Free Republic

ONE of the great popular misconceptions about climate-change sceptics such as Ian Plimer, Bob Carter, Cardinal George Pell and me is that we're all Big-Oil-funded, Gaia-ravaging, nature-hating emissaries of Satan. We can't look at a lovely pristine beach, apparently, without praying for a nice, juicy oil slick to turn up and wipe out all the pelicans and turtles and sea otters. But this isn't actually true. I love our beautiful planet at least as much as your $180,000-a-year (for a three-day week) climate commissioner Tim Flannery does. One of my great heroes is Patrick Moore, the Canadian co-founder of Greenpeace...

Only months after Coconino County's first major wind energy farm got up and running this winter, the utility buying its power says more wind farms here are unlikely -- at least for now. Cost is the bottom line, with the sun beating the wind on both equipment prices and time-of-day power production. This disadvantage for wind could have some implications for a handful of other big wind projects proposed in Coconino County. A worldwide glut of solar panels produced at lower costs (including from China) has cut solar panel prices to a fraction of their former cost. So Arizona Public...

A year ago, a Reno clean energy businessman warned the Public Utilities Commission that if it didn’t set a few standards for NV Energy’s wind rebate program, its customers could end up footing the bill for turbines that rarely produce electricity. One reason behind his concern: To be eligible for rebates, customers didn’t need to prove that the wind actually blows enough to justify installing a turbine on their property. “This could allow unscrupulous developers to sell turbines to unsuspecting customers who will not generate electricity from an installed turbine because there is no wind to power the turbine,” Clean...

Scotland, one of Barack Obama’s models for his bogus wind power scam has literally seen the wind go out of her socialist politically correct sails. Scotland is the poster boy for the failure of wind power as a genuine source of energy. All of the high and mighty talk about wind as a viable alternative source of energy is now gone, not in the strong productive winds of the drawing board, but with the gentle breezes that are Scotland’s reality. The Scottish government’s ill-advised but politically correct “wind; not fossil fuel” scheme has so devastated the average Scottish household’s economy...

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Obama administration offered new guidance Friday on where wind farms should be located to reduce the number of bird deaths while promoting increased use of wind power. A bird advocacy group that lobbied for mandatory standards said the new, voluntary guidelines will do little to protect hundreds of thousands of birds killed each year by wind turbines.

Taxpayers have put out billions in subsidies over the last three years for Barack Obama's green-energy stimulus program, which has produced such success stories as Solyndra, Beacon Power, and Ener1. But what happens when taxpayers subsidize efforts that actually produce electricity? As people in the Pacific Northwest have discovered, they end up subsidizing green-power generation -- and non-generation: CLICK ABOVE LINK FOR THE VIDEO Wind farms in the Pacific Northwest — built with government subsidies and maintained with tax credits for every megawatt produced — are now getting paid to shut down as the federal agency charged with managing the...

Analysis Two studies published this week calculate the astounding cost of Britain's go-it-alone obsession with using wind turbines to generate so much of the electricity the nation needs. Both studies make remarkably generous concessions that favour wind technology; the true cost, critics could argue, will be higher in each set of calculations. One study reckons that the UK can still meet its carbon dioxide emissions targets and save £140bn – but only if it dumps today's inefficient hippie technology. The other puts the potential saving at £120bn – pointing out that the same amount of electricity could be generated using...

A rush to green energy by spending billions covering much of the countryside with wind turbines would be an expensive blunder, a damning study has found. Professor Gordon Hughes of Edinburgh University said the massive programme will cost consumers £120billion by 2020 through higher bills. This is almost ten times more than the £13billion it would cost to generate the same amount of electricity from efficient gas-fired power stations, according to the leading energy and environment economist. Professor Hughes said families are being forced to subsidise wind farms through their bills. Meanwhile business energy costs are also being driven up,...

You'd have to be a dim bulb -- perhaps one of those 13-watt compact fluorescents -- to believe that forcing utilities to purchase expensive offshore wind power will lead to economic prosperity. Yet this is precisely the reaction of the Boston press to a recent deal brokered by Gov. Deval Patrick. Gov. Patrick has been in a bind. With the Green Communities Act of 2008, the state legislature enacted a clean energy mandate requiring that 20% of Massachusetts' power come from renewable sources by 2025, joining 36 other states with "Renewable Portfolio Standards." Renewable energy, however, is expensive and especially...

