Climate Fraud

Climate Change Rhetoric is Nothing More Than a Cover for Wealth Redistribution.

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Nine Experts Slam EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy’s ‘Clean Power Plan’ Speech
Like a river in Colorado, the EPA is poisoning the climate debate.
by Tom Harris
August 24, 2015
Anyone trying to understand why the climate change debate has become so toxic need look no further than the August 11 speech by U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Gina McCarthy.

In her presentation at the Resources for the Future (RFF) Policy Leadership Forum, her first public appearance since the August 3 release of the EPA’s “Clean Power Plan“ (CPP), McCarthy demonstrated everything that is wrong with the Obama administration’s approach to the issue. The EPA employs error-riddled interpretations of climate science and economics, and couples this with language designed to trick the public and the press into thinking the plan is something it is not.
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A Biased Host

The forum started with an introduction by Dr. Raymond Kopp, RFF’s Energy & Climate Economics co-director, who told the audience:

As many of you know, we’re not an advocacy organization. We’re not cheerleaders for any particular policy or point of view. Our goal is really to provide the best scholarly research to the policy community so it can develop the most efficient, efficacious, affordable, and best public policies possible.

Laudable goals indeed … but Kopp immediately betrayed RFF’s supposed objectives when he next said:

The Clean Power Plan in its current form as a final rule is likely the most significant development in U.S. history with respect to climate change. I don’t think any of us believe otherwise. It is a tremendously substantial rule and one that will have significant impact.

[Developing the rule] took a lot of hard work by many people inside and outside of government and it took an awful lot of leadership and luckily Gina McCarthy was available, ready, and willing to undertake that leadership role and for that we are most thankful.

Addressing McCarthy directly, Kopp concluded:

Thank you for getting the job done, for doing it exceedingly well, and shepherding the Clean Power Plan through all of these hurdles that were necessary to bring it to a final rule today. And, I think, thank you for doing it in an environment where the politics and the rhetoric really make this job as difficult as possible.

Considering Kopp’s remarks, it is not surprising that, according to RFF Forum attendee Dr. Alan Carlin — former EPA senior analyst and manager, and past chairman of the Angeles Chapter of the Sierra Club — “RFF went all out to prevent me from handing out my comments and to keep out any skeptical comments from the Q&A.”

So much for RFF’s claim to not be “cheerleaders for any particular policy or point of view.”

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EPA Misrepresents Climate Science

McCarthy started the climate change part of her presentation with a politically correct assertion:

Climate change is one of the most important issues that we face. It is a global challenge but, in many ways, it’s also very personal to all of us because it affects everything and everyone we know and we love.

Climate change is, of course, a regional challenge, not a global one.

There is no super being straddling the planet, experiencing global trends. All that matters is what is happening — increases or decreases in the incidence of floods and droughts, heat waves and cold spells, and so on — in regions where people, plants, and animals are found. For example, what sense would it make for a community to prepare for a global sea level rise if, in that particular region, sea level was falling?

New Zealand-based renewable energy consultant Bryan Leyland pointed out:

Climate change has been a problem to mankind for hundreds of thousands of years. But we survived the last ice age, compared with which, the recent change in climate is but a minor wiggle. The greatest climate risk we face at the moment is a high probability that we are entering a period of cooling comparable to the Little Ice Age.

Many scientists agree with Leyland. For example, Dr. Howard Hayden, emeritus professor of physics at the University of Connecticut, explained:

The Earth is on a descent into the next 100,000-year ice age. For the moment, the glaciers seem to be in retreat, but they are not remnants of the last ice age. They have been growing during the last 8,000 years.

High-resolution spectroscopy specialist Dr. John Nicol, former senior lecturer of physics and dean of science at James Cook University in Australia, elaborated:

Since 1997, the Earth has not warmed but has, in fact, very slightly cooled even though atmospheric CO2 levels have been increasing. McCarthy’s assertion that climate change is “very personal to all of us” clearly demonstrates her emotional rather than the scientific approach to this non-issue.

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Gina McCarthy next said:

By now we all know that climate change is driven in large part by carbon pollution and it leads to more extreme heat, cold, storms, fires, and floods.

Referring to carbon dioxide (CO2) as “carbon pollution” is one of the most common rhetorical tricks employed by the Obama administration. In the EPA’s news release announcing the CPP, they referenced “carbon pollution” five times in the release’s first four sentences.

Calling the gas “carbon” encourages the public to think of it as something dirty, like graphite or soot — which really are carbon.

Calling CO2 by its proper name would help the public remember that it is a non-toxic, odorless, invisible gas essential to plant photosynthesis. It is no more pollution than is water vapor, by far the principal greenhouse gas in the atmosphere. The EPA website is riddled with this “carbon” deception.

Leyland replied to the EPA chief:

It is shocking that McCarthy does not understand the difference between carbon dioxide — a harmless gas that benefits agriculture — and genuine pollutants like particulates, sulphur dioxide and the like emitted from old obsolete power stations. Modern coal-fired stations do not emit these pollutants.

McCarthy is not fit to head the EPA if she doesn’t know such basic science. Regardless, neither theory nor observations support the EPA chief’s claim that CO2 rise causes “more extreme heat, cold, storms, fires and floods.” Hyderabad, India-based Dr. S. Jeevananda Reddy — formerly chief technical advisor for the UN World Meteorological Organization and author of Climate Change – Myths & Realities — said that McCarthy’s statement is “not true”:

Extreme heat, cold, storms and floods are part of natural variation. These are modified by local general circulation patterns existing over different parts of the globe over different seasons.

Nicol also contested McCarthy’s assertion:

Not only is the claim that CO2 is to blame [for increases in extreme weather] wrong, but the contradictory statements regarding these weather events, which are NO different from those of 200 years ago, demonstrates the desperation of lobby groups trying to maintain this myth.

If the world were to warm appreciably due to increasing CO2 emissions, temperatures at high latitudes are forecast to rise the most, reducing the difference between arctic and tropical temperatures. Since this differential drives weather, we should see weaker midlatitude cyclones in a warmer world — and thus fewer extremes in weather, not more.

Indeed, the lack of extreme weather increase with global warming is one of the few areas of agreement between the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and the Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change (NIPCC). In 2012, the IPCC asserted that a relationship between global warming and wildfires, rainfall, storms, hurricanes, and other extreme weather events has not been demonstrated. In their latest assessment report (Sep 2013), IPCC scientists concluded that they had only “low confidence” that “damaging increases will occur in either drought or tropical cyclone activity” as a result of global warming.

The Sep 2013 NIPCC report concluded the same, asserting:

In no case has a convincing relationship been established between warming over the past 100 years and increases in any of these extreme events.

NIPCC report chapter lead author Dr. Timothy Ball, environmental consultant and former climatology professor at the University of Winnipeg, explained that the EPA is taking the approach that American journalist Farhad Manjoo identified in his book True Enough: Learning To Live in a Post-Fact Society:

You create your theory then hire experts. The EPA agenda is political, not scientific.

Climate Change Is Normal

McCarthy then told the RFF Forum:

For farmers who are strained by the drought, for families with homes in the path of a wildfire, for small businesses along our coastlines, climate change is indeed very personal.

Nicol labeled these comments “utter rubbish,” writing:

Farmers do not believe in Global Warming or Climate Change as spruced by the human-caused global warming industry. Farmers have mostly been on their properties since they were children and have also been given detailed accounts of the weather and the seasons from when their great-grandfathers began farming.

This fact upsets those who try to claim that there are obvious changes. Farmers will tell you that the seasons come in cycles and any season we have now has been seen in the past — possibly 100 years ago.

Reddy also replied to McCarthy:

These [phenomena McCarthy lists] are associated with human actions on nature — land use and land cover changes, pollution (air, water, soil, and food) and adulterated foods, etc. For example, recent devastations in Jammu & Kashmir and Himalayan states of India were associated with occupation/building houses on river banks.

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McCarthy continued:

We all know that climate change is impacting us today and will continue to get worse if we don’t take action.

The EPA chief knows full well that this is not true.

After intense questioning from Representative Mike Pompeo (R-KS) at the September 18, 2013 hearing of the House Subcommittee on Energy and Power, McCarthy admitted that the CPP will have essentially no impact on climate. Hayden agreed:

Even if the restrictions were enacted, the effect on worldwide temperature would be too tiny to measure.

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McCarthy Suppresses Open Scientific Debate

McCarthy said:

We are way past any further discussion or debate.

Scientists are as sure that humans are causing climate change as they are that cigarette smoke causes lung cancer. So, unless you want to debate that point, don’t debate about climate change any longer because it is our moral responsibility to act.

Comparing the science linking cigarette smoke and cancer with the science of climate change is ridiculous. Climate science is becoming more uncertain as the field advances — we don’t even know if warming or cooling lies ahead.

University of Western Ontario applied mathematician Dr. Chris Essex, an expert in the mathematical models that are the basis of the climate scare, explained:

Climate is one of the most challenging open problems in modern science. Some knowledgeable scientists believe that the climate problem can never be solved.

The NIPCC reports list hundreds of peer-reviewed science papers that show that much of what we thought we knew about climate is wrong or highly debatable. In particular, the lack of global warming over the past 18 years, a period during which CO2 concentration in the atmosphere has risen 10%, shows there is something seriously wrong with the human-caused warming theory.

Reddy responded to McCarthy’s statement:

We still need to discuss global warming science since the IPCC is not sure of the correct sensitivity factor that relates anthropogenic greenhouse gas increases to temperature rise.

This is illustrated by the fact that they changed the sensitivity factor [the temperature rise in degrees Celsius forecast to occur due to a doubling of CO2], from 1.95 in the IPCC Fourth Assessment Report (2007) to 1.55 in their Fifth Assessment Report (2013).

They are merely employing trial and error, and not physical process paths.

Ball points out what the IPCC itself admitted in its Third Assessment Report (2001):

In climate research and modeling, we should recognize that we are dealing with a coupled non-linear chaotic system, and therefore that the long-term prediction of future climate states is not possible.

