Once again, I Must Defend My Name, and My Position, from Posers!
Once again, I find myself in the regrettable position, of having to defend myself from false claims, made by the copycat group, that are operating, using my name. The former co-chair, and treasurer of Mothers, verbally resigned, in front of witnesses, and a few days later, decided to illegally take the funds and try to pretend that they now had control of my group. It was nonsense. I had cheerfully accepted their resignations, and appointed a new co-chair, with whom I would share treasury responsibilities. They never returned the money, or the paperwork, instead choosing to cut off all contact, forcing me to spend valuable time and energy in fighting them, instead of wind turbines. There you have it. The true story, instead of the nonsense those women have dreamed up.
So “Ladies”….Because you wish it, doesn’t make it so. You are NOT Mothers Against Wind Turbines, you are wannabes! Stop publishing my name and my picture and making false claims, people. I am not affiliated with your corporate fiction, in any way! I am now, always have been, and always will be, the Director of Mothers Against Wind Turbines. Shellie
One of The Undeniable Facts About Wind Turbines….No Wind….No Power!
Brits Rumble Frightening Energy Fact: Wind Power Depends on the (ur, ahem) Wind …
September 30, 2014 by
Power from wind turbines slumps – due to lack of wind
The Telegraph
Emily Gosden
25 September 2014
Electricity output from UK wind farms falls by a fifth due to unusually low wind speeds
Power produced by wind farms slumped by a fifth in the second quarter of this year, despite hundreds of new turbines being built – because it wasn’t very windy.
Official Government statistics published on Thursday show that in the three months to the end of June, the amount of electricity produced by offshore wind farms fell by 22 per cent, to 2 terawatt-hours (TWh), compared with the same period the year before.
Yet the number of offshore wind turbines operating grew significantly – with 4.1 gigawatts (GW) of capacity installed in the seas around the UK by June this year, up from 3.5GW by June 2013.
Power output from onshore wind farms also fell, by 17 per cent to 3.22 TWh. The fall came despite dozens of new wind farms being built, increasing onshore wind capacity by 14 per cent over the same period.
There was 8GW of onshore capacity at the end of June, 1GW more than a year before.
The Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC) said that the impact of increased capacity was “out-weighed by that of very low wind speeds”.
“Average wind speeds were 1.6 knots lower than a year earlier, and the lowest for quarter two for four years. Average wind speeds in June were the lowest for any month in the last 14 years,” it said.
About 900 turbines were constructed on and offshore over the course of 2013, according to Renewable UK.
Dr John Constable, director of the Renewable Energy Foundation, which publishes data on the sector and is critical of subsidy costs, said: “The latest DECC data is further confirmation that wind power output is highly variable over all timescales, minutes, hours, months, and even from year to year.
“These variabilities are physically manageable but they have highly significant negative economic impacts on the rest of the power generation fleet, whose market is made very uncertain, and these uncertainties ultimately mean much higher costs for consumers.”
While wind power output fell, the amount of electricity generated from solar farms soared by 67 per cent, to 1.2TWh.
The rise was in line with a near-identical increase in the amount of solar capacity installed.
Ministers have admitted that solar farms have been installed far more rapidly than they had expected, thanks to costs falling and developers taking advantage of generous subsidies.
In May they announced they were closing a subsidy scheme two years earlier than planned to stop the spread of the farms, which critics say are blighting the countryside.
Ministers originally anticipated between 2.4-4GW of large-scale solar being installed by 2020. Yet the latest DECC statistics show that the upper end of that range has now been exceeded, with 4.1GW installed by the end of June.
A spokesman for the wind industry trade association RenewableUK said: “Although it’s no secret that there are some periods that are even windier than others, the wider statistics show that wind energy is generating increasing amounts of clean electricity for British homes and businesses year on year.
“When you look at the last twelve months as a whole, generation from renewable sources in the UK went up to just over 17 per cent – up from 13 per cent in the previous 12 months. The lion’s share of that came from onshore and offshore wind – just over 50 per cent of it.
“In August, wind energy outstripped coal and nuclear for several days, and hit at all time 24-hour record high of 22 per cent of the UK’s electricity needs.
“National Grid has no problem taking clean power generated by wind whenever it’s available as often as it can, and it can predict exactly where the power will come from in advance with pinpoint accuracy. Every unit of electricity we generate from wind offsets a unit from polluting fossil fuels, so anyone who cares about climate change knows that we need to make the most of it whenever we can.”
One green power company, Infinis Energy, reported last month that its onshore wind farms had exported a third less power in the three months to June, compared to the same period the year before, blaming “low wind speeds experienced across the UK throughout the period”.
However, it said it would be “well placed to benefit from recovering wind speeds when they occur”.
The Telegraph
The wind industry and its parasites are always quick to wax lyrical about those few hours when the wind blew consistently and added a little meaningful power to the grid, but – like the gambler that only ever talks about his wins – these hucksters never seem able to front up to the hundreds of occasions when wind power output collapses for hours and even days on end (see our post here).
