European Style Socialism -- Get Ready for a rough 2-1/2 Years

 

Transportation Department Embraces Bikes, and Business Groups Cry Foul

Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood has announced a “major policy revision” that aims to give bicycling and walking the same policy and economic consideration as driving.

Today I want to announce a sea change,” he wrote on his blog last week. “This is the end of favoring motorized transportation at the expense of nonmotorized.”

[....]

Not surprisingly, the news had bike enthusiasts excited.

“It is simply the strongest statement of support for prioritizing bicycling and walking ever to come from a sitting secretary of transportation,” said Darren Flusche, policy analyst for the League of American Bicyclists.

Nonetheless, some business groups have expressed concern that giving walking and biking the same policy considerations as other transportation modes, as Mr. LaHood recommended, would impede progress on other fronts.

Remember This?

Internal combustion engines interfere with earth’s cleansing When we seek to artificially enhance our capacity to acquire what we need from the earth, we do so at the direct expense of the earth’s ability to provide naturally what we are seeking. We frequently ignore the impact of our technological alchemy on natural processes. When we manufacture millions of internal combustion engines and automate the conversion of oxygen to CO2, we interfere with the earth’s ability to cleanse itself of the impurities that are normally removed from the atmosphere. 

Source: Earth in the Balance, page 207

The Left's Smarts... Funny!

Queen

Whole Foods Blog Response -- GloBull Warming

I am updating this original response to a Whole Foods post/blog I posted quite some time ago and re-posting it. The update is merely an imported article that really hints at alien influences... however, I am of the school that civilization has ebbed and flowed, or, devolved and evolved in knowledge due to wars, famines, natural disasters, and the like. So this addition is a great example of this. For those wishing to see more of this, I recommend a book:

Here is the updated (imported) info about ancient maps and travel. Following the book selection from the imported article.

INTRODUCTION
In 1929, a group of historians found an amazing map drawn on a gazelle skin.

Research showed that it was a genuine document drawn in 1513 by Piri Reis, a famous admiral of the Turkish fleet in the sixteenth century.

His passion was cartography. His high rank within the Turkish navy allowed him to have a privileged access to the Imperial Library of Constantinople.

The Turkish admiral admits in a series of notes on the map that he compiled and copied the data from a large number of source maps, some of which dated back to
the fourth century BC or earlier.

THE CONTROVERSY
The Piri Reis map shows the western coast of Africa, the eastern coast of South America, and the northern coast of Antarctica. The northern coastline of Antarctica is perfectly detailed. The most puzzling however is not so much how Piri Reis managed to draw such an accurate map of the Antarctic region 300 years before it was discovered, but that the map shows the coastline under the ice. Geological evidence confirms that the latest date Queen Maud Land could have been charted in an ice-free state is 4000 BC.

The official science has been saying all along that the ice-cap which covers the Antarctic is million years old.

The Piri Reis map shows that the northern part of that continent has been mapped before the ice did cover it. That should make think it has been mapped million years ago, but that's impossible since mankind did not exist at that time.

Further and more accurate studies have proven that the last period of ice-free condition in the Antarctic ended about 6000 years ago. There are still doubts about the beginning of this ice-free period, which has been put by different researchers everything between year 13000 and 9000 BC.

The question is: Who mapped the Queen Maud Land of Antarctic 6000 years ago? Which unknown civilization had the technology or the need to do that?

It is well-known that the first civilization, according to the traditional history, developed in the mid-east around year 3000 BC, soon to be followed within a millennium by the Indus valley and the Chinese ones. So, accordingly, none of the known civilizations could have done such a job. Who was here 4000 years BC, being able to do things that NOW are possible with the modern technologies?

[...]

All through the Middle Ages were circulating a number of sailing charts called "portolani", which were accurate maps of the most common sailing routes, showing coastlines, harbors, straits, bays, etc. Most of those portolani focused on the Mediterranean and the Aegean seas, and other known routes, just as the sailing book which Piri Reis himself had written.

But a few reported of still unknown lands, and were circulating among few sailors who seemingly kept their knowledge about those special maps as hidden as they could. Columbus is supposed to have been one of those who knew these special sailing charts.

To draw his map, Piri Reis used several different sources, collected here and there along his journeys. He himself has written notes on the map that give us a picture of the work he had been doing on the map. He says he had been not responsible for the original surveying and cartography. His role was merely that of a compiler who used a large number of source-maps. He says then that some of the source-maps had been drawn by contemporary sailors, while others were instead charts of great antiquity, dating back up to the 4th century BC or earlier....

