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Agenda 21
The “Gang-green”, would like to eradicate the Humans on this earth!
Marita on the Well Being of Humans
Some people are convinced that we have no business on this earth, and we have no right to use the resources–the planet should be some kind of park.
I would disagree, at least until I am dead or demented. Marita explains how modern exploration and production processes are enviro- friendly. But these greenies are really people haters, no question. If somebody needs electricity in the 3rd world, better not violate some green idea of what’s right for mother Gaia. Guess what, Mother Gaia doesn’t exist, except in their true believer heads.
Marita’s essay for this week.
For immediate release: May 19, 2014
Commentary by Marita Noon
Executive Director, Energy Makes America Great Inc.
Contact: 505.239.8998, marita@responsiblenergy.org
Words: 1606
The liberty and energy connection
Following my appearance on the Daily Show, I’ve received emails and phone calls from people who don’t agree with my views about energy and the advantages America’s energy abundance provides—benefits that drive both progress and prosperity.
Some of the emails can’t be read in polite company, but one that can asked: “Please explain how energy from mountain top removal, fracking, and tar sands makes America great.” The word choices Greg selected tell me that he isn’t truly seeking enlightenment and is instead aiming to antagonize me. The next day, he sent another: “I have yet to hear back on this simple question. Please respond.”
It does seem like a simple question. One I should be able to answer in an instant. But I didn’t want to offer platitudes. I felt the question deserved a thoughtful answer. So, Greg, here you are.
I’ve spent the past couple of days at a conference on “Energy, Economics and Liberty.” There discussions took place on the energy debate, government’s role, market solutions, and the geo-politics of energy. About twenty men—all experts in various aspects of energy—attended. I wasn’t just the only female I was the only energy advocate. The topics brought Greg’s request to mind and the conversations helped form the answers.
One of the participants, Jim Clarkson, wrote an article titled: “The Shale Gas Paradigm,” in which he states: “Increased access to energy is a key to economic progress in the undeveloped world.” Similarly, in my book, Energy Freedom, I quote Robert Bryce, author of Power Hungry, who says: “Electricity is the energy commodity that separates the developed countries from the rest. Countries that can provide cheap and reliable electric power to their citizens can grow their economies and create wealth. Those who can’t, can’t.”
Senate Major Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) once said: “Oil and gas are making us sick.” But I contend that they—along with coal—are the very things keeping us well. In Energy Freedom’s introduction, I point out: “Energy saves lives. When fire strikes or hurricanes are bearing down upon a city, it is energy—in this case in the form of gasoline—that allows people to drive away and escape death. … When weather is extreme, it is energy—usually in the form of electricity (most frequently from coal or natural gas)—that keeps people alive. Air conditioning allows people to live in comfort in Arizona in the summer. Heating keeps people from freezing to death in Alaska in the winter. Energy keeps us well. Energy makes us comfortable.”
The Energy, Economics and Liberty conference was hosted by the Liberty Fund. On its website, it offers this definition of liberty: “the beginning and the source of happiness from which all beneficial things flow in return.” Much like liberty, energy is the source from which many beneficial things flow. Energy has been a source of America’s freedom, a big part of what has made America great.
The conflicts in Ukraine have made the importance of energy freedom clear. Because of being on the Daily Show talking about fracking, I’ve been given other opportunities to address the topic. One was with former Minnesota Governor Jesse Ventura for his show Off the Grid. At the end of the twenty-minute interview, he asked me for closing comments. I said something like: “Because of fracking, OPEC would never be able to use energy as a weapon as it did to America in 1973 and as we see Russia doing to Ukraine today.”
Greg’s email to me used terms that lead to three different energy sources: coal, natural gas, and oil—and each have been big contributors to America’s progress and prosperity. Each has made the personal lives of Americans more pleasant and less painful. Together these energy sources have made America energy secure.
The email used the term “mountain top removal,” which is a method by which coal can be mined. It is safer than underground mines because it removes the risk of mine accidents, the horror of which we’ve recently witnessed in Turkey. (Note: America has far more stringent mining regulations today than does most of the world.) Greg likely selected the term “mountain top removal” because it sounds harsh. In fact, in the mountainous regions of Eastern Kentucky and West Virginia, this surface mining process allows for hospitals, housing developments, shopping centers to be built—all which bring more economic development and much needed jobs.
I’ve toured regions where “mountain top removal” is being done and stood on top of the massive coal seam. The procedure is amazing. Picture the region like lots of upside down ice cream cones next to each other. Hills and valleys—but no place to create a community. In that mountain is a thick layer of coal that goes all the way through the mountain, north to south, east to west. To access it, the dirt, the tip of the ice cream cone, is taken off and the coal is removed.
In the past, when the coal had been extracted, a private landowner could ask the mining company to level out the land—making it economically productive. However, today’s regulations take away that property owner’s rights and require that the mountain be rebuilt and put back to its original condition. If the landowner wants to turn his land into a housing development, he then has to incur the expense of, once again, removing the peak and leveling the land.
The coal provides, and has provided, America with low-cost, base-load electricity—which, as we’ve already addressed, has given us a competitive advantage in the global marketplace and unmatched personal progress. And, therefore, energy from mountain top removal makes America Great.
Fracking—short for hydraulic fracturing—combined with the amazing technology of horizontal drilling, has brought America into a new era of energy abundance. Clarkson states: “Gas using industries are expanding while we enjoy a distinct advantage over the rest of the world.” He explains: “Shale gas lay worthless beneath the earth’s surface for the whole of man’s previous existence until human intelligence made it valuable”—and that was done with fracking.
