fighting wind turbines

We Should have Seen It All Along…..It’s the Bat’s Fault…..

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“Confused Bats” to Blame for “Unprecedented” Wind Farm Bat Slaughter

October 5, 2014 by Leave a Comment

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Wind farms are certified bird and bat slaughterhouses, where millions are clobbered, sliced and diced every year (see our post here).

Now, apparently, it’s turned out to be all the bats’ fault.

If only they’d undergone turbine recognition and awareness training they wouldn’t be belted to kingdom come, night after bloody night.

You see, bats (or at least the dimmest of them) apparently can’t tell the difference between trees (a source of food and shelter) and giant turbines (a guaranteed pathway to the promised land).

Maybe, over time, as Darwin’s rules about survival of the fittest and natural selection start to bite, the eradication of bats too stupid to know the difference between friendly oaks and mechanical bat thrashers will lead to a bat “super race” – not only capable of spotting certain death, but equipped with superlative “blade-dodging” flying powers and indestructible lungs.

In the meantime, however, they’ll continue to cop a battering. Here’s The Telegraph on the “unprecedented” wind farm bat slaughter.

Bats lured to deaths at wind farms ‘because they think turbines are trees’
The Telegraph
Emily Gosden
29 September 2014

Flashing red lights may be needed to prevent bats making potentially-fatal mistake, scientists say

Bats may be lured to their deaths at wind farms because they think turbines are trees in which they can find shelter, food and sex, according to new research.

The creatures fly towards slow-moving turbines, only to be killed when gusts of wind spin the blades, scientists investigating “unprecedented” numbers of bat deaths at wind farms suggested.

Flashing red lights may need to be installed at wind farms to help prevent the animals making the potentially-fatal mistake, they said.

Bats were “attracted to and actively approach” turbines when they were either stationary or moving only very slowly, according to the researchers from the United States Geological Survey.

About 600,000 bats are estimated to have been killed by wind farms in the US in 2012.

“Bats may not have the cognitive ability to differentiate wind turbines or other tree-like structures from real trees either at a distance or at close range,” the researchers said.

“The simplest explanation for bats closely approaching turbines may be that they are seeking places to roost in what they perceive as trees while migrating.”

The scientists suggested that the central pole of the wind turbine resembled a tree trunk, while blades resembled branches.

These misleading visual signals – “such as similar silhouettes against the night sky” – were compounded by similar airflow patterns generated by the stationary turbines.

Bats were less likely to approach turbines when the blades were spinning quickly, potentially because this created turbulence, according to the scientists.

“Our observations that tree bats show a tendency to closely investigate inert turbines and sometimes linger for minutes to perhaps hours … highlight the plausibility of a scenario in which bats are drawn toward turbines in low winds, but sometimes remain long enough to be put at risk when wind picks up and blades reach higher speeds,” they said.

The scientists suggested one remedy would be to alter the appearance of wind farms, for example by installing lights on the turbines, which might “might make some bats less likely to mistake them for trees”.

They cited the example of one wind farm in Texas where “fewer fatalities of eastern red bats were found under turbines with flashing red aviation lights”.

They suggested that wind farm operators should also only allow the turbines to spin when the wind speeds were consistently high, in order “to prevent gusts from intermittently pushing blades to lethal speed during low-wind periods”.

In a paper, published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences on Monday, the researchers said that as well as seeking shelter, bats may also be lured toward turbines with the expectation of finding “social opportunities or food”.

Bats may head toward what they think are trees in search of a mate, especially as some species of bat carrying out mating displays at trees. The highest death rates from bats at wind farms were documented around the start of the mating season.

The bats may also be drawn toward the tree-like machines with the expectation of finding insects. The researchers said it was not clear whether the bats actually found insects when they arrived at the turbines – as some previous theories have suggested – but that the animals “may be acting upon the expectation of resources rather than the actual presence of resources”.

Other theories have suggested that bats may suffer bends-like symptoms from air pressure changes caused by the turbines, resulting in their internal organs exploding.
The Telegraph

bat

Wind is Novelty Energy, Not Feasible for Everyday Use….

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‘Wind energy has come to a limit’: Experts debate on the best way to combat climate change

BRITAIN should stop investing in wind farms as they are no longer an efficient source of energy, a leading global warming expert has warned.

By: Levi Winchester

Published: Fri, October 3, 2014

Daily Express debate with Benny PeiserDr Benny Peiser said that wind turbines are no longer effective [EXPRESS/GETTY]

Turbines have been hailed as a clean, alternative fuel supply but the UK should not expect them to play a major part in how we try to solve climate change, claimed a leading scientist.

In 2009, the UK Budget included meant that the budger for wind power in the UK could amount to £525million between 2011 and the end of this year.

In the latest debate hosted by the Daily Express, two experts maintain mankind is not doomed, despite some scientists pointing to melting ice caps, rising sea levels and erratic weather.

But they debate the extent to which we are to blame for the current situation and question whether new kinds of energy are the solution.

Dr Benny Peiser, Director of The Global Warming Policy Forum, said wind turbines have reached the limit of their effectiveness and money should be spent elsewhere.

“I’m all in favour of alternative energy,” he insisted. “[But] I’m against picking winners and throwing money at technologies that might not have a future.

“Wind energy I think has come to a limit to how efficient can get.

“I think solar has a brighter future.”

Wind energy I think has come to a limit to how efficient can get

Dr Benny Peiser

However Bob Ward, Policy and Communications Directory at The Grantham Research Institute, urged the Government to continue investing in new “cleaner” means of fuel, such as wind farms.

Arguing climate change could not be explained by natural phenomena alone, he said mankind had clearly played a part and suggested we need to completely re-think the way that we fuel our planet.

Fossil fuels, he argues, are becoming an outdated means of energy – meaning that we now face pressure to find new sources of energy.

“It’s far better to invest in modern, clean form of energy than looking backward and saying we must continue burning all these old, polluting fossil fuels,” he said.

“Progress is about new, clean energy.”

