Governments Finally Starting To Open Their Eyes to the Wind Scam…

May 8, 2015 / 1957chev / Leave a comment

2015: the Wind Industry’s ‘Annus Horribilis’; or Time to Sink the Boots In

May 8, 2015 by stopthesethings

Any ‘business’ model or industry that is built around endless streams of government mandated subsidies – like Australia’s REC Tax/Subsidy or the US’s Production Tax Credit – pins its hopes of long-term survival on the whims of our political betters, which tend to ebb and flow with the economics that dictate the fortunes of those they pretend to govern. Or, more crudely, if your business can only survive when firmly nuzzled to the public tit, then at some point, with the stroke of a parliamentary pen, you can expect to see your firm’s future grind to a shuddering halt.

In Australia, successive governments threw $billions in subsidies at (and/or erected impregnable tariff barriers – a tax on consumers – to protect) manufacturers of agricultural machinery, like HV McKay; textile, clothing and footwear manufacturers; and car manufacturers.

But, eventually, the cost of propping up uncompetitive industries wears thin; governments grow tired of endless excuses as to why the recipients aren’t ready to ‘compete’, just yet; and/or pleading for the gravy train to roll for that little bit longer, at everyone elses’ expense.

Sometimes, when the flabby firms concerned are threatened by a government out to axe mandated corporate welfare schemes, they pipe up with claims of being ‘competitive’ SOON – like the naughty boy caught for the umpteenth time stealing mum’s Tim Tams, promising to be better in future.

****

One such example is from Christopher Flavin, the President emeritus of the Worldwatch Institute, when he pitched the yarn that, in a few years’ time, wind energy will not need to be subsidised at all.

But, hang on, that was 1984 – and the very same line gets reloaded and fired off ad infinitum – without a hint of irony, or shame, at begging for more, over and over and over again.

But, sensible governments are catching on: the fiction that the wind industry will SOON be competitive with conventional power generators, is being treated with the contempt it rightly deserves; and, as a consequence, wind power outfits are being threatened with that which spells their immediate demise: the chance to compete NOW!

Here’s a take from the US on what the wind industry fears most.

It is a Bad Time to be in the Renewable Energy Industry
Heartland.org
Marita Noon
27 April 2015

2015 may go down in the books as the year support for renewable energy died – and we are only a few months in. Policy adjustments – whether for electricity generation or transportation fuels – are in the works on both the state and federal levels.

While the public is generally positive about the idea of renewable energy, the reality of years-long policy implementation that offers it special favors has changed public opinions. An October 2014 report in Oklahoma’s Enid News titled: “Wind worries?: A decade after welcoming wind farms, states reconsider,” offers this insightful summary:

“A decade ago, states offered wind-energy developers an open-armed embrace, envisioning a bright future for an industry that would offer cheap electricity, new jobs and steady income for large landowners, especially in rural areas with few other economic prospects. To ensure the opportunity didn’t slip away, lawmakers promised little or no regulation and generous tax breaks. But now that wind turbines stand tall across many parts of the nation’s windy heartland, some leaders in Oklahoma and other states fear their efforts succeeded too well, attracting an industry that gobbles up huge subsidies, draws frequent complaints and uses its powerful lobby to resist any reforms.”

But, it isn’t just wind energy that has fallen from favor. 2015 state and federal legislation reflects the “reconsider” prediction. Likewise “powerful” lobbyists are resisting the proposed reforms.

Oklahoma is just one state in what has become a new trend.

About a decade ago, when more than half of the states enacted strict Renewable Portfolio Standards (RPS), Oklahoma, and a few other states, agreed to voluntary targets. Now, nearly one-third of those states are reconsidering the legislation that sounded so good in a different energy era. Back then, it was widely believed that there was an energy shortage and “dealing with global warming” was a higher public priority.

“Roughly 30 bills relating to the Oklahoma wind industry have been filed in the state legislature in the 2015 session, including at least one targeting the tax breaks and others attempting to alter regulatory policies,” reports Fox News. On April 16, the Oklahoma House voted, 78-3, to eliminate the wind energy tax credit. The measure now moves to the Senate, which will review a companion bill introduced by Senator Mike Mazzei – it is expected to pass and will likely be headed to Governor Mary Fallin soon.

Oklahoma isn’t the first state to reconsider its renewable energy policies. That distinction goes to Ohio, which in May 2014, passed legislation that paused the state’s RPS for two years. Governor Kasich signed it in June. Meanwhile, according to Eli Miller, the Ohio State Director for Americans for Prosperity: “the economic well-being of our working families and businesses can be factored in before moving forward.” The International Business Times projects that the two years a commission has to study will lead to a “permanent reduction.”

Earlier this year, West Virginia became the first state to repeal its RPS. With unanimous support in the Senate and a 95-4 vote in the House, renewable energy supporters are dismayed. Calling it “pure political theater and probably a flop,” Nick Lawton, Staff Attorney at the Green Energy Institute dismisses the move: “West Virginia’s withdrawal of its weak renewable energy policy is unlikely to significantly change that state’s energy markets.” Nancy Guthrie, one of the four Democrats who voted “No,” did so because she believes “we are running out of coal, it’s that simple” – which is, of course, totally incorrect.

Last month the Texas Senate voted to end its RPS and another program that, according to the Star Telegram, “helped fuel the state’s years-long surge in wind energy production.” The bill now moves to the House State Affairs Committee. It is expected to pass the House and be signed by Governor Greg Abbott. While Texas is known for its leadership in wind energy, the termination of the RPS will impact the solar industry as well. Charlie Hemmeline, executive director of the Texas Solar Power Association, states: “Increasing uncertainty for our industry raises the cost of doing business in the state.”

Coming up, Kansas, North Carolina, and Michigan have legislation that revisits the states’ favorable renewable energy policies.

New Mexico and Colorado had bills to repeal or revise the RPS that passed in one chamber, but not in the other.

While Louisiana doesn’t have an RPS, it does have generous tax credits for solar panel installations that have exploded the cost to the state’s taxpayers.

The credits were originally expected to cost the state $500,000 a year. In 2014 the payouts ballooned to $63.5 million according to the Baton Rouge Advocate. Repealing or revising the policy is a key priority in the current legislative session.

“Taxpayer support for wind energy is also losing momentum in Congress,” says Fox News. It points out: “Capitol Hill lawmakers at the end of last year did not extend the Federal Production Tax Credit (PTC). And in March, Sen. Heidi Heitkamp (D-ND), failed to rally support behind an amendment that would have put a five-year extension on the PTC.”

It is not just wind energy that has lost favor in Congress. The Ethanol mandates – known as the Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS) – are being re-examined, too.

On January 16, 2015, Senators Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) and Pat Toomey (R-PA) introduced the “Corn Ethanol Mandate Elimination Act of 2015.”

More recently, a “former Obama economic adviser” issued a report that calls for changes to the 10-year-old RFS. Harvard University Professor Jim Stock served on the Council of Economic Advisers in 2013 and 2014.

The Hill states: “His report comes at a time of growing angst among lawmakers, regulators and the industry over the future of the RFS, which mandates fuel refiners blend a certain volume of ethanol and biodiesel into their traditional gasoline and diesel supplies.” The Wall Street Journal(WSJ) supports the sentiment calling Stock’s report: “a key voice to a growing chorus of people who say the policy isn’t working.” It continues: “The report adds to a growing body of politicians and experts who are questioning the law’s effectiveness amid regulatory uncertainty and lower prices.”

Hawaii, uniquely, has its own ethanol mandate, but it, too, is coming under attack. KHON states: “Nine years after a major change at the gas pump was forced on Hawaii drivers, many are now calling it a failed experiment and want it gone.”

In both the case of Hawaii and the federal government, lawmakers are looking toward advanced biofuels that don’t raise food costs. However, the Environmental Protection Agency – tasked with implementing the RFS – has repeatedly waived or reduced the cellulosic biofuel requirements because, despite more than $126 billion invested since 2003, the industry has yet to produce commercially viable quantities of fuel.

Addressing dwindling investment in biofuels and growing skepticism, The Economist, on April 18, says: “Campaigners generally find it easier to fulminate against those which damage the environment or food security than to explain exactly how they ought to be grown.” It concludes: “Whether such bright ideas can be commercialised at scale is a different question. Some companies, indeed, are starting to give up. Several algae-to-fuel ventures in America are switching to the manufacture of high-value chemicals instead. Sunlight is a great source of energy. Biology may not be the best way of storing it.”

And this doesn’t include the public’s failure to embrace higher-priced electric cars – even with tens of thousands of dollars of subsidies and tax credits.

Looking at all the policy reviews, the trend is clear. As Watchdog.org, in areport titled: “Why repealing the renewable energy mandates is good for the economy,” concludes: “The best policy for the states is to leave energy consumption decisions to consumers in the market rather than legislate them.”
Heartland.org

Facts Like These, Put Climate Alarmists to Shame….

May 7, 2015 / 1957chev / 1 Comment

A Winter to Remember

In the Northeast, February 2015 was a month like no other in our lifetime; January through March Harshest since 1717?

