Liberal corruption and incompetence.

Realistic View Of Government-induced Climaphobia, & the Unintended Consequences”.

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Editorial by Tom Harris
July 8, 2015
‘Marching with the enemy’
Imagine pro-tobacco groups wanted to participate in fund raising marches for cancer research. ‘We want to help defeat cancer too,’ the tobacco advocates announce.
Anti-cancer campaigners would never march in solidarity with tobacco promoters. They know that if smoking increased, cancer rates would undoubtedly rise as well. Marching arm in arm with those working against one’s interests is irrational.
This logic does not seem to have occurred to the groups concerned with social justice and wildlife protection who participated in the July 5 “March for Jobs, Justice, and the Climate” in Toronto. They were, in effect, marching with the enemy, groups such as  and Citizens’ Climate Lobby which unwittingly encourage outcomes that are harming the poor and disadvantaged, biodiversity, and endangered species.
For example, by promoting the idea that carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions must be reduced to prevent dangerous climate change, climate mitigation activists support the expanded use of biofuels. This is resulting in 6.5% of the world’s grain being diverted to fuel instead of food, causing food price spikes that are a disaster for the world’s most vulnerable people.
The growing demand for biofuels is also creating serious problems for indigenous land owners in developing countries. In a February 2015 open letter to the European Parliament endorsed by 197 civil society organisations from Asia, Africa, and Latin America, it was asserted:
“The destruction of forests and fertile agricultural land to make way for oil palm plantations is jeopardising the food sovereignty and cultural integrity of entire communities who depend on the land as their source of food and livelihoods.”
Replacing virgin forests with monoculture plantations to provide palm oil for biodiesel greatly reduces biodiversity over vast regions.
In another attempt to reduce CO2 emissions, hundreds of thousands of industrial wind turbines (IWT) are being constructed worldwide. For example, the Ontario government is erecting 6,736 IWTs across the province, the most recent as tall as a 61 story building.
Only 4% of the province’s power came from wind energy in 2013 and 1% from solar, yet together they accounted for 20% of the commodity cost paid by Ontarians. Despite massive government subsidies for wind power, electricity rates in Ontario have soared, mostly affecting the poor and seniors on fixed incomes.
IWTs kill millions of birds and bats across the world. Ontario’s situation has drawn the attention of the Spain-based group, Save the Eagles International, which, on May 23, issued the news release “Migrating golden eagles to be slaughtered in Ontario.” They showed that some of the turbines planned for Ontario are being placed directly in the path of migrating golden eagles, which are already an endangered species.
The consequences for people living near IWTs can be severe as well. Besides a significant loss in property value, health concerns abound.
A particularly tragic example is occurring in the West Lincoln and surrounding regions of Southern Ontario.  There, despite the objections of local residents, wind developers have received approval to install at least seventy-seven 3 Megawatt IWTs, each up to 609 ft. tall, the largest such machines in North America.
One resident, Shellie Correia of Wellandport has a particular reason to be concerned.
Her 12 year old son Joey has been diagnosed with Sensory Processing Disorder and it is crucial that he live in an environment free from excessive noise. But as a result of Ontario’s Green Energy Act, the primary focus of which is climate change mitigation, an IWT will be sited only 550 metres from their home.
Correia explained in her January 2015 presentation before the government’s Environmental Review Tribunal, “On top of the incessant, cyclical noise, there is light flicker, and infrasound. This is not something that my son will be able to tolerate.”
But the approvals go ahead anyways. As Correia told the Tribunal, “No one was able to help, because of the Green Energy Act.”
The drive to reduce CO2 emissions makes it difficult for developing countries to finance the construction of vitally-needed hydrocarbon-fueled power plants. For example, in 2010 South Africa secured a $3.9 billion loan to build the Medupi coal-fired power station only because developing country representatives on the World Bank board voted for approval. The U.S. and four European nation members abstained from approval because of their concerns about climate change. They apparently wanted South Africans to use wind and solar power instead, sources too expensive for widespread use even in wealthy nations.
Finally, because of the belief that humans control climate, only 6% of the one billion dollars spent every day across the world on climate finance goes to helping vulnerable people cope with climate change today. The rest is spent trying to stop phenomena that might someday happen.  This is immoral, effectively valuing the lives of people yet to be born more than those in need today.
In all of these cases, climate mitigation takes precedence over the needs of the present. Groups such as Ontario Coalition Against Poverty, Oxfam Canada, and Great Lakes Commons, all of which participated in Sunday’s event, must distance themselves from climate activists, not march with them.
Tom Harris is Executive Director of the Ottawa-based International Climate Science Coalition.

Dr. Bruce Rapley Tells Inquiry, that “Nocebo effect”, Just More Wind Industry Lies!

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Dr Bruce Rapley tells Senate: Wind Farm Nocebo Story “Nefarious Pseudoscience” & an “Insult to Intelligence”

July 9, 2015 by Leave a Comment

senate review

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Australia is blessed with a former tobacco advertising guru who is paid a packet by wind power outfits – like near-bankrupt Infigen – to pedal a story that the adverse health impacts caused by incessant turbine generated low-frequency noise and infrasound (such as sleep deprivation) are the product of “scare-mongering” – which, on his story, affects only English-speaking “climate deniers”; and that never, ever affects those farmers paid to host turbines.

This grab bag of nonsense is pitched up under the tagline “nocebo”. Now, that doesn’t sound altogether scientific, but nor does the term “anti-wind farm wing-nut”, used by the guru as part of his efforts to diagnose (without clinical consultation, mind you) those said to be suffering from “nocebo”. We think he uses a magic stethoscope mounted in an orbiting satellite to reach his long-distance, infallible medical diagnoses.

More fortunate, however, is the fact that the Senate Inquiry into the great wind power fraud got to hear from a relevantly qualified health and acoustic expert. Dr Bruce Rapley gave this blistering evidence to the Inquiry – which makes a complete mockery of the arguments pitched up by the chancers and showboats paid by the wind industry to downplay, diminish and deny the obvious impacts that incessant low-frequency noise and infrasound has on human health.

Senate Select Committee on Wind Turbines – 19 June 2015

RAPLEY, Dr Bruce Ian, Principal Consultant, Acoustics and Human Health, Atkinson & Rapley Consulting Ltd

CHAIR: Welcome. Can you please confirm that information on parliamentary privilege and the protection of witnesses and evidence has been provided to you?

Dr Rapley: I can confirm and I have read the document.

CHAIR: The committee has your submission. I now invite you to make a brief opening statement and, at the conclusions of your remarks, I will invite members of the committee to put questions to you.

Dr Rapley: I understand that time is of the essence, so I have provided a full opening statement in writing to you but I will read a brief opening statement, if that is alright with you. Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you for this opportunity to address your Senate inquiry on this very important topic.

There are two main problems with the way the sound from wind turbines is measured and controlled. Firstly, by use of the A-weighting and, secondly, by the averaging over time. A-weighting is an anachronistic attempt to describe human hearing, initially conceived and averaged on the reception of pure sounds heard through earphones by 23 laboratory workers at the Western Electric Laboratories of the AT&T Telephone Company in the late 1920s.

The salient point is that the human organism is a frequency modulated difference engine. That is why we react to differences between instantaneous sound pressure levels—that is, the peaks. Averages are a human, anthropomorphic, construct used to generate a single descriptive value to describe a complex dataset. In creating such a statistic, much of the variance of the data is necessarily lost. The 10-minutes averages, used in almost all environmental noise controls, have little value in terms of human or animal response.

