noise

Climate Alarmists Are Not Speaking the Truth!

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GREENPEACE CO-FOUNDER SAYS THAT MAN-MADE CLIMATE CHANGE

FAILS THE MOST BASIC PRINCIPLES OF SCIENTIFIC METHOD

James Delingpole — Breitbart.com — June 19, 2014

“Climate change” is a theory for which there is “no scientific proof at all” says the co-founder of Greenpeace. And the green movement has become a “combination of extreme political ideology and religious fundamentalism rolled into one.”

Patrick Moore, a Canadian environmentalist who helped found Greenpeace in the Seventies but subsequently left in protest at its increasingly extreme, anti-scientific, anti-capitalist stance, argues that the green position on climate change fails the most basic principles of the scientific method.

“The certainty among many scientists that humans are the main cause of climate change, including global warming, is not based on the replication of observable events. It is based on just two things, the theoretical effect of human-caused greenhouse gas emissions, predominantly carbon dioxide, and the predictions of computer models using those theoretical calculations. There is no scientific “proof” at all.”

Moore goes on to list some key facts about “climate change” which are ignored by true believers.
1. The concentration of CO2 in the global atmosphere is lower today, even including human emissions, than it has been during most of the existence of life on Earth.
2. The global climate has been much warmer than it is today during most of the existence of life on Earth. Today we are in an interglacial period of the Pleistocene Ice Age that began 2.5 million years ago and has not ended.
3. There was an Ice Age 450 million years ago when CO2 was about 10 times higher than it is today.
4. Humans evolved in the tropics near the equator. We are a tropical species and can only survive in colder climates due to fire, clothing and shelter.
5. CO2 is the most important food for all life on earth. All green plants use CO2 to produce the sugars that provide energy for their growth and our growth. Without CO2 in the atmosphere carbon-based life could never have evolved.  Continue reading here…..

Antarctic2-2

John Madigan, an Australian Hero! (If Only We Had a Man Like Him!!!)

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A First Rate Senator (John Madigan) Skewers

a Third Rate Human Being (Simon Chapman)

June 19, 2014 by 

Victorian Senator, John Madigan delivered an utterly brilliant speech in the Commonwealth Senate this week. See the video below; Hansard (transcript) follows.

As to the Senator, John Madigan provides a salient example of what can happen when decency, integrity and courage all combine in defence of the weak and vulnerable among us; and in pursuit of the truth. The man is made of fearless stuff; and, in our view, stands as one of the Parliamentary Greats: William Wilberforce and his 26 year campaign to end slavery readily springs to mind. The passion with which he delivers this speech is, self evidently, the product of the man’s compassion and empathy; as he says: “every life matters and every life is important”. Hear, hear!

As to the speech, it can be covered in two words: “truly wonderful”.

***

COMMONWEALTH OF AUSTRALIA
SENATE
Hansard
TUESDAY, 17 JUNE 2014
BY AUTHORITY OF THE SENATE
PROOF

Senator MADIGAN (Victoria) (23:20): I rise to speak tonight on the privilege of this parliament to operate without fear or favour. Members and senators have the right to undertake their duties freely to represent their constituents — it is the reason we are here. Any attempt to gag a senator or member of parliament, any attempt to exert influence by means of threat or intimidation is a breach of parliamentary privilege. This could incur the most serious penalties. Tonight I will speak of such an attempt by a high-profile Australian academic. This academic has a track record of making fun of people in regional and rural communities who are sick. He trades in scuttlebutt. He makes consistent attacks on anyone who makes a complaint against his network of corporate buddies. This academic has become the poster boy for an industry which has a reputation for dishonesty and for bullying.

I have a policy of playing the issue, not the man. Policies should always go before personalities. It is a personal credo, one I have practised all my life and specifically in my professional duties since my election in 2010. But since I have been investigating matters related to wind turbines for almost 10 years now I have recorded a consistent track record of vilification, denigration and attack by those on the other side of this debate. This is an industry that sucks hundreds of millions of dollars in subsidies from the public purse. This industrial power generation sector is an industry that masquerades under a false veneer of ‘saving the environment’.

The wind industry is about one thing in this country: it exists to make people rich at the expense of many rural and regional Australians, their lives and their communities. My investigation shows it does not decrease carbon dioxide, it does not reduce power costs, it does not improve the environment. And this academic in question stands shoulder to shoulder with the wind industry companies and their colourful — and I use that term deliberately — executives. He promotes their products. He attacks their critics. He attends their conferences. He rubs shoulders with their henchmen. He is, in the words of the former member for Hume, Alby Schultz — who was a great campaigner on this issue, I might add — devoid of any decency and courage.

But, first, some background. My party, the Democratic Labour Party, has a long tradition of standing up for principle in the face of enormous opposition. My party was born in conflict and forged in sacrifice. No other political party in Australia can boast that its parliamentary founders — 51 in total, including 14 ministers and a state Premier — were prepared to sacrifice promising political careers to uphold the belief dedicated to freedom from undue and corrupt influence. The DLP was the first Australian political party to promote the vote for 18-year-olds. We were the first political party to call for equal pay for equal work and equity in education funding. We were the first political party to call for an end to the White Australia policy. And when our veterans returned from Vietnam, bloody but unbowed, DLP parliamentarians marched in their ranks while the rest of Australia turned their backs.

The DLP is a party of principle. We respect the dignity and the sanctity of life. From the womb to the grave, from the primary school to the factory floor, we see every life as unique and having intrinsic value. This is the cornerstone of the DLP; this is the foundation upon which I place every vote. That is why my attention has been turned to the wind industry for almost a decade now, even before my election to the Senate. I have seen firsthand the devastation it has caused communities. I have listened firsthand to the stories of wrecked families’ lives: family farms destroyed and small outback areas torn apart. I have seen the empty homes in Victoria at Waubra, Macarthur, Cape Bridgewater and Leonards Hill. I have listened to country people tell me stories of corporate bullying and deceit, and of corporate fraud in matters of compliance. I have repeatedly called for one thing on this issue: independent Australian research into the health problems that wind farms apparently cause. That is all — independent research. It is a question of justice. It is about getting to the bottom of this issue.

So when I spoke with Alan Jones onto 2GB on 27 March, I made one simple point. I told Mr Jones we need to be careful about people who profess to be experts in this area. For the benefit of the Senate I repeat what I said in
that interview:

… when we talk about people, using the title, using a title, such as Professor, let us be clear crystal clear here Alan. Most people in the community assume that when you use the title Professor, that you are trained in the discipline of which you speak. And I ask people, look and check. What is the person making these proclamations about other people’s health? What is the discipline they are trained in of which they speak? Because most people in the public assume when you speak of an issue of health, that you are trained in the discipline of which you speak, and there are people making pronouncements and denigrating people who are not trained in human health.

I stand by this statement. It is fair and reasonable to encourage people to look behind the blatant campaigning done by people like Professor Chapman of the University of Sydney.

