liberal fail!

The Truth is….Wind Turbines are NOT Good for our Environment!

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What’s the footprint of a Wind Turbine? Ask Howard Hayden

Posted on May 26, 2014 by  

The green thugs claim that Wind Tubines have a positive impact on the enviornment. Birds and Bats might disagree–but there’s more, courtesy of Howard Hayden

Howard is emeritus prof of physics at U Conn. I asked him if I could put up his essay on developments related to Catastrophic Anthropogenic Warming, now called climate disruption (apparently carbon dioxide is now a toxic air pollutant, and we mammals are just like diesel trucks, spewing evil CO2).

An item that deserves attention for Howard Hayden’s last newsletter is his short essay on the imprint and substructure of a typical 2.5 Mega Watt wind turbine, much like the wind turbines that were spread out over Mills County, Texas, in the past year–100 turbines on the ridge next to the road I travel to go to Fort Hood to work.

100 wind turbines built for more than 100 million dollars and they would produce about one-third of their rated capacity over a year, so they would produce about 90 Megawatts but require on-line backup for windless days.

However they make it because of mandated alternative energy portfolios in Texas, tax credits and subsidies. Farmers and ranchers are easy targets for the lease payments or royalties, whatever the arrangements are.

10 miles of open country spoiled by 300 foot bird and bat Cuisinarts, sitting on a prominent 50-100 foot ridge. Ruins the vista for hunters and retirees, and anyone who loves the country, pockmarks the land with access roads and transmission lines, and the land use is 500 acres at about 5 acres per fan. Electricity output is, at best, one tenth of a typical 1000 Mega watt coal plant that is on-line all the time and reliable, and takes about 100 acres and can be built where the grid is readily accessible and where the plant is not a sore on the horizon.

However, the power lines and the scarred up ranch land is factor–and the actual site is another matter, ranch land is not so valuable as farmland for ag production, and in Texas the fans are on ridges in pastureland–imagine when they site them in Mid Western row and field crop farmland.

When installed the fans have to have a stout substructure.

Howard explains.

The Energy Advocate
A monthly newsletter promoting energy and technology
May 2014 (Vol. 18, No. 10) P.O. Box 7609, Pueblo West, CO 81007 Copyright © by The Energy Advocate

STEM Notes: Wind Power
Wind turbines exert considerable leverage (a.k.a. torque, lever-arm length multiplied by force) on the base of the structure. The force is never published, but it is easy to calculate: Power = force times velocity. For a 2.5-MW wind machine in Cashton Greens Wind Farm in Wisconsin, at 25 m/s wind speed (above which the machine must be turned off) 2.5  106 W  25m/s = 100,000 newtons (  22,500 pounds). The tower height is 117 meters (385 ft).
For this case wind turbine’s torque on the ground is equivalent to the weight of a large school bus at the end of a plank the length of a football field from field-level spectator to field-level spectator. Accordingly, the base of the structure must be very substantial.

The circular part of the structure shown in the Cashton Greens picture will be the only part that shows after the rest has been covered with dirt, and it will contain 63 metric tons of concrete; the rest of the base will contain 570 metric tons. The base will contain 41 metric tons of rebar.

Dunn note: let’s see, what’s the carbon imprint of making and installing all that concrete? How about the carbon imprint of building a fan and tower? We don’t start the first day with a 0 imprint, do we and they have to be linked to a reliable source of energy–so what’s the benefit except to the gamers playing the tax credits and the mandates, and the subsidies. Warren Buffett recently stated that wind power goes nowhere without the tax credits so i have to look at 100 ugly fans and wonder how many birds are going to killed for what? So anxious greenies and gamers can do their projects?

Medical Professionals Everywhere are calling for Studies, Rather than Denying the Facts!!