John Nicol said of the scientists who support McCarthy’s position:

They are mistaken since they do not have a proper understanding of the spectroscopic behavior of carbon dioxide or its interactions in a mixture of other gases — oxygen and nitrogen.

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McCarthy next told the audience that Obama:

… reminded us that, while we are the first generation to feel the impacts of climate change, we are the last that can effectively do something about it.

Nicol answered:

We are not the first people to experience climate change. The Navajo in America, civilizations in the Middle East, and many others moved across continents to escape climate change-related events which were totally the responsibility of Nature and caused huge upheaval.

The changes claimed to be perceived today are, by comparison, trivial.

Carbon dioxide is not causing changes to the climate — Nature causes changes and always has, always will.

Ball asked:

How on Earth did we ever survive the climate change that has gone on for five billion years?

Of course, the idea that we can do something about it speaks to the arrogant godlessness of Obama and the environmentalists. If you get rid of God, you have to play God, and Obama’s angels are the bureaucrats like McCarthy. It’s interesting that another McCarthy, Mary, said: “Bureaucracy, the rule of no one, [is] the modern form of despotism.”

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McCarthy concluded her comments:

Science has spoken on this. A low-carbon future is inevitable. We’re sending exactly the right signals on what, at least EPA believes to be, a future of lower pollution that is essential for public health and the environment.

Nicol replied:

Advocates for the destruction of society and world control of our societies are the actual offenders who have spoken on this.

Real and demonstrable science shows that a low carbon future will have no influence on the world’s climate and will destroy our ability to care for the world’s poor.

Energy is essential for the distribution of health and wealth to the poorer nations. This means that coal-fired power is essential, as recognized by the world’s largest economies, China and India.

Who are we to dictate the living standards of these and other nations?

Leyland added:

The main effect of the drive for a low carbon future is that energy will become more and more expensive and more and more people will die in the winter from the cold and in summer because they cannot afford to run the air conditioning.

The health effects would be seriously negative. The environmental effects will be a reduction in plant growth that could cost the agricultural economy trillions of dollars.

CPP’s Fictitious Health and Financial Benefits

McCarthy made numerous excited claims about the health impacts of the new climate rule:

As a result [of the CPP], in 2030, we are going to be avoiding thousands of premature deaths and hospital admissions, tens of thousands of asthma attacks and hundreds of thousands of missed school days and missed work days.

But the CPP does not regulate pollution. It regulates CO2, which has no detrimental impact on human health.

Only by assuming that enabling the CPP will force the closure of coal-fired electricity stations – and that that will reduce pollution emissions – can one claim the health benefits claimed by McCarthy. As explained by William Yeatman, environmental policy expert and editor of the Cooler Heads Coalition:

[This is] an EPA scam, known as “co-benefits,” by which the agency has justified a number of recent highly politicized regulations.

[T]here are entire sections of the Clean Air Act given to the regulation of particulate matter and nitrogen oxides. There is, therefore, neither a public health purpose nor a need for EPA to use a climate plan to regulate particulate matter and nitrogen oxides emissions under the Clean Air Act.

Furthermore, Yeatman demonstrates that the EPA’s methodology for estimating health benefits of the Clean Air Act “is based almost entirely on controversial, ‘secret’ science.” Not only do their forecasts of lives saved make no sense, but the agency refuses to release the data used to make these calculations. Carlin labeled the supposed health benefits of the CPP “dubious if not imaginary,” and asked:

If these benefits actually exist, why has EPA not already obtained them directly and more efficiently using “conventional” pollutant regulations?

McCarthy concluded her presentation by claiming that in 2030, as a result of the CPP:

The average American family will start seeing $85 in annual savings on their utility bills.

This is lunacy. Independent climate researcher Willis Eschenbach demonstrated on Watts Up With That that the CPP will almost quadruple U.S. electricity prices by 2030 if the Obama administration’s latest CO2 rule is fully implemented. As seen in Figure 1 below, Eschenbach calculated that “renewable” capacity per capita accounts for 84% of electricity cost variations between European countries (about €1 trillion has been spent so far in Europe on the installation of renewable energy technologies for electricity generation).

Figure 1: Electricity costs as a function of per capita installed renewable capacity. Wind and solar only, excludes hydropower.

Eschenbach explained:

We get about 4% of our electricity from wind and solar. He [Obama] wants to jack it to 28%, meaning we need seven times the installed capacity. Currently we have about 231 kW/capita of installed wind and solar (see Figure 1).

So Obama’s plan will require that we have a little less than seven times that, 1537 kW/capita. And assuming that we can extend the relationship we see in Figure 1, this means that the average price of electricity in the U.S. will perforce go up to no less than 43 cents per kilowatt-hour [the current average U.S. price of electricity is about 12 cents per kilowatt-hour] (This includes the hidden 1.4 cents/kW cost due to the five cents per kilowatt-hour subsidy paid to the solar/wind producers).

In January 2008, Obama, then a candidate for the Democratic Party’s nomination for president, told the San Francisco Chronicle that under his energy plan “electricity rates would necessarily skyrocket.”

Eschenbach and other analysts (for example, here and here) show that the CPP will finally allow the president to fulfill this promise.

Climate Hoax Must Be Confronted

Dr. Jay Lehr, science director at The Heartland Institute, summed up the situation well:

There is no science behind the idea that man controls the climate. Yet, billions of dollars are being diverted from our taxes to scam artists for renewable energy, fallacious mathematical model research, and political rewards.

It is a scam that dwarfs all others that have come before. And this will continue unabated for years to come until the public rises up in dissent.

Rather than just go with the flow or try to game the system to their advantage, industry leaders, scientists, and ordinary citizens must speak out against the climate scare that threatens America. If they do not, operatives such as Gina McCarthy will have free rein to enable the president’s disastrous climate plans.

More Proof that Climate Change Hysteria is a HOAX!

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Realities Of Climate Change, Politics And Public Knowledge.

Guest Opinion: Dr. Tim Ball

The minute a small cabal hijacked climate for a political agenda it determined that setting the record straight required political answers. Naomi Klein admitted it wasn’t about the science directly. That fighting climate change was necessary to combat capitalism. This was the objective all along and expressed in 1993 when Senator Wirth admitted,

“We’ve got to ride the global warming issue. Even if the theory of global warming is wrong, we will be doing the right thing …” 


The “right thing” is achieving Maurice Strong’s objective of getting rid of the industrialized nations.

Too many skeptics continue to think that scientific points are going to change the public understanding. Most of the public don’t understand, but, more important, don’t want to understand. I doubt the 75% who failed the Yale Education Climate Change test lost any sleep. Polls, such as those of the Pew Center and overall analysis of trends indicate global warming or climate change are not a concern for most people. I suspect they don’t care because they don’t understand or want to understand. They also know how about the unreliability of weather forecasts, and that is all the science they need. One Pew pollconfirms that the public believes global warming is a political issue. Because of this, politicians and environmentalists with political agendas continue to control the story.James Delingpole puts the amount of money wasted because of this control at $4 billion a day.

Because science is ideally amoral and apolitical most scientists avoid politics, which results in a failure to provide necessary information to open-minded politicians and media. They need this to counter the pseudo-science of the IPCC proponents. They knew what to do from the start. Stephen Schneider set it out succinctly in Discover magazine a year after Hansen appeared before Wirth’s Senate committee and put the entire issue into the political realm.

On the one hand we are ethically bound to the scientific method, in effect promising to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but& which means that we must include all the doubts, caveats, ifs and buts. On the other hand, we are not just scientists, but human beings as well. And like most people, we’d like to see the world a better place, which in this context translates into our working to reduce the risk of potentially disastrous climate change. To do that we have to get some broad-based support, to capture the public’s imagination. That, of course, entails getting loads of media coverage. So we have to offer up scary scenarios, make simplified, dramatic statements, and make little mention of any doubts we might have. This double ethical bind which we frequently find ourselves in cannot be solved by any formula. Each of us has to decide what the right balance is between being effective and being honest. I hope that means being both.

If this sounds familiar today, it is because it summarizes the words in the recent Encyclical of Pope Francis. Schneider is wrong. There is no decision about right and wrong, which is why the Pope’s connection with climate deceivers contradicts his central role as upholder of truth and is so deeply troubling. It is the rationale Naomi Klein and other use, which is why they brought her on board. It is basic Alinsky; the end justifies the means.

I spoke about the need to counter the false science from a political and social perspective, in my presentation at the First Heartland Conference in New York ten years ago. I pointed out that Gore’s movie was a brilliant piece of propaganda. A view supported by Justice Burton the UK judge who ruled on its use in the classroom.

It is now common ground that it is not simply a science film – although it is clear that it is based substantially on scientific research and opinion – but that it is a political film, albeit of course not party political.

Justice Burton recommended teachers provide balance by also showing The Great Global Warming Swindle. I proudly advised producer Martin Durkin and appeared in the movie. I also warned him that the US media would not run it, as proved the case, although it is now generally available. The problem is that only a small percentage of people watch documentaries on television. Gore bypassed that by using Hollywood to make the movie but also to market it through all their traditional venues. They knew how to achieve Schneider’s goal of getting “broad-based support” and “capturing the public’s imagination.”

Skeptics have, for a variety of reasons, avoided the “Hollywood” approach. It is a major error. We need to realize that tactics are tactics, and that the adage that you fight fire with fire is true. The first thing to do in any strategy is define the problem and the second is to determine the target and thirdly use tactics appropriate to the situation.

The problem is a failure to explain climate science and its abuse in a way a majority can understand. The following points are gleaned from my experience with media interviews, school visits, questions after a presentation, and questions via email. They represent the issues I confront every day. They are the real challenges anybody trying to offset the misinformation about climate and climate change must consider. They are the political dynamics that influence how you help people understand and deal with science issues.