One of the definitions of liberty found at Dictionary.com is: “freedom from arbitrary or despotic government or control.” Clarkson points out: “There were no federal programs with subsidies, tax breaks, and mandated markets to favor the shale industry. …The new shale order of things is a triumph of free enterprise over government planning. The shale revolution shows that the good old American know-how and individual initiative that made this country great have survived the burden of big government and can still create economic miracles.” Clarkson closes with: “Some observers are already calling this the century of natural gas. This could also be the century of prosperity, free markets, and optimism as America regains its energy mojo.”
Unlike the pariah Greg presumes fracking to be, it is responsible for the shale gas phenomenon.
Last, Greg asked about tar sands and how they make America great. Tar sands, or oil sands, allow America to get oil from our friendly Canadian neighbor and reduce our need to import OPEC’s oil. We then refine that oil into gasoline, diesel, and jet fuel that fuels our transportation fleet—something that wind and solar power cannot do.
I have been to the oil sands of Canada and what they are doing there is, like fracking and horizontal drilling, a technological miracle.
If you have ever walked on a California beach and stepped on a tar ball (created when the oil seeps out of the ground and is washed ashore mixed with sand), you have a clue what the tar sands are like. The naturally occurring tar sands are a layer in the earth (much like coal). This layer has raw crude oil mixed with the dirt/sands. I recall driving to the tar sands from the town where we stayed. As the elevation increased, I noticed that trees reached a certain height and then died. It was explained that as soon as the roots hit the bitumen (or tar) it kills the tree.
At the extraction site, the tar sands are bulldozed and dumped into giant trucks (much like surface coal mining). The tar and sand mixture is processed to separate the oil and the sand. (Think of taking that tar ball from the beach and boiling it. The oil melts and floats while the sand drops to the bottom.) The oil is now available for use and the clean sand is put back into the earth—only now the trees can actually grow. The reclaimed land is teaming with wildlife that lives in the healthy forest the extraction process provides. As a result, when the Keystone pipeline is approved, America would be far less dependent on people who aim to do us harm and OPEC couldn’t cause an instant recession as it did in 1973. Plus, Keystone will be safer and cheaper—not to mention creating more jobs—than shipping the oil via rail as we are currently doing.
And that, Greg, is how tar sands can make America greater.
Yes, mountain top removal—or coal; fracking—or natural gas; and tar sands—or oil, make America great. The use of natural resources are a part of liberty: “freedom from control, interference, obligation, restriction, hampering conditions, etc.; power or right of doing, thinking, speaking, etc., according to choice.”
People like Greg want to interfere, restrict, and hamper North America’s energy abundance—which will take away America’s ability to provide cheap and reliable power to her citizens and take away the ability to grow the economy and create wealth. Why would anyone want to do that?
The author of Energy Freedom, Marita Noon serves as the executive director for Energy Makes America Great Inc. and the companion educational organization, the Citizens’ Alliance for Responsible Energy (CARE)
The “Agenda” Behind Climate Hysteria”!
What’s the Real ‘Climate Change’ Agenda?
A Perfect Storm for an End Run on Liberty
“Guard with jealous attention the public liberty. Suspect every one who approaches that jewel.” –Patrick Henry (1778)
We’re nearing the hot season in the Northern Hemisphere and, predictably, that means the Left’s alarmist “global warming” rhetoric is heating up. Never mind that most weather forecasts beyond 72 hours are largely speculative; these purveyors of hot gas believe we should accept their inviolable 100-year forecast.
Ahead of this year’s midterm elections, amid the plethora of its domestic and foreign policy failures, the Democrat Party has chosen to make their “climate change” fear and fright campaign an electoral centerpiece. Their strategy is to rally the most liberal cadres of Al Gore’s cult of Gorons, whose religious zeal toward “global warming” is fanatical. Unfortunately, for the rest of America, most who occupy this Leftist constituency are no longer capable of distinguishing fact from fiction.
Though the climate alarmists of the 1970s were driven by rhetoric over the coming ice age, the current climate calamity is one of global warming. But the question about climate isn’t if the weather is varying but why it is varying.
And the answer to that question is far less complicated than the “climate change” agenda, which is not about the weather, but about a political strategy to subjugate free enterprise under statist regulation – de facto socialism, under the aegis of “saving us from ourselves.”
The climate is always changing relative to complex short- and long-term climate cycles, so “climate change” is a superbly safe political “cause célèbre” – sort of like “heads we win, tails you lose.” So, declarations like Barack Obama’s 2014 State of the Union warning – “The debate is settled. Climate change is a fact” – fall into the “keen sense of the obvious” category.
In April, the Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change released a synopsis ofthousands of climate studies, which contradict the conventional “global warming assumptions.” According to the Cato Institute’s Roger Pilon, “We are now at 17 years and eight months of no global warming.”
Not to be outdone by the NIPCC, however, the Obama administration released its own 800-page apocalyptic National Climate Assessment last week, with such erudite conclusions as, “[W]e know with increasing certainty that climate change is happening now.”
I “know” with more than “increasing certainty” that every time I walk outside, I can detect climate change, and this ever-changing condition is better known as “weather.”
Despite the hot hype, Jason Furman, chairman of Obama’s Council of Economic Advisers, the week before Obama trotted out his climate assessment, had this to say about sluggish first quarter economic growth: “The first quarter of 2014 was marked by unusually severe winter weather.”
Global cooling? That’s right, economic stagnation is not the result of failed “economic recovery” policies but “unusually severe winter weather.”