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Austrian Medical Association Issues Warning,

Calls for Comprehensive Studies on Wind Turbine Noise

by ashbee2

Austrian Medical Association Issues Warning, Calls for Comprehensive Studies on Wind Turbine Noise

The Medical Chamber (equivalent to the Austrian Medical Association) is issuing a warning on behalf of large-scale wind turbine installations. The Chamber is calling for comprehensive studies on potential negative health effects as well as minimum safety distances to populated areas.
Vienna — Noise problems, caused by the operation of wind turbines, are drawing increasingly more attention from scientists. This was pointed out todday, Wednesday, by the Medical Chamber on the occasion of the International Noise Awareness Day. The Medical Chambe is now calling for comprehensive studies on potential negative health effects as well as a minimum safety distance to populated areas.

Wind power plants are — as opposed to individual wind turbines — very large scale operations and clustered into “wind parks”. The rotor diameter of current turbines can measure up to 114 metres — almost the length of a soccer pitch. Rotational speeds of the rotor blades lie in between 270 and 300km/h, which is causing distinct acoustic patterns and noise.

This is the point the Medical Chamber is making: “It has to be our objective to prevent sleep disorders, psychological effects and irreversible hearing damages, as they are also caused by wind farms” says Piero Lercher, the Chamber’s spokesperson for environmental medicine.

As complaints from residents about excessive and especially low-frequency noise and infrasound near wind farms are mounting, full scale investigations of potentially health-damaging effects are indispensable.

The phenomena currently observed in connection with the operations of large-scale wind power plants justify the demand for adequate safety distances — which is consistent with most expert’s view on following a precautionary principle on that issue. Says Lercher: impairments of well-being have to be taken seriously from a medical perspective, even if they are frequently attributed to a so-called “nocebo” phenomenon.

Lercher requires from manufacturers the use of environmentally friendly technologies and substances. “For example, so-called “permanently exited generators” contain large amounts of rare earths, whose mining processes lead to toxic and radioactive contaminations of vast areas in the mining regions” warns the environmental physician.

What Windpushers do to Rural Residents, is Outrageous! Corruption!!!

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Written by an Ontario Wind Victim

by ashbee2

Remember the days when you used to go to the local outdoor market to buy fresh baked goods, flowers and honey, and not to drag 120 “STOP THE WIND TURBINE” signs from the trunk of your car in hopes of educating the visitors.

Remember the days when you went to a council meeting because your neighbour two farms down wanted to sever a lot and build their parents a home, but not to beg the council to uncover some hidden ancient by-law to protect the sanctity of your health and home from swarming developers.

Remember when you could contact your health department with a concern and they would do everything in their power to help you, whatever it took, and they did not dismiss, insult and deny you with an issue serious enough that forced you to leave your home.

Remember when you used to get together once a year with your neighbours at the local town hall to have potluck just to catch up, not to line up at microphones wondering how you were going to protect each other?

Remember when children and the elderly were protected and cherished as those who may be considered at a disadvantage or needed extra loving care, not some extras in the household with “collateral damage” signs hanging from their necks.

Remember when someone asked what your favourite thing is and you said just going home, having a drink on the deck and forgetting my cares for the day, instead of locking the windows and doors up tight to block out the invasion and running away when you have to.

Remember when you used to go to family weddings and birthdays and could get lost in the excitement celebrating with everyone else, not sitting glumly in a corner with no recall of how to carry on a conversation that wasn’t slamming the government or railing against developers.

Remember the friends that used to come and visit once in a while, for some good conversation and a bite to eat, who now don’t come near you because you have been taken into the netherworld and you can’t get out.

Remember when you used to get in the car and drive for miles in anticipation of a great trip to a new unknown, and not driving for miles because you have to try to convince someone you’re having a big problem and you need them to listen.

Remember when you could come home, respond to your emails in 10 minutes and carry on with your family, and not sit in front of your computer researching, preparing and communicating until 12 AM and rising at 6 to start all over again.

Remember your Dad, pointing out the bird species and flora so you could recognize it when they graced your home, and not staring into the back yard and wondering where all the birds went and are they safe?

Remember the sounds on a warm summer night?

The sounds……

english_countryside_blue_fields

 

Lying Liberals have Got a lot of Nerve…..More finger-pointing from Wynne’s team!

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Reblogged from Sun News!

