Return to sanity!

Covering up bird mortality at wind farms. Mark Duchamp

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PRESS RELEASE
12 September 2016

Hiding evidence of the massacre

 


News of bird and bat deaths at wind farms have reduced to a trickle. Does that mean that a solution has been found? Yes, it has, but it’s not what you think. Wind turbines are every year more numerous and the massacre they cause is ever increasing. What has changed is that the cover up is now effective at 100%, or just about.

The following news sheds light on the latest technique for making mortality data unavailable to the public (and the media):

Wind farm sues to block bird death data


Yes, you read correctly: “releasing (the wind farm’s) bird and bat kill reports would provide “trade secrets” to its competitors”. Surrealist, isn’t it? But that’s only one of the many lies we must deal with when investigating that hugely subsidized industry. Below, we present the “trade secrets” they are trying to hide:

trade secrets
courtesy of Ontario Wind Resistance


Indeed, in present day United States, mortality data legally belong to wind farm owners, and the public has no right to see the numbers without their permission. This is the “solution” that has been found for covering up the butchery of eagles, cranes, pelicans, condors, swans, swallows, bats, owls, falcons, hawks, geese, gamebirds, songbirds etc.

Throughout the world, ever since shocking mortality statistics at wind farms made the news 15-20 years ago, efforts have been made by the wind industry and complicit governments to hide the numbers. In the UK for instance, wind farms have long stopped being monitored for mortality; in Spain, the monitoring has been done, but the reports were filed away without publishing; elsewhere, whenever a wind farm had to be checked for mortality, its owner would select ornithology consultants based on their reputation for “cooperation” – i.e. whose reports always showed “manageable” numbers. This is still the preferred method for covering up in some countries, e.g. Canada or Australia.

To make it even safer for European wind developers, and regardless of the proclaimed right of the public to be informed on environmental matters (Aarhus Convention), reports concerning wind farms’ impact on birds and bats were soon stamped “property of the developer”, meaning that he may edit them before publication. “The wind companies rewrite all ecological work themselves“, said to me a UK ornithologist who had worked for wind developers. But a non-disclosure clause in the contract kept him from revealing publicly what he knew and what he saw. This is now standard practice in wind farm monitoring contracts.

Thanks to these various methods to hide the evidence, high mortality numbers soon disappeared from the headlines, and the public lost interest, trusting large ecology NGOs and bird societies to watch over protected wildlife. However, conflicts of interests oblige (i.e. $$$), these organizations keep denying that significant harm is being done to biodiversity. For instance, none of them has published the report by the Spanish ornithological societyrevealing millions of deaths a year in Spain. Yet it is based on 136 monitoring reports obtained from the Spanish government under Freedom of Information legislation.

Granted, the particularly deadly Altamont Pass wind turbines kept coming back in the news now and then, but the media has become so gullible (or complicit) that even their repowering for another 25 years didn’t make waves.

The issuing by the US administration of “incidental take permits”, allowing wind farm operators to kill a number of eagles accidentally, did cause anger among bona fide conservationists, especially as wind farm operators can easily hide the real number of eagles they kill. But this scandal didn’t make the evening news on television. Most NGOs don’t really mind: there is no money in protesting, but plenty of it to be reaped from Big Wind, awash as it is in subsidies.

In Scotland, an issue that could become a hot potatoe is the census of golden eagles. Originally due in 2013, this politically-sensitive 10-year survey was postponed to 2015, and to date we are still waiting for its publication. Cynics are suggesting that it takes time to edit the text and doctor the figures, which would otherwise reveal a sharp drop in the Scottish golden eagle population, coinciding with the period when the moorlands were invaded by wind farms.

Coincidence or not, a report just surfaced in Edinburgh, reassuring the Scots on the fate of their beloved eagles. Wind turbines may be installed near eagle nests, it claims, provided ornithologists are paid, during the life of the wind farm, to feed the eagles and monitor their behavior. It’s pure rubbish, but it keeps ornithologists and bird societies happy. Officially, they are the ones who “know” about birds, and their opinion is taken into consideration by the authorities; so it’s important for the wind lobby to keep them cheery. In reality, we know that wind turbines attract (and kill) eagles, as they do other raptors, swallows and bats: read Biodiversity Alert. In short, the new report is just another one of many biased, misleading studies financed by wind interests. If you read the press article till the end, it actually claims thatBeinn an Tuirc wind farm helps Scottish eagles survive. Yes indeed, the bigger the lie, the more people will believe it.

