A Free-Market Energy Blog

Lake Erie Wind Turbines? (Part 2: Environmental Issues)

By Sherri Lange -- October 19, 2016

“Overwhelming evidence has been formally brought forward to the OPSB concerning possible and inevitable damage to the fragile ecosystems of Lake Erie. This ‘incubator’ project is intended to spawn more like projects, up to, we hear, 1,700 industrial machines in this one Lake or any of the Great Lakes.”

Members of the Great Lakes Wind Truth group for years have pointed to the fact that there are tens of millions of migrating birds and bats, possibly billions, that would be seriously impacted by even the six-to-nine industrial wind turbines at Cleveland. The Hawk Migration Association of North America and Rick Unger, past president and current advisor, of the Lake Erie Charter Boat Association, also expressed concerns to the OPSB.

Additionally, quoted in the joint letter of 2014, is a statement about

staggering environmental damages.

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Lake Erie Wind Turbines? Complaints Pour In (Part I: Overview)

By Sherri Lange -- October 18, 2016

“Groups fighting any industrialization of the Lakes … are requesting that federal funding for this expensive boondoggle, estimated to eventually run up to $125 million, or about $25 million for each turbine, be immediately truncated, and that a complete audit of existing monies granted be undertaken with fulsome reporting to taxpayers.”

“There is absolutely NOTHING ecologically friendly about an industrial wind turbine. It is designed for one thing: profits.”

The Icebreaker Windpower project, proposed by the Norway-based Fred. Olsen Renewables, would be the first proposed freshwater wind turbine project in the United States. The proposal, however, is running into serious opposition from ratepayer, taxpayer, and environmental groups.

As an offshore project (six turbines about seven miles off the shore of Cleveland Ohio), it should be compared to the $0.24/kWh cost debacle of Rhode Island’s Deepwater Wind project that is about to begin production.…

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Julian Simon on Hillary’s Incredible Commodity Deal (mid-1990s revisited)

By Robert Bradley Jr. -- October 17, 2016

“How could Clinton make money when people on average lose? There are two possibilities: She may have been incredibly lucky. Or it may have been fixed that she would gain and not lose. Neither possibility reflects well on her.”

“[T]he investment records of commodities between 1900 and 1975 … showed that the investor would have lost spectacularly by buying and holding commodities; AAA bonds produced a rate of return 733 per cent higher than holding resources.”

  • Julian Simon: 1996 (below)

Remember the Clinton commodity-investment home run back in 1994? One thousand dollars increased one-hundred-fold in ten months of trading. Some of the facts were reported at the time by the Washington Post:

Hillary Rodham Clinton was allowed to order 10 cattle futures contracts, normally a $12,000 investment, in her first commodity trade in 1978 although she had only $1,000 in her account at the time, according to trade records the White House released yesterday.

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Regulatory Reform at the Texas Railroad Commission (Part II in a series)

By Mark Miller -- October 14, 2016
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Fossil Fuels: Abundant, Chemically Stable, Energy-dense

By Mark Miller -- October 13, 2016
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Texas Railroad Commission: A Libertarian Candidacy

By David Hutzelman -- October 12, 2016
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Arlon Tussing: Remembering a Giant of Energy Analysis (energy economist & consultant par excellence)

By Robert Bradley Jr. -- October 11, 2016
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Energy Obstructionism Can Be Not-So-Green

By -- October 6, 2016
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James Hansen: Time to Go CO2 Negative!

By Robert Bradley Jr. -- October 5, 2016
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“The Energy Crisis of the 1970s: Looking Back, Looking Ahead” (Econ 101 needed at RFF seminar)

By Robert Bradley Jr. -- October 4, 2016
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