By Joseph D’Aleo · May, 2015

No one who has lived in many parts of the Northeast into Canada experienced a six-week and calendar month as extreme for the combination of cold and snow as we have this late winter. From this writer’s viewpoint in southern New Hampshire, February 2015 was the coldest month ever recorded in nearby Nashua with an average temperature of 12.2 degrees Fahrenheit. It beat out January 1888, which had averaged 12.9F. A record 18 days had low temperatures at or below zero (as cold as 14F below). 25 days remained freezing or below, also a record.

Not far away in Boston, where temperature records began in 1872, February 2015 was exceeded only by February 1934, which brought Boston its all-time record of -18F. Temperatures never rose out of the 30s this year in February in Boston, though it topped 40 four times in 1934.

The cold in February 2015 was not confined to the Boston-Nashua area. It was the coldest month ever in Worcester, Hartford and Portland. It was the coldest February in Chicago and Cleveland, third coldest in New York City and fifth coldest ever in Detroit and Baltimore, both with records back into the early 1870s.

Boston set a record for monthly snow with 64.6 inches in February and 100.4 inches in the 39 days following January 24th. The 110.6 inches for the entire season exceeded the 107.6 inch record from 1995/96. The snow that year was spread out over six months with thaws, not concentrated so much in less than six weeks. The snow blitz and the intense cold is why the snow piles were so high this year. College students were shown on local television jumping out second story windows onto huge snowbanks in their bathing suit.

ONLY 1717 BEAT THIS?

Looking back through accounts of big snows in New England by the late weather historian David Ludlum, it appears for the eastern areas this winter’s snow blitz may have delivered the most snow since perhaps 1717.

That year, snows had reached five feet in December with drifts of 25 feet in January before one great last assault in late February into early March of 40 to 60 more inches. The snow was so deep that people could only leave their houses from the second floor, implying actual snow depths of as much as eight feet or more. The New England Historical Society’s account indicated New Hampshire, Massachusetts and Connecticut were hardest hit, a lot like 2015 in what was known as the year of the great snows.

“Entire houses were covered over, identifiable only by a thin curl of smoke coming out of a hole in the snow. In Hampton, N.H., search parties went out after the storms hunting for elderly people at risk of freezing to death… Sometimes they were found burning their furniture because they couldn’t get to the woodshed. People maintained tunnels and paths through the snow from house to house.”

You may hear or read that increased snow is consistent with global warming because warmer air holds more moisture. In actual fact, 93% of the years with more than 60 inches of snow in Boston were colder than normal.

During the 40 days of snowy weather this winter, we averaged over 11F below normal, and moisture content of the air in the snow region was well below the long-term average. Cooling, not warming, increases snowfall. Indeed, winter temperatures have cooled over the last two decades in the Northeast and the 10-year running mean of Boston area snowfall has skyrocketed to the highest level since snow records were first kept.

The cold continued in March here in New England. The month averaged 5.1F below in Boston and 5.8F below normal in Nashua. There were only four 50F days in March after no 40F days in February in Boston. This compares with seventeen 50F days, eleven 60F days, seven 70F days and one 80F day in March 2012.

JANUARY TO MARCH RECORD COLD

January to March average temperatures were the coldest in the entire record in Worcester, Providence, Hartford and Nashua and third coldest in Boston behind only 1885 and 1895.

In fact, it was the coldest January through March on average in the entire Northeast (the 10 Northeast states and the District of Colombia) in NOAA’s climate record, which started in 1895.

Note how from January to March temperatures in the Northeast have declined for 20 years at a rate of 1.5F/decade.

This season, most areas of central New England had the snowiest mid to late winter and many spots the snowiest winter season on record. In 2013/14, Chicago had its coldest December to March back to 1872 and third snowiest while Detroit had its snowiest back to 1880.

The Great Lakes ice in the two years was the greatest in the record back to 1973, when measurements began edging out the late 1970s, when the world was worrying about a new ice age.

The Adirondacks into southeast Canada in these years usually gets the worst of the Arctic cold. Saranac Lake in February 2015 was 13.6F below normal with 23 sub-zero days, no day reaching freezing and four record lows. March had 15 days zero or below with 10 record lows. Last March (2014), Saranac Lake was 11.4F below normal with 10 sub-zero days and seven record lows.

All of eastern Canada set all-time records for cold, and in Maritime Canada, in many locations, this winter produced more snow than any winter season on record. Charlottetown on Prince Edward Island had a record, incredible 18.1 feet of snow. These were two amazing late winters.

WHAT IS BEHIND THE EXTREMES?

I learned early in my career from the some of the giants in the field like Jerome Namias how ocean temperature pools that develop in conjunction with strong El Niño and La Niña events meander with the ocean currents determine how the jet stream sets up and how strong and persistent it is. This determines how and where extreme winters and summers are for both temperature and precipitation.

A super La Niña in 2010/11 (second strongest in 120 years by some measures) set up warm water in the central Pacific and cold water near the West Coast of North America, which lead to that record warm and droughty 2011/12 central and eastern winter, spring and summer. That warm water came east first to off of Alaska last year leading to the historic winter near the western Lakes and north-central areas (highlighted January’s so-called ‘polar vortex’). Then in 2014 the warm water was carried by the currents southeast to the entire West Coast, forcing the cold to take aim more on the eastern Lakes and Northeast that was at its worst in February.

Similar changes occurred in the Atlantic. Starting in 2007, a warm North Atlantic helped build high pressure in the polar regions and drive Siberian air west to Europe where, in December 2010, the UK had its second coldest December since 1659 in the Little Ice Age.

Though scientists had warned snow was a thing of the past, the UK and much of northern Europe had all–time record snows and cold in five of six years. The North Atlantic turned cold last year and more so this year and Europe turned milder. But a cold North Atlantic means colder and snowier winters in eastern Canada, the Great Lakes and Northeast. The Atlantic thus helped exaggerate the Pacific-driven central U.S. and Northeast cold the last two winters.

At Weatherbell.com, where we use the oceans and sun in our statistical models for long-range prediction, we successfully predicted many months in advance these historic winters. Unless we see major changes in the eastern Pacific, we expect we may make this a threepeat about the time the administration signs a treaty in Paris with other nations at the UN to disassemble our current energy policies to supposedly save the planet from the ravages of warming, which we will show you in the next story is not happening globally and hasn’t for over 18 years.

Joe D’Aleo is a certified Consulting Meteorologist, Fellow of the American Meteorological Society (AMS), former chair AMS Committee on Weather Analysis and Forecasting, co-founder and first Director of Meteorology at The Weather Channel and a former college professor of Meteorology and Climatology.

Germany Buckling Under the Weight of the Wind Scam!

May 6, 2015 / 1957chev / Leave a comment

German Climate Physicist says: Time for Germans to Sober Up, kill their Wind Power Debacle & Save Millions of REAL Jobs

May 6, 2015 by stopthesethings

****

The Germans went into wind power harder and faster than anyone else – and the cost of doing so is catching up with a vengeance. The subsidies have been colossal, the impacts on the electricity market chaotic and – contrary to the environmental purpose of the policy – CO2 emissions are rising fast: if “saving” the planet is – as we are repeatedly told – all about reducing man-made emissions of an odourless, colourless, naturally occurring trace gas, essential for all life on earth – then German energy/environmental policy has manifestly failed (see our post here).

Some 800,000 German homes have been disconnected from the grid – victims of what is euphemistically called “fuel poverty”. In response, Germans have picked up their axes and have headed to their forests in order to improve their sense of energy security – although foresters apparently take the view that this self-help measure is nothing more than blatant timber theft (see our post here).

German manufacturers – and other energy intensive industries – faced with escalating power bills are packing up and heading to the USA – where power prices are 1/3 of Germany’s (see our posts here and hereand here). And the “green” dream of creating thousands of jobs in the wind industry has to turned out to be just that: a dream (see our post here).

Now, with Germany’s wind powered energy debacle clearly running completely out of control, a few sober individuals – like German physicist, climate scientist and spokesman for the European Institute for Climate and Energy (EIKE), Prof. Dr. Horst-Joachim Lüdecke – have weighed in. Prof Lüdecke has ripped into his country’s insane renewables policy; in an effort to get his compatriots to sober up, before they’re all left without a job, living on welfare and sitting freezing, in the dark.

German Climate Physicist: Alternative Energy, Climate Are A “Religious Creed”… “Miles Away” From Openness
NoTricksZone
P Gosselin
26 April 2015

****

Yesterday approximately 15,000 coal miners turned out to protest the German government’s energy policy.

German Economics Minister Sigmar Gabriel announced earlier he intended to levy a CO2 surcharge on older coal power plants with the aim of shutting them down.

Before yesterday’s demonstration, German physicist and climate scientist and spokesman for the European Institute for Climate and Energy (EIKE), Prof. Dr. Horst-Joachim Lüdecke, published a sharply-worded commentary here on the government’s anti-fossil fuel/nuclear power policy. As the introduction Lüdecke wrote:

“Climate protection and the switch over to renewable energies were instilled in German citizens by state propaganda, green brainwashing and with the help of all of Germany’s mainstream media. The unconditional necessity to advance into alternative energies has become a religious creed. By historical and global comparison, such a thing happens the most easily here, time after time. The logic used by the politically interested parties every time appears to be infallible. [..]

