energy costs

Wind Turbines are Useless, and Destructive. What were they thinking? Oh ya….$$$$$

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Alan Moran: Wind Power FAILS on all Scores

June 28, 2014

report-card

Renewable energy as a means of reducing emissions fails two key tests
Herald Sun
Alan Moran
26 June 2014

REGULATORY change will always disadvantage some while advantaging others. But the benefits of deregulation far outpace the costs and Australia carries a weighty regulatory burden, one that has deprived us of enjoying the world’s highest living standards.

The most costly regulations are the ever-mounting environmental red tape and Australia’s unique union-dominated controls over employment conditions. The deleterious effects of these have been somewhat offset by deregulatory progress in import tariffs, for example, and in opening up areas such as ports, travel and telecommunications to greater competition. Privatisation has also helped in this regard.

Unfortunately we have gone backwards in energy supply policy with the carbon tax and forced substitution of cheap coal-generated electricity for expensive renewables. These government measures have resulted in Australian electricity prices being transformed from among the world’s lowest into one of the highest.

This has contributed to placing intense competitive pressure on industry and commerce over the past few years; households have as a result incurred higher prices for the goods and services they buy, as well as taking a direct hit from skyrocketing electricity bills.

While the Palmer United policy remains unclear it seems that the carbon tax is likely to be removed with the new Senate. The future of the other strings to these regulatory bows is less certain. Chief among these is the Renewable Energy Target (RET) under review by a panel chaired by leading businessman Dick Warburton.

The RET forces all electricity consumers to incorporate a proportion of wind and solar energy into their electricity supply. This renewable energy is three times as costly as the energy it displaces and will soon comprise 20 per cent or more of total supply. At that stage it will add 30-50 per cent to total wholesale electricity costs. The RET alone will mean household electricity bills go up by 7 per cent and those of industrial users by 10 per cent. Other state-based measures add to this cost.

The RET review has attracted some 24,000 submissions, mostly from green zealots regurgitating slogans offered up by their leaders. This group is unaware or uncaring that the renewable energy scheme means a considerable increase in electricity costs for industry and households.

Some claim the subsidies help consumers since they drive down electricity prices. But any such price reduction is similar to that which would follow from government supplying cheap bread. The price might fall but not enough to pay for the costs involved and the price falls would result in commercial suppliers ceasing to operate, creating future shortages.

Also supporting green subsidies are a number of publicly-financed bodies. Many of these, such as the cities of Melbourne and Sydney, have no expertise on the matter but their councils’ irresponsible approach to spending involves employing green personnel for vanity purposes.

Others like Climateworks and the Grattan Institute were given taxpayer funding by Labor-Greens government to promote renewable energy.

A second group of submissions is businesses and their representatives who have made investments in subsidised renewables and are keen to protect those investments and even to create additional subsidies.

The third is specific business interests, largely in aluminium, which recognise the deadly costs of the RET scheme and seek to quarantine themselves from its effects.

The IPA mining representatives and the Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry form a fourth group, which notes that the renewable scheme is a horrendous waste of resources, needlessly drives up electricity costs, and finances lobbying activity that pollutes the political process. These bodies argue that the scheme should be axed immediately and all subsidy payments terminated.

Twenty years ago, the two green technologies favoured by subsidies — wind and solar — were touted as being on the verge of becoming competitive with coal, gas and oil. Almost no serious analyst nowadays believes this.

That bold but discredited technological optimism was joined with a rationale that subsidies to green energy would reduce carbon emissions. As a policy, renewable energy as a means of reducing emissions fails two key tests. It founders on the shoals of adamant refusals by other countries to embark on serious carbon emission reductions and on clear evidence that renewable policies only reduce emissions at a very high cost.

To date, Australia has wasted $20 billion in worthless renewable energy investments, mainly on windfarms but also on solar, including the rooftop panels. Just to put that in perspective, $20 billion would build 100,000 new houses. According to modelling undertaken by Acil Tasman for the RET review, unless the program is stopped immediately a further cost of $13 billion will be incurred. Of course, if we also provide subsidies to new renewable facilities, many more billions will be wasted.

Beneficiaries of the subsidies argue that unless they are maintained, Australia will suffer adversely by being regarded as a nation imposing “sovereign risk” on investors. This, so it is said, will discourage future investments. Sovereign risk is where governments seize property without proper compensation.

But changing a tax or subsidy can hardly be considered an imposition of sovereign risk. Such changes happen all the time and invariably mean losses to somebody.

Moreover we have seen policy changes in recent years that have very severe repercussions on investments.