STT loves the cyclone of spin from RenewableUK when it talks about some periods being windier than others and telling power punters to look “at the last 12 months as a whole” – in an effort to varnish up the infantile nonsense of trying to rely on intermittent and unreliable wind power. You don’t need to be Sherlock Holmes to rumble the fact that wind power will always be delivered at crazy, random intervals and – on plenty of occasions – won’t be delivered at all.
Notable too is the breezy optimism from wind power outfit, Infinis Energy when it talks about being “well placed to benefit from recovering wind speeds when they occur”.
In the meantime, their erstwhile customers are supposed to be “well placed” sitting freezing in the dark, apparently.
The wind industry parades as an answer to global warming (now known as climate change) and does so by wrapping itself in the “alternative” energy tag. Which begs the question: “alternative” to what?
When it comes to their demand for electricity, the power consumer has a couple of basic needs: when they hit the light switch they assume illumination will shortly follow and that when the kettle is kicked into gear it’ll be boiling soon thereafter. And the power consumer assumes that these – and similar actions in a household or business – will be open to them at any time of the night or day, every day of the year.
For conventional generators, delivering power on the basic terms outlined above is a doddle: delivering base-load power around the clock, rain, hail or shine is just good business. It’s what the customer wants and is prepared to pay for, so it makes good sense to deliver on-demand.
But for wind power generators it’s never about how much the customer wants or when they want it, it’s always and everywhere about the vagaries of the wind. When the wind speed increases to 25 m/s, turbines are automatically shut-off to protect the blades and bearings; and below 6-7 m/s turbines are incapable of producing any power at all.
It’s no wonder that the Brits have noticed that wind power is nothing more than a sick joke.
Even with the most geographically widespread grid-connected set of wind farms in the world (the 3,342 MW of wind power capacity connected to Australia’s Eastern grid across SA, Victoria, Tasmania and NSW) there are dozens of occasions each year when total wind power output struggles to top 2% of installed capacity – and hundreds when it fails to muster even 5% (see our posts here and here and here).
Now, if the power consumer was given advance warning of when these total output failures were going to occur, they might simply reconsider their selfish demands of having illumination after dark or that hot cuppa in the morning. That way, they might still consider wind power as some kind of “alternative” for conventional power?
But, so far, power consumers remain stubbornly selfish; wedded to the idea that when they hit the switch, their power needs will be satisfied that very instant (the cheek, hey?).
And that’s where the myth about wind power being some kind of “alternative” falls in a heap.
Unless you’re prepared to live like stone-age hermits, power delivered at the whim of mother nature (which in practical terms means no power at all, hundreds of times each year) is NO alternative for power delivered on-demand; anytime of the day or night; every single day of the year – and in volumes sufficient to satisfy all consumers connected to the same network, at the same time.
RenewableUK’s waffle about past wind power output averages over time is patent nonsense: for most people power consumption is a here-and-now kind of thing. In the absence of a conventional generation system with adequate capacity to satisfy demand, modern economies would quickly descend into chaos if left to rely on a power generation system entirely dependent on the weather.
But it’s the howlers contained in this quote that take the glittering prize:
“National Grid has no problem taking clean power generated by wind whenever it’s available as often as it can, and it can predict exactly where the power will come from in advance with pinpoint accuracy. Every unit of electricity we generate from wind offsets a unit from polluting fossil fuels, so anyone who cares about climate change knows that we need to make the most of it whenever we can.”
STT’s not sure what the benefit of predicting complete collapses in wind power output “with pinpoint accuracy” might be. Unless it’s meant to remind us that behind every single MW of wind power capacity there’s an equal amount of fossil fuel generating capacity kept ready and waiting (burning mountains of coal and gas) to take up the slack? When infants are left to their own devices it’s always nice to know there are adults around to take responsibility; except in this case, we’re forced to pay twice: once with massive subsidies to wind power outfits that simply can’t be relied on to stump up power when it’s needed; and again for the conventional generation capacity essential to keeping the grid up and running. So far, so costly and pointless.
Then there’s the descent to the old “climate change” chestnut.
Nowhere in the world has the wind industry provided any actual proof that it has in fact reduced CO2 emissions in the electricity sector. When we talk about “proof” we’re not talking about smoke and mirrors “modelling” based on long-term average wind farm output – which ignores the extra gas and coal being burnt (and wasted) in order to balance the grid to account for wild fluctuations in wind power output (see our post here); and to maintain additional “spinning reserve” (seeour post here) to account for complete collapses in wind power output – as seen in this post.
As we have pointed out just once or twice – the need for 100% of wind power capacity to be backed up 100% of the time by fossil fuel generation sources means that wind power cannot and will never reduce CO2 emissions in the electricity sector (see our posts here and hereand here and here and here and here and here).