The population survival issue was tackled differently in the western United States: the golden eagle census was carried out from a plane. Obviously, scientific rigor was lacking: seen from an aircraft, it is easy to mistake a juvenile bald eagle for an adult golden eagle. The wind coalition used this worthless census to report a “stable golden eagle population” in the western States. Different methods, same misleading result.

One of the countries where the cover up wasn’t achieved at 100% is Australia. Mortality at the infamous Woolnorth wind farm apparently ceased being reported to the public, but a few months ago, that of the Macarthur wind farm hit the news, causing concern worldwide.

More recently, another Australian wind farm discreetly announced (you have to search their newsletter thoroughly – page 2, paragraph 3) that it was killing many eagles: Bald Hills wind farm – 7 eagles killed in 4 months. Seven in four months is the official figure, so the reality could be even worse. It’s also a good indication that, as revealed by Save the Eagles International, raptors are attracted to wind turbines (and then killed). But don’t be surprised that, in spite of the evidence provided in STEI’s article, bird societies completely ignore this lethal attraction exerted by wind turbines: it would hurt the wind industry if they recognized it. Here you can, again, appreciate the hypocrisy surrounding the whole issue.

Finally, the cover up is naturally helped by scavengers, which become rapidly aware that wind turbines provide easy food in the form of dead or injured birds and bats. So they make the rounds daily, mostly at night or at dawn when their chances are best. Searchers employed by consultants rarely start their work as early as foxes and crows, so they miss most carcasses. In addition, they visit the site once every week at best, leaving plenty of time for scavengers to clean up the grounds.

That is how the company operating Bald Hills WF, above, can claim they only found 19 bird carcasses (assuming the figure wasn’t simply doctored). You’ll note that there were 7 eagles among them: typically, small carcasses disappear whole, while larger ones often leave some remains behind. Some wind farm operators instruct their employees to bury the evidence , but some carcasses can escape their vigilance, given the very large surface to be searched, and the vegetation.

At Altamont Pass, California, Dr Smallwood estimated in 2004 that 116 golden eagles were being killed yearly by the 5,000 (small) wind turbines (1). These mostly young, wandering eagles, were from California, the western United States, and even Canada. The massacre will continue as new, bigger turbines replace the old ones. The “green” NGOs don’t really care – do we hear them protest? The killing is now legal (incidental take permits), and that keeps the operators out of trouble if some eagle carcass happened to be discovered by a member of the public. The wind industry wins. The extermination of eagles, hawks, falcons, cranes, swallows, owls, bats and other highly valued species may continue unabated.

Mark Duchamp
President

(1) – Altamont Pass wind farm, 116 golden eagles killed yearly: see Page 73, Table 3-11: Species/Taxonomic group: Golden eagle
Mortality per year:
– adjusted for search detection: 75.6
– adjusted for search detection and scavenging: 116.5
DEVELOPING METHODS TO REDUCE BIRD MORTALITY IN THE ALTAMONT
PASS WIND RESOURCE AREA – Shawn Smallwood & Carl Thelander (2004) – for the California Energy Commission. http://www.energy.ca.gov/reports/500-04-052/500-04-052_00_EXEC_SUM.PDF

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Words of Wisdom, About Government-induced Climaphobia….

/ 1957chev / 3 Comments

Food for Thought

Posted on September 7, 2016by

global-warminmg

Scientists are always telling us to “accept nothing, challenge everything, ask for empirical proof”. Lawyers work by a similar creed – “do you have proof of that? If not, there is very little I can do for you”.

Well bear that in mind when you read this little gem:

“The Big Lie – By Alex Epstein

On February 29, 2016

There is an oft-cited comment that 97 percent of climate scientists agree that there is global warming and that human beings are the main cause.