The argument goes as follows: The rescue of the planet from a death by heat and the immediate shutdown of the irresponsible German nuclear power plants are essential. The question of whether this is really true is not to be asked, let alone discussed.”

Lüdecke says, however, that public awareness over the madness of Germany’s energy policy is beginning to dawn and that he believes “now is the phase of sobering up, but unfortunately not yet one of reason.” Leading print media are beginning to soften their support for the so-called Energiewende as it now stands, he writes. As angry coal miners take to the street, and thousands of industrial jobs become threatened, it is becoming increasingly apparent something has gone awry.

Lüdecke thinks that the sobering-up process will take time because every political party has made green issues part of its platform. “Green is a very difficult color to wash away,” the German physicist writes.

Lüdecke then explains the primary disadvantage of renewable energy: their low energy density, i.e. meaning they require vast areas and that the major ones are weather-dependent. The German EIKE professor does not know how long the sobering-up process will take, citing the immense power of an array of lobbies behind the green movement.

Lüdecke also aims harsh words at Germany’s pompous and one-sided media:

“Finally a word for the German media, here especially for the public TV and radio networks. They are rightly being compared by the current contemporaries to the conditions of former East Germany or even earlier times.”

At the political level, Lüdecke blasts the atmosphere of intimidation against people who have alternative views, who often are threatened with physical violence from radical leftists groups.

When it comes to openness, such as that proclaimed by French philosopher Voltaire, the German climatologist writes “in the dark media of Germany, we are miles away.” He adds:

“Factual discourse, connected with polite listening and taking the arguments from opponents seriously, is definitely not in fashion.”

Lüdecke describes Germany as a desert when it comes to independent reporting and expression of opinions.
NoTricksZone

There, as here, a gullible and pliant media has aided and abetted the greatest environmental and economic fraud of all time. Whether it’s bone laziness, or intellectual dishonesty, modern journos have a lot to answer for.

****

Once upon a time, the ambitious young hack was inquisitive, suspicious and had the kind of forensic zeal that would have teamed up well with Sherlock Holmes and his side-kick, Watson. Not any more.

Sadly, save for a few remarkable examples – like Graham Lloyd, Alan Jones, James Delingpole, Emily Godsen, Christopher Booker and Rodney Lohse – the press-pack simply parrot the drivel tossed out as “media releases” by the Clean Energy Council, and its wind industry funded equivalents around the globe.

But, thanks to the likes of NoTricksZone, and a few other dedicated bloggers, the unassailable facts are seeing the light of day; much to the horror and annoyance of the wind industry, its parasites and spruikers.

As the scale and scope of the fraud is steadily being revealed – despite the wind industry’s best efforts to keep a lid on it – those who are in a position to have called it a long time ago – and failed or refused to do so – are going to end up looking like either gullible dupes; or willing worshippers, in an insidious, quasi-religious cult.

The Full Impact of the Damage, from the Wynned Fiasco, is being felt in increments. Greed Energy!

May 4, 2015May 4, 2015 / 1957chev / Leave a comment

GWYN MORGAN

Special to The Globe and Mail

Published Sunday, May. 03 2015, 7:20 PM EDT

Last updated Monday, May. 04 2015, 7:31 AM EDT

Last month’s announcement by Ontario Premier Kathleen Wynne that her province would link up with the existing Quebec and California carbon dioxide cap-and-trade systems prompted an editorial in this newspaper headlined, “Is this Green Energy Act Round Two?”

Ontario’s Green Energy Act offered so-called “feed-in rates” almost four times existing electricity rates for wind and more than 10 times for solar power. Like bees to honey, wind and solar companies rushed in. By the time the government realized that these subsidies were driving Ontario from one of the lowest to one of the highest power cost jurisdictions in North America, the province had signed myriad 20-year-locked-in-rate-guaranteed contracts that will drive power rates up a further 40 per cent to 50 per cent in coming years. Adding salt to this self-inflicted wound is the reality that much of the green power comes on stream when it isn’t needed. This unneeded electricity is dumped into the United States at bargain-basement prices that Ontario’s Auditor-General found has already cost Ontario power consumers billions of dollars, with much bigger losses yet to come before those 20-year contracts expire.

Given these disastrous results, one would think that Ms. Wynne and her cabinet colleagues would have carefully studied experience in other jurisdictions before implementing green policy two. The first and largest carbon cap-and-trade scheme is Europe’s 10-year-old system. As in Ontario, the story begins with huge subsidies for wind and solar power that drove up electricity prices precipitously. Cap-and-trade handed wind and solar power companies a second windfall by creating a “carbon trading market” that allowed them to sell “carbon offsets” from their low-emission projects.

On the other hand, many factories and industrial plants, already struggling with high power costs, found it more profitable to shut down and sell their carbon credit allocation in the carbon trading market. As a result, the bulk of Europe’s emissions reductions have been achieved by the departure of energy-intensive industries to overseas locations. Many of the products consumed by Europeans are now produced in countries without emissions limits, demonstrating the futility of imposing local carbon cap measures without global commitments. And since European industry was already among the world’s most energy efficient, the emissions embedded in most of those imported goods are higher than when the same goods were produced domestically.

Adding irony to this job-exporting fiasco, some European countries, including Germany, have implemented subsidies in an effort to keep the remnants of their industrial sector from shutting down. German electricity consumers paid some €20-billion ($27.2-billion) in green power subsidies last year, while at the same time their government spent billions of euros to help industrial plants survive the combination of high electricity and cap-and-trade costs that made them uncompetitive in the first place.

The Ontario announcement has promulgated a debate as to whether cap-and-trade is a tax. Clearly, for those having to buy carbon credits, it amounts to a tax. But for those who have credits to sell, it amounts to a subsidy.

But what most commenters have missed is that former premier Dalton McGuinty’s Green Energy Act created what is, for practical purposes, an indirect tax on energy consumers. Now comes Ms. Wynne’s equally ill-considered cap-and-trade tax. In mirror image to Europe’s green-power-driven levy on electricity consumers followed by cap-and-trade, Ontario’s ill-considered green scheme No. 2 could strike the final blow that drives industry elsewhere.

This leaves the question as to why Quebec so warmly welcomed Ontario’s decision to join its cap-and-trade system. Quebec’s electricity comes almost entirely from cheap, emissions-free hydropower, mitigating much of the competitive impact of cap-and-trade. Quebec has just announced a massive expansion of its hydropower capacity and is looking for markets. The net effect of signing Ontario onto its cap-and-trade system may well be the export of jobs from Ontario to Quebec businesses and the export of electricity from Quebec to Ontario consumers, along with the added bonus of selling carbon credits to Ontario businesses unable to meet cap-and-trade targets.

Ontario generates just 0.5 per cent of global carbon emissions. Even a giant 20-per-cent reduction would knock just a tenth of 1 per cent off global emissions. A minuscule gain for the globe, at a potentially enormous cost to the people of Ontario, and all Canadians.

Gwyn Morgan is a retired Canadian business leader who has been a director of five global corporations

Climate Alarmists: They Hate Facts that Don’t Back Up Their Story, and the People Who Expose Them!

May 2, 2015 / 1957chev / Leave a comment

Climate Change | John Roskam
Australian Financial Review 1st May, 2015

In 1987, the American historian and philosopher Allan Bloom wrote a best-selling book, The Closing of the American Mind. It was about the mediocrity and intellectual conformity of American universities. Bloom died in 1992. If he was alive today and writing about Australian universities his book could be titled The Closed Australian Mind.

The reaction of university academics to the Abbott government’s decision to provide $1 million to fund a branch of Bjorn Lomborg’s Copenhagen Consensus Centre at the University of Western Australia demonstrates all that’s wrong with Australia’s universities. Their culture tends to be distrustful, insular and choked in unthinking intellectual uniformity. That’s why the number of Australian researchers who rival Lomborg’s global renown can be numbered on the fingers of one hand. Probably the closest any Australian comes to having anything like Lomborg’s international standing in the field of philosophy and policy is the ethicist Peter Singer now at Princeton University. (Singer who supports infanticide in some circumstances was voted one of Australia’s most outstanding public intellectuals. He’s also been awarded the Companion of the Order of Australia, the country’s second-highest honour.)

Instead of welcoming a world-class public policy thinker coming to Australia and to their university, academics and students at the University of Western Australia are outraged. The vice-president of the university’s staff association talked of having the funding revoked, while the student guild launched a ‘Say No to Bjorn Lomborg’ campaign.

Lomborg’s problem is he’s a climate “contrarian”. As the The Guardian newspaper has helpfully pointed out a climate “contrarian” is someone who is not a climate “denialist” but who nevertheless says things that “infuriate” people who believe climate change is the world’s most serious and urgent problem. And the reason we know Lomborg is not a “denialist” is because the university’s vice-chancellor says so. At a meeting last week of 150 angry academics the vice-chancellor attempted to placate his staff by reassuring them Lomborg most definitely wasn’t a “denialist” and his institution “had a history of defending its climate change research staff against the most extreme views of climate change deniers”. (There’s no record of the vice-chancellor defining what he meant by the term “denialist”. Presumably his university doesn’t employ any.)