E.ON operates numerous transmission grids in Germany and, therefore, has the unenviable task of being forced to integrate the wildly fluctuating and unpredictable output from wind power generators, while trying to keep the German grid from collapsing (E.ON sets out a number of the headaches caused by intermittent wind power in the Summary of this paper at page 4). Dealing with the fantasy that wind power is an alternative to conventional generation sources, E.ON says:
“Wind energy is only able to replace traditional power stations to a limited extent. Their dependence on the prevailing wind conditions means that wind power has a limited load factor even when technically available. It is not possible to guarantee its use for the continual cover of electricity consumption. Consequently, traditional power stations with capacities equal to 90% of the installed wind power capacity must be permanently online [and burning fuel] in order to guarantee power supply at all times.”
STT is happy to go all out and say that in Australia wind power requires 100% of its capacity to be backed up 100% of the time by conventional generation sources. As just one recent example, on 3 consecutive days (20, 21 and 22 July 2014) the total output from all of the wind farms connected to the Eastern Grid (total capacity of 2,952 MW – and spread over 4 states, SA, Victoria, Tasmania and NSW) was a derisory 20 MW (or 0.67% of installed capacity) for hours on end (see our post here). The 99.33% of wind power output that went AWOL for hours (at various times, 3 days straight) was, instead, all supplied by conventional generators; the vast bulk of which came from coal and gas plants, with the balance coming from hydro.
And Britain is no different (see our post here).
For wind power to reduce CO2 emissions in the electricity sector it has be a true “substitute” for conventional generation sources. Because it can’t be delivered “on-demand” (can’t be stored) and is only “available” at crazy, random intervals (if at all) wind power will never be a substitute for conventional generation sources (see our post here).
Perhaps the reason that the wind industry has never produced a shred of evidence (anywhere) to show that wind power has reduced CO2 emissions in the electricity sector is simply because it can’t. Running counter to wind industry claims about wind power abating CO2 emissions, the result of trying to incorporate wind power into a coal/gas fired grid is increased CO2 emissions (see our post here and thisEuropean paper here; this Irish paper here; this English paper here; thisAmerican article and this Dutch study here).
Wind power has NOTHING to do with CO2 emissions abatement in the electricity sector; and, therefore, has NOTHING to do with global warming (or climate change) – which means there is simply no justification for the massive stream of subsidies filched from power consumers and tax payers and directed to wind power outfits.
And now the stats are in, the wind industry is struggling to maintain the ruse that wind power is a credible source of electricity at all.
Reminiscent of uptight hotelier, Basil Fawlty trying to pin fault for the chaos he caused on his bemused guests, the German wind industry have started cursing the wind for not blowing (see our post here) and now their British counterparts have been reduced to the same tactic.
Some might call the wind industry “pathetic” – but that would be to ignore the $billions stolen from power punters around the globe and the grief caused to thousands of previously peaceful rural communities.
STT calls it the greatest economic and environmental fraud of all time.
Waiting on Word About a Moratorium on the K2 Wind Project!
ACW Resident Waits For Word On K2 Moratorium Request
An Ashfield-Colborne-Wawanosh resident says he is hoping to hear within the next couple of weeks whether his legal request to stop Phase 2 of the wind energy project in the Kingsbridge area has been successful.
Shawn Drennan had a hearing in London earlier this week but says realistically he doubts this will be the last one. Drennan wants the K-2 project, which will place an additional 140 turbines in the Kingsbridge area north of Goderich and around his house, stopped until several studies into health impact have been completed
He argues the province is asking for extensive research on the impact on marine life before proceeding with off-shore turbines, so the same concerns should be addressed regarding the impact of turbines on residents of A-C-W.
Drennan says at the hearing this week the request for a stay was based on concern for people but the wind company’s main argument was they should be allowed to proceed because they have already spent a lot of money.
Drennan points out this is a precedent-setting constitutional challenge so he expects both sides will appeal to the highest court before it is ultimately settled.
Seneca Mountain Wind, Will Not Be Destroying Vermont Environment! Project Cancelled!!!
SENECA MOUNTAIN WIND PULLS THE PLUG
Editor’s note: This article is by James Jardine, of the Caledonian-Record, in which it was first published Sept. 27, 2014.
Seneca Mountain Wind has removed its MET wind measurement device from its Ferdinand location.
The company also confirmed it has not started construction or site preparation at any of the other three MET sites authorized under a certificate of public good (CPG) issued to Seneca Mountain Wind by the Vermont Public Service Board.
In a letter dated Thursday, Karen Tyler, an attorney with the Burlington law firm of Dunkiel Saunders Elliott Raubvogel and Hand PLLC states, “SMW (Seneca Mountain Wind) no longer plans to either pursue its MET Tower project at a later date, or seek permission from the Board to transfer the CPG to another person or entity.”
The letter continues, “In light of these developments, [SMW] now agrees with the Appellants that their appeal of the Board’s order in Docket No. 7867 is moot.”
The MET tower in Ferdinand cited by Seneca Mountain Wind was previously constructed by Matthew Rubin when Rubin was planning a wind farm in East Haven several years ago. When Rubin canceled his plans for a wind farm, he left the MET tower in place.
