not financially feasible

Wind is a Novelty Energy Source. Not Suitable for Everyday Use!

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Wind Power: Not Even Enough for a Cuppa

July 22, 2014 by  

sevensisters_2980822b

Giant wind farm will cost millions and ruin Brighton view
Christopher Booker
The Telegraph
19 July 2014

What good will come from the colossal wind turbines to be put up off the Sussex coast?

Over the next four years, visitors to Brighton and the Sussex coast are in for a shock. Visible all the way from Beachy Head to the Isle of Wight, they will see 100 or more colossal wind turbines rising up to 700ft into the sky, nearly 200ft higher than Blackpool Tower. These will form one of the world’s largest wind farms, covering more than 60sq miles of the English Channel.

If they wonder what purpose is served by this vast industrial installation, last week given the go-ahead by Ed Davey, the Energy and Climate Change Secretary, they should not be fooled by the claim of the Rampion wind farm’s developers, the German energy giant E.on, that it will have the “capacity” to generate 700 megawatts (MW) of electricity. Buried in small print on its website, it admits that, thanks to the intermittency of the wind, the actual output of this £2 billion scheme will at best average only 240MW. To see how derisory this is, the latest gas-fired power station opened by another German firm, RWE, at Pembroke two years ago, at only half the capital cost, £1 billion, can reliably produce nearly 10 times as much electricity, 2,000MW, all the time.

Of course, no one would dream of building such a gargantuan wind factory as Rampion if it were not for Mr Davey’s ludicrous subsidy system. It may earn E.on some £325million a year. But £220 million of that will be subsidy, paid for by all of us through our electricity bills. Where the power from that Pembroke plant is costing us only £50 per megawatt hour, for that fed to the grid from Brighton we shall pay £155 per megawatt hour, more than three times as much.

Mr Davey happily brushes aside the immense damage his scheme will inflict on the natural environment, from the thousands of seabirds that will be killed by those whirling blades, to that wrought by the 15-mile long trench, up to 40 yards wide, needed to bury the huge cables connecting his windmills to the grid, much of it across the South Downs National Park. Davey may be happy to see the billions of pounds of profit from all this being repatriated to Germany. But he says nothing about the electricity that will be needed to provide back-up for the two-thirds of time, on average, when the wind is not blowing. And that, of course, will have to come from the fossil fuels he so likes to scorn. Future generations looking out to sea from Brighton will be astonished that we could have fallen for such insanity.

kettles

* When I recently observed that the output of a 50 kilowatt (KW) windmill near me on the Mendips would, in return for a £17,000-a-year subsidy, average only 13KW, I said this would be enough to boil just 13 kettles. This was based on our own old 1KW kettle. Since modern versions are now 3KW, I should have said four kettles.
The Telegraph

Novelty Energy at Best…Wind & Solar are NOT Making the Cut!

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Germany’s $412 Billion Green Energy Plan Meets Harsh Reality

Germany has been rapidly increasing its green energy production but hasn’t gotten the results it planned.

The Switzerland-based FAA Financial Advisory AG looked at the consequences of Germany’s “Energiewende” and found that the $412 billion effort did “not provide net savings to consumers, but rather a net increase in costs to consumers and other stakeholders.”

“Over the last decade, well-intentioned policymakers in Germany and other European countries have created renewable energy policies that have slowly revealed themselves to be unsustainable, resulting in profound, unintended consequences for all industry stakeholders,” reads FAA’s report which was prepared for the Edison Electric Institute and other European groups.

“Accordingly, the United States and other countries should carefully assess the lessons learned in Germany, with respect to generous subsidy programs and relatively rapid, large-scale deployment and integration of renewable energy into the power system,” FAA warns.

Germany was once touted by President Obama as a shining example of green energy policy. The country aims to get 80 percent of its power from green energy by 2050 in an effort to drastically cut its carbon dioxide emissions, which scientists say cause global warming.

A mix of subsidies and production quotas have allowed the country to rapidly expand its green energy production, growing from 4.3 percent of total energy consumption in 1990 to a whopping 23.5 percent in 2012 (this includes hydroelectric power). But the cost has been astronomical to consumers.

Consumer energy bills have been spiking for years to the point where electricity in the country has been called a “luxury good” by major media outlets. German households have seen electricity prices more than double in the last decade “increasing from €0.14/kilowatt hour (kWh) ($0.18) in 2000 to more than €0.29/kWh ($0.38) in 2013,” according to FAA. This is compared to U.S. household prices, which have been stable at $0.13 per kilowatt hour over the last decade.

FAA also reports that German consumers will pay $31.1 billion for energy subsidies this year alone. Furthermore, in the past five years Germany has suffered $67.6 billion in net export losses from high energy costs — a huge blow to an export-led economy like Germany.

“While these policies have created an impressive roll-out of renewable energy resources, they have also clearly generated disequilibrium in the power markets, resulting in significant increases in energy prices to most users, as well as value destruction for all stakeholders: consumers, renewable companies, electric utilities, financial institutions, and investors,” FAA notes.

“From 2005 to 2011, Germany’s CO2 emissions declined by 99 million metric tons, or 12 percent,” reports FAA. “Yet, since 2009, a number of factors have led to an increase in German emissions: low prices for CO2 certificates, low coal prices … larger power generation needs due to the increase in electricity consumption in response to the economic recovery, the decommissioning of nuclear plants, and the increase in power exports.”

While Germany’s emissions have been increasing in recent years, the U.S. has seen carbon dioxide dramatically reduced because of the increased use of natural gas brought about by hydraulic fracturing.

