Dysfunctional wind turbines!

Low Frequency noise from Wind Turbines is Harmful!

/ 1957chev / Leave a comment

Living close to wind farms could cause hearing damage

New research published by the Royal Society warns of the possible danger posed by low frequency noise like that emitted by wind turbines

New research warns of the possible dangers posed by low frequency noise Photo: ALAMY

7:00AM BST 01 Oct 2014

Living close to wind farms may lead to severe hearing damage or even deafness, according to new research which warns of the possible danger posed by low frequency noise.

The physical composition of inner ear was “drastically” altered following exposure to low frequency noise, like that emitted by wind turbines, a study has found.

The research will delight critics of wind farms, who have long complained of their detrimental effects on the health of those who live nearby.

Published today by the Royal Society in their new journal Open Science, the research was carried out by a team of scientists from the University of Munich.

It relies on a study of 21 healthy men and women aged between 18 and 28 years. After being exposed to low frequency sound, scientists detected changes in the type of sound being emitted from the inner ear of 17 out of the 21 participants.

The changes were detected in a part of the ear called the cochlear, a spiral shaped cavity which essential for hearing and balance.

“We explored a very curious phenomenon of the human ear: the faint sounds which a healthy human ear constantly emits,” said Dr Marcus Drexl, one of the authors of the report.

“These are like a very faint constant whistling that comes out of your ear as a by-product of the hearing process. We used these as an indication of how processes in the inner ear change.”

Dr Drexl and his team measured these naturally emitted sounds before and after exposure to 90 seconds of low frequency sound.

“Usually the sound emitted from the ear stays at the same frequency,” he said. “But the interesting thing was that after exposure, these sounds changed very drastically.

“They started to oscillate slowly over a couple of minutes. This can be interpreted as a change of the mechanisms in the inner ear, produced by the low frequency sounds.

“This could be a first indication that damage might be done to the inner ear.

“We don’t know what happens if you are exposed for longer periods of time, [for example] if you live next to a wind turbine and listen to these sounds for months of years.”

Wind turbines emit a spectrum of frequencies of noise, which include the low frequency that was used in the research, Dr Drexl explained.

He said the study “might help to explain some of the symptoms that people who live near wind turbines report, such as sleep disturbance, hearing problems and high blood pressure”.

Dr Drexl explained how the low frequency noise is not perceived as being “intense or disturbing” simply because most of the time humans cannot hear it.

“The lower the frequency the you less you can hear it, and if it is very low you can’t hear it at all.

“People think if you can’t hear it then it is not a problem. But it is entering your inner ear even though it is not entering your consciousness.”

Don’t Follow Germany’s Green Path…..They’re Lost! Epic Fail!

/ 1957chev / Leave a comment

Germany’s Green Energy Failure

  • Date: 29/09/14
  • Doug L Hoffman, The Resilient Earth

The first grand experiment in renewable energy is a catastrophe. The vast scale of the failure has only started to become clear over the past year or so.

A new analysis answers the question “should other nations follow Germany’s lead on promoting solar Power?” That question was asked on Quora and answered by Ryan Carlyle, BSChE, and a Subsea Hydraulics Engineer. His detailed and well reasoned answer is the most forceful possible NO. According to Carlyle Germany’s program has the “absurd distinction” of hitting the trifecta of bad energy policy: bad for consumers, bad for industry, and bad for the environment. So while misguided greens point to Germany as a solar success, a rising tide of opposition and resentment is growing among the German public.

Along with all the other troubles besetting the world, Germany has watched its economy, the so called “engine of Europe,” stumble. This is mostly attributable to the horribly botched shift to a renewable energy economy. In Carlyle’s own words:

I was shocked to find out how useless, costly, and counter-productive their world-renowned energy policy has turned out. This is a serious problem for Germany, but an even greater problem for the rest of the world, who hope to follow in their footsteps. The first grand experiment in renewable energy is a catastrophe! The vast scale of the failure has only started to become clear over the past year or so. So I can forgive renewables advocates for not realizing it yet — but it’s time for the green movement to do a 180 on this.

Pretty strong stuff, but as good skeptics we should demand evidence to back up these statements. Fortunately, the author provides data to back up his claims. Here are some of Carlyle’s “awful statistics”:

Germany is widely considered the global leader in solar power, with over a third of the world’s nameplate (peak) solar power capacity. Germany has over twice as much solar capacity per capita as sunny, subsidy-rich, high-energy-cost California. (That doesn’t sound bad, but keep going.)

Germany’s residential electricity cost is about $0.34/kWh, one of the highest rates in the world. About $0.07/kWh goes directly to subsidizing renewables, which is actually higher than the wholesale electricity price in Europe. (This means they could simply buy zero-carbon power from France and Denmark for less than they spend to subsidize their own.) More than 300,000 households per year are seeing their electricity shut off because they cannot afford the bills. Many people are blaming high residential prices on business exemptions, but eliminating them would save households less than 1 euro per month on average. Billing rates are predicted by the government to rise another 40% by 2020.

Germany’s utilities and taxpayers are losing vast sums of money due to excessive feed-in tariffs and grid management problems. The environment minister says the cost will be one trillion euros (~$1.35 trillion) over the next two decades if the program is not radically scaled back. This doesn’t even include the hundreds of billions it has already cost to date. Siemens, a major supplier of renewable energy equipment, estimated in 2011 that the direct lifetime cost of Energiewende through 2050 will be $4.5 trillion, which means it will cost about 2.5% of Germany’s GDP for 50 years straight. That doesn’t include economic damage from high energy prices, which is difficult to quantify but appears to be significant.

