a per Megawatt basis. It will require some 10,000 wind turbines to replace the ~ 6000 MW of coal generation at 25% CF (capacity factor). Back-up gas fired plants have to be added like plug-ins everywhere because the wind is not reliable.

The pastoral scene of a field of wind turbines slowly turning in almost still air has environmentalists dreaming in technicolour.

The truth is that these wind turbines need about 8 km/hour of wind before they will start generating electricity. Any rotation of the blades at wind speeds below 8 km/hour is accomplished by taking power from the grid to get the wind turbine started in anticipation that the wind may pick up.

The economy of scale that has historically brought competitive energy prices in Ontario is not available, given the thousands of wind turbines, and that will also become a maintenance nightmare as machines and contracts approach end of life. Why do we not refuel Nanticoke, Lakeview, Lambton, Lennox and complete Wesleyville to run on natural gas?

What makes McGuinty et al. think they can impose industrial wind turbines on Clearview and all of rural Ontario? Is Clearview thinking of becoming part of this scheme of waste?

This scheme of waste is happening not just by government order, but it is happening because of the salacious relationship between government and the developers.

The most telling example is the head of the Federal Liberal Party is a wind developer. The activity surrounding the recent cancelled “gas plant” in order to preserve seats, and thus preserve the Green Energy Act, is also telling.

We also have the government using engineers from wind developers making recommendations on health impacts. As a P. Eng. I can say that engineers are not the authority on health. The conflict of interest between the engineer being paid for engineering work, vs. the same engineer as proponent and key advisor to the government is quite apparent.

The set-back of 550 meters has no scientific basis. Noise from wind turbines has been measured up to 10 kilometers away in some locations. Medical doctors have noted the health impacts, yet they are being ignored by the Ontario government.

The Feed-in Tariff takes billions of dollars out of communities, out of the province, and out of the country. This is money that is very much needed for healthcare, for schools and teachers, and to replace aging infrastructure and to build much needed new infrastructure such as public transit.

For the first time in decades (I don’t think it ever took place), Ontario is taking equalization payments from the Federal Government, and this points to not only the unsustainability of Ontario as an economy, it is dragging down the rest of the country. It would be different if we owned everything, did local planning, and used a process that garnered respect.

The Ontario government is following the advice of foreign countries and foreign companies to give our money away to them irrespective of the advice of many MP’s. It is most interesting to note that one of the political parties with a labour platform appears in complete agreement with giving away the work and the money and the surplus electricity.

Japan is restarting its nuclear fleet. Russia, China, India, Britain, the US, and even the United Arab Emirates are building or planning to nuclear reactors for electric generation. What is the purpose and value of Ontario energy policy? Every product we buy in Ontario that is made someplace else (most items, can you name one thing that is made here?) has a nuclear energy component in that product.

It is time to stop being altruistic or hypocritical about our energy. There is no rational reason for the 50% cap on nuclear in Ontario. Are we on some unwitting “race to the bottom” being orchestrated by some competitor countries wanting to control us? Having ample low cost energy is crucial to sovereignty, internal peace, and security.

As such, there is no respecting McGuinty, Bentley et al. for this indictment. There is also no need to respect any wind developers as they have already indicated their respect for us. I commented last year on WPD, and sent comments to their consultant as requested, and they have not replied, and their silence speaks volumes. I have sent many an e-mail to the government recommending a moratorium and have not been given the courtesy of any reply.

The purpose of the developer is to make money, i.e. take our money as allowed for by the government, and with minimum effort on their part. This speaks to the quality of the public meetings and their answers to our concerns. The public meetings are a sham.

There are quite a number of lawsuits already taking place and others pending. I thank the Federal government for the recent announcement on the health study. It is also pivotal to learn today that the Ministry of Health is being forced to testify.

My recommendation is for Clearview to take the high road and avoid complicity in matters that are before the courts, and who knows, but it is quite possible (I hope) that the renewed call for a moratorium may take hold for good reasons posted here.

A moratorium in Clearview is very appropriate.

While the WPD wind turbines west of Stayner are quite a few km from our place, they are likely the thin edge of the wedge planned for coming into Clearview. Let me remind you, we came here because this is a good place to live with good opportunities for business. All of that changes if wind turbines are allowed to disrupt the neighbourhood. And 10,000 wind turbines and solar farms are not the answer to Ontario’s energy needs.

As I said before, a province-wide moratorium is needed, and I believe this will come as a matter of time because the inconvenient truth about wind turbines is too big for McGuinty’s carpet. The track record for dictatorial governments throughout history is that all dictatorships eventually capitulate. A moratorium in Clearview would be a “made in Clearview” solution to stop the waste sooner than later.

Eric Jelinski, P. Eng.

What is interesting is that this is not only a UK or European problem and the US and Canada predates much of our wind fleet. But the problems are endemic in the industry and the political myopia of the issues and problems of wind a mystery to the other 97% of the population!
Windfarmaction

Green Energy Ponzie Scheme Lands Clinton’s Buddies in “Hot Water”…

September 7, 2015September 7, 2015 / 1957chev / Leave a comment

Green Energy Execs Praised by Clinton Foundation Indicted for $54M Ponzi Scheme

Bill Clinton / AP

BY: Lachlan Markay http://platform.twitter.com/widgets/follow

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September 5, 2015 2:37 pm

Executives of a Pennsylvania green energy company singled out for praise by Bill Clinton were arrested on fraud charges on Thursday in connection with an alleged Ponzi scheme.

The individuals are facing charges of wire fraud, securities fraud, and conspiracy over their roles in running a green energy company that authorities say was an elaborate $54 million Ponzi scheme, the Associated Press reported.

Prosecutors said the trio lied to investors that their “biochar” technology and “carbon-negative” housing in Tennessee made millions, but they had almost no earnings and used the money to repay earlier investors and for themselves.

The scam allegedly ran from 2005 until 2009, even after the Securities and Exchange Commission filed a civil lawsuit against Wragg and Knorr’s Mantria Corp. They were ordered in 2012 to pay $37 million each. […]

Two months before the SEC civil lawsuit, the company was publicly recognized for its stated commitment to “help mitigate global warming” by former President Bill Clinton’s Clinton Global Initiative. The company was cited for its plans to develop the biochar technology that it said would sequester carbon dioxide and reduce emissions in developing countries. Wragg appeared on stage with Clinton at the event in September 2009.

Praise for Mantria remains on the website of the Bill, Hillary, and Chelsea Clinton Foundation:

Mantria Corporation commits to help mitigate global warming through the use of its Carbon Fields site, where Mantria will perform trials on their product BioChar, a carbon-negative charcoal, to prove how this product can sequester carbon dioxide, improve soil quality when buried, and reduce emissions in developing countries.

Windpushers Want Guarantees, That Their Scam Will be Allowed to Continue!

September 6, 2015 / 1957chev / Leave a comment

Wind Industry Still Wailing About ‘Uncertainty’ as Australian Retailers Continue to Reject Wind Power ‘Deals’

September 6, 2015 by stopthesethings

[Could it be something about the ‘product’, maybe?]

Back in February this year, STT covered the unassailable fact that Australia’s Large-Scale Renewable Energy Target (LRET) – then set at a colossal 41,000 GWh – was completely unsustainable on every level – economic, political and social:

LRET “Stealth Tax” to Cost Australian Power Punters $30 BILLION

Our little analysis came at a time when a debate was underway about not whether, but by how much, the ultimate annual target needed to be cut to preserve a little of the wind industry’s furniture.

You see – with the ultimate target set at 41,000 GWh for 2020 – barely 16,000 GWh of power available from eligible renewable sources – and no new wind power capacity being built and none likely to be built – the imposition of the whopping $65 per MWh “shortfall charge” was then looming fast.