The reason that animals, including humans, respond to instantaneous sound pressure levels is a simple matter of evolutionary adaptation. Single, often sudden, or pulsating, acoustic events are very descriptive of the environment in that they frequently contain information that is indicative of a threat and therefore essential for survival. While averages have some uses, hence their invention, the danger is not in what they reveal; rather it is in what they conceal. The use of the 10-minute average so commonly used in environmental noise monitoring is designed to smooth out the peaks, thereby missing the most important part of the soundscape: sudden loud noise events, or in the case of wind turbines, pulsating peaks of low-frequency sound.

This methodology favours the wind industry. Thus, in one fell swoop, they have managed to hide the very sound effects that are causing much of the adverse biological response. The wind industry can and does hide behind the statistics, much to the detriment of public health. With the ever-increasing size of these industrial generators comes a significant overhead: noise pollution.

It is my understanding that one such mitigation strategy that has been suggested to this commission: phase desynchronisation. This is in fact not only impractical but deeply flawed on basic principles of physics. It is my intention to correct this misunderstanding so that no precious time is wasted on an idea that is without merit.

Further, the wind industry’s strategies of denial, obfuscation, sustained personal attacks on professionals advising of the problems, and ridicule of those who are suffering, followed by buy-outs with gagging clauses must be exposed for the ruse that it is. That the wind industry and its supporters continue to fly the flag of the nocebo principle must also be shown for the misapplication of science that it is. The nocebo principle cannot be applied to a palpable phenomenon by definition. To continue to fly this particular flag is to insult the intelligence of genuinely impacted people and to bring the scientific method and science into disrepute. It is a staggering misuse of the scientific method and does nothing to advance the understanding of this complex problem.

In the future, I believe that the adverse health effects of wind turbines will eclipse the asbestos problem in the annals of history. In my opinion, the greed and scientific half-truths from the wind industry will be seen by history as one of the worst corporate and government abuses of democracy in the 21st century. I look forward to answering your questions, Senators. Thank you.

CHAIR: Thank you, Dr Rapley. In your submission, why do you think the A-weighting is inappropriate for the measuring for the acoustic output for wind turbines?

Dr Rapley: The A-weighting was a good idea 80 years ago but it is not a good idea now. It is an average, it is predicated on averaged hearing of a small number of people using very poor equipment, using pure tones, occluded headphones, in 1928. The equipment was very poor in those times.

The A-weighting has been revised a number of times as equipment has got better over the years. The problem is that it progressively discounts frequencies below 1,000 hertz, and it totally ignores everything below 20 hertz. It is not a good indicator of what is in the acoustic environment.

A very important point here is that human hearing sensitivities are continually changing. In much of this debate, I see a lot of talk about acoustics, physics and measurements. What I do not see is a good understanding of the basic science of human biology and hearing—and that is not just dealing with the human apparatus of the ear; it is also dealing with the processing by the human brain and the auditory cortex, and the filtering systems therein. It is a complex problem. The A-weighting is a poor indication of average hearing, badly implemented. It does not describe the frequency region, where most of the biological effects, we believe, are being initiated. It averages out the very values we need to look for and it cannot find the values that are actually causing the problem. Why this continues to be used is beyond my understanding. It is a complete scientific anachronism; it is inappropriate.

CHAIR: Dr Rapley, could you explain to us what are heightened noise zones?

Dr Rapley: Okay. Can I ask you: have you seen the second submission of mine: Elements of Wind Turbines Sound Synchronicity Phase and Heightened Noise Zones?

CHAIR: Yes, some of us have.

Dr Rapley: I think its best described there, but let me describe this, if I can, in a simple manner. Sound is an energy form which we describe as a wave. The way to look at this is let us imagine that we are looking at the surface of a still pond. Onto that pond we drop a stone. We all know what happens: the ripples will spread out. If you were to drop two stones into the pool at the same time, both would create ripples, and the ripples would interfere with one another. We call this superposition theory—the addition of wave energy as a vector quantity in space.

What happens is that, when one wave exactly coincides with another wave from another pebble, the two waves add together. It is a simple matter of algebraic addition; it is very simple. You get large waves and large troughs, but as the waves move out you will see that a crest and a trough will hit. They will cancel each other out. That is what we call a node in physics. That is an area which is not moving; it is a null spot. The null spots are a necessary creation of interacting waves in a three-dimensional environment. Heightened noise zones are simply zones where several or many crests and troughs of waves interact in such a way that you get a supercrest, supertrough.

The simple way to look at it is this. Stones dropped into a pond cause ripples. The ripples interact. Where the ripples cause double-height waves, that is a heightened noise zone. The one thing that you know is that, wherever there is a heightened noise zone, one of these antinodes, in close proximity—within half a wave length—there will be a node, the null spot. Simply waves hitting one another, combining, causes this problem. Phase, I am afraid, is not the question; it is not the issue.

CHAIR: Thank you, Dr Rapley. Senator Day?

Senator DAY: What sort of research do you think should be undertaken in the short term to better understand the science of this phenomenon?

Dr Rapley: I think that is one of the most important questions that you have to consider. Observational studies are urgently needed to study the low-frequency and infrasound emissions. It is of those people affected inside their homes—that is the priority. I have to stress this: laboratory studies cannot replicate the situation experienced by those people in close proximity to large wind turbines, and they cannot provide the study data we need.

What we have to do, now that we are in a crisis situation in terms of public health and regulation, is do the first studies on sensitised individuals. We should not be looking at large cross-sectional population studies of non-exposed people, laboratory studies. No longer are a few A-weighted sound levels and wind speeds of any use in correlating environmental conditions to subjects’ experiences.

We need to look at sensitised individuals first, because that is where the most rich data can be obtained. Research that relates to full-spectrum and also narrow-band analysis with an objective physiological measure in the people that you are investigating, who are suffering the worst impacts in their homes and workplaces, is the only strategy that can produce the results that we urgently need. We cannot afford as a country to waste time on other issues.

We must address those who are severely impacted in their homes, use the full-spectrum narrow-band analysis, and that needs to be combined not just with diaries of their experience but with real physiological measures. I have the technology to be able to do that; the technology has been invented. We can do this, but it has never ever been done. The technology is now available. Time is of the essence.

Senator URQUHART: In your submission you said the acoustic emissions from wind turbines are unique. Can you outline what makes wind farm infrasound unique?

Dr Rapley: Yes, I can. The wind farms produce wave forms which are unlike any other naturally occurring forms of infrasound. This is well documented in the scientific literature. The fact that they are different, by definition, means they are unique, and the unique character is that they are like impulsive sounds. But there is a complexity here that few understand. I will try to explain it.

We are not just dealing with a single low frequency like one hertz, two hertz or whatever it happens to be. What we are looking at is a combined effect of the infrasound in addition to all of the other sounds emitted plus all of the sounds in the environment. When you look at the environment you see a range of frequencies, which includes the hiss of the wind in the trees and the wind going through the turbines and their structures. All of that white noise, plus the acoustic noise that wind turbines produce by nature of their gears and the air flowing over the nacelle, the tower and the blades, gives you a complex sound packet.

The wind turbines are unique because the low frequency, because the rotation of the blades, essentially throws you packets of sound. It is likened to amplitude modulation of the existing sound. That is not just a physical phenomenon. That is also a phenomenon within the human organism, and that would take a lot more time to explain. But what we hear is a facsimile of what is in the environment, in the same way that a fax machine does not send your words; it sends dots and dashes which are reconstructed. The human brain reconstructs the sound.

With wind turbines, the unique combination of pulsing low-frequency bursts not only causes amplitude modulation effects in the atmosphere—the physical molecules of the air itself—but actually confuses the ear so the biological mechanism is tricked. It is not used to hearing this combination of sound. It is a very unique sound. I know of nothing in the natural soundscape that is even within cooee of this type of sound. So when that sound—this complex series of packets of pulsated noise—hits your ear, it affects the muscles that hold the ossicles and therefore determine the status position of the oval window in the cochlea but it also affects the outer hair cells, which have the main role of controlling the volume or the sensitivity of all of the cochlea in little tiny individual pieces.