Here’s the truly dismaying part: the latest numbers show Germany’s carbon output and global warming impact is actually increasing despite flat economic output and declining population, because of ill-planned “renewables first” market mechanisms. This regime is paradoxically forcing the growth of dirty coal power. Photovoltaic solar has a fundamental flaw for large-scale generation in the absence of electricity storage — it only works for about 5-10 hours a day. Electricity must be produced at the exact same time it’s used. The more daytime summer solar capacity Germany builds, the more coal power they need for nights and winters as cleaner power sources are forced offline. This happens because excessive daytime solar power production makes base-load nuclear plants impossible to operate, and makes load-following natural gas plants uneconomical to run. Large-scale PV solar power is unmanageable without equally-large-scale grid storage, but even pumped-storage hydroelectricity facilities are being driven out of business by the severe grid fluctuations. They can’t run steadily enough to operate at a profit. Coal is the only non-subsidized power source that doesn’t hemorrhage money now. The result is that utilities must choose between coal, blackouts, or bankruptcy. Which means much more pollution.

The emphasized passages are the author’s from the original posting.

Full post

– See more at: http://www.thegwpf.com/germanys-green-energy-failure/#sthash.fFTAlKrn.dpuf

Fighting an Imaginary Green Catastrophe, is costing us a Fortune!

/ 1957chev / Leave a comment

Fight against climate change ‘may cause more harm than global warming’

Owen Paterson, who was sacked as environment secretary in David Cameron’s reshuffle, claimed that the fight against climate change did more harm than global warming
  • Owen Paterson
    Owen Paterson, who was sacked as environment secretary in David Cameron’s reshuffle, claimed that the fight against climate change did more harm than global warming Will Oliver/Getty Images
Matt Dathan
Published at 7:46PM, September 28 2014

Measures to combat climate change may be causing more damage than current global warming, a former environment secretary has said.

Owen Paterson, who was sacked in David Cameron’s reshuffle in July, attacked what he described as a “wicked green blob” of environmentalists for failing to explain the pause in global warming.

“There has not been a temperature increase now for probably 18 years, some people say 26 years,” he told a fringe event at the Conservative party conference. “So the pause is old enough to vote, the pause is old enough to join the army, the pause is old enough

One of The Undeniable Facts About Wind Turbines….No Wind….No Power!

/ 1957chev / Leave a comment

Brits Rumble Frightening Energy Fact: Wind Power Depends on the (ur, ahem) Wind …

September 30, 2014 by

turbine collapse 9

Power from wind turbines slumps – due to lack of wind
The Telegraph
Emily Gosden
25 September 2014

Electricity output from UK wind farms falls by a fifth due to unusually low wind speeds

Power produced by wind farms slumped by a fifth in the second quarter of this year, despite hundreds of new turbines being built – because it wasn’t very windy.

Official Government statistics published on Thursday show that in the three months to the end of June, the amount of electricity produced by offshore wind farms fell by 22 per cent, to 2 terawatt-hours (TWh), compared with the same period the year before.

Yet the number of offshore wind turbines operating grew significantly – with 4.1 gigawatts (GW) of capacity installed in the seas around the UK by June this year, up from 3.5GW by June 2013.

Power output from onshore wind farms also fell, by 17 per cent to 3.22 TWh. The fall came despite dozens of new wind farms being built, increasing onshore wind capacity by 14 per cent over the same period.

There was 8GW of onshore capacity at the end of June, 1GW more than a year before.

The Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC) said that the impact of increased capacity was “out-weighed by that of very low wind speeds”.

“Average wind speeds were 1.6 knots lower than a year earlier, and the lowest for quarter two for four years. Average wind speeds in June were the lowest for any month in the last 14 years,” it said.

About 900 turbines were constructed on and offshore over the course of 2013, according to Renewable UK.

Dr John Constable, director of the Renewable Energy Foundation, which publishes data on the sector and is critical of subsidy costs, said: “The latest DECC data is further confirmation that wind power output is highly variable over all timescales, minutes, hours, months, and even from year to year.

“These variabilities are physically manageable but they have highly significant negative economic impacts on the rest of the power generation fleet, whose market is made very uncertain, and these uncertainties ultimately mean much higher costs for consumers.”

While wind power output fell, the amount of electricity generated from solar farms soared by 67 per cent, to 1.2TWh.

The rise was in line with a near-identical increase in the amount of solar capacity installed.

Ministers have admitted that solar farms have been installed far more rapidly than they had expected, thanks to costs falling and developers taking advantage of generous subsidies.

In May they announced they were closing a subsidy scheme two years earlier than planned to stop the spread of the farms, which critics say are blighting the countryside.

Ministers originally anticipated between 2.4-4GW of large-scale solar being installed by 2020. Yet the latest DECC statistics show that the upper end of that range has now been exceeded, with 4.1GW installed by the end of June.

A spokesman for the wind industry trade association RenewableUK said: “Although it’s no secret that there are some periods that are even windier than others, the wider statistics show that wind energy is generating increasing amounts of clean electricity for British homes and businesses year on year.

“When you look at the last twelve months as a whole, generation from renewable sources in the UK went up to just over 17 per cent – up from 13 per cent in the previous 12 months. The lion’s share of that came from onshore and offshore wind – just over 50 per cent of it.