Obama’s minister of propaganda, Jay Carney, followed with this explanation: “We had historically severe winter weather which temporarily lowered growth in the first quarter … in other words, a reduction of 1 to 1.5% in GDP as a result of what was historically severe weather, one of the coldest winters on record, the greatest number of snowstorms on record.”
After the White House climate assessment was released, Carney was challenged about the disparity between “historically severe winter weather” and global warming, and responded, “The impacts of climate change on weather are severe in both directions.”
Well there you go – climate change is the default explanation for hot and cold weather.
It was no small irony that last week, Obama chose to promote his administration’s “green agenda” with Walmart as a backdrop – ironic given that most of Walmart’s products are produced in China and other third-world nations, the biggest land, water and atmospheric polluters on the planet.
To that end, columnist Charles Krauthammer notes, “We have reduced our carbon dioxide emission since 1996 more than any other country in the world, and, yet, world emissions have risen. Why? We don’t control the other 96% of humanity. We can pass all the laws we want. We can stop all economic activity and take cold showers for the next 100 years, it will not change anything if India and China are opening a new coal plant every week.”
I would suggest to Charles that it’s called “global climate” because it is not “local climate,” even if China and India reduced their CO2 emissions it would not stop “climate change.”
Further, the administration’s report claims that “climate disruption” has resulted in a global temperature rise of 1.3 to 1.9 degrees since 1895 – and it is no coincidence that the report cherry-picked that starting date because 1890 is recognized as the end of the 300-year “Little Ice Age” global cooling period.
For the record, estimates of the minuscule temperature fluctuation over the last century, if correct, would explain why White House science adviser John Holdren has abandoned the term “global warming,” opting instead for the more ambiguous and all-encompassing phrase “global climate disruption.”
Fact is, we “disrupt” the global climate every time we exhale.
Such linguistic obfuscations would make the old Soviet Dezinformatsia Bureau proud! Of course, the Obama administration has mastered the art of the “BIG Lie” from the top down. (Think about it: Would you buy a used car from any of them?)
However, even the Left’s cherished United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change concluded that there “is limited evidence of changes in [weather] extremes associated with other climate variables since the mid-20th century.”
And, regarding the objectivity of all those erudite “climate change” scientists, columnist George Will observed, “There is a sociology of science. Scientists are not saints in white laboratory smocks. They have got interests like everybody else. If you want a tenure-track position in academia, don’t question the reigning orthodoxy on climate change. If you want money from the biggest source of direct research in this country, the federal government, don’t question its orthodoxy. If you want to get along with your peers, conform to peer pressure. This is what’s happening.”
Krauthammer added, “All physicists were once convinced that space and time were fixed until Einstein, working in a patent office, wrote a paper in which he showed that they are not. I’m not impressed by numbers. I’m not impressed by consensus.”
As for those of us who can distinguish betweenfact, fiction and political endgames, and are most decidedly not among Obama’s legions of pantywaist bed-wetters, he unilaterally suspends the revered scientific method and accuses us of “wasting everybody’s time on a settled debate – climate change is a fact. … Climate change is not some far-off problem in the future. It’s happening now. It’s causing hardship now.”
This week, you can expect to hear the Leftmedia trumpet some Antarctic ice melt, but you haven’t heard much about the record ice pack in the Arctic, which is threatening Al Gore’s once-marooned polar bear population, because the ice is too thick for the bears to reach their primary food source, seals.
Let me repeat myself: The climate hype is notabout the weather, but about a political strategy to subjugate free enterprise under statist regulation – de facto socialism, under the aegis of “saving us from ourselves.”
Indeed, Obama’s economic policies and regulations have already moved our nation rapidly toward the brink of statist totalitarianism.
And there was more evidence this week of Obama’s reckless strategy to subjugate our economy and by extension, our national security, to his “climate change” agenda.
Adding to his “War on Coal,” Obama has ratcheted up his War on Energy Independence, not only refusing to complete the Keystone XL pipeline but now going after alternative oil exploration methods by implementing new fracking disclosure rules. On top of that, he is undermining alternate transportation options for oil in the absence of Keystone XL with new regulations for trains transporting oil, and specifications for rail cars. Oh, did I mention Obama’s regulatory obstacles to constructing new refineries despite the fact that our current refinement capacity is approaching its limit?
How does this all add up?
According to columnist Terence Jeffrey, “Ultimately, it will not matter if people in government cynically promote the theory that human activity is destroying the global climate as a means of taking control of your life, or if they take control of your life because they sincerely believe human activity is destroying the global climate. Either way, government will control of your life. … In a nation where government can de-develop the economy, stop population growth and redistribute wealth both inside and outside its borders, there will still be droughts, floods and hot summer nights. But there will be no freedom.” In his 1735 edition of Poor Richard’s Almanack, Benjamin Franklin observed, “Some are weatherwise, some are otherwise.” While the Left promotes its agenda as “weatherwise” and its detractors as “deniers,” fact is, they are otherwise.
Oh, wait, my bad. “The debate is settled.”
What is the University of Queensland, so Desperate to Hide?
University of Queensland threatens lawsuit over use of Cook’s ’97% consensus’ data for a scientific rebuttal
Wow, just wow. Not only have they just invoked the Streisand effect, they threw some gasoline on it to boot. It’s all part of the Climate McCarthyism on display this week
UPDATE: Ironically, Cook’s “97% consensus paper” was published one year ago today, under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 license.
