“The people who build wind farms are not environmentalists. . . . Business is a delicate balancing act, and chief executives are always walking a tightrope between the needs of the community, their employees, and the marketplace.”
– Paul Gipe, Wind Energy Comes of Age (New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1995), p. 454.
The front page exposé in the New York Times of another problem of industrial wind—coming on top of Robert Bryce’s eye-opening Wall Street Journal piece on air emissions relating to firming wind energy—presents another problem for Big Wind and Big Environmentalism.
Windpower’s noise problem is nothing new–it has just been swept under the rug by the industrial wind complex. The oft photoshoped pictures of wind turbines skip the sound–that would ruin the idyllic facade of the energy source that is radically uneconomic and an inferior energy source compared to conventional electricity generation.…
Yesterday, an op-ed by the late Ken Lay urged for climate action as a easy winner in benefits versus costs–something that was hardly true when he said it and known to be untrue now. Drastic action barely registers on the temperature/sea level/precipitation scale.
Here is Ken Lay (with Roger Sant) a year later with more advice for California in its current debate over whether to pass California’s Prop. 23, a measure to suspend the Global Warming Solutions Act of 2006 (AB 32).
Enron had seven profit centers tied to regulating carbon dioxide (CO2). What ‘Enrons’ are involved in the climate scare today?
The op-ed from September 1998 follows:…
“It’s time to stop debating the issues surrounding climate change initiatives and focus instead on simple, realistic, cost-effective solutions. This is one area where an ounce of near-term prevention will be worth considerably more than a pound of cure later on.”
– Ken Lay, “Let’s Have an Ounce of Global-Warming Prevention,” December 1997.
“An ounce of global warming prevention is worth a ton of CO2 cure. There are no emergency rooms for a sick planet.”
– Edward J. Markey (D–MA), “Second Life Remarks to the Virtual Bali UN Climate Conference,” December 2008.
The New York Times and other media outlets have identified the principled free-market advocates Charles and David Koch as supporters of California’s Prop. 23, a measure to suspend the Global Warming Solutions Act of 2006 (AB 32).…