The actual cost to consumers of what is, pure and simple, a Federally mandated fine on electricity retailers – which will be recovered from all Australian power consumers – is around $93 per MWh, which is added to the average wholesale price of around $35 per MWh.

The Coalition’s wind industry front man, young Gregory Hunt calls it his “massive $93 per tonne carbon tax”. Its particular political toxicity was what focused the minds of our political betters in Canberra; and resulted in the first cut to the LRET’s ultimate annual target from 41,000 GWh to 33,000 GWh.

The principal logic that drove both the Coalition and Labor to slash the LRET target being fear of a power consumer (read “voter”) backlash – a revolt that will inevitably result when power consumers receive spiralling bills spelling out the fact that they are being hit with a mammoth, Federal electricity stealth tax.

Politicians of all hues know it – and, more importantly, Australia’s major electricity retailers know it: there is absolutely no way that – in an economy about to start going backwards – struggling businesses, manufacturing industries and cash-strapped households will tolerate the imposition of an enormous (and utterly pointless) Federal tax on electricity consumption.

Remember, this is the same electorate that smashed Julia Gillard over her ‘carbon tax’ – which, as another Federally mandated tax on electricity, was seen by voters as economically ‘toxic’; and gifted government to Tony Abbott’s Coalition 2 years ago.

After a lot of huffing and puffing – and shenanigans in the Senate – the reduced LRET target passed in June. At the time, the wind industry, its parasites and spruikers were howling one minute about the attack on “wonderful wind”; and breathing a collective sigh of relief that the dreaded “uncertainty” about the target was finally over.

Well, the trouble is that certain “certainties” still, and will always exist, in relation to the greatest economic and environmental fraud of all time: THESE THINGS DON’T WORK.

The retailers are about selling power on demand; not according to the vagaries of the wind.

Now, our favourite wind-worship cult-commanders – the Climate Spectator’s Tristan Edis (see this piece of wishful thinking) and ruin-economy’s Giles Parkinson – are furious about the fact that – despite the ‘agreement’ that settled on the latest LRET target – Australia’s retail power companies have absolutely NO interest in signing up to buy a “product” that can only ever be delivered at crazy random intervals, if at all. A product that brings total chaos for grid managers and allows peaking power operators to scoop up $millions in minutes:

South Australia’s Unbridled Wind Power Insanity: Wind Power Collapses see Spot Prices Rocket from $70 to $13,800 per MWh

The Wind Power Fraud (in pictures): Part 1 – the South Australian Wind Farm Fiasco

The Wind Power Fraud (in pictures): Part 2 – The Whole Eastern Grid Debacle

On top of that, the Senate Inquiry’s report (see our post here) into the great wind power fraud concluded that the adverse health effects caused by incessant turbine generated low-frequency noise and infrasound – such as sleep deprivation – are real; and not the product of some BIG COAL plot.

With 200 pages setting out the evidence of victims like SA turbine hosts, Clive and Trina Gare (see our post here), retailers are fully alive to the fact that it’s a matter of when, not if, wind farm neighbours start suing wind power outfits for $millions in damages. ‘Slam dunk’ common law claims in nuisance for the loss of the use of their homes; loss of property values etc, are brewing up as we speak. The outcome of which is that the $2 outfits used as fronts for the likes of Infigen will be insolvent, as soon as the victims file their claims:

Potential Wind Farm Neighbour Finds Idyllic Property is Now ‘Unsaleable’ at Any Price

Brits to Force £2 Wind Power Outfits to Hold £Millions in Reserve to Pay Damages to Victims & for Decommissioning

Bankers, retailers and anyone else with real skin-in-the-game hate risk – of any description. Signing up to lend money to – or buy wind power from – an outfit liable to go under in heartbeat is bad enough, but where the wind power outfit in question is in the gun for $millions in liability claims for nuisance or negligence, then it’s RISK that only the crazy-brave would take on.

But it’s risk of a different kind that has poor old Giles Parkinson almost turning on the waterworks in this, his latest lament: Renewable investment drought to continue as utilities extend buyers’ strike

Giles cites Miles George – head of Australia’s most notorious wind power outfit, Infigen (aka Babcock and Brown) – as he rails against the fact that Australia’s 3 biggest retailers – Origin, EnergyAustralia and AGL – have no intention of entering power purchase agreements with wind power outfits, which means they will never obtain the finance needed to build any new wind power capacity, anywhere FULL STOP.

Although never one quick to join the dots, Giles fails to make the (fairly obvious) connection between the unwillingness of $billion outfits – like Origin – to contract with near-bankrupt Infigen – even though Giles focuses on Infigen’s latest whopping $304 million annual loss: ever heard of ‘due diligence’, Giles?

In the mother of all ironies, Infigen, again blames its latest financial disaster on ….. wait for it …. “PARTICULARLY POOR WIND CONDITIONS”.

Oh, mother!

But should Miles and the gang really be complaining? After all, the wind is – as they repeatedly tell us – “FREE”. Which calls to mind that old chestnut about “getting precisely what you pay for”.

We’ll pick up Infigen’s latest ‘be-calmed-cash-loss-calamity’ in another post, shortly.

The ONLY reason power retailers do any business with cowboys like Infigen and union backed thugs like Pacific Hydro, is to obtain renewable energy certificates (RECs); and, thereby, avoid the imposition of the shortfall penalty. However, the likes of Giles and Tristan are unable to recognise that power retailers do, in fact, have a ‘choice’, in that respect.

They do not need to purchase RECs at all – power retailers are perfectly entitled to pay the fine and collect it from their customers. Which brings us back to ‘pending political toxicity’.

The big retailers know full well that Australian power consumers will not tolerate being lumbered with fines that will add close to $22 billion to their power bills, over the life of the LRET scheme. Here’s the calculus of what no-one – on either side of government – is willing to reveal, let alone prepared to ‘sell’, to voters.

The LRET target is set by s40 of the Renewable Energy (Electricity) Act 2000 (here). At the present time, the total annual contribution to the LRET from eligible renewable energy generation sources is 16,000 GWh; and, because commercial retailers have not entered PPAs with wind power outfits for well over 2½ years – and have no apparent intention of doing so from hereon – that’s where the figure will remain.

In the table below, the “Shortfall in MWh (millions)” is based on the current, total contribution of 16,000,000 MWh, as against the current 33,000 GWh target, set out as the “Target in MWh (millions)”.

A REC is issued for every MWh of eligible renewable electricity dispatched to the grid; and a shortfall penalty applies to a retailer for every MWh that they fall short of the target – the target is meant to be met by retailers purchasing and surrendering RECs. As set out below, the shortfall charge kicks in this calendar year. Given the impact of the shortfall charge, and the tax treatment of RECs versus the shortfall charge, the full cost of the shortfall charge to retailers is $93. Using that figure, here is the cost of the shortfall penalty.

Year	Target in MWh (millions)	Shortfall in MWh (millions)	Penalty on Shortfall @ $65 per MWh	Minimum Retailers recover @ $93
2015	18.85	2.85	$185,250,000	$265,050,000
2016	21.431	5.431	$353,015,000	$505,083,000
2017	26.031	10.031	$652,015,000	$932,883,000
2018	28.637	12.637	$821,405,000	$1,175,241,000
2019	31.244	15.244	$990,860,000	$1,417,692,000
2020	33.85	17.85	$1,160,250,000	$1,660,050,000
2021	33	17	$1,105,000,000	$1,581,000,000
2022	33	17	$1,105,000,000	$1,581,000,000
2023	33	17	$1,105,000,000	$1,581,000,000
2024	33	17	$1,105,000,000	$1,581,000,000
2025	33	17	$1,105,000,000	$1,581,000,000
2026	33	17	$1,105,000,000	$1,581,000,000
2027	33	17	$1,105,000,000	$1,581,000,000
2028	33	17	$1,105,000,000	$1,581,000,000
2029	33	17	$1,105,000,000	$1,581,000,000
2030	33	17	$1,105,000,000	$1,581,000,000
Total	490.043	234.043	$15,212,795,000	$21,765,999,000

The almost $22 billion in fines payable by power consumers will sit on top of the $22-23 billion worth of RECs that will also be added to power bills (see our post here).