When you inject infrasound pulsations what you are doing is introducing low-frequency pulses below the normal human hearing, which interferes directly with the afferent and efferent control systems of the sensitivity of the cochlea. What this does is magnify and amplify the amplitude modulation. It is kind of like listening to your stereo and turning the knob up and down so you get this changing volume. The sound does that, but the ear makes it far worse because of the physiology of how it works.

The brain is not designed, as far as we understand it, to deal with low frequencies being imposed on the control circuitry of the gain or the feedback control of sensitivity. That sound is doing something that nothing else in the world does. That is why it has such an important effect on humans—because it actually confounds the control circuitry that allows us to hear. I hope that gives you some explanation. It is exceedingly complicated.

Senator URQUHART: Thank you for that. You also mentioned in your submission that thousands of people living in close proximity to wind farms report similar adverse health effects. The committee has heard that there are many countries where health impacts of wind farms are rarely raised as a concern, particularly in non-English-speaking countries. What factors do you think could account for these geographic differences?

Dr Rapley: There are undoubtedly going to be geographic differences, but this is the problem with data collection. The same thing occurs when you start to look at the incidence of diseases in a population or the incidence of crime in a community. It is the reporting which is largely at fault. The fact is that people are affected by this, and the numbers are in the thousands. I only have to look at the emails that cross my desk from all over the world. I get bombarded from the UK, Ireland, France, Canada, the United States, Australia, Germany.

There are tonnes of these things out there but, because the system does not understand the problem, nor does it have a strategy, many of those complaints go unlisted. If I were to look, for example, at the list of complaints for the wind farm which is in my territory, in the Manawatu, in New Zealand, we are talking hundreds upon hundreds of complaints. They were all logged but never actioned. Nothing happens about them; they just get lost. Unless you go looking for them, you will not find the data. You have to burrow down into the data to find it. You cannot just rely on the simple reporting. That is highly erroneous and a very bad way to do science.

Senator URQUHART: The Health Canada study, which looked at 1,200 residents, found that there was no correlation between wind farms and self-reported sleep problems, illnesses, perceived stress or quality of life. If wind farms are causing the health impacts, why do you think they are not showing up in large-scale epidemiological research such as the Health Canada study?

Dr Rapley: There is an old biblical reference, ‘Seek, and ye shall find.’ If you deliberately set out not to find something, there is a very good chance you will not find it. I think that study is flawed on so many levels it is not even worth considering.

Senator URQUHART: In which areas do you believe that that study is flawed?

Dr Rapley: The way I think they collected the data is a problem. The questions that they asked to collect that data were flawed. But it is such a huge issue we would need several hours for me to sit down and explain it. I am happy to do that in writing, but if we are short of time—there are so many things wrong with that study. It is too big a topic to do in a couple of minutes. I see I have nine minutes remaining.

Senator URQUHART: Okay.

Dr Rapley: I am happy to answer that in writing later.

Senator URQUHART: Thank you.

Senator BACK: Dr Rapley, you made the comment with regard to the nocebo effect and you said, ‘It can’t be applied to a palpable’—I did not get the last word.

Dr Rapley: Phenomenon.

Senator BACK: Could you expand on that for us, please? Obviously it is a topic of quite intense interest in this inquiry.

Dr Rapley: Yes, it is. Firstly, quite bluntly, on first scientific principles it is the wrong terminology.

It is a piece of very poor academic science to even invoke the term. The definition of nocebo, in medicine, is—from the Latin ‘I shall harm’—an inert substance or form of therapy that creates harmful effects in a patient. Therefore, the nocebo effect is the adverse reaction experienced by a patient who receives such a therapy. Wind turbines are not a therapy. Sound is not an inert substance devoid of biological perception or effect.

Nocebo is the wrong word. It is very simply a bastardisation of a term invented for nefarious purposes to attempt to invoke some sort of pseudoscientific authenticity. The term that should be used is psychogenic or psychosomatic.

It just stuns me that people continue to use this. It is the wrong term to begin with and it does not explain the effects that we see. It is simply a ruse. It is a red herring that is put out and promoted by certain academics and the industry to explain a phenomenon. It fails on first principles. But it fails because it cannot account for those who were pro-turbine prior to commissioning only to experience adverse health effects post-commissioning that they were later able to relate back to turbine emissions. I think Dr Swinbanks will be talking on this.

We have animals affected by this. Normally we would believe that animals are not really susceptible to media hype, so the fact that animals are doing this is showing that that cannot work. We also have physiological mechanisms of action now that have been proposed—and this is years ago. The nocebo effect is akin to a self-fulfilling prophecy. It is akin to what I call ‘the magician’s dilemma’—are you familiar with that concept?

Senator BACK: No, I do not think I am. But I am about to be!

Dr Rapley: The magician’s dilemma is this: suppose you watch a magician performing a trick, perhaps sawing a lady in half. We know that you cannot actually saw a person in half, because they are going to die. That happens every day in surgery. But you think about this and you say: ‘Gee, I think I’ve worked this out. I know how he’s making this appear to happen.’ You have come up with the answer: this is how magicians cut a woman in half; it is a complete ruse; it is a trick.

That is true, but the fallacy in the logic is that just because you have proposed one theory to explain the phenomenon, that does not mean that all magicians use the same tricks to do the same bit of magic. They may have a completely different method that you have not thought of, and this is why you cannot latch on to any one single explanation, because of multiple causation. The magician’s dilemma is that you think that you have found the answer and that it is the only answer. There are many ways to skin a roo, as I think you say over there—or a cat in New Zealand—and there are many ways to do a trick.

There are many reasons why there are health effects of wind turbines. We now know that there are good physiological mechanisms to explain this. We have known for 30 or 40 years that the effects are there. Science is an empirical art form. First it involves observation, and after observation we then start to think, ‘How did that happen?’ We create a hypothesis, we find a way of testing that and we carry out those tests to see if it agrees with our theory of how the woman was cut in half. That is what science is about. We have the observations over decades. We have a new situation with larger wind turbines—

Senator BACK: We have only got seconds left, and I know another colleague wants to ask a question. So I do thank you for that very extensive explanation.

Senator LEYONHJELM: Can you just keep your comments brief please; we are running out of time. You do not think very much of the A-weighting. What measure would you use if you wanted to monitor compliance with a standard? What standard would use and what process would you use for determining an appropriate sound level?

Dr Rapley: I would use unweighted sound levels. I would use no weighting at all. It would be unweighted and it would be the equivalent of what you may understand by ‘narrow band’.

Senator LEYONHJELM: We asked one witness that question and he just said straight 30 dB, unweighted. Would you agree?

Dr Rapley: Not at all. Not with a 30 dB, because the one thing that you are missing from the equation is the biology and the human response. You must not look at this purely as a physical phenomenon. That is where the mistakes are made. You need to understand the response of the biological organism and the fact that human hearing is changing. There is no one magic decibel level; it depends on environments.

Senator LEYONHJELM: That presents a regulatory issue. How do you set a standard? In your submission you went to great lengths to criticise the New Zealand standard. But governments and regulators like standards. If there was to be a standard, what should it have in it?

Dr Rapley: That standard can only be proposed after the research that I am saying is vitally important and urgent is done. When we understand what you would call in general terms the dose-response relationship, then I can give you the standard. I cannot do that in the absence of that science. That must be completed first. I am happy to answer it when the science has been done.

Senator LEYONHJELM: Just to clarify, you also talked about nodes, and what you are suggesting is that there is no way of replicating those nodes in a laboratory environment. Is that right?

Dr Rapley: I think you are confusing two answers there. The point is that nodes exist with complex waveforms—complex sound in a complex environment. Therefore, what I am saying is, forget the nodes; the fact is you cannot replicate in a sealed room, a little laboratory room, what is happening in the real world for people living in a house near wind turbines.