The pair both acknowledged that even if the UK changes tack on energy, emerging powers like China and India burn massive amounts of dirty fuel and need to change.

Dr Peiser said China was building one new coal-powered plant per week and only ten per cent of its energy needs by 2030 would be met by a renewable source.

However Mr Ward said China did take the situation very seriously because poorer countries are more at risk from the adverse effects of global warming. He added it was easier to put solar power in villages than to build large plants.

Express debate with Bob Wardurged the Government to continue investing in new ‘cleaner’ means of fuel [EXPRESS]

Scientific research shows that the Earth’s surface temperature first rose in the last half of the 20th century, but several scientists say the overall temperature has not actually risen for 18 years.

Dr Peiser admits that tackling climate change is a tricky problem, because no-one really knows when, if ever, the Earth’s temperature will rise again – and we don’t know what the climate was like thousands of years ago.

“We don’t know if climate change in the next 50 or 100 years will be a big problem, a moderate problem or a small problem,” admits Dr Peiser.

“We’re not sure how much warming we will see.”

Mr Ward agreed there was no easy answer but said the risks of climate change were “clearly huge.”

He added: “We can do this and it’s really up to us. This is a decision not just for ourselves but for our children and our grandchildren.

The debate on global warming comes just weeks after thousands of people gathered around the world to protest against climate change at the People’s Climate March.

It is believed that over 40,000 people attended the march in London, while over 300,000 people protested in New York.

This coincided with the start of the UN Climate Change Summit where US President Barack Obama said it was an issue “that will define the contours of this century more dramatically than any other”.

All over the World….Where there are Windweasels, there is Corruption!

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Britain’s Green Energy Fiasco Deepens

/ 4 hours ago October 3, 2014

From The GWPF and Dr. Benny Peiser

Expensive Green Energy A ‘Bad Gamble’ As Gas Price Drops

Families face paying up to £40 extra each year for wind and solar farms to meet climate change targets after the government revised its energy price forecasts. The subsidy required for each unit of renewable electricity will rise after the Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC) conceded that gas was much cheaper than it had predicted. A glut of gas on the world market means gas-fired power stations have become cheaper to run, making wind and solar farms comparatively even more expensive. –Tim Webb & Ben Webster, The Times, 3 October 2014

green_money_windmills

Peter Atherton, energy analyst at Liberum Capital, said that green energy was “always a hell of a gamble and now looks like an increasingly bad gamble”. “Year after year [energy secretary] Ed Davey has been banging on that one of the core reasons [for backing green energy] is to protect ourselves against inevitably high and volatile fossil fuel prices. Now their own forecasts are saying fossil fuel prices are going to be very affordable,” he said. –Emily Gosden, The Daily Telegraph, 3 October 2014

The impact of rising household energy bills will be greatly reduced by climate change policies which could save consumers around £166 by 2020, according to the energy and climate secretary, Ed Davey. “Global gas price hikes are squeezing households. They are beyond any government’s control. The analysis shows that our strategy of shifting to alternatives like renewables and of being smarter with how we use energy is helping those who need it most to save money on their bills,” he said. –John Vidal, The Guardian, 27 March 2013

In a bizarre statement, energy and climate change secretary Chris Huhne told the House of Commons that his [green energy] policies mean consumers will actually be better off. Dr Benny Peiser, of the Global Warming Foundation, said Mr Huhne’s reassurances were ‘political spin’. Government policy is based on an assumption that gas prices will continue to rise, but Dr Peiser said the price could fall. He said: ‘Prices are likely to come down very significantly.’ –Sean Poulter, Daily Mail 24 November 2011

By 2020, British Energy & Climate Change Secretary Chris Huhne routinely insists, families and businesses in the United Kingdom will be better off – despite his plan to shift the country towards expensive renewable energy. His claim is based on the assumption that the price of fossil fuels can only go up as we “run out” of oil and gas supplies. As a result, energy prices will inevitably shoot into the stratosphere, making very costly renewables competitive in the future. I am afraid Huhne’s assumptions are misguided. In reality, we are in the middle of a global natural gas revolution. Indeed, gas prices have dropped by half in the United States in the last two years as a result of a glut in cheap shale gas. –Benny Peiser, Public Service Europe, 19 January 2012

As we look at UK energy policy now, DECC has had the country make a massive financial gamble on the back of a prediction that was wholly unfounded and which has been obviously so for many years. We now learn that DECC has also distributed this astonishing wave of public money in a manner that can only be described as monstrously incompetent, and which many will assume to be monstrously corrupt.
Any reasonable person would close down DECC right now and lay off all the environmentalists who staff it. –Andrew Montford, Bishop Hill, 3 October 2014

Global warming is a ‘public health emergency’ that will cause thousands of deaths worldwide, a leading medical journal warns. The BMJ’s editor Dr Fiona Godlee calls on the World Health Organisation to declare the issue a public health emergency – putting it on a par with the current ebola outbreak in West Africa. Dr Benny Peiser of the Global Warming Policy Forum accused the BMJ report of being needlessly alarmist. ‘The World Health Organisation would become a global laughing stock if they were to follow the ridiculously over-the-top demands of a green alarmist editor. There is a real disconnect between what they are saying and the reality.’ –Sophie Borland and Ben Spencer, Daily Mail, 2 October 2014

The Folks in Ireland Don’t Want the Useless Wind Turbines…..No Wonder!

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The Fightin’ Irish Go to War Over Wind Farm Plans for Emerald Isle

October 3, 2014 by

1397574371-dublin-thousands-gather-to-protest-against-pylons-and-wind-turbines_4479876

There aren’t many guarantees in life – death and taxes spring to mind: to which can be added community opposition to giant fans.

Wherever wind farms have appeared – or have been threatened – big numbers of locals take a set against the monsters being speared into their previously peaceful – and often idyllic – rural communities. Their anger extends to the goons that lied their way to development approval – and the bent officials that rubber-stamped their applications and who, thereafter, help the operators ride roughshod over locals’ rights to live in and enjoy the peace and comfort of their own homes and properties.