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Tags: Germany, green energy

Read more: http://dailycaller.com/2014/07/21/germanys-412-billion-green-energy-plan-meets-harsh-reality/#ixzz38A4TlsLU

Wind and Solar Are Not Environmentally Friendly, Or Financially Feasible

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Big Wind’s Dirty Little Secret: Toxic Lakes and Radioactive Waste

OCTOBER 23, 2013
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The wind industry promotes itself as better for the environment than traditional energy sources such as coal and natural gas. For example, the industry claimsthat wind energy reduces carbon dioxide emissions that contribute to global warming.

But there are many ways to skin a cat. As IER pointed out last week, even if wind curbs CO2 emissions, wind installations injure, maim, and kill hundreds of thousands of birds each year in clear violation of federal law. Any marginal reduction in emissions comes at the expense of protected bird species, including bald and golden eagles. The truth is, all energy sources impact the natural environment in some way, and life is full of necessary trade-offs. The further truth is that affordable, abundant energy has made life for billions of people much better than it ever was.

Another environmental trade-off concerns the materials necessary to construct wind turbines. Modern wind turbines depend on rare earth minerals mined primarily from China. Unfortunately, given federal regulations in the U.S. that restrict rare earth mineral development and China’s poor record of environmental stewardship, the process of extracting these minerals imposes wretched environmental and public health impacts on local communities. It’s a story Big Wind doesn’t want you to hear.

Rare Earth Horrors

Manufacturing wind turbines is a resource-intensive process. A typical wind turbine contains more than 8,000 different components, many of which are made from steel, cast iron, and concrete. One such component are magnets made from neodymium and dysprosium, rare earth minerals mined almost exclusively in China, which controls 95 percent of the world’s supply of rare earth minerals.

Simon Parry from the Daily Mail traveled to Baotou, China, to see the mines, factories, and dumping grounds associated with China’s rare-earths industry. What he found was truly haunting:

As more factories sprang up, the banks grew higher, the lake grew larger and the stench and fumes grew more overwhelming.

‘It turned into a mountain that towered over us,’ says Mr Su. ‘Anything we planted just withered, then our animals started to sicken and die.’

People too began to suffer. Dalahai villagers say their teeth began to fall out, their hair turned white at unusually young ages, and they suffered from severe skin and respiratory diseases. Children were born with soft bones and cancer rates rocketed.

Official studies carried out five years ago in Dalahai village confirmed there were unusually high rates of cancer along with high rates of osteoporosis and skin and respiratory diseases. The lake’s radiation levels are ten times higher than in the surrounding countryside, the studies found.

As the wind industry grows, these horrors will likely only get worse. Growth in the wind industry could raise demand for neodymium by as much as 700 percent over the next 25 years, while demand for dysprosium could increase by 2,600 percent, according to a recent MIT study. The more wind turbines pop up in America, the more people in China are likely to suffer due to China’s policies. Or as the Daily Mail put it, every turbine we erect contributes to “a vast man-made lake of poison in northern China.”

Big Wind’s Dependence on China’s “Toxic Lakes”

The wind industry requires an astounding amount of rare earth minerals, primarily neodymium and dysprosium, which are key components of the magnets used in modern wind turbines. Developed by GE in 1982, neodymium magnets are manufactured in many shapes and sizes for numerous purposes. One of their most common uses is in the generators of wind turbines.

Estimates of the exact amount of rare earth minerals in wind turbines vary, but in any case the numbers are staggering. According to the Bulletin of Atomic Sciences, a 2 megawatt (MW) wind turbine contains about 800 pounds of neodymium and 130 pounds of dysprosium. The MIT study cited above estimates that a 2 MW wind turbine contains about 752 pounds of rare earth minerals.

To quantify this in terms of environmental damages, consider that mining one ton of rare earth minerals produces about one ton of radioactive waste, according to the Institute for the Analysis of Global Security. In 2012, the U.S. added a record 13,131 MW of wind generating capacity. That means that between 4.9 million pounds (using MIT’s estimate) and 6.1 million pounds (using the Bulletin of Atomic Science’s estimate) of rare earths were used in wind turbines installed in 2012. It also means that between 4.9 million and 6.1 million pounds of radioactive waste were created to make these wind turbines.

For perspective, America’s nuclear industry produces between 4.4 million and 5 million pounds of spent nuclear fuel each year. That means the U.S. wind industry may well have created more radioactive waste last year than our entire nuclear industry produced in spent fuel. In this sense, the nuclear industry seems to be doing more with less: nuclear energy comprised about one-fifth of America’s electrical generation in 2012, while wind accounted for just 3.5 percent of all electricity generated in the United States.

While nuclear storage remains an important issue for many U.S. environmentalists, few are paying attention to the wind industry’s less efficient and less transparent use of radioactive material via rare earth mineral excavation in China. The U.S. nuclear industry employs numerous safeguards to ensure that spent nuclear fuel is stored safely. In 2010, the Obama administration withdrew funding for Yucca Mountain, the only permanent storage site for the country’s nuclear waste authorized by federal law. Lacking a permanent solution, nuclear energy companies have used specially designed pools at individual reactor sites. On the other hand, China has cut mining permits and imposed export quotas, but is only now beginning to draft rules to prevent illegal mining and reduce pollution. America may not have a perfect solution to nuclear storage, but it sure beats disposing of radioactive material in toxic lakes like near Baotou, China.

Not only do rare earths create radioactive waste residue, but according to the Chinese Society for Rare Earths, “one ton of calcined rare earth ore generates 9,600 to 12,000 cubic meters (339,021 to 423,776 cubic feet) of waste gas containing dust concentrate, hydrofluoric acid, sulfur dioxide, and sulfuric acid, [and] approximately 75 cubic meters (2,649 cubic feet) of acidic wastewater.”