Now, while Giles Parkinson’s article misses the point, his headline, which includes the words “buyers’ strike” touches on the “golden rule”: whoever has the gold, makes the rules.

When we first looked at this issue in February, we drew the analogy with another Federal government backed producer subsidy scheme, which also imploded due to a “buyers strike”.

With Giles, among others, struggling to come to terms with the “golden rule”, we think that it would be rude not to give that analysis another run.

In a little case of déjà vu, STT thinks that there are some significant parallels and important lessons to be learnt from how the Australian wool industry saw its Federally mandated subsidy scheme implode during the 1990s; all but killing the industry and costing growers and taxpayers tens of billions of dollars.

The wool industry’s “cause of death” was the Federally backed Reserve Price Support scheme (RPS), which set a guaranteed minimum price for all Australian wool.

A little background on the RPS

For over 150 years, Australia happily rode on the sheep’s back: until the 1970s the wool industry was, for the Australian economy, the “goose that laid the golden egg”; textile manufacturers from all over the world clamoured for the fibre; which was, for most of that time, the largest single commodity export by value; Australia produces over 80% of the world’s apparel wool. However, as fashions changed (the three-piece wool suit became, well, so “yesterday”) and new synthetics began to eat into its market share, the dominance of Australian apparel wool was no longer a certainty.

Against the backdrop of increasing competition, for the wool industry there was always the perennial issue, not only of fluctuating demand, but also of wildly fluctuating swings in production. Dorothea McKellar’s land of “droughts and flooding rains” meant that a few years of meagre production (and favourable, and even phenomenal, wool prices) would be soon eclipsed by sheds and wool stores overflowing with fibre ready for market (sending prices and woolgrower profits plummeting).

The response to these (often climate driven) marketing “swings and roundabouts”, was the establishment of the Australian Wool Corporation (AWC) and the RPS in 1973.

The RPS would set a minimum price for all types of wool, guaranteeing woolgrowers a minimum return; such that if supply exceeded demand, the AWC would purchase any wool being offered, if it failed to reach the minimum price set (referred to as the “floor price”).

Wool being offered at auction that failed to meet the floor price was purchased by the AWC and “stockpiled” (ie stored), until such time as either supply fell or demand conditions improved; at which point the AWC would offer stockpiled wool to the trade. The aim being the smooth and more orderly marketing of wool over the supply and demand cycle; with higher average returns to growers; and less risk for buyers and sellers along the way.

The scheme worked swimmingly (as designed and intended) until the late 1980s.

The reserve price set under the RPS was fixed in Australian dollar terms. However, with the float of the Australian dollar in 1983 (resulting in a massive 40% depreciation of the dollar between February 1985 and August 1986), maintaining the reserve price without reference to the terms of trade and fluctuations in trading currencies (particularly the US dollar) set the scheme up for a spectacular failure; simply because what goes down can just as easily go up.

During the 1980s, there was a solid increase in demand for wool, driven by demand from the USSR, a then fast growing Japan, buoyant Europeans, and a newly emergent China, as a textile manufacturer and consumer. However, that surge in demand occurred in the context of an Australian dollar trading in a range around US$0.55-75.

During the 1980s, under pressure from wool grower lobby groups, the floor price was continually increased: from 1986 to July 1988 the floor price jumped 71% to 870 cents per kilogram.

That did not, in itself, create any problems: a general surge in demand, relatively low production and a plummeting Australian dollar generated auction room sale prices well above the rising floor price, which reached their zenith in April 1988: the market indicator peaked at 1269 cents per kg, and the market continued its bull run for most of that year, well above the 870 floor price set in July.

However, as international economic conditions worsened, Australian interest rates soared (the consequence of Paul Keating’s “recession that we had to have”) and the value of the Australian dollar with it (hitting US$0.80 by early 1990), the market indicator headed south and, over the next few years, the AWC was forced to purchase over 80% of the Australian wool clip at the 870 cent per kg floor price. Adding to the AWC’s difficulties was a massive surge in production; driven by growers responding to the high and “guaranteed” floor price; and a run of exceptional growing seasons (1989 being a standout across Australia). Production went from 727 million kg in 1983/84 to over 1 billion kg in 1990/91.

Despite worsening market conditions, the AWC, under pressure from wool grower lobby groups, was forced to maintain the 870 cent per kilogram floor price.

However, from around August 1989, international wool buyers simply sat on their hands in auction sale rooms (in May 1990 the AWC bought 87.5% of the offering); and waited for the RPS to implode.

Knowing that the system was unsustainable, the last thing that buyers wanted was to be caught with wool purchased at prices above the floor price which, when the floor price was cut or collapsed, would immediately be worth less than what they had paid for it. Moreover, traders were dumping stock as fast as they could to avoid the risk of a collapse in the RPS and, therefore, a collapse in the price of any wool they happened to hold.

The RPS was ultimately backed by the Federal government. With the buying trade sitting on their hands, those responsible for maintaining the floor price ended up in a staring competition, the only question was, who would blink first: the AWC (or, rather, the government underwriting the RPS); or the buyers?

With the AWC purchasing millions of bales of wool at the floor price the cost of supporting the RPS was running into the billions of dollars: primarily the support came from a grower levy on sales, but, at the point which that soon became insufficient to support the RPS (despite upping the levy from 8% to 25%), support came from $billions in mounting government debt; the buyers had no reason to blink.

Instead, in May 1990, the government announced its decision to retreat to a new floor price of 700 cents per kilogram, and directed the AWC to fight on in support of the reduced floor price. The Minister for Primary Industry, John Kerin boldly asserting that the 700 cent floor price was “immutable, the floor price will not be reduced”.

But, having blinked once, the buyers largely continued to sit on their hands and simply waited for the government to blink again. The stockpile continued to balloon; and with it government debt: by February 1991 the stockpile reached 4.77 million bales (equivalent to a full year’s production); the accrued government debt stood at $2.8 billion; and the cost of storing the stockpile was over $1 million a day.

Faced with the inevitable, the government blinked, again: John Kerin was forced to eat his words about the floor price being “immutable”; on 11 February 1991, announcing the suspension of the floor price. The RPS had totally collapsed; the buyers had won.

The wool industry’s saga is beautifully, if tragically, told by Charles Massy in “Breaking the Sheep’s Back” (2011, UQP), which should be required reading for any of our political betters pretending to know more than the market (eg, the power market).

Which brings us to the lessons and parallels.

The LRET effectively sets the price for RECs: the minimum price is meant to be set by the shortfall charge of $65 per MWh (rising to $93 when account is given to the tax benefit), as the penalty begins to apply on the shortfall (as detailed above). That equation is based on an ultimate 33,000 GWh target.

In the event that the cost of the shortfall charge was reduced, there would be a commensurate fall in the REC price. Likewise, if the LRET target was further reduced: the total number of MWhs which would then attract the shortfall charge if RECs were not purchased would fall too; also resulting in a fall in the REC price.

In addition, any reduction in the LRET would simply result in a reduction in the demand for RECs overall: fewer RECs would need to be purchased and surrendered during the life of the LRET; again, resulting in a fall in the REC price. Of course, were the LRET to be scrapped in its entirety, RECs would become utterly worthless.

The retailers, are alive to all of this, hence their reluctance to enter PPAs for the purpose of purchasing RECs; agreements which run for a minimum of 15 years.