More than 2,000 groups have sprung up all over the Globe to fight-back against the great wind power fraud (see our post here).

The Scots are on the brink of another round of Highland wars (see our posts here and here and here).

The Danes are suing and being awarded substantial compensation for turbine noise impacts on the value of their homes (see our post here).

The Taiwanese aren’t afraid to take a beating from developers’ goons in order to prevent fans from going up (see our posts here and here).

In the USA, locals are joining forces to take their persecutors to court to either prevent wind farms from being built or to have them shut down to allow them to sleep (see our posts here and here). Among those Americans taking developers to court is a group of Texans being paid as turbine hosts who are suing for remedies in nuisance (see our post here).

Canadians in Ontario are on the brink of open revolt against the hard-green-left nutjobs that have wrecked their economy and environment – as covered in the brilliant Sun News documentary, Down Wind (see our posts here and here and here and here).

In Australia, dozens of threatened communities are united in their efforts to drive a stake through the wind industry’s heart (see our posts here andhere and here).

What makes them angrier still, is knowing that all that actual or threatened grief and suffering is for nothing: rather than being an answer to the planet’s prayers, wind power represents the greatest economic and environmental fraud of all time (see our post here).

The power produced by wind farms comes at crazy, random intervals and is, therefore, of no commercial value: it would never find a market without mandated targets, massive subsidies or whopping penalties (seeour post here).

And, despite big claims, the wind industry has never produced a shred of evidence to show that wind power reduces CO2 emissions in the electricity sector; principally because it can’t (see our post here).

The Irish have already hit the streets to bring an end to the fraud: some 10,000 stormed Dublin back in April. The sense of anger in Ireland – as elsewhere – is palpable (see our post here).

Now they’re tooling up for a raft of litigation in order to prevent the construction of wind farms, wherever they’ve been threatened on the Emerald Isle. Here’s the Sunday Independent on the escalating wind farm wars in Ireland.

Communities’ €50,000 war chests to fight wind farms
Sunday Independent
John Drennan
28 September 2014

Rural groups across the country have embarked on a new fundraising drive to pay for a series of High Court challenges to controversial wind-farm and pylon projects, the Sunday Independent has learned.

Activists claim amounts of up to €50,000 are being raised by individual communities to mount up to a dozen new challenges before the end of the year.

The renewed rural revolt comes amid a growing belief among protesters that the Government and An Bord Pleanala are not defending the interests of small rural communities.

There are currently six groups challenging An Bord Pleanala decisions on various wind-farms projects in the courts.

However, one senior anti-wind farm activist said this was “just the tip of the iceberg”. He told the Sunday Independent: “There will be funds raised for a dozen challenges by the end of this year.”

Ongoing anger at the wind-farm and pylon plans was evident at the Ploughing Championships in Co Laois last week, where there were flash-mob demonstrations at the Fine Gael and Labour stands.

Labour Senator John Whelan, who has campaigned against wind farms, said: “The angry exchanges are indicative of how tormented ordinary citizens are by this issue.”

Such is the scale of rural anger over the ongoing threat to the landscape posed by wind farms and pylons, community groups have not found it difficult to secure the funding to mount the legal challenges.

The Co Laois village of Cullenagh alone raised €40,000 in just one week to fund its own High Court challenge.

Henry Fingleton, from the anti-wind farm group, Wind Aware, told the Sunday Independent: “It was astonishing. Once we decided to go to the courts to protect Cullenagh, 20 people immediately came up with €1,000 each. Ordinary citizens do not have that money, but people do not want to see their communities being destroyed, they cannot take the risk of not challenging these decisions.”

However, Senator Whelan lamented the fact that hard-pressed rural householders are having to dig deep into their own pockets to take on the State.

He told the Sunday Independent: “Communities are being sucked dry to make barristers wealthy as they take on a State and state bodies that now appear to be the enemy. This is diverting resources away from villages that could be used to build playgrounds for children or GAA clubhouses.

“Community groups are being driven to the courts by frustration over the abject failure of the planning process and a total absence of confidence in the political process.”

Anti-wind farm and pylon groups are now actively planning to punish the Coalition by targeting government seats in the next general election.

After a recent meeting of 85 local action groups in Co Laois, a further gathering has been planned where the protesters will “design a political strategy to focus on TDs whose seats are vulnerable”.

Mr Fingleton added: “One of the key actions coming to the next election will be to put pressure on Fine Gael. Until they feel that their seats are under threat and they are going to lose votes through this, they are not going to act in our interest.”

Another anti-wind farm protester warned it would be a “major issue” in next month’s Roscommon-South Leitrim by-election.

Tensions among rural groups have been exacerbated by delays in introducing proposed new stricter planning guidelines for pylons and wind farms. Some activists have reported that there has been here has been “a headlong rush of developers to get their applications in before the new regime comes in”.

One protester told the Sunday Independent: “In recent months in Tipperary alone there have been 14 applications alone for wind farms; we will have turbines at every crossroads in the county before this is done.”
Sunday Independent

THE QUIET MAN - BY JOHN FORD

Unaffordable, Unreliable Wind Turbines, Create Energy Poverty

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Bjørn Lomborg: Wind Power – The Rich Man’s Curse on the Poor

October 2, 2014 by

Bjorn-Lomborg-wsj

When it comes to assessing the costs, risks and benefits of environmental policy Bjørn Lomborg has always tried to provide balanced, detailed analysis supported by facts and evidence. The economic choices we make – about allocating scarce resources to unlimited wants – should – as Lomborg consistently points out – be made taking into account all of the costs weighed against properly measured benefits (see our post here).

Bjørn Lomborg has become one of the most high profile critics of insanely expensive and utterly pointless renewable energy policies across the globe (see our posts here and here).

Bjørn’s back –  in this piece published by The Australian – in which he hammers the insane cost and utter pointlessness of tying our energy futures to unreliable and intermittent renewables, like wind power.

