Guest essay by Dr. Tim Ball
If Obama’s policies on energy and environment were truly original they would be worth consideration, but they are not. He dismisses claims that
“The economy will lose millions of jobs and billions in growth.” He said, “Let’s face it, that’s what [critics] always say,” and “every time … the warnings of the cynics have been wrong.”
Wrong! They failed disastrously everywhere and every time they were applied. Figure 1 above shows a poster from Britain, one of several European nations on the path
Obama pursues.
Ironically, Maurice Strong, architect of the false claims of human produced CO2 causing catastrophic global warming/ climate change, provided a classic example.
Obama and other world leaders are basing their policies on the Reports of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). This was the climate science agency created by Maurice Strong through the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) and presented to the world in Rio de Janeiro in 1992. Figure 2 shows a simple flow chart of the structures created to control the political and scientific sectors to achieve a political agenda.
Figure 2
Strong chaired the Rio 92 conference and in the same year was appointed to Ontario Hydro. He became Chair and was given free rein by Bob Rae, socialist Premier of the Province. He set about applying the philosophy and policies enshrined in the UNEP program. These were designed to demonize CO2 as the byproduct of fossil fuel driven industries and nations. It was speculated by Strong in his comments to Elaine Dewar cited in The Cloak of Green (1995). He suggested,
“Isn’t the only hope for the planet that the industrialized civilizations collapse? Isn’t it our responsibility to bring that about?”
Dewar asked why he didn’t enter politics to implement his plan. He essentially said you can’t do anything as a politician, but knew a political vehicle was required. He knew that convincing individual governments was almost impossible, as Kyoto negotiations proved. His experience told him the United Nations (UN) was his vehicle.
Dewar wrote that he liked the UN because:
He could raise his own money from whomever he liked, appoint anyone he wanted, control the agenda.
Dewar concluded:
Strong was using the U.N. as a platform to sell a global environment crisis and the Global Governance Agenda.
Strong had similar powers and objectives as Chairman of Ontario Hydro and became the architect of that Provinces problems. A 1997 article titled “Maurice Strong: The new guy in your future” says,
“Maurice Strong has demonstrated an uncanny ability to manipulate people, institutions, governments, and events to achieve the outcome he desires.” It concludes, “The fox has been given the assignment, and all the tools necessary, to repair the henhouse to his liking.”
This applied to his UN role, but also to his Ontario Hydro role.
Under the guise of claiming Ontario’s debt was a result of expensive nuclear power plants he set about implementing an anti-fossil fuel agenda. One commentator referencing a later scandal involving Strong called “Hydrogate” says,
“Within no time of his arrival, he firmly redirected and re-structured Ontario Hydro. At the time, Ontario Hydro was hell-bent on building many more nuclear reactors, despite dropping demand and rising prices. Maurice Strong grabbed the Corporation by the scruff of the neck, reduced the workforce by one third, stopped the nuclear expansion plans, cut capital expenditures, froze the price of electricity, pushed for sustainable development, made business units more accountable.”
Sounds good, but it was a path to inadequate supply. Key is the phrase he, “pushed for sustainable development”. In Strong’s, keynote speech at the Rio Earth Summit he said:
“Current lifestyles and consumption patterns of the affluent middle class – involving high meat intake, the use of fossil fuels, electrical appliances, home and work-place air-conditioning, and suburban housing – are not sustainable.”
He’d already created mechanisms to eliminate fossil fuels and bring about reduction and destruction of western economies. Ontario was his personal application and they were a disaster.
Despite evidence of the failures, Canadian environmentalist David Suzuki became involved and urged Liberal Premier Dalton McGuinty to continue Strong’s disastrous policies. Suzuki was forced to resign from his own Foundation because his political activities violated his tax situation. As one commentator noted,
“The McGuinty government has a major electrical power problem, one created by its decision to use the power system as a political policy tool. This policy has resulted in the doubling of rates in Ontario to a level higher than in most U.S. states. Ontario’s former industrial advantage has disappeared, while the government has been pretending that nothing is wrong.”
