[Yesterday] morning, a Chinese climate adviser announced that the country was going to limit its carbon dioxide emissions. Now he has backed down and says: “That was just my personal opinion. What I have said does not represent the view of the Chinese government.”
Was this really just a gaffe? Earlier in the day, He Jiankun, a Chinese climate adviser announced that the People’s Republic of China would cap its carbon emissions. That was a powerful statement, at least it was perceived as such – not least because the American president also announced that he was more determined than ever to mobilise against carbon dioxide emissions.
But China is already backing down. “What I have said today was my personal opinion,” He told the Reuters news agency in Beijing. His statements from the morning session were intended only for “academic studies”. “What I have said does not represent the view of the Chinese government or of any organisation,” he clarified .
At a [green energy] conference He had earlier said the world’s largest CO2 producer would, for the first time, cap its greenhouse gas emissions to a specified upper limit. This, he claimed, would be firmly anchored in China’s upcoming five-year plan that will come into force in 2016. Coming soon after the announcement of new measures by the U.S. government the day before, this announcement had raised hopes of an international breakthrough in the fight against global climate change.
London, 2 June: A new paper published today by the Global Warming Policy Foundation warns that intermittent wind and solar energy pose a serious energy security risk and threaten to undermine the reliability of UK electricity generation.
Many people – including ministers, officials and journalists – believe that renewable energy enhances Britain’s energy security by reducing the dependency on fossil fuel imports. The ongoing crisis over the Ukraine and Crimea between Russia and the West has given much attention to this argument.
Written by Philipp Mueller, the paper (UK Energy Security: Myth and Reality) concludes that domestic and global fossil fuel reserves are growing in abundance while open energy markets, despite the conflict in the Ukraine, are enhancing Britain’s energy security significantly.
In contrast, the ability of the grid to absorb intermittent renewable energy becomes increasingly more hazardous with scale.
Germany provides a warning example of its growing green energy insecurity. Last December, both wind and solar power came to an almost complete halt for more than a week. More than 23,000 wind turbines stood still while one million photovoltaic systems failed to generate energy due to a lack of sunshine. For a whole week, conventional power plants had to provide almost all of Germany’s electricity supply.
Germans woke up to the fact that it was the complete failure of renewable energy to deliver that undermined the stability and security of Germany’s electricity system.
“Open energy markets are a much better way to ensure energy security than intermittent generation systems like wind and solar. It would be a huge risk in itself for Britain to go down the same route as Germany and destabilise what is still a reliable UK electricity grid,” said Philipp Mueller. Full paper(PDF)
Tonight I had the opportunity to watch a pre-screening of “Down Wind”….a documentary thoroughly explaining the influx of industrial wind turbines throughout Ontario during the Liberal regime. It was an amazing revelation!!! A brilliant production!!!
I was so excited to attend this show in Toronto produced by Canada’s Sun News.
I was invited to go because I have been involved with the fantastic work initiated by Shellie Correia (the original Mothers Against Wind Turbines TM.). Her persistent goal, as many of you are aware, has been to protect her son against 3MW Industrial Wind Turbines proposed around 550 meters from her home in West Lincoln. In protecting her own son, Shellie has extended her concern to protect all children within Ontario against the negative impact from IWTs. Her influence has been acknowledged worldwide and is now of significant interest to all levels of government.
Needless to say, the opportunity to support the production of “Down Wind” was significant to Shellie and all of us who have joined her work for the original Mothers Against Wind Turbines TM group.
The show itself describes the negative impact of IWTs on many communities across Ontario where over 6736 IWTs have been installed, approved or proposed and 1915 are along beautiful Lake Huron alone. www.windpower.ca.
Many of the people we have met at rallies were involved in the movie…..everything was mentioned…Mike Crawley’s influence, how animals react, the loss of municipal control, the depreciation of real estate, illnesses that prevail, including cancer which comes from lack of sleep, and impaired immune systems, due to infra sound and low frequency emissions. So much was included in the movie…even the plight of the tundra swans and the disappearance of earth worms, from around the wind turbines!
