You may have seen the Canadian Press story that surfaced on Sunday and Mondayabout a study done by a University of Guelph agricultural economics teacher, which was published in the Journal of Agricultural Economics. While the headlines said wind turbines caused NO effect on property value, the real study said otherwise: the co-authors noted that they had very little data, that expired listings (houses listed for sale that never sold) were not included, and neither were sales not on the open market, such as the properties purchased by wind power developers. So the situation was: very few sales, houses not selling at all, and some houses that did sell changed hands many times. What’s wrong with that picture? Well, plenty. Here’s a letter to the editor of the journal that published the study, released today. Too bad the damage has been done by the headline writers. Letter to the Editors of Canadian Journal of Agricultural Economics:The paper by Vyn and McCullough (2014) should not have been published in its current form as the results are being misinterpreted and highly publicized in the press and in radio broadcasts. The core issue is the lack of power in the statistical tests, a problem partially acknowledged by the authors but then dismissed by their focusing attention on tests for the sensitivity of their model specification. The article appears to encourage the misinterpretation of its statistical findings. Out of the 5414 sales, only 79 post-turbine sales are of properties within a 5 kilometer radius and the rest are within a 50 kilometer radius. The diversity of the houses in the sample is very large as indicated by their price range of ten thousand to two million dollars and by the relatively low R-squares (0.57) in the hedonic regressions. Given the small number of properties that may have been adversely affected and the great diversity of properties in the sample, it is not at all surprising that the regressions yield no ‘statistically significant’ results. The shortage of observations on properties close to the turbines cannot be overcome by extensive sensitivity testing of model form. The problem is with the lack of data not with model form and focusing on the form tends to obfuscate the issue. The authors do recognize the data problem: “Unfortunately, there are relatively few observations in the post-turbine periods that are in close proximity to turbines” (p 375) and “Hence, these numbers of observations are likely too few to detect significant effects, which represents a major limitation of this analysis” (p 387). But there are three problems that should have been picked up and corrected through the peer review and editorial decision process. First, the authors conclude: “The empirical results generated by the hedonic models, using three different measures to account for disamenity effects, suggest that these turbines have not impacted the value of surrounding properties” (p 388). This is wrong for two reasons. First they could not discern an impact which is different from not having an impact. Second, they misuse the term ‘value’. If you have a choice between two identical properties, identical in all respects except that one is close to a turbine while the other is not and if you choose the far one, then the turbine has an effect on the value of the property. This hypothetical example tests the paper’s hypothesis using common sense rather than a statistical measure. Second, the authors claim: “The findings of this paper will provide evidence that may help to resolve the controversy that exists in Ontario regarding the impacts of wind turbines on property values” (p 369) and then proceed to do all they can to make a non-finding appear important and repeat the general statement that they found no significant impact. They correctly said in the CBC interview this morning that their study did not find a statistically significant price effect but the public and reporters, not being familiar with statistical terms interpret this as saying that there was no price effect. Not finding a statistically significant impact due to a data shortage does not mean that there was no significant (i.e. important) impact. This distinction was not made clear enough in the paper nor in the follow up interviews and newspaper articles. Third, the reviewers and finally the editors should have insisted on the power of the statistical tests to be calculated and reported. I understand that editors in the major health science journals insist on this as their readers, doctors and other clinicians, are not always aware of statistical fine-points but they need to be fully aware of the qualifications before using the results to change their practice. Given the potential impact a misinterpretation of the findings could generate, the test of the power should be reported even in the abstract. The reader should be told how big an impact would have to be before it can be detected by a statistical test with this number of observations. Had the price of properties near the turbines been 10 percent lower than they actually were, would the model have yielded a statistically significant finding of a price decrease at say the 0.05 probability level? What about a 20 percent decrease, would it have been ‘statistically significant’? Answers to this type of question would have been easy to produce and far more relevant that sensitivity tests of the model form. The paper deals with an important issue that can have serious policy implications affecting the wellbeing of many people. The results can affect the location of wind turbine farms and the compensation claims of affected parties. Incorrect information or interpretations can be very hard to correct. In such cases, it is the journal editors’ responsibility to ensure that results are presented in a manner that, at the very least, does not encourage the misinterpretation of the findings. Sincerely, Andrejs Skaburskis, Professor Emeritus North American Editor: Urban Studies, School of Urban and Regional Planning, Queen’s University, Kingston Ontario, Canada |
climate scam
There is No Reason for Them To Lie! Google Engineers Expose the Renewables Scam!
Google’s Top Engineers say: “Renewable Energy Simply Won’t Work”
December 1, 2014 by
Renewable energy ‘simply WON’T WORK’: Top Google engineers
The Register
Lewis Page
21 November 2014
Windmills, solar, tidal – all a ‘false hope’, say Stanford PhDs
Two highly qualified Google engineers who have spent years studying and trying to improve renewable energy technology have stated quite bluntly that renewables will never permit the human race to cut CO2emissions to the levels demanded by climate activists. Whatever the future holds, it is not a renewables-powered civilisation: such a thing is impossible.
Both men are Stanford PhDs, Ross Koningstein having trained in aerospace engineering and David Fork in applied physics. These aren’t guys who fiddle about with websites or data analytics or “technology” of that sort: they are real engineers who understand difficult maths and physics, and top-bracket even among that distinguished company. The duo were employed at Google on the RE<C project, which sought to enhance renewable technology to the point where it could produce energy more cheaply than coal.
RE<C was a failure, and Google closed it down after four years. Now, Koningstein and Fork have explained the conclusions they came to after a lengthy period of applying their considerable technological expertise to renewables, in an article posted at IEEE Spectrum.
The two men write:
At the start of RE<C, we had shared the attitude of many stalwart environmentalists: We felt that with steady improvements to today’s renewable energy technologies, our society could stave off catastrophic climate change. We now know that to be a false hope …
Renewable energy technologies simply won’t work; we need a fundamentally different approach.
One should note that RE<C didn’t restrict itself to conventional renewable ideas like solar PV, windfarms, tidal, hydro etc. It also looked extensively into more radical notions such as solar-thermal, geothermal, “self-assembling” wind towers and so on and so forth. There’s no get-out clause for renewables believers here.
Koningstein and Fork aren’t alone. Whenever somebody with a decent grasp of maths and physics looks into the idea of a fully renewables-powered civilised future for the human race with a reasonably open mind, they normally come to the conclusion that it simply isn’t feasible. Merely generating the relatively small proportion of our energy that we consume today in the form of electricity is already an insuperably difficult task for renewables: generating huge amounts more on top to carry out the tasks we do today using fossil-fuelled heat isn’t even vaguely plausible.
Even if one were to electrify all of transport, industry, heating and so on, so much renewable generation and balancing/storage equipment would be needed to power it that astronomical new requirements for steel, concrete, copper, glass, carbon fibre, neodymium, shipping and haulage etc etc would appear. All these things are made using mammoth amounts of energy: far from achieving massive energy savings, which most plans for a renewables future rely on implicitly, we would wind up needing far more energy, which would mean even more vast renewables farms – and even more materials and energy to make and maintain them and so on. The scale of the building would be like nothing ever attempted by the human race.
