Connemara Against Windfarms

01/05/2023

When I left school one of my first attempts to make a wage was tree felling, it was awful hard work especially in the early days as I done no research and had zero experience with a saw.
Maybe the sort of job you are born into, anyway I only lasted a couple of years before moving to a sawmill for a weekly wage.
Its handy nowadays to be able to handle a chainsaw safely as are a lot of life experiences.
That's one of the reasons I smirked when reading the quote from Leroy Reitsma, Vice President, Pinnacle Pellet Inc when he said "With the economic downturn in the forest industry, it has forced us to have to diversify our fibre supply. The good news for the entire community is what it does is it will create significant employment. At the end of the day, the community is the winner because there are more jobs in the community."

Here is a bit of history about Pinnacle Pellet Inc. It was owned by Pinnacle Renewable Energy Group a private company owned by the Swaan family of Quesnel, British Columbia having commenced operations in 1989 with the opening of their Quesnel plant.
It went on to operate six plants across BC with a productive capacity of 1,050,000 tonnes of wood pellets annually which comprises fifty-six percent of Canada’s total pellet production.

The Meadowbank plant, located near Quesnel, was first designed and built with the expectation that ninety percent of the fibre supply would be provided by the nearby Dunkley Sawmill operations, and they recieved grants because they were going to provide employment.
With the reduction in production at the sawmill, the pellet plant is receiving only forty-five percent of its fibre needs directly from Dunkley Lumber.

You might be wondering by now why I'm ranting about the Pinnacle Renewable Energy Group Well you may have seen the Panorama TV program on 3rd Oct 2022 that analysed satellite images, traced logging licences and used drone filming to prove how they have been cutting down virgin forests for your GREEN RENEWABLE ENERGY. see links in comments

Ecologist Michelle Connolly told Panorama the company was destroying forests that had taken thousands of years to develop.

You may be asking who the heck are Pinnacle Pellet and what has it to do with us in the UK, Well they had a few rebranding change of names, and are now owned by DRAX you may have heard of them?

According to the Drax hyperbole on their website "The acquisition will increase Drax’s annual operational capacity to 4.9 million tonnes of sustainable biomass pellets from 2022, at 17 plants in locations across Western Canada and the US South – up from 1.6Mt now. Of this increased capacity, 2.9 million will be available for Drax’s self-supply requirements from 2022. It will also give the Group access to four deep water port facilities and three major wood fibre baskets."

The Carbon Capture element that has led Drax into being the "go to" example of progress in reducing C02 and negative emissions needs our attention, the logic of the negative emissions argument is that burning wood is “carbon neutral” because trees absorb CO₂ from the atmosphere in the first place, and you are simply releasing it back. When you combine this with a carbon capture facility, it is argued, you are therefore removing CO₂ from the atmosphere overall. see link . And how about Carbon monoxide and the process also produces other noxious emissions, such as volatile organic compounds and oxides of nitrogen, which are responsible for acid rain.
Remember ACID RAIN it was going to kill us in the early 1980's before Greta and the WEF changed the goalposts.







https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-63089348

https://theconversation.com/carbon-capture-on-power-stations-burning-woodchips-is-not-the-green-gamechanger-many-think-it-is-110475

The Drax biomass plant in Yorkshire is the first in the world to pioneer carbon capture and some specialists see it as it has a bright future. But hold the rosy headlines.

01/05/2023

If this is a quote from Mick O’Meara of the Blue Horizon campaign group, published in the Irish Times, https://www.irishtimes.com/.../trouble-brewing-with.../...
"We can have everything: renewable energy, decarbonisation, the technology to allow turbines beyond 22km ... without industrialising the coastline"
I would like to know how on Earth he thinks this is possible, Turbines are industrial fans, constructed by using huge amounts of carbon for the first thing, then, after a massive installation project involving their transportation across the World, when they do start producing electricity, how does he think laying cables on the sea floor then pylons across the countryside to deliver the "Green electricity" is Not industrialising the coastline?

01/05/2023

The final auction results date is the 6th June, What Auction? Ohh its just to see who can put turbines around the coast of Ireland nothing important don't worry just sign on the dotted line, you will hardly notice them.
The Sceirde Rocks turbine construction area is part of Ireland's Government’s offshore renewable energy targets, including the target of achieving 5GW of capacity in offshore wind by 2030 (which they have conveniently upped to 7 GW recently)
Your community may be given a softener, which is usually the case when developers are taking over, maybe the local LBQT+ community will be given a shared bathroom or something, it will be something really needed for sure and there will be great bells and whistles at how generous they are although actually you will be paying yourselves through higher electricity prices.
You just have to be sooooo proud of Ireland becoming one of the leading producers of the most expensive method of producing energy in Europe.
But it's Saving the Planet, yeah yeah whatever I'm away to have a f**kin huge bonfire and chill out with a beer from Mexico.