But it is the statement that has prompted him to threaten me, utilising a law firm that was instrumental in the set-up of Hepburn Wind. He has threatened to sue me for libel over this statement unless I pay him $40,000 plus costs. He has threatened to sue me for libel unless I organise an apology on the website of 2GB and an anti-wind farm website called Stop These Things. He has threatened me with contempt of parliament and a breach of parliamentary privilege if I raise these matters in the Senate. This reaction by Professor Chapman is something that my more experienced parliamentary colleagues have labelled a blatant try-on. It is another attempt by the wind industry to silence me, to scare me off and to intimidate me. It is a case of a Sydney university academic firing shots across the bow of the blacksmith from Ballarat.

This is something he has done before now, tweeting about my position on this issue, always in the context of my background as a blacksmith — a background, I add, that I am enormously proud of. I remain one of the wind industry’s most stubborn and outspoken critics. I will not be silenced. I will not give up on the injustice inflicted on people who claim to be impacted by living near turbines. I will not stop. My comments to Alan Jones were a series of rhetorical statements or questions about the assumptions members of the public should be entitled to make when somebody professes to be qualified to speak about an issue of public health. In other words, I was asking people to check that so-called experts on this issue are relevantly trained and qualified. It is a reasonable request. Our media and the internet are crawling with self-appointed experts. Daily we operate in a cacophony of opinion presented as fact.

Professor Chapman has been an outspoken critic of those who have dared to question the wind farm orthodoxy. But is Professor Chapman a medical doctor? Is he legally entitled to examine and treat patients? Is he qualified in acoustics or any other aspect of audiology? Is he a sleep specialist? Does he hold any qualifications in bioacoustics or physiology or neuroscience? How many wind farm victims has he interviewed directly? How many wind farm impacted homes has he visited? Professor Chapman claims to receive no payment from the wind industry. How many wind industry conferences, seminars and events has he spoken at? How many wind industry events has he attended? Writing on the Crikey website in November 2011, Professor Chapman lamented how many conferences do not pay speaker’s fees, and, when one conference organiser refused to pay his hotel bill, he withdrew. This is the same Professor Chapman who was photographed at a campaign launch in Melbourne by the Danish wind turbine manufacturer Vestas. Did Vestas pay your hotel bill and other costs, Professor Chapman? These are reasonable questions — they put in context his actions.

I take this opportunity to draw the attention of the Senate to the discovery of a 2004 PowerPoint presentation by Vestas employee Erik Sloth to the former Australian Wind Energy Association, now the Clean Energy Council. This demonstrated Vestas knew a decade ago that safer buffers are required to protect neighbours from noise. Vestas knew their preconstruction noise models were not accurate. I draw the attention of the Senate to a quote from the presentation that Vestas knew then that ‘noise from wind turbines sometimes annoys people even if the noise is below noise limits.’ This is confirmation that the global wind industry have known for more than a decade that their turbines impact on nearby residents. How can Professor Chapman reconcile his ridicule of the reasons numerous people have been forced to abandon their homes with the knowledge that the company initiating this campaign he attended knew a decade ago there were problems?

As a public health academic, Professor Chapman displays a lack of compassion for people who claim to be suffering debilitating effects from pervasive wind turbine noise. Professor Chapman’s undergraduate qualifications were in sociology. His PhD looked into the relationship between cigarette smoke and advertising. I question his expertise, I question his qualifications and I question his unbridled motivation to promote and support the wind industry at the cost of people’s lives, homes and communities. I question Professor Chapman’s lack of interest in speaking with wind industry victims. Professor Chapman has a record of public denigration of victims. I refer to his tweet in February this year about ‘wind farm wing nuts’.

One of the important things about this fight that is going on across rural Australia is that it is country women who are in the front line. Farmers’ wives are running hard, fighting to save their families, fighting to save their homes, fighting to save their communities. It is often these women who suffer the most denigration. It is a roll call of honour — people like Mary Morris of South Australia; Dr Andja Mitric Andjic in Victoria; Sonia Trist,Joanne Kermond and Melissa Ware at Cape Bridgewater; Colleen Watts in New South Wales; and, of course, the extraordinary Sarah Laurie in South Australia.

One more example: Annie Gardner and her husband, Gus, have lived and worked happily and healthfully for 34 years on their farming property in south-west Victoria. This came to a sudden halt in October 2012 when the first 15 turbines of the Macarthur wind farm began operation. In a recent letter to the AMA Annie said she is now able to get only two or three hours sleep each night in her own home. She writes: ‘At the time of writing this letter, I am suffering terribly from the infrasound emitted by the 140 turbines located far too close to our property. I have a bad headache. I have very strong pains shooting up through the back of my neck and into my head. I have extremely sore and blocked ears and very painful pressure in my nose. I have pressure in my jaws and my teeth. My heart is pounding. I can feel the vibration going through my body through the chair like an electric charge. The infrasound in our bedroom was appalling. I could feel the vibration through the mattress and the pillow like an electric charge through my body. My head felt as if a brick was on it, and the pressure and pain in my nose was extreme.’

Annie Gardner would be what Professor Chapman would call a ‘wind farm wing nut’. Writing on a green movement website earlier this year, Professor Chapman said protesting against wind farms is a fringe activity as if to suggest that the hundreds of people who attended and spoke at anti-wind farm forums I have held across my home state of Victoria and interstate are simply collateral damage. I cannot live with such a utilitarian view. As I said, even putting aside the highly questionable environmental, social and economic benefits of wind farms, every life matters and every life is important. I have sat in people’s homes and kitchens. I know firsthand the suffering they experience from these industrial developments. Professor Chapman’s attempts to gag me are the same as his attempts to silence those who object to the great wind farm scam. It is part of a greater attempt to silence open and transparent debate on this issue. It does no service to academia or to science already under much attack. It does nothing to advance discussion or progress.

Surely the big businesses behind this attempt — the entities who are funding it, like Bleyer Lawyers, who have worked for Hepburn Wind — should remember cases such as McDonald’s and Gunns. For the environmental movement to attempt this shallow legal shooting of a mere messenger is poor judgement in my view. Bullies corporate or otherwise never get far. Surely it is apparent that companies that use the courts to silence opposition lose out in the court of public opinion. To borrow words from the great human rights campaigner Malcolm X:

I’m for truth, no matter who tells it. I’m for justice, no matter who it’s for or against.

If Professor Chapman proceeds with this action, I look forward to having him answer in court those questions I have raised here tonight — questions about his qualifications, his expertise and his links with the wind industry financial or otherwise. I look forward to his cross-examination under oath as equally as I look forward to mine. I say this: his action, if it proceeds, is doomed in a legal setting or elsewhere for one reason; it is not based on the truth.
Senator Madigan 

One phrase sums up the Senator’s attitude and approach to the wind industry’s vast (and, as he puts it, “colourful”) cast of bullies and thugs: Sic semper tyrannis – “thus always to tyrants.” More power to John Madigan.

John Madigan

 

Excellent Article About Reading, and Understanding Scientific Papers…for all of us!

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How to read and understand a scientific paper: a guide for non-scientists

Jennifer Raff 

Last week’s post (The truth about vaccinations: Your physician knows more than the University of Google) sparked a very lively discussion, with comments from several people trying to persuade me (and the other readers) that their paper disproved everything that I’d been saying. While I encourage you to go read the comments and contribute your own, here I want to focus on the much larger issue that this debate raised: what constitutes scientific authority?