Take the automotive industry, where reductions in industry protection, changes to industrial relations laws and the energy price hikes have caused investment write-offs amounting to billions of dollars. Or the “alcopops” industry, severely impaired by a sudden and unexpected 70 per cent tax increase. Or cigarette manufacturing, hounded from Australia by tax hikes and restraints to marketing.

We also saw the former Commonwealth government, in response to claims by the ABC about animal cruelty, dramatically close the live beef trade to Indonesia. Many graziers had to shoot their stock and average prices fell by a third.

The victims of these government activities got no compensation. Importantly, nor did the measures bring a rise in investment risk.

While the less government meddling there is in the economy the better, the fact is taxes, subsidies and tax rates do change. No government can reasonably expect to bind its successors to paying a worthless subsidy for 15 years as is nominally the case with the RET. And no investor would sensibly expect this.

The renewable energy scam, alongside the carbon tax, was one of the many targets of the late Ray Evans, whose funeral is today. He was a co-founder of the Lavoisier Group established to combat misinformation about climate change. The current Shadow Resources Minister, Gary Gray, was a former member. Ray did not live to see the costly green edifices of economic self-harm dismantled. But the new Senate, in spite of resistance from the Greens and Labor’s leadership, will begin the necessary economic repairs next week.

Alan Moran is the Director, Deregulation at the Institute of Public Affairs
Herald Sun

In addition to the fine analysis above, Alan also had this to say on the Catallaxy blog:

Many governments are seeking ways of escaping the wanton cost impositions irresponsible green predecessors have bequeathed them.  None more so than Spain, the former poster child of green energy.  Following its election the current Spanish Government has wound-back previously agreed green energy subsidies.  This has prompted claims of retrospectivity and sovereign risk, including anappeal to Brussels.

The Spanish risk premium seems unaffected by this and has in fact been declining.

Australia’s renewables rort, with seemingly guaranteed high returns, has provided a bonanza for many union pension funds, but these have mainly provided the capital and sold back the forecast stream of electricity.  Those most at risk from a termination of the scheme are the electricity retailers, who have taken long-term contracts on the wind power as part of the portfolio of forward buying to cover the requirements imposed by the current legislation.

Renewables and climate change matters were among the many issues of government imposed costs and liberty curtailments addressed by the late Ray Evans whose funeral is today.
Catallaxy Files

In his Herald Sun piece, Alan refers to modelling by “Acil Tasman”. The firm is now called ACIL Allen and it produced modelling which is fundamentally flawed – grossly underestimating the impact of the mandatory RET on retail power prices – simply because it failed to consider the impact of the Power Purchase Agreements struck between wind power generators and retailers that sets the price paid for wind power at rates 3-4 times the average wholesale price for power (see our post here).

Alan refers to the risk faced by Union Super Funds and retailers. He could have also included the major banks who have lent to wind power outfits (see our post here).

Any banker, Union Super fund manager or retailer who thinks they can safely rely on Clive Palmer’s current “support” for the mandatory RET as a sound basis for their future financial health should think again. Big Clive took the Greens and their acolytes for fools over his brief brush with an Emissions Trading Scheme – which blasted like a comet across the night sky – but went straight to the political dustbin. Anyone betting the house on Clive Palmer’s next move is a very brave punter, indeed.

clive palmer sleeping

Those Brilliant Aussies, Deliver the Final Death Blow to the Wind Industry!

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Wind Industry Doomed as Smokin’ Joe Hockey Shuts Down CEFC Lending for Wind Farms

June 29, 2014 by  Leave a Comment

gore and palmer

Having killed the “carbon” tax in an eye-blink – a business killing and family punishing $23 a tonne tax on carbon dioxide gas – Clive Palmer vowed to use his ability to block legislation proposed by the Coalition in the Senate to prevent any changes to the mandatory Renewable Energy Target; and the abolition of the Clean Energy Finance Corporation.

Retaining the Clean Energy Finance Corporation and the mandatory RET makes no sense for a political party which helped to kill the “carbon” tax because of the punishment it caused to businesses and households through spiralling power bills. Since big Clive’s announcement, The Australian has produced a plethora of articles to much the same effect.

For our overseas followers, Clive’s 3 PUP Senators – plus their ally, Ricky Muir of the Motoring Enthusiasts’ Party – are able to block any legislation put up by the Coalition in the Senate, where Labor and the Greens oppose it; or, conversely, to side with the Coalition and get legislation passed where Labor and the Greens choose to block it, with the support of 2 of the cross-benchers, like John Madigan and Nick Xenophon. That leaves Palmer with the ability to throw his considerable weight against or behind Coalition backed legislation. On that matrix, with Palmer’s support, any attempt to kill the CEFC – a Green/Labor created renewables slush fund – is bound to fail.

But – in politics – there’s more than one way to skin a cat.