20/03/2017

I'm fed up of being quoted "97% of scientists believe that man is responsible for global warming" and before you go labelling me a climate change sceptic I am very much the opposite, I believe the World is in a constant cycle of Warming and Cooling.

Anyway the "97%" claim often cited is from a paper by John Cook, who runs the popular website SkepticalScience.com, a virtual encyclopedia of arguments trying to defend predictions of catastrophic climate change from all challenges.

His paper “Cook et al. (2013) found that over 97 percent [of papers he surveyed] endorsed the view that the Earth is warming up and human emissions of greenhouse gases are the main cause.”

So to come up with 97% Cook created two categories “explicit endorsement without quantification”—that is, papers in which the author, by Cook’s admission, did not say whether 1 percent or 50 percent or 100 percent of the warming was caused by man.

Second category called “implicit endorsement,” for papers that imply (but don’t say) that there is some man-made global warming and don’t quantify it. In other words, he created two categories that he labelled as Endorsing a view that they most certainly didn’t.

How easy it is to come up with a HUGE majority favouring something all you have to do is tweak the categories, then market the heck out of your corrupt results and harvest the subsidies or whatever.

10/02/2017

January in Germany highlighted well, how wind power can not be trusted as a main supply of electricity. There was a high pressure area providing still winds and fog, while at the same time the electricity demand in Germany was increasing strongly, because it was so cold.

On Tuesday, 24 January, electric trains, subways and elevators brought people to work and the factories started to work, Germany's electricity consumption rose rapidly to 83 gigawatts. The wind power on land, however, delivered less than one gigawatt during the whole day. At midday, some solar plants helped to hoist the entire green electricity production to three gigawatts. But even that was just a drop in the bucket.

On January 24, the coal, gas and nuclear power plants covered more than 90 percent of the German electricity demand. On almost all other days between January 16 and 26, it was very similar.

"Currently, the poor economic conditions mean that a number of conventional power plants are being declared for decommissioning or are going off the grid," Stefan Kapferer, CEO of the Federal Association of Energy and Water Industries (BDEW) summarized the situation this way: "Investments in the construction of new power plants have already come to a standstill."

So no conventional means of producing electricity and no renewables , you may think ahh we will just buy our power from France and their nuclear reserves but hey the aging French nuclear power plants, are no longer a safe bank. Right now, many of the facilities are offline because of security checks, in January. France, formerly an exporter of electricity, suddenly had to import itself.

10/02/2017

When you put all your eggs in the one basket as South Australia has done with wind power you can expect drastic outcomes. This month Australia is sweltering in record temperatures and their electricity system cant handle it thanks to a shortfall in supply risks the electricity network becoming "unstable" creating the need for "localised load shedding to rebalance the power system", according to the AEMO
So are we happy here in Ireland to allow our money grubbing politicians stuff up our network, we don't have the huge temps we have the opposite but the demand is the same come a cold snap everyone has the heaters on.

Four states are bracing for some of the hottest temperatures of the entire summer, as a potentially record-breaking heatwave sweeps across South Australia, New South Wales, Queensland and Victoria over the next three days.   

12/12/2016

I am in Scotland just now waiting for a flight back to Belfast and just happened to see a blatant advert for the wind industry on the news with an astonishing claim regarding CO2 savins due to wind turbines. It really annoys me the way unsubstantiated claims get air time and also the use of Fear by so called environmentalists with doomsday scenarios all to satisfy a political money grab. One day the truth will come out and they will look back and think what a paranoid believing bunch lived in the 21st century.

29/08/2016

Are going to be watching Vincent Brown's show tonight? He has a discussion on Climate Change. On the panel, Eamon Ryan and An Taisce rep, Cara Augustenberg from Friends of the Earth.

I wont be watching I'm fed up being fed the same old bull from Eamon Ryan and other Government cronies. Well ok I might watch it and take an extra blood pressure pill.

Hopefully there is someone else on that will put a decent argument against wind power alone being the only option to save emissions if this is what we HAVE to do.