...(Read More, Its Very Interesting)...

Subject Related Books from Article

Maps of the Ancient Sea Kings Charles Hapgod If you are in UK use this link Maps of the Ancient Sea Kings

The Piri Reis Map of 1513 Gregory C. McIntosh & Norman J. W. Thrower If you are in UK use this link

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
End of Addition
==================================

This is a response to a blog on Whole Foods website. I wanted to make some of the views known that are not too often discussed by the GreenPeacers found in front of my work, nor, not too well-known by many who work and push this “green” answer to supposed “problems.” Some things I didn’t mention was the “global warming” happening on other planets, where Exxon and others do not have access to yet. Not to mention the many points in an excellent documentary answering the pseudo-science in Al Gore’s movie. Enjoy:

Here is the Post (it is unedited)

I think some of this issue is overblown for political reasons... and then in response to the “Soros involved” activism and his money finding its way to both Marxist organizations as well as environmental organizations who seem to have similar ideas to ANSWER and MoveOn, the more conservative side (mine -- letting my biases be known) reacts in full, which can be a turn off as well to some. I will touch on just a few ideas here that I talk about in my best friends classroom once a semester so some deprogramming can happen to these kids that are inundated with myths in the media as well as in their school. I will take a portion of my son’s sixth-grade Toast Masters speech to kick off the issues below:

William Shatner, Captain Kirk of Star Trek fame, mentioned in a National Geographic video that, “rainforests [are] being cleared at the rate of 20 football fields per minute.” If this were truly the case, the forests would have been completely wiped out years ago. In fact, the co-founder and long-time director of Greenpeace, Patrick Moore, said:

• “All these save-the-forests arguments are based on bad science…. They are quite simply wrong… [Phillip Stott and I] found that the Amazon rainforests is more than 90% intact. We flew over it and met all the environmental authorities. We studied satellite pictures of the entire area.”

Phillip Stott, who has 30 years of studying tropical forests under his belt as well as being professor of biogeography at London University mentioned that, “there are now still – despite what humans have done – more rainforests today than there were 12,000 years ago.”

This is just one issue I raise in the classroom of high school kids. Some other historical points I touch on are that of wine production. The Roman’s produced wine on the Salisbury Plains in Britain in the 8th century, today it is entirely too cold for such a production of wine, right now at least. Another issue I raise is that of the Vikings. They had enough crop production to sustain long “naval expeditions” over the watery horizon, tree’s to build their armada of ships, homes, and the like. Today, the ground is permafrost for the most part. It was called Greenland for a reason at one point in history. To make the point clear here:

The very warm climate during the MWP allowed this great migration to flourish. Drift ice posed the greatest hazard to sailors but reports of drift ice in old records do not appear until the thirteenth century (Bryson, 1977.) The warmer climate would also result in a greater harvest in Iceland than would be experienced today so the land must have looked more inviting in the past than it does today.

The Norse peoples traveled to Iceland for a variety of reasons including a search for more land and resources to satisfy a growing population and to escape raiders and harsh rulers. One force behind the movement to Iceland in the ninth century was the ruthlessness of Harald Fairhair, a Norwegian King (Bryson)

(link)

I want to caveat here that that quote is from the following man who is one of the many thousands of specialists who say global warning is not anthropogenic (man-caused):

Reid Bryson, known as the father of scientific climatology, considers global warming a bunch of hooey. The UW-Madison professor emeritus, who stands against the scientific consensus on this issue, is referred to as a global warming skeptic. But he is not skeptical that global warming exists, he is just doubtful that humans are the cause of it.