DownWind will be shown on Wednesday at 8 pm, on Sun News (channel 506 on Bell Expressview.) There will be a second showing at 11 pm.
We have been invited to attend the leadership debate in Toronto tomorrow evening. It’s a busy time for all conscientious voters to get the facts. We’ll keep you posted! Susan
An Islamist religious judge recently sentenced a Christian woman to hang, for being a Christian. Militant Islam has declared war on the entire civilized world, which it calls openly the Dar-el-Harb (House of War). The Harbis, the inhabitants of the Dar-el-Harb, are dhimmis, who have no right to own property, govern their own affairs, or even live.
How can the “dhimmis” respond? By joining forces to take out the world’s trash. There exists a weapon of war it is legal for anybody, whether civilian or military, to use during peacetime. This weapon is psychological warfare, and its deployment involves three steps.
Identify our objectives. Our goal is to totally discredit and demonize militant “Islam” throughout the Western World, and convince its adherents to self-deport if they won’t assimilate into their surrounding societies.
Identify the Propaganda Men, or the audiences we wish to persuade. These include people in our camp, neutrals, and the enemy rank and file.
Deploy arguments that are simple, visceral, and forceful. Sally Hogshead, an expert on the power of fascination in business relationships, states that a communication has about nine seconds in which to capture the attention of the person to whom it is directed. Germany learned the hard way in World War I that long-winded intellectual arguments from Professor-Doctors don’t work, while pictures of murderous “Huns” with babies on their bayonets do.
Anti-German Propaganda: “For God, Fatherland, and King”
Define the Objective and the Enemy
The goal of our propaganda is to counteract the Islamist campaign to subjugate Jews, Christians, Hindus, and the wrong kinds of Muslims. The enemy strategy begins with calls for “tolerance,” demonizes enemies as Islamophobes, continues with speech-code legislation to criminalize discussion of Islamist violence andmisogyny, with the goal of imposing dhimmitude and Sharia law. Islamist invaders have already created “no-go” zones that are off limits to unarmed Europeans, including police officers.
Our goal is not, however, to protest these outrages, or defend ourselves against them. Propaganda is, like the lance and saber of the horse and musket era, an almost exclusively offensive weapon. As stated by General Patton,
The saber is solely a weapon of offense and is used in conjunction with the other offensive weapon, the horse. In all the training, the idea of speed must be conserved. No direct parries are taught, because at the completion of a parry the enemy is already beyond reach of an attack. The surest parry is a disabled opponent.
Charles M. Province added, “The cavalryman rides at a man to kill him. If he misses, he goes on to another, moving in straight lines with the intent of running his opponent through.” Good propaganda similarly makes little effort to fend off the enemy’s arguments, and seeks instead to discredit him so thoroughly that nothing he does is relevant. If we prove to the Propaganda Man (the individual we wish to persuade) that Islamists are woman-beating misogynists,child rapists, and human traffickers, the Islamists’ propaganda will cease to matter. The surest parry is indeed a disabled opponent.
Identify the Propaganda Man
The Propaganda Men are clearly identifiable as:
People in our camp whom we wish to engage or mobilize. We want to turn everybody on our side into an engaged, enthusiastic, and active participant instead of a passive bystander.
Neutrals, such as the John Doe of public opinion. In Europe, these neutrals often tolerate the Islamist infestation, and are afraid to speak up about it. This does not mean they won’t follow those who set the right example.
The enemy rank and file, whom we want to disengage, desert, or even change sides.
Colonel Paul Linebarger’s Psychological Warfare adds that it is bad policy to define the enemy too widely. Consider, for example, Steve Benson’s cartoons of “NRA members.” The NRA should purchase Benson’s cartoons, and publish them in every issue of The American Rifleman. This would mobilize currently unengaged gun owners to the point where they will vent their fury on anything that vaguely resembles an enemy of the Second Amendment in every election.
