Flipping the Switch: Your Tax Dollars at Work

Yes, we’ve poured billions of tax dollars subsidizing the building of massive wind farms throughout the Columbia River Gorge. And now the turbines are being turned off because they’re producing too much power. And we’re paying them to shut down!

Fox News reports:

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 region’s electricity grid says there’s an oversupply of renewable power at certain times of the year.

The problem arose during the late spring and early summer last year. Rapid snow melt filled the Columbia River Basin. The water rushed through the 31 dams run by the Bonneville Power Administration, a federal agency based in Portland, Ore., allowing for peak hydropower generation. At the very same time, the wind howled, leading to maximum wind power production.

Demand could not keep up with supply, so BPA shut down the wind farms for nearly 200 hours over 38 days… [Emphasis mine]

…Now, Bonneville is offering to compensate wind companies for half their lost revenue. The bill could reach up to $50 million a year.

The extra payout means energy users will eventually have to pay more. 

Of course they will. And most people aren’t happy with the solution. Even environmentalists think it’s a bad idea — not because of the waste of money, energy, or resources, you understand, but because it looks bad for business:

“It sends a very poor signal to the market about doing business in the Northwest,” said Rachel Shimshak, executive director of the Renewable Northwest Project. “We want the Northwest to be a good place to do business.”

 

Sadly, the Bonneville Power folks can’t really do anything about it. Why? (All together now…) Because of environmental regulations! Apparently shutting down the hydropower instead of the wind turbines is bad for the salmon in the river. Too much water over the dam is as bad for the fish as… well, supply your own bad pun here. 

 

I’d like to know why there isn’t a plan in place to handle the surplus energy that might be (and apparently has been) generated. Surely some of our tax dollars went to develop all sorts of contingencies about the combined power supply… and the best they could come up with was just turn it off? No way to divert the extra power to other areas of the region? Couldn’t we sell it to Canada? It’s not like we’d need to build a pipeline or anything.

 

In clean energy parlance, this is evidently a case of dammed if you do and damned if you don’t.

 

UPDATE: Ed Morrissy at Hot Air beat me to this by 10 minutes!  And he’s got video.

 

Stoutcat

 

Slactivism Strikes Again

Once again, the enviro-nuts of the world have made their annual grand useless obeisance to Mother Gaiea in the form of “Earth Hour.” As the AP fawningly reports:

Europe’s best known landmarks — including the Eiffel Tower, Big Ben and Rome’s Colosseum — fell dark Saturday, following Sydney’s Opera House and Beijing’s Forbidden City in joining a global climate change protest, as lights were switched off across the world to mark the Earth Hour event.

In the United States, the lights went out at the Empire State Building in New York, the National Cathedral in Washington, D.C., and the Coca-Cola headquarters in Atlanta, among many other sites in the Eastern time zone.

Millions were expected to turn off lights and appliances for an hour from 8:30 p.m. in a gesture to highlight environmental concerns and to call for a binding pact to cut greenhouse gas emissions. This year’s was the fourth annual Earth Hour, organized by the World Wildlife Fund. (emphasis mine)

Here’s a clue, Einsteins. Turn off lights and appliances when you’re not using them. Period.

Doug Powers (filling in admirably while Michelle Malkin is on vacation) reveals what he and so many of us normal people do on a regular basis, celebrating “Earth Hour” every day:

We don’t leave lights on in rooms that nobody is in. We keep the thermostat fairly low (mostly because I’m usually too hot). We carpool when possible. We don’t waste gas. We pick up trash alongside the road when we’re walking. We volunteer to clean up the riverwalk, and we plant trees because we like trees — not because we’ve fooled ourselves into believing that planting trees is helping make Streisand’s environmentally-unfriendly concert tours carbon-neutral…

After Earth Hour is over, I pledge to turn my lights off for a full eight hours or so, just like we do every night, no doubt while Al Gore’s pool filter is still whirring away and outdoor flood lights protect his property. But during Earth Hour, we’ll have so many lights on that my family will have tan lines by the time the 60 minutes is up. I realize I’ll probably get hit with an Obamacare tanning bed tax, but it’s a price I’m willing to pay.