Conclusion

Wind energy is not nearly as “clean” and “good for the environment” as the wind lobbyists want you to believe. The wind industry is dependent on rare earth minerals imported from China, the procurement of which results in staggering environmental damages. As one environmentalist told the Daily Mail, “There’s not one step of the rare earth mining process that is not disastrous for the environment.” That the destruction is mostly unseen and far-flung does not make it any less damaging.

All forms of energy production have some environmental impact. However, it is disingenuous for wind lobbyists to hide the impacts of their industry while highlighting the impacts of others. From illegal bird deaths to radioactive waste, wind energy poses serious environmental risks that the wind lobby would prefer you never know about. This makes it easier for them when arguing for more subsidies, tax credits, mandates and government supports.

IER Policy Associates Travis Fisher and Alex Fitzsimmons authored this post. 

What Climate Alarmists Will Do, To Try To Scare You!

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July 21, 2014

Faulty and False Global Temperature Readings

By Jonathan Moseley
 

Temperature measurements that are the basis for claims of global warming are defective and wrong.  That’s the finding of a scientific team led by Anthony Watts.  Watts is a meteorologist, editor of “Watts Up With That,” founder of the “Surface Station Project,” and my personal hero for his style and bravado.

When global warming alarmists claim that the Earth is warming or that this was the hottest (year, month) ever, they are totaling up readings from rather simplistic, low-budget, small, automated weather stations scattered around the nation and the world.  But about 90% of those weather stations violate the officially-published standards required for accurate measurements.

In 2007, meteorologist Anthony Watts stumbled onto an official weather station, where hot air was blowing onto the sensor from an air-conditioner’s exhaust, located on an asphalt parking lot heated by the sun. 

Curious, Watts started the “Surface Station Project” to survey weather stations around the world.  The “crowd sourced” response from trained scientists documented with photographs that about 90% of the weather stations are faulty.  This sparked the “How Not to Measure Temperature” series highlighting individual faulty stations.  Note that when Watts and his team refer to finding “siting issues” with the stations, you should read that as them discovering “royal screw ups.”

Watts was a presenter at the 9th International Conference on Climate Change (ICCC-9) organized by the Heartland Institute, held in Las Vegas, Nevada.  Watts explained in a call in to our radio show, Conservative Commandos, from the conference on July 9, 2014, that a weather station (about the size of a modest camera tripod) standing next to a brick building will give inaccurate readings, because the brick building will radiate heat at night absorbed during the day.  This raises the average temperature over 24 hours above what a properly sited station far away from any building or heat source would have registered.  In other cases, air conditioning exhaust, heat from factories, and even jet exhaust at airports blow onto the weather stations measuring temperature.

Furthermore, the errors have changed over time.  Airports were originally located out in the countryside away from cities, to serve small propeller planes.  Today, those airports are surrounded by urban sprawl, with lots of concrete and asphalt creating a local “heat effect” environment that is artificially hotter than the countryside that once was there.  And those airports are now serving large jet-engine aircraft spewing much-hotter exhaust in the direction of badly sited temperature stations.  Therefore, the changing local conditions have increased the temperature readings over time, having nothing to do with global climate. 

Similarly, installations of ever-more-elaborate equipment increase temperature readings over the decades.  More-powerful, modern industrial air conditioning units on the roofs of office buildings blow hot air on to the rooftop weather stations near by.  The growth of cell phone facilities has caused low-budget locations like a rural fire station to bring in extra revenue by hosting both a cell phone transmitter – cooled by air conditioner – and a weather station tripod next to the air conditioner.

So about half of the temperature trend claimed by alarmists is completely artificial (false).  Watts’ team finds that the accurate temperature trends show a rise of about 0.18 degree Centigrade per decade.  NOAA is claiming an increase of 0.32 degrees Centigrade per decade. 

It may not sound that bad that half of the claimed temperature rise is wrong.  However, the scientific debate concerns the sensitivity of the global weather systems to carbon dioxide.  Discovering that half of the alleged temperature increases are fictitious dramatically changes the projections, and our understanding of positive or negative feedback mechanisms in the world’s atmospheric systems and biosphere. 

Anthony Watts and his fellow researchers are about to publish a peer-reviewed study and analysis on the falsehood of temperature readings that global warming alarmists are relying upon.  The news in the near future about climate alarmism should continue to be very interesting.  It is about to get hotter for Al Gore, Tom Steyer, and other climate propagandists.

UK’s Guardian, Talks About the Left’s Faux-Green Agenda!

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UK Guardian Admits That Climate Change Is A Left Wing Agenda

JUL 21

Posted by 

After years of being told, contrary to all the available evidence, that Climate Alarmism was embraced by all political spectruns, the UK Guardian now admits that the right have a problem with it.

The repeal last week of Australia’s ill conceived Carbon Tax has had the Big Green propaganda machine running around in circles trying to perform a damage limitation exercise.

The warming alarmists, Green rent seekers and crony capitalists know there is more bad news coming for their sacred Emissions Trading Systems (ETS) and Carbon taxes, New Zealand is likely to dump its ETS, one of oldest ETS in the world. South Korea is also getting cold feet about its ETS with the deputy Prime Minister Choi Kyung-hwan saying his country’s ETS was “flawed in many ways“.

The warming alarmist industry have always maintained that the irrational fear of CO2 was embraced by all political spectrums, though as time has gone by this particular Green Lie, like so many other Green lies that have come before and after it, has been shown to be just that, a lie.

The UK Guardian in a strong piece of wish projection journalism, by Gaia’s representative on Planet Earth, Damian “Head of Environment” Carrington now admit that the right have a problem with Anthropogenic Global Warming.

Writing about Owen Paterson’s departure from the UK Government, and the subsequent interview Paterson gave to the Daily Telegraph Carrington really the describes the worsening problems awaiting the Greens belief systems:

When the foundation of your world view is crumbling under the weight of inconvenient truths, you can do one of two things: revise your world view or descend into paranoia.

