Two ships traveling the Welland Canal in Ontario collided. Thankfully no injuries to the crews on board were reported. One was transporting coal and the other industrial wind turbine components.
Parents raising objections after a children’s Christmas concert was used to pursue the “green” agenda. Look closely at Green Santa’s wish list which includes wind power.
School division apologizes after Christmas concert deemed ‘anti-oil’
‘No political agenda,’ board of trustees chair says after parents raise concerns about Thursday concert
A Saskatchewan school division has apologized after parents raised concerns a Christmas concert last week had an anti-oil agenda.
On Thursday, the Oxbow Prairie Horizons School’s annual concert featured a show titled: “Santa Goes Green.”
This didn’t sit will with some audience members, as Oxbow is a community where a good number of workers are in the mining and resource industries. In fact, the town’s logo prominently contains a pumpjack.
Mike Gunderman, whose daughter was in the show, took to Facebook to express his concerns about the play, saying the concert was a “kick in the groin” to anyone working in the struggling oil industry. The post has since been shared more than 650 times….
I’m just gonna say it, but the kids school Christmas concert last night at Oxbow was the most “un”-Christmassy thing i have seen. It was a green Christmas theme, with all the words to the Christmas carols changed to support the green agenda, and don’t use the pumps, and keep the oil in the ground, while they danced around wearing green plastic hats from the dollar store. Considering the state of our industry, it was a kick in the groin to those who are employed by it. Not the kids fault…they smiled and sang and had fun, and the audience was respectful and applauded, but jaw dropping, and hypocritical of the school to allow that, considering all the diesel school buses and all the financial support the school gets from oil industry related people & businesses.
Transmission lines from now decommissioned Nanticoke Power Generation Plant, Haldimand County
Recent article published in the Hamilton Spectator about Ontario’s electricity generation sources has generated lively feed back and thought provoking comments.
Published Hamilton Spectator|May 3, 2019
Afterthoughts pulls together reaction to specific Hamilton Spectator stories. These opinion submissions follow the April 30, 2019 feature Who’s powering Hamilton?
Afterthoughts: Not all power generation created equal
Wind turbines and solar are intermittent energy sources that only produce power when the wind blows or the sun shines
From Catherine Mitchell:
Your article failed to mention that not all energy generation is created equal. Because the industrial wind turbines and solar are intermittent energy sources that only produce power when the wind blows or the sun shines, they only produce a portion of the name plate capacity.
Industrial wind turbines produce 28 per cent of the name plate capacity. (It’s a bit like putting a one-titted cow on the dairy production line or buying seed with a 28 per cent germination rate.) Solar is worse with 13 per cent production of name plate capacity.
The downside of renewable energy is that “non-polluting” wind energy is culpable for air pollution (gas plants on standby and smelting), ground water contamination (toxic effluent and ground disturbance), electromagnetic pollution, noise pollution (infrasound), radioactive waste (rare earth mining), and toxic waste” (Each blade made of fiberglass produces 6 tons of toxic waste). In addition to the loss of habitat created by the huge footprint required for installation of industrial wind turbines and solar fields.
We are currently under utilizing our hydro energy production to accommodate wind and solar. So the question becomes if we under utilize hydro to accommodate wind and solar — is any of the flooding being caused because water is being held back? The dam is a man-made restriction so blaming ‘climate change’ may not be the correct answer.
For example — the Ottawa River is one of the most highly regulated rivers in Canada, with over 50 major dams and hydroelectric generating stations scattered throughout its tributaries and mainstem. If you count all the smaller water control dams in the river system, there are hundreds of dams throughout the watershed.
The Ottawa River and its tributaries flow right into the St. Lawrence and the spring run-off often causes flooding with a particular affect on Quebec towns and cities. The amount of water is all controlled by the Saunders dam and is the responsibility of the St. Lawrence Seaway Authority. Because water is held back it also causes flooding in many parts of Ontario.
I am not sure the people experiencing the recent flooding care if it is a result of mismanagement by the St. Lawrence Seaway Authorities or underutilizing hydro energy, either way this could be a man-made disaster.
Proposed Icebreaker wind project is not what it seems
It is hard to know where to start dissecting the slick spin-doctoringrecently published in The Blade’s Op-Ed pages by LEEDCo, the Lake Erie Energy Development Corp., which wants to erect North America’s first freshwater offshore wind-turbines in central Lake Erie off Cleveland.