Previously, Seneca Mountain Wind has argued before the Vermont Supreme Court that the certificates of public good issued by the Vermont Public Service Board have value even if Seneca Mountain Wind has canceled leases it holds on the land on which the towers are to be located. Seneca Mountain canceled a lease on land in Newark owned by Scott and Sarah Williams, Guilford, Vt., according to Newark Town Clerk Joan Bicknell. Seneca Mountain Wind also canceled a lease on land in Ferdinand and Brighton owned by Daniel Ouimette, Colebrook, N.H.
The Vermont Supreme Court, on Aug. 12, remanded Seneca Mountain’s lawsuit back to the Public Service Board, telling the PSB, “to consider, given the current circumstances whether appellant’s CPG should be revoked or declared void with respect to the towers located in the Town of Newark and the Town of Brighton.” The remand continues, “If the Board either revokes or declares void Seneca’s CPG for those towers, then the appeal will be dismissed.”
Now that Seneca Mountain Wind has confirmed it will no longer pursue its MET tower project at a later date and will not seek permission to transfer its authorizing certificate to another person or entity, anyone hoping to build a commercial wind farm in Newark, Brighton or Ferdinand will have to start from scratch.
New York Climate Alarmist Convention……Epic Fail!
NY Climate Spin: Putting on a brave face
We met to talk about CO2, and got a forest agreement –
Eric Worrall writes:
Now that its all over, the climate spinners are already hard at work, desperately trying to reframe the New York climate shambles as a win for the environment.
According to “The Australian”, a major Aussie daily newspaper;
“Yet this year’s summit seemed different. UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon brought together heads of state, NGOs and business leaders from major global companies such as Unilever, Coca-Cola and Asia Pulp & Paper to sign a declaration to safeguard the world’s forests. … The declaration is a commitment to act, not just to speak. Action on this scale will, though, require collaboration on an unprecedented level. A crucial phrase in the New York Declaration is: “We commit to doing our part to achieve the following outcomes in partnership.”
However, a declaration to save forests is truly an empty, painless piece of spin. Forests are already recovering worldwide, thanks to globalisation, cheap energy and economic development. In a mirror of our own economic history, large scale urbanisation of countries such as Brazil and Panama, driven by the creation of new jobs in the cities, is luring the younger generation to abandon subsistence farms hacked out of the jungle.
The abandoned farms, contrary to green propaganda, very quickly revert back to a state almost indistinguishable from the original virgin forest.
In fact, the only places where forests are not recovering, are places where perverse incentives are encouraging an increase in agriculture.
One of the biggest of these perverse incentives is biofuel subsidies, which are motivating global corporations to clear fell large plots of tropical forest, to make way for palm oil plantations.
http://www.worldwildlife.org/stories/illegal-palm-oil-plantations-threaten-protected-forests
Stepping back from the forest non issue, there is another aspect of the NY climate conference spin which I find disturbing – the continuous emphasis on the need for “widespread collaboration” and “unprecedented cooperation”. Every time I see a reference to how everyone has to allegedly strive to sacrifice their own interests, and work together for a common eco-goal, to save the world, I remember something the famous author Terry Pratchett once said;
“Pulling together is the aim of despotism and tyranny. Free men pull in all kinds of directions.”
Thankfully, for now at least, people appear to be following Pratchett’s sage advice.
Jihadis and Warmunists….Both want to Destroy Our Way of Life!
September 28, 2014
Jihadis and Warmunists: Brothers Under the Skin
By Clarice Feldman
Watching the parade of the naïve, the far left, and their energy-hogging celebrity manipulators marching in New York City this week, I was struck by how much these true believers had in common with jihadis, a notion reinforced by Purdue Professor Louis Rene Beres’ description of jihadis in Gatestone Institute and my friend “Ignatz’s’” comment at Just One Minute.
Both movements seem to these authors to be a means of denying death and change and making the mortal, immortal and the insignificant individual life, a significant force when massed with others.
If this is true — and I think it is — we cannot defeat these irrational movements in the ordinary ways. New strategies are called for.
Jihadis
Beres’ argument (and you should read it all to fully understand it) is, in sum, that the bloody depredations of jihadism provide its adherents with a “delusion of immortality” and a “religious justification” for erotic satisfaction.
If this is the case, he says, we cannot stifle its advance by treating terrorism simply as a normal striving for land or politics or strategy. It’s a different kind of enemy.
Among more “normal” conflict scenarios, America, Europe and Israel now need to consider mega-threats of both unconventional war and unconventional terrorism. Faced with determined adversaries — who are not only willing to die, but who actively seek their own “deaths” in order to live forever — Washington and Jerusalem should finally address the what needs to be done in addition to military remediation.
Sustained and selective armed force against IS and related Jihadist targets is certainly necessary and appropriate. However, it is also important to remind our leaders that force always needs to be combined with reinforcing efforts to convince these terrorists that their expected martyrdom is ultimately just an elaborate fiction.
Jihadists, in killing Americans, Israelis, and all other “unbelievers,” may not even intend to commit evil, so much as to do themselves and Allah good — and to do so with an absolute purity of heart. In their view, waging Holy War can never be shameful; it can only be heroic.