Poverty Must Be the World’s Top Priority
The Australian
Bjørn Lomborg
1 October 2014

Ban Ki-Moon overstates the case while renewables kill millions in poor countries 

LAST week, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon gathered the heads of government from more than 120 countries for a climate summit “to make climate change a top priority for all leaders”. Of the world’s many ills, he unequivocally finds that “top of the priority list is climate change”.

Yes, global warming is a real problem, but it makes no sense to claim it is the world’s first priority.

And the UN knows it. Its outreach program, The World We Want, asked more than five million people from every nation to name their top priorities: better education and healthcare, less corruption, more jobs and affordable food. And they placed global warming as priority No 17.

This is no surprise when you consider the poorest half of our world. If your kids are at risk of dying from malaria or malnutrition, those are your first priorities. Even Europe, with the world’s strongest climate policies, ranks global warming 10th.

Yet politicians use catastrophic alarmism to bolster the claim that climate is our “generational mission”. Britain’s winter floods predictably were held up as a “wake-up call for climate change”, although study after study has shown that so far more flooding is due entirely to more houses being built on more flood plains. In the long run, climate also likely will make a smaller contribution, but blaming global warming simply takes away attention from political failure to focus on the real game changers: building better levies and setting aside some flood plains for floods.

An analysis of climate communication by the University College London found that appeals to fear are ineffective and often lead to a suspicion that “they are trying to manipulate me”. Remember when Al Gore told us in his Nobel speech in 2007 that the north polar ice cap is “falling off a cliff” and it could be gone in “as little as seven years. Seven years from now”.

That is now. Arctic ice definitely shows a long-term decline, but from the low point in 2012 it has actually increased 47 per cent.

Ban declared that climate posed “sweeping risks” while we’re heading towards a “cataclysm”. Yet the UN climate panel finds the total cost of climate change by the 2070s is less than 2 per cent of gross domestic product. This is a problem, but not the end of the world. Weigh the 2 per cent loss against the fact the UN expects the world to be 800 per cent richer in 2070.

Compare it to the very real challenges the world faces right now. There are still 1.2 billion people living in abject poverty, and they need economic growth. In the past 30 years China has lifted 680 million people out of poverty, the greatest poverty reduction ever, and it did it with lots of cheap, if polluting, coal.

Yet well-meaning Western leaders (including Barack Obama, Francois Hollande and David Cameron, but not Tony Abbott) descended on New York to reiterate the solution to global warming that has failed for more than two decades: we must switch to renewables. But look how that is going. The EU’s climate policies cost an unaffordable €209 billion ($303bn) a year, yet at the end of the century, after costing more than €18 trillion, they will have reduced temperature rises by 0.05C.

Moreover, pushing renewables is hypocritical: according to the International Energy Agency, Europe gets just 12 per cent of its energy from renewables and just 1.5 per cent from solar and wind. Africa gets almost 50 per cent from renewables — because it is poor — and the renewable source is mostly wood, which kills more than half a million a year as a result of indoor air pollution and contributes to deforestation.

Not surprisingly, when African leaders went to Washington last month, they said they wanted to use more coal. Even the climate-worried World Bank president accepted that “there’s never been a country that has developed with intermittent power”.

A new study from Washington-based Centre for Global Development starkly shows the cost of pushing renewables. Spending $US10bn ($11.4bn) on renewables in Africa can lift 20 million out of darkness and poverty. But spending $US10bn on gas would lift 90 million. Insisting on renewables means deliberately leaving 70 million people in darkness.

This does not mean we shouldn’t tackle global warming. But as long as renewables are much more expensive than fossil fuels, rich countries may spend a couple of hundred billion to make themselves feel virtuous, but it won’t make a difference to the climate. Right now, the world pays more than $60bn a year in subsidies to solar and wind, yet they supply less than 0.6 per cent of its energy. Even in its extremely ­optimistic scenario, the IEA estimates solar and wind will supply just 3.5 per cent of our energy by 2035 — and the bill for subsidies will run to about $US100bn a year.

Some campaigners claim that renewables are already competitive. But this is wishful thinking — if they were, they wouldn’t need subsidies. Look at Spain: with lower but still substantial wind subsidies, Spain has this year put up just one wind turbine.

Instead of wasting billions in current subsidies, we should invest much more in green innovation to reduce the cost to future generations of clean energy. When innovation takes the price of green energy below fossil fuels, everyone will switch.

But in a world where four million die each year from burning wood and dung in open fires inside, while poverty, lack of clean water, infectious diseases, poor education and too little food afflict billions, we cannot with a straight face claim that climate should be our top priority.
The Australian

Bjørn doesn’t limit his criticism of the impact of ludicrously expensive intermittent renewables on the poor in the developing world; he makes the same point in relation to poorest in, supposedly, first world economies like Australia (see our post here).

With $50 billion to be transferred from power consumers to wind power outfits over the next 17 under the Large-Scale RET (see our post here) – and that cost added to already spiralling power bills – there will be many more households who will be unable to afford power; adding to the tens of thousands of homes already deprived of what was once a basic necessity of (a decent) life. And thousands more destined to suffer “energy poverty” as they find themselves forced to choose between heating (or cooling) and eating.

If our political betters in Canberra don’t line up to kill the LRET very soon – in less than a decade – Australia will have created an entrenched energy underclass, dividing Australian society into energy “haves” and “have-nots”.

For a taste of an escalating social welfare disaster, here are articles from Queensland (click here); Victoria (click here); South Australia (click here); and New South Wales (click here).

There’s something deeply troubling about thousands of Australian households descending into gloom after dark – unable to afford the power needed for electric lighting; or troubling, at least, for those with a social conscience.

Beyond the LRET’s perverse impact on the poorest and most vulnerable there is, of course, its wealth and job destroying impact on the economy as a whole (see our post here).

For those that claim to be “friends of the poor” there’s no time like the present to prevent a mere disaster from becoming an all-out catastrophe. How about it Clive? It’s time to scrap the LRET and give the poor a truly bright (ie “well-lit”) future.

clive palmer sleeping

Stop the Subsidies for Wind & Make Them Follow Regulations….NOW!