In reality, well before any such stage was reached, energy would become horrifyingly expensive – which means that everything would become horrifyingly expensive (even the present well-under-one-per-cent renewables level in the UK has pushed up utility bills very considerably). This in turn means that everyone would become miserably poor and economic growth would cease (the more honest hardline greens admit this openly). That, however, means that such expensive luxuries as welfare states and pensioners, proper healthcare (watch out for that pandemic), reasonable public services, affordable manufactured goods and transport, decent personal hygiene, space programmes (watch out for the meteor!) etc etc would all have to go – none of those things are sustainable without economic growth.
So nobody’s up for that. And yet, stalwart environmentalists like Koningstein and Fork – and many others – remain convinced that the dangers of carbon-driven warming are real and massive. Indeed the pair reference the famous NASA boffin Dr James Hansen, who is more or less the daddy of modern global warming fears, and say like him that we must move rapidly not just to lessened but to zero carbon emissions (and on top of that, suck a whole lot of CO2 out of the air by such means as planting forests).
So, how is this to be done?
Koningstein and Fork say that humanity’s only hope is a new method of energy generation which can provide power – ideally “dispatchable” (can be turned on and off) and/or “distributed” (produced near where it’s wanted) – at costs well below those of coal or gas. They write:
What’s needed are zero-carbon energy sources so cheap that the operators of power plants and industrial facilities alike have an economic rationale for switching over within the next 40 years …
Incremental improvements to existing technologies aren’t enough; we need something truly disruptive.
Unfortunately the two men don’t know what that is, or if they do they aren’t saying. James Hansen does, though: it’s nuclear power.
As applied at the moment, of course, nuclear power isn’t cheap enough to provide a strong economic rationale. That’s because its costs have been forced enormously higher than they would otherwise be by the imposition of cripplingly high health and safety standards (in its three “disasters” so far – Three Mile Island, Chernobyl and Fukushima – the scientifically verified death tolls from all causes have been and will be zero, 56 and zero: a record which other power industries including renewables can only envy*).
Nuclear costs have also been artificially driven up by the non-issue of “waste”. In the UK for instance, all “higher activity nuclear waste” must be kept expensively stored in a secure specialist facility and can only ever – perhaps – be finally disposed of in a wildly expensive geological vault. No less than 99.7 per cent of this “waste” is actually intermediate-level, meaning that it basically isn’t radioactive at all: you could theoretically make half a tonne of ordinary dirt into such “intermediate level nuclear waste” by burying a completely legal luminous wristwatch in it. (If you did that inside the boundaries of a licensed nuclear facility, the dirt really would then become ridiculously costly “waste”.)
The remaining 0.003 of “nuclear waste” actually is dangerous, but it can almost all be reprocessed into fuel and used again. So waste really doesn’t need to be an issue at all.
There can’t be any doubt that if nuclear power had been allowed to be as dangerous per unit of energy generated as, say, the gas industry* – let alone the terribly dangerous coal business – it truly would be too cheap to meter and Messrs Koningstein and Fork’s problem would have been solved for them decades ago: by now, nobody with access to uranium would be bothering with fossil fuels except for specialist purposes – and there’s no reason why nations “of concern” couldn’t be kept safely supplied. Would we run out of uranium? Not until the year 5000AD.
Cheap power solves a lot more problems than just carbon emissions, too. If power is cheap, so is fresh water (the fact is we’re really at that point already, though a lot of people refuse to admit it and prefer to treat fresh water as some sort of scarce and finite resource). If fresh water is cheap, an awful lot more of the planet is habitable and/or arable than is the case if it’s expensive: and that is truly game-changing stuff for the human race.
And as a side benefit we’d by now have actual useful spacecraft which could actually go to places in reasonable amounts of time carrying reasonable amounts of stuff at reasonable costs. We’d be able to establish viable bases on other planets – for instance to mine uranium there, should we ever find ourselves running low.
Even if you aren’t terribly convinced about the looming menace of carbon-driven warming, the fact that we have decided of our own free will not to have cheap, abundant energy and all the miracles it would bring with it … that’s a terrible human tragedy. Nobody knows how much misery might result from climate change in the future, but one can say with certainty that a lot of misery has been caused by the absence of cheap energy, water, food and decent places to live over the last sixty-plus years.
Anyway the truth is that the disruptive new technology which Koningstein and Fork are dreaming of already exists: but it’s been stolen from us by our foolish fears, inflated in many cases by dishonest activists. Even if someone could come up with some other way of making terrifically cheap energy, there’s no guarantee that the ignorant fearmongers of the world wouldn’t manage to suppress that too. There would almost certainly be a powerful application in weapons, just as there is in nuclear; this is, after all, energy we’re talking about.
Koningstein and Fork believe that the answer to the carbon menace is a reallocation of R&D spending, to seek out high-risk disruptive technologies. But the fact is it would probably make more sense to spend money on making sure that people don’t reach voting age without understanding basic mathematics and facts about risk and energy.
You wouldn’t need to take that money from R&D. You could instead repurpose some of the huge and growing amounts of money that are currently being diverted into the purchase of tiny amounts of ridiculously expensive renewable energy.
After all, no matter the wider issues, we now have it on the best and unimpeachably environmentalist of authorities that renewable energy can’t achieve its stated purpose. So – no matter what – there can’t be any point in continuing with it.
None of this is new, of course. These realities have been wilfully ignored by the British governing class and others for many years. But the British/American governing classes, so fatally committed to renewables, often seem willing to listen to Google even if they won’t listen to anyone else.
So, just maybe, this time the message will have some impact.
Bootnote
*The Piper Alpha gas rig explosion of 1988 on its own caused three times as many deaths as the nuclear power industry has in its entire history. Bizarrely though, no nations ceased using gas.
The Register
James Delingpole followed up on The Register’s brilliant piece of analysis with his usual dash and flair.
Renewable Energy: So Useless That Even Greenie Google Gave up on it
Breitbart.com
James Delingpole
22 November 2014
Some people call it “renewable energy” but I prefer to call it “alternative energy” because that’s what it really is: an alternative to energy that actually works (eg nuclear and anything made from wonderful, energy-rich fossil fuel.)
Now a pair of top boffins from uber-green Google’s research department have reached the same conclusion.
Ross Konigstein and David Fork, both Stanford PhDs (aerospace engineering; applied physics) were employed on a Google research project which sought to enhance renewable technology to the point where it could produce energy more cheaply than coal. But after four years, the project was closed down. In this post at IEEE Spectrum they tell us why.
We came to the conclusion that even if Google and others had led the way toward a wholesale adoption of renewable energy, that switch would not have resulted in significant reductions of carbon dioxide emissions. Trying to combat climate change exclusively with today’s renewable energy technologies simply won’t work; we need a fundamentally different approach.
Why is renewable energy such a total fail? Because, as Lewis Page explains here, it’s so ludicrously inefficient and impossibly expensive that if ever we were so foolish as to try rolling it out on a scale beyond its current boutique levels, it would necessitate bankrupting the global economy.
In a nutshell, renewable energy is rubbish because so much equipment is needed to make it work – steel, concrete, copper, glass, carbon fibre, neodymium, shipping and haulage – that it very likely uses up more energy than it actually produces.
Yet our political class remains committed to the fantasy that the emperor’s green clothes are perfectly magnificent. Earlier this week, for example, the British government chucked £720 million of taxpayers’ money into a cesspit labelled the Green Climate Fund.
In theory this UN-driven initiative is supposed to help Third World countries cope with the effects of climate change. In reality, all it will do is force on their struggling economies more of the costly, intermittent renewable technologies (wind turbines; solar; etc) which have proved such a disaster for the advanced Western economies.
