Who Said That Manmade Global Warming is a Settled Science? The Trouble With Windmills;

National Review writes: One of the most stridently debated public policy controversies of the past 15 years. But it is dying a quiet death. In a little reported move, the Chicago Climate Exchange (CCX) announced on Oct. 21 that it will be ending carbon trading – the only purpose for which it was founded – this year.
Although the trading in carbon emissions credits was voluntary, the CCX was intended to be the hub of the mandatory carbon trading established by a cap-and-trade law, like the Waxman-Markey scheme passed by the House in June 2009.
At its founding in November 2000, it was estimated that the size of CCX’s carbon trading market could reach $500 billion. That estimate ballooned over the years to $10 trillion.
The CCX was the brainchild of Northwestern University business professor Richard Sandor, who used $1.1 million in grants from the Chicago-based left-wing Joyce Foundation to launch the CCX. For his efforts, Time named Sandor as one of its Heroes of the Planet in 2002 and one of its Heroes of the Environment in 2007.
The CCX seemed to have a lock on success. Not only was a young Barack Obama a board member of the Joyce Foundation that funded the fledgling CCX, but over the years it attracted such big name climate investors as Goldman Sachs and Al Gore’s Generation Investment Management.
But a funny thing happened on the way to the CCX’s highly anticipated looting of taxpayers and consumers – cap-and-trade imploded following its high water mark of the House passage of the Waxman-Markey bill. With ongoing economic recession, Climategate, and the tea party movement, what once seemed like a certainty became anything but.
CCX’s panicked original investors bailed out this spring, unloading the dog and its across-the-pond cousin, the European Climate Exchange (ECX), for $600 million to the New York Stock Exchange-traded Intercontinental Exchange (ICE) – an electronic futures and derivatives platform based in Atlanta and London. (Luckier than the CCX, the ECX continues to exist thanks to the mandatory carbon caps of the Kyoto Protocol.)  http://www.nationalreview.com/planet-gore/252703/rip-al-gores-chicago-climate-exchange-has-died-greg-pollowitz
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The UK Independent writes: Hundreds of local revolts against wind farms have jeopardised the plan to use them to generate more than a quarter of Britain's electricity, figures seen by The Independent reveal.

New wind farms are needed to have any chance of creating enough renewable energy to reduce reliance on coal and gas power production. But planning approvals for them in England are at an all-time low, with only one in three applications getting the go-ahead from councils in the face of angry and organised opposition from people living nearby.

More than 230 separate local campaign groups against wind farms are operating across the UK, from Scotland and Kent to Norfolk, Yorkshire and Cornwall. These groups are scoring striking successes in defeating planned wind farms – even when faced with the weight of official recommendations. http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/green-living/power-failure-uks-wind-farm-plans-in-disarray-2118493.html

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http://www.savewesternny.org/docs/pierpont_testimony.html
I would like to stress that these are not “farms.” One doesn’t “farm” wind any more than one “farms” water in a hydroelectric dam or “farms” neutrons in an atomic plant. These are large, industrial installations. They make large-scale, industrial noise. “Jet engines” is the most common description I hear in surveying people—a jet engine that doesn’t go away and which you can’t get used to.
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This page gives recent evidence to support the concern that putting wind turbines only 1000 feet away from homes and schools (as provided in the Adams County Wind Ordinance) would be reckless with the health of Adams County residents.  Even though some people are able to tolerate living that close, there is ongoing scientific investigation into the reasons why at least 25% to 50% of people living within a half mile of a turbine will suffer from a variety of physical and psychological symptoms. 
It is of particular concern that the severity of symptoms has led a small but growing number of people to abandon their homes (and be unable to sell them), not only in the United States but also in other countries.  Far from "just being in their head," this issue has already led the World Health Organization and other respected scientific groups around the world to seek longer setbacks ranging from one-half mile (2640 feet) to one mile and a half (7920 feet) from homes, schools, and businesses. http://www.adamscountywind.com/Revised%20Site/Windmills/Health%20Effects/Health%20Effects.htm
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University of New Hampshire and outside researchers are creating a computer model to help organic dairy farmers cut greenhouse gas emissions such as methane, because Beano probably isn't an option.
Nitrogen- and carbon-based greenhouse gases are produced via a complicated system at dairy farms that is affected by everything from the weather to the soil to the feed to cow burps, among other things.
"Cows emit most of their methane through belching, only a small fraction from flatulence," said the project's principal investigator, Ruth Varner of UNH's Institute for the Study of Earth, Oceans and Space.
UNH has been awarded a $700,000 U.S. Department of Agriculture grant to create a computer model that measures the amount of greenhouse gases an organic dairy farm produces and thus provide ways to cut those emissions.  http://www.unionleader.com/article.aspx?headline=UNH+scientists+to+study+cow+burps+.+.+.+and+more&articleId=c43c3680-3551-47ed-be8a-0b5b87880d6e

