fighting wind turbines

Fighting back Against Climate Alarmism!

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GET REAL, GET ORGANISED AND FINISH IT.

Posted by Pointman on April 24, 2014 · 1 Comment

Tank01

You may get offended or not by some of the things I’m going to say in this piece but they’ll get said nevertheless, so damn the torpedoes and full blog ahead. It’s the acid test of a real friendship to at times tell them they’re acting like a prat, and by the way, your bum really does look gigunda in that dress.

Anthony Watts recently ran a poll at WUWT that posed the question – “Is it time for an “official” climate skeptics organization, one that produces a policy statement, issues press releases, and provides educational guidance?”

I voted “yes” and I’d like to outline my reasons for doing so.

Any scattered and disparate opposition to an unjust law, policy or controversial issue which doesn’t get organised under some umbrella organisation is not only politically naïve but a consequently weak faction which doesn’t need to be taken seriously. More often than not, they’re comfortable in their armchairs living in their own deluded and secluded cloud cuckoo land.

There’s nicer ways of saying it but if want to be a force to be reckoned with, you have to get all ganged up. You seriously want to take on that exploitive employer, get unionised brothers and sisters. You want political change, form a lobby group. You don’t want that wind farm monstrosity blighting your life, start a local campaigning group. You want equal civil rights irrespective of the colour of your ass, start marching en masse. You want women to have the vote, get those bustles out of the drawing rooms and onto the streets as a mob waving placards and make the powers that be listen to you.

There’s simply no other way to get an issue onto the political agenda, and if you happen to think global warming isn’t a political thing, you pop that blue pill brother and dream on.

Give people a standard they can rally to and if the cause has real popular support, they’ll flock to it and become a bigger voice which will be heard despite any attempts to suppress it. Those attempts will just serve to strengthen group identity and make it a much more powerful force.

The deep primordial history of us as a species is all about getting together and cooperation. You might be rubbish at knapping a flint spearhead, but as long as one of the group can do that specialist thing, everyone is happy. Crap at tracking game? No matter, that runty kid over there is somehow brilliant at it. You might just be a spear carrier, but you know you play your part for the good of everyone else. That compulsion to gang up and work together is by now deeply embedded in our DNA. It’s been selected for. Without it, civilisation would fall apart in a day.

The worst thing you can ever do is sit in grumpy isolation doing nothing more than bitching away to a few cronies, and that’s exactly what’s all too common across the skeptic blogosphere. I call it the whinge and dump mentality and in the whole history of the human race, it’s never achieved anything other than being known as a complete bore to be avoided at all costs. Here they come – run away, run away!

As I look at the poll results to date, out of 2,683 votes cast, the response was 63% Yes, 24% No and the rest going for unsure. Scanning through the five hundred comments below the piece, a substantial majority expressed a “No” for various reasons. That’s an interesting dichotomy but an unsurprising one given the web dynamics of such a controversial issue as global warming.

There are just simply too many polarised people on either side who’ve spent years doing nothing more than venting spleen at each other. It’s become a social activity, a recreational pastime, a macho ego trip, a catharsis for a lot of tangential frustrations. Log in quickly, hurl an insult or two and surf onto the next brawl. Underneath the most combative blogs, out of hundreds of comments, barely a single digit percentage of the comments even reference the original blog topic, whatever it was.

That’s always forgotten in the light of the more important thing of continuing the niggling daggers drawn alley fights between the combatants that have raged on for years and will in all likelihood do the same for many more to come. If there’s a positive to such bad habits, I suppose the individuals in a sense are banding together for mutual support but underneath a blog rather than an organisation, and that’s an isolated waste of energy in what’s too often a never visited backwater as far as Joe Public is concerned.

Obviously, that’s not a characterisation of all people of either persuasion who comment on skeptic blogs but I think we all know it’s uncomfortably close to home in too many cases. What’s more interesting is to consider why a clear majority voted for some organisation as opposed to those who commented and were averse to any such thing.

If ever there was a graphic demonstration that the readers of blogs are quite a distinct grouping from those who choose to comment on a piece, that poll was it. It’s for that very reason that I exercise a zero-tolerance to trolling and although as a result I might only get twenty comments on a piece rather than two hundred of people intent on killing each other via the safe proxy of a keyboard, they’re usually twenty meaty ones. They’re my reward for writing the article and the viewpoints expressed very often round out the piece.