Advocates of blanket attacks on Islam add that the Koran sanctions violence against infidels, and that all Muslims believe in the Koran. The Old Testament, in which God allegedly tells the Hebrews to commit genocide, is equally bad. Modern Jews do not behave like Old Testament Hebrews. Modern Christians do not conduct Inquisitions or witch trials, or slaughter the wrong kinds of Christians as took place during the Thirty Years War. Civilized Muslims do not imitate Mohammed by engaging in murder, banditry, and child rape, although problem Muslims do.
The problem Muslims are easily identifiable from their actions and statements. Note the noxious expressions of the Islamists who are calling for the bombing of Denmark, along with their threats to take Danish women as war booty. It would require very little of this to turn Western bystanders into full participants in the war against Jihad.
Deploy Arguments that are Simple, Visceral, and Forceful
War propaganda is simple, persuasive, and easy to understand in seconds. Our goal is to demonize easily identifiable Islamist behaviors the way wartime propaganda once demonized Spaniards, Germans, Imperial Japanese, and Nazis.
Propaganda Posters: Spanish-American and World Wars
The Propaganda Man, or more precisely Propaganda Woman, for the next one is the female American college student who believes in women’s rights, but has some deluded and starry-eyed notions about the true nature of the Muslim Student Association on her campus.
Waste Not, Want Not: Another Off the Shelf Public Domain Image
It is also important to deploy short, simple, and accurate names for the enemy. During the Second World War, Americans were encouraged to “slap a dirty little Jap.” Hitler’s soldiers became Krauts, Huns, and Boche, and here are some phrases to describe today’s enemy:
Islamist: the modern counterpart of a Nazi who believes his ideology gives him the right to subjugate, kill, and/or rape outsiders.
Jihadi: which identifies bith the ideology and the technique.
Green Plague, from green as the color of Islamism.
The Black Plague and the Green Plague
The bottom line is that we are, whether we like it or not, in a war that the enemy has declared on us. We must therefore fight him with weapons of war, which include propaganda during peacetime. Our methods must be limited only by the need for truthfulness, and also the ethical duty to direct them solely against the self-declared enemies of our civilization.
William A. Levinson is the author of several books on business management including content on organizational psychology, as well as manufacturing productivity and quality.
PRINCETON — Pittsburgh-based EverPower Wind Co. is now the formal owner of Big Sky Wind Farm, which is located in northern Bureau County, the Bureau County Board heard during Monday night’s meeting.
But with that came more concerns on eventual decommissioning of the turbines and what that means for the county’s landowners and taxpayers.
At last month’s meeting, the board was looking into a letter of credit for the decommissioning plan as opposed to the existing cash-on-hand arrangements that already have been in place. Board members previously indicated they didn’t have enough information to move forward with a letter of credit, but last night Bureau County state’s attorney Pat Herrmann said the board has three options: They can either move forward with the letter of credit of just over $1.9 million, keep funds as they are currently or accept the cash that is in the cash escrow account.
“I have concerns about the letter of credit,” said Ed Gerdes, Princeton resident. “Two different issues is the amount and how that’s guaranteed.”
Based on a similar project, Gerdes said the total cost to take down 87 wind turbines came out just over $19.4 million which is approximately $224,000 per turbine.
“That’s one of the big problems we have is there’s only $1.9 million,” Gerdes said of what he says could be a $10 million-$12 million project. “That’s maybe going to take down nine turbines. Who’s going to pay for the rest?
“I don’t think the taxpayers should have to pay for taking those down. The other problem we have is that when landowners signed these leases with these companies they were promised that if this doesn’t work they’ll come back and take the turbine down. They also promised that if they weren’t here, the county would have money set aside to take them down. The county isn’t going to have money so I think all these landowners might end up with a bill for $150-$200,000 to dispose of these turbines.”
Gerdes also expressed concerned about the tax levy expiration in 2016 and what might happen if a new bank took over the letter of credit. However, Michael Speerschneider, who has been representing EverPower Wind Co., said the $1.9 million is an increase to where it was at two years ago and that number is expected to increase over the next 20 years to approximately $3 million.
The board approved a motion to go into negotiations to accept the letter of credit.