Because of these energy policies Ontario’s economy continued to decline. The real impact of the decline is offset by the great Canadian socialist policy of equalization. So-called “have” provinces with thriving economies pay money through the Federal government to “have not” provinces. It was Ontario’s destiny as equalization covered political failures
If this continues – this is not hyperbole, this is a fact – Ontario will become a ‘have not’ province in confederation. And it will be Premier (Dalton) McGuinty’s legacy that he in two terms took Ontario from being the strongest economic province in the federation to a ‘have not’ province.
Replacing nuclear and fossil fuel energies with alternate energies drives up the costs and creates a multitude of other problems. A US Senate report notes,
“Comparisons of wind, solar, nuclear, natural gas and coal sources of power coming on line by 2015 show that solar power will be 173% more expensive per unit of energy delivered than traditional coal power, 140% more than nuclear power and natural gas and 92% more expensive than wind power. Wind power is 42% more expensive than nuclear and natural gas power.” “Wind and solar’s “capacity factor” or availability to supply power is around 33%, which means 67% of the time wind and solar cannot supply power and must be supplemented by a traditional energy source such as nuclear, natural gas or coal.”
Changes in Ontario illustrate the problems. Wind turbulence restricts the number of turbines to 5 to 8 turbines per 2.6 square kilometers. With average wind speeds of 24 kph it needs 8,500 turbines covering 2590 square kilometers to produce the power of a 1000 MW conventional station. Ontario closed two 1000MW plants in 2011 – the Lambton and the Nanticoke coal fired plants. Besides the land, (5,180 km2) you still need coal-fired plants running at almost 100 percent for back up. Strong’s policies eliminate the back up, so you either have dramatically increased costs, inadequate power or both.
Source: Steve Hunter
In 2008 Obama told the San Francisco Chronicle that the
“notion of no coal . . . is an illusion,” and he favored a cap-and-trade system. “So if somebody wants to build a coal-powered plant, they can,” “It’s just that it will bankrupt them because they’re going to be charged a huge sum for all that greenhouse gas that’s being emitted.”
It’s only valid if science supports the claim that CO2, because of human production, is causing warming or climate change. It doesn’t, so there is no scientific need to replace fossil fuels.
Focus on CO2 and the assumption an increase causes temperature increase are built into the computer models. William Kinninmonth, former head of Australia’s National Climate Centre explains,
“… current climate modeling is essentially to answer one question: how will increased atmospheric concentrations of CO2 (generated from human activity) change earth’s temperature and other climatological statistics?”…. “It is heroic to assume that such a view is sufficient basis on which to predict future ‘climate’.”
Indian Union Environment Minister Jairam Ramesh said
“science is politics in climate change; climate science is politics” and we are being “led by our noses by Western (climate) scientists who have less of a scientific agenda and more of a political agenda.”
He should add that western politicians like Obama are promoting energy policies based on falsified political science and alternative energies that don’t work. Ontario, under the control of the grandmaster Maurice Strong, tried and they’ve already failed. It is unadulterated evidence that pursuing them still is purely political. As always the people will pay the price as they have in many jurisdiction beyond Ontario. An appropriate quote to explain such blind behavior comes from former Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev; “Politicians are the same every all over. They promise to build a bridge even where there is no river.” Figure 1 cartoons the alternative energy bridge to nowhere in the UK.
I once said the Kyoto Protocol was a political solution to a non-existent climate problem. Obama’s energy policy is more of the same. It is more inexcusable because it failed everywhere it was tried, including by Maurice Strong, the father of the deception that global warming and climate change are a man made problem.
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One more industry says bye to Northern Ontario
http://www.northbaynipissing.com/news-story/4543616-one-more-industry-says-bye-to-northern-ontario/
I’m still trying to find the North Bay story about a plant that is facing closure, but I don’t think it is this one. Basically, the owner said that not only is his electricity rate unmanageable, but Ontario sells cheap power to Quebec, New York and Michigan…places that just happen to house his competitors.
Caligula:
“Ontario sells cheap power to Quebec, New York and Michigan…places that just happen to house his competitors”
It’s actually worse than that.
One of the perverse side effects of the excess electricity Ontario now produces (excess due to ever declining industry usage) is that the province actually pays NY, MI and QC to take it so the grid remains balanced.
This was to the tune of $1 Billion in 2013.
So Ontario consumers pay for the most expensive power in North America while simultaneously paying neighbouring grids to take it off our hands.