(link)

Just in case no one knows who Bryson (quoted above) is, here is a short bio:

Reid A. Bryson holds the 30th PhD in Meteorology granted in the history of American education. Emeritus Professor and founding chairman of the University of Wisconsin Department of Meteorology—now the Department of Oceanic and Atmospheric Sciences—in the 1970s he became the first director of what’s now the UW’s Gaylord Nelson Institute of Environmental Studies. He’s a member of the United Nations Global 500 Roll of Honor—created, the U.N. says, to recognize “outstanding achievements in the protection and improvement of the environment.” He has authored five books and more than 230 other publications and was identified by the British Institute of Geographers as the most frequently cited climatologist in the world. Long ago in the Army Air Corps, Bryson and a colleague prepared the aviation weather forecast that predicted discovery of the jet stream by a group of B-29s flying to and from Tokyo. Their warning to expect westerly winds at 168 knots earned Bryson and his friend a chewing out from a general—and the general’s apology the next day when he learned they were right. Bryson flew into a couple of typhoons in 1944, three years before the Weather Service officially did such things, and he prepared the forecast for the homeward flight of the Enola Gay. Back in Wisconsin, he built a program at the UW that’s trained some of the nation’s leading climatologists.

(link)

Another example I give the kids is in regards to the northern face of the Mammoth Mountains where there was a volcanic eruption about 1350 A.D. that, in similar fashion to the Mt. St. Helen explosion, stripped the trees off the mountain side but leaving the roots and the lowest portion of the trunk allowing specialists of various fields to study these older trees. The tree line then was much higher than the current tree line. There are even other species of trees growing then that do not grow there today. In order for the tree line to be at its height above sea-level and the types of trees that grew there, the area would have to be 3.8 degrees Celsius warmer then that it is now. This is of course taking into account the uniformitarian understanding of events in the past (in other words, the current scientific paradigm in the study of geology).

Another challenge to the scare tactics used by those who would purport to want to help the environment (like the GreenPeace “kids” that straddle the doors of Whole Foods) is that of volcanic eruptions that cause more “greenhouse gasses” than the entire history of mankind. Krakatoa for instance. Another historical blow comes from ship travels through areas now covered by ice.

The British coined the term Northwest Passage for the potential northern oceanic pass that would allow vessels to move between the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. The earliest explorations for the fabled passage were by Cortes in 1539. The late 1500's were marked by British explorers, Martin Frobisher, Humphrey Gilbert, and John Davis. Several expeditions followed, all with little success of finding the passage but tempered by the acquisition of new lands. Some attempts lead to deaths of entire crews. Notable of these is the Sir John Franklin expedition in which all of the crew members were lost to starvation, scurvy, cannibalism, and lead poisoning from food sealed in tins. The first to transverse the Northwest Passage was Sir Robert McClure using a combination of both sledge and ship. Ironically this was done during the search for Franklin's team in which McClure's own ship became trapped in the ice for three winters. The passage was finally conquered entirely by sea by the Norwegian Amundsen in 1906.

(link)

Many of these trips, notably the trip in 1906, went through an area now covered in an ice shelf. The same ones people are scarred about melting. History is a bitch to those with political dogma as their guide.

After noting some historical cases I get into some of the issues raised by environmentalist that purport to be reasonable responses using fossil fuels (which I do not believe to be fossil fuels but that oil is always produced [a-biotic] by the inner workings of the earth and then pushed to the crust by the pressures of said inner workings). For instance all the animal life these wind farms end:

The Audubon Society, a party to the lawsuit settled last year, noted among the birds deaths are between 456 and 1,129 raptors killed each year, including 75 to 116 golden eagles killed annually.

(link)

The reason many birds die here is because many rodents set up homes at the base of these “death machines” and birds are then attracted to the area. Another reason is the placing of these wind mills in natural “wind corridors” that are also migratory paths for birds. Another myth is that of solar power, for instance some big concerns regarding the moderately high energy costs to build solar panels, and considerable toxic waste exposure issues in making and disposing of solar panels loom on the horizon of “planet health.” Not to mention the European Union's estimate that the future replacement of these panels as they are warn by the sun’s natural breaking down of materials and the subsequent end in a landfill caused them to say that “these [environmental hazards] are greater concerns than nuclear waste or nuclear accidents” (link). OUCH!

And as already discussed here (with links) and a comment by a reader, there seems to be a misunderstanding of the issue at hand. It isn’t about what some stats from a few years back are about animals being fed grains. It is about what the future holds for the amount of grains needed to both feed said animals as well as being produced for fuel. This is the main culprit in the riots a few months back in regards to poor Mexicans not being able to buy corn tortillas. Here is the issue as I see it:

... The EU adopted a goal of producing 10 percent of its fuel for road transportation from biofuels by 2020. The U.S. government (cheered on by the agriculture industry and environmentalists) adopted a mandate of 36 billion gallons of biofuel production by 2022 -- a five-fold increase over 2006 levels amounting to 28 percent of the U.S. grain harvest. Congress and the president joined hands to pass this feel-good legislation just when, as the Wall Street Journal pointed out, new data were demonstrating that biofuels cost more energy than they save. "When the hidden costs of conversion are included, greenhouse-gas emissions from corn ethanol over the next 30 years will be twice as high as from regular gasoline. In the long term, it will take 167 years before the reduction in carbon emissions from using ethanol 'pays back' the carbon released by land-use change."