Going forward, our main task should be to systematically undermine these fantasies and doctrinal “underpinnings.” In conjunction with the recommended nuanced persuasions of military firepower, it can be done.
Warmunists
The New York demonstration, full as it was of communist organizers and sympathizers, inspired one wag to argue the marchers really were warmunists — that is, far left-wingers posing as environmentalists. (Any question respecting their commitment to environmentalism and keeping the planet clean were resolved by shots of the mounds of trash they left behind while purporting to save the planet.)
Ignatz made observations about the marchers which strike me as related to Beres’ comments about jihadis:
Lefties love to talk about revolution, “cause change” fundamental transformations, progress, etc., but they are the most retrograde reactionaries imaginable. They want a one-time revolution to cement and codify utter stasis.
People who talk about change are scared to death of the creative destruction of free markets. People who worship Darwinian progress, which after all implies millions of extinctions, want to save every single evolutionary cul-de-sac of a species they can find living in some pothole or cave somewhere. Their desire to somehow fix our climate to an optimum they have arbitrarily decided is in all our interests is obvious. Less obvious is their desire for the tranquility and stultifying sameness of socialism, not because it’s fair but because it’s predictable and controllable and therefore not as disruptive and scary. They seek the perennial childlike state of someone else supplying their security while they indulge their pleasures, presumably because they regret ever having to grow up.
These fools of all ages are on a children’s crusade to compel the adults of the world to create an actual real-world Neverland for them where nothing ever changes, they’ll never age and they can pretend they’re somehow going to be the magical ones picked by fate to cheat death.
The jihadis’ “heresy” charges against those who oppose their tyranny is simply another version of the warmunists’ “treason”. If you had any doubt about that, here’s Robert F Kennedy, Jr, who disproves his existential claims about climate warming by flying in private planes to warn us we will perish if we don’t stop using conventional energy.
Kennedy lamented in an interview with Climate Depot, [he]is not permitted by law to “punish” or to imprison those who disagree with him — and this, he proposed, is a problem of existential proportions. Were he to have his way, Kennedy admitted, he would cheer the prosecution of a host of “treasonous” figures — among them a number of unspecified “politicians”; those bêtes noires of the global Left, Kansas’s own Koch Brothers; “the oil industry and the Republican echo chamber”; and, for good measure, anybody else whose estimation of the threat posed by fossil fuels has provoked them into “selling out the public trust.” Those who contend that global warming “does not exist,” Kennedy claimed, are guilty of “a criminal offense — and they ought to be serving time for it.”
Just as Eric Hoffer warned us a half century ago about all mass movements in his book The True Believer: Thoughts On The Nature Of Mass Movements such movements thrive in climates where individual opportunities are limited. He said then that they had not had much purchase in the United States because capitalism and our Constitution permitted so much advancement and freedom. Don’t the warmunists and the jihadis imperviousness to reality and fact share a common root? Doesn’t the drive of both to convert us all to their way of thinking echo Hoffer’s belief that the death denier “strengthen[s] his own faith by converting others”? Can you think of a better explanation, for example, of Kennedy’s tyrannical wish?
As anti-capitalist laws and regulations cooked up by this administration impoverish the middle class and shrink it while expanding the numbers now on the dole and pc restrictions of free speech in the workplace and colleges strangle us, do you suppose the climate for pernicious mass movements will grow or will it shrink?
I think we need to redouble our efforts to separate fact from fiction here and abroad even as we undertake warfare in the Middle East and to strengthen free markets and free speech rights here even though to do so means challenging in every available forum the ridiculous notions of the adherents of both of these mass movements.
Read more: http://www.americanthinker.com/2014/09/9_27_2014_18_33.html##ixzz3Ef1vqfKg
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Windweasels Lie about Noise they are Creating With Their Useless Wind Turbines!
Moyne Shire Council Rubberstamps AGL’s Macarthur Wind Farm Noisewash
September 28, 2014 by
The nightmare that is AGL’s Macarthur wind farm began operating in October 2012 – the first 30 fired up then. All 140 giant 3MW Vestas V112s kicked into gear in about February 2013.
Ever since, the locals have been driven absolutely insane with incessant low-frequency noise and infra-sound.
AGL (aka “Australia’s Greatest Liars”) have been running interference in relation to noise problems from the very start.
The incompetent bunch of goons that they hired to do the acoustic work lost and fudged data and, when challenged about data that went missing, blamed flat batteries more than once.
Macarthur residents hired their own careful, independent acoustic engineers to do proper methodical studies into noise impacts, which included full spectrum testing – something that AGL and its pet acoustic consultants have not done and will never do. The low-frequency testing done by AGL used the same method discredited by Steve Cooper a while back.
STT has seen the work done by the locals’ acoustic experts and – without a shadow of a doubt – it demonstrates that the noise levels generated do not and will never satisfy the noise conditions of AGL’s planning consent.