When arguing with Eamon it is pointless to put any argument apart from "why are we depending solely on wind power here in Ireland to save the earth as it is proven not to reduce carbon emissions by any noticeable factor even after the billions that have been poured into it?"
He has a blinkered agenda, probably with vested interests if Irish pollies are anything to go by. He relies on the Saving the Planet by one means only, f**k me we are an island with our West coast battered by Atlantic swells with literally hundreds of waterways poring water into the sea and tidal currents that can be forecasted millenniums into the future.
If they want to get serious about emissions why haven't we converted Moneypoint already we are they spending our hard earned tax Euros on building industrial wind farms here and grids to export electricity to countries that will only buy it when its cheaper that producing their own ffs.

26/07/2016

Have you ever noticed how slow Governments are to change legislation if the change doesn't suit them, we all know that our wonderful Irish leadership is glued to the English ETSU-R-97 guidance, yep the 97 denotes 1997 when wind turbines maxed out at 50 meters tall and 500 meters MAY have been a reasonable setback distance. We will never know because every study showing evidence to the contrary is disclaimed or poo pooed.

Anyway another piece of legislation being quoted as the reason we have to have an inter connector to France now, is the The Third Package, which came into force on 3 September 2009, its aim is to further liberalise European energy markets. Three core provisions of the Third Package are:

To ensure that Transmission System Operators (TSOs) are unbundled (or independent) from generation, production and suppliers, therefore removing any conflict of interest;
To develop cooperation between TSOs through the European Network of Transmission System Operators for Electricity (ENTSO-E); and
To create a regulatory framework to support a single, European Electricity Market, through the development of European Network Codes.

Eirgrid.plc is Ireland's TSO, go to their website for the craic http://www.eirgridgroup.com/ well f**k me how independant is this.

And why do we need a single European Electricity Market anyway?

21/02/2016

http://euanmearns.com/green-mythology-and-the-high-price-of-european-electricity/

The price of residential electricity in the EU is correlated with the level of renewable energy installed on a per capita basis. The data shows that more renewables leads to higher electricity bill…

30/01/2016

It will soon be time to vote in a new government here in Ireland, maybe we should remember how corruption and greed led to the global financial crisis before ticking the boxes and voting.
Just to remind everyone, the residents of this country will be repaying debt for generations to come thanks to the greed of bankers in America and here in Ireland and the failure of government to listen to independant advise and step in.
The top five executives of Lehamn Brothers bank made over 1 billion dollars between 2000 and 2007, when their bank went bust they were allowed to keep all the money.
The CEO of Merril Lynch made €90 million 2006 -2007 and his bank went broke Merrill went into crisis, and Bank of America swooped in to buy it for a pitance, did he get the sack? nope he was allowed to leave gracefully with a severence package of 151 million. The board of directors decide on the size of severance packages in America and a couple of other countries, guess what, the board of directors is picked by the CEO a bit like An bord Pleanna being selected by Pat Rabbitte ehh.
Jospeph Cassano was the head of AIG's Financial Products Unit. They are the ones that made about a trillion dollars worth of bets in credit default swaps. They lost. The government had to step in and cover their losses. So far, the United States taxpayers have put in $182 billion to keep AIG afloat. Cassano was given €35 million in bonuses when he was let go and he is now employed as a consultant on €1 million a MONTH.
JP Morgan bank is now much larger than it was prior to the crisis.
So how does this relate to your votes in the next election, please dont vote for corrupt officials, we just saw three exposed on TV and they are still in their jobs still drawing wages and amassing big pensions. The biggest scam at the moment is wind power, read up on the huge subsidies keeping the fans turning, take a note that the people harvesting the subsidies are of the same ilk as the greedy bankers, when the candidates stop you on the street to kiss your baby or whatever ask them their stance on wind power then ask Yourself why they have this stance as it is a technology that does not work.

08/12/2015

Did you watch the RTE documentary last night on Standards in Public Office?

Vincent Brown on his show later in the evening said that RTE should concentrate on large more important exposes, well I would have to disagree. The counsellors outed last night are in a group of people elected to protect our interest, they are required by law to declare their interests and assets and barred from being on boards that would have conflicts of interests.
It is not just one or two dirty politicians we are talking of over 40% that did not declare interests and assets and it's not a complicated form to fill in either.
These corrupt people have a huge say in zoning and planning, the same zoning that is seeing us living in the shadow of huge industrial wind turbines and the countys they claim to represent being ruined by a technology that does not work.
Cash in a bag, third parties paying under the table, promised contracts for businesses owned by the concerned individuals. Made me feel ill. They should go directly to jail and not pass go.

This goes right to the top. I wonder how much say a rabbit on the front bench would get if a local counsellor gets 10 k for his wee influence.