liberal fail!

Please Support “the Original Charter Challenge!”

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United We Stand!!

 Summary

Support The Original Charter Challenge legal case defending people’s rights not to be subjected to the untested effects of living too close to industrial wind turbines.

Mission

We are residents of rural Ontario who have tried our best for years to show our provincial government that living too close to industrial size wind turbines can make people sick and ruin the enjoyment of their family home.

All efforts have fallen on deaf ears as small independent groups were forced to raise money, hire lawyers and sound emission experts, all in an effort to oppose local wind projects at unwinnable environmental hearings.

The time has come to take the government policy to real court.

The Ministry of the Environment has played judge and jury with rural Ontarians’ lives for too long trapping those harmed in a circle of suffering with no remedy at law. It’s Ontario’s dirty secret and meets all criterion for social injustice.

All across Ontario there is a pent up anger as small groups watch their best efforts ignored. It’s time to fight as a big team with the right legal case that has the best shot at making a difference in real court. That’s The Original Charter of Rights case due in court within the next few months.

Sun Media showed us the untapped power we have raising $30,000 from us in 3 days for Downwind their hard hitting documentary going public June 4/14.

Let’s put fear into the eyes of the wind industry and our government by standing together and donating as one big team. Imagine what we could do in 60 days building on the momentum created by Sun Media who will support and help us reach our $300,000 goal! All other media outlets have ignored our pleas of help.

All our goal money donated will go to The Original Charter Challenge legal fund ensuring this case can be taken by Canada’s top human rights lawyer to the Supreme Court if needed.

United we stand. Don’t let the wind industry divide us.

A made in Ontario legal wedge driven into the wind scam will have ripple effects felt around the world.
Urban and rural Ontarians let’s lead this uprising!

Let’s show the world how a mad as hell unified crowd can raise funds to defend their charter rights in court where any win is a win for all.

We have all worked hard and raised money for our hometown projects and we’ve learned a lot about the David and Goliath struggle we are in.

Now it’s time to put our strength in numbers into action with the help of our partner Sun Media who will promote our fundraising efforts because we rose up and helped them and they believe in our cause.

Even if you can’t contribute we all can make noise, get our own copies of the documentary on disk to show our friends and get the word out.

The Original Charter Challenge fund raising campaign is being kick started by the release of Sun Media’s Downwind documentary on June 4, 2014.

Wind Turbines Destroy the Fabric of Rural Communities!

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Wind Farms & “Community Division”: Tales

from Rye Park (NSW) & Northumberland (UK)

June 4, 2014 by 

Money Wasted

Naked greed, institutional corruption and State-sanctioned corporate bullying and thuggery are part and parcel of the wind industry, wherever you go. We recount below a tale from Northumberland that could have been written anywhere giant fans have been slung up anywhere in the world.

In tales like these the phrase “community division” often appears. However, the term appears to suggest the rural communities concerned are equally divided – in the same way that 18 players line up against each other in the AFL. Nothing could be further from the truth. Communities set upon by wind industry goons divide roughly (and unequally) into three groups.

The first is the tiny minority who hope to profit directly: farmers in contracts with the developer paid to host the turbines; gullible local business people who (foolishly) believe that they’ll snaffle work surrounding the project (construction and engineering work is almost exclusively the preserve of large, well-oiled outfits like Transfield or Leighton – the fans are built in China, India or Denmark); the local volunteer firefighters (CFA/CFS) promised a brand-new fire-truck by the developer (never mind that the fire unit will be reserved to look after the developer’s fans ahead of local properties); and the local footy club, promised a little cash and brand-new footy jumpers (featuring the developer’s “stylish” logo, of course).

The second group is by far and away the majority and includes those whose lives will be the all worse for the short-sighted greed of the few mentioned above. This group obviously includes the many who will end up as neighbours, whose homes will become sonic torture traps: hard-working people who will be driven mad by shadow flicker and the incessant turbine generated low-frequency noise, night after merciless night. As part of the so-called “green” energy “bargain”, the value of their properties will be smashed, if it were even possible to find a buyer for their (soon to be uninhabitable) homes (see our post here).

A pretty fair example of the division outlined above was given a week or so ago at a “community consultation” held by Epuron – an outfit hoping to develop what it calls the “Rye Park” wind farm (north of Yass and east of Boorowa, NSW).

Epuron sent a “pretty young thing” equipped with not much more than a Marketing Degree and the developer’s “spin sheet”. This young lass found herself way out of her depth, as locals grilled her on the wild and unsubstantiated claims she made about her bosses planned giant fans. You know, the usual stuff about “powering” 100,000 homes; reducing CO2 emissions; creating thousands of wonderful “green” jobs; and, best of all, lowering retail power prices. Locals hammered her on all of these classic furphies: in trying to defend the indefensible, she didn’t get off to a great start – it quickly became evident that she had no idea what a Renewable Energy Certificate was, let alone the cost impact of RECs on retail power prices or the (critical) benefit of that subsidy to her employer. Oops!

On a show of hands, the 32 present “divided” as follows: 23 locals, firmly against; and 9 in favour – 4 of whom were employed by Epuron, 2 were contracted as turbine hosts and 3 were “unknowns” (check out this video of the count).