It’s not just a fun academic problem. Getting the science wrong has very real consequences. For example, when a community doesn’t vaccinate children because they’re afraid of “toxins” and think that prayer (or diet, exercise, and “clean living”) is enough to prevent infection, outbreaks happen.

“Be skeptical. But when you get proof, accept proof.” –Michael Specter

What constitutes enough proof? Obviously everyone has a different answer to that question. But to form a truly educated opinion on a scientific subject, you need to become familiar with current research in that field.  And to do that, you have to read the “primary research literature” (often just called “the literature”). You might have tried to read scientific papers before and been frustrated by the dense, stilted writing and the unfamiliar jargon. I remember feeling this way!  Reading and understanding research papers is a skill which every single doctor and scientist has had to learn during graduate school.  You can learn it too, but like any skill it takes patience and practice.

I want to help people become more scientifically literate, so I wrote this guide for how a layperson can approach reading and understanding a scientific research paper. It’s appropriate for someone who has no background whatsoever in science or medicine, and based on the assumption that he or she is doing this for the purpose of getting a basic understanding of a paper and deciding whether or not it’s a reputable study.

The type of scientific paper I’m discussing here is referred to as a primary research article. It’s a peer-reviewed report of new research on a specific question (or questions). Another useful type of publication is a review article. Review articles are also peer-reviewed, and don’t present new information, but summarize multiple primary research articles, to give a sense of the consensus, debates, and unanswered questions within a field.  (I’m not going to say much more about them here, but be cautious about which review articles you read. Remember that they are only a snapshot of the research at the time they are published.  A review article on, say, genome-wide association studies from 2001 is not going to be very informative in 2013. So much research has been done in the intervening years that the field has changed considerably).

Before you begin: some general advice
Reading a scientific paper is a completely different process than reading an article about science in a blog or newspaper. Not only do you read the sections in a different order than they’re presented, but you also have to take notes, read it multiple times, and probably go look up other papers for some of the details. Reading a single paper may take you a very long time at first. Be patient with yourself. The process will go much faster as you gain experience.

Most primary research papers will be divided into the following sections: Abstract, Introduction, Methods, Results, and Conclusions/Interpretations/Discussion. The order will depend on which journal it’s published in. Some journals have additional files (called Supplementary Online Information) which contain important details of the research, but are published online instead of in the article itself (make sure you don’t skip these files).

Before you begin reading, take note of the authors and their institutional affiliations. Some institutions (e.g. University of Texas) are well-respected; others (e.g. the Discovery Institute) may appear to be legitimate research institutions but are actually agenda-driven. Tip: google “Discovery Institute” to see why you don’t want to use it as a scientific authority on evolutionary theory.

Also take note of the journal in which it’s published. Reputable (biomedical) journals will be indexed by Pubmed. [EDIT: Several people have reminded me that non-biomedical journals won’t be on Pubmed, and they’re absolutely correct! (thanks for catching that, I apologize for being sloppy here). Check out Web of Science for a more complete index of science journals. And please feel free to share other resources in the comments!]   Beware of questionable journals.

 As you read, write down every single word that you don’t understand. You’re going to have to look them all up (yes, every one. I know it’s a total pain. But you won’t understand the paper if you don’t understand the vocabulary. Scientific words have extremely precise meanings).

Step-by-step instructions for reading a primary research article

1. Begin by reading the introduction, not the abstract.

The abstract is that dense first paragraph at the very beginning of a paper. In fact, that’s often theonly part of a paper that many non-scientists read when they’re trying to build a scientific argument. (This is a terrible practice—don’t do it.).  When I’m choosing papers to read, I decide what’s relevant to my interests based on a combination of the title and abstract. But when I’ve got a collection of papers assembled for deep reading, I always read the abstract last. I do this because abstracts contain a succinct summary of the entire paper, and I’m concerned about inadvertently becoming biased by the authors’ interpretation of the results.

2. Identify the BIG QUESTION.

Not “What is this paper about”, but “What problem is this entire field trying to solve?”

This helps you focus on why this research is being done.  Look closely for evidence of agenda-motivated research.

3. Summarize the background in five sentences or less.

Here are some questions to guide you:

What work has been done before in this field to answer the BIG QUESTION? What are the limitations of that work? What, according to the authors, needs to be done next?

The five sentences part is a little arbitrary, but it forces you to be concise and really think about the context of this research. You need to be able to explain why this research has been done in order to understand it.

4. Identify the SPECIFIC QUESTION(S)

What exactly are the authors trying to answer with their research? There may be multiple questions, or just one. Write them down.  If it’s the kind of research that tests one or more null hypotheses, identify it/them.

Not sure what a null hypothesis is? Go read this, then go back to my last post and read one of the papers that I linked to (like this one) and try to identify the null hypotheses in it. Keep in mind that not every paper will test a null hypothesis.

5. Identify the approach

What are the authors going to do to answer the SPECIFIC QUESTION(S)?

 6. Now read the methods section. Draw a diagram for each experiment, showing exactly what the authors did.

I mean literally draw it. Include as much detail as you need to fully understand the work.  As an example, here is what I drew to sort out the methods for a paper I read today (Battaglia et al. 2013: “The first peopling of South America: New evidence from Y-chromosome haplogroup Q”). This is much less detail than you’d probably need, because it’s a paper in my specialty and I use these methods all the time.  But if you were reading this, and didn’t happen to know what “process data with reduced-median method using Network” means, you’d need to look that up.

Battaglia et al. methods

You don’t need to understand the methods in enough detail to replicate the experiment—that’s something reviewers have to do—but you’re not ready to move on to the results until you can explain the basics of the methods to someone else.

7. Read the results section. Write one or more paragraphs to summarize the results for each experiment, each figure, and each table. Don’t yet try to decide what the resultsmean, just write down what they are.

You’ll find that, particularly in good papers, the majority of the results are summarized in the figures and tables. Pay careful attention to them!  You may also need to go to the Supplementary Online Information file to find some of the results.

 It is at this point where difficulties can arise if statistical tests are employed in the paper and you don’t have enough of a background to understand them. I can’t teach you stats in this post, buthere, here, and here are some basic resources to help you.  I STRONGLY advise you to become familiar with them.

 THINGS TO PAY ATTENTION TO IN THE RESULTS SECTION:

-Any time the words “significant” or “non-significant” are used. These have precise statistical meanings. Read more about this here.

-If there are graphs, do they have error bars on them? For certain types of studies, a lack of confidence intervals is a major red flag.

-The sample size. Has the study been conducted on 10, or 10,000 people? (For some research purposes, a sample size of 10 is sufficient, but for most studies larger is better).

8. Do the results answer the SPECIFIC QUESTION(S)? What do you think they mean?

Don’t move on until you have thought about this. It’s okay to change your mind in light of the authors’ interpretation—in fact you probably will if you’re still a beginner at this kind of analysis—but it’s a really good habit to start forming your own interpretations before you read those of others.

9. Read the conclusion/discussion/Interpretation section.

What do the authors think the results mean? Do you agree with them? Can you come up with anyalternative way of interpreting them? Do the authors identify any weaknesses in their own study? Do you see any that the authors missed? (Don’t assume they’re infallible!) What do they propose to do as a next step? Do you agree with that?