Oh the irony.

The problem is that every government and science academy on the planet agree that climate change is a dangerous problem caused by fossil fuel burning and that emissions must be slashed quickly. Given the choice between accepting this reality and the socialist masterplan that Paterson and his ilk believe is inextricably tied to it, they opt for the less torturous mental path of denial.

Every government and science academy? Really?

So Australia has not dumped its Carbon Tax?

Canada has not walked away from Kyoto II?

Poland, Russia, Japan, India, Brazil the list of countries that will not commit economic suicide with UN Agenda 21 is growing, but when your science is based on consensus, and not observed empirical evidence, then every no longer means, all, it really means a few. Though in a rare moment of Green success Afghanistan has signed up for Kyoto II.

In this parallel universe, Paterson can praise prime ministers Tony Abbott in Australia and Stephen Harper in Canada for their courage in tackling the green conspiracy.

The secret of lying Damian is to be consistent and tell the same story, in one paragraph you say every government, then two paragraphs later you show that at least two governments do not agree, makes a bit of a mockery of every don’t you think?

Then there the endless stream of death threats that Paterson received:

 

I soon realized that the greens and their industrial and bureaucratic allies are used to getting things their own way. I received more death threats in a few months at Defra than I ever did as secretary of state for Northern Ireland. My home address was circulated worldwide with an incitement to trash it; I was burnt in effigy by Greenpeace as I was recovering from an operation to save my eyesight.

 

Greenpeace have a history of making violent threats to those that stand in the way of the Green Dream, back in 2010 there was Gene for India who embarrassed Greenpeace with his “We know where you live” post on their web site.

Mounting Evidence that the Global Warming Scare, is a Scam. They Have an Agenda….

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Meteorologist Joe Bastardi: “Planet Is Going To Be Cooling Next 20 To 30 Years Because Of Natural Processes”

By P Gosselin on 20. Juli 2014

Veteran meteorologist Joe Bastardi at his WeatherBell Analytics site has posted the latest Saturday Summary.

bastardi_home Weatherbell

Meteorologist Joe Bastardi. Photo credit: WeatherBell Analytics

Just before the 3-minute mark he comments on the general nonsense behind the claims that global warming causes more cold weather and on how John Holdren, senior advisor to President Barack Obama on science and technology, “was mouthing off on how global warming was causing it to get so cold back in January”.

At the 3:08 mark Joe reiterates his long term forecast for global temperatures:

“I do think the planet is going to be cooling the next 20 to 30 years due to natural processes. But some of these explanations border on inane”

 

He then reminds viewers that those blaming the cold on warming “obviously do not make forecasts for a living“.

Trapped heat constantly AWOL

And already we see that the earth’s temperature has not risen in almost 18 years. This year’s once forecast “super El Nino” is failing to materialize, which raises the question as to where all “the missing heat” could possibly be lurking.

It’s turning out that the missing heat is wholly theoretical and exists only in climate models, and is nowhere to be observed in reality.

Predictions of it reappearing have failed over and over again.

 

– See more at: http://notrickszone.com/2014/07/20/meteorologist-joe-bastardi-planet-is-going-to-be-cooling-next-20-to-30-years-because-of-natural-processes/#sthash.nSivgoHt.dpuf

Faux-green Enviro-fanatics Must Be Stopped!

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The Green Blob

by Dougal Quixote

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Owen Patterson’s article from the Telegraph. If ever you thought the Green Lobbyists are out of control and need immediate investigation by the Charities Commission, this will confirm your worst fears.

By Owen Paterson

12:38AM BST 20 Jul 2014

Every prime minister has the right to choose his team to take Britain into the general election and I am confident that my able successor at Defra, Liz Truss, will do an excellent job. It has been a privilege to take on the challenges of the rural economy and environment. However, I leave the post with great misgivings about the power and irresponsibility of – to coin a phrase – the Green Blob.

By this I mean the mutually supportive network of environmental pressure groups, renewable energy companies and some public officials who keep each other well supplied with lavish funds, scare stories and green tape. This tangled triangle of unelected busybodies claims to have the interests of the planet and the countryside at heart, but it is increasingly clear that it is focusing on the wrong issues and doing real harm while profiting handsomely.

Local conservationists on the ground do wonderful work to protect and improve wild landscapes, as do farmers, rural businesses and ordinary people. They are a world away from the highly paid globe-trotters of the Green Blob who besieged me with their self-serving demands, many of which would have harmed the natural environment.

I soon realised that the greens and their industrial and bureaucratic allies are used to getting things their own way. I received more death threats in a few months at Defra than I ever did as secretary of state for Northern Ireland. My home address was circulated worldwide with an incitement to trash it; I was burnt in effigy by Greenpeace as I was recovering from an operation to save my eyesight. But I did not set out to be popular with lobbyists and I never forgot that they were not the people I was elected to serve.

Indeed, I am proud that my departure was greeted with such gloating by spokespeople for the Green Party and Friends of the Earth.

It was not my job to do the bidding of two organisations that are little more than anti-capitalist agitprop groups most of whose leaders could not tell a snakeshead fritillary from a silver-washed fritillary. I saw my task as improving both the environment and the rural economy; many in the green movement believed in neither.

Their goal was to enhance their own income streams and influence by myth making and lobbying. Would they have been as determined to blacken my name if I was not challenging them rather effectively?

When I arrived at Defra I found a department that had become under successive Labour governments a milch cow for the Green Blob.

Just as Michael Gove set out to refocus education policy on the needs of children rather than teachers and bureaucrats and Iain Duncan Smith set out to empower the most vulnerable, so I began to reorganise the department around four priorities: to grow the rural economy, to improve the environment, and to safeguard both plant and animal health.