In December last year, Ian “Macca” Macfarlane and his youthful ward, Greg Hunt started running around pushing for a target of 27,000 GWh; and their boss made clear that he wanted to kill it outright. There followed overtures from the Labor opposition pitching for a target around 35,000 GWh.

Whether they knew it or not – with their public debate on what an amended target should be – in the staring competition with retailers – these boys blinked.

Faced with the inevitable political furore that will erupt when power consumers (ie, voters) realise they are being whacked with the full cost (and some) of the shortfall charge (being nothing more than a “stealth tax” to be recovered by retailers via their power bills), the pressure will mount on both sides of politics to slash the LRET – once again.

That both Labor and the Coalition have already blinked (in obvious recognition of the brewing political storm in power punter land over the inevitable imposition of the shortfall charge) is not lost on the likes of Grant King from Origin, and all of Australia’s other electricity retailers.

And for retail power buyers the choice of sticking with permanent recalcitrance has been made even easier: Tony Abbot making it plain that he would have cut the LRET even harder, were it not for a hostile Senate; and Labor’s Bill Shorten pushing for an entirely ludicrous 50% LRET – that would require a further 10,000 of these things to be speared all over Australia’s rural heartland. Where there was once ‘bipartisan’ support for these things, the major parties are diametrically opposed.

****

With the politics of the LRET already on the nose, like wool buyers sitting on their hands in sale rooms during 1990, waiting for the floor price to collapse, electricity retailers need only sit back and wait for the whole LRET scheme to implode.

Like wool buyers refusing to buy above the floor price and carry stock with the risk of the RPS collapsing, why would electricity retailers sign up for 15 year long PPAs with wind power outfits in order to purchase a stream of RECs over that period, knowing the value of those certificates depends entirely upon a scheme which is both economically and politically unsustainable?

However, the similarities between the wool market and the market for wind power end right about there.

There is, and always was, a natural market for Australian wool; the only issue during the late 80s and early 90s was the price that had to be paid by buyers to beat the floor price, set artificially under the RPS.

Wind power has no such market.

Available only in fits and spurts, and at crazy, random intervals, at a price which is 3-4 times that of conventional generation, retailers have no incentive to purchase it.

In the absence of the threat of the $65 per MWh fine (the stick), coupled with the promise of pocketing $93 as a subsidy in the form of a REC (the carrot), electricity retailers would not touch wind power with a barge pole: it simply has no commercial value.

Moreover, with an abundance of conventional generation capacity in Australia at present, retailers are very much in a “buyers’ market”. Overcapacity, coupled with shrinking demand (thanks to policies like the LRET that are killing mineral processors, manufacturing and industry) means that retailers can expect to see wholesale prices decline over the next few years, at least. And, for the first time in almost 20 years, a sharply declining Australian economy is a fast looming reality: unemployed households have an even tougher time paying rocketing power bills.

With those fundamentals in mind, electricity retailers will simply opt to pay the shortfall charge and recover it from power consumers, knowing that that situation will not last for very long.

Sooner or later, the Federal government (whichever side is in power) will have to face an electorate furious at the fact that their power bills have gone through the roof, as a result of a policy that achieved absolutely nothing.

Tony Abbott’s chances of leading his Coalition to a second term are tied to fundamental ‘mum and dad’ policies like electricity costs. Power prices matter; and in a battle between Australia’s Big 3 Retailers and the LRET, STT’s money is firmly on commercial self-interest.

STT hears that the big retailers are planning to wait until they look like exhausting the pile of RECs that they’re sitting on at present. At which point they’ll build some large-scale solar power facilities, in order to obtain the RECs needed to avoid the shortfall charge; for as long as it takes for the politics to turn gangrenous. As soon as the LRET gets scrapped, the plan is to sell the panels back into the residential roof-top market.

The cost of the LRET – and all that comes with it – to retail customers is at the heart of what’s driving retailers’ efforts to crush the LRET; and the wind industry with it.

This might sound obvious, if not a little silly: electricity retailers are NOT in the business of NOT selling power.

Adding a $45 billion electricity tax to retail power bills can only make power even less affordable to tens of thousands of households and struggling businesses, indeed whole industries, meaning fewer and fewer customers for retailers like Origin, AGL and EnergyAustralia.

The strategy adopted by retailers of refusing to ‘play ball’ by signing up for PPAs will, ultimately, kill the LRET; it’s a strategy aimed at being able to sell more power, at affordable prices, to more households and businesses.

And it’s working a treat, so far.

The wind industry’s incessant daily whining about “uncertainty”, is simply a signal that the retailers’ have already won. Once upon a time, the wind industry and its parasites used to cling to the idea that the RET “has bi-partisan support“, as a self-comforting mantra: but not anymore. And it’s the retailers refusal to sign PPAs that’s thrown the spanner in the wind industry’s works.

While the likes of Tristan, Giles and Miles will continue to work themselves into a lather about their inevitable fate, in the meantime, retailers, like Origin, AGL and EnergyAustralia, can simply sit back, watch the political fireworks, and wait for the inevitable and complete collapse of the LRET; and, with it, the Australian wind industry.

WINDWEASELS….and How They Intend to Steal Your Home & Your Property Rights….

August 29, 2015 / 1957chev / Leave a comment

How Wind Farm Subsidies are Used to Steal People’s Homes

August 29, 2015 by stopthesethings

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In two well-drawn pieces, Jamin Hübner throws light on the greatest economic and environmental fraud of all time. His insight and clarity of expression are notable; and so is his particular focus on the fact that the massive and endless subsidies being thrown at wind power outfits (to make ‘possible’, the otherwise impossible) has the insidious and unjustified result of destroying the value of neighbours’ properties; or as Jamin puts it – “wind energy is one of the most efficient ways of depreciating land“.

Some might call it ‘appropriation by stealth’, we call it ‘state-sponsored theft’.

Wind farms the worst idea since Cash for Clunkers
The Daily Republic
Jamin Hübner
29 April 2015

Remember Cash for Clunkers? That 2009 government program that spent $6 billion to save $1 billion? Imagine walking up to a person and saying, “I want to save some money; I’ll give you six dollars if you give me one dollar back.” Genius. Leave it to Congress to devise (and enact) such brilliance.

There are dozens of government programs like these — all failures. The reason why is easy to understand: the government has no money of its own. It can only take from others and “give” some of it back. A full return is impossible, since this process of organized theft costs money itself. The end result is a net loss — regardless of how many jobs were temporarily created.

Wind farms is another such program. I didn’t realize this at first when witnessing their construction near Tripp (and soon to be Bon Homme County, where I was raised).

I used to think wind farms were about electricity … until I realized:

Few, if any, wind farms bring electricity to an area that does not already have it. It’s too much work and money to build an entire electrical grid from the ground up. Wind energy is “supplemental,” not essential.
Wind farms are subsidized by the government precisely because they generate a loss. Wind farms have to be paid to operate. People, uncoerced and unbribed, do not want wind farms because if they did, they would build them on their own like any other product in the free market.
Wind farms function as a tax deduction for the wealthy — which is why they are built in the first place. Warren Buffett says it best: “I will do anything that is basically covered by the law to reduce Berkshire’s tax rate … on wind energy, we get a tax credit if we build a lot of wind farms. That’s the only reason to build them. They don’t make sense without the tax credit.” Exactly. Wind energy is a siphoning mechanism that offsets taxes and puts federal money into political and corporate pockets. Electricity and lease-agreement royalties are only a byproduct (and a great public cover). Proof of this is that wind farm production nearly stops every time the production credit gets suspended or canceled by Congress.