10. Now, go back to the beginning and read the abstract.

Does it match what the authors said in the paper? Does it fit with your interpretation of the paper?

11. FINAL STEP: (Don’t neglect doing this) What do other researchers say about this paper?

Who are the (acknowledged or self-proclaimed) experts in this particular field? Do they have criticisms of the study that you haven’t thought of, or do they generally support it?

Here’s a place where I do recommend you use google! But do it last, so you are better prepared to think critically about what other people say.

(12. This step may be optional for you, depending on why you’re reading a particular paper. But for me, it’s critical! I go through the “Literature cited” section to see what other papers the authors cited. This allows me to better identify the important papers in a particular field, see if the authors cited my own papers (KIDDING!….mostly), and find sources of useful ideas or techniques.)

Now brace for more conflict– next week we’re going to use this method to go through a paper on a controversial subject! Which one would you like to do? Shall we critique one of the papers I posted last week?

UPDATE: If you would like to see an example, you can find one here
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Turn Off the Money Tap, the Windweasels will Scurry!

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Fears for renewables after energy target ‘described as government largesse’

 

Report: wind farms
The renewable energy review is expected to deliver a draft report next week. Photograph: Picasa

Windfarm owners say the head of Tony Abbott’s renewable energy review recently told them they were foolish to “build a whole business model on government largesse”, raising fears he will recommend a severe winding back of the renewable energy target.

Simon Holmes a Court, the founding chair of Hepburn Wind, a community windfarm, told Guardian Australia he had been astonished by the comments from businessman Dick Warburton at a meeting last week.

Meanwhile, the now-independent Climate Council has released a report arguing Australia’s coal-fired power stations are among the oldest and dirtiest in the world and difficult to retrofit with carbon capture and storage technology – leaving renewables such as wind as the least-cost “zero emissions” option.

Holmes a Court said Warburton asked “didn’t we feel foolish basing a whole business model on government largesse”. The “government largesse” being referred to was the renewable energy target (RET) that was first introduced by the Howard government, has enjoyed bipartisan support ever since and has attracted about $18bn in investment.

“If the RET was to be abolished our project will fold. Two thousand people invested in this community windfarm on the basis that this was settled bipartisan policy. We are not feeling foolish, we are feeling betrayed,” Holmes a Court said.

Warburton’s review is expected to deliver a draft report to government next week.

The Coalition went into the election promising to keep the RET, which underpins investment in energy sources such as wind and solar, but saying it would review the fact that the policy was exceeding its original goal of delivering 20% renewable energy by 2020 because of falling electricity demand.

But, after the election, the Coalition began debating whether the RET should be scrapped altogether or – a more likely outcome – “grandfathered” so only existing projects will benefit.

The terms of reference for the RET review said it would look at “the extent of the RET’s impact on electricity prices, and the range of options available to reduce any impact while managing sovereign risk”.

And even government backbenchers who question the science of climate change and oppose the RET concede its total abolition would constitute “sovereign risk” – a situation where governments change the rules after investment decisions have already been made.

George Christensen, who the climate-sceptic Heartland Institute is sponsoring to address its conference in Las Vegas next month and who chairs the Coalition backbench industry committee, said there were “conflicting views within the Coalition because we are acutely aware of its impact on power prices but on the other hand there is a strong argument we should not disadvantage people who have invested on the basis of what was bipartisan policy”.

But the Institute of Public Affairs (IPA) thinktank – which has long lobbied against the RET – has used a submission to the Warburton review to argue for its abolition, dismissing concerns that abolishing the RET would constitute “sovereign risk”. Like Warburton, the IPA suggests businesses should not have based investments on government “favours”.

“Sovereign risk involves a ‘taking’ of property and should be avoided because, ethical issues aside, it creates great uncertainties for investment, especially investment with long payback times. But sovereign risk from the government withdrawing a favour is different from when it takes a property. No investor can reasonably expect a subsidy to prevail for 15 years as is notionally the case with windfarms and other exotic renewable facilities. And there would be few precedents for a government committing its successors to what would become 24 years of worthless expenditure,” the IPA says in its submission.

“If removal of such favourable and lengthy regulatory provisions was considered to constitute reimbursable sovereign risk, the motor vehicle manufacturers now abandoning production in Australia would have a case for compensation … The termination of the renewable energy requirements should be done immediately.”

According to the IPA, there are three options for modifying the RET scheme:

• Reduce it to a “real” 20% of the current electricity market. It says this would reduce the amount of renewables from 41,000 gigawatt hours (20% of what was the estimated size of the market in 2020) to a maximum of 33,000 GWh.

• Allow only the existing and committed projects to proceed as subsidised. This would mean about 15,000 GWh.

• Totally abandon the RET and force “renewables to immediately compete without subsidy, as their adherents always claimed they would eventually be able to do”.

The climate commission, which became a crowd-funded independent body after it was abolished by the Abbott government, will release a report on Tuesday arguing that “the least-expensive zero-emission option available at scale for deployment today in Australia is wind, closely followed by field-scale solar PV”.

“These costs are falling fast as take-up globally accelerates. Wind should be 20% to 30% cheaper by 2020, solar PV is expected to halve in cost,” the report says.

Assuming Australia does need to reduce emissions from its power sector, the report says moving to renewables would be cheaper than trying to “clean up” coal-fired plants.

It says that by 2030, 65% of australia’s power stations will be over 40 years old. The nation’s older power stations cannot be made more efficient without vast expense, and their age limits the potential for retrofit CCS investment, it says.

After the election, Abbott took control of the RET review of his own department and appointed Warburton – a self-professed climate sceptic – to head it.

Warburton, a veteran industrialist and the chairman of the Westfield Retail Trust, described his views on climate science in a 2011 interview on ABC in this way: “Well I am a sceptic. I’ve never moved away from that. I’ve always believed sceptical,’’ he said. “But a sceptic is a different person than a denier. I say the science is not settled. I’m not saying it’s wrong. I’ve never said it’s wrong, but I don’t believe it’s settled.”

Others, including Abbott’s top business adviser, Maurice Newman, want the RET scrapped altogether.

Newman, the former chairman of the ABC and the ASX, has said persisting with government subsidies for renewable energy represented a “crime against the people” because higher energy costs hit poorer households the hardest and there was no longer any logical reason to have them.

Under legislation, the next review of the RET is supposed to be undertaken by the independent Climate Change Authority (CCA) but the government is seeking to abolish the CCA.

Lenore Taylor

Lenore Taylor is the political editor of Guardian Australia. She is a Walkley award winner and a winner of the Paul Lyneham award for excellence in press gallery journalism. She co-authored a book, Shitstorm, on the Rudd government’s response to the global economic crisis.

Ontarians Shoot Themselves in the Foot! Again….and again!

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Lakehead University Professor Livio Di Matteo Reports on Economy

But don’t cry for the province; it has mainly itself to blame

THUNDER BAY – EDITORIAL – Ontarians have re-elected a government whose decade long reign dovetails with the lowest growth rate of provincial real per capita GDP in the Canadian federation. In the face of economic decline, Ontarians have come to fear change and opted for the status quo in the hope that things may get better if enough time goes by. Sadly, Ontario has embarked on the road to Argentina.