The Green Blob sprouts especially vigorously in Brussels. The European Commission website reveals that a staggering 150 million euros (£119  million) was paid to the top nine green NGOs from 2007-13.

European Union officials give generous grants to green groups so that they will lobby it for regulations that then require large budgets to enforce. When I attended a council meeting of elected EU ministers on shale gas in Lithuania last year, we were lectured by a man using largely untrue clichés about the dangers of shale gas. We discovered that he was from the European Environment Bureau, an umbrella group for unelected, taxpayer-subsidised green lobby groups. Speaking of Europe, I remain proud to have achieved some renegotiations.

The discard ban ends the scandalous practice of throwing away perfectly edible fish, we broke the council deadlock on GM crops, so decisions may be repatriated to member countries and we headed off bans on fracking. Judge me by my opponents.

When I proposed a solution to the dreadful suffering of cattle, badgers and farmers as a result of the bovine tuberculosis epidemic that Labour allowed to develop, I was opposed by rich pop stars who had never been faced with having to cull a pregnant heifer. (Interestingly, very recent local evidence suggests the decline in TB in the cull area may already have begun.)

When I spoke up for the landscapes of this beautiful country against the heavily subsidised industry that wants to spoil them with wind turbines at vast cost to ordinary people, vast reward to rich landowners and undetectable effects on carbon dioxide emissions, I was frustrated by colleagues from the so-called Liberal Democrat Party.

When I encouraged the search for affordable energy from shale gas to help grow the rural economy and lift people out of fuel poverty, I was opposed by a dress designer for whom energy bills are trivial concerns.

When I championed brilliant scientists demonstrating genetic modifications to rice to save the lives of hundreds of thousands of children in developing countries, I was vilified by a luxury organic chocolate tycoon uninterested in the demonstrable environmental and humanitarian benefits of GM crops.

When faced with the flooding of the Somerset Levels I refused to make the popular and false excuse of blaming it on global warming, but set out to reverse the policy inherited from a Labour peeress and serial quangocrat who had expressed the wish to “place a limpet mine on every pumping station”, while deliberately allowing the silting up of drainage channels.

When I set out to shatter the crippling orthodoxy that growing the rural economy and improving the environment are mutually exclusive, I was ridiculed by a public school journalist who thinks the solution to environmental problems is “an ordered and structured downsizing of the global economy”. Back to the Stone Age, in other words, but Glastonbury-style.

Yes, I’ve annoyed these people, but they don’t represent the real countryside of farmers and workers, of birds and butterflies.

Like the nationalised industries and obstructive trade unions of the 1970s, the Green Blob has become a powerful self-serving caucus; it is the job of the elected politician to stand up to them. We must have the courage to tackle it head on, as Tony Abbott in Australia and Stephen Harper in Canada have done, or the economy and the environment will both continue to suffer.

* Owen Paterson is a former secretary of state for environment, food and rural affairs.  

Windweasels Trying to Force Themselves on Another Unwilling Community

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Battle for Mount Emerald Reaches Boiling Point

July 20, 2014 by 

The battle to prevent RATCH from getting planning approval for the disaster it proposes for Mount Emerald has reached fever pitch. With 90% of locals bitterly opposed to the project, common sense would suggest a polite withdrawal by the developer. Instead, however, RATCH has dipped into the standard book of wind industry lies and half-truths (we covered a few of them in this post). Here’s the Cairns Post on a few more of them.

Storm brewing over wind farm in Tableland
Daniel Batemen
The Cairns Post
13 July 2014

bruce

THERE’S an ill wind blowing across the Tablelands, with rural landholders considering abandoning their multi-million dollar properties if the Mt Emerald Wind Farm gets the go-ahead.

They have accused the developers behind the renewable energy project of deceiving the community by downplaying the scale and impact of the wind farm, which involves the construction of up to 75 turbines – each about three times taller than Cairns Hospital.

Power producer Ratch Australia and property developer Port Bajool’s $380 million dollar project involves up to 75 wind turbines generating up to 225 megawatts of power from a 2400 hectare property aloft Mt Emerald, which is located about halfway between Atherton and Mareeba.

Jenny

Each tower is to stand about 80-90m tall, with approximately 50m long blades.

The proponents claim the project will potentially generate enough electricity to power 75,000 homes each year. The two-year construction phase of the project will also create an estimated 158 jobs, with up to 45 people to be employed locally once it is complete.

Since the development application for the wind farm was brought to the Tablelands Regional Council in 2010, a storm of protest about the project has been stirred up within the close-knit Walkamin and Tolga farming community.

When the Tablelands Wind Turbine Action Group conducted a recent survey of those living within 5km of the proposed project site, it found about 90 per cent of residents opposed the development.

The group says locals are terrified of health and noise impacts from the turbines; they are concerned about the impact the construction phase could have upon native habitat; they fear their property values will be driven right down; and they have even questioned the spacing and efficiency of the turbines.

Jenny Disley and her partner Jack Krikorian live 1800m away from the project site, where they will have a clear view of the giant bladed towers from their back porch.

The couple have struggled to sell their sprawling 42.9ha property, which has been on the market for three years through multiple real estate agents, with a current price tag of about $5 million.

“We’ve had a bit of interest but no one will buy,’’ Ms Disley told the Cairns Post. “They keep telling us the reason for that is because of the Mt Emerald wind farm uncertainty.”

The pair operate rural workers accommodation business Walkamin Enterprises, providing labour to the thriving local agricultural industry.

Mr Krikorian is most concerned about the impact noise generated by the turbines may have on up to 40 workers staying in various cabins and homes on their property.

“If the noise impacts on those 40 people, that’s the end of our business,’’ he said.

poster

“We are in the middle of an extremely active horticultural area, particularly for bananas, and all of those people need our service continuously.

“How do we get compensated, if everything that we work for is impacted?”