FIRST POSTED: SATURDAY, MAY 31, 2014 07:00 PM EDT | UPDATED: SATURDAY, MAY 31, 2014 04:36 PM EDT
Wind turbines near Watford Ontario, February 7, 2013. (HEATHER WRIGHT/QMI Agency)
How billions of taxpayers’ and hydro customers’ dollars are being wasted, and will continue to be wasted for decades to come, because of former Liberal premier Dalton McGuinty’s naive blunder into wind energy, now fully supported by Premier Kathleen Wynne.
How it has contributed to skyrocketing hydro bills and to the loss of 300,000 manufacturing jobs in Ontario.
A 2011 report by then auditor general Jim McCarter documented how the government rushed into wind energy without any business plan, ignoring even the advice of its own experts that could have substantially reduced costs.
As a result, Ontarians are now locked into 20 years of paying absurdly inflated prices for inefficient and unreliable wind power, which, ironically, still has to be backed up by fossil fuel energy, meaning natural gas.
That means the Liberals’ gas plants scandal, costing taxpayers and hydro ratepayers up to $1.1 billion — according to reports by McCarter and current Auditor General Bonnie Lysyk — is also part of the Liberals’ legacy of wind power waste.
Indeed, while the Liberals were telling us they were replacing coal power with wind and solar energy, they were actually doing it with nuclear power and natural gas.
Wind can’t replace coal because it can’t provide base load power to the electricity grid on demand.
That’s why the Liberals were frantically building new natural gas plants, even as they were imposing, and continue to impose, unwanted wind turbines on rural communities across Ontario.
McGuinty cancelled the locally unpopular Mississauga and Oakville gas plants to save five Liberal seats in the 2011 election, which we now know could cost up to $220 million per bought riding in public money.
A new documentary, Down Wind: How Ontario’s Green Dream Turned into a Nightmare, by Sun News Network’s Rebecca Thompson — airing Wednesday, June 4 at 8 p.m. and 11 p.m. — powerfully and succinctly explains the enormity of the Liberals’ wind power catastrophe.
The Surge Media production explains we are wasting and will continue to waste, billions of public dollars for a non-existent environmental benefit — the Liberal myth that wind and solar power replaced polluting coal-fired electricity in Ontario.
Nonsense. As one of Thompson’s interviewees accurately puts it in Down Wind, turbines “don’t run on wind, they run on subsidies.”
Thompson compellingly tells the story of how an unholy alliance of Liberal government insiders, wind industry developers, so-called environmentalists and Bay Street investors worked hand-in-glove to impose wind turbines on unsuspecting farming and rural communities across Ontario.
How those who tried to fight back were and are being crushed by the Liberals’ dictatorial Green Energy Act, which took away the planning rights of local municipalities.
How we don’t need the tiny amount of expensive and unreliable power wind supplies, both because Ontario has a huge energy surplus and because wind developers have to be paid for their energy first, while we dump or export inexpensive and green hydro power at a loss.
How the reported health concerns hundreds of affected residents have experienced because of the sound, vibration, low-frequency noise and shadow flicker from wind turbines — up to 50-storeys high, many located just 550 metres from homes — have been suppressed by the government.
Those symptoms include sleeplessness, nausea, migraines, heart palpitations, all dismissed by the Ontario government, even as Ottawa conducts a major study into what has become known as “wind turbine syndrome.”
The most powerful footage in Down Wind comes from ordinary Ontarians — some forced to leave their homes — telling their stories, often reduced to tears, bitterness and anger.
How on one day they were living peaceful lives in rural Ontario and how, almost overnight, were plunged into a nightmare, as wind companies turned neighbour against neighbour by leasing the land of some property owners to erect turbines, while running roughshod over the concerns of everyone else.
To me, Ontario’s wind power disaster has always been a story of urban greed, ignorance, arrogance and phony environmentalism overpowering rural interests.
Of smug, trendy, hypocritical Toronto downtowners — Wynne’s core constituency — whose experience with wind turbines is limited to one at the CNE — ignorantly accusing rural communities of NIMBYISM (as did McGuinty).
Down Wind exposes all this along with the scariest reality of all.
That the Liberals have gone too far to ever admit they were wrong, and that if we re-elect them, they’ll double down on their wind energy disaster.