Now AGL have managed to get the Moyne Shire Council to rubber-stamp its acoustic white-wash in order to allow it to claim compliance with the noise conditions of its planning consent. But the lawyers for the Council – as well as the outfit charged with reviewing AGL’s noise report – had trouble working out what the “vague” and “unduly complicated … wording of the planning permit” actually meant, so advised that the best way to determine compliance was with a vote on it, according to the Council’s Agenda:
As Maddocks have advised, (Confidential Attachment 6) the noise compliance issue for the Macarthur Wind Farm has been unduly complicated by the wording of the planning permit. For example, the permit wording is so vague it is unclear whether Council is required to make a resolution regarding noise compliance. However in order to be transparent and to act in the most appropriate manner as the responsible authority, Maddocks recommends to Council that a resolution is the best means of addressing the noise compliance issue.
There. Isn’t it so much simpler when sticky situations that might see a wind farm operator called to account are settled on a show of hands. Settled that is, by people who aren’t acoustic experts and don’t, apparently, even know what the terms of the noise conditions they’re meant to be applying mean (their lawyers didn’t). And, instead of being “transparent”, the Council kept the correspondence from its lawyers pointing out that the conditions were “unduly complicated” and “vague” confidential (Attachment 6). So much for open and transparent government.
When it came to the Council meeting AGL didn’t have it all its own way. Former Mayor, Councillor Jim Doukas ripped into AGL and gave his fellow members a right-royal-rocket for their complicity in allowing AGL to operate with impunity.
Moyne councillor slams Macarthur wind farm noise review
The Standard
Anthony Brady
25 September 2014
A MOYNE Shire Councillor has hit out at the operators of the huge Macarthur wind farm, saying they should be “tied to a tree and flogged with a whip”.
In a fiery address to the council’s meeting on Tuesday night, Cr Jim Doukas refused to accept a peer review commissioned by the shire which found company AGL was operating the 140-turbine wind farm within noise guidelines.
“It is the biggest load of garbage I’ve ever read in my life and AGL should be tied to a tree and flogged with a whip,” Cr Doukas said.
He said the noise readings taken by AGL’s consultants were “insignificant” and “outside the guidelines” and questioned how a peer reviewer could find them compliant.
“For anyone who reads this and says this is a fair and honest report is just not right and should be ashamed. “We as a council should not make the determination on the report here tonight. We haven’t gone out to the public.
“No one in Australia who is involved in the wind energy industry, whether they support it or not, has had the chance to look at this and make comment and I think there are wiser heads out there than ours.
“As for those who are objectors, they are entitled to make comment and address council on the issue.
“If we support this tonight we deny them their right and I don’t think that’s right. We are shoving it down their throats and forgetting about the community and, for me, that’s just not on.”
But Cr Mick Wolfe disagreed with the outburst, saying people had already had a chance to comment.
“It’s time for this to go through. We’ve got our report and it’s been reviewed, the facts are in there,” Cr Wolfe said.
“We’ve heard from others alleging corruption, fraud, failure — you name it.
“Everything that AGL or the testers try to do that’s not in favour of the opponents they slam them with some pretty serious allegations.
“They (the opponents) have had a chance to come to any council meeting and show us their data.
“They are hiding it, they are holding it and not releasing it and I don’t know why. Come forward with it.”
The council agreed with the report’s findings that the wind farm is complying with noise levels, but has called for further monitoring within 12 months.
This follows advice from the peer reviewer that noise emissions can change over time as faults develop within the turbines and parts need replacing.
A spokeswoman for AGL yesterday welcomed the council’s confirmation of the report.
She said AGL had already carried out more than 40,000 hours of noise monitoring at Macarthur which was “well beyond” the level required under the shire’s planning permit.
The Standard
Compliant or not, the suffering caused by AGL’s turbines is real; and was documented by STT Champion, Anne Schafer in a community survey. Here’s a link to the survey. And see our post here.
One of AGL’s numerous victims, STT Champion Annie Gardner wrote this cracking letter to the Editor of The Standard – praising Jim Doukas for doing his job; and slamming the goats that pass for local government representatives for failing to do theirs.
To the Editor,
The affected residents of this district are extremely grateful for the unconditional support given by Councillor Jim Doukas (“Moyne Councillor slams Macarthur wind farm noise review 25.9).
Unfortunately the same cannot be said of the remainder of Moyne Shire Council who have been elected with a duty of care to protect the health of ALL residents.
Moyne Shire Council are in receipt of hundreds of health complaints as a result of the acoustic emissions from the turbines at the Macarthur wind farm, but have done NOTHING to protect us from this serious harm to our bodies.
As Councillor Doukas rightly claims, we have been denied our right to comment on the noise peer review. I have requested on several occasions to have a copy of this peer review forwarded to me, but these requests have been constantly denied by a council withholding information.
Councillor Wolfe shows his ignorance when he claims residents have had plenty of time to address council and hand over our noise data. It is not that simple, as any lay person isn’t able to comprehend acoustic data, and I doubt any councillors would be trained in acoustics.