The amount of global warming that this investment in biofuels was designed to obviate was truly trifling (if GW exists at all). Economist Bjorn Lomborg's work (see "The Skeptical Environmentalist" and "Cool It") is absolutely essential to understanding this issue. He has pointed out that even if all of the world's industrial nations reduced their outputs of greenhouse gases by 20 percent as the Kyoto Protocol would have required by 2012 (and many of the signatories are not on track), the reduction of global warming would have been 0.1 F degrees lower than it would otherwise have been, thus delaying global warming by a mere five years.

The costs, on the other hand, of meeting these or other targets are substantial. There are the opportunity costs -- funds spent on reducing global warming are diverted from other worthy efforts like supplying clean drinking water to Africa, fighting malaria, and improving flood control infrastructure. And as we are now seeing on our front pages, there are direct costs like dramatically increasing the price of food and pushing millions of poor people to desperation.

"When millions of people are going hungry," Palaniappan Chidambaram, India's finance minister told the Journal, "it's a crime against humanity that food should be diverted to biofuels." ...

(“Let Them Eat Ethanol?” By Mona Charen)

This and the other issues I raised here and with students in my friends class to counter Al Gore’s film and the morning announcements the public schools program these kids with is the issue that few hear from the political cult that stands in front of our store.

Much Thought and Reason,

Papa Giorgio

|

Greenpeace Founder Says "Yes"...

...to Nuclear Energy

Another blow to the nutter-enviro-left.

Greenpeace founder now backs nuclear power

Patrick Moore tells the Boise chamber that the world must wean itself from fossil fuels to reduce greenhouse gases.

By Rocky Barker -- 04/24/08

Idaho Statesman

Greenpeace founder Patrick Moore says there is no proof global warming is caused by humans, but it is likely enough that the world should turn to nuclear power - a concept tied closely to the underground nuclear testing his former environmental group formed to oppose.

.....

Ethanol

The Corn Gods

Corn Prices Rise... bad news

There were riots in Mexico a few months back now over this very issue. Biofuels are the main cause of this problem. Many farmers quit planting broccoli, potatoes, strawberries, and the like to score off the biofuel push. Now its getting out of hand. Expect food and other items (fuel) to continue to rise! All thanks to the “no drilling in Alaska/alternative fuels crowd.”

Drudge Report (props)

Corn Hits $6 a Bushel on Tight Supplies

Thursday April 3, 6:56 pm ET

By Stevenson Jacobs, AP Business Writer

Corn Prices Jump to Record $6 a Bushel, Driving Up Costs for Food, Alternative Energy

NEW YORK (AP) -- Corn prices jumped to a record $6 a bushel Thursday, driven up by an expected supply shortfall that will only add to Americans' growing grocery bill and further squeeze struggling ethanol producers.

Corn prices have shot up nearly 30 percent this year amid dwindling stockpiles and surging demand for the grain used to feed livestock and make alternative fuels including ethanol. Prices are poised to go even higher after the U.S. government this week predicted that American farmers -- the world's biggest corn producers -- will plant sharply less of the crop in 2008 compared to last year....

.... Corn for the most actively traded May contract rose 4.25 cents to settle at $6 a bushel on the Chicago Board of Trade, after earlier rising to $6.025 a bushel -- a new all-time high.

Worldwide demand for corn to feed livestock and to make biofuel is putting enormous pressure on global supply. And with the U.S. expected to plant less corn, the supply shortage will only worsen. The U.S. Department of Agriculture projected that farmers will plant 86 million acres of corn in 2008, an 8 percent drop from last year.

Moreover, cold, wet weather in parts of the U.S. corn belt may force farmers to delay spring planting, potentially sending prices even higher.

While corn growers are reaping record profits, U.S. consumers can expect even higher grocery bills -- especially for meat and pork -- as livestock producers are forced to pass on higher animal feed costs and thin their herd size.