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First of all, this statement itself, even if it were true, is deliberately manipulative. The reason we care about recent global warming or climate change is not simply that human beings are allegedly the main cause. It’s the allegation that man-made warming will be extremely harmful to human life. The 97 percent claim says nothing whatsoever about magnitude or catastrophe. If we’re the main cause of the mild warming of the last century or so, that does not begin to resemble anything that would justify taking away our machine food.

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One of the main papers behind the 97 percent claim is authored by John Cook, who runs the popular website SkepticalScience.com, a virtual encyclopedia of arguments trying to defend predictions of catastrophic climate change from all challenges.

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Here is Cook’s summary of his paper: “Cook et al. (2013) found that over 97 percent [of papers he surveyed] endorsed the view that the Earth is warming up and human emissions of greenhouse gases are the main cause.”

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This is a fairly clear statement—97 percent of the papers surveyed endorsed the view that man-made greenhouse gases were the main cause—main in common usage meaning more than 50 percent.

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But even a quick scan of the paper reveals that this is not the case. Cook is able to demonstrate only that a relative handful endorse “the view that the Earth is warming up and human emissions of greenhouse gases are the main cause.” Cook calls this “explicit endorsement with quantification” (quantification meaning 50 percent or more). The problem is, only a small percentage of the papers fall into this category; Cook does not say what percentage, but when the study was publicly challenged by economist David Friedman, one observer calculated that only 1.6 percent explicitly stated that man-made greenhouse gases caused at least 50 percent of global warming.

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Where did most of the 97 percent come from, then? Cook had created a category called “explicit endorsement without quantification”—that is, papers in which the author, by Cook’s admission, did not say whether 1 percent or 50 percent or 100 percent of the warming was caused by man. He had also created a category called “implicit endorsement,” for papers that imply (but don’t say) that there is some man-made global warming and don’t quantify it. In other words, he created two categories that he labeled as endorsing a view that they most certainly didn’t.

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The 97 percent claim is a deliberate misrepresentation designed to intimidate the public—and numerous scientists whose papers were classified by Cook protested:
“Cook survey included 10 of my 122 eligible papers. 5/10 were rated incorrectly. 4/5 were rated as endorse rather than neutral.” —Dr. Richard Tol

“That is not an accurate representation of my paper . . .” —Dr. Craig Idso

“Nope . . . it is not an accurate representation.” —Dr. Nir Shaviv

“Cook et al. (2013) is based on a strawman argument . . .” —Dr. Nicola Scafetta

Think about how many times you hear that 97 percent or some similar figure thrown around. It’s based on crude manipulation propagated by people whose ideological agenda it serves. It is a license to intimidate.”

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This is not about being what opponents label “a global warming denier”. It is simply a plea to break away from the “groupthink” and research and investigate these things for yourself and come to your own conclusions. Look into the backgrounds of these so-called experts/prophets of doom and see where their money is invested, for example. You might be surprised, hopefully shocked.

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This idea that “if you are not with us, you are against us”, is bullshit, plain and simple. Consider both sides of the argument, study research methodologies, ask politically incorrect questions to politically correct people, come to a conclusion for yourself when you actually understand what the arguments are about. If you don’t understand it, don’t come to a conclusion, because that is not your conclusion, it is somebody else’s.

The Truth about “Government-Induced Climaphobia”!

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Tens of Thousands Of Scientists Declare Climate Change A Hoax

Submitted by IWB, on September 2nd, 2016

30,000 scientists declare man-made climate change a hoax

A staggering 30,000 scientists have come forward confirming that man-made climate change is a hoax perpetuated by the elite in order to make money. 

One of the experts is weather channel founder, John Coleman, who warns that huge fortunes are being made by man-made climate change proponents such as Al Gore.

Natural News reports:

In a recent interview with Climate Depot, Coleman said:

“Al Gore may emerge from the shadows to declare victory in the ‘global warming’ debate if Hillary Clinton moves into the White House. Yes, if that happens and the new climate regulations become the law of the land, they will be next to impossible to overturn for four to eight years.”

 

Climate change proponents remain undeterred in their mission, ignoring numerous recent scientific findings indicating that there has been no warming trend at all for nearly two decades.