I’m target oriented, I got into this thing to win it, not to spend the next five years doing the same things like some obsessive compulsive stuck in a hopeless repetitive loop. The guerrilla phase served its purpose, but it’s high time for us to come out of the jungle, get organised and finish the thing off as a volunteer militia fighting it together. There’s no other way of putting some big tank tracks on the front lawns of governments around the world.

Global warming alarmism is going into the dustbin of history. It’s still got a fair amount of kicking and screaming to do but unless we ourselves get proactive in that endgame and are organised enough to have initiatives and policies already hammered out, we’ll be leaving those things to the tender mercies of those ephemera known as politicians. Make no mistake, it’s only a matter of time until they catch the popular sentiment and ride that bull to power, but entirely for their own selfish reasons and in the way they think it should be done.

I don’t care what particular form an umbrella organisation takes. I know it couldn’t address all my concerns, be led by people I totally like, perhaps not make the moves I would, become a liability at times, be a single target of focused attacks by the alarmists. I really don’t care.

It gets worse though. It’d be primarily a political organisation because it’d have to be and yes, that does mean dragging our hitherto pristine skirts through some muddy puddles, with the added discomfort of no pretty spiffing graphs or neat equations that nobody in the real world could make head nor tail of. And yes, some big fishies in our little pond might very well end up beached by events. There’ll always be casualties but the mission comes first, then the men. It’d never ring everyone’s bell but so what? I’d put on my I’m a big boy now long trousers and get stuck in.

The only shape any such organisation could take, and which I’d have a real objection to, is if it’s a thinly disguised lashup of coneheads who just know repacking and bombarding that tired bloke waiting in the drizzling rain for a bus home after a long day’s work with the REAL science is somehow going to make him get off it at Damascus. For God’s sake, give the poor bastard some credit, he already knows it’s a load of bollocks and at this point just needs nothing more than some decent leadership.

Yes, the science would always be a part of the package but we’ve tried that one to death and we are where we’ve been with that approach for a number of years, so it patently can never be the popular spearhead. Unpalatable as the idea might be, it really is high time for people to evolve out of some comfort zones.

Get it roughly, reasonably or even badly right and I’ll be content to chip flint spearheads or whatever I can usefully do to contribute. Just as long as most of us are moving forward together in some realistic manner.

©Pointman

Wind Turbines are not the solution…..to ANY problem!

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UK’s Wind Rush Leaves Grid Vulnerable to Collapse & Power Punters Foot the Bill

April 24, 2014 by  Leave a Comment
light-in-darkness

Shares in UK candle producers set to rocket.

Like the Germans, the Brits are now reaping the whirlwind of their insane renewable energy policy. Not only have power prices skyrocketed, the perverse economics of that policy has left the UK grid vulnerable to complete collapse.

Britain’s energy needs have been so mismanaged – and the incentives filched from taxpayers and power consumers and directed to wind power so obscene – that there is insufficient capacity to operate a reliable and stable grid and little incentive to build it.

Backing a policy – through a fat pile of taxpayer and power consumer subsidies – favouring a generation source that can only ever be delivered at crazy, random intervals was always going to end in tears.

As a foretaste of what those south of the Scottish Border are up for, last week a spike and then collapse in wind power output saw more than 200,000 homes without power in Northern Scotland. Ah, the vagaries of the wind!

And, with the Muppets on both sides of the House in Westminster who appear to have no understanding of the fact that wind power generation is a technology that was simply redundant before it began, there is little or no hope that the Brits will escape the same fate.

Here’s the Wall Street Journal on Britain’s dark and dismal future.

When Britain’s Lamps Go Out; Green policies destroy the economics of power generation.
Wall Street Journal (Online)
28 Mar 2014

Germans are laughing are Green Energy Boondoggle. (It’s either that, or cry!)

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GERMANY DISCOVERS SENSE OF HUMOUR, LOSES FAITH IN GREEN ENERGY

by 

If there are two things we know about the Germans it’s that they don’t have a sense of humour and that they are greener than the Jolly Green Giant’s favourite emerald St Patrick’s Day outfit.

This hilarious video from a German national TV broadcast instantly disproves both:

What I like about it – apart from its sweary joke about kilowatts – is its palpable and honest outrage about Germany’s disastrous state-enforced transition to renewable energy, the so-called Energiewende.

