We Don’t Need No Stinking Giant Fans

60 Replies to “We Don’t Need No Stinking Giant Fans”

1. Someone should print a copy of this report and nail to dulton’s forehead . . .
   http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/02/13/the-futility-of-wind-power/
   On second thought, that would be cruel and unjust punishment for a nail.
   Crazy glue instead.

2. I wonder how many folks fell for the snake oil tales and sunk in a lot of their life savings based on the government backed assurances? How many of these investors would have put money into these projects if they were entirely private ventures without government stimulus or incentives? These investors aren’t young greenie types but rather older middle class folks that probably used to buy Canada Savings Bonds because they were government backed also.

3. “The risk seemed non-existent…”
   Perhaps these people had not heard the saying “When something sounds too good to be true it probably is.”
   Sorry but I have very little sympathy for people who thought a system that purchases electricity for 5-6 times the price it sells it would sustain them in their retirement.

4. “You can’t cheat an honest man”.

5. And the feds still have a commitment to purchase 20% of its electricity from such sources, and trumpet “for example, in Alberta, Environment Canada and NRCan purchase 100 per cent of their facilities’ electricity from emerging low-impact renewable energy sources. Also, federal offices and laboratories in Saskatchewan and Prince Edward Island now obtain almost half of their electricity from wind power.”
   http://www.ec.gc.ca/energie-energy/default.asp?lang=En&n=6766D86C-1

6. A fool and his money are soon parted.
   No sympathy here for people who have invested in energy totalitarianism.
   I read Steven Den Beste’s cogent arguments about energy density on his blog USS Clueless back in 2004.
   There is no excuse for people not knowing what the issues are concerning alternative energy when the truth has been out there in cyberspace for so long.

7. A “conditional” offer is just that: conditional. It’s like buying shares on the stock market. It might pay off. It might not. I’m sorry for the credulous folks who invested in solar panels but they are not the only losers. All the taxpayers are essentially losers–paying off a system that is ridiculously expensive and doesn’t work. They will also have to pay extra to obtain power from somewhere since the province hasn’t got the capacity to produce it anymore.

8. Caveat venditor.

9. I’d feel schadenfreude but these (OBVIOUS and STUPID) mal-investments will haunt the country for decades in the form of higher energy prices which will supress growth and economic vitality.
   And the perpertrators will be happily retired with no conception of the damage they have done, moving on..

10. Liberals see door open for change
    By BILL HENRY , SUN TIMES STAFFThe two men seeking the Liberal nomination in Bruce-Grey- Owen Sound agree on much, especially about the man they hope to replace at Queen’s Park.
    Both Kevin Eccles, of Neustadt, and Selwyn Hicks of Hanover are longtime Liberals who announced campaigns late last week for the April 12 Liberal nomination.
    *With longtime Conservative MPP Bill Murdoch retiring after two decades, the door is open for a Liberal in Bruce-Grey-Owen Sound, they said. Murdoch also leaves a legacy and a political style anyone following in his footsteps should heed, Hicks and Eccles both said.
    *Eccles disputes any early speculation that McGuinty’s Liberals may be in trouble against Tim Hudak’s Conservatives
    http://www.owensoundsuntimes.com/ArticleDisplay.aspx?e=2976843

11. Some one should also clue Brad Wall and Sask Power into this.
    Oz is right, a fool (sucker) and his money are soon parted.

12. People have to understand that our governments are evil. For instance, if governments provincial and federal were subject to the same laws which govern private companies our finance ministers would all be in jail, and probably our first ministers as well. They lie to us, swindle us, … grope us (soon to come to Canada) … I learned this as a boy when my dad was in the RCAF. “Ottawa” was the enemy – the Russkies would given a chance nuke us, subvert us, enslave us, but they were just doing their thing, if we let them — but Ottawa, the Federal Government, was EVIL.
    Believe it.

13. The McGuinty government’s justification for pulling the rug out from under their latest off-shore windmill project:
    “Offshore wind on freshwater lakes is a recent concept that requires a cautious approach until the science of environmental impact is clear.”
    Sound familiar? It should. It’s the Enviro-Taliban’s own so-called “Precautionary Principle” — a bogus objection they’ve trotted out for years to ban everything they don’t understand and don’t like, from GMOs and nanotechnology, to the discovery of the wheel.
    Now it has come back to bite them in the @ss. That sound you hear is thousands of Khmer Vert skulls exploding.

14. My uncle listened to the Gov in the early 80’s in BC and had a natural gas system installed in his pickup. 2 years later the only Natural gas fill station in Chilliwack was closed. Lucky for him he had a dual system as the next nearest fill station was 25 miles away. He told me he mostly ran it on gas until he sold it a couple years ago.