“In August, wind energy outstripped coal and nuclear for several days, and hit at all time 24-hour record high of 22 per cent of the UK’s electricity needs.

“National Grid has no problem taking clean power generated by wind whenever it’s available as often as it can, and it can predict exactly where the power will come from in advance with pinpoint accuracy. Every unit of electricity we generate from wind offsets a unit from polluting fossil fuels, so anyone who cares about climate change knows that we need to make the most of it whenever we can.”

One green power company, Infinis Energy, reported last month that its onshore wind farms had exported a third less power in the three months to June, compared to the same period the year before, blaming “low wind speeds experienced across the UK throughout the period”.

However, it said it would be “well placed to benefit from recovering wind speeds when they occur”.
The Telegraph

The wind industry and its parasites are always quick to wax lyrical about those few hours when the wind blew consistently and added a little meaningful power to the grid, but – like the gambler that only ever talks about his wins – these hucksters never seem able to front up to the hundreds of occasions when wind power output collapses for hours and even days on end (see our post here).

STT loves the cyclone of spin from RenewableUK when it talks about some periods being windier than others and telling power punters to look “at the last 12 months as a whole” – in an effort to varnish up the infantile nonsense of trying to rely on intermittent and unreliable wind power. You don’t need to be Sherlock Holmes to rumble the fact that wind power will always be delivered at crazy, random intervals and – on plenty of occasions – won’t be delivered at all.

yacht

Notable too is the breezy optimism from wind power outfit, Infinis Energy when it talks about being “well placed to benefit from recovering wind speeds when they occur”.

In the meantime, their erstwhile customers are supposed to be “well placed” sitting freezing in the dark, apparently.

The wind industry parades as an answer to global warming (now known as climate change) and does so by wrapping itself in the “alternative” energy tag. Which begs the question: “alternative” to what?

When it comes to their demand for electricity, the power consumer has a couple of basic needs: when they hit the light switch they assume illumination will shortly follow and that when the kettle is kicked into gear it’ll be boiling soon thereafter. And the power consumer assumes that these – and similar actions in a household or business – will be open to them at any time of the night or day, every day of the year.

Neonatal_ICU

For conventional generators, delivering power on the basic terms outlined above is a doddle: delivering base-load power around the clock, rain, hail or shine is just good business. It’s what the customer wants and is prepared to pay for, so it makes good sense to deliver on-demand.

But for wind power generators it’s never about how much the customer wants or when they want it, it’s always and everywhere about the vagaries of the wind. When the wind speed increases to 25 m/s, turbines are automatically shut-off to protect the blades and bearings; and below 6-7 m/s turbines are incapable of producing any power at all.

It’s no wonder that the Brits have noticed that wind power is nothing more than a sick joke.

Even with the most geographically widespread grid-connected set of wind farms in the world (the 3,342 MW of wind power capacity connected to Australia’s Eastern grid across SA, Victoria, Tasmania and NSW) there are dozens of occasions each year when total wind power output struggles to top 2% of installed capacity – and hundreds when it fails to muster even 5% (see our posts here and here and here).

Now, if the power consumer was given advance warning of when these total output failures were going to occur, they might simply reconsider their selfish demands of having illumination after dark or that hot cuppa in the morning. That way, they might still consider wind power as some kind of “alternative” for conventional power?

But, so far, power consumers remain stubbornly selfish; wedded to the idea that when they hit the switch, their power needs will be satisfied that very instant (the cheek, hey?).

And that’s where the myth about wind power being some kind of “alternative” falls in a heap.

Unless you’re prepared to live like stone-age hermits, power delivered at the whim of mother nature (which in practical terms means no power at all, hundreds of times each year) is NO alternative for power delivered on-demand; anytime of the day or night; every single day of the year – and in volumes sufficient to satisfy all consumers connected to the same network, at the same time.

RenewableUK’s waffle about past wind power output averages over time is patent nonsense: for most people power consumption is a here-and-now kind of thing. In the absence of a conventional generation system with adequate capacity to satisfy demand, modern economies would quickly descend into chaos if left to rely on a power generation system entirely dependent on the weather.

But it’s the howlers contained in this quote that take the glittering prize:

“National Grid has no problem taking clean power generated by wind whenever it’s available as often as it can, and it can predict exactly where the power will come from in advance with pinpoint accuracy. Every unit of electricity we generate from wind offsets a unit from polluting fossil fuels, so anyone who cares about climate change knows that we need to make the most of it whenever we can.”

STT’s not sure what the benefit of predicting complete collapses in wind power output “with pinpoint accuracy” might be. Unless it’s meant to remind us that behind every single MW of wind power capacity there’s an equal amount of fossil fuel generating capacity kept ready and waiting (burning mountains of coal and gas) to take up the slack? When infants are left to their own devices it’s always nice to know there are adults around to take responsibility; except in this case, we’re forced to pay twice: once with massive subsidies to wind power outfits that simply can’t be relied on to stump up power when it’s needed; and again for the conventional generation capacity essential to keeping the grid up and running. So far, so costly and pointless.

Then there’s the descent to the old “climate change” chestnut.

Nowhere in the world has the wind industry provided any actual proof that it has in fact reduced CO2 emissions in the electricity sector. When we talk about “proof” we’re not talking about smoke and mirrors “modelling” based on long-term average wind farm output – which ignores the extra gas and coal being burnt (and wasted) in order to balance the grid to account for wild fluctuations in wind power output (see our post here); and to maintain additional “spinning reserve” (seeour post here) to account for complete collapses in wind power output – as seen in this post.