If we really want to throw money at the developing world so it can combat climate change, then what we should really be doing is insist that it is spent on adaptation projects – not, heaven forfend, ones to do with “decarbonisation.”
As Benny Peiser and Daniel Mahoney write here, adaptation projects make a real difference and save lives.
Bangladesh’s investment in cyclone shelters, better weather forecasts, and smarter construction practices is a prime example of how effective adaptation can be. The country has learnt how to prepare for the threat of cyclones, succeeding in significantly reducing related deaths. The two deadliest cyclones in Bangladesh’s history occurred in 1970 and 1991, killing up to 500,000 and almost 140,000 respectively. Through adaptation investment, in the last two decades the country has been able to reduce deaths and injuries from such disasters 100-fold.
Instead, though, our leaders are still ideologically committed to wasting much of our foreign aid on renewables.
Take the UK’s recent contributions. Just over a quarter of UK climate aid from 2011 to the beginning of 2014 went to adaptation measures, whereas well over 50 per cent was allocated to renewables, according to the Independent Commission for Aid Impact. The World Resources Institute estimates that, between 2010 and 2012, of a total of $35bn in global climate aid, a mere $5bn was allocated to adaptation.
You know that scene right at the end of Spartacus? Well I think I’d like to recreate it, using wind turbines instead of crucifixes, and, instead of rebellious gladiators, all those lovely people – green activists, wind and solar industry parasites, idiot politicians – who’ve been telling us that renewable energy is the way forward.
Breitbart.com
Aussies Set to Hold an Inquiry Into the “Great Wind Power Fraud”!!!
Australian Wind Industry in a Tailspin as Senate Sets Up Inquiry Into the Great Wind Power Fraud & Cross-Benchers Lay Out Plans for the LRET
November 25, 2014 by
STT recently covered a motion proposed by cross-bench Senators Leyonhjelm, Madigan, Day, Xenophon; with the support of the Coalition, through their Deputy Government Whip in the Senate, STT Champion, WA Senator, Chris Back to establish a wide-ranging inquiry into the wind industry in Australia (see our post here).
It gives us much pleasure to report that the Senate voted to establish the inquiry, as moved by David Leyonhjelm on Monday.
THE SENATE
PROOF
COMMITTEES
Wind Turbines Committee Appointment
SPEECH
Monday, 24 November 2014
SPEECH Speaker Leyonhjelm, Sen David
Senator LEYONHJELM (New South Wales) (16:46): I, and also on behalf of Senators Madigan, Day, Xenophon and Back, move:
(1) That a select committee, to be known as the Select Committee on Wind Turbines be established to inquire into and report on the application of regulatory governance and economic impact of wind turbines by 24 June 2015, with particular reference to:
(a) the effect on household power prices, particularly households which receive no benefit from rooftop solar panels, and the merits of consumer subsidies for operators;
(b) how effective the Clean Energy Regulator is in performing its legislative responsibilities and whether there is a need to broaden those responsibilities;
(c) the role and capacity of the National Health and Medical Research Council in providing guidance to state and territory authorities;
(d) the implementation of planning PROCESSES
in relation to wind FARMS, including the level of information available to prospective wind farm hosts;
(e) the adequacy of monitoring and compliance governance of wind farms;
(f) the application and integrity of national wind farm guidelines;
(g) the effect that wind towers have on fauna and aerial operations around turbines, including firefighting and crop management;
(h) the energy and emission input and output EQUATIONS from whole-of-life operation of wind turbines; and
(i) any related matter.
(2) That the committee consist of 7 SENATORS, 2 to be nominated by the Leader of the Government in the SENATE, 1 to be nominated by the Leader of the Opposition in the Senate, 1 to be nominated by the Leader of the Australian Greens in the Senate, and 3 to be nominated by other parties and independent senators.
(3) That:
(a) participating members may be appointed to the committee on the nomination of the Leader of the Government in the Senate, the Leader of the Opposition in the Senate or any minority party or independent senator;
(b) participating members may PARTICIPATE in hearings of evidence and deliberations of the committee, and have all the rights of members of the committee, but may not vote on any questions before the committee ;and
(c) a participating member shall be taken to be a member of the committee for the purpose of forming a quorum of the committee if a majority of members of the committee is not present.
(4) That 4 members of the committee constitute a quorum of the committee.
(5) That the committee may proceed to the dispatch of business notwithstanding that all members have not been duly nominated and appointed and notwithstanding any vacancy.
(6) That the committee elect as chair and deputy chair a member nominated by the minority PARTIES and independent senators.
(7) That the deputy chair shall act as chair when the chair is absent from a MEETING of the committee or the position of chair is temporarily vacant.
(8) That the chair, or the deputy chair when acting as chair, may appoint another member of the committee to act as chair during the temporary absence of both the chair and deputy chair at a meeting of the committee.
(9) That, in the event of an equality of voting, the chair, or the deputy chair when acting as chair, has a casting vote.
(10) That the committee have power to appoint subcommittees consisting of 3 or more of its members, and to REFER to any such subcommittee any of the matters which the committee is empowered to examine.
(11) That the committee and any subcommittee have power to send for and examine persons and documents, to move from place to place, to sit in public or in private, notwithstanding any prorogation of the Parliament or dissolution of the House of Representatives, and have leave to report from TIME to time its proceedings, the evidence taken and such interim recommendations as it may deem fit.
(12) That the committee be provided with all necessary staff, facilities and resources and be empowered to appoint persons with specialist knowledge for the purposes of the committee with the approval of the President.
(13) That the committee be empowered to print from day to day such documents and evidence as may be ordered by it, and a daily Hansard be published of such proceedings as take place in PUBLIC.
I seek leave to make a SHORT statement.
The PRESIDENT: Leave is granted for one minute.
Senator LEYONHJELM: I understand that Senate resources are limited in relation to select committees. We acknowledge that. And I understand that at least one other select committee will need to be wound up in order for this to have the full amount of resources. We accept that that is the case. The worst case is that this will operate on limited resources until March, when the inquiry into the activities of the Queensland GOVERNMENT is concluded. Furthermore, if Senator Day is appointed chairman of the committee, he has suggested he may consider relinquishing his fees as chairman to contribute to the committee’s costs.
DIVISION
Ayes 33
Noes 32
MAJORITY 1
Here’s how the SENATORS voted:
AYES, 33
| Back | Fawcett | Madigan | Ronaldson |
| Bernardi | Fierravanti-Wells | McGrath | Ruston |
| Birmingham | Fifield | McKenzie | Ryan |
| Bushby (Teller) | Heffernan | Nash | Seselja |
| Canavan | Johnston | O‘Sullivan | Sinodinos |
| Cash | Lambie | Parry | Smith |
| Colbeck | Leyonhjelm | Payne | WILLIAMS |
| Day | Macdonald | Reynolds | Xenophon |
| EDWARDS |
|||
NOES, 32
| Bilyk | Gallacher | McLucas | Siewert |
| BROWN |
Hanson-Young | Milne | Singh |
| Bullock | Ketter | Moore | Urquhart (Teller) |
| CAMERON |
Lazarus | O‘Neill | Wang |
| Collins | Lines | Peris | Waters |
| Dastyari | Ludlam | Polley | Whish-Wilson |
| Di Natale | Ludwig | Rhiannon | Wong |
| Faulkner | McEwen | Rice | Wright |
Sure, it was a close-run thing, but many a grand final has been won by a single kick.