And that brings us to the third group. Quite often a few “unknowns” turn up at “community consultations” to voice their loving support for giant fans. These aren’t “locals” and, even if they live in the vicinity, will never actually live anywhere near that (or any other) wind farm. They’re pretty easy to spot: beards are essential, as are socks and sandals. They turn up to the meeting, rant about the mortal perils of “climate change” and disappear into the ether, never to be seen again. Think Dave Clarke of delusional “ramblings” fame. You know, the type that says having a couple of hundred giant fans speared into YOUR backyard is a sacrifice that THEY’RE willing to make.

Take out rent seekers (like the developer and hopeful turbine hosts) – and rent-a-crowd ideologues – and the “division” in communities set upon by plans for giant fans soon disappears.

Remember, that it’s only ever been about the money.

Chop the fat pile of taxpayer and power consumer subsidies directed to wind power outfits and “community division” will soon resolve. The developers will disappear in a heartbeat; the prospective hosts will go back to doing what they were doing before they entered contracts they neither read nor understood; and the locals will return to the peaceful and untroubled lives they deserve.

Here’s The Daily Mail on how mountains of pointless subsidies fuel the utterly rotten and corrupt wind industry; and sustains its parasites.

Dirty tricks, greed and a ruined idyll that proves the wind turbine plague ISN’T over after all: ROBERT HARDMAN on the stormy issue of green subsidies
The Daily Mail
Robert Hardman
24 May 2014

The last time tempers were this high around here was almost exactly 500 years ago at the Battle of Flodden — the biggest Anglo-Scottish punch-up in history. And not much has changed in this stunning corner of Northumberland since then.

The big house is still Ford Castle, where James IV of Scotland spent his last night alive, carousing on the eve of battle. A couple of miles down the road is Etal Castle, where the English army celebrated victory.

Going back further still, there are 60 sites of prehistoric interest in a three-mile radius — including the Geordie answer to Stonehenge.

The views are much the same, across to the Cheviots, the Scottish borders and what is now Northumberland National Park.

But, this week, all that has changed. The diggers and pile drivers have just arrived, along with a lot of heavies in hi-viz jackets.

By Christmas, a great swathe of this ancient and enchanting border country, including the Holy Island of Lindisfarne, will be overshadowed by the Barmoor Wind Farm — six wind turbines, each 360ft tall and with a blade span the size of a Boeing 747.

Thought we’d heard the last of the onshore wind farm? Remember last year’s ministerial pledges to ‘roll back’ those barmy green subsidies for landowners and companies which desecrate the countryside?

As this week’s scenes in wildest Northumberland testify, it’s business as usual.

This racket, which already adds £3billion a year to all our fuel bills, is as lucrative as ever. The planning applications are pouring in, even though Britain has comfortably met its wind energy targets for 2020.

Oh for the days when the worst to fear was a wall of leylandii. It’s a story familiar to rural communities all over Britain. And, with just six turbines, Barmoor is actually at the smaller end of the wind farm spectrum.

But it’s important for several reasons. First, it shows that nowhere, however beautiful, is safe from the predations of developers masquerading as environmentalists.

Second, even the energy company now building these things acknowledges that ‘amazing’ tactics were used to ram through this development in the face of overwhelming local opposition.

Third, the bulldozers have started tearing up the soil here in the very week that Britain’s only overtly anti-wind farm party — UKIP — has made giant strides across the political landscape.

Down on the edge of Brackenside Farm, I find a building site, a digger and several men in hi-viz jackets scratching their chins. It’s the new site for EDF Energy’s Barmoor sub-station. A security guard becomes rather aggressive the moment we start taking photographs, even when I point to the public footpath sign next to me.

‘It’s a hard-hat area and it’s dangerous,’ he shouts.

Three EDF officials appear and say the same, though two must be in mortal danger for they are without hard hats, too.

Eventually, they concede that they have no powers to shut down a public right of way and choose not to engage in further conversation. We go about our business.

A mile further on, I meet another digger ripping up a field to create a new access road from the B6525 to the wind turbines. The sight of our cameras prompts two men to jump in to a van and race over the field to confront us as we stand on the public road.

‘Can I help?’ asks one, in tones presaging the answer ‘no’. He marches off when I explain I am from a newspaper.

As soon as I start exploring the background to this project, I begin to understand why these EDF contractors are so jumpy.

It has taken 11 years of legal battles, bad blood and festering anger to create a hideous eyesore which will, ultimately, generate just 12 megawatts — on a windy day.

That’s enough electricity to power a few villages in the right weather. Yet, as I shall explain, it will pay out a £50 million jackpot over 20 years.

The Barmoor saga began when wind farm developers Force 9 Energy and Catamount persuaded three local farmers to sign up to a deal, which was all sorted before the public had any inkling of what was going on.

The locals, as locals do, formed an action group called Save Our Unspoiled Landscape (SOUL) and produced a few leaflets.

To their astonishment, Force 9 hired a swanky London PR firm and then made a formal complaint to the Advertising Standards Authority arguing that the locals had exaggerated the threat from the turbines.

Quite why it was the ASA’s business to adjudicate on a planning dispute is anyone’s guess, but the judges ruled in favour of the developer.

Meanwhile, the action group bought a bright orange helium-filled blimp which they tethered at the proposed site to show people across the region just how visible the turbines would be.

Soon after it was raised aloft, its moorings were mysteriously cut and the local authorities spent several days warning North Sea air traffic to be aware of a large orange UFO with ‘NO!’ written on it.

The local council threw out the project after receiving more objections to this plan than any it could recall.

But, shortly before the 2010 election, the Labour government ruled in favour of the development on the grounds that ‘it involved proposals of major significance for the delivery of the government’s climate change programme’.