Just prior to the council meeting on Tuesday, when Moyne Shire finally released the peer review report, I requested Council forward to our independent acoustic expert, all documentation relating to the peer review, in order that he may compile a report to immediately present to Council. This report, with additional damning evidence, will prove that the Macarthur Wind Farm is NOT COMPLIANT with government noise guidelines.
I also requested Council defer confirming compliance of the wind farm, until our acoustic expert is able to present his report to the Council. This request was obviously ignored.
In the name of openness and transparency, surely Moyne Council could have waited to read the resident’s acoustic expert report which will surely blow any claim of compliance of the Macarthur wind farm, out of the water.
We ask Moyne Shire, WHERE HAS DEMOCRACY GONE?
ANN and ANDREW GARDNER
PENSHURST, Victoria
Climate Scientist Calls For Common Sense, Not Alarmism, in the Handling of the Environment.
Richard Lindzen–MIT hot shot on climate–declaims on the issues and warns us
Who am I to even comment on the eloquence of Richard Lindzen, who has tried–lord how he’s tried, to educate people on climate science done by real scientists.
Here he provides some wisdom on the mess that is the debate on Anthropogenic Warming.
I would add, as a humble physician–warm is better, what’s the damn panic about a few degrees of warming?
Dr. Lindzen:
Reflections on Rapid Response to Unjustified Climate Alarm
The Cato Institute’s Center for the Study of Science today kicks off its rapid response center that
will identify and correct inappropriate and generally bizarre claims on behalf of climate alarm. I
wish them luck in this worthy enterprise, but more will surely be needed to deal with this issue.
To be sure, there is an important role for such a center. It is not to convince the ‘believers.’ Nor
do I think that there is any longer a significant body of sincere and intelligent individuals who
are simply trying to assess the evidence. As far as I can tell, the issue has largely polarized that
relatively small portion of the population that has chosen to care about the issue. The remainder
quite reasonably have chosen to remain outside the polarization. Thus the purpose of a rapid
response Center will be to reassure those who realize that this is a fishy issue, that there remain
scientists who are still concerned with the integrity of science. There is also a crucial role in
informing those who wish to avoid the conflict as to what is at stake. While these are important
functions, there are other issues that I feel a think tank ought to consider. Moreover, there is a
danger that rapid response to trivial claims lends unwarranted seriousness to these claims.
Climate alarm belongs to a class of issues characterized by a claim for which there is no
evidence, that nonetheless appeals strongly to one or more interests or prejudices. Once the
issue is adopted, evidence becomes irrelevant. Instead, the believer sees what he believes.
Anything can serve as a supporting omen. Three very different previous examples come to mind
(though there are many more examples that could be cited): Malthus’ theory of overpopulation,
social Darwinism and the Dreyfus Affair. Although each of these issues engendered opposition,
only the Dreyfus Affair led to widespread societal polarization. More commonly, only the
‘believers’ are sufficiently driven to form a movement. We will briefly review these examples
(though each has been subject to book length analyses), but the issue of climate alarm is
somewhat special in that it appeals to a sizeable number of interests, and has strong claims on the
scientific community. It also has the potential to cause exceptional harm to an unprecedented
number of people. This has led to persistent opposition amidst widespread lack of interest.
However, all these issues are characterized by profound immorality pretending to virtue.
Malthus’ peculiar theory wherein the claimed linear growth of food loses out to the exponential
growth of population has maintained continuous popularity in the faculty lounge for about two
centuries. It is, therefore, worth noting that Malthus had no evidence that food supply would
increase only linearly. Nor did he have evidence for exponential population growth. Malthus
initially went so far as to estimate an e-folding time for population of 25 years, based on the
population of North America, and ignoring the role of immigration. Although Malthus, himself,
eventually acknowledged these problems, the enthusiasm for his anti-human conclusions remains
strong. Neither the green revolution nor the diminution of famine amidst increasing population
dissuades them. The fact that Chad is poor and the Netherlands is rich never strikes the believer
as odd. Apparently, the growth of cities, the movement of workers from the farm to the city,
and, for much of the developed world, immigration, all served to convince people of means that
there were too many other people around, and Malthusian theory formed a framework for
something they were (and are) eager to believe.
Social Darwinism and its corollary, eugenics, represents another case of a theory without support
that was widely accepted with, at times, horrid consequences. Darwin’s “The Origin of the
Species” had immense influence. It presented a theory whereby natural selection and what were
essentially mutations could account for biological evolution. While it offered valuable insights
into the development of finch beaks, it was hardly meant to describe societal evolution.
Nevertheless, the notion of ‘survival of the fittest’ applied to society had obvious appeal to those
who perceived themselves to be the fittest and who naturally regarded the application as
scientifically justified. It was a small step to eugenics which was the counterpart of modern day
environmentalism during the first third of the twentieth century, and was supported by all the
‘best’ people (including George Bernard Shaw, Margaret Sanger, Alexander Graham Bell, and
Theodore Roosevelt) despite the fact that there actually was a mathematical theorem (the Hardy-
Weinberg Theorem) that showed that the impact of eugenics on the gene pool would be
negligible. Needless to add, mathematics is of no importance to the ‘best’ people. Malthusian
population fears continue to the present, but eugenics was rendered unfashionable by the obvious
implications presented by the Nazis.