Predictably, the wind industry, its PARASITES and spruikers have gone into a tailspin – wailing about the dreaded malady of “uncertainty” – of the kind that everyone else gets to face on a daily basis in every aspect of life and business – but from which the wind industry must be protected at all times.
But the Senate INQUIRY is just the beginning of the wind INDUSTRY’s many woes.
Crossbench working on RET plan
Sky News
24 November 2014
A key Senate crossbencher is warning household ELECTRICITY PRICEScould skyrocket unless a political impasse over the renewable energy target is resolved.
Liberal Democrat David Leyonhjelm is in discussion with other crossbenchers about a plan to scale back the RET after talks between the government and LABOR failed.
He fears for households if parliament can’t reach a compromise.
“The record high energy bills that people have been experiencing will seem tame by comparison,” he told AAP.
The government wants to slash the target of 41,000 gigawatt hours to around 27,000, claiming that figure will represent 27 per cent of energy use by 2020 instead of bipartisan level of 20 per cent.
Labor quit negotiations over a new target which has led to further industry uncertainty.
While the Palmer United Party opposes any CHANGES to the RET, Senator Leyonhjelm believes PUP defector Jacqui Lambie may be open to a compromise.
“If the hydro industry was given the ability to generate RENEWABLE ENERGY CERTIFICATES, it would give a badly needed economic boost to Tasmania to the tune of around $120 million per year,” he said.
Senator Lambie has pledged to vote against all government legislation until a defence force pay deal is reconsidered.
However, she could SUPPORT a private bill initiated by one of her crossbench colleagues.
Fellow independents Nick Xenophon and John Madigan both have concerns about wind turbines and have joined forces with other senators to set up an inquiry into the industry.
AAP
STT hears that the cross-benchers are acutely aware that if radical changes aren’t made to the Large-Scale RET pronto, then Australian power consumers will be walloped with fines (the $65 per MWh “shortfall charge”) for every MWh that retailers fall short of the escalating annual LRET target – a figure that will reach more than $1 billion by 2020 and continue at that level until 2031 – simply because the LRET target will never be met (see our posts here and here).
STT also hears that the cross-benchers are currently thrashing out a plan that will avoid that politically disastrous PROSPECT (for a copy of the plan click here).
One aspect of the plan is to include “old” hydro (hydro generation built prior to 1998 that is excluded from the LRET and which is ineligible to receive RECs) and use that output to help SATISFY the shortfall (see our post here).
Another is to bring in rooftop solar output generated in excess of the 4,000 GWh annual “expectation” set by the Small Scale Renewable Scheme (SRES): small-scale SOLAR GENERATION is currently between 8,000-9,000 GWh annually and still growing fast. By 2020, rooftop solar is expected to GENERATE more than 14,000 GWh annually, blitzing the original 4,000 GWh annual expectation. The plan being thrashed out now would use all of that “excess” solar generation to satisfy the LRET.
Bear in mind that all rooftop SOLAR INSTALLED under the SRES gets a fat pile of subsidies by way of “small-scale technology certificates” (STCs), which are paid up front at a guaranteed price of $40. The cost of issuing STCs is paid for by the Federal government to solar installers and recouped from all taxpayers. So it only seems fair that solar does its bit to avoid power consumers being whacked with $billions in fines for failing to meet the LRET: thus avoiding a power and tax bill “double-whammy”.
STT hears Jacqui is working very closely with her fellow cross-benchers to ensure that Tasmania’s “old” hydro gets included in the LRET, with RECs GOING to Tasmanian hydro generators (for a taste of Jacqui’s fury, seeher press release here). In that event, Tasmania would SATISFY the target in a heartbeat.
STT hears that Jacqui’s PLAN to use “old” hydro – along with the plan to use rooftop solar – to satisfy the LRET gets is fast gaining traction amongst the cross-bench Senators.
Including “old” hydro and solar in excess of the SRES “expectation” in order to satisfy the LRET and avoid $billions in fines under the shortfall charge sounds like a common sense outcome to STT – and just the kind of thing one might EXPECT to come from members of a group now known as the Coalition of Common Sense.
Why Do Global Warming Alarmists Want to Scare us, and Why Are They Lying To Us?
People Starting To Ask About Motive For Massive IPCC Deception
Guest Opinion: Dr.Tim Ball
Skeptics have done a reasonable JOB of explaining what and how the IPCC created bad climate science. Now, as more people understand what the skeptics are saying, the question that most skeptics have not, or do not want to address is being asked – why? What is the motive behind corrupting science to such an extent? Some skeptics seem to believe it is just poor quality scientists, who don’t understand physics, but that doesn’t explain the amount, and obviously deliberate NATURE, of what has been presented to the public. What motive would you give, when asked?
The first step in understanding, is knowledge about how easily large-scale deceptions are achieved. Here is an explanation from one of the best proponents in HISTORY.
“All this was inspired by the principle – which is quite true in itself – that in the big lie there is always a certain force of credibility; because the broad masses of a nation are always more easily corrupted in the deeper strata of their emotional nature than consciously or voluntarily; and thus in the primitive simplicity of their minds they more readily fall victims to the big lie than the small lie, since they themselves often tell small lies in little matters but would be ashamed to resort to large-scale falsehoods. It would never come into their heads to FABRICATE colossal untruths, and they would not believe that others could have the impudence to distort the truth so infamously. Even though the facts which prove this to be so may be brought clearly to their minds, they will still doubt and waver and will continue to think that there may be some other explanation. For the grossly impudent lie always leaves traces behind it, even after it has been nailed down, a fact which is known to all expert liars in this world and to all who conspire together in the art of lying. These people know only too well how to use falsehood for the basest purposes.”
————————–
Do these remarks explain the comments of Jonathan Gruber about legislation for the AFFORDABLE CARE ACT, aka Obamacare? Do the remarks fit the machinations of the founders of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and the activities of the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) disclosed in their 6000 leaked emails? It is instructive to know that Professor Gruber’s health care models are inaccessible, protected as proprietary.
The author of the quote was a leader whose lies and deceptions caused global disaster, including the deaths of millions of people. In a complex deception, the IPCC established a false result, the unproven hypothesis that human CO2 was causing global WARMING, then used it as the basis for a false premise that justifies the false result. It is a classic circular argument, but essential to perpetuate the phony results, which are the basis of all official climate change, energy, and environmental policies.
They successfully fooled the majority and even though many are starting to ask questions about contradictions, the central argument that CO2 is a demon gas destroying the planet through climate change, remains. There are three phases in countering what most people understand and convincing them of what was done. First, you have to explain the SCIENTIFIC METHOD and the hypothesis they tried to prove, instead of the proper method of disproving it. Then you must identify the fundamental scientific flaws, in a way people understand. Third, you must anticipate the next question, because, as people grasp what is wrong and what was done, by understanding the first two stages, they inevitably ask the basic question skeptics have not answered effectively. Who did it and what was the motive? You have to overcome the technique so succinctly portrayed in the cartoon (Figure 1).
The RESPONSE must counteract all the issues detailed in Adolf Hitler’s cynical comments, but also the extremely commendable motive of saving the planet, used by the IPCC and alarmists.