Treasurer, Joe Hockey and Finance Minister, Mathias Cormann had planned to sell off the CEFC to the private finance sector. The loans written by the CEFC amount to assets on its books which could be sold, at a price, to any financial institution ready to take on the risk. No doubt, the sale price would be at a considerable discount to the current face value of the loans, but Hockey and Cormann apparently took the view that it was better that some other sucker take the risk; rather than leave the Australian taxpayer exposed to the CEFC’s reckless approach to lending. A sale would have also prevented any further risk exposure.

Big Clive’s declaration that he would prevent the abolition of the CEFC has thrown a spanner in the works; but only briefly. Hockey and Cormann have identified that the Coalition has the power to direct the CEFC to lend to certain types of projects and, more importantly, to prevent it from lending to others.

Hockey has already declared his hatred of “utterly offensive” wind farms and is hip to the fact that wind power is inefficient, insanely expensive and fails in its principal claim of reducing CO2 emissions in the electricity sector (see our posts here and here).

No prizes, then, for guessing which “renewable” generation source won’t be getting any more funds from the CEFC. Here’s The Australian on the Hockey/Cormann wind farm attack.

Direct action to benefit from Clean Energy Finance Corporation funds
The Australian
Sid Maher
28 June 2014

THE Clean Energy Finance Corporation is likely to be directed away from lending to wind farms in favour of programs that support the Coalition’s “direct action” plan such as energy-efficiency schemes and leasing for solar hot water systems.

In the wake of Clive Palmer’s declaration this week that his senators will vote to retain the CEFC, it has emerged that Joe Hockey and Finance Minister Mathias Cormann have the power to alter the CEFC’s investment mandate without parliament being able to reverse the move.

Senior government sources have told The Weekend Australian the CEFC could be instructed to favour direct action-style programs such as providing leasing for households to install solar hot water systems and for energy-efficiency programs instead of wind farms. Twenty-two per cent of the CEFC’s loans in its first year were for wind projects.

The likely change of direction for the CEFC comes as funding for the $2.55 billion Emissions Reduction Fund, the centrepiece of the Coalition’s direct-action policy, was contained in an appropriation bill that passed both houses of parliament this week.

However, the mechanism for distributing the funds is contained in amendments to the Carbon Farming Initiative, which is yet to pass the Senate.

Government sources remain hopeful of having the bill passed, despite Mr Palmer’s announcement that he would not support direct action because it was a “waste of money’’.

If direct action is blocked, with the money already allocated in an appropriation bill, an alternative plan is to distribute money to the states for carbon abatement programs under Section 96 of the Constitution.

Under Section 96, the federal government is able to provide tied grants to the states.

This would enable direct-action funding to be paid to the states for programs addressing energy efficiency, boosting soil carbon initiatives and increasing the take up of solar hot water systems.

In the wake of Mr Palmer’s announcement this week that he would support the abolition of the carbon tax, it is likely to be abolished either on July 14 or soon after.

The Palmer United Party leader’s call for an emissions trading scheme rated at zero appears doomed after failing to gain government support.

Mr Palmer is also backing the retention of the CEFC and the Climate Change Authority and will not support changes to the Renewable Energy Target before 2016 – after the next election is due.

Environment Minister Greg Hunt on Thursday split the CEFC repeal bill from the main body of the carbon tax repeal bills. The former appears set to be debated by the Senate after the main carbon tax repeal bills.

Under the legislation establishing the CEFC, the Treasurer and Finance Minister can provide direction on matters of risk and return, eligibility criteria for investments, allocation of investments between different types of clean-energy technologies, the types of financial instruments that may be invested in and “broad operational matters’’.

While the government can alter the investment mandate of the CEFC, existing legislation guarantees the CEFC the ability to write up to $10 billion in loans over the next five years.

The CEFC legislation allows the corporation to write $2bn of loans every year and, if it fails to reach the ceiling, the unused portion can be carried over to the next year.

As the political debate over its future has raged, the CEFC has written to all sides of parliament, including the crossbench senators, arguing its case for survival. It has also had meetings with MPs on its operations.

While the government can change the investment mandate, its ability to change the CEFC board, whose members have been given five-year terms, is limited.

Since it began operating from July last year, the CEFC has written $700 million in loans and has mobilised more than $1.8bn of private sector investment, for a total of $2.5bn in projects.

It argues its abolition would cost the government $100m a year in lost revenue.
The Australian

STT hears that Al Gore’s presence on the podium alongside Clive Palmer last week was orchestrated (and paid for) by our favourite whipping boys over at Infigen (aka Babcock and Brown) – Gore’s “stunned-fish-out-of water” performance was heralded by Infigen’s spin masters as a propaganda coup.