Meanwhile, Watts Up with That reports that Earth Hour was a wild success in North Korea, with nearly 100% participation–and includes a photo to prove it.

“The WWF sponsored Earth Hour has already come and gone in the Korean time zone, and the North Korean proletariat has claimed a stunning victory over its evil capitalist neighbor, South Korea.

Oh, wait… Seems it is always that way.”

Once again, a useless gesture carries more weight, gets more publicity, and garners more enthusiasm and adulation than the actual daily practicing of what is being preached for an hour. In other words, style over substance.

Stoutcat

Week-End Fun: Let’s Play “Where’d Al Go?”

  

There’s a fun new game that’s sweeping the nation, in light of record freezing and snow storms. Based loosely on the children’s books, “Where’s Waldo?” this game is played by adults wanting to know what’s happened to the former Vice-President, author of the best-seller, “An Inconvenient Truth” and winner of both an Oscar and Nobel Prize. The game is called “Where’d Al Go?”

Illustration by Gerry Ashley

At the height of Al Gore’s great “Global Warming” scam, he was everywhere. Talk shows, Monday Night Football, Internet videos, radio, newspapers, magazines… He left no form of exposure unexploited. The crowds came showed up to reinforce their adulation. It was almost enough to make him forget he got beaten in the Presidential election a few short years before… 

His book and movie enthralled an American public that loves to grab onto any perceived crisis without bothering to do any fact-checking (the same people who forward e-mails with dramatic stories without bothering to check their validity). Next stop: The Hollywood Oscars. Yep, there was Al, fresh from hosting Saturday Night Live to collect his Oscar for his pseudo-documentary, “An Inconvenient Truth” (which, as we now know, was actually a propaganda movie whose real title was A Bunch Of Very Convenient Lies.” 

But that wasn’t the end of it. Next thing you know, Al’s flying off to Copenhagen to pick up a Nobel prize for his erstwhile work in demonstrating how the world (but mostly the United States) was destroying the planet. 

Children cried as they watched images of helpless Polar Bears adrift on ice chunks that had once been giant glaciers (or so the kids were led to believe). 

Then came Al’s second biggest invention since the Internet: Carbon Credits! While Al figured out how to make billions by being one of the only sources for Carbon Credits, environmentalists drew up new guidelines for “the rest of us.

When Gore was criticized for having a home that uses 30 times the amount of energy of the typical American home, we were told, “Well, that’s different… he’s buying Carbon Credits to make up the difference.” What we weren’t being told is that buying carbon credits, for someone like Gore, simply meant taking money from his left pocket and simply inserted it into his right.

When he was criticized for flying around the country in his own personal Gulfstream jet (one of the least fuel efficient in the business), we were told it’s a small price to pay for spreading  the word about global warming: 

Source: Photobucket

 

But then, like climate change, Al’s credibility started to slide:: 

• Former CRU director Phil Jones was accused of covering up the fact that data from Chinese weather stations was flawed. Darned if he could find the original data documentation, too… 
• Stoutcat recently covered the other aspects of the crumbling case for Global Warming regarding Glaciergate and Amazongate in her piece you can read here.
• And, of course, there were the e-mails exposed when hackers broke into the computers at the University of East Anglia where, as it turns out, much of the Global Warming data was uh, massaged into supporting the agenda.
• Finally (and this just has to really suck if you’re Al Gore), his Global Warming position was endorsed by non other than Osama Bin-Laden. Read my piece on that ringing endorsement here.

Then came appearances that had to be cancelled due to blizzards which, of course, Gore supporters now tell us is all due to Global Warming (which, oddly enough, was their explanation for  the lack of snow several years ago).  