Despite Ontario’s mounting public debt, laggard economic performance, new status as a have not province, general lack of competitiveness, as well as a government marked by scandals and charges of corruption, the opposition parties were unable to convince the electorate of the need for change. In the face of such abundant fodder, this also represents a notable failure on the part of the opposition parties. Like Argentina, Ontario’s economic decline has spilled over to pervade its institutions with an inability to articulate and effect change.

In the early 20th century, Argentina was a successful export-led economy rooted in agricultural production – particularly beef. During the 20th century, Ontario became a successful export-led economy based particularly on its manufacturing sector. During its heyday, Argentina had one of the highest standards of living in the world and believed it was on the verge of becoming the next United States. Meanwhile, Ontario has grown accustomed to one of the highest standards of living in the world and taken its role as an economic cornerstone of the Canadian federation for granted.

The First World War and Great Depression shocked the Argentine export economy and the beef export industry never fully recovered. The result was poor economic policies over the next half-century that aimed to recapture a fading standard of living. Argentina was marked by large public sector debts and deficits, corruption, high inflation, and protectionism for uncompetitive sectors of the economy. Most importantly, there were entrenched economic interests that benefitted from poor government economic policies and a general inability to implement changes that would reverse the long-term decline of the Argentine economy. With a set of poor political institutions that included military coups, Argentina settled into a long-term decline punctuated by bouts of economic crisis and an inability to resolve its problems.

For Ontario, its problems began with an incomplete transition to the economic changes brought about by a more competitive world economy after 1990. Ontario’s economic development reached a crucial watershed in the wake of the economic boom of the 1980s that saw free trade with the United States, a shift away from the traditional east-west economic alignment, and the recession of the early 1990s. While the mid-1990s saw the onset of public sector restructuring and economic reforms, these petered out in the early 21st century with the return of more interventionist government economic policy that saw tax increases, increased public sector spending and a flawed industrial strategy based on green energy initiatives that became a factor in higher electricity prices. Economic productivity faltered and the 2009 tilt into recession was compounded by an appreciating Canadian dollar.

Ontarians have become used to ever-larger amounts of public spending fueled by growing public debt to compensate for faltering private sector productivity. This has created clients with a vested interest in more interventionist government. The recent election campaign saw promises of new public infrastructure spending, a new pension plan as well as overt political meddling by some traditionally circumspect public sector unions. While Ontario police unions do not have the heft of the Argentine military, their election activity is nevertheless yet another sign that Ontario may be changing for the worse.

In towns and cities across the province ravaged by manufacturing decline, the public sector has picked up the slack with public works construction projects, expanded government initiatives and their associated employment. Ontarians have convinced themselves that what is needed to reverse their malaise is more government spending fueled by debt and deficits, despite the evidence that the past decade of such policies have yet to turn the economy around. It is still early on in Ontario’s economic and fiscal troubles but another decade of economic policy ineptness could well make Ontario’s decline terminal.

Don’t cry for Ontario, it has mainly itself to blame.

Livio Di Matteo

– See more at: http://www.netnewsledger.com/2014/06/13/ontario-the-new-argentina-di-matteo/#sthash.RvVq5SNA.dpuf

Governments and Wind Industries Know They are Harming Us!!

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Wind turbines are a human health hazard: the smoking gun

Credit:  By James Delingpole | The Telegraph | July 25th, 2013 | telegraph.co.uk ~~

 

How much more dirt needs to come out before  the wind industry gets the thorough investigation it has long deserved?

The reason I ask is that it has now become clear that the industry has known for at least 25 years about the potentially damaging impact on human health of the impulsive infrasound (inaudible intermittent noise) produced by wind turbines. Yet instead of dealing with the problem it has, on the most generous interpretation, swept the issue under the carpet – or worse, been involved in a concerted cover-up operation.

A research paper prepared in November 1987 for the US Department of Energy demonstrated that the “annoyance” caused by wind turbine noise to nearby residents is “real not imaginary.” It further showed that, far from becoming inured to the disturbance people become increasingly sensitive to it over time.

This contradicts claims frequently made by wind industry spokesmen that there is no evidence for so-called Wind Turbine Syndrome (the various health issues ranging from insomnia and anxiety to palpitations and nausea reported by residents living within a mile or more of wind turbines). Until recently, RenewableUK – the British wind industry’s trade body – claimed on its website: “In over 25 years and with more than 68,000 machines installed around the world, no member of the public has ever been harmed by the normal operation of wind farms.”

In a section called Top Myths About Wind Energy’ section it claimed that accusations that wind farms emit ‘infrasound and cause associated health problems’ are ‘unscientific’.

Other pro-wind campaigners, such as Australian public health professor Simon Chapman, have gone still further by insisting that the symptoms reported by Wind Turbine Syndrome victims around the world are imaginary and often politically motivated.

But the 1987 report, based on earlier research by NASA and several universities, tells a different story. A team led by physicist ND Kelley from the Solar Energy Research Institute in Golden, Colorado tested under controlled conditions the impact of low-frequency noise generated by turbine blades.

It found that the disturbance is often worse when indoors than when outside (a sensation which will be familiar to anyone who has heard a helicopter hovering above their house).

In subsequent lab tests involving seven volunteers, it found that “people do indeed react to a low-frequency noise environment”. As a result of its findings, the report recommended that in future wind turbines should be subject to a maximum noise threshold to prevent nearby residents experiencing “low-frequency annoyance situations.”

However these recommendations – widely publicised at the Windpower 87 Conference & Exposition in San Francisco – fell on (wilfully, it seems more than plausible) deaf ears.

It found that the disturbance is often worse when indoors than when outside (a sensation which will be familiar to anyone who has heard a helicopter hovering above their house).

In subsequent lab tests involving seven volunteers, it found that “people do indeed react to a low-frequency noise environment”. As a result of its findings, the report recommended that in future wind turbines should be subject to a maximum noise threshold to prevent nearby residents experiencing “low-frequency annoyance situations.”

Rather than respond to the issues raised, the industry devised a code of practice apparently contrived to ignore those very acoustic levels of most concern. ETSU-R-97 – the UK industry standard, which became the model for wind developers around the world – places modest limits on sound within the normal human hearing range, but specifically excludes the lower frequency “infrasonic” noise known to cause problems.

Last month the Department of Energy and Climate Change  (DECC) published a report by the Institute of Acoustics examining whether ETSU-R-97 was still adequate to the task. Remarkably, instead of stiffening regulations, it made them more lax, not only continuing to ignore the Low Frequency Noise and infrasound issue, but actually giving wind farms leeway to make more noise at night and to be built even closer to dwellings.

John Constable, director of the Renewable Energy Foundation, commented: “The report may represent current wind industry practice but it is very poor guidance and fails in its duty of care.”

The industry’s response is that turbine design has grown so much more sophisticated since the late Eighties that the problems identified in the 1987 report – which built on work from another report two years before – no longer apply.

“We’re often hearing these weird and wacky reports on the effects of wind. It seems anyone can stand up and say anything, which we find somewhat worrying because it gives a false impression. We don’t accept the suggestion that there are any health impacts caused by wind turbine noise, though we welcome any new research into the issue,” a spokesman for Renewable UK told me.