Hitherto one’s instinct towards Germany’s post-Fukushima rejection of nuclear power and the ongoing green energy policy which is crippling its industry has been: well the silly, credulous idiots deserve it. Serves them right for being so green.

But what’s clear from this video is that Germany’s problems are the same as our problems, which is to say that their economic growth and their standards of living are being held hostage by an out-of-touch political class in thrall to a green, activist-driven ideology long past its sell-by date.

As the video notes, every single German must now pay Euros 240 a year (“a total of 21.8 billion Euros for power which on the market had a value of only 2 billion. That’s sick!”) in order to subidise worthless green energy projects – such as the ugly wind farms for which swathes of forest are being cut down and the ludicrous solar panels now found on every other roof (in a country not exactly known for its sunshine) – which, as even Germany’s former Godfather of Green Professor Fritz Vahrenholt has now conceded, are the wrong solution to the wrong problem.

The absurdities of Germany’s energy policy are so myriad and manifest it’s difficult to know where to begin. Since 2005, Germany has spent 100 billion Euros (nearly $140 billion) on green energy. Yet in the last three years, the carbon emissions that this economic suicide was supposed to prevent have actually been increasing. One reason for this is its ban on nuclear energy.

To make up the energy shortfall – wind and solar being hopelessly unreliable at providing baseload power – it has been having to use more filthy lignite-fired power instead. (Which, incidentally, is also happening in Japan) (H/T Benny Peiser GWPF)

It is hitting Germany’s economy hard:

German exports would have been €15bn higher last year if its industry had not paid a premium for electricity compared with international competitors, according to a recent analysis by the Energy Consultancy IHS.Germany’s manufacturing suffered already €52bn in net export losses for the six-year period from 2008 to 2013. The figure was calculated by linking changes in the net volume of German manufacturing exports to changes in energy costs, using an economic model that accounted for other variables such as exchange rates. Almost 60 per cent of the total loss (or €30bn) came in energy-intensive industries: paper, chemicals and pharmaceuticals, non-metallic mineral products and basic metals.

Smaller companies were disproportionately affected. Unlike heavy energy users such as BASF and Thyssen/Krupp, small companies are not eligible for exemptions from the energy bill surcharges that cover the costs of the move to clean energy. Even more worrying for Germany is a clear trend for investment to go abroad. IHS found that direct investment abroad has accelerated at the expense of domestic investment and the cost of energy was the most important driver of this shift.

Yet, as in the rest of the world (with such odd, notable exceptions as Tony Abbott’s Australia which is on the verge of repealing its carbon tax), the insane policy as being driven on by the government regardless of what the people think.

But the present coalition government, despite its intention to lower the burden for consumers and industries, is still determined to double the amount of renewables till 2030.

In the last survey, only 24 per cent of Germans felt confident about their country’s energy policy, while 73 per cent were dissatisfied and ill at ease.

Welcome to the club, Germany.

Contracts signed for wind turbines favour the industry – NOT the farmers!

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Contracts signed by more than 1,000 farmers for the collapsed midlands’ wind energy projects should be reviewed as a matter of urgency, a legal expert has warned.

While the midlands wind energy plans are in limbo following the failed energy export negotiations between the Irish and British governments, Nora Fagan – a member of the Law Society’s commercial business panel – says the lease options negotiated by energy companies could still have serious long-term consequences for farming families.

Ms Fagan, who outlined her concerns at a recent Law Society seminar in Tullamore, told the Farming Independent this week that the main legal problem centred on the contracted options.
“While the wind turbine companies may only be leasing a hectare of land from a contracting farmer to construct the wind turbine, the option is placed as a burden on the entire farm,” she said.
“This ensures that the energy companies have access to the land for the necessary cabling and ducting required for the transmission of electricity from the turbine, but it also has an impact on the zoning of the land.
“The effect of signing such an option essentially places the farm within a legal vacuum for the period of the option,” Ms Fagan claimed.
Many farmers who signed the agreements with Element Power and Mainstream Renewable Power believed they were only pledging one hectare of land for wind farm development, but Ms Fagan said a clause in the agreements meant no registrations could be made on the farm without the consent of the wind farm operators.
Restrictions
 