15. http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/ontario/poll-finds-ontarians-turning-against-mcguinty/article1905696/
    *IMO: the article states major contributor to his falling numbers Being Taxes(HST) i disagree
    its the rising Hydro One cost that are hitting more people where it hurts.
    *And in my prior post Iam sorry i forgot to say I think those 2 Liberal’s are dilusional if they think they are going to win Grey/Bruce.

16. We’re from the government and we are here to help.
    We built some windmills, federal money available and all but without the cash the deal wouldn’t have been done. It does keep the greenies home during the protest season so it does have a political benefit but don’t over count that.

17. Time for the class action lawsuits. Suzukis sorry ass should be drug into a courtroom along with Gore. The Great White Dopes uncle over in China should be indited also. Same thing happened in Europe, all these dullards were duped into the pixie dust energy/ globull warming SCAM, listening Mr. Renner?

18. I asked on a CBC thread if Ontarians realized they subsidize power they export? Actually I asked stuff like that quite often. Then the increases started to hit and the smart meters that showed how ridiculous it was to do laundry at 3 o’clock in the morning.

19. Beautiful, just beautiful. Perhaps enough of this sort of thing and we get back to sensible decision making. Not pity for the greedy and the stupid.

20. I live in rural Ontario. My local weekly newspaper ran numerous ads by companies offering to supply solar systems for any “lucky” farmer who signed up and of course paid them – the “lucky” person would collect vast wealth over the time frame. Unfortunately “fools and their money are soon parted” or “theres a sucker born every minute”. the ads stopped about a month ago.

21. “How do I tell my wife” is right!

22. Sucks to be him I guess. But good on McGuinty for putting the kibosh on this type of deal.
    Lawrence Solomon had a column in the FP a few months back suggesting that the Conservatives should they win could use the (hope I get this right) Doctrine of Odius Debt whereby governments can cite the doctrine to get out of ‘odius’ deals set up by previous administrations. Think Samsung. And he cited several precedents. So it’s doable.

23. Dulton crashes and burns;
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jwVz5hdAMGU

24. “Higher power rates will be with Ontarians for decades after Mr. McGuinty’s green dreams have faded from memory.”
    It just gets better and better unless of course you live in Ontario and use energy. From Andrew Bolt last December: “Ontario will have less actual electrical generation capacity in 2030 than in 2010 — and will have spent $87-billion to accomplish this!”

25. 8 Feb 11 – Here’s an announcement to its customers that I’m told came directly from Sysco Foods.
    ALL OF OUR GROWERS HAVE INVOKED THE ACT OF GOD CLAUSE ON OUR CONTRACTS (Force majuere) DUE TO THE FOLLOWING RELEASE. WE WILL BE CONTACTING YOU PERSONALLY TO REVIEW HOW THIS WILL AFFECT OUR CONTRACTED ITEMS WITH YOU GOING FORWARD.
    THE DEVASTATING FREEZE IN MEXICO IS WORST FREEZE IN OVER 50 YEARS..
    http://www.iceagenow.com/Mexico_crop_loss_80_to_100_percent.htm

26. It seems -incredible-, as in not credible, that Ontario Hydro boffins did not explain to the Liberals that you can’t put a noisy, surge prone solar panel generation system onto a rural power line and not expect it to melt the line and/or blow all the transformers up. I am -not- an electrician nor an electrical engineer, and I know this.
    Furthermore, upgrading an entire rural line to support one (1) solar generator would be insane, it would cost millions of dollars to support hundreds of dollars worth of electricity input. One does not need to be an accountant or an MBA to do that math.
    Therefore, the Liberals -were- told, probably often and loudly, and they went right ahead and did it anyway knowing it wouldn’t work. Couldn’t work. (Kind of like the gun registry?)
    It has come as no surprise to anyone (except the gullible idiots who spent the money) that now the things have been built, they cannot be connected. Shazam, it doesn’t work.
    Ergo, there must have been some -other- reason for the Liberals to be doing it. Like, maybe they know somebody in the solar business? Possibly some friend of the Ontario Liberals deals in solar panels, or panel installation, or some such thing? Some other thing I haven’t thought of?
    If all these people who have been rooked on this solar panel deal got together and formed a class action lawsuit against the province, some very interesting connections might come to light.
    Lets face it, a provincial government that actively protects illegal smoke shops built on public land beside public highways might do business in… shall we say novel and interesting ways with the Green Energy biz too.