After the Gore/Palmer circus of the bizarre died down – the wind industry and its parasites were crowing about their “political masterstroke” in having Palmer announce his support for the mandatory RET and the CEFC.

Talk about your all-time backfires.

The Hockey/Cormann manoeuvre could well be the killer blow we’ve been looking for.

It’s other peoples’ money that started the great wind power fraud; and its depriving wind power outfits of access to other peoples’ money that will end it.

The CEFC represents the ONLY source of funds available to wind farm developers.

Wind power outfits have been unable to obtain funds from commercial lenders, simply because retailers stopped signing Power Purchase Agreements over 18 months ago (see our post here).

In the absence of a PPA, a wind farm developer has nothing to offer by way of valuable security for their loan with a bank: commercial banks will simply not lend in the absence of the security provided by a long-term (15-25 year) PPA. That, rather significant, detail has never troubled the CEFC, which is prepared to lend on unsecured terms at rates far below those which would be demanded by commercial banks lending on the same terms (see our post here).

By preventing the CEFC from lending to wind power outfits, the Coalition have virtually guaranteed that no new wind farms will be built in the foreseeable future; at least where the wind power outfits involved do not hold a PPA.

Now that’s a “coup”!

Joe Hockey and Mathias Cormann

 

Hard-Hitting Probe, Into the True Impact of Wind Turbines…

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Special Investigation: Toxic wind turbines

BY DEREK LAMBIE, 23 MARCH 2014
  • Evidence has revealed environmental cost of wind farms.Getty Images

Part Two of The Sunday Post’s hard-hitting probe into the true impact of wind farms.

Damning evidence of wind farms polluting the Scottish countryside can today be revealed by The Sunday Post.

Scotland’s environmental watchdog has probed more than 100 incidents involving turbines in just six years, including diesel spills, dirty rivers, blocked drains and excessive noise.

Alarmingly, they also include the contamination of drinking water and the indiscriminate dumping of waste, with warning notices issued to a handful of energy giants.

The revelations come just a week after our investigation showed

£1.8 billion in Government subsidies have been awarded to operators to build turbines since Alex Salmond took office in 2007.

Anti-wind farm campaigners yesterday insisted Scotland’s communities are now “under siege” and demanded an independent inquiry into the environmental damage.

Murdo Fraser MSP, convener of Holyrood’s Economy, Energy and Tourism Committee, said: “I am both surprised and concerned by the scale of these incidents.

“The fact there were more than 100 complaints is a dismal record.

“This should serve as a wake-up call that wind energy is not as clean and green as is being suggested.”

He added: “What’s worse is that the current Scottish Government seems to have an obsession about wind power and the expansion in the number of turbines shows no signs of relenting any time soon.”

Promotion of green energy, particularly the growth of onshore and off-shore wind farms, has been one of the SNP’s key policies since 2007.

The Scottish Government’s target is to generate the equivalent of 100% of the country’s electricity consumption, and 11% of heat demand, from renewables by 2020.

In recent years, ministers have invested heavily in the sector, insisting Scotland has a quarter of all of Europe’s wind energy potential.

But wind power is becoming increasingly unpopular, with giant turbines now scattered across much of the Scottish countryside.

There are now 219 operational wind farms in Scotland, with at least 2,400 turbines between them.

Moray has the most sites, with 20 in operation, while Orkney has the most turbines, with 600 across the archipelago, although the majority are owned by farmers and other individuals.

Now, we can reveal the Scottish Environment Protection Agency has investigated 130 ‘pollution reports’ connected to wind farms or turbines over the past six years. In June 2012, elevated levels of the banned insecticide Dieldrin were found in samples from a private drinking water supply in Aberdeenshire.

A redacted SEPA report, obtained under Freedom of Information, states: “It was noted a wind turbine had recently been erected by the nearby farmer.”

Run-off from the construction of a wind farm near Loch Fyne in February 2012 caused concern that fish had stopped feeding, with SEPA officers discovering a burn was “running brown” and that “a noticeable slick on Loch Fyne was visible”.

In another incident in November 2011, 1,000 litres of oil leaked from a turbine at the Clyde wind farm in Abington, Lanarkshire, resulting in an emergency clean-up operation.

Warning letters have been sent by the environment agency to a number of operators, including Siemens, after another fuel spill at the same 152-turbine site four months later.

A report on that incident states: “Siemens…maintained it was under control. However…operators who then visited the area did not see any action being taken and fuel ponding at the base of the generator”.

A warning was issued to Scottish and Southern Energy in February 2011 after the Tombane burn, near the Griffin wind farm in Perthshire, turned yellow as a result of poor drainage.