"Higher corn prices is going to affect meat prices. If you're feeding with $6 corn, you'll definitely have some (cost) pressure," Kub said.

In addition, corn and corn syrup are used in an array of products, meaning the price of everything from candy to soft drinks will eventually go up, analysts say. It's the latest dose of bad news for U.S. consumers, who are already struggling with higher food costs from record increases in the price of wheat, soybeans and other agriculture products.

Another loser in higher corn costs is ethanol producers, who are struggling to squeeze out gains as corn's record-setting run outpaces the price of ethanol, currently at around $2.50 a gallon.

"For years, corn was cheap and fermentation processes for ethanol production came to completely dominate the biofuel industry in North America," Michael Jackson, president and chairman of Vancouver-based ethanol maker Syntec Biofuel, said this week. "Now, with corn prices well over $5 a bushel, corn ethanol economics have gone out the window."

The nation's 147 ethanol plants now have the capacity to produce 8.5 billion gallons of fuel a year, according to the Renewable Fuels Association. Corn is the basic feedstock for most of the plants and about 20 percent of last year's 13 billion bushel corn crop was consumed by ethanol production. That percentage is expected to increase to 30 percent for the next crop year, which ends Aug. 31, 2009, according to Terry Francl, a senior economist for the American Farm Bureau Federation.

....

Thanks Gore... you eco-fascist.

Corn Bred Fed Enviro-Nuts

This article is another nail in the inflationary coffin that environmentalists are causing. A professor of economics explains how vegetables affect meat.

Big Corn and Ethanol Hoax

By Walter E. Williams

Wednesday, March 12, 2008

One of the many mandates of the Energy Policy Act of 2005 calls for oil companies to increase the amount of ethanol mixed with gasoline. President Bush said, during his 2006 State of the Union address, "America is addicted to oil, which is often imported from unstable parts of the world." Let's look at some of the "wonders" of ethanol as a replacement for gasoline.

Ethanol contains water that distillation cannot remove. As such, it can cause major damage to automobile engines not specifically designed to burn ethanol. The water content of ethanol also risks pipeline corrosion and thus must be shipped by truck, rail car or barge. These shipping methods are far more expensive than pipelines.

Ethanol is 20 to 30 percent less efficient than gasoline, making it more expensive per highway mile. It takes 450 pounds of corn to produce the ethanol to fill one SUV tank. That's enough corn to feed one person for a year. Plus, it takes more than one gallon of fossil fuel -- oil and natural gas -- to produce one gallon of ethanol. After all, corn must be grown, fertilized, harvested and trucked to ethanol producers -- all of which are fuel-using activities. And, it takes 1,700 gallons of water to produce one gallon of ethanol. On top of all this, if our total annual corn output were put to ethanol production, it would reduce gasoline consumption by 10 or 12 percent.

Ethanol is so costly that it wouldn't make it in a free market. That's why Congress has enacted major ethanol subsidies, about $1.05 to $1.38 a gallon, which is no less than a tax on consumers. In fact, there's a double tax -- one in the form of ethanol subsidies and another in the form of handouts to corn farmers to the tune of $9.5 billion in 2005 alone.

There's something else wrong with this picture. If Congress and President Bush say we need less reliance on oil and greater use of renewable fuels, then why would Congress impose a stiff tariff, 54 cents a gallon, on ethanol from Brazil? Brazilian ethanol, by the way, is produced from sugar cane and is far more energy efficient, cleaner and cheaper to produce.

Ethanol production has driven up the prices of corn-fed livestock, such as beef, chicken and dairy products, and products made from corn, such as cereals. As a result of higher demand for corn, other grain prices, such as soybean and wheat, have risen dramatically. The fact that the U.S. is the world's largest grain producer and exporter means that the ethanol-induced higher grain prices will have a worldwide impact on food prices.

It's easy to understand how the public, looking for cheaper gasoline, can be taken in by the call for increased ethanol usage. But politicians, corn farmers and ethanol producers know they are running a cruel hoax on the American consumer. They are in it for the money. The top leader in the ethanol hoax is Archer Daniels Midland (ADM), the country's largest producer of ethanol. Ethanol producers and the farm lobby have pressured farm state congressmen into believing that it would be political suicide if they didn't support subsidized ethanol production. That's the stick. Campaign contributions play the role of the carrot.