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A decade after welcoming wind, states reconsider

By SEAN MURPHY 

CALUMET, Okla. (AP) — 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. The tension could have broad implications for the expansion of wind power in other parts of the country.

“What we’ve got in this state is a time bomb just waiting to go off,” said Frank Robson, a real estate developer from Claremore in northeast Oklahoma. “And the fuse is burning, and nobody is paying any attention to it.”

Today, many of the same political leaders who initially welcomed the wind industry want to regulate it more tightly, even in red states like Oklahoma, where candidates regularly rail against government interference. The change of heart is happening as wind farms creep closer to more heavily populated areas.

Opposition is also mounting about the loss of scenic views, the noise from spinning blades, the flashing lights that dot the horizon at night and a lack of public notice about where the turbines will be erected.

Robson said the industry is turning the landscape into a “giant industrial complex,” and the growing cost of the subsidies could decimate state funding for schools, highways and prisons.

Oklahoma went from three farms with 113 turbines a decade ago to more than 30 projects and 1,700 active turbines today.

With the rapid expansion came political clout. The industry now has nearly a dozen registered lobbyists working to stop new regulations and preserve generous subsidies that are expected to top $40 million this year.

Evidence of that influence can be seen at the Statehouse. A bill by the Senate president pro tem to ban any new wind farms in the eastern half of the state was quickly scuttled in the House. When state Rep. Earl Sears tried to amend the proposal to include some basic regulations for the industry, lobbyists killed that idea, too.

“I personally believe that wind power has a place in Oklahoma, but I’m frustrated,” Sears said. “I think they should have more regulations.”

Wind developers say they’re just protecting their investment — more than $6 billion spent on construction of wind farms in Oklahoma over a decade, according to a study commissioned by the industry. In addition to royalties paid to landowners, the giant turbines themselves are valued at as much as $3 million each.

Monte Tucker, a farmer and rancher from Sweetwater in far western Oklahoma, said his family has received annual payments of more than $30,000 for the four wind turbines placed on their ranch two years ago.

“We’re generating money out of thin air,” Tucker said. “And if the landowners don’t want them, the developers have to go somewhere else.”

Tucker says the turbines take only about 5 acres of his property out of production, and they have not affected the deer, turkey and quail hunting on the land. On a recent 101-degree day, he found about 40 of his cows lined up in a single row in the turbine’s shadow.

Meanwhile, a formal inquiry into how the industry operates in Oklahoma is being launched by a state regulatory agency at lawmakers’ request. The fact-finding mission could lead to legislation targeting the industry.

The turbines are subject to local property taxes after a five-year exemption for which the state reimburses local counties and schools. The exemption for wind producers was designed to offset a lifetime property tax exemption in neighboring Kansas.

In addition, the state offers wind developers tax credits based on per-kilowatt production that can be applied to any corporate income tax liability and then sold back to the state for 85 cents on the dollar. Those cash subsidies are expected to total $80 million over the next four years, according to estimates from the Oklahoma Tax Commission.

Oklahoma is one of at least six states competing for wind industry development, which often breathes life into communities that have lost manufacturing jobs and family farms.

Over the last decade, the number of wind-generated megawatts has grown from 6,000 in 2003 to 61,000 last year, which equates to roughly 30,000 turbines.

The biggest wind industry boom is taking place in Texas. Iowa and Oklahoma are close behind. Other states that have announced major projects include Kansas, North Dakota and New Mexico, according to the American Wind Energy Association, a trade group.

In Kansas, Republican Gov. Sam Brownback is trying to balance his state’s embrace of wind with opposition to a 2009 state energy law that requires utilities to use more wind and other renewable sources of power. Brownback supports wind energy, but his political base includes free-market GOP conservatives who oppose such mandates.

Texas Comptroller Susan Combs released a report last week urging an end to state subsidies for wind power, saying that tax credits and property tax limits helped grow the industry but today give it an unfair advantage.

“It’s time,” Combs said, “for wind to stand on its own two feet.”

___

Rebecca Thompson is Wise to the Windweasels!

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A Lesson in Journalism: Rebecca Thompson Exposes the Great Wind Power Fraud

October 1, 2014 by

Rebeca Thompson Sun
Rebecca Thompson is the brilliant young journo behind the recent Sun News documentary, Down Wind – that tipped a bucket on the great wind power fraud in Canada (see our post here).

Down Wind, which runs for 96 minutes, can be purchased as a file and downloaded or as a DVD for those in the US and Canada (here’s the link). For those outside the US and Canada the file can be purchased and downloaded (using this link). If you’re in there fighting the great wind power fraud, Down Wind is essential viewing. For a detailed synopsis of Down Wind – see our post here.

Rebecca is a stand-out not simply because she exhibits the proper temerity to challenge the lunacy of wind power and those behind the fraud (it’s what journalists are supposed to do), but because she has taken the time and trouble to understand every aspect of the most destructive government sanctioned rort of all time: be it the infantile pointlessness of throwing $billions at an intermittent and unreliable power source; spiralling power prices; the utterly flawed economics; the slaughter of thousands of birds and bats; and the harm caused to thousands of hard-working rural people through incessant turbine generated low-frequency noise and infrasound – Rebecca has a complete grip on the facts.

It’s almost incredible what happens when journalists open their eyes, ears and minds – instead of knocking out endless streams of drivel from the wind industry and its highly paid spin-masters – readers and viewers are gifted with a real insight into the insane costs and non-existent benefits of wind power. It’s a pity there aren’t more journos like Rebecca.

Here she is being interviewed by Alex Pierson on Sun News (22 September 2014) (transcript follows):

Straight Talk – Alex Pierson with Rebecca Thompson

Alex Pierson: Well call it the latest David verses Goliath kind of fight – as an Ontario farming family begs the court to help them stop an enormous wind farm that’s going to go up in their farming town, just in a little tiny farming community called Goderich, which is about an hour outside of Toronto.

