August 1, 2010 by admin.

Greenpeace and other Greens have for decades promoted an atmosphere of alarmism that has been the major cause of wide-spread bans on the development of nuclear power generation in many developed nations, while at the same time far more deadly, damaging and excessively-costly alternative energy-generation schemes were rammed through development.

The hype and hysteria fueling that alarmism is being brought to a well-reasoned and practical end in Belarus.

Belarus to Repopulate Chernobyl Exclusion Zone
by Dr. Zbigniew Jaworowski
July 28, 2010

On July 23, Novosti, Interfax, Interia, other Belarusian, Russian, and Polish news agencies announced that the government of Belarus decided to resettle hundreds of thousands of people back into the 2,000 ghost-villages in the Chernobyl exclusion zone from which they had been hastily removed 24 years ago.  (Full Story, PDF file, 82kB)

Dr. Jaworowski identifies in his article that,

Calculating by unit of energy produced, the Chernobyl catastrophe caused 0.86 deaths per gigawatt-year of electricity produced, which is 47 times less than for hydroelectric power stations (40 deaths per GWe-year), including the 230,000 fatalities caused by the 1975 collapse of the dam on the Banqiao river in China.

(More on the negative aspects of alternative sources of energy)

Posted in Energy Issues, Propaganda debunked, Alternative Energy Sources, Community & Industry, Explosions & Fires, Emission Incidents & Issues | Print | No Comments »

July 3, 2010 by admin.

LAWRENCE SOLOMON

Catastrophism collapses by Lawrence Solomon

Saturday, July 3rd 2010, 6:20 AM EDT

Co2sceptic (Site Admin)

G20 leaders in Toronto tried to avoid the fate of colleagues felled by warming advocacy

(Full Story)

Posted in Alarmist Insanity, Alternative Energy Sources, Climate Change | Print | No Comments »

June 20, 2010 by admin.

This does not exactly fall into the fraud and corruption category, but it is so mind-boggling and so nonsensical that it takes quite a bit of effort not to consider it fraudulent at least with respect to the lack of practicality as to the primary intention of coming up with better and effective ways of producing energy from renewable, alternative sources.

From wattsupwiththat.com:

Firms paid to shut down wind farms when the wind is blowing

Posted on
June 20, 2010
Britain’s biggest wind farm companies are to be paid not to produce electricity when the wind is blowing.
From The UK Telegraph.

Published: 9:00PM BST 19 Jun 2010

Energy firms will receive thousands of pounds a day per wind farm to turn off their turbines because the National Grid cannot use the power they are producing Photo: ALAMY

Energy firms will receive thousands of pounds a day per wind farm to turn off their turbines because the National Grid cannot use the power they are producing.

(Continue reading →)

Posted in Corruption & Fraud, Alternative Energy Sources | Print | No Comments »

June 18, 2010 by admin.

This is a must-read:

A suggestion for meeting the UK Government’s renewable energy target because the adopted use of windfarms cannot meet it,

By Richard S. Courtney, Thursday 26th October 2006

Source: The 2006 Annual Prestigious Lecture to
The North of England Institute of Mining and Mechanical Engineers
and
The Institute of Materials, Minerals and Mining (North East)

On 2010 06 18, Richard S. Courtney posted an excellent and easy-to-understand illustration of the uselessness of windfarms to the blog of Anthony Watts, the most popular science blog in the world.  In that posting, Richard Courtney compares the reasons for constructing windfarms to the reasons for construction the Wall of China: Useless, impractical and extremely costly for meeting the ostensible purposes but very, very effective as widely-visible propaganda efforts.

Posted in Alternative Energy Sources | Print | No Comments »

June 6, 2010 by admin.

EurActive

Impoverished SE Europeans turn to wood for heating

Published: 03 June 2010 | Updated: 04 June 2010

Rising electricity prices are increasing the use of wood for heating in South Eastern Europe to alarming levels, posing a serious threat to health and the environment, experts warned….(Full Story)

Posted in Alternative Energy Sources, Community & Industry | Print | No Comments »

May 4, 2010 by admin.