Job done, Force 9/Catamount started looking for a buyer and sold the project for an undisclosed sum (thought to be around £10million), via Duke Energy, to EDF Energy Renewables in March. And now work begins.

Politicians love to bang on about ‘vibrant communities’, but this one has just been torn in half. How can the footling energy output from a minor get-rich-quick scheme justify the long-term pain felt by so many?

People who wouldn’t get planning permission for a garage extension must now see their views desecrated and the value of their homes slashed in order to enrich a handful of their neighbours.

Based on the projected output of the plant, the highly respected think tank, the Renewable Energy Foundation, expects the wind plant (how can anyone call this thing a ‘farm’?) to receive a £1.15million annual subsidy on top of £1.4million a year for electricity generated over a 20-year contract.

How is it shared out? The terms are always confidential, but the going rate for a landowner in this situation is £10,000-£20,000 per turbine per year, plus a slice of the pie every time the site is resold.

The locals now realise that there is nothing more they can do.

Nick Maycock smiles grimly outside his comfortable guest house, the Friendly Hound, which overlooks the site. He doesn’t even want to contemplate the effect on his trade.

‘Those farmers have been offered a goldmine. How can they turn it down?’ he asks.

I find only one of the farmers today. Sandy Rievely will have two turbines on his land, but will only say he is not allowed to discuss it under the terms of the contract. So what do his neighbours think?

‘I’d prefer not to say,’ replies Dr John Ferguson, 73, a former GP whose retirement has been consumed by the 11-year battle to stop his cottage being dwarfed by these monstrosities.

‘Well, I will then,’ says his wife, Ann. ‘It’s just completely wrong that a handful of landowners can do this to all their neighbours. I avoid even talking to them now because I’ll lose my temper . . .’

Her voice cracks, the conversation halts and we all look awkwardly out of the kitchen window across the sheep and the fields to the distant treeline. In a matter of months, six giant fans on six masts many times the height of the trees, will look back at her.

Now is probably not the moment to remind Ann of the immortal words of the former Energy Secretary who inflicted much of this unhappiness on the countryside in the name of fluffy Polar bears and saving the planet. ‘It is socially unacceptable to be against wind turbines in your area,’ declared Ed Miliband the last time Labour was in power, ‘like not wearing your seat belt.’

The very man who now attacks grasping energy bosses for fleecing the poor is none other than the Minister who thought it would be a wise and noble idea to make the rest of us pay dukes and developers an overall £200,000 annual bonus for every single skyscraper-sized windmill they planted in the middle of the countryside.

For these things really are the size of skyscrapers. Each one of the wind turbines going up by the Fergusons’ home near Flodden Field is going to be the height of a 30-storey office block — taller indeed than anything in, say, Edinburgh.

If they were buildings, they would automatically enter the list of Britain’s top 50 highest.

After more than a decade of sleepless nights and legal battles costing hundreds of thousands of pounds, the residents are well-used to the arguments: that they are simply Nimbys, that it is our duty as human beings to place the greater needs of the environment ahead of selfish local considerations.

They’ve heard all this stuff. And they know it’s tosh. These landowners and EDF wouldn’t be doing any of this if it wasn’t for the staggering inducements.

I go for a drive with local farmer Andrew Joicey, 58, whose elder brother runs the family estate covering 15,000 acres in this area, including mighty Ford Castle (now leased to the local council).

He points out that the estate was offered the usual big bucks to sign up for the scheme, but rejected it. And Andrew has devoted a large part of the past 11 years to fighting local wind farm proposals, seeing off three others — but not this one.

‘What is particularly galling is the way these things are just bought and sold without any regard for local feelings,’ he tells me.

Just this week, he had a long meeting with a senior EDF ‘director of construction’ as part of the company policy of ‘engaging’ with the community.

To his astonishment, the executive admitted that he had heard how the developers had persuaded local farm workers to sign meaningless contracts for a few hundred pounds (wind farm noise restrictions do not apply to people deemed to be ‘financially involved’). Force 9/Catamount was unavailable for comment yesterday.

The EDF executive also agreed that it was ‘incredible’ that the local action group had been reported to the ASA.

As for the Government’s claim that this 12 megawatt site was of ‘major significance’ to Britain’s climate change programme, he shook his head and admitted: ‘It doesn’t even feature.’

So there we have it. Lives and livelihoods are being blighted by a project which even the owners concede is of little consequence.

An EDF spokesman points out that it will give £60,000-a-year to community schemes as a gesture of goodwill.

But it’s a gesture which impresses no one, any more than the latest Tory promise, four weeks ago, to cut wind subsidies after the next election.

For these locals are already having to fund yet another legal battle to stop yet another wind project. In January, a government inspector approved a scheme to put a turbine in front of Northumberland’s ancient Duddo Stone Circle.

Next month, they are taking the Government and the farmer concerned to the High Court in a bid to overturn the decision.

As UKIP — with its clear anti-wind farm agenda — toasts its council successes and looks forward to tomorrow’s Euro election results, there is a clear message here for the eco-zealots in all the main parties.

But is anyone listening?
The Daily Mail

dirtyrottenscoundrelsoriginal

 

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Ontario election debate: Hudak and Horwath

try to make ‘corrupt’ Liberal record stick

Scott Stinson | June 3, 2014 9:29 PM ET

Ontario NDP leader Andrea Horwath, Liberal leader Kathleen Wynne and PC leader Tim Hudak square off in a televised debate in Toronto on Tuesday. Wynne was forced to defend her role in the Liberal gas-plant scandal.