In fact, the last known photo of Al Gore, before his disappearance was as he addressed a small group outside a Circle K  in Flagstaff, Arizona: 

 

Source: Photobucket

After this fiasco, Al retreated and was reportedly hiding out on a private Island near Fiji.  

At some point along the way, the decision was made to re-name “Global Warming” as “Climate Change.” It was discovered that it’s  harder to define and, therefore, harder to be held accountable for the resulting scams.

Which brings me to the crux of the matter: Al Gore, one of the principal architects behind the whole “Cap and Trade” scam, stands to make billions as companies are strong-armed into buying “Carbon Credits” as a penance for their sins of using electricity. While Global Warmi… oops, sorry… “Climate Change” is being blamed for the need of Cap and Trade, there doesn’t seem to be any discussion on scaling it back or eliminating it altogether now that the science supporting it has been debunked.  Ahhh… no wonder Al is in hiding. 

But there’s more bad news for Gore: On Tuesday, the editors of Investors Business Daily wrote: 

“The godfather of climate hysteria is in hiding as another of his wild claims unravels — this one about global warming causing seas to swallow us up. We’ve not seen or heard much of the former vice president, Oscar winner and Nobel Prize recipient recently as the case for disastrous man-made climate change collapses.”  

Yet, according to Fox News, Gore spoke at the American Library Association conference at the Boston Convention & Exhibition Center on January `16th. While there, he signed copies of his newest book, Our Choice: How We Can Solve the Climate Crisis. On Feb. 22nd, he appeared at the IBM Pulse Conference in Las Vegas where he discussed how the environment was a fantastic business opportunity. According to the Fox article, Gore said: 

“We are in the presence of one of the greatest opportunities in the history of business to become much more efficient and eliminate waste, pollution and losses all at the same time,” he said. 

Ohhhhhh… Now we get it, Al. By that, I mean, now we get why you’re so selectively incommunicado.  Since he attended the Copenhagen climate summit in December, Gore has, for the most part,  been unavailable to talk to the media, making only a handful of public appearances (and those were under strictly controlled conditions). 

Finally, it’s getting harder for Gore to run, and it has nothing to do with record snow-falls. From Fox news: 

On Tuesday, Oklahoma Sen. James Inhofe — a prominent skeptic of global warming theory and the Republican leader of the Senate’s Environment and Public Works Committee — issued a request for Gore to come testify on global warming. In an interview with FoxNews.com, Inhofe said he wants Gore to appear because “it will be interesting to ask him on what science he based his movie,” a film the senator considers “science fiction.” 

Read the Fox report on-line here. 

Global Warming? Climate Change? Oh well, Al… you’ll always have the Internet… 

H/T Fox news 

Gerry Ashley

Discredited Scientific Theory Receives Yet Another Blow

 

Those poor AGW “scientists” and their supporters. The whole ClimateGate scandal was bad enough, with the embarrassing release of emails from the University of East Anglia Climate Research Unit which strongly suggest that scientists there conspired to hide research results detrimental to the claims of man-made global warming, and to discover ways to “fix” the outcome of experiments to support the agendas of  major global-warming advocacy groups desperate to show that global warming is real.

Then came GlacierGate:

…in which it is revealed that a prediction in the last international panel report that the Himalayan glaciers could all disappear by 2035 was wildly exaggerated. Some of the biggest glaciers in the Himalayas are so massive and so high it would actually take them 300 years to melt.

It was a grievous error, and the way it got into the panel’s 2007 report only compounded the offence. It was based on a casual remark by a single Indian scientist, Syed Hasnain, that found its way into a World Wildlife Fund study (which gave it the respectability of appearing in print), and thence into the panel’s 2007 report.

To add idiocy to the insult and injury above, we now have AmazonGate! James Delingpole of the Telegraph reports that:

…not content with having lied to us about shrinking glaciers, increasing hurricanes, and rising sea levels, the IPCC’s latest assessment report also told us a complete load of porkies about the danger posed by climate change to the Amazon rainforest.