27. The vast majority of people who enter politics are long on ego and short on life skills such as science, technology and numeracy. Given the over-reach of government involved in far too many areas of responsibility and the mass hysteria and resulting lysenkoism associated with AGW, this adjustment was inevitable. Politicians can only pimp the decline so long before being caught and forced to backtrack a little! Unfortunately, the real disease of government involvement remains intact.

28. Thanks for relinking the E=MC2 article Kate!
    I was trying to find it a couple months ago, but my search was made rather difficult since I could not remember the name……LOL
    Bookmarked this time!

29. The environmentalists’ war on our standard of living is relentless. It will be a catastrophe for low-income people. I see examples of the effect all the time now.
    The other day I was in Sears looking at refrigerators. I struck up a conversation with a knowledgeable, gray-haired salesman. He told me that friges used to last 25 years or more. Then, in 1998, our blessed government made the manufacturers change from the old freon to a new coolant. The new product doesn’t lubricate compressors as well, so, voila, refrigerators now only last 10 or 12 years. This is evidently why we were spending hard-earned dollars replacing a not very old appliance.
    A friend of mine has a 2004 Ford F-350 diesel pickup with a 6 liter engine. The thing broke down again a while back. It has been a lemon. At the shop, I talked to our diesel mechanic. He said the older, 7.3 liter engine had been very good, but Ford could not meet new emission standards with it. They came out with the new, supposedly more advanced engine that met the new standards but has had crappy reliability. Ford spent zillions on warranty repairs then, and I was out 700 bones for this work now. Thanks Sierra Club.
    The federal government has their mitts in virtually all manufacturing these days. Clothes washers are now so energy and water efficient that they barely clean clothes any more. Companies that make dishwasher detergent finally gave up the fight and now make their product without phosphates. This will make almost no difference in the environment, but it does leave dirt and a film on your dishes: http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/257794/hands-my-dishes-mona-charen Thanks NRDC.

30. Mutt: These smart pills you sold me taste like sh*t.
    Jeff: See, you are smarter already.

31. I have zero sympathy for these folks. Each were of middle or later age, and if they have managed to live that long and still trust government, they are rock, hard, stupid. Government changes with every new fad, because people in government never bear the consequences of their actions, they just move along to the next great thing. Selling power for 5 times it’s cost as a long term strategy is so naive, it sounds like something only a government employee would believe, not a private citizen.

32. The offshore moratorium is a ploy.
    There was currently on one project in the OPA pipeline (Kingston & Islands). But a projected offshore development from Toronto Hydro (Scarborough Bluffs) had stirred up the residents concentrated in six Liberal held riding along the Toronto-Ajax lakeshore. Swing ridings in region where voters helped propel Rob Ford past George Smitherman in the November race for mayor.
    By making this move, Liberals plan to protect their majority and take wind turbine opposition out of play as a full provincial issue. They hope it returns to a rural, media free anomaly.
    They announce this of course on a Friday afternoon full of Egypt, and Ontario conservatives fumbling over cheap beer. What they really wanted hide though, I think, was something that will turn out to be much more important.
    On Friday, utilities started to issue notices of cancellation to MicroFIT applicants, the farmers and landowners who though solar was a hot return, and had spent big dollars in arrays.
    The OPA’s MicroFIT program is now dead and the landscape is strewn with many very, very unhappy victims, albeit not entirely undeserved. This will not end well.
    These farmers should have been considered reliable liberal supporters in the next election(if only to protect their income) and have been ardent supporters of green initiatives. They have been an effective foil against the many anti-turbine groups that have infected the countryside. Common cause has now been accomplished in political opposition to McGuinty.
    What this all boils down to is an election numbers calculation where several rural Liberal MPPs are to be sacrificed to suburban voters, who might be tempted to put green ideology ahead of steep hydro bills and re-elect McGuinty.
    Plan probably not going to work.

33. For the life of me I cannot understand why Ontario Tory leader Tim Hudak is not out pounding the snot out of McGuinty over his green energy policies and his other costly boondoggles.
    McGuinty has authored so many screw-ups and told so many lies that any opposition leader should be able to punch him senseless once a day before breakfast. But Hudak seems devoid of any killer instinct so instead of him defining McGuinty as a wastrel and liar, McGuinty is defining him as the heir of Mike Harris.

34. “He had been given a conditional offer by the Ontario Power Authority under a plan proposed and backed by the Ontario government.”
    I wonder what part of “conditional offer” Aukema doesn’t understand.