Data in the SI was added 16 days after publication, but not all the data, not sure if they have any legal basis to withhold the rest and still keep CCL license – Anthony
Brandon Schollenberger writes:
My Hundredth Post Can’t Be Shown
Dear readers, I wanted to do something special for my hundredth post at this site. I picked out a great topic for discussion. I wrote a post with clever prose, jokes that’d make your stomach ache from laughter and even some insightful commentary. Unfortunately, I can’t post it because I’d get sued.
You see, I wanted to talk about the Cook et al data I recently came into possession of. I wanted to talk about the reaction by Cook et al to me having this data. I can’t though. The University of Queensland has threatened to sue me if I do.
I understand that may be difficult to believe. I’d like to provide you proof of what I say. I’m afraid I can’t do that either though. If I do, the University of Queensland will sue me. As they explained in their letter threatening me:
That’s right. The University of Queensland sent me a threatening letter which threatens me further if I show anyone that letter.
Confusing, no? It gets stranger. Along with its threats, the University of Queensland included demands. The first of these is:
This demand is interesting. According to it, I’m not just prevented from disclosing any of the “intellectual property” (IP) I’ve gained access to. I’m prevented from even doing anything which involves using the data. That means I can’t discuss the data. I can’t perform analyses on it. I can’t share anything about it with you.
But that’s not all I can’t do. The University of Queensland also demanded I cease and desist from:
This fascinates me. I corresponded with John Cook to try to get him to assert any claims of confidentiality he might have regarding the data I now possess. I sent him multiple e-mails telling him if he felt the data was confidential, he should request I not disclose it. I said if people’s privacy needed to be protected, he should say so.
He refused. Repeatedly.
Apparently I badgered Cook too much. I tried too hard to get him to do his duty and try to protect his subjects’ privacy. The University of Queensland needs me to stop. If I don’t, they’ll sue me.
So yeah, sorry guys. I wanted my hundredth post to be interesting, but I guess it won’t be. Anything interesting I might have to say will get me sued. And maybe not just sued. The University of Queensland apparently wants me arrested too:
I don’t know what sort of hack they had investigate the supposed hacking, but this is silly. There was no hacking involved. The material was gathered in a perfectly legal way. I could easily prove that.
Only, proving it would require using the data I’ll be sued for using…
http://hiizuru.wordpress.com/2014/05/15/my-hundredth-post-cant-be-shown/
The Faux-Green Renewables Scam is Dripping with Outrageous subsidies!!
Big Green’s untold billions
Mainstream media don’t know Big Green has deeper pockets than Big Oil
The “Kill Keystone XL” crowd isn’t little David up against a Big Oil Goliath. As usual, conventional wisdom isn’t wisdom when the mainstream media ask all the wrong questions with commensurate answers.
Behemoth Big Green outstrips Big Oil in expendable revenue by orders of magnitude — if you know how to follow the money.
The mainstream media don’t know how. Like most liberals, their staffs are afflicted with what 20th century futurist Herman Kahn called “Educated Incapacity” — the learned inability to understand or even perceive a problem, much less a solution.
They’ve been taught to be blind, unable to see Big Green as having more disposable money than Big Oil, so they don’t look into it.
They would never discover that the American Petroleum Institute’s IRS Form 990 for the most recent year showed $237.9 million in assets while the Natural Resources Defense Council reported $241.8 million.
Nor would they discover who started the anti-Keystone campaign in the first place. It was the $789 million Rockefeller Brothers Fund (established in 1940). The fund’s program is elaborated in a 2008 PowerPoint presentation called “The Tar Sands Campaign” by program officer Michael Northrop, who set up coordination and funding for a dozen environmental and anti-corporate attack groups to use the strategy, “raise the negatives, raise the costs, slow down and stop infrastructure, and stop pipelines.” Tom Steyer’s $100 million solo act is naive underclass nouveau cheap by comparison.
Mainstream reporters appear not to be aware of the component parts that comprise Big Green: environmentalist membership groups, nonprofit law firms, nonprofit real estate trusts (The Nature Conservancy alone holds $6 billion in assets), wealthy foundations giving prescriptive grants, and agenda-making cartels such as the 200-plus member Environmental Grantmakers Association. They each play a major socio-political role.
Invisible fact: the environmental movement is a mature, highly developed network with top leadership stewarding a vast institutional memory, a fiercely loyal cadre of competent social and political operatives, and millions of high-demographic members ready to be mobilized as needed.
That membership base is a built-in free public relations machine responsive to the push of a social media button sending politically powerful “educational” alerts that don’t show up on election reports.
Big Oil doesn’t have that, but has to pay for lobbyists, public relations firms and support groups that do show up on reports.
You don’t need expert skills to connect the dots linking Keystone XL to Alberta’s oil sands to climate change to Big Green.
On the other hand, you do need detailed knowledge to parse Big Green into its constituent parts. I spoke with CFACT senior policy analyst Paul Driessen, who said, “U.S. environmental activist groups are a $13-billion-a-year industry — and they’re all about PR and mobilizing the troops.
“Their climate change campaign alone has well over a billion dollars annually, and high-profile battles against drilling, fracking, oil sands and Keystone get a big chunk of that, as demonstrated by the Rockefeller assault.”
Driessen then identified the most-neglected of all money sources in Big Green: “The liberal foundations that give targeted grants to Big Green operations have well over $100 billion at their disposal.”
That figure is confirmed in the Foundation Center database of the Top 100 Foundations. But how much actually gets to environmental groups? The Giving USA Institute’s annual reports show $80,427,810,000 (more than $80 billion) in giving to environmental recipients from 2000 to 2012.