1. People can’t believe a small group of people could mislead the world. Nowadays, the explosion of conspiracy theories because of the Internet, make the idea even more remote and unpalatable. They need to heed world-renowned anthropologist Margaret Mead’s observation.

“Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.”

This comment implies that “thoughtful” and “committed” are pursuing positive changes. History indicates they are never positive as power centralizes and corrupts and people lose freedoms.

2. People can’t believe scientists would distort, manipulate, or do anything other than proper science. They accept the view that science and scientists are amoral and apolitical. As Mary McCarthy said,

“In science, all facts, no matter how trivial or banal, enjoy democratic equality.”

This is reinforced by the practice of most scientists to avoid politics. The public assumes the silence is a tacit agreement with what is in the media about global warming.

3. It is mostly the politicians who talk about the 97% manufactured consensus. The public asks as happened to me twice on radio this week,

“How come thousands of scientists believe there is global warming and climate change?”

The simple answer is, very few are familiar with the science. They, like most of the public, assume other scientists would not distort, manipulate, or do anything other than proper science. When scientists find out, they are shocked as exemplified in Klaus-Eckert Pulscomment.

Ten years ago I simply parroted what the IPCC told us. One day I started checking the facts and data—first I started with a sense of doubt but then I became outraged when I discovered that much of

what the IPCC and the media were telling us was sheer nonsense and was not even supported by any scientific facts and measurements. To this day I still feel shame that as a scientist I made presentations of their science without first checking it.

IPCC proponents promoted and perpetuated this deception through science societies as I explained.

A particularly egregious exploitation was carried out through science societies and professional scientific groups. They were given the climate science of the IPCC and urged to support it on behalf of their members. Certainly a few were part of the exploitation, but a majority, including most of the members simply assumed that the rigorous methods of research and publication in their science were used. Lord May of the UK Royal Society was influential in the manipulation of public perception through national scientific societies. They persuaded other national societies to become involved by making public statements. The Russian Academy of Science, under its President Yuri Israel, refused to participate.

4. To paraphrase Winston Churchill, “Never in the history of mankind have so many been deceived by so few, with so few facts.” The more you try to counteract what the public knows using scientific facts, the more you lose the battle. If you use scientific facts you must couch them in terms and analogies everybody understands. I know this from 25 years of teaching a compulsory science credit course for Arts students. The abilities and techniques I developed there of explaining climate in ways the public understand made me a double threat to IPCC proponents because I was also qualified.

5. Most people don’t know what is “normal” or “natural” in nature. This made it easy to imply or infer that they were abnormal or unnatural. It works well with the modern practice of “sound bites” in which information is presented without context. Climate change is innately historical and demands context. There are two basic options to counter the problem. Publish the context for each story as soon as possible after it appears. Publish stories of true facts that are outside of people’s comprehension using analogies. For example, alarmists add human scale to stories with analogies. One year they reported Arctic sea ice melted more by an area the size of Texas than the previous year. Texas is 695,662 km2, which is approximately 4.6% of the total Arctic ice of 15 million km2. The change is within the natural annual variability, but Texas is big so it must be a problem.

6. We tell people CO2 isn’t causing the warming but fail to explain why. This is for people who don’t know what a greenhouse gas is or that water vapor is far more important. (Figure 1)

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Figure 1 Source: Yale Education Climate Change Test.

We then fail to explain what is the most likely cause. As politicians learn to their peril, you can’t just be against something.

Today they push the global warming claims with increasing deception because the 21stParis Conference of the Parties on climate is scheduled for 7-8 December 2015. They consider it imperative to pass a Kyoto type set of policies. Ironically, one thing that diminishes their chances is continued economic decline, the very objective of Wirth, Klein and the gang. It is ironic because politicians will reset their priorities to promote development, growth, and job creation because they don’t want angry voters. What they will get is angry global warming activists with a political agenda.

Why the Climate Change Hysteria is Being Pushed, In Spite of Evidence, That it is NOT As They Say!

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Climate Crisis, Inc.

$1.5 trillion and Larry Bell book explain how profiteers of climate doom keep the money flowing

Paul Driessen

No warming in 18 years, no category 3-5 hurricane hitting the USA in ten years, seas rising at barely six inches a century: computer models and hysteria are consistently contradicted by Real World experiences.

So how do White House, EPA, UN, EU, Big Green, Big Wind, liberal media, and even Google, GE and Defense Department officials justify their fixation on climate change as the greatest crisis facing humanity? How do they excuse saying government must control our energy system, our economy and nearly every aspect of our lives – deciding which jobs will be protected and which ones destroyed, even who will live and who will die – in the name of saving the planet? What drives their intense ideology?

The answer is simple. The Climate Crisis & Renewable Energy Industry has become a $1.5-trillion-a-year business! That’s equal to the annual economic activity generated by the entire US nonprofit sector, or all savings over the past ten years from consumers switching to generic drugs. By comparison, annual revenues for much-vilified Koch Industries are about $115 billion, for ExxonMobil around $365 billion.

According to a 200-page analysis by the Climate Change Business Journal, this Climate Industrial Complex can be divided into nine segments: low carbon and renewable power; carbon capture and storage; energy storage, like batteries; energy efficiency; green buildings; transportation; carbon trading; climate change adaptation; and consulting and research. Consulting alone is a $27-billion-per-year industry that handles “reputation management” for companies and tries to link weather events, food shortages and other problems to climate change. Research includes engineering R&D and climate studies.

The $1.5-trillion price tag appears to exclude most of the Big Green environmentalism industry, a $13.4-billion-per-year business in the USA alone. The MacArthur Foundation just gave another $50 million to global warming alarmist groups. Ex-NY Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Chesapeake Energy gave the Sierra Club $105 million to wage war on coal (shortly before the Club began waging war on natural gas and Chesapeake Energy, in what some see as poetic justice). Warren Buffett, numerous “progressive” foundations, Vladimir Putin cronies and countless companies also give endless millions to Big Green.

Our hard-earned tax dollars are likewise only partially included in the CCBJ tally. As professor, author and columnist Larry Bell notes in his new book, Scared Witless: Prophets and profits of climate doom, the U.S. government spent over$185 billion between 2003 and 2010 on climate change items – and this wild spending spree has gotten even worse in the ensuing Obama years. We are paying for questionable to fraudulent global warming studies, climate-related technology research, loans and tax breaks for Solyndra and other companies that go bankrupt, and “climate adaptation” foreign aid to poor countries.

Also not included: the salaries and pensions of thousands of EPA, NOAA, Interior, Energy and other federal bureaucrats who devote endless hours to devising and imposing regulations for Clean Power Plans, drilling and mining bans, renewable energy installations, and countless Climate Crisis, Inc. handouts. A significant part of the $1.9 trillion per year that American businesses and families pay to comply with mountains of federal regulations is also based on climate chaos claims.

Add in the state and local equivalents of these federal programs, bureaucrats, regulations and restrictions, and we’re talking serious money. There are also consumer costs, including the far higher electricity prices families and businesses must pay, especially in states that want to prove their climate credentials.

The impacts on companies and jobs outside the Climate Crisis Industry are enormous, and growing. For every job created in the climate and renewable sectors, two to four jobs are eliminated in other parts of the economy, studies in Spain, Scotland and other countries have found. The effects on people’s health and welfare, and on overall environmental quality, are likewise huge and widespread.

But all these adverse effects are studiously ignored by Climate Crisis profiteers – and by the false prophets of planetary doom who manipulate data, exaggerate and fabricate looming catastrophes, and create the pseudo-scientific basis for regulating carbon-based energy and industries into oblivion. Meanwhile, the regulators blatantly ignore laws that might penalize their favored constituencies.

In one glaring example, a person who merely possesses a single bald eagle feather can be fined up to $100,000 and jailed for a year. But operators of the wind turbine that killed the eagle get off scot-free. Even worse, the US Fish & Wildlife Service actively helps Big Wind hide and minimize its slaughter of millions of raptors, other birds and bats every year. It has given industrial wind operators a five-year blanket exemption from the Bald and Golden Eagle Protection Act, Migratory Birds Treaty Act and Endangered Species Act. The FWS even proposed giving Big Wind a 30-year exemption.

Thankfully, the US District Court in San Jose, CA recently ruled that the FWS and Interior Department violated the National Environmental Policy Act and other laws, when they issued regulations granting these companies a 30-year license to kill bald and golden eagles. But the death tolls continue to climb.

Professor Bell’s perceptive, provocative, extensively researched book reviews the attempted power grab by Big Green, Big Government and Climate Crisis, Inc. In 19 short chapters, he examines the phony scientific consensus on global warming, the secretive and speculative science and computer models used to “prove” we face a cataclysm, ongoing collusion and deceit by regulators and activists, carbon tax mania, and many of the most prominent but phony climate crises: melting glaciers, rising sea levels, ocean acidification, disappearing species and declining biodiversity. His articles and essays do likewise.

Scared Witless also lays bare the real reasons for climate fanaticism, aside from lining pockets. As one prominent politician and UN or EPA bureaucrat after another has proudly and openly said, their “true ambition” is to institute “a new global order” … “ global governance” … “redistribution of the world’s resources” … an end to “hegemonic” capitalism … and “a profound transformation” of “attitudes and lifestyles,” energy systems and “the global economic development model.”

In other words, these unelected, unaccountable US, EU and UN bureaucrats want complete control over our industries; over everything we make, grow, ship, eat and do; and over every aspect of our lives, livelihoods, living standards and liberties. And they intend to “ride the global warming issue” all the way to this complete control, “even if the theory of global warming is wrong” … “even if there is no scientific evidence to back the greenhouse effect” … “even if the science of global warming is all phony.”

If millions of people lose their jobs in the process, if millions of retirees die from hypothermia because they cannot afford to heat their homes properly, if millions of Africans and Asians die because they are denied access to reliable, affordable carbon-based electricity – so be it. Climate Crisis, Inc. doesn’t care.