Before President Obama took office in 2009, the amount of electricity being produced by coal-fired utilities was approximately fifty percent of the total. Today it is approximately forty percent and, when the Environmental Protection Agency regulations take effect as of June 2, more such utilities are likely to close their doors. The basis for the regulations is utterly devoid of any scientific facts.
Environmentalism, as expressed by many of the organizations that advocate it is, in fact, an attack on America, its economic system of capitalism, and its need for energy to maintain and grow its business and industrial base. Electricity, of course, is also the energy we all use daily for a multitude of tasks ranging from heating or cooling our homes to the use of our computers and every other appliance.
The EPA regulations are said to be necessary to reduce “greenhouse gas” emissions, primarily carbon dioxide (CO2) which the Greens deem to be a “pollutant” in our atmosphere. It is not a pollutant, despite a Supreme Court decision that identifies it as such, but rather a gas vital to all life on Earth, used by all vegetation for its growth. CO2 is to vegetation what oxygen is to all animal life. Humans, all seven billion of us, exhale CO2!
Viv Forbes, the Chairman of the Carbon Sense Coalition and a Fellow of the Australasian Institute of Mining and Metallurgy, notes that the Earth’s atmosphere “is not a greenhouse” and “does not have a glass roof. It uses convection to redistribute heat very quickly.” The claim for several decades has been that CO2 has an effect on the Earth’s surface temperature, but Forbes points out that “water vapor is a far more effective agent for insulating the Earth and preserving its warmth than carbon dioxide,” adding that “there is no evidence that man-made carbon dioxide is a significant cause of global warming.”
Indeed, even though the amount of CO2 in the Earth’s atmosphere has increased, Forbes points out that “Close examination of past records shows that temperature tends to rise before carbon dioxide content rises, sometimes centuries earlier.” Significantly, at the same time Greens have been crying out against emissions of CO2 from coal-fired utilities and other sources, the Earth has been in a cooling cycle now verging on eighteen years!
The EPA is lying to Americans regarding carbon dioxide and, worse, its proposed regulations will reduce the number of coal-fired utilities and drive up the cost of electricity for Americans.
One of the many Green organizations, Earthjustice, claims that “Climate change threatens the world as we know it – and the chief culprit is fossil fuel burning. To avert ecological disaster, Earthjustice is pushing for a shift from dirty to clean energy to stabilize our climate and build a thriving sustainable world.”
There is literally nothing that mankind can do to “stabilize” the Earth’s climate. While the Earth has been going through climate change for 4.5 billion years, there is no evidence that anything mankind does has any effect on it. The change the Earth has encountered, as mentioned, is a cooling, a far different scenario than the “global warming” claims of the past three decades or more.
Tom Richard, the editor of ClimageChangeDispatch.com, notes that “Arctic sea ice has rebounded to higher and higher levels each year. Antarctica is actually gaining in size and there has been no increase in droughts, tornadoes, hurricanes, wildfires, ‘extreme weather,’ flooding, et cetera.”
Reducing CO2 would have zero benefits while, at the same time, the EPA regulations would have a dangerous and totally unnecessary effect on CO2 emissions from plants producing electricity. Other nations around the world are actually abandoning “clean energy.” i.e., wind and solar power, in favor of building many more coal-fired plants to meet their need to provide energy for their populations and their economic growth. China and India are just two examples.
To support its claims of the forthcoming EPA regulations, EarthJustice is claiming that climate change “hits people of color the hardest” and that power plants “disproportionately impact Latino communities.” It noted “the moral obligation of faith community to act on climate change and support carbon pollution limits.” This has nothing to do with the actual facts of climate change and CO2 as noted here and is a blatant political campaign to secure support from these groups.
The reality, as noted by the Bipartisan Policy Center, a policy research organization founded by former Senate leaders from both parties, was quoted in the May 26 edition of The Wall Street Journal saying “A 25% reduction (of CO2) with a 2015 baseline might make it impossible for some companies to operate,” noting that the cap-and-trade policies of emissions allowances that the EPA is putting in place “amounts to a hidden tax” on a whole range of electrical generation and industrial plants that produce CO2 emissions. The EPA will likely use the term “budget program” to avoid “cap-and-trade,” a proposal that was rejected by Congress.