Frank Gunn/The Canadian Press; Frank Gunn/CP; Mark Blinch/CP-poolOntario NDP leader Andrea Horwath, Liberal leader Kathleen Wynne and PC leader Tim Hudak square off in a televised debate in Toronto on Tuesday. Wynne was forced to defend her role in the Liberal gas-plant scandal.

Premier Kathleen Wynne spent the early part of the Ontario leaders’ debate apologizing for her party’s “mistakes” in the billion-dollar gas-plant scandal, as an election issue that has largely been overlooked in the month-long campaign quickly returned to the forefront.

The art of persuasion hasn’t progressed much since Aristotle was plying his trade 2,300 years ago.

Politicians still need to persuade their audience they are of good character; they must make an emotional connection; and they have to convince voters their message makes sense ­ — in Aristotle’s words, ethos, pathos and logos.

For Tim Hudak at the Ontario leaders’ debate Tuesday, two out of three wouldn’t have been a bad result.

Continue reading…

Responding to the first of six questions submitted by viewers in the only debate of the six-week campaign, one that asked how the Liberals could be trusted, Ms. Wynne said the decisions made “were wrong” and “public money was wasted.” Rather than pivot away, the Premier said that there had been “a breach of trust,” but “I have apologized for that.”

It was a perfect opening for NDP leader Andrea Horwath, who was able to begin her remarks in the 90-minute televised debate by saying “the Liberals have betrayed you.” How the Liberals could be trusted, she said, was “the actual question of the evening.”

Ms. Horwath, as did PC leader Tim Hudak later, pushed Ms. Wynne to explain why, as a member of Dalton McGuinty’s cabinet, she didn’t “say no” to the decision to cancel two gas-fired power plants at what turned out to be a $1.1-billion cost to the public.

“I am so sorry that public funds were wasted,” the Premier replied. “I have taken responsibility for being a part of a government that made mistakes.”

It was an impossible start for Ms. Wynne, and a subject for which there is no good answer, but even still she struggled to not sound guilty. “I’ve said that the decisions weren’t right,” she said. Mr. Hudak responded by saying that if the Liberals are re-elected after having apologized for getting caught, “they’re going to do it again.”

Related

Tim Hudak is the Obvious Best Choice for Ontario’s Premier!

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Shellie Correia

“the original Mothers Against Wind Turbines TM”,
thank Tim Hudak, for a Job Well Done!
    We went to the CBC, on Front St., in Toronto, to support the Conservative Party, and Tim Hudak, at the
Leader’s Debate. and also to attend the party afterward.  When Tim came into the room, after the debate, the
crowd went crazy!  I congratulated Tim, and told him that he had done a wonderful job this evening, and that
were very proud!  Tim’s wife, Deb, was beaming, and looked radiant.  What an awesome couple!
Tim Hudak made the other two lack-luster candidates, look like blithering fools.  He really nailed this debate!!!
He answered questions, while they tried their best, to avoid them. He had clear, logical answers, while they
made ridiculous statements about what they were going to do with money that we, the taxpayers, do not have.
Tim nailed this debate….hands down!  I am thrilled with his accomplishments!
     While Tim talked about improving our kid’s math and science grades, Horwath said she would give them breakfast.
Tim wants our kids to thrive and succeed, while Horwath, wants them to be dependent upon government handouts.
Tim Hudak was the only one, that would even discuss the wind turbine fiasco, the others didn’t dare even speak of
that scam!  Tim Hudak has a serious plan for repairing the damage that was done, by the Liberal party, (enabled by the NDP!)
     Wynne was a complete bomb.  She looked terrified in the beginning, Saying she was sorry for the gas plants,
repeatedly, but we already know, that she is sorry, only that they got caught!   She then became defensive, and angry,
finishing off by pleading with her ever-outstretched arms, and offering to spend more of our money on Toronto’s infrastructure
The ratio for infrastructure, was half for the GTA, and half for the rest of the entire province…..none of which she has any way
to pay for, other than sinking us even further into debt!
All in all, it was an incredible evening.  We thanked our hosts, at Boston Pizza, for the wonderful food, drinks, and service,
shook hands with the other jubilant Conservative supporters, from all over the province, and we felt very satisfied with the outcome
of the Leader’s Debate!  I believe it was quite obvious to all, that Tim Hudak, is by far, the Best Choice for Ontario’s next Premier!

 

The Faux-Green Energy Fiasco is Coming to Light! Wake up People!!

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Ontario, Canada: A Mirror of America’s Economic Future Mortgaged To Falsified Climate Science

Posted on June 3, 2014 by 

Guest essay by Dr. Tim Ball

clip_image002If Obama’s policies on energy and environment were truly original they would be worth consideration, but they are not. He dismisses claims that

“The economy will lose millions of jobs and billions in growth.” He said, “Let’s face it, that’s what [critics] always say,” and “every time … the warnings of the cynics have been wrong.”

Wrong! They failed disastrously everywhere and every time they were applied. Figure 1 above shows a poster from Britain, one of several European nations on the path
Obama pursues.

Ironically, Maurice Strong, architect of the false claims of human produced CO2 causing catastrophic global warming/ climate change, provided a classic example.