Figure 1
There are several roadblocks, beyond those Hitler identified. Some are inherent to individuals and others to society. People want to believe the best in people, especially if they have certain positions in society. Most can’t imagine scientists would do anything other than honest science. Most assume scientists avoid politics as much as possible because science is theoretically apolitical. One argument that is increasingly effective against this CONCERN is funding. Follow the money is so basic, human greed, that even scientists are included.
Most find it hard to believe that a few people could fool the world. This is why the consensus argument was used from the start. Initially, it referred to the then approximately 6000 or so involved directly or indirectly in the IPCC. Later it was converted to the 97 percent figure concocted by Oreske, and later Cook. Most people don’t know consensus has no relevance to science. The consensus argument also marginalized the few scientists and others who dared to speak out.
There were also deliberate efforts to marginalize this SMALL GROUP with terminology. Skeptics has a different meaning for science and the public. For the former they are healthy and necessary, for the latter an irritating non-conformist. When the facts contradicted the hypothesis, namely that temperature stopped rising while CO2 continued to INCREASE, a more egregious name was necessary. In the latter half of the 20thcentury, a denier was automatically associated with the holocaust.
Another form of marginalizing, applied to minority groups, is to give them a unique label. In climate, as in many other areas where people keep asking questions for which they receive inadequate answers, they are called conspiracy theorists. It is why I prefer the term cabal, a secretive political clique or faction, named after the initials of Clifford, Arlington, Buckingham, Ashley and Lauderdale, ministers to Charles II. Maurice Strong referred to the cabal when he speculated in 1990,
What if a small group of these world leaders were to conclude the principal risk to the earth comes from the actions of the rich countries?…In order to save the planet, the group decides: Isn’t the only hope for the planet that the industrialized civilizations collapse? Isn’t it our responsibility to bring this about?
The motive emerged from the cabal within the Club of Rome around the themes identified by their founder, scientist Alexander King, in the publication The First Global Revolution. They took the Malthusian argument that the population was outgrowing food resources and said it was outgrowing all resources. The problem overall was bad, but was exacerbated and accelerated by industrialized nations. They were later identified as the nations in Annex 1 of the Kyoto Accord. The objective to achieve the motive was to reduce industrialization by identifying CO2 as causing global warming. It had to be a human caused variable that transcended national boundaries and therefore could only be resolved by a world government, (the conspiracy theory). Two parallel paths required political control, SUPPORTED by scientific “proof” that CO2 was the demon.
All this was achieved with the political and organizational skills of Maurice Strong. Neil Hrab explains how Strong achieved the goal.
How has Strong promoted concepts like sustainable development to consume the world’s attention? Mainly by using his prodigious skills as a networker. Over a lifetime of mixing private sector career success with stints in government and international groups, Strong has honed his networking abilities to perfection. He can bring presidents, prime ministers and potentates from the world’s four corners to big environmental conferences such as the 1992 Rio Summit, an environmental spectacle ORGANIZED by Strong and attended by more than 100 heads of state.
Here is a simple FLOW CHART of what happened at Rio.
The political structure of Agenda 21 included the environmental catch-all, the precautionary PRINCIPLE, as Principle 15.
In order to PROTECT the environment, the precautionary approach shall be widely applied by States according to their capabilities. Where there are threats of serious or irreversible damage, lack of full scientific certainty shall not be used as a reason for postponing cost-effective measures to PREVENT environmental degradation.
What reads like a deep concern for doing good, is ACTUALLY a essentially a carte blanche to label anything as requiring government intervention. The excuse for action is the unassailable “protect the environment”. Who decides which State is capable? Who decides what is “serious” or “irreversible”? Who decides what “lack of full scientific certainty” means?
Maurice Strong set out the problem, as he saw it, in his keynote speech in Rio in 1992.
“Central to the issues we are going to have to DEAL with are: patterns of production and consumption in the industrial world that are undermining the Earth’s life-support systems; the explosive increase in population, largely in the developing world, that is adding a quarter of a million people daily; deepening disparities between rich and poor that leave 75 per cent of humanity struggling to live; and an economic system that takes no account of ecological costs or damage – one which views unfettered growth as progress. We have been the most successful species ever; we are now a species out of control. Our very success is leading us to a dangerous future.”
The motive was to protect the world from the people, particularly people in the industrial world. Measure of their damage was the amount of CO2 their industry produced. This was required as scientific proof that human CO2 was the cause.
From its inception, the IPCC focused on human production of CO2. It began with the definition of climate change, provided by the UNFCCC, as only those changes caused by humans. This effctively sidelined natural causes. The computer models produced the pre-programmed results and everything was amplified, and exaggerated through the IPCC Summary for Policymakers. The deception was very effective because of the cynical weaknesses Hitler identifies, the natural assumption that nobody could deceive, on such an important issue, and on such a scale, but also because most didn’t know what was being done.
People who knew, didn’t think to question what was going on for a variety of reasons. This situation makes the statement by German meteorologist and physicist Klaus-Eckert Puls even more important.
“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.”
Puls commented on the scientific implications of the deception when he said,
“There’s nothing we can do to STOP it (climate change). Scientifically, it is sheer absurdity to think we can get a nice climate by turning a CO2 adjustment knob.”
Now, as more and more people learn what Puls identifies, they WILL start to ask, who did it and what was the motive. When you understand what Adolf Hitler is saying in the quote from “Mein Kampf” above, you realize how easy it was to create the political formula of Agenda 21 and the scientific formula of the IPCC. Those responsible for the formation, structure, research, and FINAL Reports, easily convinced the world they were a scientific organization making valid scientific statements. They also quckly and easily marginalized skeptics, as the leaked CRU emails exposed.
Do you have another or better explanation of a motive?
Residents Being Tortured by the Noise from Wind turbines!
OCOTILLO RESIDENTS SAY WIND TURBINE NOISE CREATES “LIVING HELL”
“It’s a horror beyond words; something you have to live to understand. Something must be done to stop the noise.” – Ocotillo resident Parke Ewing
November 14, 2014 (Ocotillo) – Residents in Ocotillo say that during windy conditions in early November, noise from wind turbines is making their lives unbearable.
Jim Pelley captured the loud noise on videotape, juxtaposed with footage of Pattern Energy’s Glenn Hodges selling the project to supervisors in Imperial Valley by claiming that noise would not be an issue due to setbacks. “The project was sold on the understanding to be five miles from the community of Ocotillo,” Pelley wrote on a Youtube post. “We have turbines as close as 1/2 mile, we are now forced to live with the horrible noise of 112 turbines when the wind blows.”
His neighbor, Parke Ewing, says his complaints to Imperial County and Bureau of Land Management officials, as well as Pattern Energy, have fallen on deaf ears, with no meaningful responses.
“The turbines have created a living hell to us as we try to continue on with our lives after the Ocotillo Wind Facility was constructed over our objections,” he wrote in a November 1st letter sent to officials at those entities.”Turbines 176 and 169 and others are so loud when the wind blows that they disrupt everything. We can’t enjoy our property. The turbines are even more disruptive to our lives than even we could have imagined. It’s a horror beyond words; something you have to live to understand.