I’d love to give you details of Liberal Leader Kathleen Wynne’s campaign platform released Sunday.

Sadly, I can’t.

The Liberal campaign chose to release further details of their platform in Thunder Bay.

She took it as far away as she could from Toronto, no doubt to attract as few reporters as possible.

Only those news outlets that could afford the $7,000-$8,000 that the campaigns are charging reporters to sit in their buses could be there.

Those of us on more modest budgets are left to follow the campaign online.

And their Livestream system was a joke. It didn’t work.

At one point, I thought she said they’d “invest in in” and “build more hops.”

It could mean they’re going to invest in infrastructure and build more hospitals, but why take the risk of misquoting her?

If they want positive ink, they need to act in a more competent fashion.

Meanwhile, PC Leader Tim Hudak held a news conference to push his Million Jobs platform — and to counter Mississauga South Liberal Charles Sousa’s assertions that the Tories had their numbers wrong.

It started to sound like an economist’s version of how many angels can dance on the head of a pin.

I start to giggle when I hear a Liberal accusing anyone of getting their numbers wrong.

This is the party that came to power in 2003 by lying. They lied again in 2007, when they slammed John Tory’s plan for faith-based funding. By the 2011 election they were allowing “religious accommodation” in public schools.

One school in Kathleen Wynne’s own Don Valley West riding actually allows Friday prayers in a public school cafeteria for Muslim students.

If that’s not publicly funded faith-based schooling, I don’t know what is.

This is the government that told us their appalling Green Energy Act would create 60,000 jobs. In fact, as former auditor general Jim McCarter pointed out in a scathing report, not only did it not create jobs, it’s caused massive job losses in the manufacturing sector because the added cost of electricity has wreaked havoc in the rust belt.

Now we have Sousa, he of the avuncular voice, lecturing the Tories on their numbers.

To paraphrase a negative Working Families’ ad in the 2003 election, “Not this time, Charlie.”

If anyone actually believes the nonsense Sousa and his Liberal buddies are spouting in yet another say-anything-to-get elected campaign, they deserve the bad government they’ll get.

This is the same Liberal Party that scrapped the Mississauga gas plant during the last election, saying it would cost $40 million. The bill to scrap two plants came in at a whopping $1.1 billion.

Their May 1 budget was a joke. If they implement it, this province will be plunged even deeper into debt — and likely see a credit downgrade.

Hudak said Wynne and New Democrat Leader Andrea Horwath are “paralyzed by a desire to be popular,” while he’s giving voters the straight goods up front.

“The finance minister (Sousa) and Kathleen Wynne are so far in the pockets of the big government unions, they can’t see the reality out there,” Hudak told reporters.

From what I can gather from the glitchy livestream, Wynne promised to send Alberta what’s left of the Ontario manufacturing sector by introducing a new mandatory tax to pay for a pension plan only people now in their 20s will benefit from.

It almost makes you glad the Liberal track record is to lie about what they’ll deliver.

Remember, this is the party that came to power with a promise not to increase your taxes “one cent,” then brought in the biggest tax hike the province has ever seen in the first budget after they were elected.

I can’t believe there are enough suckers out there who are willing to give the Liberals a new mandate.

The polls say differently.

Apparently, the Liberals have such a sketchy platform, they’ll do anything not to tell us about it — and then blame computers.

A Conservative Government is What we Need, to Save our Economy!

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Governments rip up renewable contracts

Brady Yauch, Special to Financial Post 

Europe’s renewable energy investors are facing a harsh reality – that the promises from politicians can be taken away at any moment. Canada’s renewable energy investors may soon face that same reality.

Postmedia NewsEurope’s renewable energy investors are facing a harsh reality – that the promises from politicians can be taken away at any moment. Canada’s renewable energy investors may soon f

Companies ‘do not have a right [to expect the compensation] not to be changed’

Governments across Europe, regretting the over-generous deals doled out to the renewable energy sector, have begun reneging on them. To slow ruinous power bills hikes, governments are unilaterally rewriting contracts and clawing back unseemly profits.