Obama and other world leaders are basing their policies on the Reports of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). This was the climate science agency created by Maurice Strong through the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) and presented to the world in Rio de Janeiro in 1992. Figure 2 shows a simple flow chart of the structures created to control the political and scientific sectors to achieve a political agenda.


clip_image004

Figure 2

Strong chaired the Rio 92 conference and in the same year was appointed to Ontario Hydro. He became Chair and was given free rein by Bob Rae, socialist Premier of the Province. He set about applying the philosophy and policies enshrined in the UNEP program. These were designed to demonize CO2 as the byproduct of fossil fuel driven industries and nations. It was speculated by Strong in his comments to Elaine Dewar cited in The Cloak of Green (1995). He suggested,

“Isn’t the only hope for the planet that the industrialized civilizations collapse? Isn’t it our responsibility to bring that about?”

 

Dewar asked why he didn’t enter politics to implement his plan. He essentially said you can’t do anything as a politician, but knew a political vehicle was required. He knew that convincing individual governments was almost impossible, as Kyoto negotiations proved. His experience told him the United Nations (UN) was his vehicle.

Dewar wrote that he liked the UN because:

He could raise his own money from whomever he liked, appoint anyone he wanted, control the agenda.

Dewar concluded:

Strong was using the U.N. as a platform to sell a global environment crisis and the Global Governance Agenda.

 

Strong had similar powers and objectives as Chairman of Ontario Hydro and became the architect of that Provinces problems. A 1997 article titled “Maurice Strong: The new guy in your future” says,

“Maurice Strong has demonstrated an uncanny ability to manipulate people, institutions, governments, and events to achieve the outcome he desires.” It concludes, “The fox has been given the assignment, and all the tools necessary, to repair the henhouse to his liking.”

This applied to his UN role, but also to his Ontario Hydro role.

Under the guise of claiming Ontario’s debt was a result of expensive nuclear power plants he set about implementing an anti-fossil fuel agenda. One commentator referencing a later scandal involving Strong called “Hydrogate” says,

“Within no time of his arrival, he firmly redirected and re-structured Ontario Hydro. At the time, Ontario Hydro was hell-bent on building many more nuclear reactors, despite dropping demand and rising prices. Maurice Strong grabbed the Corporation by the scruff of the neck, reduced the workforce by one third, stopped the nuclear expansion plans, cut capital expenditures, froze the price of electricity, pushed for sustainable development, made business units more accountable.”

Sounds good, but it was a path to inadequate supply. Key is the phrase he, “pushed for sustainable development”. In Strong’s, keynote speech at the Rio Earth Summit he said:

“Current lifestyles and consumption patterns of the affluent middle class – involving high meat intake, the use of fossil fuels, electrical appliances, home and work-place air-conditioning, and suburban housing – are not sustainable.”

 

He’d already created mechanisms to eliminate fossil fuels and bring about reduction and destruction of western economies. Ontario was his personal application and they were a disaster.

Despite evidence of the failures, Canadian environmentalist David Suzuki became involved and urged Liberal Premier Dalton McGuinty to continue Strong’s disastrous policies. Suzuki was forced to resign from his own Foundation because his political activities violated his tax situation. As one commentator noted,

“The McGuinty government has a major electrical power problem, one created by its decision to use the power system as a political policy tool. This policy has resulted in the doubling of rates in Ontario to a level higher than in most U.S. states. Ontario’s former industrial advantage has disappeared, while the government has been pretending that nothing is wrong.”

Because of these energy policies Ontario’s economy continued to decline. The real impact of the decline is offset by the great Canadian socialist policy of equalization. So-called “have” provinces with thriving economies pay money through the Federal government to “have not” provinces. It was Ontario’s destiny as equalization covered political failures

If this continues – this is not hyperbole, this is a fact – Ontario will become a ‘have not’province in confederation. And it will be Premier (Dalton) McGuinty’s legacy that he in two terms took Ontario from being the strongest economic province in the federation to a ‘have not’ province.

Replacing nuclear and fossil fuel energies with alternate energies drives up the costs and creates a multitude of other problems. A US Senate report notes,

“Comparisons of wind, solar, nuclear, natural gas and coal sources of power coming on line by 2015 show that solar power will be 173% more expensive per unit of energy delivered than traditional coal power, 140% more than nuclear power and natural gas and 92% more expensive than wind power. Wind power is 42% more expensive than nuclear and natural gas power.” “Wind and solar’s “capacity factor” or availability to supply power is around 33%, which means 67% of the time wind and solar cannot supply power and must be supplemented by a traditional energy source such as nuclear, natural gas or coal.”

 

Changes in Ontario illustrate the problems. Wind turbulence restricts the number of turbines to 5 to 8 turbines per 2.6 square kilometers. With average wind speeds of 24 kph it needs 8,500 turbines covering 2590 square kilometers to produce the power of a 1000 MW conventional station. Ontario closed two 1000MW plants in 2011 – the Lambton and the Nanticoke coal fired plants. Besides the land, (5,180 km2) you still need coal-fired plants running at almost 100 percent for back up. Strong’s policies eliminate the back up, so you either have dramatically increased costs, inadequate power or both.

Source: Steve Hunter

In 2008 Obama told the San Francisco Chronicle that the

“notion of no coal . . . is an illusion,” and he favored a cap-and-trade system. “So if somebody wants to build a coal-powered plant, they can,” “It’s just that it will bankrupt them because they’re going to be charged a huge sum for all that greenhouse gas that’s being emitted.”

clip_image006

It’s only valid if science supports the claim that CO2, because of human production, is causing warming or climate change. It doesn’t, so there is no scientific need to replace fossil fuels.