This global warming industry survives and thrives only because of secretive, fraudulent climate science; constant collusion between regulators and pressure groups; and a steady stream of government policies, regulations, preferences, subsidies and mandates – and taxes and penalties on its competitors. CCI gives lavishly to politicians who keep the gravy train on track, while its well-funded attack dogs respond quickly, aggressively and viciously to anyone who dares to challenge its orthodoxies or funding.

Climate change has been “real” throughout Earth and human history – periodically significant, sometimes sudden, sometimes destructive, driven by the sun and other powerful, complex, interacting natural forces that we still do not fully understand … and certainly cannot control. It has little or nothing to do with the carbon dioxide that makes plants grow faster and better, and is emitted as a result of using fossil fuels that have brought countless wondrous improvements to our environment and human condition.

Climate Crisis, Inc. is a wealthy, nasty behemoth. But it is a house of cards. Become informed. Get involved. Fight back. And elect representatives – and a president – who also have the backbone to do so.

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The Irony of Using Wind Turbines to Fight `Global Warming`….

/ 1957chev / 2 Comments

Wind farms can cause climate change, finds new study

Wind farms can cause climate change, according to new research, that shows for the first time the new technology is already pushing up temperatures.

Wind farms can cause a rise in temperature, found a study in Nature.

Wind farms can cause a rise in temperature, found a study in Nature. Photo: Alamy
Louise Gray

By , Environment Correspondent

Usually at night the air closer to the ground becomes colder when the sun goes down and the earth cools.

But on huge wind farms the motion of the turbines mixes the air higher in the atmosphere that is warmer, pushing up the overall temperature.

Satellite data over a large area in Texas, that is now covered by four of the world’s largest wind farms, found that over a decade the local temperature went up by almost 1C as more turbines are built.

This could have long term effects on wildlife living in the immediate areas of larger wind farms.

It could also affect regional weather patterns as warmer areas affect the formation of cloud and even wind speeds.

It is reported China is now erecting 36 wind turbines every day and Texas is the largest producer of wind power in the US.

Liming Zhou, Research Associate Professor at the Department of Atmospheric and Environmental Sciences at the University of New York, who led the study, said further research is needed into the affect of the new technology on the wider environment.

“Wind energy is among the world’s fastest growing sources of energy. The US wind industry has experienced a remarkably rapid expansion of capacity in recent years,” he said. “While converting wind’s kinetic energy into electricity, wind turbines modify surface-atmosphere exchanges and transfer of energy, momentum, mass and moisture within the atmosphere. These changes, if spatially large enough, might have noticeable impacts on local to regional weather and climate.”

The study, published in Nature, found a “significant warming trend” of up to 0.72C (1.37F) per decade, particularly at night-time, over wind farms relative to near-by non-wind-farm regions.

The team studied satellite data showing land surface temperature in west-central Texas.

“The spatial pattern of the warming resembles the geographic distribution of wind turbines and the year-to-year land surface temperature over wind farms shows a persistent upward trend from 2003 to 2011, consistent with the increasing number of operational wind turbines with time,” said Prof Zhou.

However Prof Zhou pointed out the most extreme changes were just at night and the overall changes may be smaller.

Also, it is much smaller than the estimated change caused by other factors such as man made global warming.

“Overall, the warming effect reported in this study is local and is small compared to the strong background year-to-year land surface temperature changes,” he added.

The study read: “Despite debates regarding the possible impacts of wind farms on regional to global scale weather and climate, modelling studies agree that they can significantly affect local scale meteorology.”

Professor Steven Sherwood, co-Director of the Climate Change Research Centre at the University of New South Wales, said the research was ‘pretty solid’.

“This makes sense, since at night the ground becomes much cooler than the air just a few hundred meters above the surface, and the wind farms generate gentle turbulence near the ground that causes these to mix together, thus the ground doesn’t get quite as cool. This same strategy is commonly used by fruit growers (who fly helicopters over the orchards rather than windmills) to combat early morning frosts.

Global Warming is Socialism, Through the Back Door! Don’t Fall For It!

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George Will: “Global Warming Is Socialism By The Back Door”

George Will sits down with The Daily Caller‘s Jamie Weinstein.

GEORGE WILL: Global warming is socialism by the back door. The whole point of global warming is that it’s a rationalization for progressives to do what progressives want to do, which is concentrate more and more power in Washington, more and more Washington power in the executive branch, more and more executive branch power in independent czars and agencies to micromanage the lives of the American people — our shower heads, our toilets, our bathtubs, our garden hoses. Everything becomes involved in the exigencies of rescuing the planet.

Second, global warming is a religion in the sense that it’s a series of propositions that can’t be refuted. It’s very ironic that the global warming alarmists say, “We are the real defenders of science,” and then they adopt the absolute reverse of the scientific attitude, which is openness to evidence. You cannot refute what they say.

I own a house in Kiawah Island, South Carolina, facing the Atlantic, where the hurricanes come from. After Katrina, the global warming people said, “This is just a sign of the violent weather that’s going to become more common because of global warming.” Well, that certainly interested me. Of course, since then, there’s been a collapse of hurricane activity.

I was a columnist in the 1970s when Newsweek, Time, all sorts of media outlets said the real problem is global cooling. I remember the Washington Post reporting that the armadillos were going south to escape the coming chill, the threat of glaciation over northern Europe. We’ve been through this before. You say, “What happened to global cooling?” They say, “Well, our models were wrong.” Now we’re supposed to risk several trillion dollars of global growth and spending on new models that might be wrong?

One other thing, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change produced a report. The New Yorker, which is impeccably alarmed about global warming, the writer being their specialist began her story something like this: “In a report that should be but unfortunately will not be viewed as the final word in climate science.” Now, just think about that. The final word in microbiology, the final word in quantum mechanics. There are no final words in science. But there you have the deeply anti-scientific temper of the global warming advocacy groups: Final words.

The Wind Scam Proves to be a Huge Waste of Money!

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Germans Spend 100s of €Billions on their “Energiewende” & Get Only 3% of their Power in Return

August 13, 2015 by Leave a Comment

angry german kid

The Germans are rueing the day the bought into the great wind power fraud.

The Germans went into wind power harder and faster than anyone else – and the cost of doing so is catching up with a vengeance. The subsidies have been colossal, the impacts on the electricity market chaotic and – contrary to the environmental purpose of the policy – CO2 emissions are rising fast: if “saving” the planet is – as we are repeatedly told – all about reducing man-made emissions of an odourless, colourless, naturally occurring trace gas, essential for all life on earth – then German energy/environmental policy has manifestly failed (see our post here).

Some 800,000 German homes have been disconnected from the grid – victims of what is euphemistically called “fuel poverty”. In response, Germans have picked up their axes and have headed to their forests in order to improve their sense of energy security – although foresters apparently take the view that this self-help measure is nothing more than blatant timber theft (see our post here).

German manufacturers – and other energy intensive industries – faced with escalating power bills are packing up and heading to the USA – where power prices are 1/3 of Germany’s (see our posts here and hereand here). And the “green” dream of creating thousands of jobs in the wind industry has turned out to be just that: a dream (see our post here).

The ‘gloss’ has well and truly worn off Germany’s wind power ‘Supermodel’ status – as communities fight back against having thousands of these things speared into their backyards – and for all the same reasons communities are fighting back all over the world; those with a head for numbers have called the fraud for what it is; and medicos have called for a complete moratorium on the construction of new wind farms in an effort to protect their patients and quarantine their professional liability:

Germany’s Wind Power ‘Dream’ Becomes a Living Nightmare

German Medicos Demand Moratorium on New Wind Farms

And, on a practical level, those in charge of Germany’s power grid have stepped up calls for an end to the lunacy of trying to absorb a wholly weather dependent generation source into what was never designed to deal with the chaos presented on a daily basis:

Germany’s Wind Power Debacle Escalates: Nation’s Grid on the Brink of Collapse

And the economics are so bizarre, that you’d think its “Energiewende” policy had been put together by the GDR’s ‘brains trust’, before the Berlin Wall took its tumble in 1989.

In Germany, around €100 billion has already been burnt on renewable subsidies; currently the green energy levy costs €56 million every day. And, the level of subsidy for wind and solar sees Germans paying €20 billion a year for power that gets sold on the power exchange for around €2 billion.

Squandering €18 billion on power – which Germans have in abundance from meaningful sources – has them asking the fair and reasonable question: just how much power are they getting for the €billions that they’ve thrown – and continue to throw at wind and solar?

The answer is: NOT MUCH.

Germany gets only 3.3% of its energy consumption from wind and solar. Ignore the headlines
Carbon Counter
Robert Wilson
31 July 2015

“Give a man a reputation as an early riser and he can sleep til noon” – Mark Twain.

There is apparently no greater leader on climate change than Germany. Here is some evidence. This country will build almost 11 GW of new coal power plants this decade, and is in the process of licensing new lignite coal mines. It prematurely shut down 8 zero-carbon nuclear power plants in 2011, closed another one this year, and will prematurely close all remaining nuclear power plants by 2022. Germans have reassured themselves by turning from the disturbing vision of the split atom to the nostalgia of coal fires.

But where does Germany’s climate change reputation come from? It certainly does not come from achievements in reducing greenhouse gas emissions. This decade Germany’s emissions have been essentially flat, and Germany is on course to come a long way short of meeting its 2020 national targets for emissions reductions.

This planet saving reputation instead comes from what Germany has supposedly achieved with renewables. The German renewables revolution is apparently in full gear. If you want to understand what is happening in the world it is better to ignore adjectives and instead count.

Counting is instructive about the realities of renewables in Germany. According to the most recent data, Germany got only 3.3% of its final energy consumption from wind and solar installation (Eurostat data for 2013 available here and here).

Does that sound like a revolution? Obviously not.

The 3.3% figure above tells us that renewables are in fact marginal to Germany’s energy system. So where does this idea that there is a renewables revolution in Germany come from?