And it’s bringing Rebecca Thompson to talk about the realities facing this particular family. What are we talking as far as this latest wind farm v turbine …

Rebecca Thompson: So interestingly, Downwind, which is a documentary that Sun News network aired a couple months ago, that featured this family that is asking the Divisional Court in Ontario, the Ontario Divisional Court to review their appeal to not have this 140 wind turbine project put up. And essentially the Divisional Court has never – this would be precedent-setting – if in fact this family among other families who are part of this appeal would be able to win this on the grounds that this would cause problems for their health.

So right now Health Canada, which is at the Federal level, is reviewing whether or not wind turbines cause health concerns. Given the fact that in Ontario the setbacks of wind turbines are only 500 feet. This is a concern because it’s too close to people’s homes.

Alex Pierson: You did a lot of work of on this in your documentary, and I urge any of you who haven’t yet seen Downwind – watch it. I don’t care if you are living in the city of Toronto. I don’t care if you’re living in a big urban centre – watch it because until you’ve seen what Rebecca exposes you don’t really truly get an understanding. And you made some really a valid points in the documentary that – what absolutely confounds me is that there are so many questions about health issues that are being looked into, and nobody seems to know what the long-term implications are. But yet the province is forging full steam ahead building these things.

Rebecca Thompson: The province is forging full steam ahead and they have indicated that there are no health concerns even though they haven’t done sufficient research into whether the or not there are health concerns. Look at places like Alberta. There are wind turbines set up, but they’re 2 miles away from anyone’s home. And in Ontario there was a theory that the reason why the wind turbines were admitted to be put up 500 foot away was because farms in Ontario are only an acre. So basically if the Ontario government can get away with putting wind turbines along a transmission line which is you know, a few turbines every other farm, then they could get away with a 500 foot setback.

The challenge with this that Health Canada is currently researching. I interviewed them – they said absolutely we’re seeing evidence that families have health issues, specifically …

Alex Pierson: sleeping issues, depression issues …

Rebecca Thompson: Sleeping, tinnitus, headaches, feeling faint, having stomach issues. There’s all sorts of issues.

Alex Pierson: So why wouldn’t the Courts then be listening to this and saying well hold on we don’t have enough conclusive evidence to say that there are no health problems, we have to rule in favour, there is doubt?

Rebecca Thompson: Well so far, the Provincial government has written its laws and its rules to be heavily in favour of the companies. And so essentially when any family, and there have been more than 20 appeals that have gone to Environmental review tribunals in Ontario, when any – and by the way these families they dip into their RSPs, they have to take it from their own small farming business, or whatever kind of businesses they have. They have to take it from the profits to pay for these appeals. Hire lawyers all the rest and they essentially lose the appeals because the Ontario government has written the regulations in a way where the wind turbine companies, often foreign companies, win time and time and again.

Alex Pierson: But when it comes to the bigger picture because all I’m hearing right now is massive lawsuits. Maybe not tomorrow, but in the next 5 or 6 years, when Health Canada finally comes out and says yes there are long-term health implications. So does the Ontario government not want to look at the bigger picture?

Rebecca Thompson: I don’t think they do. You know, I asked Kathleen Wynne, the Premier of Ontario point-blank will you put a moratorium on wind turbine projects that have not yet been built, given the fact that they’re causing endless amounts of communities serious concerns? Not only with health, but also property values. And also the fact that we pay through the nose for electricity now as a result of wind turbines, wind farms and wind power. And she said no we’re not going to put a stop to this.

Essentially they’ve offered the opportunity for wind turbine companies, often foreign based, to come in and have a 20 year contract to provide a source of wind power which is often intermittent. So the issue with these farmers – and you know I went out for the documentary and had an opportunity to meet with a ton of families. Thinking, you know what are the health issues?

Alex Pierson: What are they complaining about?

Rebecca Thompson: And I spoke with doctors, I spoke with researchers and experts and what they indicated is that yes, when it comes to the average person, it does effects to them – not everybody is affected – but children are seriously affected. Senior citizens are affected. You know it’s a concern that has driven these families to actually get a lawyer to fight at Divisional Court for them.

Alex Pierson: And I should point out one of the best lawyers in the country so I’m hoping that at least, under his guidance, they can get this seen – because I think it’s going to be one of these issues that ends up going to the Supreme Court and finally you’ll have someone ruling in on behalf of them.

You know it was interesting over the weekend I was reading an article by a Mexican ecologist who has opened the door, he’s blown the whistle on the corruption, the lies and what he calls the incompetence of the wind industry. And he talked about a whole bunch of countries – whether it be the United States, Australia and Canada – talking about the massive environmental damage these windmills are creating. And he talks about – it doesn’t seem that the environmentalists care about the clear cutting, they don’t care about the birds, they don’t care about the bees, they don’t care about the environmental ecosystems that are destroyed by these stupid windmills. But they’re aren’t doing anything. They’re just all about optics and there are people behind-the-scenes making billions of dollars. So it’s such a hypocritical hype.

Rebecca Thompson: Absolutely. You know what’s interesting is that these individuals – there’s a mass movement, not only in Ontario but across Canada to try to stop, to try to curtail wind power, or at least stop to research it before it goes up. And they reached out to a number of environmental groups. Specifically when it came to the mutilation of migratory birds by these wind turbine blades.

And the bird organisations in Ontario, sorry in Canada, said you know, we’re not interested. It’s partially because, you know Sierra is …

Alex Pierson: Are they getting funding from someone?

Rebecca Thompson: Well, they certainly rely on government funding. And essentially you have the Ontario government or the Canadian government or whoever offering these groups funding for in return they’re going to stay silent on these major issues.

Alex Pierson: It’s such an incestuous industry. You know we make a big stink about birds flying into buildings within city centres. And we do all sorts of things to protect birds by asking people ‘turn off your lights’ or do whatever, don’t seem to care about the birds. Don’t seem to care about the bees.

Rebecca Thompson: No, you know it’s interesting.

Alex Pierson: Certainly don’t care about bats.

Rebecca Thompson: They certainly don’t – and it’s the bats in fact, which are an endangered species in Ontario. You know, there’s evidence that in Northern Ontario, the bats that are an endangered species, could be obliterated as a result of wind turbines and you know maybe the Ministry of Natural Resources has stood by idly and said ‘Oh well’.

