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Post by sigurdur on Oct 15, 2014 0:48:54 GMT
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Post by magellan on Oct 16, 2014 3:49:54 GMT
I hadn't traveled north of my home all summer. A few weeks ago we went to pick up hay from our friend's place and the number of wind turbines added this summer was completely shocking; just ten minutes away. All around their home are wind turbines as far as the eye can see. They think wind farms are foolish, but were willing to cash in and allow one or more on their land. Why not? However, they are out of luck because a flight path to a local airport (may have 10 planes land there a year ) goes right through their property preventing erecting a wind turbine. To the left and to the right they are surrounding by wind turbines. I think they farm about 1000 acres. One of these days I'm going to take some video with my drone. Hopefully it won't suffer the same fate as the birds and bats.
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Post by nautonnier on Oct 16, 2014 11:09:14 GMT
I hadn't traveled north of my home all summer. A few weeks ago we went to pick up hay from our friend's place and the number of wind turbines added this summer was completely shocking; just ten minutes away. All around their home are wind turbines as far as the eye can see. They think wind farms are foolish, but were willing to cash in and allow one or more on their land. Why not? However, they are out of luck because a flight path to a local airport (may have 10 planes land there a year ) goes right through their property preventing erecting a wind turbine. To the left and to the right they are surrounding by wind turbines. I think they farm about 1000 acres. One of these days I'm going to take some video with my drone. Hopefully it won't suffer the same fate as the birds and bats. Better be quick with the video, as subsidies get withdrawn those subsidy farm rotary markers will be left to rot. The subsidy farming company will declare bankruptcy and it will be the landowner that picks up the bill to remove all the old markers
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Post by sigurdur on Oct 17, 2014 15:32:31 GMT
Minnesota passed a law in 2007 that calls for 25 percent of its electricity to come from renewable energy sources, namely wind. The following is from a recent Forbes magazine. "In Minnesota, electricity consumers spent $6.4 billion on electricity in 2013. Had Minnesota electricity prices risen at merely the national average from 2008-2013, however, Minnesota electricity consumers would have spent only $5.4 billion on electricity. That’s $1 billion in excess electricity costs in 2013. If we divide that up among Minnesota’s 2.1 million households, the extra electricity costs drained $476 from the average Minnesota household in 2013. The wind power industry’s fallback position is wind power benefits state economies, despite rapidly rising electricity costs, because the switch from conventional power to wind power generates jobs within the wind power industry. This argument, however, amounts to nothing more than a misleading head-fake. Shifting electricity production from conventional power to wind power does not create any net new jobs – it merely shifts jobs from one sector (conventional power) to another sector (wind power). Jobs created in the wind power industry come at the price of eliminating jobs in the conventional power industry
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Post by Ratty on Oct 17, 2014 23:47:01 GMT
.... and the general economy suffers because of the loss of $476 worth of discretionary spending per family.
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Post by sigurdur on Oct 18, 2014 1:43:25 GMT
.... and the general economy suffers because of the loss of $476 worth of discretionary spending per family. Yep.
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Post by cuttydyer on Oct 19, 2014 16:50:50 GMT
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Post by nautonnier on Oct 22, 2014 17:08:51 GMT
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Post by nautonnier on Nov 22, 2014 16:38:02 GMT
Faulty Turbines Sending Siemen’s Wind Power Division Broke as Samsung Cuts & Runs from Europe"But Tim [Flannery] may need to think about where his next meal is coming from, as his paymaster’s wind power division hits the wall. Not only did Siemens find itself in huge strife being convicted of bribery and corruption – leading to hundreds of $millions in fines (see our post here) – its wind turbine arm is losing money hand-over-fist. The problem?: Siemens turbines are suffering catastrophic bearing and blade failures, requiring urgent, wholesale replacements. "
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Post by acidohm on Nov 22, 2014 21:34:17 GMT
A research effort by Google corporation to make renewable energy viable has been a complete failure, according to the scientists who led the programme. After 4 years of effort, their conclusion is that renewable energy “simply won’t work”. There is simply no getout clause for renewables supporters. The people who ran the study are very much committed to the belief that CO2 is dangerous – they are supporters of James Hansen. Their sincere goal was not to simply install a few solar cells, but to find a way to fundamentally transform the economics of energy production – to make renewable energy cheaper than coal. To this end, the study considered exotic innovations barely on the drawing board, such as self erecting wind turbines, using robotic technology to create new wind farms without human intervention. The result however was total failure – even these exotic possibilities couldn’t deliver the necessary economic model. The key problem appears to be that the cost of manufacturing the components of the renewable power facilities is far too close to the total recoverable energy – the facilities never, or just barely, produce enough energy to balance the budget of what was consumed in their construction. This leads to a runaway cycle of constructing more and more renewable plants simply to produce the energy required to manufacture and maintain renewable energy plants – an obvious practical absurdity. wattsupwiththat.com/2014/11/22/shocker-top-google-engineers-say-renewable-energy-simply-wont-work/
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Post by douglavers on Nov 23, 2014 20:56:29 GMT
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Post by acidohm on Nov 23, 2014 21:03:51 GMT
Subscriber only article :-(
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Post by douglavers on Nov 23, 2014 21:30:53 GMT
Sorry. Some extracts from the Patrick Moore article in The Australian:
[I am sceptical that humans are the main cause of climate change, and that it will be catastrophic in the near future. There is no scientific proof of this hypothesis, yet we are told “the debate is over”, the “science is settled”. My scepticism begins with the warmists’ certainty they can predict the global climate with a computer model. The entire basis for the doomsday climate change scenario is the hypothesis that increased CO2 due to fossil fuel emissions will heat the Earth to unlivable temperatures. In fact, the Earth has been warming very gradually for 300 years, since the Little Ice Age ended, long before heavy use of fossil fuels. Prior to the Little Ice Age, during the Medieval Warm Period, Vikings colonised Greenland and Newfoundland, when it was warmer there than today. And during Roman times, it was warmer, long before fossil fuels revolutionised civilisation.]