35. “Such thinking assumes great conspiracies exist among industrialists to suppress viable technological alternatives and it presumes that governments are both more competent and less self-interested than businesses and the marketplace. Everywhere there are nasty free-marketers looking to defraud an ignorant public against whom the only guardians are noble politicians and public-good bureaucrats.”
    That is the crux of the matter, socialist/greenie trust in big government. McParland deserves the Hero of Soviet Canada award for that paragraph.
    Here in B.C., our allegedly conservative Liberal government is going ahead full bore on windmill projects,mostly WAY up in the Northeast corner,where few Lower Mainlanders ever tread.
    We once had the cheapest electric power in North America,thanks to WAC Bennett,but every year the prices creep up to pay for Green initiatives. Some day,we’ll wake up and find our cheap electricity has become as expensive as California’s.
    But we have at least half a dozen logged off valleys that won’t regrow a crop of trees for about 500 years, just begging for a good hydro project.
    But the Greens are agin’ ’em, so nothing happens on that front while we pursue Green alternatives.
    It’s simple pandering to a very loud and aggressive lobby,and it’s disheartening that Provincial governments of all political stripes lack the courage to call them on it,state the facts,and build the power infrastructure we need.

36. The Phantom:
    “Therefore, the Liberals -were- told, probably often and loudly, and they went right ahead and did it anyway knowing it wouldn’t work. Couldn’t work. (Kind of like the gun registry?)”
    Ontario’s own agency, Ont. Power Authority rated various alternatives for power generation in a 2007 report. Wind power ranked at the very bottom decribed as a source that “could never be more than a niche supplier of electricity”.
    There are some people at OPA and in the government capable of doing a cost/benefit analysis on wind power. Looking at the internet provides dozens of studies without any cost.
    McGuinty chose to ignore any economic studies in favour of crass green political considerations.
    George Smitherman (where is he now),even crowed at the time of the Green Energy Act that they would not be constrained by cost/benefit analysis. The environment is too important. Ontarians will pay for decades for the fantasies of these Liberals, the most incompetent government in provincial history.

37. I can see some potential bargains to be found on solar panels at farm bankruptcy auctions in Ontario this coming year.
    Buy the panels for what they are actually worth, hook ’em up, and offset some of your own energy costs.

38. Phantom, they fired the CEO of Hydro One Tom Parkinson who told them the facts about integrating this junk with the provincial system.
    You have to understand that the boneheads in Energy and Infrastructure and the Premier’s Office have been calling all the shots on Ontario electricity policy ever since the plug was pulled on the OPA’s plan review by the Ontario Energy Board.

39. Martin and CGH, I -wish- they were boneheads. I -wish- they were Greenie dreamers with their tiny little heads in the clouds.
    They aren’t. They are SHARKS. We are the chick on the inflatable raft.

40. Does the Ontario Teacher’s pension have a stake in the green scam?
    I hear the TTC is going to be declared an essential service and prevented from striking.
    I guess our teachers in Ontario are not essential.
    Except as McDumbo’s main political backers.

41. finally it’s hitting the fan for Mcsh1tstain. Screwup after screwup from day 1

42. Phantom, I’ve met some of these people. They really are that stupid. We’re talking about people who are completely ignorant of anything resembling early high school physics. We’re talking about people who are innumerate beyond grade school arithmetic. We’re talking about people who majored in silly ideology in university under the rubric of Psych. Soc. and Poli Sci. We’re talking about people who have not the slightest comprehension of what 60 Hz. means.
    When you look through the ranks of the civil service today, what you see are rows and rows of 20- and 30-something twits.
    But it’s not just the degradation of the civil service. For 40 years there has been a growing trend of ministries being second-guessed by political advisors. These are usually young campaign workers getting rewarded by appointment into the Minister’s office. They keep a watch on all of a department’s activities, attend all the meetings and let everyone know that what they hear and don’t like goes right back to the Minister. For these folks, only the politics of the moment matters. Reality of whether it works or not is utterly irrelevant.
    I said it before, and I will say it again. Any chance of sensible power planning in Ontario died forever when the Power Corporation Act was repealed in 1998 and Ontario Hydro was broken up. OH made its own share of mistakes but nothing like the chaos we have now. What we have now is simply stunning ignorance combined with political expediency. And that’s always a recipe for disaster.