Senator LEYONHJELM: I am also working on an assumption—correct me if I am wrong—that, with respect to ordinary emissions from a wind farm, you could be in reasonable proximity to a wind farm and not be affected, but if you move to another area that is a similar distance from a wind farm, where the sound is exaggerated, amplified or whatever, that is more likely to adversely affect you. I am assuming that that might be a node. Am I wrong there?

Dr Rapley: The node is in fact the quiet part. It is the antinode that is noisier. I know it is a funny piece of terminology. I first discovered it some years ago. I walked down a country road at quarter past 10 in the evening. It was a still night. There were no stars. It was totally black. I really had to feel the road. I had never heard wind turbine sounds. What I heard was what to me sounded like a didgeridoo. It occurred very suddenly. I took two steps forward and it disappeared. I took two steps back—that is about two metres—it came back.

Nodes and antinodes are sometimes very small in area, sometimes large, but they are forever moving. As they are forever moving, you cannot use phase cancellation to make all of the houses in an area get no sound. It is an absolute impossibility. Wherever there is a node there is an antinode. You just cannot make that happen.

Senator LEYONHJELM: We have had anecdotal evidence presented to the committee about adverse effects on animals, but others have said that there have not been any at all. Are you aware of any published work on the effect of turbines on animals?

Dr Rapley: Yes, I am. I would have to go and look those references up. They certainly do exist. It is interesting that in the veterinary medicine textbook of diseases of cattle, sheep, pigs and horses by Blood, Henderson and Radostits—

Senator LEYONHJELM: I know it well.

Dr Rapley: they tell you in chapter 30 of the importance of sound effects on animals. It is a brilliant textbook. It is obviously still in use today. There are papers and references I could find for you and send to you. But can I bring you back to one more important point. The scientific method is predicated first on observation. Much needs to be looked into in the grey literature, the anecdotes, to find that data. Once we have that, then the papers will come. There are papers in the literature, but I would have to go and dig those up. I do not have them in front of me.

Senator LEYONHJELM: We get the impression that if the wind farms made available their data on their operating hours, their wind speed, their own sound measurements, their energy emissions and that sort of stuff they could be analysed in conjunction with separate sound monitoring in order to improve our scientific understanding of this. Would you agree?

Dr Rapley: Absolutely. That is not a question. That is rhetorical. It is a no-brainer. Of course it would. The problem that we have been beset with for many years is that the wind turbine people will not release their data. They say it is commercially sensitive. They are absolutely inhibiting us from getting that data. They are hiding. We cannot get it.

I can give you, on another occasion, chapter and verse of trying to get that data where I myself have monitoring stations set up. The wind industry is deliberately hiding that data so that we cannot use it. This means that, as scientists, we have to get it for ourselves. We have to duplicate that effort, which is a waste of time and resources and doggy in the manger. Public health is what is suffering here.

CHAIR: Dr Rapley, are you happy for us to send you questions on notice?

Dr Rapley: Absolutely. I would be more than happy to respond to questions in a timely manner.

CHAIR: Thank you for your appearance before the committee today, Dr Rapley.

Dr Rapley: Thank you for your time.

Hansard 19, June 2015

Dr Rapley’s evidence is available from the Parliament’s website here.

bruce rapley

It’s Happening All Over the World. Electricity is Becoming a “Luxury Item”! Energy poverty!

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EPA’s war on the poor

Friend,

What happens when government regulations cause more harm than they prevent?

In an important new research article at CFACT.org, senior policy advisor Paul Driessen joins with energy analyst Roger Bezdek to consider EPA’s “Clean Power Plan” and ask, “what effect will the regulation itself have on poor and minority communities?”

The answer is shocking.

“The plan will result in higher electricity costs for businesses and families, lost jobs, lower incomes, higher poverty rates, reduced living standards, and diminished health and welfare, our exhaustive recent study found. This damage will be inflicted at the national level and in all 50 states. The CPP will impact all low-income groups, but hit America’s 128 million Blacks and Hispanics especially hard.”

Obama Administration bureaucrats want to dramatically increase the cost of electricity, despite the fact that these painfully expensive rules will provide little or no meaningful benefit to the climate or the environment.

“The EPA regulations will significantly increase the minority family ‘energy burden’ – the percentage of annual household incomes they must pay for residential energy bills – and thus the number of families driven into energy poverty. Inability to pay energy bills is second only to inability to pay rent as the leading cause of homelessness, so increasing numbers of poor and minority families will become homeless.”

Over the weekend we shared a Hoover Institution piece on Facebook, “When Bureaucrats Get Way With Murder,” which calculates that every $7 to $10 million in regulatory costs induces one fatality through what is called the “income effect.”  The author concludes that excessive regulation is tantamount to “statistical murder.”
When bureaucratic ideologues over-regulate, the law of unintended consequences will take its toll.

Unfortunately, the poorest and most vulnerable among us will find that toll hardest to pay.

For nature and people too,

Craig Rucker
Executive Director

Obama and EPA imperil minority welfare

By Paul Driessen

& Roger Bezdek

The Wind Scam is Much More Financially Detrimental, Than the Windpushers Claimed.

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STUDY: WIND FARMS EVEN MORE EXPENSIVE AND POINTLESS THAN YOU THOUGHT

Reuters

Reuters

by JAMES DELINGPOLE

The cost of wind energy is significantly more expensive than its advocates pretend, a new US study has found.

If you believe this chart produced by the US Energy Information Administration (EIA), then onshore wind is one of the cheapest forms of power – more competitive than nuclear, coal or hydro, and a lot more than solar.

EIA_LCOE_AEO2013

But when you take into account the true costs of wind, it’s around 48 per cent more expensive than the industry’s official estimates – according to new research conducted by Utah State University.

“In this study, we refer to the ‘true cost’ of wind as the price tag consumers and society as a whole pay both to purchase wind-generated electricity and to subsidize the wind energy industry through taxes and government debt,” said Ryan Yonk Ph.D., one of the report’s authors and a founder of Strata Policy. “After examining all of these cost factors and carefully reviewing existing cost estimates, we were able to better understand how much higher the cost is for Americans.”

The peer-reviewed report accounted for the following factors:

  • The federal Production Tax Credit (PTC), a crucial subsidy for wind producers, has distorted the energy market by artificially lowering the cost of expensive technologies and directing taxpayer money to the wind industry.
  • States have enacted Renewable Portfolio Standards (RPS) that require utilities to purchase electricity produced from renewable sources, which drives up the cost of electricity for consumers.
  • Because wind resources are often located far from existing transmission lines, expanding the grid is expensive, and the costs are passed on to taxpayers and consumers.
  • Conventional generators must be kept on call as backup to meet demand when wind is unable to do so, driving up the cost of electricity for consumers.

“Innovation is a wonderful thing and renewable energy is no exception. Wind power has experienced tremendous growth since the 1990’s, but it has largely been a response to generous federal subsidies,” Yonk stated.

Among the factors wind advocates fail to acknowledge, the report shows, is the “opportunity cost” of the massive subsidies which taxpayers are forced to provide in order to persuade producers to indulge in this otherwise grotesquely inefficient and largely pointless form of power generation.

In the US this amounts to an annual $5 billion per year in Production Tax Credits (PTC). Here is money that could have been spent on education, healthcare, defence or, indeed, which could have been left in the pockets of taxpayers to spend as they prefer.

Instead it has been squandered on bribing rent-seeking crony-capitalists to carpet the landscape with bat-chomping, bird-slicing eco-crucifixes to produce energy so intermittent that it is often unavailable when needed most (on very hot or very cold days when demand for air-conditioning or heating is high) and only too available on other occasions when a glut means that wind producers actually have to pay utilities to accept their unwanted energy. This phenomenon, known as “negative pricing”, is worthwhile to wind producers because they only get their subsidy credits when they are producing power (whether it is needed or not). But clearly not worthwhile to the people who end up footing the bill: ie taxpayers.