I checked the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and found $147.3 million in assets while environmental donor Gordon E. and Betty I. Moore Foundation posted $5.2 billion.
Driessen pointed out another unperceived sector of Big Green: government donors. “Under President Obama, government agencies have poured tens of millions into nonprofit groups for anti-hydrocarbon campaigns.”
Weather Channel co-founder John Coleman adds, “The federal government is currently spending $2.6 billion [per year] on climate change research (and only those who support the “carbon dioxide is a pollutant/major greenhouse gas’ receive funding).”
This web of ideological soul-mates, like all movements, has its share of turf wars and dissension in the ranks, but, as disclosed on conference tapes I obtained, it shares a visceral hatred of capitalism, a worshipful trust that nature knows best, and a callous belief that humans are not natural but the nemesis of all that is natural.
Lawyer Christopher Manes wrote “Green Rage: Radical Environmentalism and the Unmaking of Civilization.” Manes now practices tax litigation from his law office in Palm Springs, Calif., which he has not yet unmade.
The legal branch of Big Green is varied. Earthjustice, (formerly Sierra Club Legal Defense Fund) raked in $133.8 million in the past five years – comparable to many similar law organizations. Highly litigative attack groups receiving federal settlements are numerous and thriving, such as the Center for Biological Diversity ($29.2 million in the past five years).
It’s not unusual for heirs of big money to dream of unmaking the source of their wealth: Laura Rockefeller Chasin of the Rockefeller Family Fund once said, “It’s very hard to get rid of the money is a way that does more good than harm. One of the ways is to subsidize people who are trying to change the system and get rid of people like us.”
The money reported to the Federal Election Commission is barely the beginning of what’s really happening. It doesn’t show you Big Green’s mobilized boots on the ground, the zooming Twitter tweets, the fevered protesters, the Facebook fanatics or the celebrities preaching carbon modesty from the lounges of their private jets.
When self-righteous victims of Educated Incapacity insist that Big Oil outspends the poor little greenies, keep in mind the mountains of IRS Form 990s filed by thousands of groups, land trusts, lawyer outfits, foundations, and agenda-makers, just waiting for America to wake up and smell Big Green’s untold hundreds of billions.
____________
This article originally appeared in The Washington Examiner
– See more at: http://www.cfact.org/2014/05/14/big-greens-untold-billions/#sthash.u6BIT3H8.dpuf
Tim Hudak Promises to End Wind Scam…..other parties will continue to rob us!
D’Amato: To understand Ontario’s election,
take a careful look at your hydro bill
SEE MOREarticles from this author
It’s so easy to get sidetracked by the distractions.
Ontario Liberal Leader Kathleen Wynne goes for a morning jog in Kitchener’s Victoria Park, leaving a reporter out of breath as he tries to follow. Progressive Conservative Leader Tim Hudak gets kicked off a Toronto subway when he tries to make an announcement, because his team didn’t get permission.
These events grab the headlines because they’re anecdotes, easy to tell. But they have nothing to do with what a political party will or won’t do for you if it wins.
On the other hand, if you look at your hydro bill, and what each party will do about it, it tells you something significant about each of them.
The cost of electricity is a key issue. Ontario’s electricity rates have soared and are now among the highest in North America.
In part, this is because of the Liberal government’s “green energy” plan that offers subsidies to those that put up wind turbines and solar panels, then sell the power back to the power grid.
Expensive electricity is stressful. There’s evidence that it’s forcing manufacturing employers out of the province. Last week, Don Walker, CEO of auto parts giant Magna International, said: “I doubt we’ll add any more plants in Ontario” in part because of electricity costs.
Full platforms have not been released by the parties yet. But here’s what each has said so far about your hydro bill:
Greens: Conservation is their focus. They’d require utilities to provide grants and “affordable” loans for people to make their homes more energy efficient.
Liberals: Their latest announcement was billed as good news for consumers, but when you check the details, it isn’t.
Their plan is to relieve consumers of the debt retirement charge from the old Ontario Hydro (nearly $8 on my last household bill of $177 over two months).
That sounds helpful, until you realize that the “clean energy benefit,” which gives customers a 10-per-cent break on the bill ($19.35 in my case), is also being eliminated. And there’ll be a 90-cents-a-month hike for most homes to subsidize low-income customers. Total impact: I’m paying $13.15 more every two months, and that’s before the cost of electricity goes up again.
New Democrats: Piecemeal policy. There’s very little so far. Leader Andrea Horwath announced Monday that she will “take the HST” off hydro bills “to put money back into the budgets of middle-class families.” Further down in the press release, it’s revealed that actually it’s only the “provincial portion” of the HST that would come off. On my bill, that’s $13.70 in savings over a two-month period.
Conservatives: Shock therapy: The plan is to bring electricity prices down, and therefore keep industrial employers here, by ending those Liberal subsidies for wind and solar costs, cutting the hydro bureaucracy (Hudak says there are 11,000 people making more than $100,000 a year) and buying cheap energy from the United States and Quebec.
This election boils down to a choice: Do you like things the way they are, or do you want big changes?
The Conservatives offer radical change. The Liberals offer their record over the past 11 years. The New Democrats offer tweaks on the Liberal program. And those basic distinctions are true of a lot more issues than just your electricity bill.
Science has turned into a Propaganda Machine!!!
Shameless Climate McCarthyism on full display – scientist forced to resign
Climate McCarthyism: “Have you now or have you ever been a climate skeptic?”.