In Italy, one of Europe’s largest economies and one that lavished billions in subsidies on the renewable sector, the government in 2013 applied its so-called “Robin Hood tax” to renewable energy producers. Under the new rule, renewable energy producers with more than €3 million in revenue and income greater than €300,000 must now pay a tax of 10.5%.

That follows a 2012 move to charge all solar producers a five cent tax per kilowatt hour on all self-consumed energy. The government also told solar producers that it would stop taking their power – and would offer no compensation – when their output overwhelms the system.

The result of these and other changes, says the solar industry, has been a surge in bankruptcies and a massive decrease in solar investment.

In Belgium – where both regional and federal bodies hand out renewable subsidies – a number of retroactive changes have capped the largesse renewable producers once received. In one region the price for “green certificates” – which producers received for renewable energy – was slashed by 79%. The government original committed to buy green certificates at a benchmarked price for 20 years, then cut it to 10 years.

Belgium’s regulators tried to impose a fee on all energy added to the grid from small- to medium-sized solar producers. While the country’s court of appeals struck down that fee, a defiant regional government plans to reintroduce it next year, forcing all solar producers to pay an annual fee that varies with the power they pump into the grid. Various municipalities, meanwhile, are introducing taxes on new and existing wind turbines.

As in Italy, Belgium’s renewable sector in the county has gone dark –“imploded” in the view of a solar industry publication. Many companies shrank or went bankrupt.

In France the government last year cut by 20% the “guaranteed” rate offered to all solar producers, and retroactively applied it to projects connected to the grid in the previous three months. The government is also considering ending an 11% tax break on solar energy producers.

Perhaps the most dramatic moves occurred in Spain, for years the poster child for those touting a transition to green energy. Since 2000, Spain has given renewable producers $41-billion more for their power than it has fetched on the open market. To recover those subsidies, the Spanish government recently killed its Feed In Tariff (FIT) program for renewables, which paid them an outlandishly high guaranteed price for their power, replacing it with the market price for their power plus a subsidy deemed more “reasonable.” Companies’ profits are now capped at a 7.4% return, following which they must then sell their power at market rates. That measure is retroactive, with renewable energy producers who got too fat off their profits now being starved until they reach the 7.4% cap.

For example, if a company spent $100-million on a solar installation in Spain and was posting a return of 14%, or $14-million, annually on that investment, then the government would cut it off from subsidies until its total return – starting from when it was first built – fell to 7.4%, or $7.4 million, a year.

Wind projects built before 2005 will no longer receive any form of subsidy – a move a wind energy trade group called a “sacking” of the sector that will see more than a third of wind producers lose their subsidy.

The fallout in Spain was immediate. Its solar sector, which once employed 60,000 workers, now employs 5,000. The wind sector is estimated to have laid off 20,000 workers. Ikea – the Swedish furniture retailer that became enamoured of renewables – announced it was cutting its losses and abandoning a solar plant it had built in Spain. Investment in the sector also collapsed. In 2011, Spain attracted $10 billion in solar investment. In 2013, the level of investment dropped by almost 90%.

Spain’s Supreme Court offered no sympathy to the solar industry, in ruling against its argument that the government’s retroactive changes were wrong.  “The evolution of the energy sector …  was putting the financial sustainability of the electricity system at risk,” the court decided, adding that the companies “do not have a right [to expect the government compensation regime] not to be changed.”

Europe’s renewable energy investors are facing a harsh reality – that the promises from politicians can be taken away at any moment. Canada’s renewable energy investors may soon face that same reality.

Brady Yauch is an economist and executive director of Consumer Policy Institute, a division of Energy Probe Research Foundation.

Memorial Day for Wind Turbine Victims in Massachusetts!