The same firm was sent another letter in June that year after SEPA found high levels of silt in a burn near a wind farm in Elvanfoot, Lanarkshire.

Officers also then discovered “significant damage” to 50 metres of land and found “the entire area had been stripped of vegetation” as a result of unauthorised work to divert water.

Other incidents investigated since 2007 include odours, excessive noise from turbines and heavy goods vehicles and the indiscriminate dumping of waste and soil.

Dr John Constable, director of the Renewable Energy Foundation, a charity that publishes data on the energy sector, said: “The new information from SEPA deepens concerns about the corrupting effect of overly generous subsidies to wind power.

“Many will wonder whether wind companies are just too busy counting their money to take proper care of the environment.”

Linda Holt, spokeswoman for action group Scotland Against Spin, said: “A lot of environmentalists actually oppose wind farms for reasons like this. If you go to wind farms they are odd, eerie, places that drive away wildlife, never mind people.

“The idea they are environmentally-friendly is not true — they can be hostile. We have always suspected they can do great harm to the landscape and now we have proof.”

Officials at SEPA stressed not all 130 complaints were found to be a direct result of wind farms, with some caused by “agricultural and human activities” near sites and others still unsubstantiated.

A spokesman added: “While a number of these complaints have been in connection with individual wind farms these are generally during the construction phase of the development and relate to instances of increased silt in watercourses as a result of run-off from the site.

“SEPA, alongside partner organisations, continues to actively engage with the renewable energy industry to ensure best practice is followed and measures put in place to mitigate against any impact on the local water environment.”

Joss Blamire, senior policy manager at Scottish Renewables, insisted the “biggest threat” to the countryside is climate change and not wind farms.

He added: “Onshore wind projects are subject to rigorous environmental assessments. We work closely with groups, including SEPA, the RSPB and Scottish Natural Heritage to ensure the highest conservation and biodiversity standards are met.”

• The revelations come just months after evidence emerged of contamination in the water supply to homes in the shadow of Europe’s largest wind farm.

People living near Whitelee, which has 215 turbines, complained of severe vomiting and diarrhoea with water samples showing high readings of

E. Coli and other coliform bacteria.

Tests carried out between May 2010 and April last year by local resident Dr Rachel Connor, a retired clinical radiologist, showed only three out of 36 samples met acceptable standards.

Operators ScottishPower denied causing the pollution, but admitted not warning anyone that drinking water from 10 homes in Ayrshire was, at times, grossly contaminated.

Dr Connor said: “I would expect this likely contamination of drinking water must be happening all over Scotland.

“If there is not an actual cover-up, then there is probably complacency to the point of negligence by developers and statutory authorities.”

 

We are Wasting Precious Time and Money on Faux-Green Renewables!

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June 27, 2014

Photovoltaic Energy Is Not Renewable Energy

By David Archibald

Photovoltaic (PV) power is created from a burst of coal-sourced energy priced at 4 cents/kWh, which you get back as an intermittent and declining dribble over the following 20 years at 15 cents/kWh.  The numbers vary with location, but the basic relationship remains the same – at best, the energy produced by PV panels is at least four times the cost of the power consumed in making them.

That is one thing.  The main thing is that over their lifetimes, PV panels now produce slightly more energy than what it took to make them.

So a civilization that relies upon PV power is just getting its energy back, but at four times the cost.  If PV power were used only to make PV panels, and even assuming no energy losses in the process, then PV power at 15 cents/kWh would produce panels that made power at 60 cents per kWh, and so on to infinity.  So there is nothing renewable about PV power.

There are some applications in PV power is very useful, such as pumping irrigation water, in which the requirement is too small to justify a diesel pump or the cost of extending grid power to the site.  In fact, PV power is well under the cost of power from diesel – you just can’t access it at a time of your choosing.  It also has a role where high-priced grid power and reticulation costs make it competitive.  But it can’t pretend to be renewable or sustainable.  Apart from those niche applications, it bleeds energy and treasure from our civilisation.

The economics of wind power might be a net positive, but a wind-powered economy would have a standard of living similar to that of 17th-century Holland.  One rule of thumb is that each megawatt of wind power used in the grid requires half a megawatt of gas turbine backup.  That is why some of the major oil companies have been so much in favor of renewable energy.  It tricks us into burning a higher-cost fossil fuel.

Making cheap energy from a process requires that the energy produced from that process be at least five times the amount of energy that went into making it.  Anything less than that, and civilization will go backward very rapidly.  Instead of mandating renewable energy and installing PV panels, we should be concentrating on developing the technology that will sustain civilization in the post-fossil fuel eternity.

In that regard, we have a choice: either plutonium breeder reactors or thorium breeder reactors.  We should make the choice and get on with it.