From The Resilient Earth
Science, Global Warming and the Fate of Humanity

05/03/2010

Link to article

From the article:

I am all for clean energy, but only if it is safe energy. So let’s be realistic here, birds and bats do not get hacked from the air by nuke plants. And I know from personal experience, living on Chesapeake Bay near the Calvert Cliffs Nuclear Power Plant, that fish love  the warm water outlets from such installations. Over the past 40 years there have been more deaths attributed to wind power than to nuclear power, yet nuclear power is the one always called “unsafe” by conservationists. [Emphasis by folc.ca] It’s time to grow up children—if you want to save the birds, the bats and the humans, embrace the power of the atom.

The article contains photos and video clips of damage to wild life and of the dangers posed by wind turbines.

Posted in Alternative Energy Sources, Fines & Penalties | Print | No Comments »

March 9, 2010 by admin.

For some time now, the media reported on the case of the ducks who died at a Syncrude tailings pond, near Fort McMurray, in Northern Alberta.  First it was claimed that about 500 ducks had been killed.  That claim was later revised upward to 1,600 ducks in the incident or incidents.

The front page of the March 9, 2010 issue of the Edmonton Journal carried an article that reported Alberta Premier Ed Stelmach as stating that he had not seen the images of the ducks coated with bitumen at the Syncrude tailings pond, quite properly casting some doubt on Ed Stelmach’s claim that he had not seen those all-pervasive images.

The insinuation by the article in the increasingly liberal Edmonton Journal was that the pro-industry Alberta Government’s premier is in open denial of the truth, namely that the oil industry is deadly to the environment and specifically has little regard for the death toll it imposes on Alberta wildlife.

The deaths of 1,600 ducks appears to be a red herring dragged out to draw attention away from the death toll inflicted by “environment-friendly” alternative sources of energy, particularly wind power.

No doubt, environmentalist are ready and eager to crucify Ed Stelmach for daring to — either deliberately or inadvertently — belittle the deaths of the ducks in Fort McMurray.  The goal of the environmentalists’ exercise has been achieved.  Ed Stelmach’s denial is evidence of the Alberta Government’s program to insert “dirty oil” into the world market for oil production.

The deaths of the 1,600 ducks in the Syncrude tailings pond needs to be put into perspective.  The Alberta Government is an ardent promoter of alternative energy in the form of wind power, even though wind-power production cannot be justified economically and can be kept alive only through massive taxpayer-funded subsidies.

However, with respect to the impact of wind power on the lives of birds, the simple truth is that wind power is at least thousands of times more deadly to the lives of birds than the Fort McMurray tailings ponds could ever be feared to be.

 “Bernd Koop, based on monitoring studies conducted in Holland by Winkelman, estimated there would be 60,000 to 100,000 bird collisions per 1,000 megawatt installed capacity in his country - annually (13) . . ..Applying his estimate to Germany´s 17,000 MW, we obtain: 1,020,000 to 1,700,000 bird collisions per annum. And the closer we are getting to territorial saturation, the lower the chances for migrating birds to find safe routes through the maze, especially if we add the deadly power lines.

Already, birds in Germany die in great numbers from collisions with 70,000 km of high-tension lines that criss-cross the country - 30 million birds per year is an extrapolation found in Hoerschelmann, Haack & Wohlgemuth, based on a study along 4.5 km of high tension lines - electrocutions excluded (14). - As windfarms need more power lines, this mortality will increase as well; there is already evidence of this : Windfarms - the bird massacre continues. (Please follow this link, photos must be seen; author.)

__________
Source:
Wildlife Conservation Examiner

Deadly blades; death toll mounts as wind farms massacre birds of prey
August 7, 8:52 PM; by Cathy Taibbi

Not that anyone should downplay the unfortunate deaths of the ducks at Fort McMurray, but if we wish to measure the impact of energy sources on wildlife, let’s do justice to all sources of energy.  By objective measures, wind power is far more deadly to wildlife than the Syncrude tailings ponds are.

At least Syncrude is trying to do something, and largely successfully, about protecting ducks and other migratory birds, while most environmentalists who harp on Alberta’s “dirty oil” are totally silent about the massive deadliness and excessive costs of wind power.

Posted in Alternative Energy Sources, Fines & Penalties, Pollution: Health Issues, Emission Incidents & Issues | Print | 1 Comment »

November 11, 2009 by admin.

By Traci Watson, USA TODAY

One of the world’s oldest energy sources is making a comeback.

Across the USA, power plants are turning to wood to make electricity. The move is spurred by state mandates to encourage renewable power and by bills moving through Congress that require more renewable electricity nationwide.