LOMBORG’S BELIEFS

Lomborg believes humans are causing the climate to change and he believes it’s a problem. But he also believes that much of the money spent on fighting climate change would be better spent on overcoming malaria and HIV/Aids and assisting the 700 million people on the planet who don’t have clean water. These views apparently make Lomborg unfit to hold a position at the University of Western Australia. As yet it’s not clear what Lomborg would have to believe to satisfy the staff and students of the university.

In The Closing of the American Mind, Bloom examines how the teaching of humanities has been affected by postmodernism and moral relativism. For Bloom, what’s even worse is that so many academics think the same things and they won’t tolerate anyone disagreeing with them. He tells the story of what happened to him as a student.

“We are used to hearing the Founders charged with being racists, murderers of Indians, representatives of class interests. I asked my first history professor in the university, a very famous scholar, whether the picture he gave us of George Washington did not have the effect of making us despise our regime. ‘Not at all,’ he said, ‘it doesn’t depend on individuals but on our having good democratic values.’ To which I rejoined, ‘But you just showed us that Washington was only using those values to further the class interests of the Virginian squirearchy.’ He got angry, and that was the end of it.”

What Bloom said about the humanities in American universities 30 years ago is true of science in Australian universities today. Those who dare to question whether the science of climate change actually is “settled” provoke anger and name calling from many in Australia’s scientific community.

Australia’s Nobel Laureate Peter Doherty is a leader of that community. He’s another one angry Lomborg is coming to this country. Doherty’s attitude is disappointing but also perplexing. Without contrarian thinkers there wouldn’t be many Nobel Prizes to hand out.

Windweasels Live Up to Their Reputation as….. Gangsters!

April 30, 2015 / 1957chev / Leave a comment

Noose Tightens on Spain’s Wind Farm Fraudsters: Tax Inspectors Uncover €110 million Paid as Bribes & Backhanders

April 30, 2015 by stopthesethings

The wind industry seems to attract a particular class of bloke, in much the same way that the Prohibition era drew lots of heavy-set Italians to the Mob.

Maybe that seemingly endless stream of massive subsidies filched from taxpayers and power consumers generates the same allure as festering dung does for swarms of flies?

Whatever it is, the whiff that surrounds the wind industry has attracted (and continues to attract) a class that has no hesitation lying, cheating, stealing and even bonking their way to the easy loot on offer.

The Italian Mob were in on the wind power fraud from the get-go: applying their considerable (and perfectly applicable) skills – leading the European wind power fraud, with what economists call “first-mover-advantage” (see our post here).

We’ve reported on just how rotten the wind industry is – from top to bottom – and whether it’s bribery and fraud; vote rigging scandals; tax fraud; investor fraud or REC fraud – wind weasels set a uniform standard that would make most businessmen blush.

The crooks involved – and the corruption, lies thuggery and deceit that follow them – are uniform across the globe.

Wind power outfits in Taiwan – faced with a pesky community backlash – sent the muscle in and beat the protesters to a bloody pulp (see our posts here and here).

The Thais aren’t much better.

In Australia, Thai outfit RATCH has been lying to, bullying and threatening communities far and wide for years (see our posts here and here andhere).

In previous posts we’ve looked at how the goons that work for RATCH didn’t hesitate to invent a character – Frank Bestic – in a half-cunning attempt to infiltrate their opponents at Collector and elsewhere – see our posts here and here and here.

RATCH also teamed up with one of Queensland’s property developer, “white-shoe-brigade“, John Morris – in a joint plan to destroy the Atherton Tablelands, by spearing 60 odd turbines into a patch of pristine, tropical wilderness on top of Mt Emerald – a move, quite rightly, opposed by 92% of locals (see our post here).

Morris is a five-star resort owner, who generously wined, dined and otherwise accommodated his mate, LNP pollie, David Kempton. Kempton got rolled at the last election, but while in power, held a rabid interest in getting the project approved, despite the fact that his own electorate was miles away, and pulled out all stops to ‘smooth’ the way to development approval (see our post here).

RATCH and Morris have shown all the care and restraint we’ve come to expect from the wind industry and its parasites: an “industry” that has absolutely no interest in producing meaningful power or “saving” the planet. Take away the promise of $50 billion in subsidies from the REC Tax on power consumers (see our post here) and this lot will disappear in a heartbeat (see our post here).

RATCH shares its Thai roots with another Thai wind power outfit that owes its existence to the Thai Military Junta – “Wind Energy Holdings”.

Wind Energy Holdings hit the news a while back when its hitherto-hot-shot head, Nopporn Suppipat was caught with his fingers in the till. Having been caught – he acted with all the honour we’ve come to expect from wind weasels, wherever they ply their trade: he bolted! (see our post here)

Now, it’s the turn of Spanish Wind Conquistadors to feel the heat.

That the wind industry is the product of institutional corruption – fuelled by back-slaps, and $millions in back-handers to planning officers, local councils and others in charge of the rubber stamps needed to start and keep the wind power fraud rolling – is no secret.

However, as these boys have bought the sanction of governments, rooting out the recipients of that crooked cash – when it’s sprinkled all the way to the top – presents investigators with more than the usual forensic challenges. Here’s Spain’s El País on España’s errant wind fraudsters’ trail.

Regional officials and businessmen may have received €110 million, say auditors
El País
F.Garea; R. Méndez
20 April 2015

Private renewable energy firms may have paid more than €110 million in commissions to government officials and local businessmen in Castilla y León to help them obtain licenses and push through paperwork to install wind farms across the region between 2004 and 2007, tax inspectors said.

In a December 30 report obtained by EL PAÍS, seven transactions detail how energy firms paid local businessmen and people connected to the regional Popular Party (PP) government either directly or through stocks in companies created to build and operate wind farms.

The Spanish AEAT tax agency has turned over the 94-page report to anti-corruption prosecutors to investigate if money laundering or other crimes may have been committed.

Those suspected of taking part in the commission deals are public officials in Castilla y León; go-betweens who negotiated on behalf of the energy firms and were able to obtain administrative approvals; and companies belonging to local businessmen who, “without any valid economic motives, received the transfer of funds and stock for an amount superior to €110 million,” inspectors said.

In some cases, the firms transferred stock in the businesses set up in such a way so as to multiply the initial capital invested by hundreds, even thousands, of times.

Among those who may have benefited from this alleged scheme were officials from Castilla y León’s economy department, which authorized the wind farms.

EL PAÍS was unable to reach Rafael Delgado Núñez, who was the deputy chief of the economy department at the time and the official responsible for signing the administrative permits.

In some cases, the firms multiplied the initial capital invested by hundreds, even thousands, of times

Along with other officials, Delgado Núñez was called in to give a statement before tax inspectors. According to his testimony, which was included in the audit, he said the procedure in the region was “very efficient” because there was hardly any legal framework supporting these operations at the time and the government wanted to ensure that “the companies that applied had regional interests.”

One of the main figures in the report is Alberto Esgueva, who until 2006 was CEO of Excal – a public entity formed by the Castilla y León government to promote regional exports. His own firm, according to inspectors, received the most commissions from the operations. Since September Esgueva has been living in Poland, where he runs a real estate business.

He declined to be interviewed for this article despite various attempts to contact him through his secretary.

A spokesman for the region’s economy department said he had no knowledge about the report but added that all the transactions were legally carried out and there was no evidence that commissions were paid.

Tomás Villanueva, who has headed up Castilla y León’s economy department since 2003 and is considered a close aide to PP regional premier Juan Vicente Herrera, on Monday stated that, after carrying out a “first check,” the paperwork authorizing the wind farms under question by the Tax Agency “was correct and in line with the law.”

Villanueva’s name surfaces in one part of the audit where tax inspectors mentioned that Delgado Núñez “played an important role” in both the economic and education departments.

In their report, inspectors alleged that numerous payments helped pave the way for the regional government to make quick decisions about the installation of wind farms. In one case, the money helped overcome the bureaucracy that had been blocking the project for six years.

Utility companies that wanted to install wind farms allegedly set up joint venture vehicles with local businesses and officials who had government ties to the region, the report said.

The association with the local businessman or government official would allegedly help push through the paperwork and, once the electric companies had received authorization to build the wind farm, they would pay back the investors more than what they had initially put into the joint venture.

One of the renewable energy companies that paid out a large amount to install a wind farm was Preneal, owned by Eduardo Merigó, the former president of Visa in Spain and an ex-secretary of state in former Spanish Prime Minister Adolfo Suarez’s Union of the Democratic Centre (UCD) administration (1977-1982). He told tax inspectors that he “felt like a victim of the system.”

Merigó also declined to speak to EL PAÍS for this article.

Preneal paid €6 million to San Cayetano Wind, which belonged to Esgueva, without “any obligation or compensation,” the report states.

Another €7 million was paid to Cronos Global, which was half owned by Esgueva. Last December, a Preneal representative told tax inspectors that Cronos had nothing to do with obtaining permits or building wind farms.

The projects have still not been approved, but Cronos Global received €7 million after putting down a €1.5 million initial investment.

Tax inspectors have also discovered suspicious bank transfers by Cronos Global at the beginning of the recession of up to €100 million to Poland and the United States while around €38 million was transferred to Spain.

The other partners in Cronos Global was Luis María García Clerigó and his family.

Clerigó is the president of the now-defunct Parqueolid, a construction firm in Valladolid. When contacted by EL PAÍS, Clerigó said he had difficulty remembering anything because he suffered a stroke seven years ago.