Writing in Commentary, Jonathan S. Tobin, said that the new regulations on carbon emissions “will have a potentially devastating impact on America’s more than 600 coal-fired power plants” noting that “the move was made possible by Supreme Court decisions that ruled that the Environmental Protection Agency had the right to regulate (CO2) emissions, giving the President virtual carte blanche to remake this sector of our economy without requiring congressional consent.”
In July, the Heartland Institute, a free market think tank, will hold its ninth international conference on climate change. Previous conferences have brought together some of the world’s leading authorities on meteorology and climatology to debunk the decades of lies Greens have told about climate change and global warming.
The President has put “climate change” high on his list of priorities and it is an attack on the nation’s ability to affordably and extensively provide the energy needed to meet current needs for electricity and reducing our capacity to meet future needs.
The U.S. Chamber of Commerce is on record saying that the President’s bogus “climate change” policy could cost the U.S. economy $50 billion a year and force more than a third of coal-fired plants to close by 2030. The Heritage Foundation says “The plan will drive up energy prices for American families and businesses without making a dent in global temperatures.”
This is a form of regulatory death for the nation and comes straight out of the Oval Office of the White House.
Canada’s Sun News was among the first news outfits worldwide to grasp the scale and scope of the great wind power fraud; and the associated harm inflicted on hard-working rural people. And Sun’s Ezra Levant led the charge, doing what real journalists do: getting the truth out, despite the efforts of those who seek to profit from burying it (check out this broadcast).
Exposing the wind industry for what it is, Sun has produced a truly ground-breaking documentary on how wind power outfits have fleeced power consumers for $billions, while happily destroying the lives hundreds of farming families across Ontario.
The documentary, “Down Wind” will screen on Wednesday, on 4th June; and will be available online, thereafter. Here’s the trailer:
Meanwhile, Kevin Marriott, Mayor of Enniskillen has reminded residents of their right to remain silent, in a clever effort to stymie a developer’s ability to subsequently claim that it had “consulted” with those whose lives it is hell-bent on destroying. Fair call, Kevin.
The “community consultations” run by developers are nothing more than occasions for baseless wind industry propaganda delivered by a pack of lying, sociopaths (see our post here).
These are the people that publicly feign genuine interest in community “concerns”, but are quick to ridicule, bully and berate anyone who has the temerity to point out that losing the ability to sleep in one’s own home due to the incessant low-frequency noise generated by giant fans isn’t a “concern”, it’s a State sponsored and funded crime (see our post here).
Here’s the Sarnia Observer on the Ontario community back lash.
Mayor urging township residents to not speak to wind developers
Sarnia Observer
Paul Morden
15 May 2014
Enniskillen Township residents should feel free to exercise their right to remain silent when wind energy companies come calling, says Mayor Kevin Marriott.
EDF EN Canada has reportedly been approaching residents and groups about its Churchill Wind Project proposal, a 100 to 150-MW wind farm it wants to build in Enniskillen and neighbouring Plympton-Wyoming.
Marriott said he turned down a request from the company to meet with township council, and urged others in the community to do the same.
“We’re unwilling hosts,” Marriott said. “We’re not interested, end of discussion.”
Enniskillen was among approximately 80 Ontario municipalities declaring themselves unwilling hosts for wind turbines after the provincial government said it was changing how it awards renewable energy contracts.
The 2009 Green Energy Act took away municipalities’ planning powers for wind projects, leading to an outcry from many rural communities and municipal councils. Last year, the province said a new system of awarding renewable energy projects will require companies to work with municipalities.
“It will be very, very difficult for a developer to be approved without municipal engagement, in some significant way,” Energy Minister Bob Chiarelli said last June.
But, Marriott said that until the province clarifies what it means by municipal engagement, “We’re being vigilant.”
He advised the anti-wind turbine group, Conservation of Rural Enniskillen (CORE), against meeting with the company.