So-doing would reach far beyond the scope of a newspaper “op-ed.” Beth Nagusky, LEEDCo’s director of sustainable development, is a master at cherrypicking and parading obscure statements as a fait-accompli. Her contentions about the goodness of the proposed six-unit Icebreaker Wind power-generation project, some seven miles offshore, lie between premature and erroneous.
They are a masterful act of dissembling, distraction, distortion, and deception. Perhaps “MisLEEDCo” would more appropriate.
Ms. Nagusky has posited that Icebreaker’s towering turbines would kill few birds and bats, a claim that simply does not hold up under scrutiny. This is shown clearly for anyone who assesses it thoughtfully.
LEEDCo is betting on the glitter of such buzz-words as “economic impact, jobs, and clean energy” to substantiate its stance that somehow the pre-construction research on Icebreaker’s impact is all said and done and we can gleefully ride off into a lovely green-energy future. Wrong.
It claims that the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has declared the project a low risk to birds and bats. Wrong again. The Service ruled that the project only posed a low risk to a few particular endangered species. It rejected the initial Icebreaker environmental assessment (EA), citing several insufficiencies in regard to birds and bats. The final EA has yet to be filed. No one, including LEEDCo, has seen it yet.
Among other unsettled issues, the required technology to monitor post-construction bird and bat mortality simply does not exist. And additional studies, including meaningful radar studies of migrations through the turbine zone, should be mandatory.
In its sugarcoating, LEEDCo ignores saying that the initial six units are just the tip of the iceberg. If the Ohio Power Siting Board and related agencies give the green light, this project opens a Pandora’s Box to hundreds or thousands more turbines on Lake Erie and the other Great Lakes. Any negative impacts would be magnified by orders of magnitude.
The state of New York has issued a moratorium on offshore wind for just such considerations, as has the province of Ontario, which alone has put 1,250 proposed offshore Erie wind turbines “on hold” while it assesses Icebreaker deliberations. Do you think that the giant Fred Olsen Renewables, of Oslo, Norway, would bother with building just six units here? The big money lies in hundreds. A proposed “buildout” after Icebreaker may run to 1,600 turbines.
So this really is not just six little old turbines and a few dead birds and bats. The migratory pathway and wintering grounds of millions of birds, and migratory bats as well, lie in the paths of a potential phalanx of towering 500-foot rotors. Out of sight, out of mind, is no justification.
LEEDCo is counting on the public not bothering with facts. Ms. Nagusky singled out Black Swamp Bird Observatory (BSBO) for its criticism of poor, incomplete science that LEEDCo’s hired-gun consultants have proffered about unknown and likely devastating impacts of arrays of offshore turbines. This in the heart of what the National Audubon Society and BirdLife International has declared a Globally Important Bird Area.
The Ohio Power Siting Board staff has attached a daunting list of conditions to its preliminary analysis. Last October, contrary to LEEDCo pretentions, the USF&WS argued that a still-unapproved environmental assessment is insufficient. Instead a more serious, detailed, environmental impact statement should be drawn. Yet LEEDCo proselytizes incorrectly that a waffling preliminary assessment means that Icebreaker is clean and green.
BSBO’s analysis has been dogged over many months. Its conservation committee includes a professional engineer, an environmental law attorney, and no less than three lifetime professional wildlife and fisheries biologists. Contentions down Cleveland-way that the anti-LEEDCo campaign is an animal of the beleaguered coal industry is just another distraction. The project needs to stand on its own scientific merits, not smoke-and-mirrors……
This project should be stayed unless or until it can assure minimal wildlife impacts based on the most rigorous science. The public should thoughtfully educate itself on the project before forming opinion. Icebreaker is the first small wave in a floodtide. Read the record, not just a “windustry” spin-doctor’s selective fantasizing.
Parry Sound Fire 33 started at site of Henvely Wind project. Work continued despite extreme fire hazard conditions.
“Despite “extreme fire hazard” conditions and a region-wide fire ban, a number of workers say crews continued to blast rock and use heavy machinery that had set off several small fires earlier last week. The workers asked CBC News to withhold their names out of fear of losing their jobs.
But on Wednesday, things got out of control.”
CBC INVESTIGATES
Massive Ontario forest fire sparked by wind farm construction during extreme fire ban, workers allege
Ontario’s Ministry of Natural Resources and Forestry is investigating whether construction crews building a major wind-turbine project on the eastern shores of Georgian Bay amidst tinder-dry conditions caused a forest fire that is now devouring more than 5,600 hectares of land.