As we have pointed out just once or twice – the need for 100% of wind power capacity to be backed up 100% of the time by fossil fuel generation sources means that wind power cannot and will never reduce CO2 emissions in the electricity sector (see our posts here and hereand here and here and here and here and here).

E.ON operates numerous transmission grids in Germany and, therefore, has the unenviable task of being forced to integrate the wildly fluctuating and unpredictable output from wind power generators, while trying to keep the German grid from collapsing (E.ON sets out a number of the headaches caused by intermittent wind power in the Summary of this paper at page 4). Dealing with the fantasy that wind power is an alternative to conventional generation sources, E.ON says:

“Wind energy is only able to replace traditional power stations to a limited extent. Their dependence on the prevailing wind conditions means that wind power has a limited load factor even when technically available. It is not possible to guarantee its use for the continual cover of electricity consumption. Consequently, traditional power stations with capacities equal to 90% of the installed wind power capacity must be permanently online [and burning fuel] in order to guarantee power supply at all times.”

STT is happy to go all out and say that in Australia wind power requires 100% of its capacity to be backed up 100% of the time by conventional generation sources. As just one recent example, on 3 consecutive days (20, 21 and 22 July 2014) the total output from all of the wind farms connected to the Eastern Grid (total capacity of 2,952 MW – and spread over 4 states, SA, Victoria, Tasmania and NSW) was a derisory 20 MW (or 0.67% of installed capacity) for hours on end (see our post here). The 99.33% of wind power output that went AWOL for hours (at various times, 3 days straight) was, instead, all supplied by conventional generators; the vast bulk of which came from coal and gas plants, with the balance coming from hydro.

And Britain is no different (see our post here).

For wind power to reduce CO2 emissions in the electricity sector it has be a true “substitute” for conventional generation sources. Because it can’t be delivered “on-demand” (can’t be stored) and is only “available” at crazy, random intervals (if at all) wind power will never be a substitute for conventional generation sources (see our post here).

Perhaps the reason that the wind industry has never produced a shred of evidence (anywhere) to show that wind power has reduced CO2 emissions in the electricity sector is simply because it can’t. Running counter to wind industry claims about wind power abating CO2 emissions, the result of trying to incorporate wind power into a coal/gas fired grid is increased CO2 emissions (see our post here and thisEuropean paper here; this Irish paper here; this English paper here; thisAmerican article and this Dutch study here).

Wind power has NOTHING to do with CO2 emissions abatement in the electricity sector; and, therefore, has NOTHING to do with global warming (or climate change) – which means there is simply no justification for the massive stream of subsidies filched from power consumers and tax payers and directed to wind power outfits.

And now the stats are in, the wind industry is struggling to maintain the ruse that wind power is a credible source of electricity at all.

Reminiscent of uptight hotelier, Basil Fawlty trying to pin fault for the chaos he caused on his bemused guests, the German wind industry have started cursing the wind for not blowing (see our post here) and now their British counterparts have been reduced to the same tactic.

Some might call the wind industry “pathetic” – but that would be to ignore the $billions stolen from power punters around the globe and the grief caused to thousands of previously peaceful rural communities.

STT calls it the greatest economic and environmental fraud of all time.

Definition of fraud

Seneca Mountain Wind, Will Not Be Destroying Vermont Environment! Project Cancelled!!!

/ 1957chev / Leave a comment

SENECA MOUNTAIN WIND PULLS THE PLUG

SEP. 28 2014, 11:41 AM 11 COMMENTS

Editor’s note: This article is by James Jardine, of the Caledonian-Record, in which it was first published Sept. 27, 2014.

Seneca Mountain Wind has removed its MET wind measurement device from its Ferdinand location.

The company also confirmed it has not started construction or site preparation at any of the other three MET sites authorized under a certificate of public good (CPG) issued to Seneca Mountain Wind by the Vermont Public Service Board.

In a letter dated Thursday, Karen Tyler, an attorney with the Burlington law firm of Dunkiel Saunders Elliott Raubvogel and Hand PLLC states, “SMW (Seneca Mountain Wind) no longer plans to either pursue its MET Tower project at a later date, or seek permission from the Board to transfer the CPG to another person or entity.”

The letter continues, “In light of these developments, [SMW] now agrees with the Appellants that their appeal of the Board’s order in Docket No. 7867 is moot.”

The MET tower in Ferdinand cited by Seneca Mountain Wind was previously constructed by Matthew Rubin when Rubin was planning a wind farm in East Haven several years ago. When Rubin canceled his plans for a wind farm, he left the MET tower in place.

Previously, Seneca Mountain Wind has argued before the Vermont Supreme Court that the certificates of public good issued by the Vermont Public Service Board have value even if Seneca Mountain Wind has canceled leases it holds on the land on which the towers are to be located. Seneca Mountain canceled a lease on land in Newark owned by Scott and Sarah Williams, Guilford, Vt., according to Newark Town Clerk Joan Bicknell. Seneca Mountain Wind also canceled a lease on land in Ferdinand and Brighton owned by Daniel Ouimette, Colebrook, N.H.

The Vermont Supreme Court, on Aug. 12, remanded Seneca Mountain’s lawsuit back to the Public Service Board, telling the PSB, “to consider, given  the current circumstances whether appellant’s CPG should be revoked or declared void with respect to the towers located in the Town of Newark and the Town of Brighton.” The remand continues, “If the Board either revokes or declares void Seneca’s CPG for those towers, then the appeal will be dismissed.”