Al Gore’s dire predictions of the melting of polar ice on a massive scale have proved to be completely false. In fact, in 2014 – a year that was touted as being “the hottest ever” in the Earth’s history – there were record amounts of ice reported in Antarctica, an increase in Arctic ice, and record snowfalls across the globe.

Debunking the “97 percent” lie

On top of those “inconvenient truths,” the White House’s assertion that 97 percent of scientists agree that global warming is real has been completely debunked. Several independently-researched examinations of the literature used to support the “97 percent” statement found that the conclusions were cherry-picked and misleading.

More objective surveys have revealed that there is a far greater diversity of opinion among scientists than the global warming crowd would like for you to believe.

From the National Review:

“A 2008 survey by two German scientists, Dennis Bray and Hans von Storch, found that a significant number of scientists were skeptical of the ability of existing global climate models to accurately predict global temperatures, precipitation, sea-level changes, or extreme weather events even over a decade; they were far more skeptical as the time horizon increased.”

Other mainstream news sources besides the National Review have also been courageous enough to speak out against the global warming propaganda – even the Wall Street Journal published an op-ed piece in 2015 challenging the Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW) pseudoscience being promulgated by global warming proponents.

And, of course, there are the more than 31,000 American scientists (to date) who have signed a petition challenging the climate change narrative and 9,029 of them hold PhDs in their respective fields. But hey, Al Gore and his cronies have also ignored that inconvenient truth, as well.

Many of those scientists who signed the petition were likely encouraged to speak out in favor of the truth after retired senior NASA atmospheric scientist John L. Casey revealed that solar cycles are largely responsible for warming periods on Earth – not human activity.

Al Gore and cronies continue getting richer from the global warming hoax

But the global warming crowd continues to push their agenda on the public while lining their pockets in the process. If you’re still inclined to believe what Al Gore has to say about global warming, please consider the fact that since he embarked on his crusade, his wealth has grown from $2 million in 2001 to $100 million in 2016 – largely due to investments in fake “green tech” companies and the effective embezzlement of numerous grants and loans.

(American people:  You might want to take all of this information into serious consideration before casting your vote in the November election.)

More on “Government-Induced Climaphobia”…

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Many People Think What Few Dare To Say

Published on August 20, 2016,  Principia Scientific International

Written by Dr Klaus L E Kaiser

From climate doomsters to media politicos, the world is being bombarded with mis-constructs, unfounded claims and outright lies. Some listeners and readers may fall for such deceits but many others are thinking to themselves and quietly walking away. unhappy

Time and again, I have experienced that phenomenon after giving a talk to (mostly) retired professionals from a variety of disciplines. They approach me in private with statements like “fully agree with you but am afraid to speak out.” Too few speak up in public – though they may voice their views indirectly at the ballot box.

However, times are slowly changing. Many people have become dissatisfied with main stream media reports and become more willing to stand up against misleading advertising, destructive policies and rapidly rising costs. In my perception, the recent Brexit vote is a harbinger of more of such “rebellions” to come, some likely to be equally surprising.

Bureaucratic overreach is just one aspect of widespread dissatisfaction; waste and falsehoods are others.

Waste and Lies

The waste of taxpayers’ funds on alternative energy plans pales in relation to the real costs of totally misguided energy policies that one can find in a variety of jurisdictions, both here and abroad. Most of these wasteful projects center around one (and WRONG !) idea, namely of atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) being a driver of the climate on earth.

That CO2-climate idea came about nearly two-hundred years ago (a hypothesis at the time) and was shown to be incorrect one hundred years ago. However, it is still “making the rounds” for three simple reasons:

  • For many scientists applying to agencies to obtain any research funds is rather futile if the grant proposal does not pretend to show how “bad” CO2 is.
  • Many “politicians” (real or wanna-be’s alike) simply go “with the flow,” following the path of least resistance and, consequently, blow the same CO2-climate horn.
  • There is next to no accountability for bureaucrats or politicians that do so.

Waste – who cares; independent thought – who needs that anyway and, in any event, the voters are expected to have forgotten all bad deeds by the time the next election rolls around.