Parqueolid is under investigation in another case for allegedly receiving €50 million from the Castilla y León regional government to build new offices for the economic department. A judge investigating this case has targeted Delgado Núñez, who served as deputy chief of the regional economy department for eight years, and is also sifting through his bank accounts.
El País

WindWeasels Cannot Continue Denying the harm they are Causing!

April 29, 2015 / 1957chev / Leave a comment

Denmark Calls Halt to More Wind Farm Harm

April 29, 2015 by stopthesethings

*****

Denmark is the home of struggling Danish fan maker, Vestas – an outfit that – after our Wind Power Fraud Rally in June 2013 – paid $millions to a crack team of Australian propaganda parrots to invent a campaign aimed at winning back the “moral” high ground.

It called its new public relations model “Act on Facts” – we covered some of their “facts” in this post.

Well, as is often the case, the facts eventually surface; and, when they do, the ‘unhelpful’ ones have a nasty habit of working against those that, like Vestas, have worked hardest to suppress them:

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

Danes complain about precisely the same effects from the incessant turbine generated low-frequency noise and infrasound that Vestas’ victims at Macarthur in Victoria do (see our posts here and here).

And the Danes’ complaints have seen victims awarded substantial compensation for the sonic torture being inflicted unnecessarily and endlessly by Vestas & Co:

Danish High Court Orders Compensation for Wind Turbine Noise Victims

Danish wind power outfits have had to concede that human beings and giant fans simply don’t mix, and have taken to buying up huge numbers of homes, and even whole villages; bulldozing them in order to carpet the entire country in their blade-chucking, pyrotechnic, sonic torture devices:

This Town is ‘coming like a Ghost Town: Wind Industry Buys Up & Bulldozes Whole Danish Villages

Now, the Danish government has gone into legal liability damage control by refusing to issue any further permits for wind farms. Here’s NoTrickZone on the Danes’ latest lament.

Under Fire Due To Health Impacts From Infrasound … Danish Permitting Halts!
NoTricksZone
P Gosselin
21 April 2015

Beleaguered Industry: Wind Parks Coming Under Fire Due To Health Impacts From Infrasound … Danish Permitting Halts!

The debate on the effects of infrasound on the health of people and animals living near wind parks has been raging on with more intensity than ever – especially since Denmark unexpectedly halted the permitting of new wind parks due to “health concerns” from infrasound.

Infrasound is defined as low frequency sound under 16 Hz – below the threshold of human hearing. Wind farms are notorious for generating these potentially harmful sub-audible frequencies. It is said that infrasound can be sensed as pressure to the ears or to the stomach, or as a slight vibration.

There’s a Swedish report available on the hazard, click here. It calls for the legal framework for the creation of wind parks to be revised.

German NTV public television reports recently that in Denmark mink farm operator Kaj Bank Olesen from Herning is a neighbor to four large-scale wind turbines only 330 meters away. Olesen and other neighbors had protested the planning of the wind turbines, fearing negative consequences from their noise and shadows.

However the community rejected their claims, basing it on a lack of credibility. The turbines were installed. Now it seems that Olesen’s earlier fears may have had merit as he claims that the infrasound generated by the turbines are making the mink animals on the farm aggressive and is leading them to die. After one night he found 200 dead minks the next morning. The incident has since sparked the Danish government to take action. Permitting of wind parks in Denmark is now on hold.

The alleged health impacts from wind turbines have been making the news (0:55) in Germany as well.

In Schleswig Holstein, Germany, the Hogeveens have been forced to sleep and eat in their basement in a desperate attempt to find refuge from the maddening infrasound emitted by recently installed turbines near their home.

The wind industry and many government authorities deny there’s a connection between infrasound from wind turbines and health impacts on humans. Hermann Albers of a wind lobby group says there’s no connection between the turbines and the irritation sensed by those living close by, claiming that it is a “subjective” perception or that it’s “politically motivated”. In other words, people living close to wind turbines are just making it all up and they should instead just shut up and live with it.

The German government says it will study the matter further and consider if infrasound should be taken into consideration during the wind park permitting process.

In Australia a link has also been found between wind turbines and health in the so-called Cape Bridgewater report. Steven Cooper investigated the possible link, saying that availbale data so far is very small, but adds:

“There’s definitely a trend. There’s definitely a connection between the operation of a wind farm and what the residents were identifying as disturbances, and so it’s definitely open to debate as to what the cause or link is in terms of that data.”

Data from comprehensive studies are difficult to come by. Wind farms are reluctant to share their data with researchers, fearing unfavorable results and consequences.

The impacts from infrasound on human health will continue to be debated in the future. But other things are already sure and beyond debate: Wind farms are rapidly losing their attractiveness and support from the public due to their poor performance, hazard to birdlife, ruining of property values, and their blighting of the natural landscape.

An adverse connection to human health would be yet another large nail in the coffin of the now increasingly controversial wind industry.

Hat-tip: Wolfgang Neumann at Facebook.
NoTricksZone

In the piece above it’s said that “Permitting of wind parks in Denmark is now on hold“.

STT’s Danish operatives have confirmed that that is, indeed, the case. Not that you’ll read about in the Australian press; or see or hear it on your ABC.

Governments – Federal, State and Local – around the world are getting jumpy about their legal liability to their citizens, for having set up planning laws so lax as to be risible and/or for manifestly failing to enforce even those derisory rules. Moreover, the very existence of the wind industry is the direct result of massive subsidies and/or mandated government targets, fines and penalties, so governments are in it up to their necks; and can’t possibly hope to get out of trouble by pulling the Sergeant Schultz defence:

In liability terms, governments that continue to allow turbines to be speared into peoples’ backyards, or which fail to shut them down wherever neighbours can’t sleep, are sitting ducks as defendants in negligence actions. The evidence of harm and personal injury is clear enough; and those in power can no longer claim to be unaware of it (seeour post here).

Having set themselves up for compensation claims that will run into the hundreds of $millions, governments (and their insurers) are keen to limit their exposure by pointing to others: for example, wind power outfits and their pet acoustic consultants who claimed the noise standards they wrote were the gold-standard in protecting public health (see our post here). Or, in the case of Brown County, Wisconsin making it clear that it’s not game to rely on the lies pitched up the wind industry’s mercenary acoustics acolytes by coming out publicly:

“To declare the Industrial Wind Turbines in the Town of Glenmore, Brown County. WI. a Human Health Hazard for all people (residents, workers, visitors, and sensitive passersby) who are exposed to Infrasound/Low Frequency Noise and other emissions potentially harmful to human health.” (see our post here)

Now, it seems that the Danish government is also out to draw a line between it and the wind industry; if only in an attempt to quarantine its liability to thousands of its victims.

It was due to Vesta’s corporate malfeasance and insidious institutional sway that Denmark became the birthplace for the great wind power fraud in the first place; and, thereafter, became the Mecca for the wind industry’s cult-like followers.

STT thinks that it’s fitting, in its way, that this despicable industry and its worshippers have their “Doomsday” in Denmark.

Father of Green Communities Act, Convicted Under the RICO Act! Who’s Next?

April 28, 2015 / 1957chev / Leave a comment

Falmouth Wind Turbines – RICO Act

Prior to Wind Turbine Installations Falmouth had the Octave Band Data / Sound performance for the V82 turbine

Falmouth Wind Turbines & RICO Act

Did the Town of Falmouth violate the RICO Act ? They all knew the turbines would break state noise laws !

The Commonwealth of Massachusetts
Department of Environmental Protection (DEP)
Noise Control Regulation 310 CMR 7.10

310 CMR 7.10 Noise
(1) No person owning, leasing, or controlling a source of sound shall willfully, negligently, or through failure to provide necessary equipment, service, or maintenance or to take necessary precautions cause, suffer, allow, or permit unnecessary emissions from said source of sound that may cause noise.

Prior to the installations of the Falmouth wind turbines it appears Vestas Wind Company forewarned the Town of Falmouth, Town of Falmouth contract engineers and construction contractors. The manufacturer ( Vestas )also needs confirmation that the Town of

Falmouth understands they are fully responsible for the site selection of the turbine and bear all responsibilities to address any mitigation needs of the neighbors.

The turbines operated full time until May of 2012. State officials shut down the wind turbine in Falmouth after measurements showed the machine generating more than 10 decibels above ordinary background noise.

The turbines operate 12 hours a day during daylight now and are shut off on Sunday

Passed in 1970, the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO) is a federal law designed to combat organized crime in the United States. It allows prosecution and civil penalties for racketeering activity performed as part of an ongoing criminal enterprise.

To convict a defendant under RICO, the government must prove that the defendant engaged in two or more instances of racketeering activity and that the defendant directly invested in, maintained an interest in, or participated in a criminal enterprise affecting interstate or foreign commerce.

Political Corruption

Politicians :
. UNITED STATES V. CIANCI
Providence Rhode Island
For twenty-one years, from 1975-1984 and from 1991-2002, Vincent A. “Buddy” Cianci was the mayor of Providence, Rhode Island.