The fire started last Wednesday on Henvey Inlet First Nation at the site of the province’s largest wind project, where crews are blasting rock and clearing land to erect dozens of wind turbines.
Despite “extreme fire hazard” conditions and a region-wide fire ban, a number of workers say crews continued to blast rock and use heavy machinery that had set off several small fires earlier last week. The workers asked CBC News to withhold their names out of fear of losing their jobs.
But on Wednesday, things got out of control.
“We heard on two-way radios that there was an Argo [an all-terrain vehicle] that broke down in the bush where the fire began,” one worker said.
“During the week, as we proceeded through work, there were fires that started up from our machines … little fires,” he said. “But this one started and it was too big for [workers] to control. And it got out of hand and it turned into devastation.”
…………..
“I think that the job should be shut down,” he said. “I think those that knew the consequence of this [and] just kept going and ignored the problem at hand … should be held responsible for this.”
CBC News obtained this photo taken Wednesday of the Henvey Inlet construction site where workers say the fire began after a machine got stuck in bone-dry bush. (Name withheld by request)
Repairs are ongoing, and should be finished this week.
Those high winds last Friday that knocked down tree limbs and power lines, also damaged a wind turbine at Bruce Power.
Gusts of about 100 km/h rolled in off Lake Huron around 3pm that day, and one of the tips on a turbine was broken.
Bruce Power Manager of Communications and Media Relations, John Peevers says as soon as the issue was noticed, the 5 wind turbines jointly owned by Bruce Power and its partners were turned off.
Bruce road 20 was also closed in the area of the Visitors Centre, which is close to the turbine that was affected.
~~~~~~~~
“The turbines remain idled while workers investigate whether the 4 others are safe, and while repairs are done to the one wind turbine.
Peevers says Bruce road 20 remains closed and won’t likely open until later this week.”
“Starting in 2010, Nova Scotia taxpayers pumped $56 million into the operation via provincial loans and grants before the government called a $32-million loan in February 2016, pushing the manufacturing plant into receivership.”
Time and money running out on sale of idle wind turbine plant
DSME Trenton plant placed into receivership in 2016 after the province called a $32M loan
The Nova Scotia government gave DSME Trenton $19.6 million for a 49 per cent stake in the company in 2010. (CBC)
After two years and no takers, Nova Scotia is poised to end its efforts to sell an idle wind turbine manufacturing plant in Pictou County, bringing to a close another failed government-backed industrial enterprise.
“At $150,000 per month to keep the operation at status quo, we want this to happen, we want to find a viable operator. But the clock is ticking,” Business Minister Geoff MacLellan said Thursday, after touring the mothballed DSME Trenton plant.
That money goes toward keeping the facility in a sellable state.
The global adjustment charge is chiefly used to cover the difference between the province’s market price for power and the price guaranteed to hydroelectric, natural gas, nuclear, solar and wind generators through their regulated payments or contracts with the government, as well as the cost of conservation programs. All electricity customers in Ontario pay global adjustment, which can be a separate line or included in the commodity portion of their bill.
But the August lawsuit filed by National Steel Car (NSC) believes the revenue the IESO collects for the global adjustment, from the company “and others,” should be declared “an unconstitutional tax, not a valid regulatory charge.”
The company gives numerous reasons, including that the global adjustment allegedly “redistributes wealth from the consumers of electricity in Ontario to, among others, the generators of renewable electricity.”
Manufacturer launches challenge against power fee that has cost Ontarians billions
The lawsuit argues that the global adjustment fee is an unconstitutional tax imposed to fund the Ontario government’s policy initiatives
“And it’s not impossible that infrasound could explain some of what diplomats thought they heard.
Though infrasound is usually inaudible, some people can detect it if the waves are powerful enough. For example, individuals living near infrasound-generating wind turbines have described pulsating hums that have left them dizzy, nauseous or with interrupted sleep. Such effects have prompted fierce scientific debate.”
National Post September 16, 2017
Cuba mystery: What theories US investigators are pursuing
WASHINGTON — There must be an answer.
Whatever is harming U.S. diplomats in Havana, it’s eluded the doctors, scientists and intelligence analysts scouring for answers. Investigators have chased many theories, including a sonic attack, electromagnetic weapon or flawed spying device.
Each explanation seems to fit parts of what’s happened, conflicting with others.
The United States doesn’t even know what to call it. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson used the phrase “health attacks.” The State Department prefers “incidents.”
Mothers Against Wind Turbines Inc. 