[So we are told CO2 is a “toxic” “pollutant” that must be curtailed when in fact it is a colourless, odourless, tasteless, gas present at 400 parts per million of the global atmosphere and the most important food for life on earth. Without CO2 above 150 parts per million, all plants would die. Over the past 150 million years, CO2 had been drawn down steadily (by plants) from about 3000 parts per million to about 280 parts per million before the industrial revolution. If this trend had continued, CO2 would have become too low to support life on Earth. Human use of fossil fuels and clearing land for crops have boosted CO2 from its lowest level in the history of the Earth back to 400 parts per million today. At 400 parts per million, all our food crops, forests, and natural ecosystems are still on a starvation diet for CO2. While one wing of CSIRO promotes the IPCC line, another is demonstrating the positive impact of the small increase in CO2 over the past 50 years due primarily to fossil fuel use — a 10 per cent to 30 per cent increase in plant growth in many regions. Australia is benefiting more than most because its vegetation evolved for dry conditions. Increased CO2 means plants don’t need as much water, so our deserts are lusher. The optimum level of CO2 for plant growth, given enough water and nutrients, is about 1500 parts per million, nearly four times higher than today. Glasshouse growers inject CO2 to increase yields of 50 to 100 per cent. Farms and forests will be much more productive if CO2 keeps rising. We have no proof increased CO2 is responsible for the slight warming over the past 300 years. There has been no significant warming for 18 years while we have emitted 25 per cent of all the CO2 ever emitted. Yet we have absolute proof CO2 is vital for life on Earth and plants would like more of it. Which should we emphasise to our children? The IPCC’s followers have given us a vision of a dying world due to CO2 emissions. I say the Earth would be a lot deader with no CO2 and more of it will be a very positive factor in feeding the world. Let’s celebrate CO2. Patrick Moore was a co-founder, and leader of Greenpeace for 15 years is now an independent ecologist and environmentalist based in Vancouver, Canada.]
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Post by acidohm on Nov 25, 2014 1:33:11 GMT
Well summed up!
Thx for posting text douglavers
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Post by scpg02 on Dec 6, 2014 15:56:54 GMT
December 3, 2014 4:00 AM The BET ME ChallengeBET ME would put the pundits’ money where their predictions are. By Kevin D. Williamson It’s December, meaning that the pundits-and-predictions season is upon us. In the name of public safety and common-sense reform, somebody has to put a stop to this madness. Regular readers will have by now detected my pronounced skepticism of government regulation — of both its wisdom and its effectiveness. But even the most gimlet-eyed small-government man has his hesitations — e.g., William F. Buckley Jr.’s late-in-life confession that he would, despite his free-market principles, ban smoking, had he the power to do so. If I were inclined to violate my own libertarian leanings, I’d lobby the new Republican majority in Congress to enact the Better Expertise Through Monetary Exposure Act of 2015 — the BET ME Act. The purpose of the BET ME Act would be two-fold: First, it would impose accountability on pundits and self-appointed experts of all descriptions by requiring them to wager a month’s pay on the real-world outcome every time they published a prediction. Second, and consequently, it would surely eliminate the national debt in a matter of months. I was on the fence about this until I read the latest from UberFacts, the runaway leader in the race to be the most boneheaded thing on Twitter not called Sally Kohn: “Experts predict that solar power will be the primary source of energy on the planet in 2025.” That may be true if by “solar power” we mean the solar energy stored in dead dinosaurs and pumped out of the ground by Exxon; if by “solar power” we mean photovoltaic cells and the like, then I want these so-called experts to put their money where their tweets are. Similarly, unless you’re ready to take the appropriate position on oil futures, I don’t want to read your apocalyptic “peak oil” pabulum. ~snip~ www.nationalreview.com/article/393813/bet-me-challenge-kevin-d-williamson
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