Tag Archives: CFACT

Something That Needs To Be Looked Into

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I don’t usually use articles from The Guardian, but even a blind squirrel finds an acorn occasionally. On November 8th, The Guardian posted an article about a French couple who won a lawsuit claiming health issues caused by a nearby wind farm. This is not the first time that wind farms have been cited for creating various health problems (article here).

The article at The Guardian reports:

A French court has recognised “turbine syndrome” after a couple complained their health was damaged by living near a windfarm.

In what is believed to be the first judgment of its kind in France, Belgians Christel and Luc Fockaert were awarded more than €100,000 in compensation by the judge in Toulouse.

The couple claimed they experienced a range of health problems including headaches, insomnia, heart irregularities, depression, dizziness, tinnitus and nausea for more than two years, insisting these were caused by six wind turbines set up 700 metres from their home at Fontrieu in the Tarn, southern France.

The turbines had been installed in 2008. However, it was reported that the couple’s health problems started five years later. The Fockaerts believed this was because woodland between their property and the nearest turbine was cut down.

They singled out the noise, which they said was “comparable to a washing machine continually turning”, and the “white flashing lights” on the turbines, as particularly detrimental to their health.

“We didn’t understand straight away, but little by little we realised the problem came from the turbines,” Christel Fockaert said. “The turbines flash every two seconds … we had to have outside lights to counter the effect of the flashes.”

The couple moved away from the area in 2015 and said their health problems disappeared shortly afterwards.

Doctors failed to find any health problem, but a court expert said turbine syndrome had been previously identified by scientific research.

There are also other problems with wind turbines. They don’t biodegrade and are so large that it only takes a few of them to fill up a landfill. There is also the matter of bird kills. In October 2020, a website called CFACT posted the following:

Wildlife conservationists hate Wind turbines for their infamous role as bird killer, a fact that is very rarely mentioned in the news media.

Pro-renewable lobbies argue that there are many causes for bird mortality and that the mortality contribution from Wind Turbines is quite insignificant. However, people who do actual ground work in protecting these birds–biologists, bird conservationists, wildlife ecologists, and non-profit organizations–disagree with this argument.

According to experts, Wind turbines pose a significant risk to birds, especially to large raptors, birds of prey, and other migratory soaring birds. Even in a very high quality habitat, Wind turbines cause disproportionate increases in collision mortality. Besides direct injury and deaths, Wind farm turbines also cause functional habitat loss for migratory soaring birds, leading to significant damage to flocks.

In the U.S., the government is well aware of the Wind turbine potential to kill birds in large numbers. So much so that Wind operators have been allotted bird-kill quotas which indicate the number of birds that the wind operator is allowed to kill in a year.

It is a fact that is so well established, that researchers no longer ponder if Wind turbines kill or not. They have moved on to addressing how to minimize these deaths and finding solutions for more efficient ways to calculate the collision mortality rates. Countries like India are even planning to introduce guidelines to protect birds from wind mills.

A 2019 study estimated that wind turbines affect the life and habitat of around 150,000 birds in the U.S. annually. But the numbers are only going to get higher, as more wind turbines will be installed in the U.S. (Installed wind energy capacity in the United States doubled from 2012 to 2020). The American Bird Conservancy predicts that if 20 percent of the nation’s electricity comes through wind power it will potentially kill at least one million birds per year by 2030.

I think we need to do more research before we decide that wind farms are the answer to our energy needs.

A Waste Of Time And Money Sponsored By The United Nations

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Yesterday the Washington Examiner reported on some of the plans of the United Nations Climate Change Conference. The group is currently meeting in Durban, South Africa.

The article reports: 

Negotiators at the conference are considering “a new tax on every foreign currency transaction in the world,” according to the Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow (CFACT). “Every time you travel abroad, you’ll have to pay a climate tax,” explains CFACT, the group that released the “Climategate” emails. “More importantly, every time we import goods, every time we export our fine products (think jobs) we will do so with a climate tax skimming off the top.”

The article states that President Obama is open to the idea, which will place most of the burden on Americans–Europeans will not have to pay the tax within the Eurozone and thus will avoid most of the expense.

The article concludes: 

CFACT suggests that Obama is open to implementing this tax and similar policies in the absence of a full climate treaty, which would require congressional approval.  “We have learned that while many have discounted this conference, knowing that a full climate treaty is difficult to achieve especially with a U.S. Senate that will not vote to ratify,” CFACT says. “Obama and his fellow climate travelers are working around the Senate and planning to stick America with the bill.”

Some perspective on this can be found at wattsupwiththat.com, where Anthony Watts posted a commentary by Christopher Monckton of Brenchley. Lord Monckton concludes his article by stating:

As President Vaclav Klaus of the Czech Republic pointed out at a recent climate conference in Cambridge, if we leave less wealth to our successors because we have wasted trillions on the non-problem of global warming, we harm future generations by denying them the full inheritance they would otherwise have received.

But don’t expect any of the delegates here to get the point. They are making far too much money out of the climate scam –at taxpayers’ expense – to want to do anything other than recite that The Science Is Settled. As the West goes bust, drowned under the sheer cost of the ever-expanding State, the UN, the IPCC, the UNFCCC, the UNEP and the WMO are luxuries we can no longer afford and will no longer pay for. Time to shut them all down and make their self-serving, rent-seeking bureaucrats go out into the real world and do a proper job.

This is one more reason for America to get out of the United Nations. If this is a conference of United Nations delegates, how much of a carbon footprint did they leave by meeting in Durban instead of closer to the United Nations headquarters in New York City?

 

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