Wind turbines or trees…
Administrator | Jan 28, 2013 | Comments 9
A couple of weeks back, the Wall Street Journal published an article about the increasing devastation of forests (trees) in Greece, where as a result of the high cost of energy, impoverished folks who cannot afford electricity or fuel have turned to wood stoves to heat their homes and cook their food.
Although we Canadian’s tend to see Greece as having a much warmer weather, winters in the north and higher elevations are more like those temperatures experienced on the coast of southern British Columbia.
The article went on to highlight the plight of a young man caught chopping down a tree on public land in the mountains near Athens. When confronted he “broke down in tears” pleading that “he was unemployed and needed the wood to warm the home
he shares with his wife and four small children”.
This is not an isolated incident, in Greece, Germany, France, Spain, Britain, etc. the rate of forest wood poaching for heat and cooking has increased dramatically over the last several years in concert with energy prices.
Fuel poverty in these countries which have embraced the fallacious economics and efficacy of subsidized wind and solar energy, has become endemic. Last September, Reuters reported that in the already troubled economy of Greece, the electricity system was near collapse when the market operator LAGHE was overextended by the subsidies it pays to wind and solar power producers.
The other day I was in a wood stove retailer shop in Trenton and had an interesting conversation with the owner. He told me that the sales of wood stoves, wood pellet and wood boilers, particularly the high efficiency models had more than tripled in the last few years. This coincides with reports from Britain where it is reported that 180,000 new wood stoves were installed in 2011, and in Germany that same year over 400,000 wood and coal burning stoves were purchased for heating ue to increasing rising energy costs. This has led to increasing thefts of wood fuel and rampant poaching of trees on public and private land. And they’re not just burning seasoned wood… plywood, treated, lacquered and painted wood, books, cardboard, paper waste, all which release other dangerous chemical particulates into the air, are being used to create much needed heat.
It is quite apparent that the massive subsidized wind and solar energy developments are resulting in increasing deforestation, destroying the natural carbon syncs they are fraudulently portrayed to mitigate. Peppering and denuding the landscape with subsidized wind turbine and solar industrial installations is only going to increase the use of wood for heat and don’t expect the ideologues of green renewable energy to acknowledge their victims! They have conveniently disengaged from their responsibility and insidious complicity for this victimization of others and the resulting “climate change” problems
they have helped create.
David Norman, Rogue Primate of Bloomfield
Filed Under: Letters and Opinion
Have you ever taken a good look at some of the people who eat all of that organic food which is supposedly so good for us?
Donna I don’t understand how if we stop using sugar and don’t eaat meat how that compares with putting IWT’s on land by digging down 8 ft (Ithink) and filling that hole with cement and then placing large steel like towers 50 stories in the air that spin and make a nose and kill birds and bat.
Certainly everything we do affects our world in one way or an other, itis the extent that we wish to destroy it that needs to be taken into consideration.
Ideally if we went back to the aboriginal way of life we wouldnot need all these man made things that in one way or another destroy our planet.
They didnot leave a large footprint as we are doing. Stop and think, can the planet sustain all the things we are doing to it and to what end.
We should do things that have the smallest footprint but I wonder if it is too late for the planet earth. Maybe we should all go out in space and discover a new world and start over.
The statement, “Peppering and denuding the landscape with subsidized wind turbine and solar industrial installations is only going to increase the use of wood for heat…” defies any conceivable logic!
If you want to discuss the denuding of the landscape, consider the massive acreages of land and the massive volumes of water used for meat production, either in direct grazing or growing feed for animals. Why don’t we all eat lower on the food chain and use the land to feed people, not animals?
These immense fields are abandoned by wildlife because of the heavy use of pesticides and herbicides and frequent harvesting. Why can’t we all eat organic foods from farms with green, sustainable practices?
Believe it or not, giving up our addiction to sugar would stop incredible amounts of land from being destroyed. Here in Texas in the ‘food belt’, we watch sugar cane being grown and harvested using horrendous agricultural practices. To grow the sugar you use in your coffee or in your desserts, not only the land is ruined but the air is heavily polluted and water is used in huge quantities. The crop uses 6 times the amount of water of other food crops; the crop is burned before harvesting causing unbelievable clouds of smoke that, in the Texas winds, blanket everything, causing lung irritation, black ash fallout all over houses, cars, roads, people, whatever. The cleanup from each burn is extensive for people and businesses. After harvesting with multiple tractors per field and several transport trucks, the crop is burned again! Then it’s generously flooded and the process starts again.