The answer is easy to find by googling and searching social media. This will immediately lead you to the following type of headline:

Germany Just Got 78 Percent Of Its Electricity From Renewable Sources

Another popular variant are headlines about German solar output exceeding 50% of electricity demand. The obvious problem with these headlines is that many people come to the mistaken conclusion that these record highs are somehow representative of what goes on the rest of the time. They are not.

Let’s quantify this. The record high renewables output (which included biomass and hydro, a fact rarely pointed out) occurred on the 25th July. Total wind and solar output was around about 39 GW according toFraunhofer ISE data.

How often does this happen? This is relatively easy to find out. All we need to do is add up all hourly wind and solar output and see how it is distributed throughout the year.

I have done this in the graph below. Hourly output was rounded to the nearest gigawatt. I have then added up the number of hours when total wind and solar output fell under each GW bracket. Each bracket covers the average output over an individual hour, in GW.

In total we have about 40 brackets, starting at 0 GW. Yes, German wind and solar falls to zero gigawatts, rounded to the nearest gigawatt. Resist that temptation to write “German wind and solar now meeting 0.1% of Germany energy needs” headlines.

wind_solar

Mean hourly output of German wind and solar was 9.6 GW in 2014, while the median output was 8 GW. The maximum output was almost 39 GW; four times greater than the average, no matter how you define the average.

Furthermore, total wind and solar output was above 30 GW only 2.1% of the time. It was above 25 GW only 9.6% of the time.

The heavily skewed distribution shown above has clearly lead to heavily skewed perceptions about German renewables.

So each time you see headlines about record high renewables output remember this: average output of combined German wind and solar is roughly one quarter of these record highs, and German wind and solar is still just over 3% of final energy consumption in Germany.
Carbon Counter

German wind farm

Windpushers Lie About the Cost of Producing Wind Energy!

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US Wind Power Spruikers – AWEA – Caught Lying About Wind Power Costs

August 7, 2015 by Leave a Comment

lies

****

The wind industry was built on lies, half-truths and critical omissions – and it prays on misconception, ignorance and downright stupidity.

The standard tactics are to go on the offensive, with well-oiled spin from the wind industry’s “play-book”. However, as time marches on, the myths and lies are being called for what they are.

The result has the wind industry’s spruikers floundering around with nonsensical and nasty attacks: attacks not just against the opinions and the conclusions of those who challenge the fraud; and personal attacks on those that express them – but – most desperately of all – they’ve been reduced to lying about the black-and-white facts upon which those opinions and conclusions are based.

This insidious feature of the wind industry – and the parasites that dine at its table – is no more evident in their efforts to downplay the insane costs of seeking to rely upon a meaningless power source, which was abandoned in the 18th century, for obvious reasons:

The Wind Power Fraud (in pictures): Part 1 – the South Australian Wind Farm Fiasco

The Wind Power Fraud (in pictures): Part 2 – The Whole Eastern Grid Debacle

June 2015 National

Here’s America’s Institute for Energy Research responding to a raft of rubbish pitched up by the American Wind Energy Association – the equivalent of Australia’s Clean Energy Council.

Wind Lobby’s Critique of IER Study Fails on All Fronts
Institute for Energy Research
24 July 2015

IER recently released a first-of-its-kind study on the cost of electricity from the existing generation fleet, titled “The Levelized Cost of Electricity from Existing Generation Resources.” A major takeaway from the study is that the cost of electricity from new wind resources is three times more expensive than electricity from existing nuclear, hydroelectric, and coal power plants. Power from new combined cycle natural gas plants—the lowest-cost new source of electricity—is about twice as expensive as existing coal-fired electricity.

The bottom line: shutting down existing power plants before the end of their economic lives and replacing them with new generation resources will increase electricity rates.

The American Wind Energy Association (AWEA), the lobbying arm of the wind industry, wrote a response to the IER study. AWEA referred to our study as “a new attack piece” against the wind industry, despite the fact that the study was general in nature and reported on all major sources of electricity including natural gas, coal, nuclear, and hydroelectric power. The central theme in AWEA’s argument is that wind energy “is one of the lowest cost sources of electricity, particularly among low- and zero-emission energy sources.”

AWEA may not like our finding that existing nuclear power plants provide electricity at a levelized cost of $29.60 compared to new wind’s Levelized Cost of Electricity (LCOE) of $106.80. But AWEA’s vitriol towards data-driven reports by IER is nothing new—in the past AWEA has reacted withname-calling when IER publishes facts about the wind industry. Below, we go point-by-point through AWEA’s claims and show that our study stands up to AWEA’s scrutiny.

AWEA Claim #1: the “first trick in their paper The Levelized Cost of Electricity from Existing Generation Sources is using obsolete wind cost assumptions.”

This claim is false, unless data that was current until June 2015 is considered “obsolete” for a study released in the same month. Our study was finalized in June 2015—the same month the Energy Information Administration (EIA) came out with new LCOE data for new sources of electricity. We used EIA’s 2014 data, which was the most recent available at the time. Updating to 2015 data does not change the result of the analysis, as the table below shows.

LCOE-Chart

The LCOE 2015 update from EIA reduces the cost of wind by about $7 per megawatt-hour (MWh) from $80.30 to $73.60. Crucially, even that lower estimate (which excludes some categories of the cost of wind) shows that wind electricity is twice as expensive as existing nuclear ($29.60), hydroelectric ($34.20), and coal-fired power ($38.4).

AWEA Claim #2: “[M]arket data indicate the actual average purchase price for wind energy was $25.59/MWh in 2013, or well under $50/MWh if the impact of the Production Tax Credit (PTC) on long-term wind purchase prices is removed.”

This claim is wildly misleading. It may be true that the average price of recent power purchase agreements (PPAs) is only $25/MWh, but that says little about the true cost of wind power. AWEA lobbyists know better than anyone how many subsidies and mandates are built into PPA prices for wind power. Wind is the beneficiary of dozens of subsidies and other government support, yet AWEA only recognizes one of the largest sources—the wind production tax credit (PTC).

The reality is that AWEA’s own made-up numbers actually show that wind is not competitive with existing sources of generation—and calculating the cost of existing sources of generation was the point of our report. Taking AWEA’s figure above ($50/MWh) indicates that building new wind is already an unattractive option relative to existing resources like nuclear power ($29.60). By failing to recognize this simple math, AWEA seems to miss the point of our study.

However, the PTC is not the only subsidy distorting the PPA price for wind power. Wind is the beneficiary of at least five major subsidies:

  1. Federal Production Tax Credit (PTC)
  2. Accelerated depreciation rules
  3. Federal loan guarantees
  4. Renewable Energy Certificates
  5. State and local utility property tax rebates

But don’t take our word for it. These subsidies are well known. In 2010, a White House report written by Larry Summers, Ron Klain, and Carol Browner explained that the subsidies for wind projects are massive. They explained that total government subsidies for the Shepherds Flats wind project totaled $1.2 billion. The total project cost $1.9 billion. When government subsidies cover nearly 60 percent of the value of a project, the sale price loses meaning as a true measure of cost.

And as we highlighted in our report titled The Case Against the Wind Production Tax Credit, which AWEA did not challenge, the Government Accountability Office counted 82 initiatives across nine federal agencies that supported the wind industry. It is disingenuous for AWEA to point to one subsidy and pretend it tells a complete story about the federal support enjoyed by wind power.

Because of the many subsides artificially lowering the PPA price for wind power, PPA prices do not tell an accurate story of the real cost of electricity from wind facilities. EIA estimates of the LCOE of wind power are much more defensible.

EIA notes that “The LCOE values for dispatchable and nondispatchable technologies are listed separately in the tables, because caution should be used when comparing them to one another.” This is because wind is, by its nature, not reliable. The wind doesn’t always blow. In order to make more apples-to-apples comparisons with other sources of generation, we needed to make some adjustments to EIA’s estimates to reflect wind’s unreliability and need for back up when the wind isn’t blowing.

To EIA’s baseline data, we added in the costs imposed by unreliable wind electricity on other resources—we call these “imposed costs.” Because wind is unreliable, it imposes very real and significant costs on other sources of electricity generation and the power grid. With a more complete picture of the cost of wind power, we estimate that the LCOE for wind is $106.80.

AWEA Claim #3: “Imposed Costs are actually ‘sunk costs.’”

False. By definition, sunk costs are already incurred and hence unavoidable. In contrast to sunk costs, the imposed costs we calculate in our study not only apply to existing generation resources but also new resources. The costs are ongoing and avoidable. In fact, the way we calculated imposed costs ties directly to the most relevant comparison of ongoing—not sunk!—costs in the electricity industry: the pairing of new wind facilities with new combined cycle gas plants. On this point, AWEA fails basic economics.

What are the “imposed costs” of wind? Notably, wind is the only intermittent resource in our study. One implication of wind power’s intermittency is that it has a parasitic effect on the rest of the generation fleet, which has to back down its output—which is controllable or “dispatchable”—in lockstep with any increase in wind generation. By displacing the energy from other generation resources without replacing their capacity to the same extent, wind imposes costs on the dispatchable fleet and raises the LCOE for dispatchable resources.

In the chart below, the dark blue areas represent the “cutting in” effect of wind power on the power grid. The gas plant’s output (light blue) represents the non-wind resources on the power grid, which are forced to back down in order to accommodate the unreliable wind output (dark blue). Our estimate of “imposed costs” shows how this parasitic effect increases the LCOE for non-wind resources using natural gas plants as a proxy.

Chart-2

In our calculation of the imposed cost of wind, we used new combined cycle natural gas output as a proxy for the mix of generation wind might displace. Specifically, we applied the fixed costs of new combined cycle gas at two different capacity factors—best case and fleet average—to estimate the effect on each of intermittent wind generation. This is a reasonable and fair choice for the example because: 1) new combined cycle gas is the most common dispatchable technology being built today, and 2) new combined cycle gas units have the lowest fixed cost per MWh of all new dispatchable generation technologies. If wind displaced resources with higher fixed cost, imposed cost would be higher.