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Memorial Day Fairhaven & Falmouth Massachusetts

http://falmouth.patch.com/groups/opinion/p/memorial-day-fairhaven–falmouth
Memorial Day Fairhaven & Falmouth – Remember the Wind Turbine Victims Massachusetts

Memorial Day Fairhaven & Falmouth

Posted by Frank Haggerty , May 26, 2014

Memorial Day Wind Turbine Victims

Memorial Day Fairhaven & Falmouth Massachusetts
Remember the Massachusetts wind turbine victims on Memorial Day
The Massachusetts Democratic Party Platform has declared an actual war on fossil fuels. The party has prioritized its attention and action on the scale equivalent to a major war. The decision has been made to take immediate action at all levels of government.
Massachusetts has a renewable energy goal of 2000 megawatts of renewable energy by the year 2020.
Reference : Climate Crisis in this link; http://massdems.org/state-committee/governance/platform/
There is a war brewing in American over commercial wind turbines that, in times past, could not have been predicted or imagined. This is a war that involves the invasion of American’s rights and freedoms and will, if allowed to continue unabated, lead to the destruction of the U.S. Constitution as well as our democracy.
Investigative journalists should understand that their reckless ignorance of wind turbine victims rights could have an adverse effect on this nation’s Constitutional right of the freedom of speech as exercised by its journalistic community.
There are those who are not afraid to expose serious government abuses.
On Veterans Day ,November 14, 2011 the Town of Fairhaven and wind turbine contractors used that day to start construction of two massive megawatt wind turbines. The work continued through the Veterans Day weekend to clear land. The abutters to the wind turbine site were taken by surprise with no formal warning. Where was the respect for all the Veterans on this weekend ?
The common problem with commercial wind turbines is the two types of noise described in a wind turbine study done for the Town of Mattapoisett in 2005. The reference to the two distinct types of noise was dropped in order to build the Falmouth wind turbines in 2010. State officials were aware of noise issues in 2005. No turbines were ever built in Mattapoisett because of the reference to the two types of noise.
Residents of Falmouth & Fairhaven in order to file a noise complaint against the turbines had to fill out special written certified noise complaints which had to be documented by local town officials. The state felt that people would huff and puff and just go away. Today, Massachusetts is faced with thousands of certified noise complaints.
For the last four years state and local boards of health officials have ignored the documented noise complaints. They have taken no action.
The Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection has found the turbines out of state noise regulations and has taken no action.
The war on fossil fuels declared by the Massachusetts Democratic Party Platform is ongoing. Laws and regulations are being ignored that effect the wind turbine victims around the wind turbines. These victims are viewed as collateral damage in the war on fossil fuels.
The general public has been conditioned over the past years to expect the abutters of the wind turbines to sacrifice their health and constitutional property rights so the rest of us can breathe clean air.
Massachusetts officials in the executive branch of government have used obfuscation as a method to stop the thousands of wind turbine noise complaints. Massachusetts appointed wind turbine advocates to conduct a state wind turbine study with a predetermined conclusion.
The Massachusetts Clean Energy Center is now paying the Town of Falmouth up to 1.8 million dollars to pay court costs of the wind turbines against the wind turbine victims.
How much longer can local residents fight for their health and rights without resources.
The war continues in Falmouth with the town filing lawsuit after lawsuit against itself.
Folks, The wind turbine victims in Massachusetts are veterans of the actual war declared by the Massachusetts Democratic Party Platform. These people are not dead but are and have been wounded by the poor placement of commercial wind turbines.
Ed & Sue Hobart of Falmouth put up a brave fight against the wind turbines. The cost of litigation, health and noise from the turbines caused them to give up their dream home on six acres of land in Falmouth.
They are the real heroes today.
On this Memorial Day I ask you all to remember all the victims of the wind turbines and the ongoing war on fossil fuels.
Remember NIMBY used to mean “not in my back yard.” Today it means “next it could be you. “


If Global Warming is the problem….Wind turbines are NOT the Solution!

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Ken Braun: If the climate is ablaze, why waste time

and money on wind-powered fire trucks?

NUKE PLANT.jpg
Palisades Nuclear Power Plant in Covert Township. ((Mark Bugnaski | MLive/Kalamazoo Gazette/FILE))

The UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change predicts we can’t stop the impact of rising seas and flooded cities, and demands radical cuts to carbon emissions or Doomsday will be worse. The loudest climate alarmists demand energy options that produce zero carbon, and show it by supporting the continued river of tax dollars washing toward promises of producing lots of our power from pleasant breezes and rays of sunshine: wind and solar.