Mad.
Dissemination is the art of presenting false information to confuse motives and obfuscate actions taken. The purpose is often to hide the truth of the actions of the disseminators .
While serving in the military during the Southeast Asian conflict my assignment was to produce such misdirections as a method of confusion to the enemy. Eventually it was also used as a tool to deceive the American public as well.
This administration is desperately in need of issues that will draw attention away from the total failure of their policies. It is very apparent that dissemination of information is the vehicle being used for this purpose. I am positive that those who are lying to achieve such ends are perfectly aware of the falseness of a carbon crisis, and they have recruited a cadre of useful idiots who for money or fame have been willing to prostitute their profession for money, power.
I make no claim that all AGW believers are corrupt. ( after all they aren’t politicians) but many have walked the walk for so long they can not distinguish reality from fantasy. While this is true in many believers involved in many fields, most of the time it is a minor annoyance , in this case it could be a disaster.
albertalad says:
June 3, 2014 at 10:28 am
“… Moreover, Ontario is have an election as we speak – you guessed it. The same liberal government, led by another free spending liberal this time around, that led them into have not status is leading in the polls. Go figure….”
——————————————————————————————————————–
It is easy to figure. Study Sales 101. People buy on emotion and “what’s in it for me”. Liberals have mastered that approach constantly appealing to the emotions and greed of voters. One would assume that facts and logic would win the election but nope. There are many failed salespersons out there that thought the same, hopelessly presenting facts with logical explanations intending to get a factual and logical positive decision. You don’t sell the steak, you sell the sizzle.
Thanks, Scute.
’cause I was thinking it looked more like a fence with barbed wire.
Ontario’s problems can’t be reduced to Tim Ball’s overly simplistic tale about electricity cost and renewables. Don Drummond, former Chief Economist of TD Bank, headed a commission that produced a report on the challenges facing Ontario and recommended solutions. If anyone is interested in what is actually going on in Ontario, take some time to browse the report from the Drummond Commission:
http://www.fin.gov.on.ca/en/reformcommission/chapters/summary.html
The financial situation is a big, complex problem. Electricity cost is one small part of it. But since the subject has been raised, it is worth noting that subsidies to fossil fuels are also identified as an issue to be addressed:
Canada would be better off with an end to all of these subsidies, whether directed to fossil fuels or renewables, and the adoption of a simple *revenue neutral* carbon tax like the successful one currently in place in British Columbia.
Professor Anne Glover, Cief Scientific Advisor to EU President Barroso, has accused the EU of twisting facts to fit a political agenda. (Whats new?) But she cannot have done her career much good.
There is a report in EurActiv on her talk to the Association of European Chambers of Commerce and Industry.
http://www.euractiv.com/sections/eu-priorities-2020/eu-twisting-facts-fit-political-agenda-chief-scientist-says-302399
Leo Geiger: “Canada would be better off with an end to all of these subsidies, whether directed to fossil fuels or renewables…”
Can you define what you mean by subsidies, especially in relation to fossil-fuels? And can you tell us whether these (fossil-fuel) ‘subsidies’ also apply to ‘renewables’? For example, in the UK, some would claim that the 5% VAT rate (instead of 20% VAT) for energy was a subsidy to fossil-fuel yet, it applies to energy generated from renewables equally. Furthermore, a tax-break for the consumer is really letting him/her keep more of their money, rather than a ‘green subsidy’ which is a way of taking money from the consumer and giving it to wealthy subsidy-farmers.
But I’m sure you can clear that one up for me.
Harry Passfield says:
June 3, 2014 at 12:41 pm
“I’d heard of Strong but didn’t realise . . .”
Harry,
Here is something you might like to read. It is one of the first articles I found after getting a fast (non-dial-up) connection.
It mentions the link between M. Strong and A. Gore, and much more.
http://icecap.us/images/uploads/EDBLICKRANT.pdf
UN Infects Science with Cancer of Global Warming
Edward F. Blick, PhD
Oct. 3, 2008
Not all of us in Ontario are idiots. We have been trying to get rid of the Liberals since they were first elected. The problem is that too many people, nurses and all health care workers, teachers and all education workers, all public service workers, etc. owe their jobs to the Liberals and will not vote them out. This is what happens when half of your population works for the government and they are called the night before the election and told to get out and vote for the Liberals.