Using conservative estimates, we find that the “imposed cost” of wind power on the dispatchable fleet is between $15.87 and $29.94 per MWh. These costs are in no way “sunk.”

AWEA Claim #4: “EIA’s method shows that a MWh of wind energy has an average economic value of $64.60/MWh, much higher than the current cost of wind energy of under $50/MWh, indicating wind energy provides net benefits for consumers.”

False. Just dead wrong. At this point in the “critique,” AWEA’s sleight of hand reaches new levels.

Even if you agree that the EIA estimate above ($64.60/MWh) reflects the real economic value of wind to the power grid, AWEA’s claim that electricity from wind only costs $50/MWh has no basis in reality. As we explained above, AWEA’s estimate ignores the dozens of subsidies that wind receives in addition to the wind production tax credit.

If AWEA had used EIA data to calculate the “net benefits” of wind power, it would have subtracted EIA’s cost estimate of $73.60/MWh from EIA’s “benefit” estimate of $64.60/MWh to come up with negative $9/MWh. The results only get worse when we adjust the EIA estimates to reflect the imposed costs highlighted above. Using our own updated cost estimate of $106.80/MWh for wind and EIA’s “benefit” estimate, we would have to conclude that wind power falls woefully short in a cost-benefit test—net benefits would be negative $42.20/MWh.

Conclusion

Our study on the cost of electricity from the existing generation fleet is a data-driven analysis of the economics of the power grid. AWEA’s characterization of the study as “a new attack piece” against the wind industry is unfounded—unless AWEA perceives reality as an attack on the wind industry. The fact is, shutting down existing power plants before the end of their economic lives is an incredibly expensive thing to do and, as a result, will increase the cost of electricity. That is true whether the replacement technology is wind, natural gas, or any other new resource.

AWEA’s misinformation surrounding IER’s work is nothing new. As with previous critiques of IER reports, AWEA’s rebuttal to “The Levelized Cost of Electricity from Existing Generation Resources” fails to identify any problems with our paper while exposing AWEA’s own flawed analysis.
Institute for Energy Research

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Some People Are Very Slow to see the Truth! Wind Energy is USELESS!

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‘Silly’ Sarah Henderson joins ‘Disappointing’ Dan Tehan, as another ‘Green’ in Conservative Clothing

August 5, 2015 by

Sonia Trist

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In recent weeks, with the wind industry copping it from all sides, the battle lines have been drawn, with politicians choosing sides. Although, not always the side one might expect. Old guard Labor men – like Gary Johns have rumbled the fraud:

The Wind Industry’s “Fossil-Fuel-Free” Fantasy Scotched

And the PM, Tony Abbott – as a Liberal should be – is no lover of “these things”; and, true to his Conservative roots, is on record as being keen to further R.E.D.U.C.E the staggering LRET subsidy paid to wind power outfits:

Australia’s PM – Tony Abbott – Out to STOP THESE THINGS

Among his team of Liberals and Nationals, there are plenty who get it; and who are quick to call out the greatest economic and environmental fraud of all time – such as Craig Kelly, Keith Pitt, Angus Taylor, Matt Canavan and Chris Back:

STT Champions in Coalition Ranks – Craig Kelly & Keith Pitt – Turn on $46 Billion LRET Debacle

The Wind Industry’s Worst Nightmare – Angus Taylor – says: time to kill the LRET

Senator Matt Canavan: Australia’s RET Policy: “Robin Hood visits Bizarro World”

Chris Back meets Alan Jones & Graham Richardson on Sky News

However, lurking amongst Conservative ranks are a handful of characters, whose recent wailings about the inevitable demise of the wind industry, sound more like the kind of hysterics we’ve come to expect from the lunatics that front up for the Australian Greens.

Separating what comes out of Environment Minister, young Gregory Hunt’s office from the 100% renewable-rantings of Christine Milne or Bill Shorten’s 50% flight of fan-tasy – and their endless tirades about the wonders of wind power – is like trying to pick fly shit out of pepper while wearing boxing gloves:

Australian Wind Industry’s ‘Armageddon’: PM Chops Public Finance for Wind Power

Having a pair of wind industry plants as his advisers, doesn’t help Greg come to grips with the most expensive and pointless policy ever designed. And, barely visible Liberal back-bencher, Dan Tehan suffers from the same lack of common sense and knowledge of basic economics – ‘attributes’ that would qualify him perfectly for Greens pre-selection:

Disappointing Dan: Liberal MP becomes Wind Industry Spruiker

Adding to the list of “Greens” in Conservative clothing is Victorian ‘Liberal’, Sarah Henderson – who in the last few weeks has been out helping to salvage the great wind power fraud with a zeal that would make Christine Milne proud.

Sarah Henderson

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Greg Hunt, Dan Tehan and Sarah Henderson all seem to believe (and publicly claim) that the cost of the massive subsidies directed to wind power outfits under the LRET is magically picked up by fairies and pixies; and that the policy is a no-cost, family and business friendly vote winner. And these policy lightweights also seem to think that treating the honest, hard-working country people, who have to suffer these things, with high-handed contempt will earn them a badge of “green” honour. Contempt for power consumers of all shades is a given – hell, why not simply follow the Green power model and condemn your constituents to freezing or boiling in the dark:

Victoria’s Wind Rush sees 34,000 Households Chopped from the Power Grid

Casualties of South Australia’s Wind Power Debacle Mount: Thousands Can’t Afford Power

As STT followers are well aware, the mandatory Large-Scale Renewable Energy Target (LRET) and the Renewable Energy Certificates (RECs) issued to wind power generators under it amount to a Federal Tax on all Australian power consumers. The value of the REC Tax is then transferred to wind power outfits – like Union Super Fund backed, Pacific Hydro.  Under Greg Hunt’s current formula, the REC Tax/Subsidy will add $45 billion to power bills from hereon.

As a direct consequence of the Federal government’s LRET policy, Pac Hydro speared 29 of these things into the heart of the peaceful Victorian coastal community of Cape Bridgewater back in 2008: no LRET, no RECs, no wind farm – pure and simple.

Pac Hydro’s Cape Bridgewater wind farm does not – and will never – comply with the noise conditions of its planning permit. The Victorian government are well aware of that fact but – in a form of malign acquiescence – aid and abet the offender, by doing nothing.

Some time ago, Sonia Trist – one of Pac Hydro’s numerous Cape Bridgewater victims – decided her ability to sleep and be healthy was more important than staying in her beautiful seaside home. Sonia’s decision to vacate it was made for no other reason than to escape the incessant low-frequency noise and infrasound generated by Pac Hydro’s turbines – and the impact that noise has on her ability to sleep, to use and enjoy her (otherwise) perfectly comfortable home.

Here is Sonia talking a while back about the merciless nature of the noise generated by Pac Hydro’s non-compliant wind farm.

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Now, Sonia has launched into ‘Silly’ Sarah Henderson for running a line that the Clean Energy Finance Corporation – a Green/Labor renewables slush fund – should keep throwing $millions at losers like Pac Hydro – despite her own party’s direction to the contrary.

Subject: CEFC comment on ABC radio national Monday 27/07. 

Sarah Henderson, I woke this morning to hear you speaking with Fran Kelly on ABC National Radio.Over the past 6/7 years, living closeby wind turbines, I have learned to listen intently, on hearing mention of renewable energy. In particular wind energy, and matters concerning proposals, commissioning, operations and machinations of this careless industry.

Many people I know listen for any item of news which might bring a ray of hope to our domestic circumstances, living and working as we do, in the all pervasive shadow of the wind industry.

My personal definition of closeby is 620 metres from the kitchen area of my home at Cape Bridgewater.

A very old cypress tree on my fence line, partially shields me, visually, from the revolutions of Pacific Hydro’s number three turbine. Further to the right of the tree I can see five 110m high turbines, each under a kilometre from the kitchen window. 29 wind generators in total, constitute Pacific Hydro’s Cape Bridgewater energy facility. All visible on the approach to my home.

Proximity, and the sanctioning of this proximity, is culpable.

For some reason, known only to themselves and speculated on by others, Pacific Hydro agreed, and negotiated with Steven Cooper, to participate with six residents, of whom I was one, in acoustic testing for a period of eight weeks mid 2014.  Pacific Hydro’s acknowledged plan was to ‘restore our lives to those we had had prior to the wind farm.’

Just why this was undergone, only to be reneged upon so brutally by CEO Lane Crockett, at the public presentation of the Cooper Report in PORTLAND in February this year, is beyond words. The company’s reasons can only be suspect.

Now Pacific Hydro’s complaints service has been thoroughly degraded. The  24 hour complaints phone line can ring out when we phone to complain of grotesque noises emanating from the turbines at midnight and the early hours of morning.

Recently we recorded a previously unheard noise from the turbine behind our house. This was sent to Pacific Hydro, only to be asked by them in a brusque, accusatory email, what equipment we had used to capture the noise, alleging falsification.

The family member who resides here with me, has professional photographic and recording equipment and has no need to tamper with the recording process, having been woken by the noise, and not being able to ‘get through’ on the 24 hour complaints service.

I am tired.  I did not plan to spend precious years in “the pervasive shadow of this careless wind industry.” It is a nightmare situation, and seems to intensify each time we seek to resolve it.

I simply ask you, why? Why do you want us to cradle this industry, which has already been overfed by subsidies, pampered to our destruction, exposing the wilful emanations of the industry’s influence and power play.

If this industry is so mature, dependable and productive, why does it need to bleed our coffers?

We know the reason and so do you, if you reflect on the process in an informed way.

Wind turbines are not the ‘be all’ of renewables. They can never be, whilst dependent on gas and coal fired back up, intermittent wind, causing health issues of various symptoms, harmful sleep deprivation, anxiety attacks. The effects roll on. The pressure fluctuations in my home last evening caused punchy ear and head aches and breathlessness. Infrasound … well known by the industry for years and years.

Be humanely professional. Let your informed coalition colleagues get on with the job of directing the financing of innovative and reliable renewables. The CEFC was set up for precisely that reason.