Now that Seneca Mountain Wind has confirmed it will no longer pursue its MET tower project at a later date and will not seek permission to transfer its authorizing certificate to another person or entity, anyone hoping to build a commercial wind farm in Newark, Brighton or Ferdinand will have to start from scratch.

Jihadis and Warmunists….Both want to Destroy Our Way of Life!

/ 1957chev / Leave a comment

September 28, 2014
Jihadis and Warmunists: Brothers Under the Skin
By Clarice Feldman
Watching the parade of the naïve, the far left, and their energy-hogging celebrity manipulators marching in New York City this week, I was struck by how much these true believers had in common with jihadis, a notion reinforced by Purdue Professor Louis Rene Beres’ description of jihadis in Gatestone Institute and my friend “Ignatz’s’” comment at Just One Minute.

Both movements seem to these authors to be a means of denying death and change and making the mortal, immortal and the insignificant individual life, a significant force when massed with others.

If this is true — and I think it is — we cannot defeat these irrational movements in the ordinary ways. New strategies are called for.

Jihadis

Beres’ argument (and you should read it all to fully understand it) is, in sum, that the bloody depredations of jihadism provide its adherents with a “delusion of immortality” and a “religious justification” for erotic satisfaction.

If this is the case, he says, we cannot stifle its advance by treating terrorism simply as a normal striving for land or politics or strategy. It’s a different kind of enemy.

Among more “normal” conflict scenarios, America, Europe and Israel now need to consider mega-threats of both unconventional war and unconventional terrorism. Faced with determined adversaries — who are not only willing to die, but who actively seek their own “deaths” in order to live forever — Washington and Jerusalem should finally address the what needs to be done in addition to military remediation.

Sustained and selective armed force against IS and related Jihadist targets is certainly necessary and appropriate. However, it is also important to remind our leaders that force always needs to be combined with reinforcing efforts to convince these terrorists that their expected martyrdom is ultimately just an elaborate fiction.

Jihadists, in killing Americans, Israelis, and all other “unbelievers,” may not even intend to commit evil, so much as to do themselves and Allah good — and to do so with an absolute purity of heart. In their view, waging Holy War can never be shameful; it can only be heroic.

Going forward, our main task should be to systematically undermine these fantasies and doctrinal “underpinnings.” In conjunction with the recommended nuanced persuasions of military firepower, it can be done.

Warmunists

The New York demonstration, full as it was of communist organizers and sympathizers, inspired one wag to argue the marchers really were warmunists — that is, far left-wingers posing as environmentalists. (Any question respecting their commitment to environmentalism and keeping the planet clean were resolved by shots of the mounds of trash they left behind while purporting to save the planet.)

Ignatz made observations about the marchers which strike me as related to Beres’ comments about jihadis:

Lefties love to talk about revolution, “cause change” fundamental transformations, progress, etc., but they are the most retrograde reactionaries imaginable. They want a one-time revolution to cement and codify utter stasis.

People who talk about change are scared to death of the creative destruction of free markets. People who worship Darwinian progress, which after all implies millions of extinctions, want to save every single evolutionary cul-de-sac of a species they can find living in some pothole or cave somewhere. Their desire to somehow fix our climate to an optimum they have arbitrarily decided is in all our interests is obvious. Less obvious is their desire for the tranquility and stultifying sameness of socialism, not because it’s fair but because it’s predictable and controllable and therefore not as disruptive and scary. They seek the perennial childlike state of someone else supplying their security while they indulge their pleasures, presumably because they regret ever having to grow up.

These fools of all ages are on a children’s crusade to compel the adults of the world to create an actual real-world Neverland for them where nothing ever changes, they’ll never age and they can pretend they’re somehow going to be the magical ones picked by fate to cheat death.

The jihadis’ “heresy” charges against those who oppose their tyranny is simply another version of the warmunists’ “treason”. If you had any doubt about that, here’s Robert F Kennedy, Jr, who disproves his existential claims about climate warming by flying in private planes to warn us we will perish if we don’t stop using conventional energy.

Kennedy lamented in an interview with Climate Depot, [he]is not permitted by law to “punish” or to imprison those who disagree with him — and this, he proposed, is a problem of existential proportions. Were he to have his way, Kennedy admitted, he would cheer the prosecution of a host of “treasonous” figures — among them a number of unspecified “politicians”; those bêtes noires of the global Left, Kansas’s own Koch Brothers; “the oil industry and the Republican echo chamber”; and, for good measure, anybody else whose estimation of the threat posed by fossil fuels has provoked them into “selling out the public trust.” Those who contend that global warming “does not exist,” Kennedy claimed, are guilty of “a criminal offense — and they ought to be serving time for it.”
Just as Eric Hoffer warned us a half century ago about all mass movements in his book The True Believer: Thoughts On The Nature Of Mass Movements such movements thrive in climates where individual opportunities are limited. He said then that they had not had much purchase in the United States because capitalism and our Constitution permitted so much advancement and freedom. Don’t the warmunists and the jihadis imperviousness to reality and fact share a common root? Doesn’t the drive of both to convert us all to their way of thinking echo Hoffer’s belief that the death denier “strengthen[s] his own faith by converting others”? Can you think of a better explanation, for example, of Kennedy’s tyrannical wish?

As anti-capitalist laws and regulations cooked up by this administration impoverish the middle class and shrink it while expanding the numbers now on the dole and pc restrictions of free speech in the workplace and colleges strangle us, do you suppose the climate for pernicious mass movements will grow or will it shrink?