As for Harry Passfield and all the other people stuck in Ontario. You can move, sure it takes some doing but it is not impossible. Most of my friends are gone or are doing as we are, 5 months in Ontario and the rest in a warm country. It just took a friend of mine who sold her condo in downtown TO and moved to Mexico to make the rest of us start to look around.
Leo Geiger
You said
‘”Canada would be better off with an end to all of these subsidies, whether directed to fossil fuels or renewables, and the adoption of a simple *revenue neutral* carbon tax like the successful one currently in place in British Columbia.”
A carbon tax to fight a non existing global warming threat makes little sense to me. A tax to deal with major pollution control and spills, global cooling and repair after winter disasters , flood control, etc., might get people to listen .
Carmichael put it there already – I repeat it because you can see in real time what you get:
http://www.sygration.com/gendata/today.html
All the generating machines in Ontario in real time. The cost per kwh is there too so you know when to turn on your otherwise-totally-unviable-alternative-energy-source to make a profit at the expense of Grandma Q Public
Leo Geiger
You said
‘”Canada would be better off with an end to all of these subsidies, whether directed to fossil fuels or renewables, and the adoption of a simple *revenue neutral* carbon tax like the successful one currently in place in British Columbia.”
I will not agree that the BC carbon tax is successful. It is successful in making most BC drivers go across either the US border or the Albera one for gasoline. BC thinks they are successful because gasoline sales have declined. However public buildings such as hospitals and schools are paying big portions of their budgets for the carbon tax, and of course, it hits the poor the hardest. The only group it is successful for is the BC government and the Canadian government as BC citizens have to pay GST on their carbon tax. It is not revenue neutral.
If memory serves me Maurice Strong wanted to set up an off-shore (tax haven) company to buy Costa Rican rain forest to offset pollution in developed countries – and got pretty close to getting his way. This was 20-30 years ago. Clearly a man ahead of his time.
I live in Ontario and my electricity averages about $0.16 – $0.18 per kWh depending on usage, including taxes.
Lou Geiger, If you define the success of the BC carbon tax as billions of dollars dging south of the border and into Alberta; schools and hospitals being forced into paying it and budget short falls, but politicians finding yet another way to syphen off more public money and put it in the hands of their buddies, you are correct. I on the other hand, refer to that as legal theft.
http://business.financialpost.com/2014/05/21/imfs-imagined-34-billion-silly-stats-are-behind-claims-that-canada-subsidizes-oil-industry/
The only true subsidy I can find is accelerated depreciation on equipment. In addition, take a look at the royalties we receive and tell me they aren’t worth th e$1.4 billion in subsidies (which don’t exist), and tell me they aren’t worth it.
BTW, I’m happily going to Costco Bellingham tomorrow to fill up, bring back chicken, cheese and milk and save about $50 – $75 by doing so. Might by some shoes and save even more.
Eve, just read your comment. Happy I could support you.
cheers
We’ve just gone through exactly the same thing in Australia.
And now trying to piece the broken mess left behind by six short years of socialist driven government.
But removing a socialist bent and corrupt government appears to be the “easy”part.
It’s removing the financial “landmines” they leave in their wake before they explode that has the real crippling affect on any incoming government.
As each one goes off the financial hit on government budget stymies their own policy implementation, to fix what the socialist government wrecked.
From 20 billion in the bank 6 short years ago. To a projected 600 billion debt is telling the same story that is being told around the world.
Be warned.
What Australia is experiencing right now is a window into the future of Canada,America, England and any other country that chooses to “experiment with socialism.
It doesn’t work, ask Adolph.
The Godfather of AGW is Canada’s genocidal psychopath: Maurice Strong
Maurice Strong had a fantasy that he hired mercenaries to take world leaders hostage in Copenhagen and, in the absence of a commitment to the 350 ppm carbon cap, kill them all.
Strong hired Paul Jr. to work for him during a vacation from university. “We controlled many companies, controlled political budgets,” Strong said of his time at Power Corporation. “Politicians got to know you and you them.”