It would be easier to take this all more seriously if they’d propose realistic solutions. Skeptics of the Doomsday scenarios are constantly beat about the head regarding the overwhelming “scientific consensus” regarding the implications of climate change.

Yet where is the overwhelming statement of scientific consensus in favor of pouring all these tax subsidies into options that really work, such as low carbon natural gas and zero carbon nuclear?

If the emergency is as dire as advertised, climate scientists should be united in loudly denouncing the wind welfare lobby for wasting so much of the rescue money.

A report from the Brookings Institution demonstrates that wind doesn’t always blow, and often blows most when needed least. Windmills run at just 25 percent capacity (versus 90+ percent for coal, gas and nuclear.) The story is more sad for solar: 15 percent. Factoring this in, wind power is 50 percent more expensive than coal or natural gas.

Tens of billions of dollars (or more) have already flooded down this rathole, and the wind lobby wants more, calling for a continuation of the recently cancelled federal wind power subsidy. This would chew up another $60 billion over ten years.

Low carbon natural gas provides the cheapest and most readily available electricity source there is. But instead of demanding it receive the corporate welfare, climate alarmists instead attack the hydraulic fracking technology that makes natural gas so attractive.

Well, is the world on fire or not?

Brookings supports a carbon tax, but is very critical of the wind subsidies. The report says nuclear energy is a more costly alternative than coal and natural gas, but is vastly cheaper than wind.

Leaving aside low carbon – yet not zero carbon – natural gas, if climate-saving corporate welfare really must be used to produce power without any carbon emissions at all, then nuclear is the place to spend it. Excluding the safety scofflaws of the former Soviet Empire, nuclear power has an excellent safety record: Nobody died from Fukushima, compared to 65 American coal miners killed just since 2001.

A new nuclear plant in Georgia is expected to cost its owner something north of $14 billion (let’s round up crazy to $20 billion.) When operational, just this plant will crank out power equal to ten percent of the total electricity produced by every single wind farm in America last year.

With the objective of cooling the climate, $60 billion from the 2009 federal “Stimulus” Bill went to subsidize green energy, public transit, energy efficiency and the like. Now the wind welfare lobby wants another $60 billion to save its own dubious corporate welfare.

That $120 billion could provide a ten percent subsidy to build 60 nuclear plants like the one in Georgia. Those sixty plants would create six times more electricity than every wind farm currently in operation.

If climate scientists believe the planet is in peril, then they owe it to their cause to denounce climate alarmists who burn our cash on bogus solutions. Otherwise, the advice they’re giving us is this: “The town is ablaze right now, but please waste billions of dollars and hours building wind-powered fire trucks.”

Pardon the skepticism.

Liberal Wind Turbines Invading Ontario!

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KAGAWONG – Looks like Martians landed on Manitoulin Island this spring. Liberal Martians.

They hulk on McLean’s Mountain behind Little Current, Manitoulin’s metropolis, pop. 1,500.

What a shocking sight it is as you approach the century-old iron swing bridge, the only land link.

When I left last October, there was nothing between that ridge and God but treetops and clouds.

Now? Someone call Orson Welles.

“It’s like we’ve been invaded,” Deb Turner tells me at Turners of Little Current, a 135-year-old department store.

The War of the Worlds giants also march along the Cup and Saucer trail behind M’Chigeeng, the closest Ojibwa reserve to my woodsy shack near Kagawong, “Ontario’s Prettiest Village.”

“They’re a blight,” says Deb’s husband, Jib, who is running for Tim Hudak’s Tories.

Jib’s great-great-grandmother was migrating west when her boat arrived at this Paradise and she declared, “I don’t know about you, but I’m staying right here.”

Who could blame her? Or the Martians? The Ojibwa call this Spirit Island with reason.

