Let’s not be fooled by wind and solar
By Letter to the Editor on January 16, 2019.
For the last decade or more the Canadian public has been conditioned to believe that man-made CO2 added to the atmosphere will have an apocalyptic effect on our future climate. Following up, and equally well sold, is the ostensible need for “renewable” electrical power generation to replace dependable and affordable fossil fuel based generation. If you follow the money, as they say, it is easy to understand how this happens. Three rich and powerful players collaborate to control the narrative about climate and renewable energy. First of all, radical environmental outfits (e.g. Greenpeace, World Wildlife Fund, Suzuki Foundation, etc.) that are heavily funded partially by American billionaires and foundations continue to successfully attack our Canadian oil, gas and coal industries. Wind and solar power industrialists are also financing this indoctrination effort for obvious reasons. If governments can be convinced to mandate conversion from gas and coal to renewables their resulting windfall will be in the billions of dollars in Canada alone. And finally, “green” government leaders with their hands in taxpayer pockets, have unlimited wealth and power to do the bidding of the other two perpetrators of this slight of hand. The Canadian power consumer doesn’t stand a chance, any resistance to this green tsunami is being outgunned and silenced! Our provincial NDP government is clearly attempting to ram as much solar and wind as possible onto our electrical grid before likely losing this spring’s election. They are doing this using an auction format to give the process the appearance of competitiveness. After each auction, Notley and others gleefully announce that the successful green bidder’s kilowatt hour prices are becoming very close to what existing conventional generators are paid. That exaggeration wouldn’t be true even if the power quality provided by these new intermittent and unreliable sources was remotely similar to that from existing sources. The many hidden costs surrounding green energy are rarely discussed. A few details must be understood to fairly compare solar/wind power to what is called “base-load” generation (coal, gas, hydro, nuclear). Base-load power is constantly and reliably available to customers 24/7. Solar and wind generators, by comparison, can’t be relied upon to provide any needed power at a point in time. Every night solar production dies completely as well as supplying minimal output in Alberta’s winters or on cloudy days. An average of 15 per cent of name-plate capacity is typical of annual solar output in Alberta. Wind power is similarly unreliable and averages 25 per cent of its designed output throughout the year. But both require an overbuilt transmission and infrastructure capacity to occasionally handle 100 per cent of their maximum output. As a result, green power transmission assets are severely under-utilized through the course of the year. This represents huge, wasteful fixed costs charged to our energy bills. And one last critical point is that as new expensive wind and solar generators are built, not 1 kW of existing generation can be retired because it has to be there as a backstop for the random, frequent times when green energy produces next to nothing. This, effectively, is a politically motivated duplication of electrical generation assets that will cost all of us dearly! Lynn Thacker Bow Island 9-8
Good thing we have some random person from Bow Island to speak the truth and who knows better than nearly every scientist on the planet. So many flaws here, but not worth correcting. The world will improve and progress without you.
Thanks, well said. A whole lot of real people see the con game going on. The word INDOCTRINATION says a lot about the whole scam to me.
Great comments banjokaz, and rhawk. I’m betting Lynn is a senior, because it’s only seniors my fellow seniors and I are hearing saying these stupid things. The young people certainly understand what a mess we have created for them. Continuing to ignore the true facts like these people do isn’t an option.I believe that what University Professors have been telling us for years is true, these seniors are cowards, they can’t handle the truth, it scares them so badly so they stick their heads in the sand and pretend it isn’t happening and are afraid of change. It’s why so many seniors are climate change deniers, refusing to believe the thousands of scientists that are right. This massive damage they see on TV scares them, so they make up idiotic comments to convince themselves not to believe it.
My family had known the Klein family since the early 1960s and many of the Klein family members were a lot smarter than the Albertans who made Ralph Klein out to being a hero for what he did to this province. They automatically support anyone who attaches the word Conservative to their name and believe every lie they feed them, like they did with Klein and are doing with Kenney. The point is we are in this mess because of Klein.
Here is something you might want to pull up and read. We knew Angie when she was just a infant and as she points out she didn’t always support her father, and neither did her grandmother Flo or grandfather Phil when Ralph was destroying this province, as they pointed out to us.
Global News April 30, 2015 “Daughter of former Alberta premier Ralph Klein supports NDP in upcoming election” As Angie points out Klein always considered himself to be a Liberal , as our family certainly knew, but used Reform Party Polices to destroy this province. Like Kenney he never was a true Conservative. In addition Angie points out that even when her father was in office she was supporting the NDP. She knew the flat tax was a disaster. Accountants and economists were telling us that during the oil boom Albertans were losing around $9 billion a year in tax breaks afforded to Klein’s rich friends. It was far more than enough to have kept our health care and education systems running properly without losing our doctors, nurses and teachers, but as we know Klein was deliberately trying to force Albertans into accepting a privatized health care and education system, like Kenney is promising to bring us. It’s the major Reform Party mandate, as true conservatives know. Make the people pay out a lot more from their bank accounts, so we have more money for ourselves and our rich friends. Alberta already has the highest percentage per capita , in Canada, of seniors using food banks, so why would you want to let Kenney make it worse? We were told in Edmonton that we have seen a 15% increase in seniors using food banks in the past year , and friends who volunteer at the food banks certainly agree with that figure.
Man, you’re an @#$hole.
What I got out of that long winded nonsense was a lot of bullying and hate being spewed. I didn’t use the INDOCTRINATION word for nothing. Were you a professor by chance because that is what I’d expect from some of them? Now go back to your mama’s basement senior or not!
I did it for one reason and one reason only to see what kind of a reaction I would get and I got what I expected, . ignorant seniors who don’t want to hear true facts, supported Ralph Klein and helped him put this province in the mess it’s in, as Lougheed called it a “Horrific Mess” and don’t want to hear the truth even if it came from Klein’s own daughter. It’s it amazing how the true Alberta conservatives knew what had happened to this province and voted in the NDP to put a stop to it and these guys want to to continue allowing phony conservatives, Reformers, helping their rich friends clean them out of their money and they think it’s wonderful. As my friends say “You can’t be any dumber than that”.
Nice that you at least admit that you’re a typical troll. Keep on name dropping and enthralling us “deplorables”with your tales of travel to Norway and Alaska and anywhere else that you require to prove your ridiculous talking points. As for your “friends”, I highly doubt you have many with the amount of vitriol that comes off your keyboard and your “so much smarter” than us attitude. Unfortunately, you’re probably going to get your way and have us become a socialist nation because there are too many helpless, useless and self-loathing apologetic people nowadays who want the government to control all aspects of their lives. You will be in your Utopian paradise until the productive people’s money runs out, then what?