Ultimately, Cianci was only convicted of one RICO conspiracy count.
The First Circuit notes—for a RICO conspiracy conviction, a defendant simply “must intend to further an endeavor which, if completed, would satisfy all of the elements of a substantive criminal offense, but it suffices that he adopted the goal of furthering or facilitating the criminal endeavor.”

Buddy Cianci was therefore found guilty of a §1962(d) RICO conspiracy violation and sentenced to five years and four months in prison.

Falmouth noise letter recently released through a Freedom of Information Request

August 3, 2010
Mr. Gerald Potamis
WasteWater Superintendent
Town of Falmouth Public Works
59 Town Hall Square
Falmouth, MA 02540

RE: Falmouth WWTF Wind Energy Facility II “Wind II”, Falmouth, MA
Contract No. #3297

Dear Mr. Potamis,

Due to the sound concerns regarding the first wind turbine installed at the wastewater treatment facility, the manufacturer of the turbines, Vestas, is keen for the Town of Falmouth to understand the possible noise and other risks associated with the installation of the second wind turbine.

The Town has previously been provided with the Octave Band Data / Sound performance for the V82 turbine. This shows that the turbine normally operates at 103.2dB but the manufacturer has also stated that it may produce up to 110dB under certain circumstances. These measurements are based on IEC standards for sound measurement which is calculated at a height of 10m above of the base of the turbine.

We understand that a sound study is being performed to determine what, if any, Impacts the second turbine will have to the nearest residences. Please be advised that should noise concerns arise with this turbine, the only option to mitigate normal operating sound from the V82 is to shut down the machine at certain wind speeds and directions. Naturally this would detrimentally affect power production.

The manufacturer also needs confirmation that the Town of Falmouth understands they are fully responsible for the site selection of the turbine and bear all responsibilities to address any mitigation needs of the neighbors.

Finally, the manufacturer has raised the possibility of ice throw concerns. Since Route 28 is relatively close to the turbine, precautions should be taken in weather that may cause icing.

To date on this project we have been unable to move forward with signing the contract with Vestas. The inability to release the turbine for shipment to the project site has caused significant [SIC] delays in our project schedule. In order to move forward the manufacturer requires your understanding and acknowledgement of these risks. We kindly request for this acknowledgement to be sent to us by August 4, 2010, as we have scheduled a coordination meeting with Vestas to discuss the project schedule and steps forward for completion of the project.

Please sign in the space provided below to indicate your understanding and acknowledgement of this letter. If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to call me.

Sincerely,

(Bruce Mabbott’s signature)
_____________________
Bruce Mabbott Gerald Potamis
Project Manager Town of Falmouth

CC: Sumul Shah, Lumus Construction, Inc.
(Town of Falmouth’s Wind-1 and Wind-2 Construction contractor)

Stephen Wiehe, Weston & Sampson
(Town of Falmouth’s contract engineers)

Brian Hopkins, Vestas
(Wind-1, Wind-2’s turbine manufacturer, and also Webb/NOTUS turbine)

Aussies Fight Back, Against Corruption in the Wind Industry!

April 28, 2015 / 1957chev / Leave a comment

Australian Senators – Day, Leyonhjelm & Canavan – Line Up to Can Big Wind

April 28, 2015 by stopthesethings

STT likes to go in hard, call it early and keep on backing it up. Sure we descend to colourful language, and polish it off with a healthy smear of good old-fashioned sarcasm. But the idiom and imagery we use sits atop a pile of festering wind industry generated lies, deception and common garden variety fraud.

Back in January this year, we likened Steven Cooper’s groundbreaking acoustic study into the harm caused by Pac Hydro’s Cape Bridgewater wind farm disaster, to the detonation of a small, but effective, nuclear device:

Steven Cooper’s Cape Bridgewater Wind Farm Study the Beginning of the End for the Wind Industry

We wrote that:

Earlier this week, a small, but very effective, nuclear device was detonated at Cape Bridewater, which – before Union Super Funds backed Pacific Hydro destroyed it – was a pristine, coastal idyll in South-Western Victoria.

The bomb that went off was a study carried out by one of Australia’s crack acoustic specialists, Steven Cooper – and some typically solid journalism from The Australian’s Graham Lloyd – that put the Pac Hydro initiated pyrotechnics in the International spotlight.

Over the next few posts, STT will analyse just what the detonation, its aftermath and fallout means for an industry which, in Australia, is already on the ropes.

And we’ll look at what it means to the thousands of wind farm victims here – and around the world.

Three months on, and we don’t shy away from any of that. Oh no. If anything likening events at Cape Bridgewater to the wind industry’s very own Hiroshima, was mastery in understatement.

You see, Cooper’s work became the central focus of day one of the Senate Inquiry into the great wind power fraud – which kicked off on 30 March, at Portland, Victoria; right next to Cape Bridgewater.

Not only did Cooper impress the Senators (save Anne Urquhaut – a wind industry apologist and mouthpiece for Friends of the Earth’s propaganda parrot, Leigh Ewbank), the subjects of Cooper’s study gave evidence to the Committee in camera (privately); and a number of the Senators (save Urquhaut, of course) visited them in their homes the night before the hearing. A number of other wind farm victims laid out the suffering they’ve been forced to endure by wind farm operators, like AGL at Glenthompson and Macarthur, as well.

From what STT hears, to say that the Senators were “moved” is to put it mildly.

The gut-wrenching evidence of the symptoms and sensations experienced by these people and caused by incessant turbine generated low-frequency noise, infrasound and vibration, left a group of seasoned political performers and parliamentary knuckle men, including libertarian tough-nut, David Leyonhjelm, with watery eyes and lumpy throats.

And rightly so: Pac Hydro’s continued mistreatment of its wind farm’s neighbours is nothing short of a disgrace – it is unnecessary, unjustifiedand, in STT’s view, criminal.

And, so it was, that South Australian Senator, Bob Day came to describe their evidence as “harrowing”: thankfully, not a word that gets much of a run these days; but, given the gravity of the harm being caused, and the genuineness and obvious sincerity of the victims, one that’s right on the money.

The real significance of the day was not only what Day had to say, but that he, and the other Senators on the Committee, including David Leyonhjelm from NSW and Matt Canavan from Queensland have had their eyes opened to the scale of the wind power fraud; and the entirely unnecessary suffering it continues to cause.

These boys have uniformly stiffened their opposition to the wind industry; and have joined forces to call for a halt to the greatest rort of all time.

‘Wait for wind inquiry before changing RET’: Bob Day
The Australian
Rosie Lewis
22 April 2015

Family First senator Bob Day has asked Tony Abbott and Industry Minister Ian Macfarlane to delay a vote to change the Renewable Energy Target for six months, until the conclusion of a Senate inquiry into wind turbines.

Any lengthy delay to the scheme is likely to frustrate the renewables sector and energy intensive businesses, which have urged the Prime Minister to end the RET stalemate.

Senator Day said he had heard “harrowing” evidence about the impact of wind turbines on humans and animals during the inquiry’s first hearing last month and wanted to know all the “facts and figures” before a RET deal was reached. “I think it’s not unreasonable to ask that we don’t come to any agreement on the Renewable Energy Target until such time that we get to the bottom of this,” he said.

“I’m not talking about ending the RET, I’m just talking about ‘let’s defer the decision on it’. Nothing’s going to happen in the next six months anyway. It’s more important to do this right than do this quick.”

Labor has backed a compromise from the Clean Energy Council, which would cut the large-scale RET from 41,000-GWh by 2020 to 33,500GWh, but the government’s final offer remains at 32,000GWh.

Without support from Labor or the Greens the government needs six crossbench votes to see legislation pass the Senate.

Liberal Democrat senator David Leyonhjelm, who is also on the wind turbine committee, said he had given the government’s RET offer conditional support.

Senator Leyonhjelm said he was much more likely to support the government’s target if there was less of a “big leg up” to the wind power industry.

“Ian Macfarlane is doing the rounds in an effort to get six votes,” he said. “I think he probably will get six votes. (The government) will have my vote, with conditions. I’m not a fan of wind turbines, they are killing birds and they are also making some people sick.

“My support for 32,000GWh relates to not giving a particularly big leg up to wind and giving more scope for other sources.”
The Australian

Bob Day followed up with this letter to The Australian on 27 April 2015.

No rush on RET

Because I have asked Industry Minister Ian Mcfarlane and the Prime Minister to defer a vote on the Renewable Energy Target until a Senate inquiry into wind turbines has handed down its report, Kane Thornton of the Clean Energy Council tells me I have little regard for the many thousands of people whose jobs are at risk every day this review remains unresolved.

This inquiry held its first hearing on March 30 and heard evidence about the adverse effects of wind turbines on humans and animals. The evidence was compelling. There was also evidence on the efficacy of wind turbines to reduce carbon dioxide given the amount of the gas required to manufacture and install them.

Since that hearing, information has been provided regarding reports from the 1980s about the adverse effects of wind turbines. The enquiry is keen to understand what wind turbine owners know, and how long they have known it.

The inquiry hands down its report in August. Given the seriousness of the evidence so far, I do not think it unreasonable to request deferring a vote on the RET until then.
Bob Day, Senator for South Australia

The claim by the CEC’s head spruiker, Kane Thornton that “thousands of jobs are at risk” is utter bunkum.