I think we need to redouble our efforts to separate fact from fiction here and abroad even as we undertake warfare in the Middle East and to strengthen free markets and free speech rights here even though to do so means challenging in every available forum the ridiculous notions of the adherents of both of these mass movements.

Read more: http://www.americanthinker.com/2014/09/9_27_2014_18_33.html##ixzz3Ef1vqfKg
Follow us: @AmericanThinker on Twitter | AmericanThinker on Facebook

Windweasels Lie about Noise they are Creating With Their Useless Wind Turbines!

/ 1957chev / Leave a comment

Moyne Shire Council Rubberstamps AGL’s Macarthur Wind Farm Noisewash

September 28, 2014 by

Rubber_stamp_stand

The nightmare that is AGL’s Macarthur wind farm began operating in October 2012 – the first 30 fired up then.  All 140 giant 3MW Vestas V112s kicked into gear in about February 2013.

Ever since, the locals have been driven absolutely insane with incessant low-frequency noise and infra-sound.

AGL (aka “Australia’s Greatest Liars”) have been running interference in relation to noise problems from the very start.

The incompetent bunch of goons that they hired to do the acoustic work lost and fudged data and, when challenged about data that went missing, blamed flat batteries more than once.

Macarthur residents hired their own careful, independent acoustic engineers to do proper methodical studies into noise impacts, which included full spectrum testing – something that AGL and its pet acoustic consultants have not done and will never do.  The low-frequency testing done by AGL used the same method discredited by Steve Cooper a while back.

STT has seen the work done by the locals’ acoustic experts and – without a shadow of a doubt – it demonstrates that the noise levels generated do not and will never satisfy the noise conditions of AGL’s planning consent.

Now AGL have managed to get the Moyne Shire Council to rubber-stamp its acoustic white-wash in order to allow it to claim compliance with the noise conditions of its planning consent. But the lawyers for the Council – as well as the outfit charged with reviewing AGL’s noise report – had trouble working out what the “vague” and “unduly complicated … wording of the planning permit” actually meant, so advised that the best way to determine compliance was with a vote on it, according to the Council’s Agenda:

As Maddocks have advised, (Confidential Attachment 6) the noise compliance issue for the Macarthur Wind Farm has been unduly complicated by the wording of the planning permit. For example, the permit wording is so vague it is unclear whether Council is required to make a resolution regarding noise compliance. However in order to be transparent and to act in the most appropriate manner as the responsible authority, Maddocks recommends to Council that a resolution is the best means of addressing the noise compliance issue.

There. Isn’t it so much simpler when sticky situations that might see a wind farm operator called to account are settled on a show of hands. Settled that is, by people who aren’t acoustic experts and don’t, apparently, even know what the terms of the noise conditions they’re meant to be applying mean (their lawyers didn’t). And, instead of being “transparent”, the Council kept the correspondence from its lawyers pointing out that the conditions were “unduly complicated” and “vague” confidential (Attachment 6). So much for open and transparent government.

When it came to the Council meeting AGL didn’t have it all its own way. Former Mayor, Councillor Jim Doukas ripped into AGL and gave his fellow members a right-royal-rocket for their complicity in allowing AGL to operate with impunity.

Moyne councillor slams Macarthur wind farm noise review
The Standard
Anthony Brady
25 September 2014

A MOYNE Shire Councillor has hit out at the operators of the huge Macarthur wind farm, saying they should be “tied to a tree and flogged with a whip”.

In a fiery address to the council’s meeting on Tuesday night, Cr Jim Doukas refused to accept a peer review commissioned by the shire which found company AGL was operating the 140-turbine wind farm within noise guidelines.

“It is the biggest load of garbage I’ve ever read in my life and AGL should be tied to a tree and flogged with a whip,” Cr Doukas said.

He said the noise readings taken by AGL’s consultants were “insignificant” and “outside the guidelines” and questioned how a peer reviewer could find them compliant.

“For anyone who reads this and says this is a fair and honest report is just not right and should be ashamed.  “We as a council should not make the determination on the report here tonight. We haven’t gone out to the public.

“No one in Australia who is involved in the wind energy industry, whether they support it or not, has had the chance to look at this and make comment and I think there are wiser heads out there than ours.

“As for those who are objectors, they are entitled to make comment and address council on the issue.

“If we support this tonight we deny them their right and I don’t think that’s right. We are shoving it down their throats and forgetting about the community and, for me, that’s just not on.”

But Cr Mick Wolfe disagreed with the outburst, saying people had already had a chance to comment.

“It’s time for this to go through. We’ve got our report and it’s been reviewed, the facts are in there,” Cr Wolfe said.

“We’ve heard from others alleging corruption, fraud, failure — you name it.

“Everything that AGL or the testers try to do that’s not in favour of the opponents they slam them with some pretty serious allegations.

“They (the opponents) have had a chance to come to any council meeting and show us their data.

“They are hiding it, they are holding it and not releasing it and I don’t know why. Come forward with it.”

The council agreed with the report’s findings that the wind farm is complying with noise levels, but has called for further monitoring within 12 months.

This follows advice from the peer reviewer that noise emissions can change over time as faults develop within the turbines and parts need replacing.

A spokeswoman for AGL yesterday welcomed the council’s confirmation of the report.