Amazingly Predictably, the path leads right back to ClimateGate and the IPCC (support the agendas of major global-warming advocacy groups) as well as to GlacierGate (using an advocacy group’s suspect “report” as a basis for scientific conclusion).

And just what is AmazonGate? Within the IPCC report is an alarming claim that as much as 40% of the Amazon rainforests could be affected (adversely, of course) by even a slight reduction in precipitation. While this claim sounds both drastic and sweeping, it turns out that this claim is from another WWF study. Written by learned climate scientists? Of course not! Written by a policy wonk and a freelance journalist, to advance a specific agenda, with no scientific basis at all.

How long will it take for the sheer ineptitude of these so-called “climate scientists” to pull down the whole “global warming” scam? I mean, even Al Gore isn’t this stupid. Is he?

Stoutcat

UPDATE: HotAir is on the case as well.

UPDATE II: More excellent information on AmazonGate can be found at EU Referendum here and here.

H/T: FreeRepublic

Something Rotten in Denmark?

Evidently there is much weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth in Copenhagen today, as the three main groups attending the “Kool Kids Konference” are all throwing major hissy fits. The Guardian reports:

The UN Copenhagen climate talks are in disarray today after developing countries reacted furiously to leaked documents that show world leaders will next week be asked to sign an agreement that hands more power to rich countries and sidelines the UN’s role in all future climate change negotiations.

The document is also being interpreted by developing countries as setting unequal limits on per capita carbon emissions for developed and developing countries in 2050; meaning that people in rich countries would be permitted to emit nearly twice as much under the proposals.

The so-called Danish text, a secret draft agreement worked on by a group of individuals known as “the circle of commitment” – but understood to include the UK, US and Denmark – has only been shown to a handful of countries since it was finalised this week.

What a scandal and a hissing!

• Developing countries are upset because they will not be allowed to emit nearly as much carbon as the developed nations. Unfair!
• Developed nations are upset because this little secret plan got leaked. Unfair!
• And the United Nations is upset because it takes power and money (lots and lots and lots of money) out of their hands and places it elsewhere. Really unfair!

So what to do about this brouhaha? Well, I think the best-case scenario is if the representatives from the developing nations, the developed nations, and the United Nations all leave Copenhagen in a huff and have nothing more to do with such a stupid conference ever again.

Face it. The earth has been slowly warming since the end of the Little Ice Age back in 1850. Is some of that warming caused by human beings? Probably. Is much or most of it due to circumstances having nothing to do with human activity? Certainly. Is there anything we can do about it, regardless of cause? Precious little in the grand scheme of things, despite what the “scientists” are claiming.

And until the scientists at East Anglia can come up with a better excuse than, “The dog ate our homework” to explain why they can’t show any raw data, I say we scrap Copenhagen, scrap Kyoto, scrap the CRU, scrap NOAA/GHCN, scrap NASA/GISS, and start again.

It behooves all of us as human beings to live on this earth conscientiously. If I speak of “responsible stewardship” I’ll probably get branded as a wingnut born-again Christianist, but so what? We do need to be responsible stewards.

We also need things like fuel to power all the great inventions that allow us all to live in relative comfort and safety. That stewardship therefore also includes discovering things like reliable, large-scale renewable fuel sources; and until we find and develop those, responsible exploitation of the riches that lie beneath our own soil and on our own shores, rather than outsourcing our needs to countries which would rather see us all under sharia law, and which do their drilling in far less eco-friendly ways.

Global warming scams aside, if we are not responsible stewards, we may bequeath our children and grandchildren an environment as unpleasant to live in as their indebtedness from the cost of nationalized healthcare will be to live with. And we don’t need a conference in Copenhagen, Kyoto, or anywhere else to remind us of that.

UPDATE: HotAir suggests: “What this is really about is first-world nations getting last-minute cold feet at the thought of massive wealth transfers to some unreliable partners.”

Stoutcat

Double Standards Are For the Birds

 

Literally. Particularly when it comes to energy policy.