Focus on CO2 and the assumption an increase causes temperature increase are built into the computer models. William Kinninmonth, former head of Australia’s National Climate Centre explains,

“… current climate modeling is essentially to answer one question: how will increased atmospheric concentrations of CO2 (generated from human activity) change earth’s temperature and other climatological statistics?”…. “It is heroic to assume that such a view is sufficient basis on which to predict future ‘climate’.”

Indian Union Environment Minister Jairam Ramesh said

“science is politics in climate change; climate science is politics” and we are being “led by our noses by Western (climate) scientists who have less of a scientific agenda and more of a political agenda.”

He should add that western politicians like Obama are promoting energy policies based on falsified political science and alternative energies that don’t work. Ontario, under the control of the grandmaster Maurice Strong, tried and they’ve already failed. It is unadulterated evidence that pursuing them still is purely political. As always the people will pay the price as they have in many jurisdiction beyond Ontario. An appropriate quote to explain such blind behavior comes from former Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev; “Politicians are the same every all over. They promise to build a bridge even where there is no river.” Figure 1 cartoons the alternative energy bridge to nowhere in the UK.

I once said the Kyoto Protocol was a political solution to a non-existent climate problem. Obama’s energy policy is more of the same. It is more inexcusable because it failed everywhere it was tried, including by Maurice Strong, the father of the deception that global warming and climate change are a man made problem.

Living Too Close to a Wind Turbine, is Bad for Your Health!

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Updated Research Design and Sound Exposure Assessment

Summary

The last decade has seen a sharp increase in wind turbine generated electricity in Canada. As of November 2012, Canada’s installed capacity was 5.9 Gigawatts, providing 2.3 percent of Canada’s current electricity demands. The wind energy industry has set a vision that by 2025 wind energy will supply 20% of Canada’s electricity demands. Some public concern has been expressed about the potential health impacts of wind turbine sound (WTSFootnote i). The health effects reported by individuals living in communities in close proximity to wind turbine installations are poorly understood due to limited scientific research in this area. This is coupled with the many challenges faced in measuring and modeling WTS, including low frequencies, which represent knowledge gaps in this area. The continued success and viability of wind turbine energy in Canada, and around the world, will rely upon a thorough understanding of the potential health impacts and community concerns.

Health Canada is collaborating with Statistics Canada on an epidemiological study to evaluate measurable health endpoints in people living in 8-12 communities at distances up to 10km from wind turbine installations. Measured endpoints include an automated blood pressure/heart rate assessment, hair cortisol concentrations and sleep actimetry. The seven days of sleep measurement data will be analyzed in relation to synchronized wind turbine operational data, providing the strength of a repeated measures design that incorporates objectively determined health outcome measures.

Read full report at: http://www.hc-sc.gc.ca/ewh-semt/consult/_2013/wind_turbine-eoliennes/research_recherche-eng.php

Footnote i: An important distinction is made between the physical characterization of acoustical energy as "sound" and the subjective evaluation of sound as "noise" when it is subjectively evaluated as unwanted.
Posted on the Health Canada website, http://www.hc-sc.gc.ca/ewh-semt/consult/_2013/wind_turbine-eoliennes/research_recherche-eng.php

The Liberals have Destroyed our Affordable Electricity

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Ontario’s Power Trip: Irrational energy

planning has tripled power rates under

the Liberals’ direction

Parker Gallant, Special to Financial Post | June 2, 2014 | Last Updated:Jun 3 8:17 AM ET

Dalton McGuinty's Liberals claimed the province’s electricity sector was in a mess when they took over in 2003. Look at it today.

Ontario Hydro may well have been a mess. But it was a mess that produced less expensive electricity

In the summer of 2003, just before Dalton McGuinty’s Liberals gained power in Ontario, 50 million people in the U.S. Eastern Seaboard and Ontario suffered an electricity blackout caused “when a tree branch in Ohio started an outage that cascaded across a broad swath from Michigan to New England and Canada.” Back in 2003 Ontario’s electricity prices were 4.3 cents a kilowatt hour (kWh) and delivery costs added 1.5 cents per kWh. An additional charge of 0.7 cents — known as the debt retirement charge to pay back Ontario Hydro’s legacy debt of $7.8-billion — brought all-in costs to the average consumer to 6.5 cents per kWh.

The McGuinty Liberals claimed the province’s electricity sector was in a mess when they took over in 2003. The Liberals’ first Energy minister, Dwight Duncan, said then that he rejected the old Ontario Hydro model. “It didn’t work. We’re fixing it. We’re cleaning up the mess.”

Fast forward 11 years. Today, Ontario electricity costs average over 9 cents per kWh, delivery costs 3 cents per kWh or more, the 0.7-cent debt retirement charge is still being charged, plus a new 8% provincial sales tax. Additional regulatory charges take all-in costs to well over 15 cents per kWh.. The increase in the past 10 years averaged over 11% annually. Recently, the Energy Minister forecast the final consumer electricity bill will jump another 33% over the next three years and 42% in the next 5 years.

Summing up: Whatever mess existed in 2003 is billions of dollars worse today. The cost of electricity for the average Ontario consumer went from $780 on the day Dalton McGuinty’s Liberals took power to more than $1,800, with more increases to come. The additional $1,020 in after-tax dollars extracted from the province’s 4.5 million ratepayers is $4.6 billion – per year!

Why?