It’s the installation of domestic rooftop solar that’s created the thousands of jobs he’s referring to; and none of them are under threat. No-one is out to scrap the Small-Scale Renewable Scheme (SRES) – which provides the subsidies for rooftop solar – it’s got plenty of backers and – unlike the wind industry – no sworn enemies.

Contrary to the CEC’s wailing, there are no wind industry jobs under threat. Construction activity has ground to a standstill, simply because retailers stopped entering Power Purchase Agreements over 2½ years ago, in November 2012, long before the RET Review kicked off in April 2014 (see our post here).

In the absence of PPAs, wind power outfits have been unable to obtain finance to sling up any new fans. And it’s that fact that means that there are no construction jobs under threat – jobs which are fleeting, in any event. And the handful of wind industry jobs that have any permanence – such as changing oil, replacing generators and blades etc – are under no threat at all from the RET Review. No the CEC’s “case” is all about conflating domestic solar and industrial wind power, when they have absolutely nothing in common – in its efforts to ensure the LRET remains untouched, the wind industry has been using the domestic solar business as a kind of political “human shield”:

Angus Taylor: Coalition set to kill the wind industry, while supporting rooftop solar

As to the claims about the LRET creating thousands of “groovy green” jobs, to debunk that myth you need look no further than Germany, where its insane rush into wind power has seen major energy intensive industries head to the USA to avoid rocketing power prices, while at the same time the millions of so-called “green” jobs, promised by the wind industry there, simply failed to materialise:

German industry set to flee renewable power price punishment

Germany’s Unsustainable “Green” Jobs “Miracle” Collapses

So, Bob Day needn’t worry too much about the CEC’s last ditch attempts to save the LRET; and to avoid the unavoidable: the wind industry is on its last legs, and the CEC knows it.

Matt Canavan – who hails from Rockhampton in Queensland, and was another on the Senate Inquiry Committee whose eyes and ears were opened at Portland – has now taken a keen interest in the disaster planned by one of Queensland’s cheesy “white-shoe brigade” for the pristine, tropical wilderness of Mt Emerald, on the Atherton Tablelands:

The Battle for Mt Emerald FNQ: What’s the Price for the Sound of Your Silence?

STT’s covered the politically stinky relationships and wheel greasing that’s gone on behind closed 5 Star Resort doors in the developer’s efforts to side-step the obstacle to his plans to wallow in the REC Subsidy trough, created by a thousand or so dedicated pro-farming and pro-community advocates:

Mt Emerald: Tablelands Regional Council Puts People & Environment Before Proposed Wind Farm Disaster

It’s an economic nonsense and environmental disaster in the making that has locals seething – over 90% of locals are dead set against it:

1,000 Sign Petition Against Mt Emerald Wind Farm: Survey says 92% Opposed

Now Matt Canavan has entered the fray.

SENATOR REQUESTS DELAY TO DECISION ON MT EMERALD WIND FARM
Media Release
23 April 2015

Senator Matt Canavan has requested the Queensland Government to delay making a final decision on the Mt Emerald wind farm proposal west of Cairns.

This follows a decision by a Senate committee inquiring into wind turbines to hold a public hearing in Cairns on May 18.

Senator Canavan is a member of the Committee and has written to Deputy Premier Jackie Trad requesting a decision on the Mt Emerald proposal be deferred until after the Cairns hearing.

“One of the purposes of the Committee’s hearing in Cairns will be to hear from the local community, and the proponent, about the proposed wind farm at Mt Emerald,” Senator Canavan said. “My understanding is that the Queensland Government is currently considering whether to approve this project.”

“In the interests of wide stakeholder consultation and best-practice policy-making principles, I have requested that the Queensland Government delay making a final decision on the Mt Emerald proposal until it has the opportunity to hear the evidence presented to the Senate Committee.”

“Previous hearings have heard compelling evidence from residents living close to wind turbines about their impact on residents’ health and wellbeing. Unlike other States, Queensland has no specific regulatory guidelines on the minimum distance turbines can be from a place of residence.

“Parliamentary committees provide witnesses with a range of protections. As a result, the evidence provided at this public hearing may add to the statements made at other public consultations that the Queensland Government has already conducted in regards to the Mt Emerald wind turbines proposal.”

Senator Canavan said the Senate Select Committee on Wind Turbines confirmed on Wednesday that it will conduct a public hearing in Cairns on May 18. The Committee is tasked with inquiring into and reporting on the application of regulatory governance and economic impact of wind turbines.
Senator Matt Canavan

Despite Matt’s more than reasonable call for a little public health prudence, Labor wind industry shill, Jackie Trad went ahead and gave planning approval, in accordance with the Labor Party/Union Super Fund business model.

Were Trad to have canned the project, it would have cut across Labor’s cash cow, by further threatening the Ponzi scheme in which Labor/Union heavy owned and (badly) run outfits, like Pac Hydro are well ensconced. In a cunning move, Trad’s press release giving the disaster the nod, was slipped out on Anzac Day, so that there would be no way the media would give it any oxygen at all.

STT thinks that it’s no surprise that the Senators on the wind farm Inquiry Committee have turned sharply against the great wind power fraud. And, with Jackie Trad’s sly little move at Mt Emerald, we expect Matt Canavan will come back swinging just that little bit harder.

Human beings, possessed of a modicum of empathy and decency, generally don’t like to sit back and watch the common law rights of hard-working people to live in, use and enjoy their homes get steam-rolled. And much less so, when there’s no justification at all for the harm and suffering being endured by the wind industry’s victims – which it regards as “road-kill” – and which the mock-medicos that spruik for it sneeringly call “wind farm wing-nuts“.

However, as we’ve pointed out before, the endless lies tossed up by the wind industry and its parasites just don’t wash anymore. These days, people are becoming switched on to the fraud; and angry for having been taken for gullible dupes.

Once reasonable people are introduced to the facts about the insane costs of intermittent and unreliable wind power they cease to support it.

When they learn of the senseless slaughter of millions of birds and bats, and the tragic suffering caused to hard working rural people by giant fans, reasonable people start to bristle.

But when they learn that – contrary to the ONLY “justification” for the$billions filched from power consumer and taxpayers and directed as perpetual subsidies to wind power outfits – wind power INCREASES CO2 emissions in the electricity sector – rather than decreasing them, as claimed – their attitude stiffens to the point of hostility to those behind the fraud and those hell-bent on sustaining it.

In our travels we’ve met plenty of people that started out in favour of wind power and turned against it. But we’ve yet to meet anyone who started out opposed to wind power, who later became a supporter. Funny about that.

Present the facts to reasonable people – and they’ll want to know how the scam got started in the first place, and why it hasn’t been stopped in its tracks already?

Watching the Senators on the Inquiry arriving at that point, provides STT with more than just a little encouragement: from here-on, the wind industry hasn’t got a hope in hell of convincing them as to any part of its pitch.

As seminal mod-rockers, The Who, wailed in 1971, STT thinks it’s a case of we Won’t Get Fooled Again:

****

The Truth About Wealth Redistribution, & the Unaffordable, Renewables Scam!

April 27, 2015 / 1957chev / Leave a comment

Want to Help the Poorest? Then It’s Time to Ditch Wind Power

April 27, 2015 by stopthesethings

The only reason that Western economies have entertained the infantile nonsense of wind power, is that the rich world can afford (at least in the short term) to throw $billions in subsidies at a wholly weather dependent “system”, that will never stump up as an “alternative”, unless your starting point is sitting freezing (or boiling) in the dark; and you’re happy with that as your status quo (see our post here).

Some, however, might call backing wind power a form of wanton waste, aimed at satisfying the political vanity of the naive and gullible.

Then there’s the moral bankruptcy of a policy that’s aimed at wind power producers to (notionally) add more electricity to the system, notwithstanding that, in Australia, there is NO shortage of power – what there is a shortage of, however, is affordable power; and wind power will never provide that (see our post here).

Australia’s wind industry depends entirely on the Large-Scale Renewable Energy Target – which has already transferred $9 billion, and is set up to transfer $50 billion more, from power consumers (in the form of the REC Tax on retail power bills) to subsidise wind power outfits, at the expense of the poorest and most vulnerable who, as the policy bites in the next 2 years and beyond, will simply be denied access to power (see our post here).

When the concept of directing $50 billion worth of Australian taxes springs to mind, it doesn’t take long to think of groups within Australia that could easily be considered more worthy recipients, than foreign owned wind power outfits, backed by Union Super Funds.

STT’s first picks would be Aboriginal health and education; where standards in many regional and remote communities are positively third world. A fraction of what the wind industry is clamouring to pocket by keeping the LRET alive would, if well-managed, go a long way to giving a lot of under-privileged Australians an opportunity to improve their lot; and the lives of their children. Healthy kids have a better chance of learning; and educated kids have a better chance, all round.

But Aboriginal health and education hardly rates a mention from inner city “greens” – instead, their present obsession is “wonderful wind power” and ‘saving’ the RET.

Their worship of wind turbines, as some kind of Divine gift from the wind Gods, is a form of mania, akin to a deluded, religious fanaticism.

****

The mania extends to pumping up the fiction that the world can obtain 100% of its electricity needs from wind and solar power.