In a fragmented world let’s be caring adults.  Divisive commentary concerning your Party, to a media saturated in pro-wind propaganda, belatedly destabilising Senator Mathias Cormann’s progress in putting the CEFC back on track, is exceedingly questionable.

It exposes an insensitivity to afflicted residents, struggling to maintain some balance, in conditions knowingly imposed upon them, which suspend and threaten their productivity and lives, in uninhabitable and unsaleable homes.

Loyalty to your electorate and considered respect for your political advocacy, should be paramount.

Why was your position on this matter not discussed within the party at the appropriate time? What is your disruptive agenda?

You have recreated doubt in the minds of people, struggling to understand how they can survive a parliamentary process which permits an out of control industry to control that very process,  just when they had taken a breath at the realigning of process by Senator Mathias Cormann and colleagues in the Coalition, regarding the CEFC.

Why?

Sincerely,

Sonia Trist
Corkhill
Cape Bridgewater
Victoria

To give some idea of what Pac Hydro has done to destroy the lives of those – like Sonia – trying to live at Cape Bridgewater, cop an earful of this:

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The “screech” heard in the video is a “special” feature that was added in 2011 to the “Psychopath’s Symphony” that Pac Hydro has faithfully rendered, whenever the wind is blowing, since 2008 (see our post here). In the result, a law-abiding Australian citizen is driven from her own home.

The offender was only placed in the position to ruin Sonia Trist’s life (andmany other citizens’ lives) by virtue of a perverse Federal government industry subsidy scheme, that has added $billions to power consumers’ bills – lining the pockets of outfits like Pac Hydro – and which has done nothing at all to reduce CO2 emissions in the electricity sector (its stated aim).

In substance, the mandatory LRET/REC scheme is financing outfits like Pac Hydro to take peoples’ homes (some 40, so far) without paying any valuable consideration – or, in simpler terms again, Pac Hydro and other wind power outfits are literally stealing Australian citizens’ homes with Commonwealth government assistance (see our post here). Call us old fashioned, but in STT’s view there’s something very wrong with that picture.

The fact that so-called Conservatives, like Greg Hunt, Dan Tehan and Sarah Henderson have chosen to side with the offenders is nothing short of a disgrace.

thief

Corruption and Collusion in the Relationship, Between EPA and Faux-green Alarmist Groups.

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Back to Square One: Unlawful Collusion with Green Pressure Groups Should Doom U.S. EPA’s Greenhouse Gas Regulation

/ 2 hours ago July 30, 2015
EPA_collusion
Washington, D.C. — Today, the Energy & Environment Legal Institute (E&E Legal), a 501 (c) (3) watchdog group, released an investigatory report, Back to Square One: Unlawful Collusion with Green Pressure Groups Should Doom U.S. EPA’s Greenhouse Gas Regulation  and an appendix of source documents.  The report, which is based on e-mails and other documents obtained under numerous Freedom of Information (FOIA) requests and litigation, details illegal activities by EPA staff, colluding with certain environmental lobbyists to draft EPA’s greenhouse gas (GHG) rules behind the scenes, outside of public view, and to the exclusion of other parties.  More importantly, it clearly shows that EPA must start anew if it wishes to regulate GHGs. (A two-minute companion video is available for use.)
With EPA’s GHG rules going final any day, it is critical to inform the public of the emails detailed in this report for what they show about how EPA has developed these costly public policies with select, ideologically aligned outside interests, and its continuing efforts to obscure and even hide the content of discussions with those same lobbyists.
“E&E Legal has obtained proof that EPA’s GHG rules are the product of unlawful collusion and are themselves therefore unlawful,” said E&E Legal Senior Legal Fellow Chris Horner and author the report.  “Congress or the courts — or EPA, in a moment of rationality — should stop these rules from taking effect before the (intended) anticipatory harms of a sham rulemaking are imposed upon millions of Americans, without years of delay and devastation before the ultimately illegal agency rulemaking is overturned.”
EPA is a regulatory agency tasked with protecting the environment. EPA can regulate greenhouse gases thanks to the Supreme Court’s Massachusetts v. EPA decision. It is not compelled to do so, and it remains prohibited under the law from regulating with an “unalterably closed mind”, for the purposes of completing a “naked transfer of wealth”, or to do the bidding of ideologically aligned pressure groups.
“This pattern of conducting official business in secret and outside of the legal parameters is unfortunately a hallmark of this Administration,” said E&E Legal Executive Director Craig Richardson.  “In the case of the EPA, green groups led by the Sierra Club and NRDC set up shop at the EPA, even before Obama took office, with a plan to eliminate the U.S.’s most abundant source of electricity, coal-fired power plants.  Part of this was to shift the public’s wealth to renewable energy, where the large benefactors of these same green groups are now poised to make significant money.”
The report comes as President Obama prepares to announce these rules next week, and follows anE&E Legal interim report released last September which also showed that EPA was working with outside green lobby groups on a common regulatory agenda, often with deliberate secretiveness and unlawfully.   Since the 2014 report, E&E Legal has pried many hundreds of relevant emails out of EPA in several requests and lawsuits.  The record is not complete, of course, but reflects only those records responsive to E&E Legal’s search terms and that EPA, or its now-departed activist-staffers, decided to produce. EPA continues to improperly withhold certain obviously important information with no conceivable legal justification.

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The Energy & Environment Legal Institute (E&E Legal) is a 501(c)(3) organization engaged in strategic litigation, policy research, and public education on important energy and environmental issues. Primarily through its petition litigation and transparency practice areas, E&E Legal seeks to correct onerous federal and state policies that hinder the economy, increase the cost of energy, eliminate jobs, and do little or nothing to improve the environment.

More About the Lies the Windpushers Tell….

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WIND FAIL: 20 QUOTES FOR 30 YEARS OF FALSE HOPES

Last week, news reports indicated the Senate Finance Committee will soon mark up legislation to retroactively extend a number of tax provisions that expired at the end of last year. Of note in this package is the wind Production Tax Credit (PTC). This would be the 10thextension of the PTC since it became law in 1992.

Senator Charles Grassley of Iowa, one of the original authors of the wind PTC, made clear last week in a letter to Chairman Hatch that despite his past statements, he wants yet another extension of this damaging provision. He stated:

“But, I also know this credit won’t go on forever. It was never meant to, and it shouldn’t. In 2012, the wind industry was the only industry to put forward a phase out plan. I have expressed support in the past for a responsible, multi-year phase out of the wind tax credit. But, I believe any phase out should be done in the context of comprehensive tax reform, where all energy tax provisions are on the table.” Senator Grassley letter to Chairman Hatch, 7/7/15

Sen. Grassley admits the wind PTC should not last forever and indicated he supports a phase out. It is clear that today Sen. Grassley does not want to see the wind PTC expire on his watch. Of course, this is significantly different than what he said 12 years ago:

“I’d say we’re going to have to do it [keep the PTC] for at least another five years, maybe for 10 years. Sometime we’re going to reach that point where it’s competitive (with other forms of energy). I think the argument for any tax credit is to make the new source of energy economically competitive.” (“Wind Energy Rides Roller Coaster Year.” Electrical Wholesaling, 4/1/03)

Sen. Grassley now appears not to believe what he said in 2003. Not only has more than 10 years passed, but the American Wind Energy Association claims that wind is not only competitive, but cheaper than other sources. In fact, AWEA claims that “the current cost of wind energy of under $50/MWh.” To put that in perspective, the Energy Information Administration explains that new combined cycle natural gas plants will produce electricity for $72/MWh. It appears that Sen. Grassley either does not believe the wind lobbyists or he was not being truthful in 2003 when he spoke about the PTC.

It turns out that wind promoters like Sen. Grassley and AWEA have long made claims that wind would soon be cost competitive and that the PTC would not be needed forever. Here are of some of their claims over the years:

1983 – Booz, Allen & Hamilton did a study for the Solar Energy Industries Association, American Wind Energy Association, and Renewable Energy Institute. It stated: “The private sector can be expected to develop improved solar and wind technologies which will begin to become competitive and self-supporting on a national level by the end of the decade [i.e. by 1990] if assisted by tax credits and augmented by federally sponsored R&D.”(Renewable Energy Industry, Joint Hearing before the Subcommittees of the Committee on Energy and Commerce et al., House of Representatives, 98th Cong., 1st sess. 1983)

1984 – Christopher Flavin of the Worldwatch Institute: “Tax credits have been essential to the economic viability of wind farms so far, but will not be needed within a few years.” (Christopher Flavin, “Electricity’s Future: The Shift to Efficiency and Small-Scale Power,” Worldwatch Paper 61, Worldwatch Institute, 11/84)

1985 – Christopher Flavin of the Worldwatch Institute: “Although wind farms still depend on tax credits, they are likely to be economical without this support within a few years.” (Christopher Flavin and Cynthia Pollock, “Harnessing Renewable Energy,” in Worldwatch Institute, State of the World 1985)

1985 – “Wind Energy Cannot Only Become Competitive, But Will In The 1990’s Be One Of The Cheapest Sources Of New Power.” “While wind power cannot yet deliver electricity at costs competitive with other energy sources – some experts estimate that it may cost anywhere from 9 to 12 cents a kilowatt-hour, as opposed to the 7-cents-a-kilowatt-hour cost of oil and gas -proponents point to a recent study by the Electric Power Research Institute of Palo Alto, Calif., a research group financed by electric utilities. That study indicated that wind energy cannot only become competitive, but will in the 1990’s be one of the cheapest sources of new power.” (Barry Fisher, “The Threat To Wind Energy,” The New York Times, 10/26/85)

1986 – Christopher Flavin of the Worldwatch Institute: “Early evidence indicates that wind power will soon take its place as a decentralized power source that is economical in many areas…. Utility-sponsored studies show that the better wind farms can produce power at a cost of about 7¢ per kilowatt-hour, which is competitive with conventional power sources in the United States.” (Christopher Flavin, “Electricity for a Developing World: New Directions,”Worldwatch Paper 70, Worldwatch Institute, 6/86)