“These legal restrictions cover a wide range of issues including leases and mortgages and indeed farmers have recently discovered that the transfer of land for housing sites has been prohibited,” she claimed.
Ms Fagan also warned that the income from the wind farm leases – the bulk of them initially for five-year periods – will be treated as commercial income and not farm-related income.
“Many farmers have received a payment of €1,000 from wind farm companies for the execution of the option over their farm. These payments are fully taxable and do not qualify as income that can be set off against ordinary agricultural reliefs. Their net benefit after tax relative to the personal restrictions they impose on the farmer is questionable,” she said.
Some lease agreements reviewed by Ms Fagan suggest that the energy companies will indemnify farmers against the loss of certain reliefs.
However, she stressed that the reliefs identified were those which existed at the moment and that the farmer was not indemnified against any subsequent or amending reliefs which may be introduced in the future.
“Considering some of the lease agreements have a life of 30 years with an option of another 30 and the payments are fully taxable, farmers and their families may find themselves in a worse situation in the years to come than they are today.”
Fagan also insisted that the options currently owned by the energy companies were “fully assignable” without the prior consent of the landowner.
Options
 
“Wind farm companies are multinational and trade their options on the international markets so it is quite possible that the options could transfer to another company at some stage during the lease and the landowner will have no say in this transfer or how it may affect his or her farm,” she said.
She has called on the IFA, who assisted farmers with the wind farm lease option documents, to renegotiate the necessary amendments to these leases.
The wind farm proposals for themMidlands envisaged Element Power and Mainstream investing €8bn in the construction of 1,200 wind turbines in seven counties as part of a plan to export energy to Britain via an Irish Sea inter-connector.
Bord na Mona had also proposed investing over €1bn in a wind energy hub on cut-away bogs in the midlands. However, the semi-state company last week announced the project as originally planned would not proceed following the collapse of energy export negotiations between the Irish and British governments.
Energy Minister Pat Rabbitte stated last week that midlands project “would not proceed”, saying the negotiations stalled because of “the economic, policy and regulatory complexities involved”.
Reacting to Ms Fagan’s claims, Element Power told the Farming Independent that it does not publicly discuss its commercial arrangements with landowners.
“Element Power has entered into agreements with hundred of landowners across five midland counties.
“Each of these individuals has obtained their own independent legal advice.
“The format of the agreement was negotiated at length between Element Power and the Irish Farmers’ Association and its legal advisors and has since been reviewed by approximately one hundred different solicitors across the midlands,” said the statement.
Mainstream Renewable Power was contacted last week for a comment on Ms Fagan’s claims, but had not responded to our query before we went to press.
The IFA declined to comment when contacted.

Wind Turbines….a waste of land, money, and communities!

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4TH GENERATION FARMER MAKES RATIONAL ARGUMENT AGAINST WIND TURBINES

Randy Williams — Rock River Times — April 22, 2014

This letter is intended to share some of the thoughts of a fourth-generation Boone County farmer in regards to the intention of the County to allow, and some neighbors to promote, wind turbines to be built in Northern Boone County.

It is important to recognize that the residents of this rural area have chosen to live in this rural area – to make their livings and to enjoy their lives – because of the residential and agricultural zoning that allows them separation from densely populated and designated industrial areas. The reason that designated industrial areas exist is to protect residential and agricultural areas from the byproducts associated with heavy industry, such as excessive sound, light, stray voltage, heavy traffic, and so on.

In bringing wind turbines to Boone County, some are essentially trying to disguise heavy industry as farming. Some have even had the audacity to call their decision to financially benefit from the wind turbines as “freedom to farm.” It would appear, in fact, that they are looking for freedom to have industry.

It seems to be not too far of a stretch to say that, if we have industrial turbines, why can’t we bring in some other industry? Maybe a big factory, like Motorola*, where they could make some electronics? If we call it an electronics farm, probably some industrious individuals could then say that qualified also as freedom to farm.

Someone else said, in the newspaper, “this could be Northern Boone County’s Chrysler.” Could it be that Northern Boone County does not need, nor does it want, a Chrysler? Aside from the logistical and financial untruths of this statement, the residents living in Northern Boone County have chosen to live in this rural environment because they enjoy the lifestyle offered here. If they wanted to live in the shadow of such a mecca of industry, they would live there.

So why, then, have some farmers agreed to the preposterous contract allowing wind turbines onto their property? One sentiment that could explain some of these behaviors is this: at a meeting last fall, someone said to the County Board “if you don’t give us these wind turbines, what are you going to do for us?” It seems to me that as a farmer, you are responsible for making a living by farming, not looking to the county to help you find a way to find subsidies, not demanding that the county allow you to benefit at the detriment of the health, financial well-being, and general lifestyles of your neighbors.