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Breitbart reports: A top UN panel on Friday called for increased taxes on carbon emissions and international transport to raise 100 billion dollars a year to combat climate change. The group led by the prime ministers of Norway and Ethiopia also said there could be a tax on international financial transactions.  http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=CNG.65d35f849629004f3f01ff977b2a3e33.741&show_article=1 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ 

American Thinker opines: Since 2007 the price of food around the world has just about doubled. Bad harvests, inflation, or George Bush didn't cause this price increase. According to a secret report from the World Bank, reported in the UK's Guardian, 75% of the increase in price has one source:  "Biofuels." This contrasts with US claims of only a 3% biofuels-caused increase. The World Bank also says that rising food prices have pushed 100 million people worldwide below the poverty line. Riots have been sparked from Bangladesh to Egypt.

Where is the outrage? Where are the MSNBC stories on food riots? Where is Sean Penn? [The law of unintended consequences is in play.  So if 100 million more people are now in poverty, just how do they buy the food they need to survive?]  http://www.americanthinker.com/2010/11/the_biofuels_scam.html
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The DesMoines Register writes: A remark by President Obama at his postelection news conference Wednesday should send Iowa’s wind energy advocates into full alert.
When asked about environmental issues, the President suddenly started talking up natural gas, saying there are “terrific natural gas resources” in the United States.
He’s right about that, with big new shale gas discoveries coming on line not only from traditional fossil-fuel producing regions in Texas, Louisiana and Colorado, but also in Ohio, Pennsylvania and New York.
A big national swing to natural gas would represent a Plan  B for Obama and politically-savvy environmentalists now that the Cap and Trade bill most likely has been blown away for good with the results of the election last Tuesday. http://blogs.desmoinesregister.com/dmr/index.php/2010/11/07/obama-jumps-on-natural-gas-bandwagon/
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Pajamas Media writes: Kansas is ranked second in the nation behind Montana for wind energy potential, a fact which should have environmentalists jumping for joy. Instead, they’re trying to block the construction of transmission lines to wind farms in south central Kansas and north central Oklahoma.
Why? Well it all has to do with the lesser prairie chicken. According to a story by the Hutchinson News in February of this year, ranchers and wildlife officials in the area are teaming up with groups like the Sierra Club to block the construction of the lines, which would apparently run through prime breeding territory for the bird. Studies by Kansas State University show the birds will not nest within 400 yards of a power line, and the counties through which the lines would run are where the largest concentrations of the birds remain. Indeed, Kansas is the last state in the nation with a hunting season for lesser prairie Chicken.
The problem developers ITC Great Plains (a Kansas subsidiary of a Michigan company) and Prairie Wind Transmission (a joint venture between Westar Energy and Electric Transmission America) are facing: the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is saying if more habitat is lost — and 60 percent of it has been lost in western Kansas alone — they’ll have to list the bird as “threatened.” In that case, the developers may find themselves with wind farms to nowhere. [It needs to be reiterated here that windmills are known to lead to bird kills, human illnesses, and stress caused by the noise.  There is no perfect solution, and all alternatives to oil and gas have their major problems.]  http://pajamasmedia.com/blog/environmentalists-blocking-wind-farms-and-solar-and-geothermal/
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