43. One good thing wind-power turbines are easy to pull down, unlike buildings. So when the fanaticism finally catches up with the fact this is window dressing for the green stupids. Having been shown the hard nosed reality of how feeble this endeavor is. It will not take much to bulldoze this useless Towering ugliness.
    JMO

44. cgh; remember the despicable “bastard” who took Ontario Hydro from 0 debt to 36 billion in debt, while buying up Costa Rican rain forest and 200.000 acres of Colorado atop that huge aquifier. Who could that be? The same “bastard” who engineered the purchase of Petro Fina for 900 million and in short order sold it to Petro Canada for I think 2 billion plus enabling Turdough and his closest friends a tidy profit in stock holdings. Canada Eh, where the connected are really connected. There are no doubt “connections”, follow the money Ontario voters, bet it ends up in China.

45. Of Uncle Mo and Ontario Liberal Pharaoh McGuinty.
    bartinksy: “The Great White Dopes uncle over in China should be indited also.”
    That’s Moi Uncle Mao Stlong, Liberal leader Bob Rae’s Uncle Maurice UNaBomber Strong.
    Here’s Mao:
    “Isn’t the only hope for the planet that the industrialized civi-
    lizations collapse? Isn’t it our responsibility to bring this
    about?'”
    Excerpt from:
    “‘Strong resumes his story. ‘The
    group’s conclusion is ‘no.’ The rich countries won’t do it. They
    won’t change. So, in order to save the planet, the group decides:
    Isn’t the only hope for the planet that the industrialized civi-
    lizations collapse? Isn’t it our responsibility to bring this
    about?’
    ‘This group of world leaders, he continues, ‘form a secret
    society to bring about an economic collapse. It’s February.
    They’re all at Davos. These aren’t terrorists. They’re world
    leaders. They have positioned themselves in the world’s commodi-
    ties and stock markets. They’ve engineered, using their access to
    stock markets and computers and gold supplies, a panic. Then,
    they prevent the world’s stock markets from closing. They jam the
    gears. They hire mercenaries who hold the rest of the world
    leaders at Davos as hostage. The markets can’t close. The rich
    countries…’ And Strong makes a slight motion with his fingers
    as if he were flicking a cigarette butt out the window. ‘I sit
    there spellbound. This not any storyteller talking. This is
    Maurice Strong. He knows these world leaders…He sits at the
    fulcrum of power. He is in a position to do it. ‘I probably
    shouldn’t be saying things like this.’ he says… ‘When the truth
    is finally told, Maurice and Hanne Strong fear the world will
    come to this. No secret societies. No hostage-taking at Davos.
    But it will come to the same conclusion: the global economy,
    sapped by credit and debt loads and environmental disasters, will
    simply come unstuck. And nothing ~ not even the dreams of Baca ~
    can save humanity from itself….They fear that Baca will be, at
    best, an oasis in the desert of the future ~ and at worst, a …”
    http://www.scribd.com/doc/23648275/Maurice-Strong-Dossier

46. by the time ontario mad-with-power should ever intrude on my twilight residence, by then I expect battery powered tools will include a heavy duty grinder. Ive taken down big maples with a 14″ homelite before.
    just sayin’……

47. Bart, debt is irrelevant. OH always had debt, some of it maturing over 80 years because that’s the way the PCA worked as intended. Now, anything bad you want to say about Mo Strong I will completely agree with you. The turd took one of the world’s best utilities and finished ruining it after Marc Eliesen got through with it.

48. One good thing wind-power turbines are easy to pull down, unlike buildings. So when the fanaticism finally catches up with the fact this is window dressing for the green stupids. Having been shown the hard nosed reality of how feeble this endeavor is. It will not take much to bulldoze this useless Towering ugliness.
    JMO
    I am not so sure I agree with you. The latest plans I have seen call for towers 600′ high the same as a 40 story apartment building. All that concrete and steel is a mamouth construction project. Of course they can be taken down, but the foundation of solid concrete, who is going dismantle that, and return the field to normal
    crop rotation?
    These are not windmills but gigantic industrial towers. Ontarians will pay much more to scrap these useless turbines then they ever did to build them.

49. Quite right, Martin. I don’t believe any of the contracts require provisions for decommissioning.

50. Watching McGuinty’s Ontario is like watching a train wreck unfold in slow motion. While one can feel a heightened fascination at how that one time economic powerhouse is deconstructing, any sense of schadenfreude would just be wrong, for many reasons. Here are two:
    1) If the country’s economic engine is deconstructing itself, that can’t be good for the other denizens of this demented dominion.
    2) Ontario is the most spectacular version of bad provincial government wrecking the economy. To a considerable extent, however, the same forces are out wrecking the rest of the provincial economies. Shutting a perfectly good coal generating station here; forcing construction of important transmission into uneconomic corridors to appease environmentalists there; blighting prime agricutural land with stinkin’ giant fans everywhere, and almost always gubmint meddling with once well-managed utilities.