Something must be done to stop the noise. We are one of several families that have homes obviously too close to the turbines. The turbines located near my home need to be removed or relocated. We can’t go on trying to live our lives around the turbine noise. No body, including people that have objected to Ocotillo Wind, should have to live with the noise when the wind blows. We just can’t do it any longer…”
Ewing asked the County, BLM and Pattern to mitigate the problem, noting that the sound is much louder than Pattern’s description of a dishwasher in the next room. “Whoever’s idea of using that term as an adequate description of the noise we would experience has obviously never lived near a turbine in their life.. Let alone 112 “dishwashers” all running at the same time in the next room,” Ewing observed, adding that no officials have taken steps to measure the decibels, let alone measurements such as low-frequency infrasound.
“The turbine noise is creating a high degree anxiety in our lives. We don’t believe it is lawful for this to continue,” the beleaguered Ocotillo resident concluded. “I invite any of you to visit our property when the wind blows and stay awhile. Live the experience as we do- try to talk across your yard over the crashing sound of 336 blades turning and listening to the turbines as they generate their very irritating noise, nobody should be forced to endure this torture.”
Update November 15, 2014: After our story ran, we received this update from Parke Ewing the next morning, which reads in part:
“Believe it or not, of all days, after I contacted the site manager for Ocotillo Wind today, two representatives visited my home today for the first time. They listened for awhile, as today was one of those very loud turbine days, their only comment after I asked was, TBD (To Be Determined). Still no return calls or letters from the County of Imperial or BLM. A general manager for Pattern Energy, a Samuel Tasker, quit returning generic answers to me and Jim’s questions and concerns. Carrie Simmons at BLM turned us over to him after we questioned one of her comments regarding the oil leaks and a few other issues. (not noise)
Interestingly, I stood a hundred feet or so in front of a wind turbine yesterday and the noise was very much greater than standing underneath a turbine or even behind the turbine. I assumed that the noise would blow away from me, not into me against the wind, just the opposite of what we would expect. So since our home is in front of turbines 176 and 169 when the wind is coming from the west south west, we hear the turbines much more loudly than Jim Pelley, which is down wind. Then when wind is coming from the east we hear turbine 174 more, because we are in front of that one, weird how that works.”
No More Free Ride for Windweasels in the US!
Republican Mid-Term Victory Spells Doom for US Wind Industry
November 11, 2014 by
The US has just been through its mid-term elections, which saw sweeping gains by the Republican Party in the Senate, House, and in many gubernatorial elections, as well as state and local races.
The Republicans gained control of the Senate for the first time since 2006, and increased their majority in the House. The Republicans also gained several seats in governors’ races, defeating one incumbent Democrat and picking up three seats vacated by retiring Democrats. Counting continues with the Republicans set to pick up a number of seats in the House, and, possibly the Senate.
With Republicans firmly in control of Congress, the smooth subsidy-sailing enjoyed by the US wind industry (until now) is about to hit stormy waters.
Those US States that piled into wind power in a big way have seen power prices rocket, with some seeing increases of over 34% (Idaho). From 2008-2103, the top 10 wind power states saw their electricity prices rise an average of 20.7%, which is seven-fold higher than the national electricity price increase of merely 2.8% over the same period (see our post here). The cost of wind power is so uncompetitive that Nebraska has just knocked-back a long-term wind power deal because it was “just too expensive” (see our post here).
The adverse economic impacts of propping up the wind industry with exorbitant fixed priced State Feed-In-Tariffs and the Federal Production Tax Credit aren’t lost on Republicans. Here’s a wrap up on where America’s wind industry is headed.
It May be Lights Out for the Wind Industry Come the Midterms
FOXBusiness
Chris Versace
27 October 2014
The International Energy Agency recently cut its forecasts for oil demand growth for this year. Nevertheless, production in North America is exploding led by the shale oil boom. Already, the U.S. has become the world’s largest producer of oil and natural gas.
For energy products like oil and natural gas operating in the marketplace, this excess production means lower costs for consumers. Lower prices have their own consequences for the industry as well. Analysts at Sanford C. Bernstein & Co recently released a report revealing that current at prices as much as one-third of U.S. shale oil production will be “uneconomic” to harvest.
For government-backed industries such as wind energy, the relationship is directly the opposite – the more they produce, the more it costs ratepayers and taxpayers. Recent analysis shows that states with the largest use of wind power have the highest electricity bills. Such factors have caused private investors to largely bypass wind companies and leave them largely dependent upon the government for their survival.
Wind energy companies rely heavily upon a government construct known as the “Production Tax Credit” (PTC) to support their bottom lines. The PTC is a federal program that provides billions of dollars annually to subsidize renewable energy facilities such as wind farms. Generally speaking a clean technology facility receives a tax credit for 10 years after the date the facility is placed in service with the tax credit amount ranging from $0.23 per kilowatt-hour (kWh) for wind to $0.011 per kWh for qualified hydroelectric.
Looking at the International Journal of Sustainable Manufacturing, researchers concluded that “in terms of cumulative energy payback, or the time to produce the amount of energy required of production and installation, a wind turbine with a working life of 20 years will offer a net benefit within five to eight months of being brought online.” This raises the question as to why any tax credit for wind energy would span more than just a few years at most let alone 10 years after the facility is up and running.
Congressional support for the PTC is largely split along party lines. Fifty-five Members of the House led by Rep. Mike Pompeo, (R-Kan.), have written a letter to the tax writing committee demanding an end to the wind energy subsidies. The letter stated:
It is presumed that a GOP controlled Congress would see the PTC on the chopping block in 2015 and a Democrat-controlled Congress will fight for renewal.
It would be an understatement to say that the outcome of the 2014 elections is important for wind energy producers. In an effort to see PTC friendly Harry Reid as Majority Leader, the wind industry has essentially turned the League of Conservation Voters (LCV) into their own personal Trojan horse.
Much of the LCV leadership has deep ties to the wind energy:
- Tom Kiernan, CEO of the American Wind Energy Association (AWEA) serves as the Treasure of the LCV.
- Peter Mandelstam, former AWEA board member and founder of Green Sails wind energy company also serves on the LCV board.
Unsurprisingly, much of the LCV’s campaign activities have been aimed squarely at renewal of the PTC. The organization brags that it will spend over $25 million supporting pro PTC candidates and attacking their opponents before November elections.
Should LCV’s campaign fail, loss of the PTC could prove fatal to some wind companies. As Warren Buffet recently told his loyal investors, “I will do anything that is basically covered by the law to reduce Berkshire’s tax rate. 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.”
The outcome of the elections remain far from certain as does the fate of the PTC under any election outcome scenario and Washington D.C.’s capacity for cronyism should never be underestimated.
That said, it should leave investors holding off if not second-guessing the potential of First Trust ISE Global Wind Energy ETF (FAN) shares or its holdings that include Capstone Turbine Holdings (CPST), Otter Tail Corp. (OTTR), NextEra Energy (NEE) and others. Especially if the Republicans take control of Congress as expected, and run a full tally of their friends and enemies during this election cycle, it may well be lights out for the wind energy industry sooner than anyone expects.
FOXBusiness
Wind Turbines are Indeed, a Health hazard!
Wind turbines declared health hazard in Wisconsin
An historic first! Jack Spencer in Michigan Capitol Confidential writes:
…the Board of Health in Brown County, Wisconsin, where Green Bay is located, has declared a local industrial wind plant to be a human health hazard. The specific facility consists of eight 500-foot high, 2.5 megawatt industrial wind turbines.
The board made its finding with a 4-0 vote (three members were not present) at an Oct. 14 meeting after it had wrestled with health complaints about the wind plant for more than four years. Ultimately, the board’s ruling was based on a year-long survey which documented health complaints and demonstrated that infrasound and low-frequency noise emanating from the turbines was detectable inside homes within a 6.2-mile radius of the industrial wind plant.