The wind power industry is predicting massive layoffs and stalled or abandoned projects after a deal to renew a tax credit failed Thursday in Washington. The move is expected to have major ramifications in states such as Illinois, where 13,892 megawatts of planned wind projects — enough to power 3.3 million homes per year — are seeking to be connected to the electric grid. Many of those projects will be abandoned or significantly delayed without federal subsidies. The state is home to more than 150 companies that support the wind industry. At least 67 of those make turbines or components...

Hopes that a near-term extension of the production tax credit (PTC) for wind power would be included in legislation to extend the payroll tax cuts through the remainder of this year are nearly extinguished, as NAW has learned that congressional leaders have reached a tentative framework agreement on the payroll tax cut - but it does not contain a PTC extension. A House-Senate conference committee is expected to approve the deal, which will then go to the House and Senate as soon as today. Sources, who wished to remain anonymous, told NAW that both legislative bodies are expected to quickly...

...I want to believe in alt power, because sun and wind are free -- just as petroleum is free. It's only the extraction and distribution that cost...

Egypt currently has a total electricity capacity of about 23,500 megawatts, which the government hopes to increase to 58,000 megawatts by 2027. A prime potential element in increasing this electrical output? Renewables. One might think, given Egypt’s climate, solar? Wrong again – wind power, which currently contributes less than 1 percent to Egypt’s energy mix. In 2003 Egypt had its wind potential assessed and published a wind atlas, which found that with wind speeds of 7-10 meters per second, almost the entire nation was ideal for wind power installations, with the country’s best areas being along the Gulf of Suez...

For decades, electric companies have swung into emergency mode when demand soars on blistering hot days, appealing to households to use less power. But with the rise of wind energy, utilities in the Pacific Northwest are sometimes dealing with the opposite: moments when there is too much electricity for the grid to soak up. So in a novel pilot project, they have recruited consumers to draw in excess electricity when that happens, storing it in a basement water heater or a space heater outfitted by the utility. The effort is rooted in some brushes with danger. In June 2010, for...

BOSTON (AP) -- A federal appeals court on Friday overturned the Federal Aviation Administration's ruling that Cape Wind's turbines present no danger for local air traffic. The decision could further delay construction of the wind farm first proposed a decade ago. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia said the FAA misread its own rules when assessing Cape Wind, which aims to be the nation's first offshore wind farm. The court said the FAA did not adequately determine whether Cape Wind's 130 turbines - each 440-feet tall - would pose a danger to pilots relying on sight...

Windmills to shut at night following demise of rare batKathy Mellott - The Tribune-Democrat October 17, 2011 LILLY — Night operation of the windmills in the North Allegheny Windpower Project has been halted following discovery of a dead Indiana bat under one of the turbines, an official with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service said Monday. The finding marks only the second location where an Indiana bat has been found dead under a wind turbine. Two Indiana bats were found under turbines in the Mid-west, said Clint Riley, supervisor for Fish and Wildlife’s Pennsylvania field office. “While finding the dead...

You may have gotten wind of the seven North Dakota oil companies recently charged in federal court with the deaths of 28 migratory birds. The birds allegedly landed in oil waste pits in western North Dakota last spring; the maximum penalty for each charge under the Migratory Bird Treaty Act is six months in prison and a $15,000 fine, the AP said. But did you know that wind-power companies are responsible for more than 400,000 bird deaths annually, and not one has faced a single charge? The Wall Street Journal knows it, opining yesterday that the prosecutions are “bird-brained,” especially...

Our ever-campaigning president heads off to a fundraiser held by a politically connected businessman whose company took a $100 million stimulus tax credit. Solyndra didn't stop pay-for-play the "Chicago Way."

Scandal: Our ever-campaigning president heads off to a fundraiser held by a politically connected businessman whose company took a $100 million stimulus tax credit. Solyndra didn't stop pay-for-play the "Chicago Way." Tone-deaf somehow does not seem adequate to describe President Obama's silent indifference to the Solyndra scandal of his making as he rushes off to another fundraiser, a $25,000 per person affair in Missouri on Oct. 4 organized by another beneficiary of our stimulus tax dollars. Tom Carnahan, of the Missouri Carnahans, arguably that state's most prominent political family, is listed on President Obama's campaign website as a host of...

These pointless monstrosities will continue to proliferate until the Government sees sense. Three separate news items on the same day last week reflected three different aspects of what is fast becoming a full-scale disaster bearing down on Britain. The first item was a picture in The Daily Telegraph showing two little children forlornly holding a banner reading “E.On Hands Off Winwick”. This concerned a battle to prevent a tiny Northamptonshire village from being dwarfed by seven 410-foot wind turbines, each higher than Salisbury Cathedral, to be built nearby by a giant German-owned electricity firm. The 40 residents, it was reported,...