David Archibald, a Visiting Fellow at the Institute of World Politics in Washington, D.C., is the author of Twilight of Abundance: Why Life in the 21st Century Will Be Nasty, Brutish, and Short (Regnery, 2014).

We Must Stand up to Greentard Bullies. They are Consummate Liars!

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GREEN GLOBAL GOVERNANCE: HOW ENVIRONMENTALISTS HAVE TAKEN OVER THE WORLD

by  25 Jun 2014

Greenpeace has been having a rough time of it, of late. Good. As I argued yesterday, Greenpeace – and similarly powerful, unaccountable, virulently anti-capitalist environmental NGOs – represent one of the greatest economic and socio-political menaces in the world today. If you’re still in any doubt of this, you should read Richard North.His latest post contains damning evidence of the degree to which our laws and regulations are now created by green pressure groups and shadowy, green-infiltrated institutions over which we have no democratic control.

These include:

Green 10 (“an informal platform of environmental NGOs” in Europe including Birdlife International, Friends of the Earth, Greenpeace and the WWF, funded by the EU and by the governments of Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Hungary, Luxembourg, The Netherlands, Norway, Slovakia, Spain, Sweden and the United Kingdom);  the OECD’s Environmental Policy Committee (EPOC); the European Environment Bureau (EEB); the OECD Environment Directorate (which, with the International Energy Agency (IEA), serves as the Secretariat for the Climate Change Expert Group (CCXG) of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), and undertakes studies of issues related to the negotiation and implementation of international agreements on climate change); and the Geneva Environmental Network listing 110 green organisations in a subsidised office, supported by the Swiss Federal Office for the Environment and led by UNEP.

Do you find this sort of thing as agonisingly tedious as I do? Of course you do. Even just writing that last paragraph, it was all I could do not to stick forks in my eyeballs. I’m surprised you didn’t die reading it.

But this, you must understand, is the whole point. As I argued in Watermelons, boredom is the deadly secret weapon of the bien-pensant technocrats of the EU and the UN. “They wear outsiders down with the tedium of their arguments and the smallness of their fine print, so that by the time anyone else notices what they’re up to the damage has been done and it’s too late to do anything about it.”

So let me just explain simply, and without the use of any more distracting initials, what the problem is here. At every level of government across the Western world – from town councils (via Local Agenda 21) to supranational bodies like the United Nations (and its myriad environment programmes) the decision-making process has been hijacked by environmental activist groups like Greenpeace. Like some hideous green ouroborus, they simultaneously feed on and nourish one another. So, for example, various branches of the EU and the UK government give funding to green NGOs which then repay the favour by proselytising on behalf of the EU’s and the British government’s environmental initiatives and lobbying for more to be introduced.

By rights these activists ought to be treated with tremendous suspicion. As we know, for example, from Greenpeace’s appalling campaigning track record – such as its mendacious smearing of Shell over Brent Spar, and its dishonest representations about the Greenland ice shelf – these environmental groups comprise hard-left political activists entirely unsuited to dispensing unbiased policy advice. Yet, time and again, these misanthropic, Gaia-worshipping Luddites with their Mickey Mouse degrees in sustainability, whale management and polar bear empathy studies and their half-baked, junk-science-fuelled opinions on how to save the world from capitalism and the non-existent problem of “climate change”, are granted seats at the top table in every government environmental decision-making process.

We didn’t vote for these soap-dodging, bunny-hugging loons yet, increasingly, they are ruling all our lives. It’s time we followed India’s example and told them exactly where they can stick their green agenda.

Global Warming!! Just a fear tactic used to push the socialist Agenda 21.

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GLOBAL WARMING STUDY RIDICULED AFTER TEMPERATURES DROP

by  26 Jun 2014, 8:53 AM PDT 20POST A COMMENT

A UK Met Office study that predicted temperatures would rise by up to half a degree centigrade over the past 10 years faces ridicule after it was revealed that temperatures actually dropped over that period.

The peer-reviewed study by Doug M. Smith et al, entitled “Improved Surface Temperature Prediction for the Coming Decade from a Global Climate Model” – and whichfeatured in the journal Science – also incorrectly predicted that several years over the past decade would see record heat.

The paper says:

“…predict further warming during the coming decade, with the year 2014 predicted to be 0.30° ± 0.21°C [5 to 95% confidence interval (CI)] warmer than the observed value for 2004. Furthermore, at least half of the years after 2009 are predicted to be warmer than 1998, the warmest year currently on record.”

However, now we are able to analyse the data on how temperatures really changed, we can see that there was actually a cooling of 0.014 degrees over the past 10 years, which is below even the lowest estimate.

Also, not a single year was warmer than 1998, despite the paper predicting that at least three years would be.