Hans von Storch reports on an email that I also received today, but held waiting on a statement from The GWPF. Since von Storch has already published the email, breaking my self-imposed embargo, I’ll add the GWPF statement when it becomes available.
von Storch writes:
In an e-mail to GWPF, Lennart Bengtsson has declared his resignation of the advisory board of GWPF. His letter reads :
“I have been put under such an enormous group pressure in recent days from all over the world that has become virtually unbearable to me. If this is going to continue I will be unable to conduct my normal work and will even start to worry about my health and safety. I see therefore no other way out therefore than resigning from GWPF. I had not expecting such an enormous world-wide pressure put at me from a community that I have been close to all my active life. Colleagues are withdrawing their support, other colleagues are withdrawing from joint authorship etc. I see no limit and end to what will happen. It is a situation that reminds me about the time of McCarthy. I would never have expecting anything similar in such an original peaceful community as meteorology. Apparently it has been transformed in recent years.
Under these situation I will be unable to contribute positively to the work of GWPF and consequently therefore I believe it is the best for me to reverse my decision to join its Board at the earliest possible time.”
I am reproducing this letter with permission of Lennart Bengtsson.
Source: http://klimazwiebel.blogspot.nl/2014/05/lennart-bengtsson-leaves-advisory-board.html
Wikipedia says:
McCarthyism is the practice of making accusations of disloyalty, subversion, or treason without proper regard for evidence. It also means “the practice of making unfair allegations or using unfair investigative techniques, especially in order to restrict dissent or political criticism.
This sort of witch hunt for the imagined sin of being affiliated with a climate skeptics group is about as anti-science (to use the language of our detractors) as you can get.
I keep waiting for somebody in science to have this Joseph N. Welch moment, standign up to climate bullies:
Have you no sense of decency, sir? At long last, have you left no sense of decency?
Nothing will change in the rarefied air of climate debate unless people are allowed to speak their minds in science without such pressure. The next time somebody tells you that “science is pure”, show them this.
Unless we get a Conservative Majority….this will be our fate!!!
Constraint payments in Scotland soar by 1,300%
From the Times, 11th May 2014
PAYMENTS to green energy firms under a controversial government scheme that compensates them for wasted power have soared by more than 1,300%.
About £35m has been awarded since the start of the financial year to the owners of 21 renewables projects — all of them in Scotland — because Britain’s power network could not cope with the energy they produced.
The figure is a huge increase on the £2.4m paid in 2011-12 under the UK Department of Energy and Climate Change’s “connect and manage” scheme.
Campaigners warn the compensation payments, paid for by the public through their electricity bills, will continue to increase as more wind farms are built. A 2009 report by Frontier Economics for regulator Ofgem estimated the cost of the scheme would reach £2bn by 2020.
A Question not asked, or answered, yet is would constraint payments be made to a foreign country in the wake of a YES vote on the Independence issue. No doubt Salmond will say ‘YES’ and Danny Alexander ‘NO’. The SNP cadre will blame Westminster, again! But then when did you start believing what any politician says, especially “Tipp ‘Eck”! If it adds cost to rUK fuel bills I think the answer is self evident. Not politically acceptable to the the rUK electorate! Even Milibean should see that 😡 .
Unsustainable Renewable Energy Scam, showing fallout, as the pyramid crumbles.
Sun Sets on Spaniards’ Solar Power Dreams
World | Agence France-Presse | Updated: May 11, 2014 11:10 IST
AFP
The sun is reflected in a solar panel in a field of Mahora, near eastern Spanish city of Albacete on May 7, 2014.
Albacete: “The sun could be yours,” the Spanish government promised in 2007, encouraging citizens to invest in solar power. Many who did now wish they could give it back.
Tens of thousands of indebted Spaniards have found themselves lumbered with fields full of expensive solar panels whose subsidies have been unexpectedly cut in the financial crisis.
“How do I feel? Completely fooled,” said David Utiel, a 37-year-old teacher who invested in a solar plant, recalling the government’s sunshine slogan.
“Fooled, swindled, disappointed, disgusted.”
He was one of the 62,000 ordinary citizens in Spain who campaign groups say have been caught in a financial sun trap.
Along with 23 of his neighbours from Madrigueras, near the eastern city of Albecete, he jointly owns nearly 360 solar panels which stand in a field of wild grass and red poppies.
“It was the government that gave us the idea,” he said, walking at the foot of the vast black panels.
“It was supposed to be a good idea to put your money in the whole solar energy thing. They said it could be very profitable.”
In return for promises of a regular return, he invested 450,000 euros ($620,000) in the field in 2007.
“We are completely ordinary people, country people from the village. Some of us work in education, some in farming, others in small businesses,” he said.
“The idea was not to go chasing after subsidies and become millionaires or anything like that. It was to have some kind of pension.”
Long favoured by the state, renewable energies are now feeling the pain of Spain’s economic austerity policies.
Spain’s government is taking drastic measures to slash a 26-billion-euro electricity deficit after years of paying subsidies to keep prices down.
– Betting the farm –
“It’s the government that encouraged us to invest our savings to generate solar energy,” said Miguel Angel Martinez-Roca, president of ANPIER, an association of small sun power producers.
“It then started to apply retroactive cuts by law once the solar plants were already built. They changed the rules half way through the game.”
UNEF, another solar energy association, estimates that since 2007 earnings by owners of solar panels have fallen by up to half in the worst cases, with losses varying according to the type of installation.
It estimated that the complex series of subsidy cuts would cost owners 920 million euros in 2014.
Meanwhile solar companies owe 22 billion euros to the banks, it says.