Ms Disley said if they were unable to be compensated for any land devaluation, and unable to sell, they would be left with no other choice but to abandon their land, becoming “wind farm refugees”.

“You can’t sell,’’ she said.

“You’ve sunk your whole life savings back into the property. If you can’t access your superannuation through a sale, you can’t live there because of the noise and infra (low frequency) sound.”

Ratch Australia thoroughly refutes any accusations the farm will generate noise pollution. It says any sound generated by the turbines will be less than that heard on a typical quiet suburban street (a level of 40 decibels).

The company and Port Bajool picked Mt Emerald for its “excellent” wind source, its proximity to the electricity grid, and potential for only “minimal” environmental and social impact.

At 4.5km away from Mt Emerald, one of the oldest families of the area, the Watkins family, believes that while the project may be a good idea, but it is being planned for the wrong spot.

Mt Uncle farmer and distillery owner Bruce Watkins says wind farms should be neither seen nor heard.

“If you see these things, you’re too close to them,’’ he said. “That’s the fact.”

“I’m not against green energy. None of us in (the action) group are – we’re all after sustainable, healthy, green energy. I’m putting solar panels up (on the distillery roof) now.”

“But where these so-called environmentalists go wrong, is they say we must have green energy, but they forget the (real) cost.”

The family has a berry farm within 1.5km of the wind farm site, employing more than 200 people. Mr Watkins said the construction phase of the development could create widespread problems for transport, and therefore businesses, across the region.

“There is a massive migration of the equipment to come up (to the Tablelands),’’ he said.

“You’ve got to appreciate they’ve got the right to commandeer main roads, traffic, everything. The delays in the traffic will be staggering.

“I’m not going to overemphasise it, but the fact is they’re going to get these things on the road, which are 80-tonne things, and they’re going to have to resurface the roads.

“At whose expense? We don’t know.”

When Bruce’s daughter Krista and her husband got married five years ago, they had been planning on building a dream house on the family’s land 2km from Mt Emerald.

The mountain even provided a backdrop in the couple’s wedding photos.

“We would have liked to have started to build a home there this year,’’ Krista said.

“But there is no way I’m going to spend $500,000 building an average home when the fact is I could be looking at a depreciated value of more than 50 per cent because of the wind turbines.”

About four years ago, the couple convinced friends to purchase property at the nearby Rangeview Estate.

Krista said it was a mistake that cost them a good relationship with their friends.

“It was the day they signed their contract, they bumped into some locals who were displaying Ratch’s own documents about the wind farm at the Tolga markets,’’ she said.

“The friends, furious, came back to us and said ‘you didn’t tell us about this’, and we saw (the development application) for the first time. We had no idea. (The developers) told us – many of us – it was just a few wind turbines. Way over the back. That was just a blatant lie, because they’re going to be all over that mountain.”

Last month, the development application was called in by the Deputy Premier and Minister for State Development, Infrastructure and Planning Jeff Seeney.

The minister, at the time, said given the complexity of the proposed development, independent assessments would be carried out to evaluate the true economic, environmental and community impacts and benefits of the project.

The development could be approved later this year, with construction to commence in early 2015.

Ratch Australia executive general manager, business development, Geoff Dutton, said the company had been as open and transparent as possible with the community, maintaining solid communication lines about the project since it was first tabled with the Tablelands Regional Council.

He assured locals would not be disturbed by the turbines, once they were operational.

“We have tried to analyse every aspect of noise and where it will go,’’ he said.

“We look at the individual wind turbine manufacturers and their offerings to us, and go through, with them, very detailed specifications.

“Wind towers aren’t just built, they’re built with a view to being within regulations.”

He conceded there would be “some queues” for traffic during the construction phase, as the turbines and their blades were being transported up to the mountain.

“We won’t be going up from Cairns through Mareeba – the more direct route – that is not practical because there are a few sharp bends that no blade will ever go around,’’ he said.

“The better way is to go the long way round further south and then come back around from the Ravenshoe direction up towards the site.”
The Cairns Post

One of the crackers tossed up by RATCH is that the noise generated by its turbines will be the same as a ‘typical quiet suburban street’. Depending on the suburb, most traffic noise dies down well before midnight and rarely resumes much before 6am. Leaving suburbanites a fair opportunity to catch a few zzzs during the hours of darkness.

Giant fans, on the other hand, operate whenever the wind blows – which usually means late evening/early morning and for some strange reason their noise has a habit of annoying neighbours, preventing them from sleeping and otherwise impacting on their good health. For the uninitiated, the sound tracks to these 2 videos might yield a clue.

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rOU39ws1gHo

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iYpgVPAK5To

Leave Mount Emerald to the eagles.

Aussies Dump the Regressive Carbon Tax!

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Carbon Tax Gone – RET to Follow

July 19, 2014 by  

Australia has started to dismantle the ‘green’ policies that have sabotaged its economy and fuelled the wind turbine industry – all with no perceivable environmental benefit – yet generating widespread annoyance across rural Australia. The first to go was the Carbon Tax – which Tory Aardvark has described so well in his post below – next will be the RET.

oz_no_carbon_tax

Australia Dumps Carbon Tax
Tory Aardvark
18 July 2014

One thing you can be absolutely sure of, globally, there will be a huge number of outraged Greens and warming alarmists because Australia has dumped it’s carbon tax.

This as the saying goes really is a double whammy, Australian PM Tony Abbott is a politician who has actually kept his word and dumped the hugely unsuccessful and deeply unpopular Carbon Tax, that Labor PM Julia Gillard promised voters she would never introduce, and then promptly broke her word.

The Carbon Tax was ill conceived, it generated virtually no revenue because of its negative impact on productivity and led directly to the downfall of the Gillard Labor/Green coalition, so it wasn’t all bad really.