The invaders, of course, are not really Martians, but windmills. McGuinty Mushrooms. Dalton’s Big Wind. Built so Liberals could feel warm and fuzzy.

There are 24 on McLean’s Mountain and two at M’Chigeeng, each 150 metres, including blade. They dwarf the Peace Tower, the Taj Mahal, Rogers Centre, even Adam Vaughan’s ego. They are higher than Rob Ford on a Saturday night.

You could live with them, I guess, if they were productive or cost-effective or were going to save us from Doomsday …

But here’s the rub: At 10 a.m. Sunday, of 13,116 megawatts total output across Ontario, just 130 megawatts came from windmills, according to a government website (ieso.ca) where nuclear and hydro still reign.

The “others” category even out-produced windmills. “Other” what, the solar reflection from Kathleen Wynne’s spectacles?

The province has 1,026 windmills to date. So according to my solar-powered calculator we’ll need 1,035,234 of the beasts to meet our energy needs. You’ll have one in your driveway.

I doubt there’ll be one in Ms Wynne’s backyard. No need to go NIMBY when you’re premier. I poke my head out of the deep woods long enough to be dumbfounded that polls give her a good shot at retaining power.

What are we, masochists? The most cynical, interfering, scandalous, overripe government in memory is even-money to repeat?! McGuinty, Wynne, McWynnety?

The Liberals’ Green Energy Act (GEA) has foisted “wind farms” on rural Ontarians while blindly ignoring wind’s unreliability, the millions it costs to connect to the grid, and minimal ecological gains.

But you know this already. Everyone from the Fraser Institute to the auditor general has slammed the GEA as hasty and wasteful — and a key reason your hydro bills are soaring.

Windmills are a boondoggle on par with Ornge, eHealth, the $270-billion debt and the infamous gas plants.

In the real world, heads would fall. The fact this election is still close does not say much for Tim Hudak but anyone’s better than Premier Mom and, before her, Premier Dad. Surely.

Island voters seem discombobulated, too. As of noon Sunday, an online poll in the superb little Manitoulin Expositor had Jib Turner at 26.4%, the NDP at 25.4% and Liberals at 25.05%.

Tighter than a deer’s arse in fly season.

Algoma-Manitoulin was longtime Liberal, before the NDP stole it in 2011.

As for windmills, opposition ran 68% in a Sudbury Star poll as construction began.

There are supporters, too. I bump into Audrey Jones, whose family’s dairy farm is newly decorated with windmills. (They reportedly earn landowners up to $30,000 rent.)

When I suggest the behemoths are alien to this idyllic, summery isle, she says:

“We live here year-round and make a living from our land to the best of our ability. Is that wrong?”

On the other hand, Dr. Bill Studzienny, a dentist in Gore Bay, down the shore from me, declared last summer he would not work on the teeth of pro-windmill politicians.

Studzienny told me he feared his hand would shake in anger during a root canal.

“I’m only human,” he said. “Would a woman want to see a gynecologist who has no respect for her (views)?”

Makes sense to me, long as it’s no emergency, but the Royal College of Dental Surgeons of Ontario disagrees. It recently charged Studzienny with “disgraceful, dishonourable or unethical conduct.”

Mmmm. “Disgraceful, dishonourable, unethical …”

If Kathleen McWynnety and company were dentists, they’d be outta here.

Tories will take the Wind out of the Wind Scam! Fantastic!

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Ill wind blows for turbines if Tories win: Wilson 18

By Morgan Ian Adams, Enterprise-Bulletin

Friday, May 23, 2014 5:00:38 EDT PM

Simcoe-Grey Progressive Conservative candidate Jim Wilson (second from right) makes a campaign announcement during a stop at the Collingwood Regional Airport, Friday, May 23, 2014. With Wilson are, from left, pilot Alexander Younger, pilot and airport board chair Charlie Tatham, and pilot Kevin Elwood. Morgan Ian Adams/Collingwood Enterprise-Bulletin/QMI Agency

Simcoe-Grey Progressive Conservative candidate Jim Wilson (second from right) makes a campaign announcement during a stop at the Collingwood Regional Airport, Friday, May 23, 2014. With Wilson are, from left, pilot Alexander Younger, pilot and airport board chair Charlie Tatham, and pilot Kevin Elwood. Morgan Ian Adams/Collingwood Enterprise-Bulletin/QMI AgencCLEARVIEW Twp. —The Progressive Conservative candidate for Simcoe-Grey says he’d put a stop to a company’s plans to erect wind turbines near the local airport should his party form the next government.