If left unchallenged, the end result of the ‘Greens’ ludicrous push for 100% ‘renewables’, will be to prevent the poorest and most vulnerable in developed economies from ever affording power again; and to simply deny power to under-developed economies and the poorest on the planet, altogether.

Steadily, though, the fiction that developing Nations can pull themselves out of poverty using insanely expensive and utterly unreliable wind power is being challenged. Here’s The New York times, throwing down the gauntlet.

A Call to Look Past Sustainable Development
The New York Times
Eduardo Porter
14 April 2015

The average citizen of Nepal consumes about 100 kilowatt-hours of electricity in a year. Cambodians make do with 160. Bangladeshis are better off, consuming, on average, 260.

Then there is the fridge in your kitchen. A typical 20-cubic-foot refrigerator — Energy Star-certified, to fit our environmentally conscious times — runs through 300 to 600 kilowatt-hours a year.

American diplomats are upset that dozens of countries — including Nepal, Cambodia and Bangladesh — have flocked to join China’s newinfrastructure investment bank, a potential rival to the World Bank and other financial institutions backed by the United States.

The reason for the defiance is not hard to find: The West’s environmental priorities are blocking their access to energy.

A typical American consumes, on average, about 13,000 kilowatt-hours of electricity a year. The citizens of poor countries — including Nepalis, Cambodians and Bangladeshis — may not aspire to that level of use, which includes a great deal of waste. But they would appreciate assistance from developed nations, and the financial institutions they control, to build up the kind of energy infrastructure that could deliver the comfort and abundance that Americans and Europeans enjoy.

Too often, the United States and its allies have said no.

The United States relies on coal, natural gas, hydroelectric and nuclear power for about 95 percent of its electricity, said Todd Moss, from the Center for Global Development. “Yet we place major restrictions on financing all four of these sources of power overseas.”

This conflict is not merely playing out in the strategic maneuvering of the United States and China as they engage in a struggle for influence on the global stage.

Of far greater consequence is the way the West’s environmental agenda undermines the very goals it professes to achieve and threatens to advance devastating climate change rather than retard it.

“It is about pragmatism, about trade-offs,” said Barry Brook, professor of environmental sustainability at the University of Tasmania in Australia. “Most societies will not follow low-energy, low-development paths, regardless of whether they work or not to protect the environment.”

If billions of impoverished humans are not offered a shot at genuine development, the environment will not be saved. And that requires not just help in financing low-carbon energy sources, but also a lot of new energy, period. Offering a solar panel for every thatched roof is not going to cut it.

“We shouldn’t be talking about 10 villages that got power for a light bulb,” said Joyashree Roy, a professor of economics at Jadavpur University in India who was among the leaders of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change that won the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize.

“What we should be talking about,” she said, “is how the village got a power connection for a cold storage facility or an industrial park.”

Changing the conversation will not be easy. Our world of seven billion people — expected to reach 11 billion by the end of the century — will require an entirely different environmental paradigm.

On Tuesday, a group of scholars involved in the environmental debate, including Professor Roy and Professor Brook, Ruth DeFries of Columbia University, and Michael Shellenberger and Ted Nordhaus of the Breakthrough Institute in Oakland, Calif., issued what they are calling the “Eco-modernist Manifesto.”

The “eco-modernists” propose economic development as an indispensable precondition to preserving the environment. Achieving it requires dropping the goal of “sustainable development,” supposedly in harmonious interaction with nature, and replacing it with a strategy to shrink humanity’s footprint by using nature more intensively.

“Natural systems will not, as a general rule, be protected or enhanced by the expansion of humankind’s dependence upon them for sustenance and well-being,” they wrote.

To mitigate climate change, spare nature and address global poverty requires nothing less, they argue, than “intensifying many human activities — particularly farming, energy extraction, forestry and settlement — so that they use less land and interfere less with the natural world.”

As Mr. Shellenberger put it, the world would have a better shot at saving nature “by decoupling from nature rather than coupling with it.”

This new framework favors a very different set of policies than those now in vogue. Eating the bounty of small-scale, local farming, for example, may be fine for denizens of Berkeley and Brooklyn. But using it to feed a world of nine billion people would consume every acre of the world’s surface. Big Agriculture, using synthetic fertilizers and modern production techniques, could feed many more people using much lessland and water.

As the manifesto notes, as much as three-quarters of all deforestation globally occurred before the Industrial Revolution, when humanity wassupposedly in harmony with Mother Nature. Over the last half century, the amount of land required for growing crops and animal feed per average person declined by half.

“If we want the developing world to reach even half our level of development we can’t do it without strategies to intensify production,” said Harvard’s David Keith, a signer of the new manifesto.

The eminent Australian conservationist William Laurance, who is not involved with the eco-modernists, put it this way, “We need to intensify agriculture in places that we have already developed rather than develop new places,” he said. “What is happening today is much more chaotic.”

Development would allow people in the world’s poorest countries to move into cities — as they did decades ago in rich nations — and get better educations and jobs. Urban living would accelerate demographic transitions, lowering infant mortality rates and allowing fertility rates to decline, taking further pressure off the planet.

“By understanding and promoting these emergent processes, humans have the opportunity to re-wild and re-green the Earth — even as developing countries achieve modern living standards, and material poverty ends,” the manifesto argues.

This, whether we like it or not, would require lots of energy. Windmills or biofuels would put large swaths of the earth’s surface in the service of energy production, so they have only limited usefulness. Solar panels andnuclear plants, by contrast, could eventually provide carbon-free energy on a very large scale.

The new strategy, of course, presents big challenges. Notably, it requires improving the safety of nuclear reactors and bringing down their price. Solar energy at scale requires new energy storage technologies.

“Decoupling of human welfare from environmental impacts will require a sustained commitment to technological progress and the continuing evolution of social, economic, and political institutions alongside those changes,” says the manifesto.

Until they are developed, poor countries will require access to other forms of energy — including hydroelectric power from dams, natural gas, perhaps even coal.

“There are enormous energy demands,” Professor DeFries noted. “It will be some time before we can fulfill them with wind and solar energy. It is only realistic that there will be a lot of coal and gas along the way.”

For all the environment-related objections one could pose to these paths, the alternative seems indefensible: Let the poor of the world burn dung and wood, further degrading the world’s forests. Or put solar panels on their huts so they can recharge their cellphones.

“Sustainable development” has been around for over a quarter century, since the United Nations’ Bruntland Commission proposed it in 1987.

Even then, it acknowledged its energy problem. “A safe and sustainable energy pathway is crucial to sustainable development,” it stated. “We have not yet found it.”

A quarter of a century on, the discourse has changed little. Today, the International Energy Agency states that it is within our grasp to provide modern energy access to everyone. What does it mean? Five hundred kilowatt-hours per year to urban households and 250 for rural ones.

Maybe enough to power a fridge.
The New York Times

	How The Climate Grif… on There is NO Global Warming…
	Bob Bateman on Government-Induced Climaphobia…
	William Hooi on Germany’s Renewable Energy Dis…
	Jessica on Issues for Landowners to Consi…
	Raymond on Poorest Families Left Powerles…

"Mothers Against Wind Turbines™" Phoenix Rising…

Children Deserve Protection!

Faux-green

Governments Finally Starting To Open Their Eyes to the Wind Scam…

2015: the Wind Industry’s ‘Annus Horribilis’; or Time to Sink the Boots In

Facts Like These, Put Climate Alarmists to Shame….

A Winter to Remember

In the Northeast, February 2015 was a month like no other in our lifetime; January through March Harshest since 1717?

Germany Buckling Under the Weight of the Wind Scam!

German Climate Physicist says: Time for Germans to Sober Up, kill their Wind Power Debacle & Save Millions of REAL Jobs

The Full Impact of the Damage, from the Wynned Fiasco, is being felt in increments. Greed Energy!

Climate Alarmists: They Hate Facts that Don’t Back Up Their Story, and the People Who Expose Them!

Windweasels Live Up to Their Reputation as….. Gangsters!

Noose Tightens on Spain’s Wind Farm Fraudsters: Tax Inspectors Uncover €110 million Paid as Bribes & Backhanders

WindWeasels Cannot Continue Denying the harm they are Causing!

Denmark Calls Halt to More Wind Farm Harm

Father of Green Communities Act, Convicted Under the RICO Act! Who’s Next?

Aussies Fight Back, Against Corruption in the Wind Industry!

Australian Senators – Day, Leyonhjelm & Canavan – Line Up to Can Big Wind

The Truth About Wealth Redistribution, & the Unaffordable, Renewables Scam!

Want to Help the Poorest? Then It’s Time to Ditch Wind Power

2015: the Wind Industry’s ‘Annus Horribilis’; or Time to Sink the Boots In

A Winter to Remember

In the Northeast, February 2015 was a month like no other in our lifetime; January through March Harshest since 1717?

German Climate Physicist says: Time for Germans to Sober Up, kill their Wind Power Debacle & Save Millions of REAL Jobs

Noose Tightens on Spain’s Wind Farm Fraudsters: Tax Inspectors Uncover €110 million Paid as Bribes & Backhanders

Denmark Calls Halt to More Wind Farm Harm

Australian Senators – Day, Leyonhjelm & Canavan – Line Up to Can Big Wind

Share this:

Want to Help the Poorest? Then It’s Time to Ditch Wind Power