Alarm bells will be sounding across the Green world as those that believe that crippling Green taxation will allow the human race to select a climate of its own choosing, can see their belief system about to come crashing down. In the immortal words of EU Climate Commissar Connie Hedegaard ‘A world you like. With a climate you like’, delusional thinking even by 15th Century standards, frankly bizarre in the 21st Century.

The response from the Green rent seekers, crony capitalists, left wing politicians and others complicit in the AGW scam has been, well what you would expect really:

EU climate commissioner Connie Hedegaard said the European Union regretted the repeal of the tax just as new pricing initiatives are emerging around the world.

“The EU is convinced that pricing carbon is not only the most cost-effective way to reduce emissions, but also THE tool to make the economic paradigm shift the world needs. This is why the EU will continue to work towards global carbon pricing with all international partners,” she said.

“With today’s repeal of the Carbon Pricing Mechanism, the discussions to link the Australian system and Europe’s carbon market will evidently be discontinued.”

Assorted Green NGOs are muttering darkly about irresponsibility, catastrophic climate change, rising sea levels and Green Armageddon because a country that emits just 1.19% of global CO2 emissions has repealed a job and wealth killing tax. To obfuscate the tiny global percentage of CO2 that Australia emits the warming alarmist cabal have invented CO2 emissions per capita to overstate their case and make Australia appear to be a bigger “polluter” than it actually is.

Climate scientists say the country is also likely to expect more extreme weather events as the plant warms, including prolonged periods of drought and more wildfires.

This Green tax definitely had mythical properties being able to control the weather, prevent wildfires and drought.  Where will the Unicorns be able to drink now?

WWF-Australia CEO Dermot O’Gorman said the move ensured polluting would now be “free”.

“This will see carbon pollution go up, not down,” he said.

“Without an effective mechanism to cut carbon pollution, Australia is unlikely to meet its international commitments to cut pollution by 5-25% by 2020 and tackle global warming.”

There is more bad news looming if you are possessed of an irrational fear of CO2, it appears that the world’s oldest Carbon Market is about to join Australia’s Carbon Tax in the dumpster:

Another looming setback to connecting markets and eventually setting a global price on polluting carbon is the possibility that New Zealand’s ETS, small but one of the first to be established, will be scrapped after a September election.

In remains to be seen how many other countries will further remove themselves from the UN backed AGW scare, Canada is a  likely candidate, in a devastating blow to the UNFCCC process Canada withdrew from the Kyoto Protocol stating “Kyoto was not the way forward for Canada or the world” just one day after COP18 finished.

Japan is also wavering on committing Green economic suicide now, then of course there is Putin’s Russia which will play along with the AGW scam for as long as it suits Gazprom and not 1 second longer.
Tory Aardvark

The mandated biannual RET review is due to present its findings in a few weeks –  but STT hears that the current version of the RET will disappear and the planned adjustments will promote renewable energy but also spell the end of the wind industry in Australia. For we all know – wind turbines don’t run on wind – they run on subsidies. Take away the subsidies  – and the problem will disappear.

Unicorn Drinking from a River

Wind Turbines Get a “License to Kill”! Obscene!

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Wind Power Slaughter: ex-USFWS Agent Speaks Out by Kajm

Wind Power Slaughter: ex-USFWS Agent Speaks Out

Photography / Photojournalism / Documentary & Editorial©2014 Kajm
PART 1:

Wind Power Slaughter: ex-USFWS Agent Speaks Out on Shiloh IV (California)

 

“It has been well known that Shiloh’s wind turbines have slaughtered protected birds species for years. These fatalities have gone largely undocumented due to the wind industry’s practices of rigging their reports and handing them to the unquestioning USFWS.… [Now] comments submitted by two USFWS retired special agents who spent their careers protecting migratory birds and making cases against other energy companies … [have] a lot to say about the Shiloh five-year eagle killing permit.”

The Shiloh IV Wind Project, located in the Montezuma foothills in California, has received an unprecedented permit from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service allowing it to kill eagles, hawks, peregrine falcons, owls and songs birds while not being subjected to the normal prohibitions afforded under the federal conservation laws. This company now gets a free pass from federal prosecution under the Bald and Eagle and Protection Act and the Migratory Treaty Act.

No other energy company has the liberty to kill birds so indiscriminately while remaining above the law!

The mitigation for this eagle-kill permit was the fixing of a few power poles by the PG&E. Yet PG&E has already been retrofitting poles in this area consistent with its Avian Protection Plan,and if the retrofitting of more power poles was needed the FWS cold have enforced this just as they have for 35 years with other utility companies. Now the FWS and EPA are accepting fraudulent data to trade the slaughter of eagles as if they were carbon credits. It is truly disgraceful.

This permit will allow for the deaths of five golden or bald eagles over a five-year period without the wind farm’s operators being penalized. Everyone has to understand that Shiloh IV is only part of this large wind resource area. All the other sections in this WIND resource area will also be killing eagles and other highly protected species.  

 

It has been well known that Shiloh’s wind turbines have slaughtered protected bird species for years. These fatalities have gone largely undocumented due to the wind industry’s practices of rigging their reports and handing them to the USFWS, which never  questioned them. I submitted blistering comments on the company’s Environmental Assessment  reports, which were nothing more than several hundred pages of monotony and misdirection, if not outright deception.

The simple truth is that all Shiloh’s turbines have been killing off golden eagles and, most likely, has already been killing bald eagles (unreported)  living in the region.  This killing of eagles has been happening for decades as supported by eagle surveys. Also not disclosed to the public is that bald eagles, which have been utilizing riparian habitat in the nearby Sacramento River delta, will probably make up the majority eagle kills at this project in the future.