However this is contradicted by the author of the original reports Neil Kelley. Kelley has told Graham Lloyd – the environment editor from The Australian who (uncharacteristically for an environment editor puts truth before green ideology) broke the story – that research has shown that it is still possible for modern wind turbines to create “community annoyance.”

Kelley, who served as the principal scientist (atmospheric physics) at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory’s National Wind Technology Centre from 1980 to 2011, told Lloyd:

“Many of the complaints I have heard described are very similar to those from residents who were exposed to the prototype wind turbine we studied.”

He said the original research was performed to understand the “totally unexpected community complaints from a 2MW downwind prototype wind turbine.”

He said: “While follow-on turbine designs moved the rotors upwind of the tower, the US Department of Energy funded an extensive multi-year research effort in order to develop a full understanding of what created this situation.”

“Their goal was to make such knowledge available to the turbine engineers so they could minimise the possibility of future designs repeating the experience. We found the majority of the physics responsible for creating the annoyance associated with this downwind prototype are applicable to large upwind machines.”

The wind industry has resisted demands from campaigners to investigate this problem further. For example, in Australia, Lloyd reports, the wind turbine manufacturer Vestas has argued in a submission to the NSW government that low frequency noise not be measured.

But as Kelley said to Lloyd, if low frequency noise from turbines does not influence annoyance within homes, “then why should [the industry] be concerned?”

Those readers with an appetite for even more technical detail may be interested in the views of acoustics expert Dr Malcolm Swinbanks:

The important aspect to understand is that the old-fashioned downwind rotor-turbines did indeed generate a wider spectrum of infranoise and low-frequency noise, extending from 1Hz to 50Hz or 60Hz. Modern upwind rotor turbines are definitely very much quieter in the 32 and 64 Hz octave bands, but under some circumstances they can be similarly noisy over the frequency range 1Hz – 10Hz.

The wind industry denies this aspect, namely that they do not generate impulsive infrasound – I was present at a public meeting, with 400 farmers enthusiastically wanting wind-turbines on their land, when a wind-industry representative argued that I was incorrect to quote NASA research because the NASA research related only to downwind turbines. In fact NASA led the world in developing upwind rotor turbines, with the first, MOD-2 in 1981. They were fully aware of the differences between downwind and upwind configurations as long ago as 1981. Although upwind turbines are indeed quieter in respect of audible sound, NASA was well aware that inflow turbulence or wind-shear could give rise to enhanced infrasound from upwind turbines.

In the context of that particular public meeting, the chairman refused to let me respond at that time to correct the wind-industry presentation, and argued that I could only send a letter to the Planning Committee, which I duly did under strong protest. So I have encountered the wind-industry position directly at first hand.

The problem is that while the acoustics community fully acknowledge that the audible component of low-frequency sound (>20Hz) can cause adverse human reaction, they consistently deny that infrasound (

The response of the Australian Senate Inquiry to this information was that wind-turbines don’t generate 110dB. But just as sound pressure levels are always weighted in the audible frequency range, using the dBA scale – one does not quote absolute sound pressure levels, but dBA levels, so the infrasound range is correctly measured using the weighted dBG scale. This is an ISO internationally approved scale, and 110dB at 2.14Hz represents 82 dBG on the dBG scale. Modern wind turbine peak infrasonic impulsive levels have been measured as high as 76-80dBG, which is only marginally below the 82dBG level that was found to cause adverse effects in the Chen laboratory tests.

It is notable that when some acousticians wish to argue that wind turbine infrasound is not a problem, they quote known problematic infrasonic sound levels using the unweighted decibel dB scale, which makes these levels seem well “out-of-reach” of wind turbine infrasound levels. Yet these same acousticians would not dream of using absolute sound pressure levels to evaluate conventional audible sound, but will always quote correctly weighted dBA levels.

Thus, for example, the Chen infrasonic tests were at 110dB at 2.14Hz. This is 82dBG. In contrast, a “child-on-a swing” is also quoted by some acousticians as “not-a-problem”, when it is experiencing 110dB. This 110dB is at around 0.5Hz, so the corresponding dBG level is only 50dBG. Although the absolute sound pressure levels are identical, the perceived infrasound levels in these two cases are very different and cannot be equated to each other.

So I am unimpressed by the casual practice of quoting absolute sound pressure levels for describing infrasound, in order to exaggerate differences, when it is well recognized that the response of the ear is not uniform, and weighted sound pressure levels should be used for describing the likely hearing response.

This feature is responsible for much of the confusion that arises – interchange of unweighted and weighted levels can lead to very different conclusions – a situation which does not help to clarify the overall impact of infrasound.

It is noteworthy that some recent research indicates that at the very lowest frequencies (around ~1Hz) infrasound may be perceived by a different, separate mechanism than the ear’s conventional auditory mechanisms, so that at these frequencies, the G-weighting may no longer be accurate. But this is only a very recent deduction. Wind turbines undoubtedly generate their strongest signals at around 1Hz, so this is a new area of investigation which may also reveal additional adverse effects.

And here is the expert opinion of another US acoustics expert, Rick James – who thinks it somewhat unlikely that the wind industry is unaware of the problem:

 The “Kelley paper” is just one of many studies and reports published in the period from 1980 to 1990 by acousticians and other researchers working under grants from the US Dept. of Energy (DOE), NASA, and other agencies and foundations. All of these papers are still available on web sites open to the public. I have attached one of the later papers (“Wind Turbine Acoustics, Hubbard and Shepherd”) that summarize many of those studies. The acoustical conferences, at least those here in the US, all had presentations on wind turbine noise and it was one of the “hot” topics in the field. Earlier papers such as the 1982 Hubbard paper on Noise Induced House Vibrations was reporting some of the early research showing wind turbines were heard at lower auditory thresholds and that the infrasound was affecting people inside homes in much the same was jet noise at airports was affecting communities along flight paths. As a general rule, all of this research noted the need for caution if large upwind wind turbines of the type being installed today were to be located near homes and communities. As you can see in the Kelly paper there was concern over health impacts by the research community. Concurrent with this type of work the US DOD and NASA were investigating human response to infrasonic sound and vibration to help select candidates for jet pilots and space missions. This led to studies of nauseogenicity like the “1987 report on Motion Sickness Symptoms and Postural Changes……” Suffice it to say that between the issues of dynamically modulated infra and low frequency sound causing adverse health effects called “Sick Building Syndrome,” similar effects observed from wind turbines leading to the Kelley paper, military interest in motion sickness and other similar issues for large ships with slowly rotating engines to jet aircraft noise few acousticians in that period would have discounted the premise that for some people these types of sounds posed serious issues.

Can anyone imagine a potential scandal of this magnitude in the fossil fuel industry going uninvestigated by the green lobby – and hitting the front pages of all the newspapers?

I can’t.

Special Needs Children are Being Abused by Their Own Governments.

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filed:  June 9, 2014 • Ireland

‘I need to protect my autistic child from wind farms’

Credit:  Originally published as: ‘I need to protect my child from wind farms’ | By Celine Naughton | Irish Independent | Published 9 June 2014 | www.independent.ie ~~

 

Whenever Jenny Spittle’s children visit their grandad in England, 12-year-old Billie comes home tired, complaining of headaches, earache, dizziness and hearing buzzing noises. Billie has autism and her mother is convinced her symptoms are brought on by the towering pylons and wind turbines located near her grandfather’s house. Now Jenny lies awake at night worrying about plans to build a wind farm close to her home in Co Westmeath.