According to the Wall Street Journal, certain energy companies face boundless prosecutions when birds are killed because of oil spills, electrocution, or other non-“green” technology. They are the traditional oil, gas, and electric providers. It seems, however when birds encounter wind turbines, the “green” energy providers are somehow magically immune from prosecution.

Michael Fry of the American Bird Conservancy estimates that U.S. wind turbines kill between 75,000 and 275,000 birds per year. Yet the Justice Department is not bringing cases against wind companies.

“Somebody has given the wind industry a get-out-of-jail-free card,” Mr. Fry told me. “If there were even one prosecution,” he added, the wind industry would be forced to take the issue seriously…

By 2030, environmental and lobby groups are pushing for the U.S. to be producing 20% of its electricity from wind. Meeting that goal, according to the Department of Energy, will require the U.S. to have about 300,000 megawatts of wind capacity, a 12-fold increase over 2008 levels. If that target is achieved, we can expect some 300,000 birds, at the least, to be killed by wind turbines each year.

Of course, the AWEA protests that this is a tiny number compared to other hazards faced by birds.

On its Web site, the Wind Energy Association says that bird kills by wind turbines are a “very small fraction of those caused by other commonly accepted human activities and structures—house cats kill an estimated one billion birds annually.”

Then why doesn’t this same defense apply to companies like ExxonMobil and PacificCorp? They have been charged millions of dollars in fines for relatively few bird kills.

It’s simple: while all energy companies are equal, some are more equal than others.

This is a double standard that more people—and not just bird lovers—should be paying attention to. In protecting America’s wildlife, federal law-enforcement officials are turning a blind eye to the harm done by “green” energy.

 One wonders what Van Jones might have had to say about this.

Stoutcat

One Reason We’re in This Handbasket

Just saw this Mastercard commercial, which makes me want to either tear my hair out, or go kick a puppy; maybe both:

“Helping Dad become a better man: priceless.”

I like most of the Mastercard “Priceless” ads. They’re clever and well-executed. This one, however, annoys me in so many ways.

It’s the latest example of ads and TV shows which portrays parents as stupid/lame/thoughtless and children as wise beyond their years. Ugh, what glurge!  It used to be that parents were parents, and their role was to ensure that their children grew up to be good people.

Perhaps we’re seeing such a dramatic rise in spoiled mall brats because today’s parents are not truly being parents any more — they are trying to be “friends”, practicing “consensual living“, or some other such claptrap. We’re seeing the result of such “parenting” techniques in the spawn of many liberal, tree-hugging, save-the-whales types these days. And in commercials like this.

It also gets my goat, of course, for the blatant “greening of America” running through the commercial. There are far too many hypocritical Al Gore-types out there already; we don’t need to have mega-corporations (or anyone else — let alone that moppet from Hell in the commercial) lecturing us.

Do your part. Raise your kids properly. Don’t lecture others. It’s not that hard.

Stoutcat

Sitting In the Dark: Did It Help?

 

Saturday’s first celebration of “Earth Hour” was, I guess, interesting for those who observed it. We in the Stoutcat household were otherwise occupied celebrating Human Achievement Hour, which meant that some lights were on, soft music composed over a hundred years ago was playing with crystal clarity, and a savory supper of non-local comestibles and beverages was being consumed with gusto.

Those who sat in the dark (many of whom actually burned candles, which to my mind sort of negates the whole idea of “Sitting in the Dark”) may have had a pleasant experience; and I freely admit, there are some really impressive photos (but again, isn’t that using power of a sort?) showing the lights dimming in larger urban areas; but did the whole imposture accomplish anything — like actually saving any power?

Let’s take a look, via Watt’s Up With That?, at actual usage charts from the state of California (an area which I think we can all agree has more than its share of folks likely to have celebrated Sit in the Dark Hour), both during the powered-down time, and for the same time period the very next day. What do we see?