I use to think wind farms were “green energy” … until I realized:

Hundreds of thousands of birds (and even more bats) die each year from wind turbines.
At 450 to 500 feet tall, wind farms are a pilot’s nightmare (recall the death of four air passengers near Highmore last year). Crop dusting has now become a risky and complicated agricultural venture.
Wind turbines are made of heavy gauge metal and concrete — transported across the nation with the heaviest gas-guzzlers of machinery. While not as bad as Al Gore’s private jet, the carbon footprint is anything but green.
Local soils are depleted because of underground vibrations, audible and inaudible low-frequency noise (“infrasound”) and electromagnetic radiation from power cables that drive away earthworms and other local organisms, the same way loud marine motors drive away fish.
Wind energy cannot be stored (e.g., batteries) and can only harness wind speeds within a tight range.
Chances are, there will be no incentive to remove the turbines once the temporary government funds disappear. Massive steel towers rusting over decades in agricultural fields are not very “green.”

I used to think wind farms supported local energy … until I realized:

A substantial percentage of wind farms are owned by overseas investors/corporations. This is not evident until the initial developers literally “sell the farm” after having built it.
Wind turbines are typically not built by local construction workers and materials.
Because of noise, adverse health effects (e.g., loss of sleep), visual pollution (bright red lights at night and shadow-flicker during mornings/evenings) and all other related liabilities (e.g., shoddy 30- and 65-year wind right contracts), wind energy is one of the most efficient ways of depreciating land.
Small communities are divided, not united, over wind farm projects. One only has to read the Avon Clarion editorials for March and April to witness such intensity and strife. This isn’t to mention the deceptive methods of obtaining wind rights (wind developers put snake-oil salesmen to shame).

At the end of the day, it is not politics or science that determine how wind farms should develop. It is the right to private property. If some people don’t care about the noise, shadows and flashing lights, no problem. But for those who do, they should be justly compensated to the extent that their rights are violated. As Supreme Court Justice Andrew Napolitano observed in “It’s Dangerous to Be Right When the Government is Wrong,” “If you lived in a very crowded area, would the government be justified in preventing you from blaring extraordinarily loud music at midnight, or at least requiring you to pay “damages” to your neighbors for doing so?

“Certainly, by playing obnoxious music, you are diminishing your neighbors’ natural right to the use and enjoyment of their property. And over time, if you were habitually noisy, then most likely would decrease the market value of their property. Thus, although the government could not criminalize this kind of expression, it would be more than justified in making it actionable, or in other words, the basis for lawsuit.”
The Daily Republic

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Let’s talk about money and wind farms
The Daily Republic
Jamin Hübner
14 August 2015

On April 29, The Daily Republic published my column, “Wind Farms: The Worst Idea Since Cash for Clunkers.” Since then, there have been several local responses to both my article and to criticism of wind energy in general. Allow me to briefly focus on two items.

I reminded readers that (all things considered) government programs cost greater than what such programs “produce.” Subsidies equal (inherently inefficient) income redistribution. The government cannot “pull a rabbit out of a hat.” In a May 14 column for The Daily Republic, Anthony Rezac essentially reached into a hat and proclaimed, “oh yes it can.” I will leave him to that imaginary world.

By June 8, the CEO of American Wind Association finished crafting a remarkably misleading piece of political prose for the Sioux Falls Argus Leader. Like Rezac and others, the majority of anti-wind concerns were casually dismissed while strings of dollar bills were lowered into readers’ faces and swung repeatedly (perhaps this would silence the critics). But, no—no fires were put out, and I might suggest that waving a dismissive hand at South Dakotans as if they were too gullible to care is not a particularly good strategy.

So, since all that pro-wind advocates seem capable of consistently conversing about is money, let’s talk about money and wind farms.

First, to repeat, wind farms have to be subsidized because they generate such a huge financial loss, and no one in the free market is silly enough to build them from their own resources. In Buffett’s words, “they don’t make sense without the tax credit.” It is precisely because of this monetary loss that pro-wind advocates have to resign to exaggerated estimates, numerical figures, and macro-level statistics (absent of micro-level realities) in the first place. They are on the defensive for good reasons.

Second, by comparison, wind energy is the most financially wasteful government-sponsored energy program in existence. This was ably demonstrated in a 2010 study conducted by Simmons et. al. for Utah State University. One key finding was, “In 2010 the wind energy sector received 42 percent of total federal subsidies while producing only 2 percent of the nation’s total electricity. By comparison, coal receives 10 percent of all subsidies and generates 45 percent and nuclear is about even at about 20 percent.”

These figures have not significantly improved today. And yet we are supposed to believe Tom Kiernan’s claim that wind energy will soon “compete” with other sources of energy? Like a tricycle in Nascar.

Third, claiming American wind energy helps the American economy by being distinctively “local” is absurd. Between 75-90 percent of wind farms are owned by foreign corporations/investors, and more than 60 percent of wind turbines are manufactured by foreign companies, according to Choma. American wind energy is as American as a pair of shoes labeled “Made in China.”

Fourth, property owners who have sold their wind rights may never earn their royalties fast enough to cover the loss in property values from owning them. In other words, those who are supposed to be making millions, don’t. (You can find this out yourself simply by asking around.) None of the financial figures produced by the AWA or — to my knowledge, by any pro-wind advocate — takes into full account this central negative factor: depreciation of land. This is significant not only because of the amount of depreciation for land near and under wind farms (which is high), but because of the ever-increasing value of land (amplifying the losses).

More than a half-dozen independent studies conducted by appraisers and university-sponsored groups in the last decade found a 15-59 percent decrease in property values on or near wind farms (see McCann Appraisal LLC, summaries). (Predictably, pro-wind studies creatively generate data with lower estimates).

Combined with 30-40 percent income tax on earnings from wind royalties, shoddy contracts often not inflation-adjusted and dependent on Washington’s empty wallet (and irrational politics), certain land-owners with wind farms ultimately earn pennies instead of millions over the long haul. (This is what you won’t hear when signing a 30- or 60-year contract.) Even for the lucky few in better situations, the profits still don’t add up to the glorious estimates because of these losses.

Fifth, because of this liability, investors will go elsewhere to invest their money (as will families in local communities). Few want to live on or near a wind farm, and no investor wants to invest in land that has any potential for significant depreciation. (And this is true whether land actually depreciates or not; ambiguity is enough to stop investors).

Sixth, as mentioned above, wind-farm developers’ numbers (whether royalty estimates, long term sales, “bringing money to the community,” etc.) are so out of touch with reality that it’s hard to even keep a straight face. Speaking of, Kiernan in his article even claims wind energy will contribute to the prevention of “a total of 22,000 premature deaths by mid-century” via cleaner air. What’s next? The vibration from turbines will cure constipation? Happy day, Farmer Joe.

Space does not allow for seventh, eighth, etc. But, wind energy advocates should at least pause before mindlessly regurgitating monetary figures in public and proclaiming everyone a financial winner with wind farms. Nothing is free, and the monstrous costs of wind energy are coming to the light year after year.
The Daily Republic

Climate Change Rhetoric is Nothing More Than a Cover for Wealth Redistribution.

August 26, 2015 / 1957chev / 3 Comments

Nine Experts Slam EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy’s ‘Clean Power Plan’ Speech
Like a river in Colorado, the EPA is poisoning the climate debate.
by Tom Harris
August 24, 2015
Anyone trying to understand why the climate change debate has become so toxic need look no further than the August 11 speech by U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Gina McCarthy.

In her presentation at the Resources for the Future (RFF) Policy Leadership Forum, her first public appearance since the August 3 release of the EPA’s “Clean Power Plan“ (CPP), McCarthy demonstrated everything that is wrong with the Obama administration’s approach to the issue. The EPA employs error-riddled interpretations of climate science and economics, and couples this with language designed to trick the public and the press into thinking the plan is something it is not.
————-

A Biased Host

The forum started with an introduction by Dr. Raymond Kopp, RFF’s Energy & Climate Economics co-director, who told the audience:

As many of you know, we’re not an advocacy organization. We’re not cheerleaders for any particular policy or point of view. Our goal is really to provide the best scholarly research to the policy community so it can develop the most efficient, efficacious, affordable, and best public policies possible.