“I said, ‘Whatever you do, don’t consult with them because they may be able to use that as a check mark,’” Marriott said.
“Who knows what could be construed as public consultation.”
CORE also ran newspaper ads urging township residents to not speak with wind company representatives.
Lambton County has 14 wind turbines in Lambton Shores and Brooke-Alvinston Township, but construction has begun on the 92-turbine Jericho wind project, and Suncor Energy is awaiting provincial approval for its 46-turbine Cedar Point project. Both new projects sit north of Highway 402 in Lambton.
Brooke Leystra, president of the Lambton Federation of Agriculture, said it also turned down the wind company’s request to meet because the group represents farmers on both sides of the turbine debate.
“We didn’t want it to be misconstrued as us working with them, in any way,” Leystra said.
By early June, Ontario is expected to finalize its plan for awarding contracts for up to 300 megawatts of new wind-generated electricity this year, and a similar amount in 2015.
“The government has been really wishy-washy on what this new process does consist of,” Marriott said. Sarnia Observer
And here’s a fantastic letter from Martina Hayward that captures the seething rage that’s building across Ontario.
Letter to southwesternontario.ca
14 May 2014
We are not willing hosts
Dear Editor:
Influenced to write yet another article overflowing with concerns related to the Goliath that is Industrial Wind, I feel burdened yet galvanized to transcribe the Whole Truth.
The article in the Regional Country News appears to praise the encroachment of these industrial skyscrapers as a “new crop” that must be “liked or lumped.” I, for one, decline the offer to endure these monuments of destruction.
Apparently “owners of the land eventually will share in a harvest of the wind.” The yield we will be forced to consume is the serious, irreversible harm to human health, animal health and the natural environment.
The repercussions of these mechanized tempest power plants seems untold as of late. Perhaps the season of Truth harvest has also arrived.
Communities worldwide are sadly experiencing the environmental, social and economic impacts of wind projects. These towers are merely a tool for energy companies and investment banks to make billions of dollars in subsidies that are subsequently added to the existing debt.
Industrial wind turbines do not reduce greenhouse gases or fossil fuel use. They can reduce your property values by 40 per cent or more.
The Green Energy Act overrides ALL local laws and grants foreign corporations unrestricted power to DO whatever they want, WHEREVER they want. The Canadian Wind Energy Association requested the Ministry of the Environment EXCLUDE the measurement of Low Frequency Noise at wind development sites. Low Frequency Noise has been found to cause nausea, headaches, dizziness, vertigo, tinnitus, memory and concentration problems, fatigue, sleep disturbances in humans. In animals such as goats, it just kills them dead. Sheep, horses, cattle are all afflicted similarly.
According to the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, Section 7, “Everyone has the right to life, liberty and security of the person, and the right not to be deprived thereof, except in accordance with the principle of fundamental justice.” Section 7 also “guarantees life, liberty and personal security of all Canadians.” It also “demands that governments respect the basic principles of justice whenever it intrudes on those rights.”
Finally, the article in Regional Country News quotes NextEra’s site safety manager, Tim Cole: “We have to win the hearts and minds of the community by being nice.”
Well, Mr. Cole, is it nice to break the hearts and beleaguer the minds of hard-working people in our communities?
I conclude, absolutely not. We are NOT WILLING HOSTS. No still means no.
Please take the time to read Wind Turbine Syndrome (Dr. Nina Pierpont) and The Constitution Act of 1982 (The Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms), and Acoustics Today Winter 2014, and go towww.howgreenisthis.org. Educate yourselves.
Martina Hayward, Priceville
Mandated subsidies for wind power is a policy that is inherently unsustainable. Any policy that is unsustainable will be scrapped or surely fail: it’s only a matter of time.
In the meantime, keep fighting, Martina: justice and sanity will soon prevail.
Dr Gordon Hughes is a Professor of Economics at the University of Edinburgh and a while back produced this cracking study which destroyed yet another wind industry myth about the longevity of their giant fans: windfarm peformance UK hughes.19.12.12.
Instead of the much touted 25 years, the output from modern turbines starts to drop significantly after about 8 – and they’re well and truly ready for the scrapheap by the time they hit their teens. Here’s a story on Dr Hughe’s findings by The Courier.