1986 – Amory Lovins of the Rocky Mountain Institute lamented the untimely scale-back of tax breaks for renewable energy, since the competitive viability of wind and solar technologies was “one to three years away.” (Lovins, K. Wells, “As a National Goal, Renewable Energy Has An Uncertain Future.” Wall Street Journal, 2/13/86)

1986 – A representative of the American Wind Energy Association testified: “The U.S. wind industry has … demonstrated reliability and performance levels that make them very competitive. It has come to the point that the California Energy Commission has predicted windpower will be that State’s lowest cost source of energy in the 1990s, beating out even large-scale hydro.”(Statement of Michael L.S. Bergey, American Wind Energy Association inRenewable Energy Industries, Hearing before the Subcommittee on Energy Conservation and Power of the Committee on Energy and Commerce, House of Representatives, 99th Cong., 2nd sess. 1986)

1990 – In 1990, two energy analysts at the Worldwatch Institute predicted an almost complete displacement of fossil fuels in the electric generation market within a couple decades [i.e. 2010]: “Within a few decades, a geographically diverse country such as the United States might get 30 percent of its electricity from sunshine, 20 percent from hydropower, 20 percent from wind power, 10 percent from biomass, 10 percent from geothermal energy, and 10 percent from natural-gas-fired cogeneration.” (Christopher Flavin and Nicholas Lenssen, Beyond the Petroleum Age: Designing a Solar Economy, Worldwatch Institute, 1990)

1991 – Dale Osborn, Former AWEA President: “The Wind Industry Could Produce, At Competitive Prices, Up To One-Third Of The Nation’s Electricity Needs Within The Next 30 Years.” “‘Here we go again. Nuclear, coal and oil appear to be receiving all the benefits, while clean, proven energy technologies like wind are receiving little serious attention,’ said Dale Osborn, president of the California-based company, U.S. Windpower, and president of the American Wind Energy Association. ‘Given an equal opportunity to compete fairly, the wind industry could produce, at competitive prices, up to one-third of the nation’s electricity needs within the next 30 years.’” (“Bush Administration’s Energy Plan Represents Another Missed Opportunity For America, Says U.S. Windpower,” PR Newswire, 2/20/91)

1991 – “Wind Power Will Be Cheaper Than Conventional Power By 2000.” “’Wind power will be cheaper than conventional power by 2000 when strides in engineering will have made windmills even more economically competitive,’ said Paulus Soullie, a windmills engineer at Holland’s Energy Research Centre in Petten. A windmill with a record 1.3Mw output will be built later this year in Holland.” (Peter Spinks, “Charm Of The Farm Goes With The Wind,” The Observer, 1/13/91)

1996 – Christopher Flavin, President of WorldWatch Institute. “Following the laws of technological progress and large-scale manufacturing, the cost of wind-generated electricity has fallen by more than two-thirds over the past decade, to the point where it is lower than that of new coal plants in many regions. Within the next decade, it is projected to fall to 3 to 4 cents per kilowatt-hour, making wind the least expensive power source that can be developed on a large scale worldwide.” (“Power Shock: The Next Energy Revolution.”WorldWatch, January/February 1996)

1998 – Ken Lay, former CEO of Enron, to Gov. Bush in 1998. “The bill, H.R. 1401 (Thomas R-CA), extends for five years the existing wind production tax credit (PTC), which was passed by the Bush Administration in the Energy Policy Act of 1992. Wind is the fastest growing new electrical generation technology in the world today and has rapidly decreased its production costs until it is close to being competitive with conventional generation technologies.” (“Enron’s Ken Lay asks for Texas Gov. Bush’s help in securing tax credits for wind.” National Wind Watch, 9/10/2008)

1999 – A DOE Assistant Secretary Said Wind Power Is Getting Close To Being Competitive With Wholesale Power. ‘”Although wind power is not yet competitive with wholesale power, it’s getting close… ‘Of all the renewable technologies, wind power is the closest to market competitiveness today. When you consider the improved technology the opportunity for consumers to choose green power, and the concerns over climate change, it all adds up to a strong potential for wind to really take off over the next 20 years.’” (Taylor Moore, “Wind Power: Gaining Momentum,” EPRI Journal, 12/22/99)

2001 – Robert Boyd, Enron Wind Corp. VP: “With Additional R & D Funding And The Continuation Of The Production Tax Credit For The Next Five Years Wind Should Become Price Competitive With Conventional Generation Technologies.” “Wind energy is close to becoming competitive with conventional fuels. With additional R & D funding and the continuation of the Production Tax Credit for the next five years wind should become price competitive with conventional generation technologies.” (Robert T. Boyd, Committee On Finance, U.S. Senate, Testimony, 7/19/01)

2003 – Senator Chuck Grassley (R-IA) on the PTC. “I’d say we’re going to have to do it for at least another five years, maybe for 10 years. Sometime we’re going to reach that point where it’s competitive (with other forms of energy). I think the argument for any tax credit is to make the new source of energy economically competitive.” (“Wind Energy Rides Roller Coaster Year.” Electrical Wholesaling, 4/1/03)

2004 – Experts Said in 2004 Wind Was “Getting Close” To Viability And “Very Nearly Competitive.” “Not long ago wind power was the domain of fringe scientists and environmentalists…. But the industry is maturing and growing quickly–and is beginning to find its place as one viable element in the energy puzzle. … Still, says Bob Thresher of the Department of Energy’s National Renewable Energy Lab, ‘wind is the first renewable technology that is very nearly competitive in the market for bulk power generation.’ … [Wind pioneer Jim] Dehlsen says the cost of wind needs to fall below three cents per kilowatt hour–without tax credits–to truly break society’s addiction to fossil fuels. “It’s still not there, but we’re getting close,” he says.” (Brad Stone, “The Master of Wind,” Newsweek, 9/20/2004)

2004 – Edward Berkel, Senior VP Shell WindEnergy: “Cost Reductions Will Eventually Make Wind Fully Competitive With CCTG Power.” “Cost reductions will eventually make wind fully competitive with CCTG power. If PTCs are not replaced other mechanism might be used, i.e. green certificates. Driven by customer needs, overall world pressure to reduce GGEs.” (“Where’s The Bill?” Project Finance, 3/2004)

2006 – A Former FERC Chairman Said The Wind Industry Will Be Eventually Be Able To Survive Without Subsidies. “[Pat Wood, former chairman of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC)] said that the high price of fossil fuels make it a ‘pretty safe bet’ that the wind energy industry will eventually be able to survive without government subsidies in the form of the wind production tax credit.” (Suzanna Strangmeier, “Former FERC Chairman Pat Wood Sees Bright Future for Wind Power,” Oil Daily, 5/2/06)

2012 – Denise Bode, Former AWEA CEO on PTC Phase-out. “In coordination with any phase down of the credit, we would urge Congress to consider additional policy mechanisms to encourage a diverse portfolio that includes renewable energy. With the policy certainty that accompanies a stable extension, the industry believes it can achieve the greater economies of scale and technology improvements that it needs to become cost competitive without the PTC.” (AWEA letter to Congress. 12/12/12)

2012 – Secretary of Energy Steven Chu: “I think it’s something the wind industry sees: “As the technology gets better, there’s no need to be subsidizing a competitive industry once it’s competitive.” “So over a period of time, especially as — and no dates were discussed — but over a period of time, a road map of phasing out, you see where the prices are going and you can see” how to eliminate the credit…. Just as eventually VEETC and other things were eventually phased out, I think it’s something the wind industry sees: As the technology gets better, there’s no need to be subsidizing a competitive industry once it’s competitive,” (“Chu opens the door to phaseout of wind incentive.” Governors’ Wind Energy Coalition, 3/15/12)

2014 – Warren Buffett on how wind isn’t profitable without subsidies. “I will do anything that is basically covered by the law to reduce Berkshire’s tax rate,” Buffet told an audience in Omaha, Nebraska recently. “For example, on wind energy, we get a tax credit if we build a lot of wind farms. That’s the only reason to build them. They don’t make sense without the tax credit.” (U.S. News & World Report, 5/12/14)

2015 – Senator Chuck Grassley on (yet another) PTC extension. “But, I also know this credit won’t go on forever. It was never meant to, and it shouldn’t. In 2012, the wind industry was the only industry to put forward a phase out plan. I have expressed support in the past for a responsible, multi-year phase out of the wind tax credit. But, I believe any phase out should be done in the context of comprehensive tax reform, where all energy tax provisions are on the table.” (Senator Grassley letter to Chairman Hatch, 7/7/15)

The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result. For more than 30 years, wind promoters have claimed that wind would soon not need subsidies because it would be cost-competitive. But here we are in 2015, and despite claims from AWEA that wind is cost competitive, their actions suggest they don’t believe their own talking points. After all, if wind were competitive, the wind lobby would be greedy to insist on $6 billion from the taxpayer for the PTC.

AWEA certainly knows that their claims about wind truly being cost competitive are not true. New research by the Institute for Energy Research found that electricity from new wind is three times as expensive as electricity for the existing fleet of coal units. This is the real reason wind supporters need the wind PTC to be continually extended. Without the PTC, no one would build wind turbines. As Warren Buffet said, “On wind energy, we get a tax credit if we build a lot of wind farms. That’s the only reason to build them. They don’t make sense without the tax credit.”

Instead of looking towards Senator Grassley, Congress should heed the advice of another author of the wind PTC, former Rep. Phil Sharp from Indiana. He said in 2013 that the tax credit should have “a sunset provision to ensure that the temporary incentive does not become a permanent subsidy.”  (“Extending the wind tax credit.” Washington Times, 12/5/13)

Members like Senator Grassley want the wind PTC to be a permanent subsidy. It is time to break this cycle and allow this subsidy to phase out. Congress should embrace HR 1901, the PTC Elimination Act by Reps. Marchant and Pompeo, to accomplish this goal.