The above chart (credit: Kalte Sonne) shows the Met Office’s observed data (thin grey line) with the Smith et al predictions (red and blue lines) and the real trend (thick black line) overlaid. We can clearly see that not only does to real trend fall well outside the range of Smith et al’s predictions, it actually drops slightly.

Writing for the German climate blog Die Kalte Sonne, scientist Frank Bosse says that the Smith et al study failed to take into account known ocean cycles and other natural factors.

Smith has since written another paper, taking more factors into account, but Bosse writes that the range of uncertainty in it makes it “more or less useless”.

In a translation by NoTricksZone, Bosse concludes:

“As long as man is unable to determine with the needed precision the role natural variability plays in our observed climate, calculating the impact of greenhouse gases will remain prophecy. Do you feel guilty that you are still using incandescent light bulbs? Don’t fret over it!”

 

Wynne has Maxed out her Ontario Taxpayer Credit Card. Something’s gotta give!

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Scott Stinson: Union contract showdown will put an end,

to Wynne’s charade of a painless fiscal balance

Scott Stinson | June 13, 2014 5:27 PM ET

Hundreds of union protesters shouted at delegates as they arrived at the Ontario Liberal Party leadership convention in Toronto on Jan. 26, 2013.

Frank Gunn/The Canadian PressHundreds of union protesters shouted at delegates as they arrived at the Ontario Liberal Party leadership convention in Toronto on Jan. 26, 2013.
Three scenes from the making of a quandary, beginning in January, 2013: Outside Maple Leaf Gardens, where the Ontario Liberals had convened to select a new Premier, hundreds of public-sector workers stood on Carlton Street in a heavy snowstorm to shout slogans and wave placards as party members filed in. Many of the signs bore the picture of an elephant; a reminder, the protestors said, that they would remember the way the outgoing Liberal leader had strong-armed them. “We won’t forget,” they yelled.

Matt Gurney: Cheer up, Tories, Wynne will impose austerity for you — she has no choice

Here’s something that may help perk all those demoralized Ontario Tories about there: In a weird way, their defeat doesn’t matter. They’ll get their agenda through, anyway. In substance, if not in name.

Who won is, in a big way, immaterial. Oh, the result matters to the participants, of course, and in terms of the dismal message it sends about how tolerant the Ontario voter is of Liberal abuse and mismanagement. But in the big picture, who is premier or what party won the most seats wasn’t the real issue.

Read full column…

April, 2014: Just before Kathleen Wynne’s second budget was tabled, officials with AMAPCEO, the union representing skilled professionals, held a press conference at Queen’s Park to announce overwhelming support for their first strike vote in 22 years. Government negotiators, they said, were making unreasonable demands, including a four-year wage freeze. “We thought it was over in 2012, that the nightmare would end,” said president Gary Gannage. “But it’s back in 2014.”

His members, he said, while typically not confrontational, did not want to “wear a deficit that was not of their making.”

June, 2014: In a packed, sweaty bakery on Royal York Road on the day before the election, candidate Peter Milczyn introduced Kathleen Wynne to the thronging mass in red. This is the person who has the plan to build Ontario up, he said. “And she will do it with no cuts!” He hit the last two words hard. Cheers erupted.

They are scenes that, taken together, illustrate the kind of pickle that Kathleen Wynne finds herself in now. Fresh from a remarkable victory in which the Liberal leader demonized the Progressive Conservative plan to freeze public-sector wages and shrink the size of government, Ms. Wynne will in short order have to confront how she will live up to her own promises to balance the budget on schedule, ramping down spending with, as Mr. Milczyn put it so enthusiastically on Wednesday, no cuts.

In the very short term, the business will be easy. A majority government will allow the Premier to bring her failed budget back for quick passage shortly after the legislature returns on July 2. That budget pushed the messy problem of expense restraint another year down the road, which meant that it did exactly what it was supposed to do on the campaign trail: it made vanquished PC leader Tim Hudak isolated in his call for austerity, and allowed Ms. Wynne to assert that hers was the gentle, painless path to balance.

That charade ends right about now. Once the budget is passed, if not sooner, the Liberal government will have to begin negotiating in earnest with the province’s major public-sector unions, who are nearing the end of the two-year contracts that were signed, under the threat of binding legislation, not long before Dalton McGuinty left office, thanks in part to the push of the union boot. Ms. Wynne has often expressed regret for the way that process unfolded and she has been consistent, dating back to her leadership run, that she would not pursue similar tactics. When her government ripped up contracts with Ontario’s two largest teachers’ unions that had been imposed under Mr. McGuinty, language in the new, negotiated agreements specifically said that changes to compensation measures in future deals would be “the subject of collective bargaining.” This is in keeping with all of the Premier’s public statements on contract negotiations: she will respect the bargaining process.