The ethanol hoax is a good example of a problem economists refer to as narrow, well-defined benefits versus widely dispersed costs. It pays the ethanol lobby to organize and collect money to grease the palms of politicians willing to do their bidding because there's a large benefit for them -- higher wages and profits. The millions of gasoline consumers, who fund the benefits through higher fuel and food prices, as well as taxes, are relatively uninformed and have little clout. After all, who do you think a politician will invite into his congressional or White House office to have a heart-to-heart -- you or an Archer Daniels Midlands executive?

Dr. Williams serves on the faculty of George Mason University as John M. Olin Distinguished Professor of Economics and is the author of More Liberty Means Less Government: Our Founders Knew This Well.

Starvation Station

Environmentalists killing off the poor in a an attempt to save the planet.

CNBC's Cramer confronts Clinton on ethanol fallacy in interview; 'Nightly News' admits corn is causing higher food prices.

By Jeff Poor

Business & Media Institute

2/28/2008

Finally, the media are connecting the dots and realizing the push for alternative energy is taking a toll on the American economy.

The Labor Department reported on February 20 that the Consumer Price Index (CPI), a key inflation reading, rose 0.4 percent in January, matching December’s rise. One of the culprits behind the spike – increased food costs because corn is being used for ethanol.

“Farmers are replacing wheat fields with corn to meet the demand for alternative fuel, but that means higher flour prices – and in one Pennsylvania pizza shop, more expensive pies,” NBC News correspondent Chris Jansing said on the February 27 “NBC Nightly News.”

Perhaps no one drew a stronger correlation between the politics of alternative energy and the rise in inflation than Jim Cramer in a February 27 interview with Democratic presidential hopeful Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-N.Y.) on his CNBC show “Mad Money.”

“Senator, you mentioned inflation,” an animated Cramer said. “Half of inflation is coming from oil. The other half is coming from food. Do you believe that we should continue to burn food in this country? Poor people cannot afford what we’re doing with our ethanol strategy. We’re raising the price of the staples that they eat. If we scrapped ethanol, half of our inflation would go away. Why are we allowing the ethanol lobby to destroy the affordability of people who want to eat chicken and beef?”

Clinton, a self-proclaimed opponent of Washington special interests, provided more of a dodge than an explanation.

“Well, I think it’s a little more complicated, Jim, because I think the increases in the energy prices generally have contributed to food inflation,” Clinton said. “Although, you’re absolutely right – that the rising cost of corn and soybeans, which are ubiquitous in our food supply, have certainly contributed significantly, but we’re in a transition period.”

So what was Clinton’s solution? More nuclear power, as in France, where 76 percent of that country’s electricity is produced without greenhouse gases? What about investing in clean-coal strategies since coal is an abundant natural resource? Or perhaps opening up part of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) for oil drilling, where according to an editorial in the February 21 Investor’s Business Daily, our dependence on “foreign oil” in a global oil market would be solved if Democrats in Congress would stop restricting the supply?

Of course it was none of the above. Clinton proposed less efficient solutions, including two ideas popular with the green movement – solar and wind power.

“We need an energy policy that does focus on homegrown energy, and that has to be a broad base set of energy alternatives,” Clinton said. “You know, ethanol from corn is not the most efficient way of producing it, but it is what we are doing now as we move toward cellulosic, as we look at how we’re going to incentivize wind and solar. You know, I think we should be looking more at new forms of energy for our cars.”

Government-mandated corn-based ethanol isn’t only doing harm to the American economy on the inflation front. It’s also contributing more to carbon emissions and “global warming” than fossil fuels, according to two recent studies. That’s not exactly a “green” alternative energy solution.

Full of Air

What We Need Is More Wind!

Maybe Bush Can Call Up A Hurricane.

Hopefully no hospitals were affected. Poison in our homes, defibrillators crashing… what are these enviro-whacko’s thinking!

Drudge Report (props)

HOUSTON (Reuters) - A drop in wind generation late on Tuesday, coupled with colder weather, triggered an electric emergency that caused the Texas grid operator to cut service to some large customers, the grid agency said on Wednesday.

Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) said a decline in wind energy production in west Texas occurred at the same time evening electric demand was building as colder temperatures moved into the state.

The grid operator went directly to the second stage of an emergency plan at 6:41 PM CST (0041 GMT), ERCOT said in a statement.