“I see what she’s like after a week with her grandfather and wonder how she’ll cope if we have these things on our doorstep,” she says.

Like many autistic children, Billie is hyper-sensitive to sound and light. She hears sounds at frequencies that are inaudible to most people, and Jenny is afraid she will find the sound of wind turbines close to home intolerable.

“It’s not easy raising an autistic child, yet while I’m busy trying to organise psychotherapy, speech and language, occupational therapy and all the other kinds of supports she needs to help her cope with everyday life, I also have to make time to protest against pylons and wind turbines,” she says. “I can’t afford to wait until they’ve been built to voice my objections. I have to protect my child.”

Thirteen years ago, university lecturer Neil van Dokkum and his wife Fiona moved from South Africa to an idyllic part of Waterford with their two sons. Their youngest, Ian, had been diagnosed with autism and part of the reason for choosing to make their home in such a remote location was to give Ian the peaceful environment they felt he needed in which to thrive. Then, six months ago, Neil heard about the proposed construction of pylons in the area from a neighbour. The news set off alarm bells for him and his family.

“Ian is incredibly sensitive to electric noise and certain types of light,” he says. “He will start crying and become very agitated. It is a source of emotional trauma for him. My wife and I discovered the extent of this sensitivity when we installed energy-saving light bulbs in our kitchen. When Ian walked in, he put his fingers into his ears, screwed his face up tight and said: ‘Blue light off, please Daddy. Blue light off!’ I was sitting directly under the light and had not noticed anything. Ian was standing at the door, about four metres away, and he couldn’t bear it. Can you imagine how he will be affected by pylons carrying 400kV power lines? Like many other parents of autistic kids and indeed children with other intellectual disabilities, we deliberately moved to the country so as to be away from the city with its high levels of ambient noise, including electrical noise, and disturbance. At night, it can be so quiet here that I can hear the cows crunching grass in the field opposite. Can you imagine how that silence will be shattered by clanking pylons? More specifically, how my son’s silence will be shattered by the electrical noise coming from those cables? How will he be able to sleep with that noise? And how will the rest of my family sleep as Ian becomes highly agitated when awakened by this distressing noise?

“The other concern I have is flight risk. Ian, like many autistic children, has no sense of danger and will run away and on to the road at any opportunity. He is not running away from anything, but sometimes seems to feel the need to rush into an open space. Again, the countryside, with its minimal traffic and quieter roads, is far safer than a city with all those vehicles. Even so, my property is fenced and gated, not to keep people out, but rather to keep my son in and safe.

My deepest fear now is that the electrical noise coming off cables and pylons will disturb him so much that he will attempt to run from it. And if he can’t get out, he will bang his head against the wall out of sheer frustration. The potential consequences are too painful to even contemplate, and if the proposed construction of pylons across the countryside goes ahead, selling our house would be impossible, so we are effectively trapped.

“If the Government were to abandon its slavish adulation of the wind industry and pursue the biomass option, converting Moneypoint power station to biomass boilers, it could save over three billion euro. Imagine how many state-of-the-art facilities for people with intellectual disabilities could be built with that sort of money.”

A Department of Health spokesperson says: “According to international literature, no direct health effects have been demonstrated in persons living in close proximity to wind turbines. However, it is agreed that there is a need for additional, well-designed studies in this area. The Department of Health advises that anyone who believes they are experiencing any health problems should consult their GP promptly.”

In its draft development plan, Westmeath County Council required any new wind farm development to implement a setback distance of 10 times the height of the turbine from residential dwellings, but the Department of the Environment intervened. Under Objective PWin6 of the plan, a turbine measuring 180m, for instance, would be sited at least 1.8km away from any house, while according to the Department’s wind energy guidelines, a distance of 500m is deemed sufficient. Minister of State for Planning Jan O’Sullivan wrote to the council instructing it to re-examine the setback distance.

“We received over 5,600 submissions from constituents who supported PWin6, which would have kept the setback distance in place,” says Westmeath County Council chairman Peter Burke. “We informed the Minister of State that we felt the Department’s guidelines were not adequate and she appointed an inspector to carry out an independent review.”

Last month, that inspector’s report recommended against the inclusion of the PWin6 objective on the grounds that it “would be contrary to section 28 of the Planning and Development Act 2000.”

At the time of writing, the Department’s final decision on the matter is pending.

Safety first: Are turbines and pylons dangerous?

Now that Ireland’s plan to export wind energy to Britain has been scrapped, the public has been left a little breathing space to focus on a simple question: Are wind farms and their related pylons and overhead power lines safe or not?

The Department of Health’s Deputy Chief Medical Officer, Dr Colette Bonner, has said that older people, people who suffer from migraine, and others with a sensitivity to low-frequency vibration, are some of those who can be at risk of ‘wind turbine syndrome’.

“These people must be treated appropriately and sensitively as these symptoms can be very debilitating,” she commented in a report to the Department of the Environment last year. We asked Dr Bonner for clarification.

“Presently the World Health Organisation does not classify Wind Turbine Syndrome as a disease under the WHO international classification of diseases,” she said. “Current research in the area suggests that there are no direct health effects of wind turbines. However, there are methodological limitations of many of the studies in this area and more high quality research is recommended.”

Side by side with the controversy over wind farms comes concern over the high voltage pylons which distribute the electricity generated by the wind turbines to the national grid. Chief Medical Officer in the Deptartment of Health, Dr Tony Holohan, has stated that he does not think there is a health risk associated with people living in vicinity of pylons.

But not everybody agrees; according to British physicist Denis Henshaw, people have every reason to be concerned. Emeritus professor of human radiation effects at Bristol University and scientific director of the charity Children with Cancer UK, he recently told a public health meeting in Trim, Co Meath, that high voltage power cables are linked “beyond reasonable doubt” to childhood leukaemia and other diseases.

“It has been shown again and again that there is a definite risk of childhood leukaemia and other diseases near these lines,” he says. “The link is so strong that when a childhood leukaemia occurs near these lines there is a greater than 50pc chance that the leukaemia is due to the line. This raises the prospect of legal action for corporate manslaughter against those involved in putting the line there. The Irish government and EirGrid need to take care of their citizens and acknowledge the known health risks in people near these lines.”

A spokesman for EirGrid says: “We’re not doctors, but having taken advice from experts at the World Health Organisation, along with the chief science adviser and the chief medical officer, it is clear to us that there is no evidence to link overhead lines with adverse health effects.”

The Government report ‘Health Effects of Electromagnetic Fields’ 2007 says: “Given that there is still uncertainty about whether long-term exposure to extremely low frequency magnetic fields could cause childhood leukaemia, use of precautionary measures to lower people’s exposure would therefore appear to be warranted.

“As a precautionary measure, future power lines and power installations should be sited away from heavily populated areas to keep exposures to people low.”