Jay Tibbetts, a physician and a member of the Brown County Board of Health, said the board based its position that the turbines constitute a health hazard on the weight of evidence.
“I can tell you that we are absolutely not an anti-wind energy board,” Tibbetts said. “We worked on this for four and a half years before making this decision. Three families have moved out. I knew all of them. We also know that this isn’t only happening here. In Ontario 40 families have abandoned their homes to get away from the effects of wind turbines.”
According to Tibbetts, micro barometers were placed in homes located in the area surrounding the industrial wind plant. The purpose of this was to detect acoustic emissions, including infrasound and low frequency noise emanating from the turbines.
“They found that there were tones of infrasound and low frequency noise as far away as 6.2 miles from the nearest wind turbine,” Tibbetts said. “There were no complaints associated with the home that was 6.2 miles away, but there were complaints associated with one 4.2 miles away.
“We have 80 people on record who have made health complaints, including a nurse who is going deaf,” Tibbetts continued. “We can’t just ignore this.”
In addition to these problems, I am aware that wind turbines sin arid locales, such as the massive wind farm near Palm Springs, California, kick uop a lot of dust, aka particulate matter. Moreover, there is no mention of the toll on migratory birds that tend to follow the same wind patterns that wind farms are situated to exploit. Doug Schmidt points out:
The Truth About the Climate Scam, Fear Mongering, and Faux-Green Energy!
Bjørn Lomborg: Climate Change “Fixes”? – the “Cure” is Worse than the “Disease”
November 10, 2014 by Leave a Comment
When it comes to assessing the costs, risks and benefits of environmental policy, Bjørn Lomborg is one of the very few that provide balanced, detailed analysis supported by facts and evidence. The economic choices we make – about allocating scarce resources to unlimited wants – should – as Lomborg consistently points out – be made taking into account all of the costs weighed against properly measured benefits (see our post here).
Bjørn Lomborg has become one of the most high profile critics of insanely expensive and utterly pointless renewable energy policies across the globe (see our posts here and here and here).
Bjørn’s back – in this piece published by The Telegraph – in which he hammers the insane cost and utter pointlessness of tying our energy futures to unreliable and intermittent renewables, like wind power.
Climate change is a problem. But our attempts to fix it could be worse than useless
The Telegraph
Bjørn Lomborg
3 November 2014
Panicked, ill-thought-through responses to the threat of climate change could hurt more people than they save
The UN Climate Panel came out with its final report yesterday. It is a summary of its 3 main reports, published over the last year. It tells us that global warming is real and a significant problem. And as usual, the media hears something else – in the words of Mother Jones magazine, how future warming will be “ghastly, horrid, awful, shocking, grisly, gruesome.”
In between the alarmist hype and the reality of climate change we once again risk losing an opportunity to think smartly about energy and find a realistic way to fix global warming.
We need to realise that the world will not come off fossil fuels for many decades. Globally, we get a minuscule 0.3pc of our energy from solar and wind. According to the International Energy Agency, even with a wildly optimistic scenario, we will get just 3.5pc of our energy from solar and wind in 2035, while paying almost $100 billion in annual subsidies. Today, the world gets 82pc of its energy from fossil fuels, in 21 years it will still be more than 79pc.
The simple reason is that cheap and abundant energy is what powers economic growth. And for now, that means four fifths from fossil fuel, and much of the rest from water and nuclear. While wind is lower cost in a few, rural areas, coal is for the most part much cheaper, and provides power, also when the wind is not blowing.
As the poor half of our world is reaching for a similar development to that of China, they will also want much, much more power, most of it powered by coal. Even the climate-worried World Bank president accepts that “there’s never been a country that has developed with intermittent power.”
Realising that fossil fuels will be here for a long time means stronger focus on moving from coal to gas, since gas emits about half the greenhouse gasses. The US shale gas revolution has reduced gas prices and lead to a significant switch from coal to gas. This has reduced US CO₂ emissions to their lowest in 20 years.
In 2012, US shale gas reduced emissions three times more than all the solar and wind in Europe. At the same time, Europe paid about $40 billion in annual subsidies for solar, while the Americans made more than $200 billion every year from the shale gas revolution. Gas is obviously still a fossil fuel and not the final solution, but it can reduce emissions over the next 10-20 years, especially if the shale revolution is expanded to China and the rest of the developing world.
While global warming will be a problem, much of the rhetoric is wildly exaggerated – like when UN secretary-general Ban Ki-moon calls it “an existential challenge for the whole human race.” The IPCC finds that the total cost of climate change by 2070 is between 0.2pc and 2pc of GDP. While this is definitely a problem, it is equivalent to less than one year of recession over the next 60 years.
Global warming pales when compared to many other global problems. While the WHO estimates 250,000 annual deaths from global warming in 30 years, 4.3 million die right now each year from indoor air pollution, 800 million are starving, and 2.5 billion live in poverty and lack clean water and sanitation.
When the UN asked 5 million people for their top priorities the answers were better education and health care, less corruption, more jobs and affordable food. They placed global warming at the very last spot, as priority number 17.
Climate policies can easily cost much more than the global warming damage will – while helping very little. The German solar adventure, which has cost taxpayers more than $130 billion, will at the end of the century just postpone global warming by a trivial 37 hours.
While a low carbon tax in theory could help a little, the political reality is that climate policies almost everywhere have been ineffective, done little good while sustaining the most wasteful technologies. The IPCC warns than less-than-perfect climate policies can be 2-4 times more expensive. Biofuels, for instance, have driven up food costs, likely causing an extra 30 million starving, with prospects of starving another 100 million by 2020. And it is likely that biofuels cause net increase in CO₂ emissions, because they force agriculture to cut down forests elsewhere to grow food.
This is why we have to be careful in pushing for the right policies. For twenty years, the refrain has been promises to cut CO₂, like the Kyoto Protocol. For twenty years these policies have failed. We should instead look to climate economics to find smarter solutions.
The fundamental problem is that green energy is too expensive, which is why it will need billions in subsidies the next two decades. Instead of making more failed promises to pay ever more subsidies, we should spend the money on research and development of the next generations of green energy sources. If we can innovate the price of green energy down below the cost of fossil fuels, everyone will switch, including China and India. Economics confirm that for every dollar spent on green R&D, we will avoid $11 of climate damage.
But this requires us to separate the hype from the real message from IPCC: global warming is a problem, but unless we fix it smartly, we won’t fix it at all.
The Telegraph
Oxford Professor Tells the Truth About Green Energy!
OXFORD PROF SHREDS GOVERNMENT’S GREEN ENERGY POLICY
An Oxford University Professor has torn the UK government’s energy policy to shreds in his appearance before the House of Lords Science and Technology Committee.
Speaking to the Lords yesterday, Professor Dieter Helm said that the “Miliband-Huhne-Davey” policy (referring to the last three energy secretaries), which is based on an assumption that fossil fuel prices would rise, was “dramatically wrong”. (h/t to Bishop Hill, where the full exchange of views can be seen).
The Lords Committee gathered to hear evidence from a range of energy experts including power companies and the National Grid to determine whether there was indeed a risk of the lights going out this winter, as has been widely reported (including on Breitbart London).