System operators curtailed power to interruptible customers to shave 1,100 megawatts of demand within 10 minutes, ERCOT said. Interruptible customers are generally large industrial customers who are paid to reduce power use when emergencies occur.

No other customers lost power during the emergency, ERCOT said. Interruptible customers were restored in about 90 minutes and the emergency was over in three hours.

ERCOT said the grid's frequency dropped suddenly when wind production fell from more than 1,700 megawatts, before the event, to 300 MW when the emergency was declared.

In addition, ERCOT said multiple power suppliers fell below the amount of power they were scheduled to produce on Tuesday. That, coupled with the loss of wind generated in West Texas, created problems moving power to the west from North Texas.

ERCOT declares a stage 1 emergency when power reserves fall below 2,300 MW. A stage 2 emergency is called when reserves fall below 1,750 MW….

Killing Birds Okay

I am starting to turn against wind farms because they are in the way of migratory birds. We should stick with Nuclear.

The key quote below is this:

The bird death issue is complicated by the fact that commercially viable wind farms must be situated in areas where the wind blows as frequently and steadily as possible. These locations tend also to be major flyways for raptors and migratory birds.

Even worse, the farms can actually lure birds to their grisly deaths. Rats, mice, and other rodents utilize turbine bases as nesting grounds, which in turn attracts birds of prey. When the birds of prey circle above their intended meal, they are sliced to death in midair by the spinning turbine blades.

The Audubon Society, a party to the lawsuit settled last year, noted among the birds deaths are between 456 and 1,129 raptors killed each year, including 75 to 116 golden eagles killed annually.

Here is the whole story as found at the link below:

Altamont Pass Settlement Fails to Reduce Bird Kills

Originally Published in: Environment and Climate News

A January 2007 settlement agreement intended to reduce the number of bird deaths from wind turbines at Altamont Pass, California is failing, scientists report.

As a result, environmental groups are calling for additional restrictions on wind power generation at the nation's largest wind farm.

Thousands of Kills Annually

Wildlife groups have long objected to the deadly toll wind turbines take on birds and bats. The wind farm at Altamont, with more than 5,000 turbines sprawling over more than 50 square miles of land, has been the poster child for that problem.

Responding to environmental concerns that spawned a federal lawsuit, operators of the installation agreed in January 2007 to a series of measures designed to reduce the roughly 1,700 to 4,700 bird deaths at Altamont Pass each year.

Among the birds killed there each year are protected raptors, including golden eagles, red-tailed hawks, American kestrels, and burrowing owls.

The January 2007 legal settlement, forged among wildlife groups, wind companies, and regulators, required the wind farm operators, through a series of measures, to reduce raptor deaths by 50 percent over three years.

Scientists in December 2007 reported the thousands of wind turbines at Altamont Pass are killing raptors and other birds at approximately the same pace as before the settlement.

Wildlife Groups Object

Elizabeth Murdock, executive director of the Golden Gate Audubon Society, one of four Audubon chapters party to the settlement agreement, says the present array of wind turbines at Altamont Pass is taking an unacceptable toll on migratory and protected bird species.

"We are not trying to shut down the wind industry, but we think that there is a positive way to move forward and produce wind power while reducing bird deaths," Murdock said.

The toll has been devastating at Altamont Pass. In the lawsuit, environmentalists cited a 2004 California Energy Commission report estimating between 1,766 and 4,721 birds were killed by Altamont wind turbines each year, equaling 47,682 to 127,467 birds over the 27-year life of the wind farm.

Many of the affected bird species are protected by state and federal laws. Some of the birds killed are protected by federal laws so stringent they do not allow the taking or killing of even a single member of the species.

Wind farm critics say the failure to enforce federal wildlife protection laws in the Altamont wind farm case is a result of environmentalists' pressure for wind power.

Birds Lured to Death

The bird death issue is complicated by the fact that commercially viable wind farms must be situated in areas where the wind blows as frequently and steadily as possible. These locations tend also to be major flyways for raptors and migratory birds.

Even worse, the farms can actually lure birds to their grisly deaths. Rats, mice, and other rodents utilize turbine bases as nesting grounds, which in turn attracts birds of prey. When the birds of prey circle above their intended meal, they are sliced to death in midair by the spinning turbine blades.

The Audubon Society, a party to the lawsuit settled last year, noted among the birds deaths are between 456 and 1,129 raptors killed each year, including 75 to 116 golden eagles killed annually.