Last week, I drove to Spring Valley for some unrelated business which took me right past hundreds of windmills. It was interesting that on a nice, clear, breezy day, no wind turbines were turning, not one. I liken the wind turbines directly to Motorola, the story of the huge factory in Harvard being known only too well in this area, because of the similarity between the exciting promises made in building them, and the disappointing reality of both scenarios. I sadly wonder how much money was being made for those “farmers” from that day’s harvest,” just as I cringe at the supposed prosperity offered by the Motorola company for the communities in McHenry County.

It is my hope that members of the County Board will carefully consider the facts in making their decisions regarding the proposed zoning amendment and not be swayed by the unlikely promises or desperate pleas offered by wind turbine advocates.

Randy Williams
Poplar Grove, Ill.

Istockphoto image of a farm, barn

Julian Falconer and Carmen Krogh, speaking in Plympton-Wyoming! May 5th

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ENERGY

Julian Falconer to speak at wind energy town hall

By Paul Morden, Sarnia Observer

Tuesday, April 22, 2014 12:51:12 EDT PM

Noted Canadian lawyer Julian Falconer is set to speak at a May 5 town hall meeting a Plympton-Wyoming citizens group is organizing to rally support for its fight against Suncor Energy’s proposed 46-turbine Cedar Point Wind Power Project.

Falconer, known for his human rights advocacy and involvement in high profile cases like the Ipperwash Inquiry, along with lawyer Asha James from Falconer’s firm, are set to speak at the meeting about Charter of Rights and Freedom challenges of wind energy projects.

“He knows how to make things happen and has quite a reputation,” said Ingrid Willemsen, with the group We’re Against Industrial Turbines – Plympton-Wyoming.

“We’re quite excited he’ll be there.”

The meeting is set for 7 p.m. to 9 p.m. at the Camlachie Community Centre. Willemsen said group members hope to fill the hall and attract more residents to their cause.

“I think it’s about the only thing the community has left to hope for,” she said.

Suncor has a contract to sell power from its Cedar Point project to Ontario’s electricity grid, and has submitted an application for provincial environmental approval for turbines it plans to build in Plympton-Wyoming, Lambton Shores and Warwick Township.

Also scheduled to address the town hall meeting are Ben Lansink, a real estate appraiser and consultant, who will speak about the impact of turbines on property values, and Carmen Krogh, one of the authors of an article published in the Canadian Journal of Rural Medicine on the health impacts of wind farms.

Willemsen said the view of turbines going up along Highway 402, just east of Lambton County, is showing local residents what’s on the way to their communities, and may spur more opposition to wind projects.

“A lot of people have not involved themselves because they don’t know how it’s going to affect them,” she said. “They haven’t seen them, right close.”

As well as awaiting provincial environmental approval for its Cedar Point project, Suncor has taken the Town of Plympton-Wyoming to court over several of its bylaws aimed at wind turbines.

Earlier this month, Suncor officials met with town council after the judge hearing the case asked the two sides to explore the possibility of a settlement.

Mayor Lonny Napper said Tuesday councillors were still waiting to hear back from the town’s lawyer before responding to Suncor.

Willemsen said she remains hopeful Suncor’s wind project can be stopped.

“They need to jump through the hoops, just like any other project, and the longer it’s delayed, the better our chances,” she said.

 

paul.morden@sunmedia.ca

 

Wind Power…..Good for NOTHING!

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Wind Power Costs send Germans back to the Stone Age

April 22, 2014 by  1 Comment

 

axeman_thumb[1]

Power starved Germans take matters into their own hands.

If you’re going down to the German woods today, beware of a big surprise. 

Although it won’t be cuddly Teddys with well-stocked picnic baskets and wonderful games to play – chances are it’ll be a power starved German armed with an axe, looking to filch a pile of timber to cook his bratwurst and warm his home.

In the last couple of posts we’ve looked at the social and economic disaster that is German renewables policy.

The Germans launched into massively subsidised wind and solar power with power prices rising 80 per cent in real terms in little over a decade. Unable to pay skyrocketing power bills, 800,000 German households have been disconnected from the grid – with that number growing by 300,000 each year. In addition, almost 7 million Germans are suffering “fuel poverty” – forced to choose between eating or heating.