I’m just saying that there are many, many ways that humans denude the land by their daily practices and choices. Most of us are unwilling to examine our lives and make any changes. It’s easier to point our fingers at someone else.
The “CSG” must just cringe reading these articles. I wonder if they at all have a conscience. To be damned by your neighbours and seen as aiding and abetting the environmental damage of the County. If any have a financial interest probably not. It’s difficult to believe that they actually truly believe this is right.
Chris Keen
A great article you posted.
We knew that we did not needthe power that wind and solar was producing, so why should we pay people to take it–just shut down the turbines –too bad the wind companies might have to take a loss–better than us paying more for power than we should have to.
Did you see the ad wpd put in the paper about all the jobs they will create –well maybe for a little while there will be some–but the damage they do during construction costs way more than the few jobs that will be available
Just in case anyone is under the illusion that “green” energy is about anything other than money – and to hell with anything else!
http://www.thestar.com/business/2013/02/01/wind_and_solar_power_firms_fight_100_million_rule_change.html
I recommend you all get down to your local drug store and stock up a goodly supply of Preparation H, because what I’m about to tell you is sure to give you a major pain in the arse. Prince Edward County, and incidentally the rest of this planet, are “soon” to become uninhabitable, unless of course it is jammed full of Industrial Wind Turbines. Seems that the harbinger of the “four horses of the climate change apocalypse”, Nicholas Stern, has just upped the ante, raising his prediction of a 2 to 3 degree celcius rise in global temperature due to anthropogenic climate change to an unlivable, human extinction causing, 4 to 5. “Lord” Stern as he is better known across the waves in the UK, is the author of their government-commissioned review on climate change that became the reference work for politicians and green campaigners. According to the Guardian newspaper, Lord Stern recently stated, “I got it wrong on climate change – it’s far, far worse”. Of course Lord Stern profits handsomely through Industrial Wind Turbine development in the name of climate change mitigation. Here in the colony, where we harbour expatriate Lord Black, a Lord Stern peer, we are busily implementing the same oxymoronic policies of “sustainable renewable energy industrial development” that Lord Stern promotes and fattens his wallet with. Newspaper columnist, James Delingpole, writes in the Telegraph, a paper Lord Black once owned, that “When you see wind farms covering every hill and mountain and most of the valleys too, you can blame Stern. If you can’t pay your heating bills, ask Stern why this has happened. When children are indoctrinated and dissenting voices crushed, it is at Nicholas Stern that you should point an accusing finger. When the lights start to go out in a few years time, it’s Stern who will have to explain why” (http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/jamesdelingpole/100179282/nicholas-stern-the-most-dangerous-man-youve-never-heard-of/).
And if this isn’t enough, Lord Stern’s climate change prognostications were bolstered by Jim Yong Kim, the new president of the World Bank who stated of the coming climate change apocalypse, “there will be water and food fights everywhere”, highlighting his pledge to make climate change a priority. Unlike Lord Stern however, Jim Yong Kim makes his motivations and economic interests quite clear by stating that “there is no solution to climate change without private sector involvement”, urging wealthy corporations to seize this projected climate change apocalypse opportunity to make profits: “There is a lot of money to be made in building the technologies and bending the arc of climate change.” Paradoxically, Kim states that the world’s megacities are responsible for 70% of anthropogenic climate change emissions, but seemingly sees nothing ironic in turning rural areas like Prince Edward County into industrial solar and wind turbine wastelands.
Randy… thanks for the sentiment of support, however, I know many honest folk who although they would not necessarily include themselves in the present day politically motivated “green” movement, are “green” in the environmental sense. As to political ideologies, liberal or otherwise, they are all fascist in that they “goose step” to a particular societal/cultural bias.
Great article…..The whole Green Movement is a FRAUD….a money laundering scheme invented by fascist liberal politicians….