Hence the observation of serial wind energy “investor” Warren Buffett, who says: “We get a tax credit if we build a lot of wind farms. That’s the only reason to build them. They don’t make sense without the tax credit.”

But even this report may underestimate the real costs of wind energy. It doesn’t account for the damage caused to the health of people unfortunate enough to live near wind turbines, as acknowledged officially for the first time in this report produced for the Australian government.

Nor does it account for the environmental blight caused to the landscape – far greater, asChristopher Booker has reported, than that created by the greenies’ bete noire fracking.

When Professor David MacKay stepped down as chief scientific adviser to the Department of Energy and Climate Change (Decc) last year, he produced a report comparing the environmental impact of a fracking site to that of wind farms. Over 25 years, he calculated, a single “shale gas pad” covering five acres, with a drilling rig 85ft high (only needed for less than a year), would produce as much energy as 87 giant wind turbines, covering 5.6 square miles and visible up to 20 miles away. Yet, to the greenies, the first of these, capable of producing energy whenever needed, without a penny of subsidy, is anathema; while the second, producing electricity very unreliably in return for millions of pounds in subsidies, fills them with rapture.

Nor yet does it factor in the epic destruction of avian fauna caused by these supposedly eco-friendly devices. According to Oxford University ecologist Clive Hambler:

Every year in Spain alone — according to research by the conservation group SEO/Birdlife — between 6 and 18 million birds and bats are killed by wind farms. They kill roughly twice as many bats as birds. This breaks down as approximately 110–330 birds per turbine per year and 200–670 bats per year. And these figures may be conservative if you compare them to statistics published in December 2002 by the California Energy Commission: ‘In a summary of avian impacts at wind turbines by Benner et al (1993) bird deaths per turbine per year were as high as 309 in Germany and 895 in Sweden.’

Because wind farms tend to be built on uplands, where there are good thermals, they kill a disproportionate number of raptors. In Australia, the Tasmanian wedge-tailed eagle is threatened with global extinction by wind farms. In north America, wind farms are killing tens of thousands of raptors including golden eagles and America’s national bird, the bald eagle. In Spain, the Egyptian vulture is threatened, as too is the Griffon vulture — 400 of which were killed in one year at Navarra alone. Norwegian wind farms kill over ten white-tailed eagles per year and the population of Smøla has been severely impacted by turbines built against the opposition of ornithologists.

Nor are many other avian species safe. In North America, for example, proposed wind farms on the Great Lakes would kill large numbers of migratory songbirds. In the Atlantic, seabirds such as the Manx Shearwater are threatened. Offshore wind farms are just as bad as onshore ones, posing a growing threat to seabirds and migratory birds, and reducing habitat availability for marine birds (such as common scoter and eider ducks).

In Britain, Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne has belatedly acknowledged the problem – which his Prime Minister’s “greenest government ever” helped create – by promising to rein in green energy subsidies.

The cost of subsidising new wind farms is spiralling out of control, government sources have privately warned.

Officials admitted that so-called “green” energy schemes will require a staggering £9 billion a year in subsidies – paid for by customers – by 2020. This is £1.5 billion more than the maximum limit the coalition had originally planned.

The mounting costs will mean every household in the country is forced to pay an estimated £170 a year by the end of the decade to support the renewable electricity schemes that were promoted by the coalition.

But given the damage that has already done to the British landscape by wind turbines it may well be a case of shutting the stable door after the horse has bolted. Especially when you consider that this man has already made £100 million out of the scam and that there are no mechanisms to get any of that wasted money back.

Nobel Prize-Winner Speaks Out Against “Gov’t-Induced Climaphobia”!

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Climate Depot Exclusive

Dr. Ivar Giaever, a Nobel Prize-Winner for physics in 1973, declared his dissent on man-made global warming claims at a Nobel forum on July 1, 2015.

“I would say that basically global warming is a non-problem,” Dr. Giaever announced during his speech titled “Global Warming Revisited.”

Image result for ivar giaever

Giaever, a former professor at the School of Engineering and School of Science Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, received the 1973 physics Nobel for his work on quantum tunneling. Giaever delivered his remarks at the 65th Nobel Laureate Conference in Lindau, Germany, which drew 65 recipients of the prize. Giaever is also featured in the new documentary “Climate Hustle”, set for release in Fall 2015.

Giaever was one of President Obama’s key scientific supporters in 2008 when he joined over 70 Nobel Science Laureates in endorsing Obama in an October 29, 2008 open letter. Giaever signed his name to the letter which read in part: “The country urgently needs a visionary leader…We are convinced that Senator Barack Obama is such a leader, and we urge you to join us in supporting him.”

But seven years after signing the letter, Giaever now mocks President Obama for warning that “no challenge poses a greater threat to future generations than climate change”. Giaever called it a “ridiculous statement.”

“That is what he said. That is a ridiculous statement,” Giaever explained.

“I say this to Obama: Excuse me, Mr. President, but you’re wrong. Dead wrong,” Giaever said. (Watch Giaever’s full 30-minute July 1 speech here.)

“How can he say that? I think Obama is a clever person, but he gets bad advice. Global warming is all wet,” he added.

“Obama said last year that 2014 is hottest year ever. But it’s not true. It’s not the hottest,” Giaever noted. [Note: Other scientists have reversed themselves on climate change. See: Politically Left Scientist Dissents – Calls President Obama ‘delusional’ on global warming]

The Nobel physicist questioned the basis for rising carbon dioxide fears.

“When you have a theory and the theory does not agree with the experiment then you have to cut out the theory. You were wrong with the theory,” Giaever explained.

Global Warming ‘a new religion’

Giaever said his climate research was eye opening. “I was horrified by what I found” after researching the issue in 2012, he noted.

“Global warming really has become a new religion. Because you cannot discuss it. It’s not proper. It is like the Catholic Church.”

Concern Over ‘Successful’ UN Climate Treaty

“I am worried very much about the [UN] conference in Paris in November. I really worry about that. Because the [2009 UN] conference was in Copenhagen and that almost became a disaster but nothing got decided. But now I think that the people who are alarmist are in a very strong position,” Giaever said.

“The facts are that in the last 100 years we have measured the temperatures it has gone up .8 degrees and everything in the world has gotten better. So how can they say it’s going to get worse when we have the evidence? We live longer, better health, and better everything. But if it goes up another .8 degrees we are going to die I guess,” he noted.

“I would say that the global warming is basically a non-problem. Just leave it alone and it will take care of itself. It is almost very hard for me to understand why almost every government in Europe — except for Polish government — is worried about global warming. It must be politics.”

“So far we have left the world in better shape than when we arrived, and this will continue with one exception — we have to stop wasting huge, I mean huge amounts of money on global warming. We have to do that or that may take us backwards. People think that is sustainable but it is not sustainable.

On Global Temperatures & CO2

Giaever noted that global temperatures have halted for the past 18 plus years. [Editor’s Note: Climate Depot is honored that Giaever used an exclusive Climate Depot graph showing the RSS satellite data of an 18 year plus standstill in temperatures at 8:48 min. into video.]

The Great Pause lengthens again: Global temperature update: The Pause is now 18 years 3 months (219 months)

Giaever accused NASA and federal scientists of “fiddling” with temperatures.

“They can fiddle with the data. That is what NASA does.”

“You cannot believe the people — the alarmists — who say CO2 is a terrible thing. Its not true, its absolutely not true,” Giaever continued while showing a slide asking: ‘Do you believe CO2 is a major climate gas?’

“I think the temperature has been amazingly stable. What is the optimum temperature of the earth? Is that the temperature we have right now? That would be a miracle. No one has told me what the optimal temperature of the earth should be,” he said.