She said AGL had already carried out more than 40,000 hours of noise monitoring at Macarthur which was “well beyond” the level required under the shire’s planning permit.
The Standard

jim doukas

Compliant or not, the suffering caused by AGL’s turbines is real; and was documented by STT Champion, Anne Schafer in a community survey.  Here’s a link to the survey. And see our post here.

One of AGL’s numerous victims, STT Champion Annie Gardner wrote this cracking letter to the Editor of The Standard – praising Jim Doukas for doing his job; and slamming the goats that pass for local government representatives for failing to do theirs.

To the Editor,
The affected residents of this district are extremely grateful for the unconditional support given by Councillor Jim Doukas (“Moyne Councillor slams Macarthur wind farm noise review 25.9).

Unfortunately the same cannot be said of the remainder of Moyne Shire Council who have been elected with a duty of care to protect the health of ALL residents.

Moyne Shire Council are in receipt of hundreds of health complaints as a result of the acoustic emissions from the turbines at the Macarthur wind farm, but have done NOTHING to protect us from this serious harm to our bodies.

As Councillor Doukas rightly claims, we have been denied our right to comment on the noise peer review. I have requested on several occasions to have a copy of this peer review forwarded to me, but these requests have been constantly denied by a council withholding information.

Councillor Wolfe shows his ignorance when he claims residents have had plenty of time to address council and hand over our noise data. It is not that simple, as any lay person isn’t able to comprehend acoustic data, and I doubt any councillors would be trained in acoustics.

Just prior to the council meeting on Tuesday, when Moyne Shire finally released the peer review report, I requested Council forward to our independent acoustic expert, all documentation relating to the peer review, in order that he may compile a report to immediately present to Council. This report, with additional damning evidence, will prove that the Macarthur Wind Farm is NOT COMPLIANT with government noise guidelines.

I also requested Council defer confirming compliance of the wind farm, until our acoustic expert is able to present his report to the Council. This request was obviously ignored.

In the name of openness and transparency, surely Moyne Council could have waited to read the resident’s acoustic expert report which will surely blow any claim of compliance of the Macarthur wind farm, out of the water.

We ask Moyne Shire, WHERE HAS DEMOCRACY GONE?

ANN and ANDREW GARDNER
PENSHURST,   Victoria

annie-gardner

Windweasels are Held Responsible For Airplane Crash….Wrongful Death Verdict! Must Pay!

/ 1957chev / Leave a comment

Ag plane crash leads to $6.7 million wrongful death verdict

Credit:  By Stephen Pope / Published: Sep 25, 2014 | Flying | www.flyingmag.com ~~

When Steve Allen, a highly respected Northern California ag pilot with 26,000 accident free hours, crashed his Rockwell S-2R into a whisper-thin, barely visible galvanized steel wind observation tower on January 11, 2011, a dark and sickening secret about personal greed and avarice was exposed for all the world to see.

The $6.7 million wrongful death settlement the aviator’s family was awarded this month will hopefully help ensure other similar tragedies won’t happen in the future.

The tower, measuring just inches under 200 feet, was hastily erected in 2009 by wind energy interests “prospecting” for the perfect site for a new wind farm in Contra Costa County east of San Francisco. The odd height of the tower is central to the case — any tower under 200 feet doesn’t need to be lighted or reported to the FAA. But because these towers can pop up almost anywhere and are nearly impossible to see in flight, they pose a special danger to aerial application aircraft.

Allen, 58, was spreading winter wheat for a local farm when he flew his single-engine turboprop into the unlit, unmarked tower. According to the National Transportation Safety Board accident report, the pilot was never told about its existence and never saw it.

The meteorological evaluation towers, known as METs and equipped with small wind anemometers, have been cropping up all across the country as investors seek to cash in on the wind energy craze. By keeping them just below 200 feet, wind farm entrepreneurs save the money, time and hassle of registering them with the FAA — while putting ag pilot’s lives at risk.

“No amount of money is ever going to compensate the Allen family for the loss of Mr. Allen,” said Roger Dreyer, the family’s lawyer. “He was an exceptional pilot, father and husband. We can only hope that those individuals in the wind industry, agricultural field and those who manufacture and install these MET towers understand that their failure to mark them adequately with lights and obstruction warning devices puts aviators, like Mr. Allen, at risk of losing their lives when there is absolutely no reason for taking that risk.”

Source:  By Stephen Pope / Published: Sep 25, 2014 | Flying | www.flyingmag.com

“Earth Friendly Energy”, is not as Clean or Green as they Claim!

/ 1957chev / Leave a comment
By Deroy Murdock
September 26, 2014 
Environmentalists worship solar energy and wind power as Earth-friendly answers to their ecological prayers. Tortoises, bats, butterflies, and bald eagles beg to differ.

Perhaps because solar panels and industrial wind farms lack emissions, they seem “clean.” Despite their pristine appearance, however, these “green” electricity sources hammer Mother Nature — often fatally.

Southern California’s Ivanpah Solar Electric Generating System.

Consider the Ivanpah Solar Electric Generating System in California’s Mojave Desert. As Carolyn Lochhead wrote on September 7 in the San Francisco Chronicle, Ivanpah occupies 3,500 previously untouched federal acres. It features 300,000 mirrors that focus sunlight on three 40-story towers of power. Inside, 900-degree temperatures yield steam, propel turbines, and generate electricity for140,000 homes.

Ivanpah’s environmental toll is stunning:

• BrightSource Energy, the project’s owner, could have rehabilitated a brownfield, an abandoned commercial site, or a decommissioned military base. Instead, BrightSource developed 5.5 square miles of virgin desert.