Always a resourceful lot, power-starved Germans have grabbed their axes and have headed back to the woods in an effort to obtain that which their insane renewables policy denies: affordable energy. However, it seems their new timber-driven energy economy is premised on a “user-doesn’t-pay” model that has left German foresters unamused.

Here’s SpiegelOnline’s look at Germany’s return to the Stone Age.

Woodland Heists: Rising Energy Costs Drive Up Forest Thievery
Spiegel Online
Renuka Rayasam
17 January 2014

With energy costs escalating, more Germans are turning to wood burning stoves for heat. That, though, has also led to a rise in tree theft in the country’s forests. Woodsmen have become more watchful.

With snow blanketing the ground, it’s the perfect time of year to snuggle up in front of a fireplace. That, though, makes German foresters nervous. When the mercury falls, the theft of wood in the country’s woodlands goes up as people turn to cheaper ways to heat their homes.

“The forest is open for everyone to enter and people just think they can help themselves, but they can’t!” says Enno Rosenthal, head of the forest farmers association in the northeastern German state of Brandenburg. “Naturally, those log piles belong to someone and there is a lot of money and work that goes into them.”

The problem has been compounded this winter by rising energy costs. The Germany’s Renters Association estimates the heating costs will go up 22 percent this winter alone. A side effect is an increasing number of people turning to wood-burning stoves for warmth. Germans bought 400,000 such stoves in 2011, the German magazine FOCUS reported this week. It marks the continuation of a trend: The number of Germans buying heating devices that burn wood and coal has grown steadily since 2005, according to consumer research company GfK Group.

That increase in demand has now also boosted prices for wood, leading many to fuel their fires with theft.

Rosenthal said just last weekend someone stole an entire bundle of oak wood worth about €150 ($199) from a private forest in the town of Neuruppin outside of Berlin. “Many foresters come back to their wood piles and find them a little smaller or even gone,” he says.

A Gray Zone

About 10 percent of the firewood that comes out of Brandenburg’s forest every year is stolen, resulting in losses of about €500,000, Rosenthal estimates. In the southern German state of Bavaria some 5 percent is absconded with annually says Hans Bauer, head of the state’s forest owners association.

“A gray zone has developed,” says Rosenthal. “Normally if you sell sausages, you create a business and pay taxes, but with wood some people are laxer.” He says many people steal wood and then resell it via ads in the newspaper. Such sales, needless to say, tend to be of the under-the-table variety.

Other thieves are more spontaneous, says Bauer. Often people will just drive by a pile of wood and see it as invitation to steal, he says. “Drivers just stop, open up their trunks and put the wood in and drive off,” he says. “It’s that easy.”

Bauer says that a couple of years ago, a driver loaded up €2,000 worth of wood into a truck and drove off. He was eventually caught and paid a fine to the forest owner. But Bauer says such retribution is rare.

Extreme Measures

Bauer now advises foresters to keep wood deep in the forests away from busy thoroughfares and to make logs too large to fit in regular cars, keeping temptation for casual thieves at bay.

Often, however, even those measures aren’t enough. Rosenthal said that just a few years ago foresters would leave log piles in the forest for up to a year to dry. Now, though, he says they aren’t kept for more than a month before moving to more secure locales. “Keeping the wood under your own surveillance is the best protection,” says Rosenthal.

In the western German city of Hessisch Lichtenau other foresters are taking a more extreme approach, according to local daily theHessische/Niedersächsische Allegemeine. In recent years, two major tree heists have taken place in town and the state experiences losses of millions of euros as a result. The paper reports that now some foresters are outfitting log piles with GPS devices to track thieves.
Spiegel Online

With hundreds of thousands of (former) German power consumers with no power at all – millions struggling to pay for power – and no relief in sight – German foresters are fighting a losing battle. Deprive people of the basic necessities of life and they will do whatever it takes to replace them with the closest thing available.

Cooking a meal and warming a home were – until pretty recently – matters which Germans, no doubt, largely took for granted. Thanks to the insane cost of their renewable policy – for a substantial and growing number of German households – these basics are now beyond reach.

As we have pointed out before, the costs of wind power fall disproportionately on the poorest and most vulnerable in society (see our posts here and here).