Wood power’s rise is “meteoric,” says William Perritt, editor of Wood Biomass Market Report. One wood-burning plant started up in 2007, seven in 2008 and a dozen in 2009, he says….(Full Story)

____________
Ostensibly, wood waste will be burned in those wood-burning power plants, but, as the article points out, the demand will soon be for wood chips that are produced by clear-cutting.

That will save the planet?  The only thing that is certain is that it will cause clear-cutting and pollution, besides, burning wood is the burning of carbon and will produce carbon dioxide.

Although Schilda is a real town in Germany, it is also the name of a fictional town inhabited by fools known as “Schildbürger” [Schilda-citizens], see Wise Men of Gotham.

Examples of the actions of the citizens of Schilda:

Schildbuerger Streich

The Germans have a series of allegorical tales in which the citizens of Schilda (the SchildBuerger) embark on a range of schemes that seem, at first sight, logical but on closer inspection turn out to be totally misguided and pointless.

A famous story runs like this – the Schildbuerger have no salt and so must buy it from the nearest big city. This is expensive and the people of Schilda are not rich. They call a town meeting and decide that something must be done. ‘Surely’ says one man “ if we grew our own salt plants there would be an endless supply for us”. The others agreed that this was a great idea. They set about collecting money from all the people to buy two large sacks of salt from the merchants in the big city.
The salt duly arrived and one of the local farmers volunteered his best acreage as a salt field, greedily hoping that he would get a bigger share in return. The salt was ploughed into the soil and the Schilda congratulated themselves on their superb cleverness.
In autumn they returned to harvest their salt plants, but found only a field of nettles. The farmer could never get crops to grow in this field till the end of his days…. (Full Story)

The Invention of the Window

A German Volksbuch (”folks book”) story tells about the difficulties that the citizens of Schilda had, as they were trying to illuminate the interior of their council house.

They went to the extreme of going outside with all types of baskets and bags, in order to collect as much sunlight as they could, and carry it inside the house.

Since that did not work, they also tried removing the house roof. This worked perfectly, until the winter came.

One day, a Schilda man accidentally hit himself against the wall on the way out of the council house. This caused a ray of light to enter inside the house through a tiny wall fissure.

And this is how the Schildans came to think about windows. That simple part of a house, the story says, was never invented but found by mere accident…(Source)

One can’t help but wonder what future generations will write and tell about climate alarmism and the supposed cures for global warming.

Posted in Alternative Energy Sources | Print | 1 Comment »

September 17, 2009 by admin.

Wind energy is a renewable alternative energy source whose alleged capability to serve as an acceptable and even desirable solution to the problem of ever-increasing fossil-fuel consumption is much touted by politicians who would like to demonstrate that with the help of billions of dollars in tax revenues they will save the world.

Regardless of their continual history of lack of success in implementing global policies, things like that are relatively easy to do for politicians.  Politicians make money for themselves whether the solutions they propose and try to push through are realistic or not, whether those solutions can be made to pay for themselves or lose trillions of dollars in gross domestic product.  Usually — the climate hysteria is a case in point — the greater the failures of politicians and the losses caused by them, the more the politicians stand to gain, and the more we — the ordinary people trying to make a living — stand to lose.

The political system is a growth industry that is being supported by a cancerously-growing, ravenous bureaucracy and ever increasing taxation.

It would be a great thing if Mother Nature’s bounty, as in the case of “free” wind energy, would help to offset the losses caused by the grand schemes rammed through by politicians, but wind energy is not free.  Wind energy is much more expensive than to generate energy by burning fossil fuels.  Wind energy generating capacity installed must be matched by corresponding generating capacity that is based on hydroelectric-, nuclear- or fossil-fuel-powered power generation.  In other words, as far as the utility of large-scale wind energy generation goes, it is as useful as tits on a boar and as precariously and potentially harmful as a second functioning steering wheel on a car.

A September 2009 study report by CEPOS (Center for Politiske Studier), “Wind Energy — The Case of Denmark” makes for fascinating reading. It addresses the illusions that anyone should hold regarding wind energy.  The study report should be of interest to a wide variety of people, such as tax payers, electrical systems operators, politicians and policy makers.

Here is the executive summary of the study report.

Executive summary

PART 1: The real state-of-play and its hidden costs

Denmark generates the equivalent of about 19% of its electricity demand with wind turbines, but wind power contributes far less than 19% of the Nation’s electricity demand.