But what that means, essentially, is that Ms. Wynne has forfeited her only avenue for leverage in those contract talks. Her budget states that there is no new money available for compensation increases, something she repeated often on the campaign trail, but it is no secret that the unions aren’t about to accept an opening offer full of zeroes. Even a friendly union like AMAPCEO is preparing to man the barricades, while the teachers’ federations have been telling members to prepare for the possibility of work stoppages in the fall, as they top up their strike funds. The comments from Mr. Gannage last month are a good representation of what labour leaders have been saying since Mr. McGuinty began his austerity push two years ago: the deficit isn’t our problem, so don’t put it on our backs to fix it. There’s also a lingering feeling that unions that promised not to strike in 2012, in hopes of getting the Liberals to blink first, were burned when the government imposed contracts anyway. There’s little appetite for repeating that process.

The next round of negotiations, then, will have unions uninterested in continued compensation restraint pitted against a government that has no money to offer and whose leader has promised to allow the bargaining process to play out. And Ms. Wynne can’t trade pay increases for layoffs, because, no cuts.

It is quite difficult to see how these positions, poles apart as they are, can be resolved. Will the Premier hope that asking nicely will convince the unions to fold? Will the unions force work stoppages, bringing about the labour chaos that Ms. Wynne just spent six weeks telling everyone would be avoided if they voted Liberal?

Or, does her commitment to bargaining extend only so far as determining a deal within the government’s fiscal parameters cannot be reached? In that scenario, the prospects of legislatively imposed contracts remain. But this is a labour movement in Ontario that just spent untold millions in aid of the Liberal cause. (That cause being: don’t vote PC.) Would the Wynne Liberals in 2014, in other words, pick the same fight with the unions that the McGuinty Liberals did in 2012?

Given all that Ms. Wynne has said and done since taking office, that seems highly unlikely. The irony is, had Mr. McGuinty had the same majority then that Ms. Wynne enjoys now, it’s a fight he would have won.

This is a Bit of Good News…. Anything to Lower Energy Prices!

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US to end 40-year ban on oil exports in a move which

could lower world petrol prices and reduce Britain’s

dependency on Russia and the Middle East

  • Two companies given permission to sell ultralight oil to foreign buyers
  • US could start supplying Britain with oil under new scheme
  • Americans typically pay less for petrol as they do not have to import oil
  • US has not sold unrefined oil abroad since the 1970s when Arab countries placed embargo on shipments to the West over support for Israel

By DANIEL BATES IN NEW YORK

PUBLISHED: 23:50 GMT, 25 June 2014 

 

America is to begin exporting unrefined oil for the first time in nearly four decades in a move which could lower petrol prices around the world.

Two companies have been given permission by the White House to sell an ultralight oil to foreign buyers after intense lobbying by the energy industry.

If it goes well then larger firms could join them and up to 700,000 barrels could be exported next year.

America is to begin exporting unrefined oil for the first time in nearly four decades in a move which could lower petrol prices around the world

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America is to begin exporting unrefined oil for the first time in nearly four decades in a move which could lower petrol prices around the world

Potentially the US could start supplying Britain with oil, reducing our dependency on countries like Russia or unstable regimes in the Middle East.

Americans have long enjoyed cheap energy bills and cheap petrol as they do not have to import oil – drivers typically pay around £2.20 a gallon at the pump compared to £5.84 in the UK.

Now due to the explosion in shale oil production which has reached three million barrels of oil a day the US is looking to sell it on the foreign market, where producers can get a higher price.

Britain gets 43 per cent of its fossil fuels from abroad as domestic reserves from the North Sea (pictured) are dwindling, the statistics show

Britain gets 43 per cent of its fossil fuels from abroad as domestic reserves from the North Sea (pictured) are dwindling, the statistics show

The oil that is being sold abroad is known as condensate and can be turned into petrol, jet fuel and diesel, the Wall St Journal reported.

It is being exported by two companies, Pioneer Natural Resources Co. and Enterprise Products Partners LP and comes from Texas’ Eagle Ford Shale formation.

America has not sold unrefined oil abroad since the 1970s when Arab countries announced an embargo on shipments to the West because of its support for Israel in the Yom Kippur War.

The resulting instability sent Britain into a recession and led to the oil price shock of 1979.

Figures from the Department of Energy and Climate Change show that Britain could benefit from US oil as we are heavily dependent on foreign countries for our fuel.

Britain gets 43 per cent of its fossil fuels from abroad as domestic reserves from the North Sea are dwindling, the statistics show.

In a statement the US Department of Commerce said there was ‘no change in policy on crude oil exports.’