While science is a common vehicle for such misuse, the Dreyfus Affair shows that other vehicles
exist. In 1894, Captain Alfred Dreyfus was accused of passing secret French military
information to the Germans. There was, in fact, no evidence to support this accusation.
Nevertheless, there was again a strong desire on the part of many people in France to believe the
accusation. To be sure, there was the endemic anti-Semitism in France. However, there was
also the humiliation of France’s loss in the Franco-Prussian War, and the desire to blame such
loss not on the army, but on the perfidy of a group that some considered to be ‘outside’. (The
Nazis’ ‘stab in the back’ theory for the German loss in WW1 represents a similar instinct).
Dreyfus was tried (several times) and sentenced to Devil’s Island. Prominent Frenchmen (Emile
Zola in particular) , incensed by the obvious injustice campaigned for Dreyfus, and the issue
literally split France in half (partly because the conflict between Catholics and Secularists also
entered the Affair). Dreyfus was eventually exonerated after the identification of the actual spy
became undeniable.
The current issue of global warming/climate change is extreme in terms of the number of special
interests that opportunistically have strong interests in believing in the claims of catastrophe
despite the lack of evidence. In no particular order, there are the leftist economists for whom
global warming represents a market failure, there are the UN apparatchiks for whom global
warming is the route to global governance, there are third world dictators who see guilt over
global warming as providing a convenient claim on aid (ie, the transfer of wealth from the poor
in rich countries to the wealthy in poor countries), there are the environmental activists who love
any issue that has the capacity to frighten the gullible into making hefty contributions to their
numerous NGOs, there are the crony capitalists who see the opportunity to cash in on the
immense sums being made available for ‘sustainable’ energy, there are the government
regulators for whom the control of a natural product of breathing is a dream come true, there are
newly minted billionaires who find the issue of ‘saving the planet’ appropriately suitable to their
grandiose pretensions, etc., etc. Strange as it may seem, even the fossil fuel industry is generally
willing to go along. After all, they realize better than most, that there is no current replacement
for fossil fuels. The closest possibilities, nuclear and hydro, are despised by the
environmentalists. As long as fossil fuel companies have a level playing field, and can pass
expenses to the consumers, they are satisfied. Given the nature of corporate overhead, the latter
can even form a profit center. The situation within science itself is equally grim. Huge sums of
government and private funding have become available to what was initially a small backwater
field. Science becomes easy when emphasis is on malleable models supported by hugely
uncertain data that can be readily found ‘consistent’ with the models supplemented by fervidly
imagined catastrophic ‘implications.’ Indeed, uncertainty is often exaggerated for just this
purpose. Opposition within the scientific community is immediately met with ad hominem
attacks, loss of funding, and difficulty in publishing.
Of course, science is not the only victim of this situation. Affordable energy has been the
primary vehicle for the greatest advance in human welfare in human history. This issue
promises to deny this to the over 1 billion humans who still lack electricity. For billions more
energy will be much less affordable leading to increased poverty. Poverty, itself, is a major
factor in reduced life expectancy. It requires a peculiarly ugly obtuseness to ignore the
fundamental immorality of this issue.
Although all these issues have strong political consequences, it is by no means clear that their
origin is, itself, political. I would suggest that a more likely situation is that politics is always
opportunistically seeking some cause that fits its needs. However, once an illusional issue
becomes a passionate belief, it becomes impervious to argument. Given how dangerous some
illusional positions are, it is an important problem to know how to avoid them. This is a problem
that is truly worthy of Cato’s attention. Rapid response can only do so much; belief seems to
inevitably trump objective reality when one is free to choose ones narrative.
Richard S. Lindzen
Sloan Professor of Atmospheric Sciences, Emeritus, MIT
Distinguished Senior Fellow, Cato Institute
September 14, 2014
Climate Change Alarmists Cannot Handle the Truth! We Are Not In Control of the Climate!!!
Federal Study Confirms Climate Change is Natural, Not Caused by Humans
New federal study confirms that climate change is caused by nature, not by man. Released even while President Obama was saying the opposite at the United Nations.
What is the the world’s biggest problem?
President Obama told the United Nations that it’s not terrorism, poverty or disease, but global warming and climate change that he claims will have the most dramatic impact on our future.
On the same day, the National Academy of Science published a new study that shows 80% of climate change on the West Coast is due to natural causes and is not caused by humans.
The official study is by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, working with the University of Washington,
Plus global temperatures have been cooling for 18 years now.
Obama promotes billions in crony capitalism for green energy, higher electric rates, and raising costs of autos and appliances , all based on scaring us into thinking there’s no other way to save the planet.
Thankfully, despite efforts to silence them, now some brave scientists are promoting truth rather than propaganda.
With insights, I’m Ernest Istook.
"Mothers Against Wind Turbines™" Phoenix Rising... 