“How can you possibly measure the average temperature for the whole earth and come up with a fraction of a degree. I think the average temperature of earth is equal to the emperor’s new clothes. How can you think it can measure this to a fraction of a degree? It’s ridiculous,” he added.

Silencing Debate

Giaever accused Nature Magazine of “wanting to cash in on the [climate] fad.”

“My friends said I should not make fun of Nature because then they won’t publish my papers,” he explained.

“No one mentions how important CO2 is for plant growth. It’s a wonderful thing. Plants are really starving. They don’t talk about how good it is for agriculture that CO2 is increasing,” he added.

Extreme Weather claims

“The other thing that amazes me is that when you talk about climate change it is always going to be the worst. It’s got to be better someplace for heaven’s sake. It can’t always be to the worse,” he said.

“Then comes the clincher. If climate change does not scare people we can scare people talking about the extreme weather,” Giaever said.

“For the last hundred years, the ocean has risen 20 cm — but for the previous hundred years the ocean also has risen 20 cm and for the last 300 years, the ocean has also risen 20 cm per 100 years. So there is no unusual rise in sea level. And to be sure you understand that I will repeat it. There is no unusual rise in sea level,” Giaever said.

“If anything we have entered period of low hurricanes. These are the facts,” he continued.

“You don’t’ have to even be a scientist to look at these figures and you understand what it says,” he added.

“Same thing is for tornadoes. We are in a low period on in U.S.” (See: Extreme weather failing to follow ‘global warming’ predictions: Hurricanes, Tornadoes, Droughts, Floods, Wildfires, all see no trend or declining trends)

Media Hype

“What people say is not true. I spoke to a journalist with [German newspaper Die Welt yesterday…and I asked how many articles he published that says global warming is a good thing. He said I probably don’t publish them at all. Its always a negative. Always,” Giever said.

Energy Poverty

“They say refugees are trying to cross the Mediterranean. These people are not fleeing global warming, they are fleeing poverty,” he noted.

“If you want to help Africa, help them out of poverty, do not try to build solar cells and windmills,” he added.

“Are you wasting money on solar cells and windmills rather than helping people? These people have been misled. It costs money in the end to that. Windmills cost money.”

“Cheap energy is what made us so rich and now suddenly people don’t want it anymore.”

“People say oil companies are the big bad people. I don’t understand why they are worse than the windmill companies. General Electric makes windmills. They don’t tell you that they are not economical because they make money on it. But nobody protests GE, but they protest Exxon who makes oil,” he noted.

#

Dr. Ivar Giaever resigned as a Fellow from the American Physical Society (APS) on September 13, 2011 in disgust over the group’s promotion of man-made global warming fears.

In addition to Giaever, other prominent scientists have resigned from APS over its stance on man-made global warming. See: Prominent Physicist Hal Lewis Resigns from APS: ‘Climategate was a fraud on a scale I have never seen…Effect on APS position: None. None at all. This is not science’

Other prominent scientists are speaking up skeptically about man-made global warming claims. See: Prominent Scientist Dissents: Renowned glaciologist declares global warming is ‘going to be a big plus’ – Fears ‘Frightening’ Cooling – Warns scientists are ‘prostituting their science’

Giaever has become a vocal dissenter from the alleged “consensus” regarding man-made climate fears. He was featured prominently in the 2009 U.S. Senate Report of (then) Over 700 Dissenting International Scientists from Man-made global warming. Giaever, who is a member of the National Academy of Sciences and won the 1973 Nobel Prize for Physics. (Watch news coverage here.)

Giaever was also one of more than 100 co-signers in a March 30, 2009 letter to President Obama that was critical of his stance on global warming. See: More than 100 scientists rebuke Obama as ‘simply incorrect’ on global warming: ‘We, the undersigned scientists, maintain that the case for alarm regarding climate change is grossly overstated’

Giaever is featured on page 89 of the 321 page of Climate Depot’s more than 1000 dissenting scientist report (updated from U.S. Senate Report). Dr. Giaever was quoted declaring himself a man-made global warming dissenter. “I am a skeptic…Global warming has become a new religion,” Giaever declared. “I am Norwegian, should I really worry about a little bit of warming? I am unfortunately becoming an old man. We have heard many similar warnings about the acid rain 30 years ago and the ozone hole 10 years ago or deforestation but the humanity is still around,” Giaever explained. “Global warming has become a new religion. We frequently hear about the number of scientists who support it. But the number is not important: only whether they are correct is important. We don’t really know what the actual effect on the global temperature is. There are better ways to spend the money,” he concluded.

Giaever also told the New York Times in 2010 that global warming “can’t be discussed — just like religion…there is NO unusual rise in the ocean level, so what where and what is the big problem?”

Related Links:

Exclusive: Nobel Prize-Winning Physicist Who Endorsed Obama Dissents! Resigns from American Physical Society Over Group’s Promotion of Man-Made Global Warming – Nobel Laureate Dr. Ivar Giaever: ‘The temperature (of the Earth) has been amazingly stable, and both human health and happiness have definitely improved in this ‘warming’ period.’

Nobel Prize Winning Physicist Ivar Giaever: ‘Is climate change pseudoscience?…the answer is: absolutely’ — Derides global warming as a ‘religion’

2012: Nobel Prize Winning Physicist Ivar Giaever: ‘Is climate change pseudoscience?…the answer is: absolutely’ — Derides global warming as a ‘religion’ – ‘He derided the Nobel committees for awarding Al Gore and R.K. Pachauri a peace prize, and called agreement with the evidence of climate change a ‘religion’… the measurement of the global average temperature rise of 0.8 degrees over 150 years remarkably unlikely to be accurate, because of the difficulties with precision for such measurements—and small enough not to matter in any case: “What does it mean that the temperature has gone up 0.8 degrees? Probably nothing.”

When Science IS Fiction: Nobel Physics laureate Ivar Giaever has called global warming (aka. climate change) a ‘new religion’ -When scientists emulate spiritual prophets, they overstep all ethical bounds. In doing so, they forfeit our confidence’

American Physical Society Statement on Climate Change: No Longer ‘Incontrovertible,’ But Still Unacceptable

Skeptic win… American Physical Society removes ‘incontrovertible’ from climate change position
Politically Left Scientist Dissents – Calls President Obama ‘delusional’ on global warming

SPECIAL REPORT: More Than 1000 International Scientists Dissent Over Man-Made Global Warming Claims – Challenge UN IPCC & Gore – Climate Depot Exclusive: 321-page ‘Consensus Buster’ Report

Another Prominent Scientist Dissents! Fmr. NASA Scientist Dr. Les Woodcock ‘Laughs’ at Global Warming – ‘Global warming is nonsense’ Top Prof. Declares

Green Guru James Lovelock on Climate Change: ‘I don’t think anybody really knows what’s happening. They just guess’ – Lovelock Reverses Himself on Global Warming

More Than 1000 International Scientists Dissent Over Man-Made Global Warming Claims – Challenge UN IPCC & Gore

Top Swedish Climate Scientist Says Warming Not Noticeable: ‘The warming we have had last a 100 years is so small that if we didn’t have climatologists to measure it we wouldn’t have noticed it at all’ – Award-Winning Dr. Lennart Bengtsson, formerly of UN IPCC: ‘We Are Creating Great Anxiety Without It Being Justified’

‘High Priestess of Global Warming’ No More! Former Warmist Climate Scientist Judith Curry Admits To Being ‘Duped Into Supporting IPCC’ – ‘If the IPCC is dogma, then count me in as a heretic’

German Meteorologist reverses belief in man-made global warming: Now calls idea that CO2 Can Regulate Climate ‘Sheer Absurdity’ — ‘Ten years ago I simply parroted what the IPCC told us’

UN Scientists Who Have Turned on the UN IPCC & Man-Made Climate Fears — A Climate Depot Flashback Report – Warming fears are the “worst scientific scandal in the history…When people come to know what the truth is, they will feel deceived by science and scientists.” – UN IPCC Japanese Scientist Dr. Kiminori Itoh, an award-winning PhD environmental physical chemist.