Alex Pierson: So where is David Suzuki? Because I would think that this is something he should care about. Because he should know. I’m no scientist. I’m no bat expert. But I do know that when you take out one species from the ecosystem, you unbalance the whole infrastructure of it. So if you take out the bats, that means other birds and bugs and all the rest of it, it unbalances the systems, and you get big problems.

Rebecca Thompson: Yes, and David Suzuki was out over few months ago saying what’s the big deal? Everybody should endorse wind power. You know this is the big question. It’s not only the environmental lies. It’s not only the major health concerns that right now are being researched and we don’t know the extent of the health problems. But it’s also the fact that our wallets and pocket books are being heavily hit because of the fact that electricity prices have gone through the roof. And I’m not just saying that. The Auditor General researched this. There have been countless studies researching and identifying the fact that wind power all around is just bad economics.

Alex Pierson: I think the Green Energy Act, maybe not this year but in the next few years is going to be exposed as the biggest, biggest failure, fraud and sham that we’ve ever seen. So we’ll continue watching it. Rebecca Thompson joining us here this morning. Thank you Ma’am.
Sun News

Definition of fraud

Low Frequency noise from Wind Turbines is Harmful!

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Living close to wind farms could cause hearing damage

New research published by the Royal Society warns of the possible danger posed by low frequency noise like that emitted by wind turbines

New research warns of the possible dangers posed by low frequency noise Photo: ALAMY

7:00AM BST 01 Oct 2014

Living close to wind farms may lead to severe hearing damage or even deafness, according to new research which warns of the possible danger posed by low frequency noise.

The physical composition of inner ear was “drastically” altered following exposure to low frequency noise, like that emitted by wind turbines, a study has found.

The research will delight critics of wind farms, who have long complained of their detrimental effects on the health of those who live nearby.

Published today by the Royal Society in their new journal Open Science, the research was carried out by a team of scientists from the University of Munich.

It relies on a study of 21 healthy men and women aged between 18 and 28 years. After being exposed to low frequency sound, scientists detected changes in the type of sound being emitted from the inner ear of 17 out of the 21 participants.

The changes were detected in a part of the ear called the cochlear, a spiral shaped cavity which essential for hearing and balance.

“We explored a very curious phenomenon of the human ear: the faint sounds which a healthy human ear constantly emits,” said Dr Marcus Drexl, one of the authors of the report.

“These are like a very faint constant whistling that comes out of your ear as a by-product of the hearing process. We used these as an indication of how processes in the inner ear change.”

Dr Drexl and his team measured these naturally emitted sounds before and after exposure to 90 seconds of low frequency sound.

“Usually the sound emitted from the ear stays at the same frequency,” he said. “But the interesting thing was that after exposure, these sounds changed very drastically.

“They started to oscillate slowly over a couple of minutes. This can be interpreted as a change of the mechanisms in the inner ear, produced by the low frequency sounds.

“This could be a first indication that damage might be done to the inner ear.

“We don’t know what happens if you are exposed for longer periods of time, [for example] if you live next to a wind turbine and listen to these sounds for months of years.”

Wind turbines emit a spectrum of frequencies of noise, which include the low frequency that was used in the research, Dr Drexl explained.

He said the study “might help to explain some of the symptoms that people who live near wind turbines report, such as sleep disturbance, hearing problems and high blood pressure”.

Dr Drexl explained how the low frequency noise is not perceived as being “intense or disturbing” simply because most of the time humans cannot hear it.

“The lower the frequency the you less you can hear it, and if it is very low you can’t hear it at all.

“People think if you can’t hear it then it is not a problem. But it is entering your inner ear even though it is not entering your consciousness.”

Wind Turbines are an Overpriced, Novelty Energy Form…..Not Suitable for Prime Time!

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The Fantasy of 100% Renewable Energy

By ALAN Y. WAYNE

Renewable energy is all the rage at the moment. Fears of global warming are ever present (and well-justified, I might add). Tax benefits for solar panels and wind turbines are at an all-time high. On Harvard’s campus, chants and rallies for divestment urge a shift away from fossil fuels toward renewables.

With Denmark’s wind power production exceeding its consumption on certain days last year, there have been calls for the United States to go completely fossil-free and become solely renewable-powered by 2050. After all, if Denmark can do it, why can’t we?

This is the point where I want to grab these 100-percent-renewable-promoting people and scream, “That’s not how it works! That’s not how any of this works!” (Oh, and Denmark isn’t entirely wind powered, that’s a misunderstanding—the true number is around 40 percent of electricity generation.)

Regardless of political pressure (which many have blamed for our lack of renewables), having a fully renewable-powered United States is physically impossible—and you can blame the sorry state of the U.S. energy grid.

Very few people know how the electricity is transmitted from, say, a wind turbine to their light bulb. We are lucky to live in a developed country where electricity can be taken for granted and blackouts are extraordinarily rare. This makes the electric grid appear to be a stable, ever-present figure that quietly and efficiently powers the country. In reality, the electric grid is less a perfectly fine-tuned blanket of distribution and more an ever-evolving patchwork quilt of relatively inefficient power lines.

There are two massive problems that currently plague the electric grid: We can’t store the electricity we produce, and we can’t transmit the electricity far from where it was generated.

There have been times when, in the Midwest on particularly windy days, there is so much energy generated by massive wind farms that there isn’t enough demand in the local area to use up all the electricity. When that happens, it would be fantastic if we could just put aside the excess electricity for another time when we need it. But we can’t. In fact, because there is absolutely no way to efficiently store this excess energy, the wind farm owners must sometimes pay money to offload their electricity.

Not being able to store it wouldn’t be an issue if we could just send all the excess electricity somewhere else though. After all, even if Wyoming’s five residents don’t need the energy at that moment, New York City is always hungry for more electricity. So what would happen if Wyoming’s wind farms generated the only energy available in the country, Wyoming had excess electricity, and a man in the Big Apple turned on his lights in an attempt to increase demand?