But it is not just money and resources that have been lost to the futile pursuit of CO2 and air conditioners as the proclaimed global evils extraordinaire. There are even greater costs to mankind; one is the time lost to really advance mankind’s wellbeing.

Lost Time

Time lost is gone for good. No space age technology or pokemons found can bring back time. The estimated trillion dollars spent over the last few decades, on “alternative” energy sources like wind, solar, and biofuels have had next to no impact on global fossil fuel (coal, oil, and natural gas) consumption in the world. At the same time and despite the (entirely avoidable) disasters at Chernobyl and Fukushima, new nuclear power plants are now being built in many countries around the world, for example even in hydro (water) power-rich Switzerland.

Even in Japan many of the nuclear power plants that were all shut down following the Fukushima tsunami-caused disaster have been or are being restarted as well. China, India and Russia are all in the process of massive expansions of their nuclear power generation capabilities as well. While these countries may pay lip service to the Paris 2015 Climate Agreement, these projects having absolutely nothing to do with any perceived climate threats from CO2 that have been proclaimed by the United Nations IPCC or U.S. President Obama. They are simply wise diversification among energy resources.

In contrast, Germany is on the way to becoming a “green” energy pauper, all because of the CO2-climate hoax.

“Green” Germany

One of the most blatant examples of wasting time and resources must be Germany. That country had many great developments to its credit in the period of roughly 1960 to 1990. That was the time of the German “Wirtschaftswunder” when science, engineering and technology grew by leaps and bounds, energy was affordable for consumers and industry alike. Coal and nuclear power plants provided ample electricity and government regulations were fostering competition and efficiency throughout the land.

However, instead of building on its developed expertise and teaching new generations of scientists and engineers to learn the trade, “green power” activists and politicians persuaded people that biofuels, sun and wind were all that was needed. By now, the generation of people capable of designing, building and operating the complex nuclear facilities have mostly retired, emigrated or died. It would likely take another generation just to get to the state of expertise available there in 1975.

For example, the newest nuclear power plant that’s still in operation in Germany was built around 1985. Since then not a single new plant has even been considered. In fact, the opposite is going to take place in a few years. All remaining operating nuclear plants are going to be shut down by government decree, the last ones in 2022. Similar actions are planned for the remaining coal and natural gas fired power plants. From then on, German households and industries are largely expected to live by the whims of sunshine, wind and imports from nearby countries like Czechia and France — if available then. That ideology has been decreed as “energy-change” (“Energiewende”).

Availability of Power

Availability of electric power when needed is rapidly becoming less guaranteed as well. That’s why the latest German government schemes are encouraging local, i.e. community level power generation cooperatives that push the responsibility down the line towards the end consumer. And oh, it’s all going to work with “smart” systems that, presumably, work along the principle of the biblical supply of wine at the wedding at Canaan.

Actually, when I read news items on the touted “smart” electricity grid and kitchen technology (e.g. in new fridges), it seems the “smart” part is less to guarantee that they run with less power but to turn them off when the sun doesn’t shine, the wind doesn’t blow, or someone wants to cut your power off altogether. It could foster politically correct thinking too and you will be happy to know that you will still be charged for “delivery” during such times of brownouts or blackouts to come.

In this context, an interesting email (copy) I recently received from overseas, written to a well-known proponent of solar power there reads (paraphrased) as follows:

“As energy expert you made the interesting discovery that the sun does not send a bill. I did not entirely understand why, despite that, several hundred thousand households are unable to pay their electricity bills and entire types of industries are emigrating due to the high electricity costs. Why are electricity costs much lower in countries that use less sun energy?”

Benefits – What Benefits?

Indeed, where or what are the benefits and who is benefiting from this alternative energy development? It couldn’t be the consumers whose hydro bills are rising much faster than governments’ inflation numbers. It probably is not even the operators of wind and solar power farms – despite their high feed-in tariffs and other prescribed “goodies.” That only leaves the producers of such equipment and, who could have guessed, the governments themselves. That’s also evident from recent moves by some jurisdictions to tax people on their own solar photovoltaic panel-produced electricity for their own consumption.