By Morgan Ian Adams, Enterprise-Bulletin
CLEARVIEW Twp. —The Progressive Conservative candidate for Simcoe-Grey says he’d put a stop to a company’s plans to erect wind turbines near the local airport should his party form the next government.

In a campaign stop at the Collingwood Regional Airport Friday morning, during which he slammed the existing Green Energy Act and the impact he says it has had on electricity bills, Jim Wilson promised a Progressive Conservative government would do what it could to halt WPD Canada’s plans to erect turbines near the facility should his party win the June 12 provincial election.

WPD’s proposal is to erect eight turbines in the area north of County Road 91; at least two of the proposed 500-foot-tall turbines are within an area the municipal services board that manages the airport say are a potential safety hazard to aircraft, especially in the landing or take-off phase, while another three turbines are considered on the edge of that area.

WPD’s plans are presently under technical review by the Ministry of Environment.

“We’ll do whatever it takes to stop WPD Canada from putting the wind turbines in this vicinity,” said Wilson. “It is in process, and it may end up in a lawsuit, but we just can’t allow it.”

“If you’re going to prevent death, you do everything you can to do that — you have a moral obligation to do that.”

The airport board, and several landowners in the area, have been fighting the proposal for several years; both Collingwood and Clearview Township municipal councils have also voiced their opposition.

One of those landowners, Kevin Ellwood — who has a private aerodrome on his farm on County Road 91, and is faced with the prospect of having a turbine in the path of his landing strip — has filed 39 access-to-information requests of various ministries on WPD’s proposal.

Some of those requests are now before an adjudicator to see if the information will be released.

The turbines, said Ellwood, are “dangerous and significant threats to pilots and their passengers.”

Ellwood and Wilson both point to a crash in South Dakota in April that killed four, after a Piper 32 aircraft collided with a turbine in poor weather conditions. The National Transportation Safety Board is investigating, but authorities have not released any details on the crash.

Regional airport board chair Charlie Tatham, who was on hand for Wilson’s announcement, said he’s tried to point out to provincial officials that the location of the turbines “pose a lethal danger… yet they choose to ignore it.

“To ignore it could lead to someone’s death at some point,” he said.

WPD’s position has been the location of the turbines will have a negligible effect on airport movements.

Wilson, however, remains unconvinced, and says the location of the turbines is just one of the problems with the Green Energy Act, which the Conservatives claim will cost electricity customers $46 billion over the next 20 years, paying out contracts for wind and solar power at rates that far exceed current electricity prices.

“Hopefully we can stop it, that there’s some escape clauses (in the agreements)… but I don’t know the full extent of these (contracts and what’s hidden in them,” said Wilson. “There are thousands, tens of thousands of these contracts that are essentially secret and covered up from the public. This one just keeps on rolling ahead and (government) doesn’t seem to be listening to anybody.”

Wilson said a former provincial Liberal cabinet minister warned the legal costs of putting a halt to some of these contracts would be in the billions of dollars, but that point is irrelevant when considering the long-term cost of paying out energy contracts — or worse, if someone dies because a plane hits a wind turbine located close to the airport.

“It’s a lot cheaper than paying people 20 years of contracts when they get paid whether the wind blows or the sun shines. It’s going to bankrupt the province, so you might as well just cut your losses,” said Wilson.

“It’s a moral choice, it’s an expensive choice, but it’s one we’re going to have to make. Hopefully we can get to the bottom of this on day-one (of a new government)… it may require that we talk to our lawyers, it may require new legislation to undo the Green Energy Act, and if we have to do that… well (the legislature) is supreme.”