Opening the second session, Professor Helm gave his name and title, before delivering a short two minute speech lambasting the governance of energy policy in recent times.
“It is a quite extraordinary state of affairs for a major industrialised economy to find itself even debating whether there is a possibility that the margins may not be sufficient of electricity to guarantee supply,” he said.
“If it was achieving carbon objectives and if it was producing low prices there might be some consolation. The wholesale price in Great Britain is twice that of northern Europe and on a CO2 front we’ve been switching from gas to burn as much coal as possible, and our emissions are actually rising on a production basis and of course on a carbon consumption basis which is the basis that matters for decarbonisation.
“For a major industrial economy to fail on one of the three objectives is a serious problem. But to fail on security and on competitiveness of price, and on decarbonisation is a sad state of affairs. And it’s even sadder in the context of which the problem isn’t fundamentally particularly difficult.
“It’s ultimately about having enough power stations and enough wires to supply the needs of the population. It’s a problem that’s been with us for a century. Many other countries solve these problems and it’s, as I say, rather sad that we’ve got to this particular point.”
The Committee probed the professor on a range of aspects including “resilience”, which the Professor explained was a matter not just of physical capability, but also the price which people are asked to pay for the energy supplied. If prices rise above people’s desire or ability to pay, people simply “turn themselves off, as happened in California”, he pointed out.
“The kit is there. If the will is there to do it, and the expertise and capacity of the grid I think is up to it, they will manage to make supply equal demand. The question is: how much higher will the price go as a result, and how long will Britain carry on having such high wholesale prices with all the consequences there are for British industry and also consumers?” he asked.
When questioned about medium term threats to resilience, Prof Helm was particularly scathing. Pointing to the fact that “the commodity super-cycle is over” and that gas, coal and oil prices are all falling, he blasted energy secretary Ed Davey, saying “We have a policy with the secretary of state repeatedly reminds us is based on the idea that gas prices are rising and volatile. Well, they’re falling and the volatility is something that we don’t want to protect customers from. [That is, downwards volatility is good for customers who want the benefit of cheaper prices immediately].
“Should we worry about resilience of fuel supplies? No, I don’t think so. The world is awash with gas. Unconventional gas is popping up all over the place America is no longer importing, plenty of supplies around, plenty more being discovered.
“The one medium term ‘risk’ that I would pay much less attention to but clearly the government thinks they should pay much more attention to is whether or not we’ll get enough supplies of fossil fuels. We have enough fossil fuels in the world to fry the planet many times over.”
He then set his target wider, laying into the “Miliband-Huhne-Davey policy”, so called “because it’s very consistent through that period”, as a whole. Successive energy secretaries had based their policy on the assumption that fossil fuel prices would continue to rise, making renewables comparatively cheaper by the 2020s and allowing subsidies to fall away; an assumption that the professor said “[doesn’t have] any part in energy policy.
“That fossil fuel prices are going to go up. … That’s an outcome of the market, not a policy assumption to make. … If your bet turns out to be dramatically wrong, you’re going to have lots of technologies which are ‘out of the market’ for some considerable period to come. We will have to subsidise those technologies right through the 2020s and beyond.
“This knowledge that politicians have, that politicians know what the winners are, we’ve been there so many times before. It usually turns out badly and it has done this time.”
Health Dept. working on a Way to Force Wind Industry to Address Health Concerns…
Paul Srubas, Press-Gazette MediaBrown County health officials have declared wind turbines a public health risk, but they haven’t determined how to put their declaration into action.
The county’s Health Board this month declared the Shirley Wind Farm operated by Duke Energy Renewables poses a health risk to its neighbors in the town of Glenmore. Three families have moved out of their homes rather than endure physical illness they blame on the low-frequency noise the wind turbines generate, according to Audrey Murphy, president of the board that oversees the Brown County Health Department.
“We struggled with this but just felt we needed to take some action to help these citizens,” Murphy said.
Murphy called the declaration a first step, but “the second step is up to the director of our Health Department, Judy Friederichs, and corporation counsel.”
The Health Department has statutory authority for licensing, inspection and enforcement for businesses where health and environmental problems are at issue, but just what that means for the wind farm has not yet been determined, Friederichs said.
State health officials have expressed interest in participating in Brown County’s discussion of the issue, Friederichs said. She, board members and the county’s lawyer need to put their heads together to determine the next step, she said. No timeline has been established.
“We’re all saying the same thing here: Now what?” Friederichs said. “There aren’t a lot of alternatives to mitigation. It really depends now on where this goes, what type of referrals we get, etc. There’s ongoing concerns. We’re going to have to really look at it, and it’s more of a legal question.”
Whatever happens, residents “are grateful to the Board of Health for reviewing the research and listening to the people of Brown County,” said Susan Ashley, who also lives in the Shirley area and who has helped rally opposition to the wind farm through the years.
Twenty families in the town have documented health issues since the wind farm started operated in 2009, Ashley said.
Duke Energy Renewables was not invited to the health board’s discussion and would have cited tests that determined sound levels from the wind generators were low and could not be linked to adverse health impacts, company spokeswoman Tammie McGee said. The company has not received any formal word about the board’s declaration, McGee said.
Dr. Jay Tibbetts, vice president of the Brown County health board and its medical adviser, said he knows of no science that proves there isn’t a link between health problems and the low-frequency noise the giant fans produce.
“There’s been nothing that’s debunked anything,” he said. “As far as what’s happening to these people, it doesn’t make a difference whether you’re in Shirley or Denmark, or Ontario, Canada. Forty people have moved out of their homes, and it’s not just for jollies. In Shirley, three people have moved out of their homes. I know all three. They’re not nuts. They’re severely suffering.”
People might not be able to hear the sounds the Shirley turbines produce, but Tibbetts said he knows of a teenager living in the area who can tell when the turbines are off or on without being able to see them. Area residents or former residents report headaches, nausea and other symptoms they say are brought on by the turbines, and those symptoms clear up when the residents move elsewhere for a time, Tibbetts said.
The board’s declaration may be cutting edge and controversial, but it wasn’t made lightly or without the weight of science behind it, Murphy said
“This is a serious step,” she said. “We didn’t make it lightly. There is science from around the world — the World Health Organization, Denmark, Poland, Germany. We believe there’s enough science.”
Darrell Ashley, who is Susan Ashley’s father-in-law and lives within a mile of the Shirley turbines, said his wife moved out of the house for several months until her symptoms disappeared. She has since moved back, and her symptoms are coming back, he said.
“I’m getting worse and I can’t afford to move out,” he said. “I’m just getting weaker — my legs, back, feet. My concentration is gone, head pressure, ear aches, headaches, it just goes on and on.”
Prior to 2009, when the turbines weren’t operating, he and his wife had no such problems, he said. He praised the health board and said he appreciated that someone finally listened to residents’ complaints.
Murphy said Brown County is probably the first governmental body in Wisconsin and perhaps the first in the country to make the formal declaration.
The board has been wrestling with the issue for about the last four years, Murphy said. While some scientific studies have failed to find a link between health risks and the low-frequency noise that wind turbines generate, two studies done recently on the Shirley Wind Farm specifically say otherwise, Murphy said.
“While there may still be debate about the precise mechanism that causes these sounds to induce the symptoms, it is clear from (these studies) … that acoustic energy emitted by operation of modern wind turbines is at the root of adverse health effects,” Murphy said.
"Mothers Against Wind Turbines™" Phoenix Rising... 