What might make a few inner-city lefties feel good – for the few moments in their day (if ever) that they consider energy policy – carries with it the social cost of deprivation and exclusion that is a form of unjustified punishment. Access to affordable power is a matter of social equity: but social equity is now running a poor second to “green” ideology, as – thanks to the exorbitant cost of wind power – electricity has been turned into an “aspirational” good for those at the bottom of the socioeconomic heap.

With Australia following Germany’s lead on wind power policy, we’re well down the track to a return to the Stone Age. Australia’s “wind power capital”, South Australia (population 1.6 million) has more than 50,000 homes disconnected from the grid because they can no longer afford to pay their power bills – with more being cut-off daily. These people have taken to lighting their homes with candles – and cooking on wood stoves and barbeques. As to why South Australians suffer the highest power prices in the world (see our post here).

So, unless Australia scraps its insanely expensive, totally ineffective and, therefore, unsustainable Renewable Energy Target – like the Germans – we’ll be sharpening our axes and heading off on Stone Age timber gathering adventures of our own.

stone age cave dweller

Wind power costs sends them back to the future.

 

A SPRING ELECTION IS IN THE CARDS!!! Ontario stands a chance!

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   ONW EXCLUSIVE: HORWATH, AIDES DECIDE TO FORCE SPRING ELECTION 

  

By Susanna Kelley

Andrea Horwath and her most senior advisors have made the decision to pull the plug on the minority Liberal government and go to a spring election, sources have told OntarioNewsWatch.com.

Ms. Horwath and her inner circle have determined they cannot be seen to be propping up Kathleen Wynne’s minority Liberals now that criminal charges may be laid in connection with the alleged wiping of 24 computer hard drives in the Premier’s Office.

Senior NDP advisors believe that supporting the Liberals would give PC leader Tim Hudak “too much of a hammer” against Ms. Horwath and they don’t want to be put in that position in the public eye, says an inside source.

A major consideration is that it is the Conservatives that pose the biggest threat to new ridings won by the NDP since Ms. Horwath became leader – Niagara Falls, London West, Windsor-Tecumseh, Kitchener-Waterloo, Essex, and others.

An e-mail has gone out to riding associations offering them insurance for their campaign offices – a routine election procedure that is not usually done until a party has decided it is definitely going to the polls.

“They don’t want to give Hudak the ammunition” of accusing Ms. Horwath and NDP MPPs of propping up a government whose paid staffer has allegedly broken the law by facilitating the deletion of information such as that concerning the gas plants scandal.

As news of the decision spread at Queen’s Park, NDP’s media director Eion Callan called ONW to “deny the premise” of the story.

In an aggressive tone, Mr. Callan called it “irresponsible,” “grossly inaccurate speculation,” and said the proof of that would be seen eventually.

Asked if that meant the NDP would vote for the budget and continue supporting the Liberals, Mr. Callan evaded the question.

A statement by NDP house leader Gilles Bisson called the information that a decision has been made “a complete fabrication.” He did not deny that the NDP would defeat the upcoming budget.

ONW replied that it stands completely behind the story.

The Liberals under Dalton McGuinty cancelled the construction of two gas plants – in Oakville and Mississauga – at the eleventh hour, costing the taxpayers more than $1 billion. Critics charge they were cancelled in order to save five Liberal seats in the 2011 election, enabling the party to win a minority government.

Mr. Hudak has pushed hard for another election ever since then.

His efforts have ramped up strongly since the OPP revealed there may be charges laid against former McGuinty Chief of Staff David Livingston for allegedly providing an administrative password to an outside computer expert who the OPP allege wiped the computer.

Mr. Hudak and PC MPP Lisa MacLeod have charged that Ms. Horwath has lost the moral authority to continue supporting the Liberal minority government because of these developments.

Mr. Hudak is being sued by Ms. Wynne for libel after he commented that she “oversaw and possibly ordered” the wiping of the hard drives.

Ms. Wynne has denied that, launching a suit seeking $2 million dollars in damages against Mr. Hudak, Ms. MacLeod and the Conservative Party.

While pressure from labour (which is worried about consequences for working Ontarians and the unions themselves from a Tim Hudak government) and unforeseen events could still have an effect, there are other signs the NDP is full-up preparing for a spring election.

ONW has also confirmed reports by The Toronto Star’s Robert Benzie that the NDP is holding “intensive” campaign readiness training for senior campaign workers this week.

Posted date : April 21, 2014