‘Some of the most formidable opponents of climate hysteria include politically liberal physics Nobel laureate, Ivar Giaever; Freeman Dyson; father of the Gaia Hypothesis, James Lovelock — ‘Left-center chemist, Fritz Vahrenholt, one of the fathers of the German environmental movement’

Flashback: Left-wing Env. Scientist Bails Out Of Global Warming Movement: Declares it a ‘corrupt social phenomenon…strictly an imaginary problem of the 1st World middleclass’

Read more: http://www.climatedepot.com/2015/07/06/nobel-prize-winning-scientist-who-endorsed-obama-now-says-prez-is-ridiculous-dead-wrong-on-global-warming/#ixzz3fDoFYSSF

When Bill Gates Says Wind is A Waste of Time, and Money, He Knows What He’s Talking About!

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Bill Gates says Subsidies for Wind Power a Pointless Waste: Time to Back Nuclear & R&D on Systems that Can Actually Work

July 7, 2015 by

Bill-Gates

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Gates: Renewable energy can’t do the job. Gov should switch green subsidies into R&D
‘Only way to a positive scenario is innovation’
The Register
Lewis Page
26 Jun 2015

Retired software kingpin and richest man in the world Bill Gates has given his opinion that today’s renewable-energy technologies aren’t a viable solution for reducing CO2 levels, and governments should divert their green subsidies into R&D aimed at better answers.

Gates expressed his views in an interview given to the Financial Timesyesterday, saying that the cost of using current renewables such as solar panels and windfarms to produce all or most power would be “beyond astronomical”. At present very little power comes from renewables: in the UK just 5.2 per cent, the majority of which is dubiously-green biofuel burning1 rather than renewable ‘leccy – and even so, energy bills havesurged and will surge further as a result.

In Bill Gates’ view, the answer is for governments to divert the massive sums of money which are currently funnelled to renewables owners to R&D instead. This would offer a chance of developing low-carbon technologies which actually can keep the lights on in the real world.

“The only way you can get to the very positive scenario is by great innovation,” he told the pink ‘un. “Innovation really does bend the curve.”

Gates says he’ll personally put his money where his mouth is. He’s apparently invested $1bn of his own cash in low-carbon energy R&D already, and “over the next five years, there’s a good chance that will double,” he said.

The ex-software overlord stated that the Guardian’s scheme of everyone refusing to invest in oil and gas companies would have “little impact”. He also poured scorn on another notion oft-touted as a way of making renewable energy more feasible, that of using batteries to store intermittent supplies from solar or wind.

“There’s no battery technology that’s even close to allowing us to take all of our energy from renewables,” he said, pointing out – as we’ve noted on these pages before – that it’s necessary “to deal not only with the 24-hour cycle but also with long periods of time where it’s cloudy and you don’t have sun or you don’t have wind.”

So what are the possible answers, in Gates’ view?

Gates is already well known as a proponent of improved nuclear power tech, and it seems he still is. He mentioned the travelling-wave reactors under development by his firm TerraPower, which are intended to run on depleted uranium stockpiled after use in conventional reactors. He also spoke of methods of using solar power to produce liquid hydrocarbons, which, unlike electricity, can be stored practicably in useful amounts: “one of the few energy storage things that works at scale”, as he put it.

Gates also spoke of the radical plan of high-altitude wind farming using kite-balloons flying high up in the jet stream – though he admitted that that one was something of a long shot.

In Gates’ view, decades from now a few of today’s new-energy companies will have become massive and early investors will have reaped the sort of rewards that he, Paul Allen and Steve Ballmer have from Microsoft. But many others won’t be so lucky.

“Now there’s a tonne of software companies whose names will never be remembered,” he told the FT interviewers.

Analysis

Gates has said a lot of this before. The main new thing is the firm assertion that renewable energy technology as it now is has no chance of powering a reasonably numerous and well-off human race.

This is actually a very simple thing to work out, and just about anybody numerate who thinks about the subject honestly comes to the same conclusion – examples include your correspondent, Google renewables experts, global-warming daddy James Hansen, even your more honest hardline greens (they typically think that the answer is for the human race to become a lot less numerous and well-off).

Unfortunately a lot of people aren’t numerate and/or aren’t honest, so it’s far from sure that the colossal subsidies pumped into today’s useless renewables will get diverted into R&D which could produce something worthwhile.

In the UK at least this would be quite difficult, as the subsidies are not actually subsidies as such – no tax money is paid out to windfarmers and solar-panellists from the Treasury.

Rather, the system works by artificially pumping up the price of ‘leccy and gas and channelling the extra cash – minus various margins for various people involved – to the windfarmers and panel people, such that they get paid vastly more than the market price of the power they produce.

A lot of people – including the government at times – prefer to pretend that this isn’t happening at all: that prices are going up because of the gas market, or corporate profiteering, or something, and that green policy isactually saving people money in some way.

So given that officially nobody is paying any more money and therefore there aren’t any subsidies, they probably can’t be diverted to anywhere. The newly-reelected Chancellor is trying to stop them getting bigger, but he probably won’t manage to seriously reduce them overall, let alone re-purpose them.

Bootnote

1DUKES chapter 1 (pdf page 1) and chapter 6 (pdf page 4)
The Register

turbine collapse 9

How the Wind Scam Is Destroying Europe’s Economy….Do We want to be Next?

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Europe’s Wind Powered Recipe for Economic Disaster

July 4, 2015 by

spain unemployment

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Lessons from Europe: Recipe for a high-cost energy system
Communities Digital News
Steve Goreham
26 May 2015

CHICAGO, May 26, 2015 — While President Obama promotes renewable energy and members of Congress argue about energy policy, a renewable energy disaster is unfolding in Europe. Driven by a desire to halt climate change, Europe has created a high-cost energy system where everyone loses. U.S. policy leaders should learn from the debacle occurring overseas.

European energy policy today is dominated by the European Climate Change Program (ECCP), which was established by the European Community in 2000. The program called for the nations of Europe to adopt measures to cut greenhouse gas emissions. The goal was for Europe to collectively meet the targets of the Kyoto Protocol climate treaty signed in 1997.

The ECCP was based on two assumptions. The first was that changes to national energy systems were needed to fight global warming. Second, that coal, gas and oil fuels would become more expensive, allowing renewable energy to compete. But policies to promote renewables resulted in substantially higher electricity prices for Europe.

Europe used subsidies and mandates to promote renewables. Feed-in tariffs were enacted in most nations, providing a payment to homeowners and businesses for electricity fed into the grid from solar or wind facilities. Governments paid a fixed subsidy of four to 10 times the wholesale electricity price, guaranteed for up to 20 years, for generated electricity.

Electricity from renewables is also granted grid priority. Utilities are required to accept wind and solar-generated electricity as a first priority, regardless of market demand. Output from traditional coal, natural gas and nuclear plants is scaled back or shut down when renewable output is high. Wholesale electricity prices, once driven by market demand, are today dominated by the weather. When the wind blows and the sun shines, large amounts of electricity are dumped onto the grid from wind and solar installations, forcing wholesale electricity prices negative.

Other factors added to the growing debacle. In 2011, Germanyannounced a complete phase-out of nuclear power in the wake of the Fukushima disaster in Japan, closing nuclear power plants and straining the electrical system of Europe’s largest economy. In addition, Germany and France banned hydraulic fracturing, ensuring that European natural gas prices will remain high for the next decade.