• Lochhead reports that “scientists now say desert soils contain vast stores of carbon that are unleashed by construction of solar facilities.”

• Tortoises native to that area became refugees once BrightSource relocated them en masse.

• Kit-fox dens were flattened during construction.

• Monarch butterflies and birds should avoid Ivanpah at all costs. Those who traverse its highly concentrated sunbeams often ignite. Center for Biological Diversity ecologist K. Shawn Smallwood told the California Energy Commission last July that Ivanpah will roast an estimated 28,380 birds annually.

This MacGillivray’s Warbler suffered fatal burns at the Ivanpah solar plant in October 2013. Photo: Associated Press/U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service.

Ivanpah cost $2.2 billion, including a $1.6 billion federal loan. For its next trick, BrightSource envisions a bigger installation near Joshua Tree National Park — within a migratory path for protected peregrine falcons, golden eagles, and some 100 other bird species.

Meanwhile, environmentalists call wind power as benign as a summer breeze. In fact, wind farms have become avian killing fields. The U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service reports that “wind turbines may kill a half a million birds a year.” Wind blows away another 600,000 bats annually, primarily through lung hemorrhaging. While these “flying vampires” look scary, most are insectivores and vegetarians. Bats actually serve mankind by pollinating crops and devouring mosquitoes. Fewer bats mean more mosquitoes. Swell.

USF&WS explains also that “eagles appear to be particularly susceptible. Large numbers of golden eagles have been killed by wind turbines in the western states,” as have smaller numbers of bald eagles. Team Obama — which could not care less about America’s beautiful, majestic national symbol — almost never prosecuteswind companies for violating the Bald and Golden Eagle Protection Act. Even worse, Obama is granting wind-farm operators 30-year federal eagle-killing permits, to continue their mayhem — all in the name of “clean” energy.

Long before they are installed — which itself consumes open fields — windmills abuse the Earth.

To evaluate any energy technology, “we must remember that it’s a process, starting with mining the materials necessary for the machines,” Alex Epstein notes in his forthcoming Penguin book, The Moral Case for Fossil Fuels. Epstein observes that windmill manufacturing requires “hazardous substances like hydrofluoric acid in order to get usable rare earth elements.”

The Daily Mail’s Simon Parry toured Baotou, China, a source of neodymium, the main ingredient in wind turbines’ electromagnets. He discovered “a five-mile wide ‘tailing’ lake. It has killed farmland for miles around, made thousands of people ill, and put one of China’s key waterways in jeopardy.”

This toxic lake in Baotou, China, is filled with pollution from neodymium factories, which are crucial to wind-turbine production.

Parry added:

This vast, hissing cauldron of chemicals is the dumping ground for seven million tons a year of mined rare earth after it has been doused in acid and chemicals and processed through red-hot furnaces to extract its components.

The lake instantly assaults your senses. Stand on the black crust for just seconds and your eyes water and a powerful, acrid stench fills your lungs.

For hours after our visit, my stomach lurched and my head throbbed. We were there for only one hour, but those who live in Mr. Yan’s village of Dalahai, and other villages around, breathe in the same poison every day.

Environmentalists should stop hallucinating about “sustainable” power sources that unleash puppies and rainbows at no cost to air, water, habitat, and wildlife. “Clean energy” hurts nature. Those who believe otherwise live in Fantasyland.

— Deroy Murdock is a Manhattan-based Fox News contributor and a media fellow with the Hoover Institution on War, Revolution, and Peace at Stanford University.

Politicians Should Be Jailed for Pushing the “Unreliable Renewables” scam!

/ 1957chev / Leave a comment

Lunacy of Wind & Solar Power Policy: Political Incompetence or Conspiracy?

September 26, 2014 by

john kutsch

John Kutsch heads up the Thorium Energy Alliance an outfit that aims to see power generated using thorium enjoy a place at our reliable energy table.

Thorium is an abundant silver-gray element named for the Norse god of thunder. It’s less radioactive than the uranium used to power conventional nuclear plants; it produces less waste; and is more difficult to turn into nuclear weapons.

Advocates like Kutsch want to adapt traditional nuclear plants to use thorium as a fuel or replace them with a completely new kind of reactor called a liquid-fluoride thorium reactor, or LFTR (pronounced “lifter”). The LFTR would use a mixture of molten chemical salts to cool the reactor and to transfer energy from the fission reaction to a turbine.

Kutsch argues that such a system is more efficient and safer than existing plants, which use pressurized water to cool uranium fuel rods and boiling water or steam to transfer the energy they create. Kutsch says: “A molten-salt reactor is not a pressurized reactor. It doesn’t use water for cooling, so you don’t have the possibility of a hydrogen explosion, as you did in Fukushima.”

Kutsch and other advocates say that a thorium-fueled reactor burns hotter than uranium reactors, consuming more of the fuel. Kutsch says that “Ninety-nine percent of the thorium is burned up. Instead of 10,000 pounds of waste, you would have 300 pounds of waste.”

STT isn’t about to weigh into the debate about thorium, but we’re on the same page as Kutsch when he slams into the lunacy of wind power.

Here’s a video of John belting into the infantile logic of trying to rely upon power sources delivered at crazy, random intervals. Oh and it comes with a “PG” warning: John’s frustration at our political betters leads to one or two “F” bombs.

blob:https%3A//www.youtube.com/b6668f91-9d89-49a1-9a99-190b7f2f361a