“It’s a frankly awful situation. Thousands of Spanish citizens are trapped,” lumbered with solar plants costly to maintain, weak revenues and loans, said Martinez-Roca.
David, who mortgaged his house for the solar investment, has received just 3,000 euros in aid in the past six months, six times less than he pays in maintenance and loan repayments.
Another local man, Manuel Alonso Caballero, 39, left his job in the airport sector to set up his own solar power plant.
He says he invested nearly 1.5 million euros and risks losing it all. His farmer parents have had to mortgage their house as his guarantors.
“I went into the solar business because I really believed what they were saying and I really believed in renewable energy, but I realise now that I was wrong,” he said.
“I’ve lost any trust I had and I wouldn’t invest another euro in Spain.”
ANPIER has lodged complaints in the courts against the state and vows to turn to the European Union authorities if its case in Spain fails.
Martinez-Roca said the group is calling a demonstration in Madrid on June 21 against the government.
“We are not prepared to let them ruin us, insult us and cheat us like this.”
The Only ones who Gain, are the Rich Wind Pushers….the rest Lose, Big-time!
Dick Warburton: is the RET worth the Pain inflicted on Families & Business?
May 11, 2014 by
As STT followers know, the RET Review Panel is headed up by Dick Warburton – a man who’s acutely aware of the pain being inflicted on Australian families and business by the mandatory Renewable Energy Target.
Since Dick was appointed to conduct the first thorough cost/benefit analysis of the mandatory RET ever undertaken, the wind industry and its parasites have been reduced to screaming “climate change denier” – as if that were some kind of immunising hex.
As pointed out previously, these boys are just working through the 5 stages of grief: denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance. From the hysterical ranting emanating from eco-fascist blogs – like the Climate Speculator, yes2ruining-us and ruin-economy – it appears they’ve got a lot more work to do before they finally come to grips with the demise of their beloved wind industry.
Adding to their grief is the fact that Dick Warburton is a hardened business-man, who couldn’t care less about the juvenile hectoring coming from the lunatic fringe of the hard-green-left. You know, the same sort of megaphone “diplomacy” seen on university campuses whenever the government proposes that the students might actually contribute a little more to their own education: same intellectually underdeveloped crowd, different ideological rant.
Here’s Dick being interviewed last Thursday on ABC Radio.
Wealthy can afford deficit tax levy: Dick Warburton
ABC Radio (AM)
Chris Uhlmann
8 May 2014
CHRIS UHLMANN: Treasurer Joe Hockey wanted a national conversation about the challenges facing the budget and he’s certainly got one. There’s been no end of the advice he’s received from interest groups and last week’s release of the Commission of Audit helped to pour rocket fuel on the debate.
Businessman Dick Warburton has advised governments from both sides and is currently heading the review of the Renewable Energy Target. Welcome to AM.
DICK WARBURTON: Oh thank you Chris, good to be here.
CHRIS UHLMANN: Well, Dick Warburton, is there a compelling need to reduce the size of government and to do it quickly?
DICK WARBURTON: I believe it is. I believe we’ve got not so much a crisis but the potential of a crisis if we don’t do something fairly quickly.
And one of the key areas that I would like to see is the reduction in the size of the government per se. Now that can be both federal and at state level. Admittedly this is a federal budget, I understand that, but nevertheless you need to start at both levels and there’s a lot of duplication between federal and state bureaucratic areas.
CHRIS UHLMANN: The footprint of government of course though is big and if you withdraw that money quickly from the economy you could crash it. Is that a risk?
DICK WARBURTON: Yes, it is a risk. Quickly clearly it’s a risk. It’s a matter of trying to do it as gently as possible without harming the growth as much as you can. You will harm growth, there’s no two ways about that, but not to crash the growth.
CHRIS UHLMANN: What do you think about having a deficit tax of 2 per cent levied on the those who pay the top tax bracket?
DICK WARBURTON: Look, I guess I’m one of those in that bracket and I’d have to say from a personal point of view, I don’t like to have an increase in tax. However, I do believe that is something that should be done. I believe this is a tax on some people who can afford to do it because the middle to the lower income people are likely to be hit with some of the cuts in some of their health and welfare and other social budget areas.
CHRIS UHLMANN: And you don’t buy the argument again that that’s taking money out of the economy which will affect demand?
DICK WARBURTON: I don’t think it will take that much money out of the economy because I think at that level it won’t have such a big impact as something in the smaller, lower to middle income areas would have. I don’t think it will have that much of an effect.
CHRIS UHLMANN: Now, of course you’ve got a background in manufacturing as well. Should the age of entitlement for business be over too? Should we see an end to many of the industry assistance programs that government provides?
DICK WARBURTON: I think we should be looking at all those. Now which ones you do or use again is a matter of how to balance the area between cutting expenditure and trying to make sure you maintain growth. Yes, I believe we should look at those but I don’t have any particular ones that I think you should focus on and say let’s cut those.
CHRIS UHLMANN: Look, as manufacturing declines everyone talks about the jobs of the future. Where do you think those jobs will come from? How will we manufacture the jobs of the future?
DICK WARBURTON: Well, in the past we’ve always seen, I mean – and always is the word I use – always seen how those jobs eventually get absorbed into the rest of the community.
I remember living in South Australia when Mitsubishi stopped in South Australia and it was an absolute case of doom and gloom. But within a space of one year to two years, those jobs were all repositioned throughout the rest of the economy. And I think that will be the case – and remember the number of jobs lost is quite traumatic to those who are affected by it, significantly affected, but in the totality of the working force, it’s actually a relatively small proportion.