Saturday, 3/28: Earth Hour day (see gray shading for the actual usage for the 8:30-9:30 time frame)

Sunday, 3/29, the day after “Sit in the Dark” Hour (see gray shading for the actual usage for the 8:30-9:30 time frame):

As Russ Steel, at the always interesting Watt’s Up With That? said:

There you have it, scientific data showing that the Earth Hour was a total bust in California.  If you look close, you can see a little bump up above the forecast demand, which tracked very closely with actual power consumed prior to the witching hour 8:30 to 9:30. But, it is clear that power consumption did not drop, it stayed up. Maybe all those protesters forgot to turn off the lights. 

I can’t wait to see what kind of feel-good boondoggle they’ll try to foist on us next…

Stoutcat

Celebrate Human Achievement Hour Tonight!

While others are observing “Earth Hour” by sitting in the dark listening to crickets chirping, join with us and celebrate our journey from living in caves to living on the International Space Station. Human Achievement Hour celebrates just that.

Congratulations, Homo Sapiens, you’ve come a long way!

Stoutcat

Deathmatch: Palin vs. Judd

 

In recent news, moderately-talented actress Ashley Judd has joined forces with the Washington lobbyist group Defenders of Wildlife, in order to “expose Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin’s renewed anti-conservation agenda.” Judd goes on to say

“I am outraged by Sarah Palin’s promotion of this cruel, unscientific and senseless practice [aerial hunting of wolves] which has no place in modern America.  Because she is apparently determined to continue and expand this horrific program, I am grateful that Defenders will aggressively fight to stop her. I am proud to be a part of that effort.” [I’m not going to link to the site, you can find it easily enough just by searching.]

She reads her script well, but if she actually did even a modicum of research, she might discover that Governor Palin is simply carrying out the requirements of the Alaska state constitution, which among other things, requires that Alaska’s resources, including its fish and wildlife, be managed for the maximum benefit of Alaskans.”

Imagine that! A state constitution which requires that the state’s resources be managed for the benefit of its citizens!

And why, you ask, does this mean that poor wolves have to be senselessly and cruelly slaughtered, apparently by the thousand, or million, or gazillion, or whatever mind-boggling number Miss Activist/Actress is imagining?

Well, to explain all this, it will take at least three more paragraphs and I’ll have to use multi-syllabic big words.

It’s because A) Alaska is a gazillion square miles of territorry and it’s at least two gazillion miles away from the rest of the United States, and B) Alaskans are pretty much the original eco-friendly live-off-the-land greenie types who actually practice what Hollywood preaches. Many, if not most, Alaskans hunt moose, caribou and other game for subsistence, thereby avoiding such eco-hazards as having to ship large quantities of  food from gazillions of miles away, using transportation and gas and oil and all those other pollutants, not to mention the killing, processing, packaging, and all those other nasty non-green/non-vegan things that have to be done to meat and stuff to make it safe to eat. Plus, for Alaskans, getting stuff up there is expensive!

This means that many Alakans hunt and kill moose and caribou to eat. Wolves also do this. Gov. Palin believes (and the Alaska constitution suggests) that it’s better for the citizens to be able to eat moose and caribou than for some of the wolves to do so.

Governor Palin also believes that it’s better for Alaska’s ecological balance, if there were fewer wolves and more moose and caribou so that the Alaskan people AND the rest of the wolves have enough moose and caribou to eat. The governor also believes that it is far kinder to quickly dispatch with bullets the few wolves killed rather than have them trying to gnaw off their own legs in traps, or to be posioned (and subsequently to poison other scavenger animals), which is also how the wolf (and other predator) populations can be regulated. And being mindful of the delicate balance of her state’s extraordinary range of eco-systems, predator control is currently only practiced on 9% of Alaska’s total land mass (areas shown in red on map). No mass wolf slaughter here.

Miss Judd, you are either a simpleton or you are willfully blind, ignoring any ideas that don’t fit in with your agenda. If I were you, I’d give Gov. Palin a quick call and ask her to explain the state’s wildlife policies to you. I bet she’d be glad to do it. And you might make a new friend.

Stoutcat