Laudable goals indeed … but Kopp immediately betrayed RFF’s supposed objectives when he next said:

The Clean Power Plan in its current form as a final rule is likely the most significant development in U.S. history with respect to climate change. I don’t think any of us believe otherwise. It is a tremendously substantial rule and one that will have significant impact.

[Developing the rule] took a lot of hard work by many people inside and outside of government and it took an awful lot of leadership and luckily Gina McCarthy was available, ready, and willing to undertake that leadership role and for that we are most thankful.

Addressing McCarthy directly, Kopp concluded:

Thank you for getting the job done, for doing it exceedingly well, and shepherding the Clean Power Plan through all of these hurdles that were necessary to bring it to a final rule today. And, I think, thank you for doing it in an environment where the politics and the rhetoric really make this job as difficult as possible.

Considering Kopp’s remarks, it is not surprising that, according to RFF Forum attendee Dr. Alan Carlin — former EPA senior analyst and manager, and past chairman of the Angeles Chapter of the Sierra Club — “RFF went all out to prevent me from handing out my comments and to keep out any skeptical comments from the Q&A.”

So much for RFF’s claim to not be “cheerleaders for any particular policy or point of view.”

—————

EPA Misrepresents Climate Science

McCarthy started the climate change part of her presentation with a politically correct assertion:

Climate change is one of the most important issues that we face. It is a global challenge but, in many ways, it’s also very personal to all of us because it affects everything and everyone we know and we love.

Climate change is, of course, a regional challenge, not a global one.

There is no super being straddling the planet, experiencing global trends. All that matters is what is happening — increases or decreases in the incidence of floods and droughts, heat waves and cold spells, and so on — in regions where people, plants, and animals are found. For example, what sense would it make for a community to prepare for a global sea level rise if, in that particular region, sea level was falling?

New Zealand-based renewable energy consultant Bryan Leyland pointed out:

Climate change has been a problem to mankind for hundreds of thousands of years. But we survived the last ice age, compared with which, the recent change in climate is but a minor wiggle. The greatest climate risk we face at the moment is a high probability that we are entering a period of cooling comparable to the Little Ice Age.

Many scientists agree with Leyland. For example, Dr. Howard Hayden, emeritus professor of physics at the University of Connecticut, explained:

The Earth is on a descent into the next 100,000-year ice age. For the moment, the glaciers seem to be in retreat, but they are not remnants of the last ice age. They have been growing during the last 8,000 years.

High-resolution spectroscopy specialist Dr. John Nicol, former senior lecturer of physics and dean of science at James Cook University in Australia, elaborated:

Since 1997, the Earth has not warmed but has, in fact, very slightly cooled even though atmospheric CO2 levels have been increasing. McCarthy’s assertion that climate change is “very personal to all of us” clearly demonstrates her emotional rather than the scientific approach to this non-issue.

————–

Gina McCarthy next said:

By now we all know that climate change is driven in large part by carbon pollution and it leads to more extreme heat, cold, storms, fires, and floods.

Referring to carbon dioxide (CO2) as “carbon pollution” is one of the most common rhetorical tricks employed by the Obama administration. In the EPA’s news release announcing the CPP, they referenced “carbon pollution” five times in the release’s first four sentences.

Calling the gas “carbon” encourages the public to think of it as something dirty, like graphite or soot — which really are carbon.

Calling CO2 by its proper name would help the public remember that it is a non-toxic, odorless, invisible gas essential to plant photosynthesis. It is no more pollution than is water vapor, by far the principal greenhouse gas in the atmosphere. The EPA website is riddled with this “carbon” deception.

Leyland replied to the EPA chief:

It is shocking that McCarthy does not understand the difference between carbon dioxide — a harmless gas that benefits agriculture — and genuine pollutants like particulates, sulphur dioxide and the like emitted from old obsolete power stations. Modern coal-fired stations do not emit these pollutants.

McCarthy is not fit to head the EPA if she doesn’t know such basic science. Regardless, neither theory nor observations support the EPA chief’s claim that CO2 rise causes “more extreme heat, cold, storms, fires and floods.” Hyderabad, India-based Dr. S. Jeevananda Reddy — formerly chief technical advisor for the UN World Meteorological Organization and author of Climate Change – Myths & Realities — said that McCarthy’s statement is “not true”:

Extreme heat, cold, storms and floods are part of natural variation. These are modified by local general circulation patterns existing over different parts of the globe over different seasons.

Nicol also contested McCarthy’s assertion:

Not only is the claim that CO2 is to blame [for increases in extreme weather] wrong, but the contradictory statements regarding these weather events, which are NO different from those of 200 years ago, demonstrates the desperation of lobby groups trying to maintain this myth.

If the world were to warm appreciably due to increasing CO2 emissions, temperatures at high latitudes are forecast to rise the most, reducing the difference between arctic and tropical temperatures. Since this differential drives weather, we should see weaker midlatitude cyclones in a warmer world — and thus fewer extremes in weather, not more.

Indeed, the lack of extreme weather increase with global warming is one of the few areas of agreement between the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and the Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change (NIPCC). In 2012, the IPCC asserted that a relationship between global warming and wildfires, rainfall, storms, hurricanes, and other extreme weather events has not been demonstrated. In their latest assessment report (Sep 2013), IPCC scientists concluded that they had only “low confidence” that “damaging increases will occur in either drought or tropical cyclone activity” as a result of global warming.

The Sep 2013 NIPCC report concluded the same, asserting:

In no case has a convincing relationship been established between warming over the past 100 years and increases in any of these extreme events.

NIPCC report chapter lead author Dr. Timothy Ball, environmental consultant and former climatology professor at the University of Winnipeg, explained that the EPA is taking the approach that American journalist Farhad Manjoo identified in his book True Enough: Learning To Live in a Post-Fact Society:

You create your theory then hire experts. The EPA agenda is political, not scientific.

Climate Change Is Normal

McCarthy then told the RFF Forum:

For farmers who are strained by the drought, for families with homes in the path of a wildfire, for small businesses along our coastlines, climate change is indeed very personal.

Nicol labeled these comments “utter rubbish,” writing:

Farmers do not believe in Global Warming or Climate Change as spruced by the human-caused global warming industry. Farmers have mostly been on their properties since they were children and have also been given detailed accounts of the weather and the seasons from when their great-grandfathers began farming.

This fact upsets those who try to claim that there are obvious changes. Farmers will tell you that the seasons come in cycles and any season we have now has been seen in the past — possibly 100 years ago.

Reddy also replied to McCarthy:

These [phenomena McCarthy lists] are associated with human actions on nature — land use and land cover changes, pollution (air, water, soil, and food) and adulterated foods, etc. For example, recent devastations in Jammu & Kashmir and Himalayan states of India were associated with occupation/building houses on river banks.

—————

McCarthy continued:

We all know that climate change is impacting us today and will continue to get worse if we don’t take action.

The EPA chief knows full well that this is not true.

After intense questioning from Representative Mike Pompeo (R-KS) at the September 18, 2013 hearing of the House Subcommittee on Energy and Power, McCarthy admitted that the CPP will have essentially no impact on climate. Hayden agreed:

Even if the restrictions were enacted, the effect on worldwide temperature would be too tiny to measure.

——————

McCarthy Suppresses Open Scientific Debate

McCarthy said:

We are way past any further discussion or debate.