CHRIS UHLMANN: What has been the thing that’s hammering the economy most recently? Is it the high Australian dollar? Is it something that really is out of the Government’s hand?
DICK WARBURTON: Well, the dollar, the exchange rate is definitely out of the, totally out of the Government’s hand. That is a monetary policy factor. But remember the exchange rate, there’s a good and bad thing. It depends what side of the fence you’re on. There are certain people who would love to see a higher exchange rate, it would affect, it would help them immensely. Other would like to see a lower one. So I’ve always seen the exchange rate as being something in the eye of the beholder.
CHRIS UHLMANN: And do you think that the monetary policy settings are right at the moment, 2.5 per cent? We’ve moved from an easing bias, if you like, with the Reserve Bank to one where it’s now neutral.
DICK WARBURTON: Yes, I think it’s exactly in the right position.
CHRIS UHLMANN: Now, you are reviewing the Renewable Energy Target at the moment; that is that Australia have 20 per cent of its energy sourced from renewables by 2020. That is driving up the cost of power, but is that a cost that is worth bearing because of the long-term environmental benefit?
DICK WARBURTON: Well, what we’ve got to look at in this review is not just the environmental benefits; we’re looking at the economic benefits, we’re looking at the social benefits. We have to take into account the effect on the electricity prices, which we’re doing, and we’re modelling to see just exactly what that is. And when we’ve completed all of those studies and the review of all the submissions that have come in and the modelling, then we’ll come up with a decision to give to the Government.
CHRIS UHLMANN: Is it your sense at the moment that the economic costs are too high because the cost of power is too high?
DICK WARBURTON: Well, it’s certainly having an effect, Chris. Whether it’s too high, we’ll find out as we get into the study.
CHRIS UHLMANN: What kind of effect is it having? Just give us a sense of the cost of power and how the renewable energy target has driven that up over time.
DICK WARBURTON: Well, we’re looking at emissions, we’ve got a target for an emission control of 5 per cent. That’s a bipartisan approach. And certainly renewables have their place in that particular equation.
I’d like to believe that we’ll look at this and say, now, is the cost of the RET worth the economic pain that you get by imposing it on the electricity consumers?
CHRIS UHLMANN: And there’s no doubt that there is economic pain because of that?
DICK WARBURTON: Yes there is, yes there is economic pain. It is one part of the equation. It is not the whole part of the equation.
CHRIS UHLMANN: Is the cost of energy doing damage to business in Australia?
DICK WARBURTON: Depends on the business, Chris. Some of the businesses that use relatively small bits of electricity, obviously it hasn’t got a great effect. But there are industries that use large quantities of electricity and in those places they’ve been telling us this is having a major impact on their cost side of the balance sheet.
CHRIS UHLMANN: Well, one of the areas where Australia always had a competitive advantage was that energy in the past here was relatively cheap and abundant. That equation has changed. Are you concerned about that?
DICK WARBURTON: Well, it is still cheap and abundant if you look at the black coal and the brown coal.
CHRIS UHLMANN: But we’re not looking at that though, are we? We’re looking at more renewables.
DICK WARBURTON: Well, no we’re not necessarily looking at all, we are looking at renewables in our study but we’re trying to look at the overall generation of electricity, what are the factors that affect the generation, and we’ll be looking at all types including renewables.
CHRIS UHLMANN: And when will your review report?
DICK WARBURTON: We’re due to report in July, Chris.
CHRIS UHLMANN: That is businessman Dick Warburton who is currently reviewing the Renewable Energy Target.
ABC
STT thinks that Dick was simply being politic, by faintly suggesting the economic pain being inflicted by the RET on families and business might (somehow) be worth it.
When the Panel met with miners, business groups and wind industry rent-seekers a few weeks back he was less circumspect – telling the audience that the review has nothing to do with “climate change” or CO2 emissions – and that it’s primarily “concerned with the cost impacts of renewable energy in the electricity sector” (see our post here).
The consultants, ACIL Allen have already found that the mandatory RET (set to expire in 2031 – unless scrapped beforehand) will involve a transfer of (at least) $53 billion from power consumers to wind power generators – in the form of RECs issued to them and added to all Australian power bills. That, in anybody’s books, is a whopping cost. And the cost of the REC Tax to power consumers is just the tip of the power-price-punishment iceberg (see our post here).
Wind power cannot and will never reduce CO2 emissions in the electricity sector – simply because 100% of its capacity is backed up 100% of the time by fossil fuel generation to account for the fact it disappears for hours every day – and for days on end – producing nothing more than hollow promises of “powering” millions of Australian homes (see our posts hereand here and here and here and here and here).
Thanks to the mandatory RET – in less than a decade – Australia has gone from having the lowest power prices in the world to the highest. And, despite wild claims from the wind industry about reducing CO2 emissions, it has failed to produce a shred of credible evidence to that effect: indeed, all the evidence points in the opposite direction (see this European paper here; this Irish paper here; this English paper here; and this Dutch study here).
And there is, of course, the renewables “pinup girl”, Germany as the perfect empirical (and disastrous) case study. The Germans have poured 100s of €billions into subsidising wind and solar over the last decade and, despite all that pain, Germany has seen its CO2 emissions increase not decrease (see our post here). A very costly “oops”.
The conclusion of any cost/benefit analysis of the mandatory RET – and its bastard child – wind power – can only be: ALL PAIN and NO GAIN.
Why not let the Panel know what you think (see our post here). Submissions close on 16 May.
"Mothers Against Wind Turbines™" Phoenix Rising... 