Wind turbines’ lifespan far shorter than believed, study suggests The Courier
29 December 2012
SCOTLAND’S LANDSCAPE could be blighted by the rotting remains of a failed regeneration of windfarms, according to a scathing new report.
A study commissioned by the Renewable Energy Foundation has found that the economic life of onshore wind turbines could be far less than that predicted by the industry.
The “groundbreaking” research was carried out by academics at Edinburgh University and saw them look at years of windfarm performance data from the UK and Denmark.
The results appear to show that the output from windfarms — allowing for variations in wind speed and site characteristics — declines substantially as they get older.
By 10 years of age, the report found that the contribution of an average UK windfarm towards meeting electricity demand had declined by a third.
That reduction in performance leads the study team to believe that it will be uneconomic to operate windfarms for more than 12 to 15 years — at odds with industry predictions of a 20- to 25-year lifespan.
They may then have to be replaced with new machinery — a finding that the foundation believes has profound consequences for investors and government alike.
Members of the renewables industry have attacked the findings, questioning the Edinburgh University research and describing them as “misleading”.
Scottish Renewables for one said that its oldest commercial windfarms in Scotland were around 16 years old and that none of them have been decommissioned or repowered.
Nonetheless, anti-windfarm campaigners believe that the evidence should be enough to halt the pace of development and force the Scottish Government to rethink its backing of the energy source.
Conservative MSP Murdo Fraser said that parts of the USA, where the industry is further advanced, were already home to what amounted to windfarm graveyards.
And he said the difficulties associated with the decommissioning of such machinery could blight the Scottish landscape for years.
“We already know that the average wind turbine must be in operation for a minimum of two years to pay back the carbon cost of construction,” he said.
“If the average lifespan of a wind turbine is only 10 years then the Scottish Government must seriously question wind energy’s role in displacing carbon emissions.
“However, the rapid wear and tear of wind turbines comes as no surprise. We need only cast our eye across the Atlantic to see 12,000 turbines rotting in the Californian desert.
“I have particular concerns surrounding the environmental costs of decommissioning and exactly who bears these burdens.
“With question marks raised over intermittency, noise, cost, efficiency, placement and now lifespan, when will the Scottish Government see sense and pull at the reins of wind energy?”
The Renewable Energy Foundation is a registered charity promoting sustainable development for the benefit of the public by means of energy conservation and the use of renewable energy. It claims to have “no political affiliation or corporate membership” and believes its findings have worrying implications for the investment being made in the UK in wind power.
The study also reports that the decline in the performance of Danish offshore windfarms had been greater than that of UK onshore windfarms.
Director Dr John Constable said: “This study confirms suspicions that decades of generous subsidies to the wind industry have failed to encourage the innovation needed to make the sector competitive.
“Put bluntly, wind turbines onshore and offshore still cost too much and wear out far too quickly to offer the developing world a realistic alternative to coal.” The Courier
California has something like 14,000 giant fans that have been abandoned – erected in the late 1980s they lasted less than 20 years – most were clapped-out by 1998 – before the enormous cost of maintaining them saw them left to rust:
In Hawaii a stack went up at Kamaoa in 1985 – by 2004 they too were left to the elements:
So, you’re thinking, only in America could wind power outfits get away with leaving thousands of giant fans to rust in the paddock. Well, think again.
The company that wind power outfits use to hold the land holder agreements with farmers is usually a $2 company with no real assets and, therefore, the “promise” contained in those agreements to decommission turbines isn’t worth the paper it’s written on: the parent company will simply let the company with the land holder agreement be wound up in insolvency; and host farmers were too gullible to obtain decommissioning bonds to ensure the clean-up costs are covered. And planning authorities were just as stupid – they could have easily forced developers to provide decommissioning bonds as a condition of granting planning consent, but generally failed to do so.
So, once these things are past their economic use by dates, their owners will cut and run in a heartbeat. Expect to see fleets of dilapidated fans rusting on Australian ridge-lines in the not too distant future.
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