First, the Liberal Party fell under the influence of the Green Energy Act Alliance (GEAA), a green activist group that evolved into a corporate industry lobby group that adopted anthropogenic global warming as a business strategy. The strategy: Get government subsidies for renewable energy. The GEAA convinced the McGuinty Liberals to follow the European model. That model was: Replace fossil-fuel-generated electricity with renewable energy from wind, solar and biomass (wood chips to zoo poo). In the minds of those who framed the Liberal’s energy policies, electricity generated from wind, solar, biomass – green energy – was the way of the future.

The plan was implemented through the 2009 Green Energy and Green Economy Act (GEA), a sweeping, even draconian, legislative intervention that included conservation spending and massive subsidies for wind, solar and biomass via a euro-style feed-in-tariff scheme. The GEA created a rush to Ontario by international companies seeking above market prices, a rush that pushed the price of electricity higher. The greater the increase in green energy investment, the higher prices would go.

At the same time, Liberals forced installation of smart meters, a measure that added $2-billion to distribution costs. Billions more were needed for transmission lines to hook up the new wind and solar generators. At the same time, wind and solar generation – being unstable – needed back-up generation, which forced the construction of new gas plants. The gas plants themselves became the target of further government intervention, leading to the $1-billion gas plant scandal.

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To force adoption of often unpopular wind and solar plants, the GEA took away municipal rights relating to all generation projects, stripping rural communities of their authority to accept or reject them.

To pay for the rising subsidies to wind and solar, the Liberals adopted an accounting device that would spread the cost over all electricity consumers. The device was called the “Global Adjustment.” The Global Adjustment draw on consumers grew fast and will continue its upward movement. In effect, the Global Adjustment is a dump on ratepayers for energy costs that are above market rates. During 2013, the total global adjustment was $7.8-billion. Of that, 52% went to gas/wind/solar/biomass.

The GA for 2014 is expected to rise to $8.6-billion, adding another 2.9 cents per kWh for each electricity consumer.

To oversee all this, the Liberals established the Ontario Power Authority to do long-term energy planning (LTEP) and to contract renewable generation under the feed-in tariff (FIT) program that guaranteed wind and solar generators above-market prices for 20 years or more. In 10 years Ontarians have seen four versions of the so-called long-term plan, suggesting there is nothing long-term or planned. The Auditor General’s report of Dec 5, 2011, disclosed that no cost/benefit analysis was completed in respect to those feed-in tariff contracts.

Whatever mess existed in 2003 is billions of dollars worse today

The numerous Liberals who have sat in the Energy Minister’s chair have had a penchant for believing how the sector should function, issuing “directives” from the cabinet. The directives created the most complex and expensive electricity sector in North America. The Association of Major Power Consumers issued a “Benchmarking” report in which they stated: “Our analysis shows that Ontario has the highest industrial rates in North America. Ontario not only has the highest delivered rates of all these jurisdictions; the disparity in rates also is growing.”

The almost 100 directives over the past 11 years from Liberal energy ministers have instructed the OPA, the Ontario Energy Board, Ontario Power Generation and Hydro One on a wide variety of issues from building a tunnel under Niagara Falls to paying producers for not generating power, subsidizing industrial clients for conservation while subsidizing other industrial clients for consumption. Numerous new programs have been created that support clients in Northern Ontario, urban clients for purchasing EVs (electric vehicles), homeowners for purchasing CFL light bulbs and a host of other concepts without weighing the effect on employers or taxpayers.
Aside from the burden on consumers, Ontario’s Power Trip has cost jobs as companies – Caterpillar, Heinz, Unilever and others – closed Ontario operations while others, such as Magna, failed to invest in Ontario due to high electricity prices and high taxes that would have created private sector jobs.

Were “green energy” jobs created? Government claims hit 31,000 in a press release in June 2013 but since then no mention of green job claims appears in releases. The recent budget of Finance Minister Charles Sousa reported 10,100 jobs in the “clean tech” sector, a far cry from earlier claims.

Ontario Hydro may well have been a mess a decade ago. But it was a mess that produced electricity priced to consumers at 6.5 cents a kWh. Current prices of 15 cents a kWh will rise to over 20 cents a kWh by 2018/19, forcing the average Ontario ratepayer to pay an additional $700 annually. By that date the cost of “renewable energy” to Ontario’s 4.5 million ratepayers will result in an annual extraction of $8-billion to satisfy the perceived benefits of wind, solar and biomass. Over the 20 years of the FIT contracts, $160-billion in disposable income will be removed from ratepayer’s pockets to access a basic commodity, all in the name of “global warming” and renewable power without use of a cost/benefit analysis.

Perhaps it is time for a change in the governing of Ontario and particularly the way the electricity sector is overseen.

Parker Gallant is a former Canadian banker who looked at his local electricity bill and didn’t like what he saw.

Rural Ontarians Treated Despicably, by the Liberals, and it Was Condoned by the NDP!

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JERRY AGAR - Callous Ontario Liberals ignore wind power’s victims

SOUTH KENT WIND FARM NEAR LONDON, ONTARIO

Credits: Mike Hensen/The London Free Press/QMI Agency

JERRY AGAR | SUN NEWS NETWORK

http://bcove.me/txilhh0p

It is heart wrenching to see and feel the pain of fellow Ontarians breaking down in tears as they explain how the Liberal government drove them from their homes.

But to understand how cold and callous our current political leadership is in this province, you need to experience it.

Rebecca Thompson’s documentary, Down Wind: How Ontario’s Green Dream Turned into a Nightmare (Surge Media Productions), airs on Sun News Wednesday at 8 p.m. and 11 p.m.