With the world swamped by cheap natural gas, crude oil, and coal (with the mines in western countries are being relegated to heritage status), who, really needs expensive and intermittent electricity from the wind and sun?

If you have the answer, drop me a line.

Heartbreaking Facts that Wind Turbine Neighbours Live With…

/ 1957chev / 3 Comments

MELODIE MCLANE: YOU KNOW YOU LIVE TOO CLOSE TO A WIND PROJECT IN VERMONT WHEN …

MAR. 12, 2014,  VTDigger.Com

Editor’s note: This commentary is by Melodie McLane, who is a neighbor of the Georgia Mountain Community Wind project.

• You dread checking the mail because you probably have another filing from the Department of Public Service that supports the wind developer in every way possible, even though they supposedly work for you.

• You do a slow burn because someone has written that you will participate in the Public Service Board’s noise investigation only because you lost. Lost what? The right to sleep at night?

• You spend every Sunday afternoon meeting with the neighbors that are still speaking to you to write discovery questions, answers, briefs, comments and to do research.

• You have stupid looking equipment set up near your house to monitor sound from the turbines.

• You laugh at the look of shock on people’s faces when you tell them to be aware that everything they say is being recorded outside when that stupid looking equipment is there.

• You have to sign a release saying that you give yourself permission to listen to your own conversations before the wind company will release the raw data from the monitoring to you.

• You plan your barbecues and neighborhood parties around whether that stupid looking equipment is there.

• You go ahead and have that barbecue or party regardless and get perverse pleasure out of blasting loud music all night at that stupid looking equipment in order to drown out all conversations.

• You realize the noise from the turbines gets louder when they take that stupid looking equipment away.

• You think you are going to stroke out if one more person says “I drove over to New York and listened to the ones there and couldn’t hear anything.” Were they running at full capacity?

• You understand why your father used to sit and swear at the television when a politician was talking.

• You know the true meaning of “campaign donations” and “follow the money.”

• You have “wind friends” who you can talk freely with about the stupidity of wind and then you have “regular friends” with whom you never discuss wind.

• You go to work ticked off and exhausted because you could hear the turbines rumbling all night, even with your windows shut.

• You are dreading summer, even after one of the most miserable winters on record, because the noise is worse when you open your windows.

• You used to love a good snowstorm but now it just means more noise with all the moisture in the air and southwesterly winds.

• You used to love going to bed at night in the summer with your windows wide open, listening to the rain. Now you shut your windows and turn the fans on to drown out the turbine noise, because it’s always louder when it rains.

•You look out at your garden and remember how peaceful it used to be to work in it. Now it’s just an annoying place to be.

• You used to love having your morning coffee on your south porch, but now you are driven away from it by noise.
You try sitting on your back porch, but the noise is worse back there because the noise bounces off from the ledges behind your house.

• You open your door in the morning and think you hear a jet flying over really low, but then realize it’s just the turbines.

You have pet names for noises that come from the mountain. There is the airplane noise, train rumbling noise, whale noise and semi-truck noise.

 

• You open your door in the morning and think the turbines are really loud, but it’s just a jet flying over really low.

• You have pet names for noises that come from the mountain. There is the airplane noise, train rumbling noise, whale noise and semi-truck noise.

• You are angry because the turbines are running and you can’t sleep.

• You are angry because the turbines aren’t running and someone ruined a perfectly good mountain for no reason.

• You want to stroke out every time you hear a wind developer say that you only complain about the noise because you didn’t want the project there in the first place. You didn’t want the wind project so close to your house because you knew it would be noisy.

• You want to stroke out every time you hear a wind developer say that only “two or three” neighbors complain about the noise. Those neighbors are the only ones who are ridiculously close to the project.

• You are shocked when the project owner starts using the Facebook group, Victims of Industrial Wind, to tout the merits of wind when most of the people in this group are suffering from sleep loss every day from wind.

• You are shocked when that owner says on his Facebook page that he has a Trunk Monkey by each turbine on Georgia Mountain to keep the anti-wind people away. Trunk Monkeys shoot people with guns and beat people up with tire irons.

• You are up checking the victims group at 4 a.m. on a regular basis to see if someone else is being kept awake by the noise.

