In July theHeartland Institute’s Environmental & Climate Newsreported on the announcement by Nordex USA, a manufacturer of wind turbines that had accepted millions of dollars in subsidies while promising to create 750 jobs that it had shut down its Jonesboro facility. In 2008, Gov. Mike Beebe (D) had given Nordex $8 million from the Governor’s Quick-Action Closing Fund and the Arkansas DevelopmentFinance Authority had given Nordex another $11 million. The decision, said the company, was its uncertainty about receiving federal subsidies. At the time, only fifty people were employed there.

In early October, the House Oversight and Government Reform Subcommittee on Energy Policy, Healthcare, and Entitlements held a hearing on the Wind Production Tax Credit (PTC). The American Wind Energy Association (AWEA) was there to argue for an extension of the subsidy. According to lobbying disclosures, in 2012 the AWEA had spent more than $2.4 million to protect the subsidy which was set to expire, but which received a one-year extension as part of the deal struck to avoid the “fiscal cliff.”

Arguing that wind energy is an important element of the mix of energy provided by coal, natural gas, nuclear and hydroelectric facilities, the facts are that in 2012 coal accounted for 37 percent of total generation, natural gas represented 30 percent, and nuclear contributed 19 percent. Wind power accounted for just 1.4 percent of U.S. energy consumption in 2012 and only 3.5 percent of the nation’s electricity generation.

Since the PTC was first enacted two decades ago, it has cost taxpayers $20 billion dollars.

One of the primary arguments for wind energy is that it is “renewable” and does not contribute to the so-called “greenhouse gas emissions” that are the cause of a “global warming.” However, the latest warming cycle ended some fifteen years ago. Not one student in our nation’s schools has ever experienced “global warming.”

Wind energy is “green” say its supporters, but it is hardly “green” to kill an estimated 573,000 birds every year, including 83,000 birds of prey according to a study published in the March edition of the Wildlife Society Bulletin. It also kills countless bats, a species that reduces the vast number of insect pests that prey on crops and transmit diseases.

A permit is being sought by the Shiloh IV Wind Project in Solano County, California, that would grant it the right to kill up to five golden eagles over a five-year period despite their protected status under the Bald and Golden Eagle Protection Act.

So wind energy is justified as reducing greenhouse gases that are not causing global warming which does not exist, is receiving millions in subsidies, and wants to kill protected species, an environmental objective. This is hypocrisy on a galactic scale.

Testifying before the congressional committee, Dr. Robert Michaels, a senior fellow of the Institute for Energy Research, noted that the subsidy which was supposed to end by now has been renewed five times. The wind industry is essentially non-competitive when it comes to energy generation from traditional sources and has also been around long enough to amply demonstrate that. In a market economy, such industries are allowed to fail.

The wind industry, however, doesn’t even need to be competitive because utilities in some thirty states are required by law to include it in their “renewable portfolio standards” that set quotes for its use. This mandate is expected to see the installation of more than 100,000 renewable megawatts over the next twenty years and wind, said Dr. Michaels, and “seems certain to get the lion’s share.”

Adding to the idiocy of wind energy is the need for such production facilities to have a back-up from traditional coal, natural gas, and nuclear facilities because wind is not available with any predictability. The consumer not only pays for the electricity these facilities provide to ensure that they will always have electricity, but pays in the form of the subsidies the wind industry continues to receive.

There is no need for renewable energy mandates. Both wind and solar are unreliable sources of energy and produce so little as to lack any justification for their existence.

The wind industry exists because it spends millions annually to convince legislators that it should not only be subsidized and because many states require its use. Take away the interference of government entities and the industry would have no real basis to exist. It is a fraud.

select a text and search and replace only in this selected text

 The word "module" is a Haskell keyword, however, creating an identifier with a prefix of "module" is also valid. e.g.

modulez = "hi" -- valid Haskell

Unfortunately, this causes the editor to think I have used the module keyword, which screws up highlighting.

http://www.thehindubusinessline.com/opinion/the-great-environment-scam/article5075991.ece

The exploitation of natural resources to benefit select industrial houses under the pretext of catering to the socio-economic requirements of the people has become a matter of serious concern. Of course, for the economy to grow we cannot avoid utilising natural resources. The question is: How should we make use of them?

  The answer to this simple question is not simple because the issue of utilisation of natural resources is a sensitive matter. Of late, the wrongful allocation of scarce resources such as oil, gas, iron ore and coal by unscrupulous elements has brought the issue into focus. 

Examples of how public money has been virtually looted include the 2G spectrum scam, the coal gate scam, irregularities in the exploitation of natural gas in the KG basin, and allocation of iron ore mines in Karnataka.   What is alarming is that while states lose huge chunks of revenue due to dubious methods of allocation of natural resources, corporate exploitation of resources to bolster financial prospects ignoresthe consequent ecological imbalance which affectsthe habitat of the regions concerned. But amid all this noise, there is a more fundamental question that has not been asked — what is it really that we are losing? 

The loss to national exchequer is the manifestation of only one world view. It is a computation of the loss in rupees incurred by the national treasury because a whole set of people ducked the system. But in fact, the country is losing much more than revenue.According to a Greenpeace India report over 1.1 million hectares of forest are at risk from coal mining in 13 coalfields in central India that the report analysed; 40 others still remain to be evaluated. The estimated loss of Rs1.86 lakh crore is only the notional value of a single resource; it does not include the value of anything. The land is scarred, without concern for economic losses nor legalities.

An ability to test compiled code, since we can build .cpp, .rb, .d, etc

Vintage mode / mac os x 10.6.8

- Selecting text while your mouse pointer goes outside the editor area will jam the whole app and will have to "force quit" it.

When I want to close a lot of tabs quickly, I use ctrl+shift+w... but instead of closing the tabs, it closes sublime. I'd really just like an option to say "no, don't close sublime, just close all of my tabs."