It is a story of reckless, agenda-driven politics resulting in shattered lives.

The Ontario Liberal government’s Green Energy Act isn’t just an economic failure; it is an act of brutal indifference to the human cost of politics.

A cost ignored by people living far from the thump of the giant wind turbines, secure in their downtown Toronto homes and politically correct theories; a safe distance from places like Ripley, Clear Creek and Lucknow, Ontario.

Many may not care – worshiping as they do at the altar of so-called green energy – that the jobs promised by the Liberals through their Green Energy Act were never delivered, while the cost of hydro skyrocketed.

But the human cost should matter to us all.

Giant wind turbines, as high as 50 storeys, with blades the size of a 747, were foisted on communities in rural Ontario with no consultation or agreement from the residents, their municipal governments having been stripped of their planning powers by the Green Energy Act.

Unlike politicians who pay lip service to “serving others” while stomping all over people’s lives and looking after themselves, Norma Schmidt spent her life in Underwood, Ontario in the actual service of others as a nurse and instructor of future nurses.

She and her husband spent their lives in the home they lovingly restored over the years; a place they had hoped to share with their grandchildren.

But Norma has been forced out of her home by severe migraines and depression, brought on by the relentless noise and vibration from the industrial wind turbines erected practically in her back yard.

She left both the job and the home she loved, escaping to a room in her daughter’s house.

It is not the life she worked all these years to achieve, and it is not what she deserves.

Do Norma’s tears, and those of others similarly affected, fall to no effect at the feet of Premier Kathleen Wynne?

Norma’s story is one among many, some of them told in Down Wind.

This is the same Dalton McGuinty/Wynne Liberal government that used public money to reward violent aboriginal protesters who seized private property and terrorized people in Caledonia.

That “occupation” continues today and the government, knowing that their voting base in Toronto couldn’t care less about some rubes in the country, keeps the issue quiet by caving into thugs, rather than protecting law-abiding citizens.

Would the government be as forgiving to people across rural Ontario if some were to blow up a few of the industrial wind turbines that have made their lives hell? Of course not.

There are no turbines thumping the night away in Don Valley West or Toronto-Centre.

It remains to be seen whether the people in such ridings, who overwhelmingly voted Liberal in 2011, will care more for their fellow citizens in rural Ontario this time around.

There are any number of political parties to support other than the Liberals.

O.P.P. Have They Crossed that Political Line? I Believe So!

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CHRISTINA BLIZZARD | QMI AGENCY

 

TORONTO – Who do you call when the police break a law?

You have to ask that as the Ontario Provincial Police Association (OPPA) sent shockwaves through the election campaign Monday with attack ads targeting PC Leader Tim Hudak.

It’s the first time the OPPA has entered the political fray with advertising.

I hope it’s the last.

“We’re here to keep you safe,” says one ad – and shows uniformed officer pushing a lawbreaker into a cruiser. “We’re the OPP and we’re here for you. Who’s Tim Hudak here for?” A respected Toronto lawyer said he believes the ads are illegal and may contravene the Public Service of Ontario Act, which prohibits civil servants from engaging in political activities unless they take an unpaid leave of absence.

“Yes, I think they have broken the law,” said Paul Copeland, a life bencher with the Law Society of Upper Canada, in a telephone interview.

Copeland, who was awarded the Order of Canada for human rights and social justice work, pointed out that the act prohibits civil servants from commenting on politics.

He pointed to a section of the act that says civil servants “cannot comment publicly outside the scope of his or her duties as a public servant on matters that are directly related to those duties and that are addressed in the policies of a federal or provincial party or in the policies of a candidate in a federal or provincial election.”

Unlike municipal police, OPP are not governed by the Police Services Act, which also prohibits political activity.

Copeland said it’s traditionally considered improper for police, armed forces and judges to comment on political matters.

“They are public servants with a very special status in society and it’s dangerous to the democratic process to have them commenting on political matters and endorsing candidates,” he said.

Meanwhile, OPPA president Jim Christie confirmed there are real cops in the ads – and a real OPP cruiser. They were part of a public service ad put out by the police union to laud the good work they do. They tweaked it for the attack ad.

He said it’s not unusual for cops to participate in political activities.

“I think it’s naive to believe the police services don’t get involved politically,” he told me.

“We’ve donated to campaigns, we’ve attended fundraisers, we’ve gone to leaders’ dinners, we’ve supported golf tournaments – all with the view of putting money in political coffers.”

He said it’s his job as a union leader to fight for the pay, perks and pensions of his members and he’s concerned about Hudak’s plans to freeze OPP pay for two years and change the pension plan for new recruits.

The OPP has received hefty pay hikes under the Liberal government.

An 8.55% pay hike kicked in Jan. 1 as part of the government’s commitment to make them the highest paid force in the province.

That pay hike gave an OPP constable with three years on the job an annual base salary of $90,621.

There are two OPP probes going on at Queen’s Park – one into the Ornge air ambulance scandal, the other into the alleged deletion of e-mails by senior staff in former premier Dalton McGuinty’s office as they supposedly attempted to cover their tracks in the gas plant scandal.

How can those probes continue when the force has been politicized like this?

Politicians shouldn’t direct cops. And cops shouldn’t engage in the political dialogue during an election when they’ll work for – or perhaps investigate – whoever wins it.

This is a conflict in so many ways. The OPP provide protection for provincial politicians.

The cops have crossed a big, blue line with these ads.