The claim that Denmark derives about 20% of its electricity from wind overstates matters. Being highly intermittent, wind power has recently (2006) met as little as 5% of Denmark’s annual electricity consumption with an average over the last five years of 9.7%.

In the absence of large-scale electricity storage, any modern electricity system must continuously balance electricity supply and demand, because even small variations in system voltage and frequency can cause damage to modern electronic equipment and other electrical equipment.

Wind power is stochastic [that is, “random”, essentially difficult or impossible to predict], especially in the very short term (e.g., over any given hour, 30 minute, or 15 minute period). This has created a completely new challenge that transmission system operators (TSOs) all over the World are only now learning how to handle. Some draw from Denmark’s experience. But Denmark’s special circumstances make its experience of limited transferability elsewhere.

Denmark manages to keep the electricity systems balanced due to having the benefit of its particular neighbors and their electricity mix. Norway and Sweden provide Denmark, Germany and Netherlands access to significant amounts of fast, short term balancing reserve, via interconnectors. They effectively act as Denmark’s “electricity storage batteries”. Norwegian and Swedish hydropower can be rapidly turned up and down, and Norway’s lakes effectively “store” some portion of Danish wind power.

Over the last eight years West Denmark has exported (couldn’t use), on average, 57% of the wind power it generated and East Denmark an average of 45%.The correlation between high wind output and net outflows makes the case that there is a large component of wind energy in the outflow indisputable.

The exported wind power, paid for by Danish householders, brings material benefits in the form of cheap electricity and delayed investment in new generation equipment for consumers in Sweden and Norway but nothing for Danish consumers. Taxes and charges on electricity for Danish household consumers make their electricity by far the most expensive in the European Union (EU)[1]. The total probable value of exported subsidies between 2001 and 2008 was DKK 6.8 billion (€916 million) during this period. A similar amount was probably exported prior to 2012[2] and larger quantities will be exported following the commissioning of 800 MW of new offshore wind capacity in 2013.

The wind power that is exported from Denmark saves neither fossil fuel consumption nor CO2 emissions in Denmark, where it is all paid for. By necessity, wind power exported to Norway and Sweden supplants largely carbon neutral electricity in the Nordic countries. No coal is used nor are there power-related CO2 emissions in Sweden and Norway.

Wind energy has replaced some thermal generation in Denmark. It has saved an average emission of about 2.4 million t per year CO2 at a total subsidy cost of 12.3 billion DKK or an average cost of 647 DKK (€ 87 or $124) per ton CO2. Wind power has proven to be an expensive way to save CO2 emissions[3].

The cost of Denmark’s wind capacity to Danish consumers is exacerbated by its inability to use so much surplus electricity. The surplus will increase in 2013 when 800 MW of new offshore capacity is commissioned, increasing Denmark’s wind production by 2.7 TWh per year. Nearly all the additional wind power will be exported and this will further depress prices; nearly all the subsidies paid by Danish consumers will also be exported without achieving any significant fossil fuel use nor any CO2 reduction. Achieving own-consumption of all its wind power is technically impossible in the short term and will remain entirely hypothetical until electricity consumption rises and new technical and demand-side solutions have been developed and implemented. In most cases, these have yet even to be invented, let alone proven and costed.

Notwithstanding its many disadvantages, wind power’s one striking advantage is that, like nuclear, its marginal costs of operation are very small once the capital has been paid. However, unlike nuclear, many ten to fifteen year-old turbines are past their useful life. By contrast, most conventional rotating power plant can enjoy a working life of 40 to 60 years, as evidenced by most power plants in Europe today. This puts into question the strategic, economic and environmental benefits of a power plant that may have to be scrapped, replaced and resubsidized every ten to fifteen years.

The Danish Parliament reached a political consensus during 2008 that in 2025 50% of Denmark’s electricity demand must come from renewable resources, mostly wind power. The Ecogrid Study Group has concluded4 that if the extra wind power is to achieve this aim, drastic re-engineering of the whole energy system will need to take place, including the retirement of much expensive, high quality, existing capacity. Wisely, it has not tried to estimate the costs of doing this. In any case, Sweden and Norway will be unable balance the extra wind capacity planned that is also planned for Germany and Netherlands.