Nothing. Absolutely nothing. The light wouldn’t even go on. Due to the structure of our power grid, electricity cannot travel from Wyoming to New York.

In fact, the electric grid in the United States is actually three electric “interconnections”—the Western Interconnection, the Eastern Interconnection, and the Electrical Reliability Council of Texas. Electricity is hardly transferred between the interconnections—not out of choice, mind you. We physically cannot due to the difference between grid structures and a lack of infrastructure. And even within an interconnection, electricity struggles to travel distances of greater than 400 miles.

Now we return to the feasibility of a 100 percent renewable energy United States.

It’s true that if we covered just five percent of Arizona with solar photovoltaic panels, we would have more than enough energy to cover the four trillion kilowatt-hours of electricity consumed annually in the United States. However, if we actually built this massive solar farm, the consequence wouldn’t be a green United States. It would just mean that the Southwest would have massively negative energy prices (assuming the grid in the area could even handle the load) while the rest of the United States would be in a perpetual blackout. No storage, and no long-distance or cross-interconnection transmission, remember? And what happens if it gets cloudy?

Wind power suffers from the same problems—even worse, actually, since wind is less predictable than the sun.

We’ve tapped all the hydropower sources in the country and it only accounts for seven percent of our nation’s electricity production.

Geothermal sites are unlikely to have a production capacity of more than 20 percent of total U.S. consumption (and are currently sitting at 0.41 percent).

Despite the environmental benefits, the fact simply remains that renewable energy—wind and solar in particular—is simply too volatile from minute to minute to produce the steady power we need. And we don’t yet have the storage or transmission technology to address these issues.

Sadly, for the time being, we will simply have to accept that the vast majority of our electricity must come from fossil fuel and nuclear plants.

Sorry, Earth.

Alan Y. Wayne ’16, a Crimson editorial writer, is an economics concentrator in Kirkland House.

Don’t Follow Germany’s Green Path…..They’re Lost! Epic Fail!

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Germany’s Green Energy Failure

  • Date: 29/09/14
  • Doug L Hoffman, The Resilient Earth

The first grand experiment in renewable energy is a catastrophe. The vast scale of the failure has only started to become clear over the past year or so.

A new analysis answers the question “should other nations follow Germany’s lead on promoting solar Power?” That question was asked on Quora and answered by Ryan Carlyle, BSChE, and a Subsea Hydraulics Engineer. His detailed and well reasoned answer is the most forceful possible NO. According to Carlyle Germany’s program has the “absurd distinction” of hitting the trifecta of bad energy policy: bad for consumers, bad for industry, and bad for the environment. So while misguided greens point to Germany as a solar success, a rising tide of opposition and resentment is growing among the German public.

Along with all the other troubles besetting the world, Germany has watched its economy, the so called “engine of Europe,” stumble. This is mostly attributable to the horribly botched shift to a renewable energy economy. In Carlyle’s own words:

I was shocked to find out how useless, costly, and counter-productive their world-renowned energy policy has turned out. This is a serious problem for Germany, but an even greater problem for the rest of the world, who hope to follow in their footsteps. The first grand experiment in renewable energy is a catastrophe! The vast scale of the failure has only started to become clear over the past year or so. So I can forgive renewables advocates for not realizing it yet — but it’s time for the green movement to do a 180 on this.

Pretty strong stuff, but as good skeptics we should demand evidence to back up these statements. Fortunately, the author provides data to back up his claims. Here are some of Carlyle’s “awful statistics”:

Germany is widely considered the global leader in solar power, with over a third of the world’s nameplate (peak) solar power capacity. Germany has over twice as much solar capacity per capita as sunny, subsidy-rich, high-energy-cost California. (That doesn’t sound bad, but keep going.)

Germany’s residential electricity cost is about $0.34/kWh, one of the highest rates in the world. About $0.07/kWh goes directly to subsidizing renewables, which is actually higher than the wholesale electricity price in Europe. (This means they could simply buy zero-carbon power from France and Denmark for less than they spend to subsidize their own.) More than 300,000 households per year are seeing their electricity shut off because they cannot afford the bills. Many people are blaming high residential prices on business exemptions, but eliminating them would save households less than 1 euro per month on average. Billing rates are predicted by the government to rise another 40% by 2020.

Germany’s utilities and taxpayers are losing vast sums of money due to excessive feed-in tariffs and grid management problems. The environment minister says the cost will be one trillion euros (~$1.35 trillion) over the next two decades if the program is not radically scaled back. This doesn’t even include the hundreds of billions it has already cost to date. Siemens, a major supplier of renewable energy equipment, estimated in 2011 that the direct lifetime cost of Energiewende through 2050 will be $4.5 trillion, which means it will cost about 2.5% of Germany’s GDP for 50 years straight. That doesn’t include economic damage from high energy prices, which is difficult to quantify but appears to be significant.

Here’s the truly dismaying part: the latest numbers show Germany’s carbon output and global warming impact is actually increasing despite flat economic output and declining population, because of ill-planned “renewables first” market mechanisms. This regime is paradoxically forcing the growth of dirty coal power. Photovoltaic solar has a fundamental flaw for large-scale generation in the absence of electricity storage — it only works for about 5-10 hours a day. Electricity must be produced at the exact same time it’s used. The more daytime summer solar capacity Germany builds, the more coal power they need for nights and winters as cleaner power sources are forced offline. This happens because excessive daytime solar power production makes base-load nuclear plants impossible to operate, and makes load-following natural gas plants uneconomical to run. Large-scale PV solar power is unmanageable without equally-large-scale grid storage, but even pumped-storage hydroelectricity facilities are being driven out of business by the severe grid fluctuations. They can’t run steadily enough to operate at a profit. Coal is the only non-subsidized power source that doesn’t hemorrhage money now. The result is that utilities must choose between coal, blackouts, or bankruptcy. Which means much more pollution.

The emphasized passages are the author’s from the original posting.

Full post

– See more at: http://www.thegwpf.com/germanys-green-energy-failure/#sthash.fFTAlKrn.dpuf