Source:  Originally published as: ‘I need to protect my child from wind farms’ | By Celine Naughton | Irish Independent | Published 9 June 2014 | www.independent.ie
As the mother of a child with ADHD and Severe Sensory Processing Issues, I can empathize entirely with this family.  My son’s Specialist has written a letter on his behalf, telling of the trauma my son will be subjected to, if huge wind turbines are surrounding our property, one of them, only 550m from the center of our home.  The wind turbines proposed for our community, are 185m high, and 3MW.  If they don’t stop this project, many people will suffer terribly, in many different ways.  It is a disgrace.
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                             Shellie Correia

Ontario…..Canada’s Financial Anchor! What a Shame!

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Canadians pay for Ontario verdict

tim hudak, waving
Ontario PC leader Tim Hudak announced he is stepping down as leader Thursday night after defeat in the provincial election on June 12 2014. (Bob Tymczyszyn/QMI Agency)

Onlookers in more fiscally stable regions might have sat back on the couch with a bowl of popcorn to chuckle as the results poured in.

“Will it be ‘Welcome to Hell: The Sequel’? or will they dodge the bullet?” they might have asked their spouses.

But when one province makes up more than a third of the country’s population, we’re all in this together.

For starters, if energy prices in Ontario continue to rise and jobs leave the province, that’ll impact the general economy.

People in Ontario will pay less federal tax, buy fewer domestic goods and cut back on vacations among other household spending.

Then there’s the more direct money drain of equalization payments. In 2009, Ontario became a “have-not” province. It takes out of the pot more than it puts in. For 2014-15, Ontario will get $2 billion.

Provinces like Saskatchewan and Alberta, which have a greater median family income and lower debt per capita than Ontario, are paying for this.

We’re in trouble when Canada’s most populous province is on the “takers” list. Yet Ontario voters just gave the Liberals — who presided over Ontario’s negative turnaround — a four-year majority. Yikes.

To paraphrase the Iron Lady, sooner or later we’re going to run out of Alberta’s money.

Besides, the very people who think reducing our spending is wrong tend to be the same who think our resources sector should be shut down.

Even if the Toronto latte crowd is morally okay with turning Albertans upside down and shaking them for cash, they should at least understand that without resource extraction there won’t be any wealth to share.

Restraining spending and growing the economy is the only way to move forward together in these sluggish times. Ontario Premier Kathleen Wynne must bring Ontario back to black.

When Canada’s premiers met in 2013 it was in Ontario and Wynne chaired the meeting.

This August when they meet in PEI, someone like Saskatchewan Premier Brad Wall needs to take the reins and teach these spendaholics how it’s done.

Ontario and the have-nots are simply endangering Canada’s future prosperity.

 

Wind Industry is a Job-thief, Not a Job-creator!

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Wind Industry Built on the Graves of

6,000 Australian Manufacturing Workers

June 16, 2014 by 

449332-ford-workers

As the RET Review Panel sharpens their axes, Members of the Coalition are making it known that the mandatory Renewable Energy Target simply has to go. Here’s what appeared on the front page of The Australian today.

‘Jobs risk’ in clean energy targets
The Australian
Adam Creighton
16 June 2014

THOUSANDS of jobs across Australia are at risk as Labor’s rising renewable energy target undermines economic growth and saps exports, fuelling Coalition backbench discontent with a policy Environment Minister Greg Hunt is widely seen to favour.

The RET, which has prompted electricity retailers to source a rising share of energy from high-cost wind farms, is forecast to lead to the loss of 4900 full-time jobs by 2020, and more than 6000 by 2030 as higher power prices ripple through the economy, undermining competitiveness and household budgets.

Only weeks before the government’s review of the RET is due to report on the policy’s efficiency and effectiveness, new modelling by Deloitte Access Economics, commissioned by the Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry and the Business Council of Australia, shows keeping the RET entails a $34 billion hit to Australia’s economy, including a near $3bn cut in exports by 2020.

“The current scheme is likely to impose a considerable cost to the Australian economy going forward,” the report concludes, noting the RET is abating carbon at an effective cost to the economy of $125 a tonne — or about five times more than the current carbon tax, which the Coalition plans to repeal from July.

“While the RET is in place, investment is directed to less efficient and higher cost renewable technologies — at the expense of more efficient and lower cost generators,” it adds.

It points out that the share of total electricity generation stemming from renewable sources is on track to rise to 27 per cent by 2020, which is far above the 20 per cent RET originally intended.

The study will galvanise the growing number of Coalition backbench MPs who want Mr Hunt, who is seen to be in favour of the status quo, to make significant changes to the RET after the review chaired by businessman Dick Warburton reports next month.

Introduced by the Howard government in 2001, Labor expanded the RET — which now makes up about 5 per cent or $70 a year in the typical household’s electricity bill — almost five-fold in 2010 in order to boost the amount of renewable energy that must be sourced to 41 terawatt hours by 2020.

DeanSmith20120328_1167

Senator Dean Smith, chairman of the Coalition backbench energy committee, said the “great majority” of Liberals were in favour of significant change.

Craig Laundy

Craig Laundy, Liberal member for Reid in Sydney’s west, said “the Liberal backbench is acutely aware of the impact of rising power bills as a result of the RET”.

“While we have to empathise with investors in the renewable sector, the impact on day to day power bills for ordinary families is not acceptable,” Mr Laundy said.

A spokesman for Mr Hunt, who has commissioned a study into the policy in keeping with promises made in opposition, said the minister was reserving his judgment until he read the RET review panel report.

With a large manufacturing base and an electricity grid powered mainly by brown coal, Victoria stands to lose 1400 jobs by 2020 (more than any other state) compared with 250 in South Australia, where up to a quarter of energy is supplied by wind, according to the study.

“Fixing the RET is just another step towards ending the age of entitlement — wind industry entitlement,” said Angus Taylor, a NSW regional Liberal member.

The Deloitte analysis anticipates an extra $10.3bn in investment in renewable energy if policies remain unchanged and electricity prices to remain well above where they would otherwise be until 2030. “The upward pressure on retail prices flows on to affect the rest of the economy, raising the cost of many day-to-day functions that depend on electricity,” the study said.

Burchell Wilson

Burchell Wilson, chief economist at ACCI, said: “The renewables industry has been standing over the graves of Australian manufacturing concerns, crowing about the jobs the RET is creating in the wind industry.”

Matthew Warren, chief executive of the Energy Supply Association, which represents “clean” and “dirty” energy suppliers said: “The RET was designed to take up most new investment in a growing energy market, but instead the market has been shrinking aggressively, forcing renewable energy into an oversupplied market.”
The Australian

Angus “the Enforcer” Taylor is going harder than ever in his sworn quest to tear the wind industry apart piece by stinking piece. STT hears that Angus has been exhorting his colleagues to “man-up” and scrap the legislation in its entirety.

Faced with a few back-sliders – like young Gregory Hunt – Angus backed himself with Parliamentary advice that the recent wind industry tosh about scrapping the RET creating “sovereign risk” is just that (see our post here). And, ditto, concerning wind industry threats about being entitled to compensation from the Commonwealth for “losses” they will suffer when the RET is wound back or scrapped (see our post here).

Angus’s effort has met with the approval of his colleagues, who are now keener than ever to put the RET to the sword.

Expect to hear more from the Coalition and the Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry as the week rolls on and the Deloitte Access Economics report is published.

STT thinks it’s the beginning of the end.

Angus Taylor