Scientists are as sure that humans are causing climate change as they are that cigarette smoke causes lung cancer. So, unless you want to debate that point, don’t debate about climate change any longer because it is our moral responsibility to act.

Comparing the science linking cigarette smoke and cancer with the science of climate change is ridiculous. Climate science is becoming more uncertain as the field advances — we don’t even know if warming or cooling lies ahead.

University of Western Ontario applied mathematician Dr. Chris Essex, an expert in the mathematical models that are the basis of the climate scare, explained:

Climate is one of the most challenging open problems in modern science. Some knowledgeable scientists believe that the climate problem can never be solved.

The NIPCC reports list hundreds of peer-reviewed science papers that show that much of what we thought we knew about climate is wrong or highly debatable. In particular, the lack of global warming over the past 18 years, a period during which CO2 concentration in the atmosphere has risen 10%, shows there is something seriously wrong with the human-caused warming theory.

Reddy responded to McCarthy’s statement:

We still need to discuss global warming science since the IPCC is not sure of the correct sensitivity factor that relates anthropogenic greenhouse gas increases to temperature rise.

This is illustrated by the fact that they changed the sensitivity factor [the temperature rise in degrees Celsius forecast to occur due to a doubling of CO2], from 1.95 in the IPCC Fourth Assessment Report (2007) to 1.55 in their Fifth Assessment Report (2013).

They are merely employing trial and error, and not physical process paths.

Ball points out what the IPCC itself admitted in its Third Assessment Report (2001):

In climate research and modeling, we should recognize that we are dealing with a coupled non-linear chaotic system, and therefore that the long-term prediction of future climate states is not possible.

John Nicol said of the scientists who support McCarthy’s position:

They are mistaken since they do not have a proper understanding of the spectroscopic behavior of carbon dioxide or its interactions in a mixture of other gases — oxygen and nitrogen.

—————

McCarthy next told the audience that Obama:

… reminded us that, while we are the first generation to feel the impacts of climate change, we are the last that can effectively do something about it.

Nicol answered:

We are not the first people to experience climate change. The Navajo in America, civilizations in the Middle East, and many others moved across continents to escape climate change-related events which were totally the responsibility of Nature and caused huge upheaval.

The changes claimed to be perceived today are, by comparison, trivial.

Carbon dioxide is not causing changes to the climate — Nature causes changes and always has, always will.

Ball asked:

How on Earth did we ever survive the climate change that has gone on for five billion years?

Of course, the idea that we can do something about it speaks to the arrogant godlessness of Obama and the environmentalists. If you get rid of God, you have to play God, and Obama’s angels are the bureaucrats like McCarthy. It’s interesting that another McCarthy, Mary, said: “Bureaucracy, the rule of no one, [is] the modern form of despotism.”

————

McCarthy concluded her comments:

Science has spoken on this. A low-carbon future is inevitable. We’re sending exactly the right signals on what, at least EPA believes to be, a future of lower pollution that is essential for public health and the environment.

Nicol replied:

Advocates for the destruction of society and world control of our societies are the actual offenders who have spoken on this.

Real and demonstrable science shows that a low carbon future will have no influence on the world’s climate and will destroy our ability to care for the world’s poor.

Energy is essential for the distribution of health and wealth to the poorer nations. This means that coal-fired power is essential, as recognized by the world’s largest economies, China and India.

Who are we to dictate the living standards of these and other nations?

Leyland added:

The main effect of the drive for a low carbon future is that energy will become more and more expensive and more and more people will die in the winter from the cold and in summer because they cannot afford to run the air conditioning.

The health effects would be seriously negative. The environmental effects will be a reduction in plant growth that could cost the agricultural economy trillions of dollars.

CPP’s Fictitious Health and Financial Benefits

McCarthy made numerous excited claims about the health impacts of the new climate rule:

As a result [of the CPP], in 2030, we are going to be avoiding thousands of premature deaths and hospital admissions, tens of thousands of asthma attacks and hundreds of thousands of missed school days and missed work days.

But the CPP does not regulate pollution. It regulates CO2, which has no detrimental impact on human health.

Only by assuming that enabling the CPP will force the closure of coal-fired electricity stations – and that that will reduce pollution emissions – can one claim the health benefits claimed by McCarthy. As explained by William Yeatman, environmental policy expert and editor of the Cooler Heads Coalition:

[This is] an EPA scam, known as “co-benefits,” by which the agency has justified a number of recent highly politicized regulations.

[T]here are entire sections of the Clean Air Act given to the regulation of particulate matter and nitrogen oxides. There is, therefore, neither a public health purpose nor a need for EPA to use a climate plan to regulate particulate matter and nitrogen oxides emissions under the Clean Air Act.

Furthermore, Yeatman demonstrates that the EPA’s methodology for estimating health benefits of the Clean Air Act “is based almost entirely on controversial, ‘secret’ science.” Not only do their forecasts of lives saved make no sense, but the agency refuses to release the data used to make these calculations. Carlin labeled the supposed health benefits of the CPP “dubious if not imaginary,” and asked:

If these benefits actually exist, why has EPA not already obtained them directly and more efficiently using “conventional” pollutant regulations?

McCarthy concluded her presentation by claiming that in 2030, as a result of the CPP:

The average American family will start seeing $85 in annual savings on their utility bills.

This is lunacy. Independent climate researcher Willis Eschenbach demonstrated on Watts Up With That that the CPP will almost quadruple U.S. electricity prices by 2030 if the Obama administration’s latest CO2 rule is fully implemented. As seen in Figure 1 below, Eschenbach calculated that “renewable” capacity per capita accounts for 84% of electricity cost variations between European countries (about €1 trillion has been spent so far in Europe on the installation of renewable energy technologies for electricity generation).

Figure 1: Electricity costs as a function of per capita installed renewable capacity. Wind and solar only, excludes hydropower.

Eschenbach explained:

We get about 4% of our electricity from wind and solar. He [Obama] wants to jack it to 28%, meaning we need seven times the installed capacity. Currently we have about 231 kW/capita of installed wind and solar (see Figure 1).

So Obama’s plan will require that we have a little less than seven times that, 1537 kW/capita. And assuming that we can extend the relationship we see in Figure 1, this means that the average price of electricity in the U.S. will perforce go up to no less than 43 cents per kilowatt-hour [the current average U.S. price of electricity is about 12 cents per kilowatt-hour] (This includes the hidden 1.4 cents/kW cost due to the five cents per kilowatt-hour subsidy paid to the solar/wind producers).

In January 2008, Obama, then a candidate for the Democratic Party’s nomination for president, told the San Francisco Chronicle that under his energy plan “electricity rates would necessarily skyrocket.”

Eschenbach and other analysts (for example, here and here) show that the CPP will finally allow the president to fulfill this promise.

Climate Hoax Must Be Confronted

Dr. Jay Lehr, science director at The Heartland Institute, summed up the situation well:

There is no science behind the idea that man controls the climate. Yet, billions of dollars are being diverted from our taxes to scam artists for renewable energy, fallacious mathematical model research, and political rewards.

It is a scam that dwarfs all others that have come before. And this will continue unabated for years to come until the public rises up in dissent.

Rather than just go with the flow or try to game the system to their advantage, industry leaders, scientists, and ordinary citizens must speak out against the climate scare that threatens America. If they do not, operatives such as Gina McCarthy will have free rein to enable the president’s disastrous climate plans.

More Proof that Climate Change Hysteria is a HOAX!

August 23, 2015August 23, 2015 / 1957chev / 6 Comments

Realities Of Climate Change, Politics And Public Knowledge.