• You are in constant disbelief at how loud 45 dBA is.

• You know that some people will make nasty NIMBY comments about this when they read it, but you have been bullied and called names so much that it doesn’t even hurt anymore.

Donald Trump….Too Smart to Fall for the Wind/Climate Scam!

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Donald Trump Would Unleash Energy Sector

Say what you want about Donald Trump, but he has said two things recently that more profoundly diagnose America’s true problems than anything Hillary Clinton has even come close to thinking about in her entire lifetime.

Donald Trump Would Unleash Energy Sector
By Steve Milloy
Breitbart.com, August 9, 2016

Say what you want about Donald Trump, but he has said two things recently that more profoundly diagnose America’s true problems than anything Hillary Clinton has even come close to thinking about in her entire lifetime
The first thing he said — that political correctness “cripples our ability to talk and think and act clearly” — is not the subject of this column. The second — that “It is time to remove the anchor that is dragging us down” — is.

The “anchor” he was talking about is the government and, especially the Obama administration and any extension thereof through Hillary Clinton.

We have a government that is choking us to death with regulations and economy killing policies. As Trump pointed out:

The Federal Register is now over 80,000 pages long. As the Wall Street Journal noted, President Obama has issued close to four hundred new major regulations since taking office, each with a cost to the American economy of $100 million or more.

In 2015 alone, the Obama Administration unilaterally issued more than 2,000 new regulations – each a hidden tax on American consumers, and a massive lead weight on the American economy.

Nowhere is this truer than in the energy sector Trump spotlighted in his speech in Detroit. But to appreciate Trump’s prescription for the energy sector and the rest of the economy, it’s first necessary to understand how the Obama administration has sabotaged both.

Probably the least talked about effect of Obama’s anti-economic policies has been the destruction of the economic model for the electric power industry. Electric utilities used to make money the old fashioned way — by selling more electricity. For a variety of reasons, that has not been possible in the moribund Obama economy.

Instead utilities have been forced to engage in various government-mandated energy efficiency and green power schemes where utilities can only make more money by selling less electricity at higher prices. Flattened electricity production by utilities has then had downstream effects on fuel production industries.

Lower fuel needs has forced down coal prices and caused overproduction in a coal industry that has become increasingly efficient over the years at producing coal.

The Obama administration then compounded this problem for the coal industry by commencing its infamous war on coal. This has had the effect of forcing utilities to choose either to endure high regulatory compliance costs and political disfavor by sticking with coal or to switch to alternatives like natural gas, wind and solar. While the Obama administration favored the later two energy sources, the markets tossed a monkey wrench in these plans.

A glut of cheap natural gas produced by hydrofracturing technology (fracking) eased the coal-switching problem for utilities. Making progressive lemonade out of lemons, at this point the Obama administration then decided to finish off the coal industry by making the permanent the glut of cheap natural gas. It did this by slow-walking if not just simply preventing natural gas from being exported to a global market hungry for it.

The effect was two-fold. First, it forced most of the coal industry into bankruptcy. Second, it kept gas prices depressed. If an oil and gas firm is not struggling today, it’s probably only because it has gone into bankruptcy, too. And it you’re thinking that cheap fuel prices must have been good for electric utilities, think again. Midwestern utilities were hoping that the cheap fuel glut would lead to a renaissance of manufacturing in the Rust Belt, facilities to which they could sell more electricity. But regulatory uncertainty brought about overzealous and arbitrary Obama administration agencies and actions has prevented any such renaissance.

A President Trump would remove the government boot from the energy industry. Natural gas could be exported to a gas-hungry world. This would relieve pressure on what’s left of the coal industry. Then, unburdening utilities of regulatory and political pressure to use politically correct fuels and allowing utilities to sell more electricity to a growing economy would restore health to the ailing energy sector and help create millions of good-paying, wealth producing jobs.

All this is complex and difficult to explain in a brief column, let alone a policy speech by a candidate who is more of a business-doer than a political-talker. But Trump gets the big picture. Overregulation is killing our economy. The energy sector is living (on life support) proof.

Steve Milloy publishes JunkScience.com and is a former coal executive.