A Free-Market Energy Blog

Ontario's Great Windpower Escape: A Setback Only

By Sherri Lange -- August 4, 2011

[Sherri Lange’s previous reports on the Ontario wind siting battles are “Wind’s Political Trouble in Ontario (Secretive Samsung deal, power rates at issue)’ from May 11 and Ontario Update: Offshore Wind Moratorium Decision Hangs Tough, Onshore BAU Targetedfrom April 8.]

In an Elvis-has-left-the-building-but-might-be-coming-back kind of moment, the Environmental Review Tribunal (ERT) in Ontario announced to that the Kent Breeze turbine project could continue. The appellants failed in this instance to prove that there would be “serious” health effects posed by the project, ERT determined.

The Tribunal did leave the doors open for future challenges, however. And not all is lost: this project was the first ever public legal challenge based on health and safety concerns.

Expect victories in the future. On the heels of this pro-wind decision that despaired many around the world tuned into this legal challenge, came Carl Phillips’ release of an epidemiological study: there are very real and verifiable health consequences for living too near turbines.…

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Environmentalists vs. Cap-and-Trade: Washington Yesterday, California Today

By Tom Tanton -- August 3, 2011

“The fraudulence of … ‘goals’ for emission reductions, ‘offsets’ that render even iron-clad goals almost meaningless, an ineffectual ‘cap-and-trade’ mechanism must be exposed. We must rebel against such politics-as-usual.”

– James Hansen, “Never-Give-Up Fighting Spirit,” November 30, 2009

“The truth is, the climate course set by [the] Waxman-Markey [cap-and-trade bill] is a disaster course. It is an exceedingly inefficient way to get a small reduction of emissions. It is less than worthless….”

-James Hansen, “Strategies to Address Global Warming,” July 13, 2009.

The case for government intervention in the name of addressing man-made climate change concerns alleged market failure. But there is a second key factor in the debate over public policy activism: government failure.

The letter below, signed by 41 Left environmental groups , is a welcome example of policy activists assessing the ‘cure’ in terms of the ‘disease’.

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Nano Climate Change: Another Issue for Industrial Wind

By Mark Lively -- August 2, 2011

“In any case there is an irony: environmental policy in the name of countering the human influence on macro climate is creating a substantial human influence on micro climate. If the natural climate is optimal, as some but not all ecologists believe, then industrial wind turbines add to the problem of man versus nature.”

I have long heard of micro-climates, isolated areas that have slightly different weather patterns than the surrounding larger area. I best remember hearing of the micro-climate of Northern California’s Napa Valley, a micro-climate that makes the area so good for growing grapes.

For the last several years, Somnath Baidya Roy has been pushing the concept that wind farms can affect the weather. While at the department of civil and environmental engineering at Duke University, Roy said:

“Large wind farms can significantly affect local meteorology.”

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Renewable Energy Trouble: Energy Reality Meets Budget Reality

By Robert Bradley Jr. -- August 1, 2011
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Seasteading and Stewardship: An Introduction to a New Frontier

By Max Borders -- July 29, 2011
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Federal 'Clean Energy' Loan Guarantees: Crazy Dollars for Bubble Jobs

By Vance Ginn -- July 28, 2011
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Towards a New Environmentalism (open criticism, midcourse correction, and scholarship needed)

By Steve Hayward -- July 27, 2011
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Wind Turbines and Whooping Cranes: Going Soft on Soft Energy (politically correct environmental damage)

By Tom Tanton -- July 26, 2011
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2011 U.S. Temperature Update: Alarmism Not

By Chip Knappenberger -- July 25, 2011
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The Crisis of Interventionism (Mises's 1949 wisdom speaks to the limits of government- forced energy transformation today)

By Robert Bradley Jr. -- July 22, 2011
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