With regards to the comments in favor of a kill permit for Shiloh Wind Power, I wasn’t surprised that many were filed by those that were financially connected to the company. For several years I’d heard that there was dissention within the USFWS against the use of wind power, but had never had any direct contact with anyone from the agency. I understood that USFWS personnel speaking out against the highly politicized issue of wind power would be putting their own careers at risk.

Recently however, I learned that there were comments submitted by two USFWS retired special agents who spent their careers protecting migratory birds and making cases against other energy companies whose activities resulted in eagle and other migratory bird fatalities. Sam Jojola and Lucinda Schroeder have a lot to say about the Shiloh five-year eagle killing permit.

Sam Jojola Letter

Mr. Wiegand,

I have always been impressed with your honest and candid approach on the devastating impacts to avian wildlife and particularly eagles and other raptors in our country. I am a former Special Agent with FWS/LE and appreciate all your valiant efforts to address the political cowardice by Washington bureaucrats when it comes to the wind industry and impacts of our priceless wildlife resources.

He went on to tell me that he and another former agent (Lucinda Schroeder)  had submitted comments against this permit.

I was thankful for the support, and I wanted to know more about his background. And low and behold, Sam Jojola had twenty-three years of field experience, with both short and long term covert operations in federal wildlife law enforcement. Through his years of service, Sam garnered specialized knowledge and experience in targeting international wildlife smugglers with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Branch of Special Operations.

He has extensive experience in surveillance, interviewing and interrogation techniques, recruiting and controlling informants. He developed expertise in collecting and analyzing intelligence, orchestrating raids, execution of arrest and search warrants, grand jury, trial preparation, as well as evidence collecting and preservation. All the skills anyone would need to investigate the wind industry.

Sam Jojola also has a great love for our vanishing wildlife. Like growing numbers of Americans, Sam is not happy with the wind industry, nor does he consider this industry to be any shade of  “green.” In his Comments  (page 177) regarding the Shiloh IV eagle killing permits, Sam shared some of his wisdom on the wind industry and the path our society is taking.

Here are some of Sam Jojola’s Shiloh IV comments:

“The cost of continuing to allow the wind industry to kill Golden Eagles, other raptors and migratory birds for over two (2) decades has been and is too high for the current benefit that wind power provides. The Altamont facility has proven that.”

“I am appalled that anyone is considering a five (5) year programmatic take permit for Shiloh IV given the historical track record of the wind industry’s impact to avian populations elsewhere. How arrogant to consider a long term permit after untold millions of taxpayer dollars have been spent for decades on eagle conservation in the Western U.S.”

“The wind industry needs to be more proactive instead of griping that buildings, cars, and cats are killing more migratory birds. They have had over 2 decades to address these eagle mortalities with meaningful solutions. Buildings, cars and cats usually don’t kill eagles and don’t exploit taxpayer subsidies.”

“These types of permits would allow the industry to continuously justify and allow untold numbers of golden eagles to be legally taken without fear of prosecution. “

“It opens the door to add numbers of eagle deaths to the permit in the future. It would also open up the arguments from electrical utility companies, mining, oil and gas exploration and others who have been prosecuted that the wind industry is getting favorable treatment. Something is wrong with that concept.”

“Why bother with a permit at all? Wind power facilities in California already kill golden eagles and have done so for decades without a permit and no accountability without a single prosecution.”

“Who will monitor this and other forthcoming permits for years to come? Certainly not the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Office of Law Enforcement which has been historically neglected for decades with only 218 Special Agents nationwide as of 2013, the same number they had in 1978. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Office of Law Enforcement was once the “Division of Law Enforcement”. With dwindling numbers they will soon be able to fit into a room or smaller. “

“Leaders need to hire a reasonable amount of agents that is commensurate with the exponentially expanding world of wildlife crime and ecological impacts to our wildlife.”

“Why are higher up officials so quick to “mitigate” wildlife loses? Where were they and where are they now when more FWS/LE Special Agents are needed?”

“Why are bureaucrats in Washington D.C. so quick to issue a permit to a project that represents an industry that has several decades of documented violations of the Migratory Bird Treaty Act and Eagle Act and watch the Office of Law Enforcement languish with such low numbers of Special Agents now and historically?”

“In the really big picture, we are wasting too much money with tax funded subsidies for the current wind turbine technology. The expansion should be slower given the historical impacts to avian wildlife. Our government needs to focus more on what is happening globally with wildlife and the ecosystem. It is all we have.”

“A recent study reports that U.S. taxpayers are paying 12 billion dollars annually for wind power subsidies. What a racket at the expense of wildlife resources and taxpayer money. How beneficial could that be given those figures?”

“Try putting some wind turbines off the coast of Malibu, Miami Beach, or the Grand Canyon, Yellowstone, etc., and see what happens if it is so beneficial. The public would really scrutinize those subsidies and tax credits then.”

“The wind power industry has been treated differently since the 1980’s in California, particularly the Altamont Pass wind facility which has wreaked havoc on Golden Eagle and other raptor populations since then without a single prosecution when they didn’t even have a permit to do so. Oil and gas, including petroleum, electric power corporations, and gold and silver mining operations have all been investigated and prosecuted over decades and these industries have made valiant efforts to curtail migratory bird deaths, much to their credit.”

“Wind power needs to do much more than report bird deaths.  Reporting and monitoring bird deaths for years is almost less than doing nothing at all.”

“We do need to explore the wind industry and its long term benefits. Doing it right with exploring meaningful technology to address the migratory bird deaths will actually create more jobs for our country.”

The official response to Sam Jojola from the FWS was generic, cold, and inappropriate.   When you think about it this is actually quite understandable since, given the chance, FWS agents like Sam Jojola and Lucinda Schroder could bring the wind industry it’s knees overnight for their hidden slaughter to protected species.

– See more at: www.masterresource.org/2014/07…

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