The results of Europe’s green energy measures have been bizarre. Feed-in tariffs in Germany stimulated more than one million rooftop solar installations. But Germany is not exactly the sun belt. The latitude of central Germany is the same as that of Calgary, Canada. As a result, German solar installations generate electricity at less than 10 percent of rated output. Over a million solar installations provide only 6 percent of Germany’s electricity and 1 percent of the nation’s energy. For this solar miracle, German citizens are obligated to pay over $400 billion in current and future payments to solar providers through higher electricity rates.

Denmark erected over 5,000 wind turbine towers, one for every thousand Danish citizens. Turbines blanket the nation, providing a beautiful view of a 300- to 500-foot tall tower from almost every house, farm, field, forest and beach. But the turbines produce only 1.3 gigawatts each of electricity on average. All could be replaced by a single large conventional power plant. Today, Denmark has the highest electricity prices of the developed nations.

Europe has created an energy system where everyone loses. Consumers, industry, traditional power plants and even renewable energy companies are now losing. Even though wholesale electricity prices are falling, consumer electricity prices have doubled over the last 10 years due to large subsidy payments to renewable companies. Nations with the largest percentage of renewable energy also have the highest electricity prices.

Citizens of Spain pay 23 eurocents per kilowatt-hour, three times the U.S. price, and citizens of Germany and Denmark pay more than 25 eurocents per kilowatt-hour, four times the U.S. price.

European industrial companies are also big losers. French firms pay more than twice the U.S. electricity rate and German firms pay three times the rate. European industrial electricity rates have risen more than 50 percent since 2007, while U.S. industrial rates have been flat. European firms also pay double the U.S. price for natural gas. European chemical firms are now building plants in America to utilize low-cost ethane from shale fracking, a technology not available in Europe.

Traditional European electrical power companies are losing as well. The wholesale price of electricity is down 50 percent in the last five years and conventional plants can no longer break even. An example is the Irsching high-efficiency natural gas plant in Germany. Built in 2010, it can operate at 60 percent efficiency. But the plant is not profitable as a backup to renewables. In March, the owners announced a shutdown of the plant.

Last year, E.ON, the largest German utility, suffered its first loss in more than 50 years. Both E.ON and Swedish utility Vattenfall have announced plans to exit their conventional power plant business in Germany in favor of renewables. Magnus Hall, president of Vattenfall, stated last year, “It makes it difficult to see how you could invest in conventional generation under these circumstances.”

Finally, even renewable energy companies are now losing. European governments have realized that they can no longer afford the green energy revolution. Subsidies have recently been cut in Belgium, Germany, Greece, Italy, Spain and the United Kingdom. In Germany, solar employment dropped 50 percent and many renewable companies declared bankruptcy. Spain ended its feed-in tariff subsidy and placed a cap on renewable industry profits, resulting in 75,000 lost renewable jobs and a 90 percent reduction in solar installations.

U.S. energy policy makers should learn from Europe’s energy experience and pursue sensible energy economics.

Steve Goreham is executive director of the Climate Science Coalition of America and author of the book The Mad, Mad, Mad World of Climatism: Mankind and Climate Change Mania.
Communities Digital News

economics101

“Ellesworth American” Editorial – Speaks the Truth About the Wind Scam!

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Another reason to just say “No”

July 3, 2015 on Editorials, Opinion

Several good reasons exist to oppose the ongoing proliferation of giant windmills on Maine’s ridges and mountains. Recently, the Maine Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife (DIF&W) added yet another one in its recommendation that the Weaver Wind farm proposed by SunEdison in the towns of Eastbrook and Osborn be rejected. The department cited what it considers unacceptable risks to birds and bats migrating through the Hancock County region where one wind farm already is operating and another has been permitted but not yet constructed.

The Bull Hill Wind farm includes 19 turbines, each 476 feet tall, in Township 16. SunEdison’s Hancock Wind farm in Townships 16 and 22, already permitted, will add 18 more of the three-bladed monsters. Those two projects were enough to cause staff at the Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) to voice concerns, in a June 15 analysis, about their cumulative effect on the bird and vulnerable bat populations in the area. The Weaver Wind farm would introduce 23 more turbines, each nearly 600 feet tall, into the mix. The DEP analysis made reference to DIF&W concerns “with the risks to migrating birds and bats” posed by the proposed Weaver Wind project. “Avian passage rate, which is an index to mortality risk, was the highest record for any project in northern New England and fatality estimates of birds at the nearby Bull Hill Wind Project also were the highest recorded in the region,” said the fish and wildlife department.

Some may regard the mortality risk to birds and bats posed by the windmill blades as inconsequential. Taken by itself, that risk may seem a small price to pay for wind farm development. But there are other compelling arguments against wind energy projects and the state policy that encourages them.

Much of the scenic beauty for which Maine is so widely known will be despoiled. The stated 2,700-Megawatt goal of Maine’s Wind Energy Act would require as many as 1,500 wind turbines, each hundreds of feet tall, with accompanying access roads and new transmission lines, on up to 300 miles of Maine’s hills and mountains. Those transmission lines, to carry the electricity that could be provided by a single, high-quality conventional generator, will add billions of dollars to New England electric bills.

Maine already is one of the cleanest states in the nation for CO2 emissions and the massive buildup of wind farms will not improve that, since almost 90 percent of our CO2 emissions are from sources other than electricity generation. The myth that wind will “get us off oil” is just that. Oil accounts for just two percent of Maine’s electricity generation.

But there is a major wind generation flaw — one that goes unaddressed by wind power advocates: it is both intermittent and unpredictable. It will not — indeed, it cannot — replace constant capacity generators that meet peak load and base load demands. A 2010 New England Wind Integration Study stated, “Wind’s intermittent nature would require increased reserves, ensuring that there are other generation options when the wind isn’t blowing.”

It’s unfortunate that such concerns fall largely on deaf ears in the small communities where wind farms are proposed. Former Governor John Baldacci and the Legislature did much to assure a warm welcome for such projects by requiring that developers provide thousands of dollars in ongoing community benefit funds for public purposes in such communities. Added sweeteners are the resulting temporary construction jobs, payments to property owners where the turbines are based and the very few permanent jobs that are created  — all of which benefit a handful of local residents while undermining Maine’s quality of place and imposing unnecessary extra statewide costs on taxpayers and ratepayers.

Notwithstanding the rosy and patently false picture painted by wind farm developers and their supporters, the costs and impacts of hundreds of land-based industrial wind turbines vastly exceed the minimal benefits. And despite all the hype, it remains likely that wind never will be more than a marginal supplier of electricity.

Bill Gates Admits that Wind & Solar are Not Suitable As An Energy Source… Spend $ On R&D!

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Switch green subsidies into R&D

It is interesting that there is no US media coverage of this perspective from Bill Gates.  This article comes from the UK.  The UK doesn’t utilize direct taxpayer subsidies like the USA, but instead has forced a “Feed-in Tariff” on the grid, forcing electricity costs to skyrocket.  This, in turn, has led to poor and working class people to endure what has been termed “energy poverty” such that they must sacrifice heavily on other things to try to keep the lights on.

Excerpts from the article:

“Retired software kingpin and richest man in the world Bill Gates has given his opinion that today’s renewable-energy technologies aren’t a viable solution for reducing CO2 levels, and governments should divert their green subsidies into R&D aimed at better answers.”

Gates refers to the cost of meeting electricity needs on renewables as “beyond astronomical”

“In Bill Gates’ view, the answer is for governments to divert the massive sums of money which are currently funneled to renewables owners to R&D instead. This would offer a chance of developing low-carbon technologies which actually can keep the lights on in the real world.”

Bill Gates scorns those ideologues who want to end all fossil fuels and run the world on wind & solar power in this interesting article.  Here is the link:

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/06/26/gates_renewable_energy_cant…