Guest Opinion: Dr. Tim Ball

The minute a small cabal hijacked climate for a political agenda it determined that setting the record straight required political answers. Naomi Klein admitted it wasn’t about the science directly. That fighting climate change was necessary to combat capitalism. This was the objective all along and expressed in 1993 when Senator Wirth admitted,

“We’ve got to ride the global warming issue. Even if the theory of global warming is wrong, we will be doing the right thing …”  

The “right thing” is achieving Maurice Strong’s objective of getting rid of the industrialized nations.

Too many skeptics continue to think that scientific points are going to change the public understanding. Most of the public don’t understand, but, more important, don’t want to understand. I doubt the 75% who failed the Yale Education Climate Change test lost any sleep. Polls, such as those of the Pew Center and overall analysis of trends indicate global warming or climate change are not a concern for most people. I suspect they don’t care because they don’t understand or want to understand. They also know how about the unreliability of weather forecasts, and that is all the science they need. One Pew pollconfirms that the public believes global warming is a political issue. Because of this, politicians and environmentalists with political agendas continue to control the story.James Delingpole puts the amount of money wasted because of this control at $4 billion a day.

Because science is ideally amoral and apolitical most scientists avoid politics, which results in a failure to provide necessary information to open-minded politicians and media. They need this to counter the pseudo-science of the IPCC proponents. They knew what to do from the start. Stephen Schneider set it out succinctly in Discover magazine a year after Hansen appeared before Wirth’s Senate committee and put the entire issue into the political realm.

On the one hand we are ethically bound to the scientific method, in effect promising to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but& which means that we must include all the doubts, caveats, ifs and buts. On the other hand, we are not just scientists, but human beings as well. And like most people, we’d like to see the world a better place, which in this context translates into our working to reduce the risk of potentially disastrous climate change. To do that we have to get some broad-based support, to capture the public’s imagination. That, of course, entails getting loads of media coverage. So we have to offer up scary scenarios, make simplified, dramatic statements, and make little mention of any doubts we might have. This double ethical bind which we frequently find ourselves in cannot be solved by any formula. Each of us has to decide what the right balance is between being effective and being honest. I hope that means being both.

If this sounds familiar today, it is because it summarizes the words in the recent Encyclical of Pope Francis. Schneider is wrong. There is no decision about right and wrong, which is why the Pope’s connection with climate deceivers contradicts his central role as upholder of truth and is so deeply troubling. It is the rationale Naomi Klein and other use, which is why they brought her on board. It is basic Alinsky; the end justifies the means.

I spoke about the need to counter the false science from a political and social perspective, in my presentation at the First Heartland Conference in New York ten years ago. I pointed out that Gore’s movie was a brilliant piece of propaganda. A view supported by Justice Burton the UK judge who ruled on its use in the classroom.

It is now common ground that it is not simply a science film – although it is clear that it is based substantially on scientific research and opinion – but that it is a political film, albeit of course not party political.

Justice Burton recommended teachers provide balance by also showing The Great Global Warming Swindle. I proudly advised producer Martin Durkin and appeared in the movie. I also warned him that the US media would not run it, as proved the case, although it is now generally available. The problem is that only a small percentage of people watch documentaries on television. Gore bypassed that by using Hollywood to make the movie but also to market it through all their traditional venues. They knew how to achieve Schneider’s goal of getting “broad-based support” and “capturing the public’s imagination.”

Skeptics have, for a variety of reasons, avoided the “Hollywood” approach. It is a major error. We need to realize that tactics are tactics, and that the adage that you fight fire with fire is true. The first thing to do in any strategy is define the problem and the second is to determine the target and thirdly use tactics appropriate to the situation.

The problem is a failure to explain climate science and its abuse in a way a majority can understand. The following points are gleaned from my experience with media interviews, school visits, questions after a presentation, and questions via email. They represent the issues I confront every day. They are the real challenges anybody trying to offset the misinformation about climate and climate change must consider. They are the political dynamics that influence how you help people understand and deal with science issues.

1. People can’t believe a small group of people could mislead the world. Nowadays, the explosion of conspiracy theories because of the Internet, make the idea even more remote and unpalatable. They need to heed world-renowned anthropologist Margaret Mead’s observation.

“Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.”

This comment implies that “thoughtful” and “committed” are pursuing positive changes. History indicates they are never positive as power centralizes and corrupts and people lose freedoms.

2. People can’t believe scientists would distort, manipulate, or do anything other than proper science. They accept the view that science and scientists are amoral and apolitical. As Mary McCarthy said,

“In science, all facts, no matter how trivial or banal, enjoy democratic equality.”

This is reinforced by the practice of most scientists to avoid politics. The public assumes the silence is a tacit agreement with what is in the media about global warming.

3. It is mostly the politicians who talk about the 97% manufactured consensus. The public asks as happened to me twice on radio this week,

“How come thousands of scientists believe there is global warming and climate change?”

The simple answer is, very few are familiar with the science. They, like most of the public, assume other scientists would not distort, manipulate, or do anything other than proper science. When scientists find out, they are shocked as exemplified in Klaus-Eckert Pulscomment.

Ten years ago I simply parroted what the IPCC told us. One day I started checking the facts and data—first I started with a sense of doubt but then I became outraged when I discovered that much of

what the IPCC and the media were telling us was sheer nonsense and was not even supported by any scientific facts and measurements. To this day I still feel shame that as a scientist I made presentations of their science without first checking it.

IPCC proponents promoted and perpetuated this deception through science societies as I explained.

A particularly egregious exploitation was carried out through science societies and professional scientific groups. They were given the climate science of the IPCC and urged to support it on behalf of their members. Certainly a few were part of the exploitation, but a majority, including most of the members simply assumed that the rigorous methods of research and publication in their science were used. Lord May of the UK Royal Society was influential in the manipulation of public perception through national scientific societies. They persuaded other national societies to become involved by making public statements. The Russian Academy of Science, under its President Yuri Israel, refused to participate.

4. To paraphrase Winston Churchill, “Never in the history of mankind have so many been deceived by so few, with so few facts.” The more you try to counteract what the public knows using scientific facts, the more you lose the battle. If you use scientific facts you must couch them in terms and analogies everybody understands. I know this from 25 years of teaching a compulsory science credit course for Arts students. The abilities and techniques I developed there of explaining climate in ways the public understand made me a double threat to IPCC proponents because I was also qualified.

5. Most people don’t know what is “normal” or “natural” in nature. This made it easy to imply or infer that they were abnormal or unnatural. It works well with the modern practice of “sound bites” in which information is presented without context. Climate change is innately historical and demands context. There are two basic options to counter the problem. Publish the context for each story as soon as possible after it appears. Publish stories of true facts that are outside of people’s comprehension using analogies. For example, alarmists add human scale to stories with analogies. One year they reported Arctic sea ice melted more by an area the size of Texas than the previous year. Texas is 695,662 km², which is approximately 4.6% of the total Arctic ice of 15 million km². The change is within the natural annual variability, but Texas is big so it must be a problem.

6. We tell people CO2 isn’t causing the warming but fail to explain why. This is for people who don’t know what a greenhouse gas is or that water vapor is far more important. (Figure 1)

Figure 1 Source: Yale Education Climate Change Test.

We then fail to explain what is the most likely cause. As politicians learn to their peril, you can’t just be against something.

Today they push the global warming claims with increasing deception because the 21^stParis Conference of the Parties on climate is scheduled for 7-8 December 2015. They consider it imperative to pass a Kyoto type set of policies. Ironically, one thing that diminishes their chances is continued economic decline, the very objective of Wirth, Klein and the gang. It is ironic because politicians will reset their priorities to promote development, growth, and job creation because they don’t want angry voters. What they will get is angry global warming activists with a political agenda.

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Climate Change Rhetoric is Nothing More Than a Cover for Wealth Redistribution.

More Proof that Climate Change Hysteria is a HOAX!

Realities Of Climate Change, Politics And Public Knowledge.