PART 2: Wind Energy’s effect on employment

Denmark has been a first-mover in the wind power industry for over ten years, and its leading wind turbine manufacturers have been able to maintain a very strong global position. This has been a consequence of a concerted policy to increase the share of wind power in Danish electricity generation. The policy has only been made possible through substantial subsidies supporting the wind turbine owners. This indirect subsidy has in turn generated the demand for wind turbines from the manufactures. Exactly how the subsidies have been shared between land, wind turbine owners, labor, capital and shareholders is opaque, but it is fair to assess that no Danish wind industry to speak of would exist if it had to compete on market terms. This paper documents the experiences gained in Denmark with regard to the employment effect of subsidizing the wind industry.

Substantial subsidies have been directed to the Danish wind mill industry over years. From 2001-2005 the yearly subsidy has been 1.7-2.6 billion DKK.

The Danish Wind industry counts 28,400 employees. This does not, however, constitute the net employment effect of the wind mill subsidy. In the long run, creating additional employment in one sector through subsidies will detract labor from other sectors, resulting in no increase in net employment but only in a shift from the non-subsidized sectors to the subsidized sector. Allowing for the theoretical possibility of wind employment alleviating possible regional pockets of high unemployment, a very optimistic ballpark estimate of net real job creation is 10% of total employment in the sector. In this case the subsidy per job created is 600,000-900,000 DKK per year ($90,000-140,000). This subsidy constitutes around 175-250% of the average pay per worker in the Danish manufacturing industry.

In terms of value added per employee, the energy technology sector over the period 1999-2006 underperformed by as much as 13% compared with the industrial average.

This implies that the effect of the government subsidy has been to shift employment from more productive employment in other sectors to less productive employment in the wind industry. As a consequence, Danish GDP is approximately 1.8 billion DKK ($270 million) lower than it would have been if the wind sector work force was employed elsewhere.

________________

1. 1. According to the OECD, Denmark has the World’s highest tax burden. This applies across a slew of tax sources, including personal income and value added tax.
   2. The wind power subsidy arrangements before 2001 were made directly by Government and are not available to the public.
   3. The “value” of European emission allowances since the European emission-trading scheme (ETS) started has varied between € 1 and €30 per ton of CO2.
   4. http://www.energinet.dk/en/menu/R+and+D/EcoGrid/EcoGrid.dk.htm

(See full study report; 2.8 MB, 39 pages,  PDF document)

The population of the Province of Alberta  (3.6 million) is comparable in size to that of Denmark (5.5 million), while its area (661,848 km²  or 255,541 sq mi) is 15.4 times larger than that of Denmark (43,098.31 km² or 16,640 sq mi).  It follows that the politicians’ push to create wind-energy generating capacity in Alberta will come at a considerably higher cost per capita than it does in Denmark, at considerably more than the Danish experience of $49 in GDP loss per annum per capita in Denmark.

The pursuit of the illusion of “free” wind power comes at a very real cost that we would be wise to avoid.

Posted in Energy Issues, Alternative Energy Sources, Climate Change, Community & Industry | Print | No Comments »

June 22, 2009 by admin.

You may wish to bookmark the following link to help you to keep up-to-date on discussions of energy issues:

http://www.icecap.us/

Today, here are some of the articles that will probably interest you.Jun 21, 2009

The Wong-Fielding Meeting On Global WarmingBy David Evans on Joanne Nova’s blog

The article relates to a meeting between government officials and government-funded climate change alarmists on the one side, and reputable climate scientists in Australia who fall into the camp of the so-called climate-change “skeptics” on the other side.

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Jun 20, 2009 “World cooling has set in and it will stay colder for at least 100 years predicts scientist”

By Piers Corbyn, WeatherAction

Piers Corbyn is an astrophysicist-turned-weather-forecaster whose long-range weather forecasts - based on solar activity trends and their influence on Earth - are remarkably accurate.

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Jun 22, 2009 United States, Great Britain and Russia Climate Action In the News

Obama Gives Green Light to Canadian Oil Sands

Climatico, 21 June 2009

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Britain Green Suicide Note: 5,000 Pound Power

By Louise Barnett, Consumer Editor

That will be the combined costs of electricity and natural (or city-) gas by 2020.  Costs are projected to go up by as much as 42% a year.
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Jun 21, 2009 Appeal to Authority

By Norm Kalmanovitch

From the article:

See large image here.

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Jun 20, 2009 A Move to Put the Union Label on Solar Power Plants

By Todd Woody, New York Times Business

Posted in Energy Issues, Weather, Alternative Energy Sources, Climate Change | Print | No Comments »