Strong hired Martin into Power Corporation’s executive suite. He helped guide Martin towards unimaginable personal wealth – and even predicted Martin’s path to becoming prime minister. But Strong’s influence reaches farther than Canada. Indeed, compared to Strong’s American and European friends, Martin is a small star in the constellation.
Strong sits on boards with the Rockefellers and Mikhail Gorbachev and chairs private meetings of CEOs, including Bill Gates. He hobnobs with the world’s royalty, too – and with dictators and despots. He once did a business deal with arms dealer Adnan Khashoggi, and wound up with a 200,000-acre ranch in Colorado – which his wife, Hanne, runs as a New Age spiritual colony.
He told Maclean’s magazine in 1976 that he was “a socialist in ideology, a capitalist in methodology.” He warns that if we don’t heed his environmentalist warnings, the Earth will collapse into chaos. “Do we really want this? Do we want Marx to be proven right, after all?” Strong asks. He shares the views of the most radical environmentalist street protester, but instead of shouting himself hoarse at a police barricade outside a global conference, he’s the secretary general inside, wielding the gavel.
Strong has always courted power – but not through any shabby election campaign. He was a Liberal candidate in the 1979 federal election, but pulled out a month before the vote.
How could a mere MP wield the kind of international control he had tasted in Stockholm? Journalist Elaine Dewar, who interviewed Strong, described why he loved the UN: “He could raise his own money from whomever he liked, appoint anyone he wanted, control the agenda,” wrote Dewar. “He told me he had more unfettered power than a cabinet minister in Ottawa. He was right: He didn’t have to run for re-election, yet he could profoundly affect lives.”
Strong prefers power extracted from democracies, and kept from unenlightened voters. Most power-crazed men would stop at calling for a one world Earth Charter to replace the U.S. Constitution, or the UN Charter. But in an interview with his own Earth Charter Commission, Strong said “the real goal of the Earth Charter is it will in fact become like the Ten Commandments. It will become a symbol of the aspirations and commitments of people everywhere.” Sounds like Maurice was hanging out at his spirit ranch without his sunhat on.
There has been no one like Maurice Strong before, except perhaps in fiction – Ernst Blofeld comes to mind, 007’s round-faced nemesis in You Only Live Twice. But Blofeld sought to attack the world order, to challenge it from some remote hideaway – not to co-opt it, and transform it from the inside as Strong does.
Blofeld would threaten a meeting of the UN; Strong would chair the meeting and script its agenda. Strangely, Strong once indulged his inner Blofeld, musing to a stunned reporter about a violent plot to take over the world through one of his many super-organizations.
In 1990, Strong told a reporter a fantasy scenario for the World Economic Forum meeting in Davos, Switzerland – where 1,000 diplomats, CEOs and politicians gather “to address global issues.”
Strong, naturally, is on the board of the World Economic Forum. “What if a small group of these world leaders were to conclude the principal risk to the earth comes from the actions of the rich countries?..In order to save the planet, the group decides: Isn’t the only hope for the planet that the industrialized civilizations collapse? Isn’t it our responsibility to bring this about?”
That’s Strong talking, but those are Blofeld’s words coming out. But this is no fictitious Bond movie villain speaking – it is the man who chaired the Rio Earth Summit and who was Kofi Annan’s senior adviser.
“This group of world leaders forms a secret society to bring about an economic collapse,” continued Strong, warming to his fantasy. “It’s February. They’re all at Davos. These aren’t terrorists. They’re world leaders. They have positioned themselves in the world’s commodities and stock markets. They’ve engineered, using their access to stock markets and computers and gold supplies, a panic. Then, they prevent the world’s stock markets from closing. They jam the gears. They hire mercenaries who hold the leaders at Davos as hostage. The markets can’t close… [the blueprint for 9/11, dammit; why did no-one listen?]”
Strong catches himself. “I probably shouldn’t be saying things like this.” (You’re dead right, mate).
For a wonderfully lucid history of the political and ideological movements that Maurice Strong , Barbara Ward and others harnessed in the 1970s and1980s , may I recommend Rupert Darwall’s ” The Age of Warming: A History”.
As Charles Moore said in reviewing the book in April last, the origins of the global warming theory lie in a cocktail of ideas including anti-industrial nature worship, post-colonial guilt, a post -Enlightenment belief in scientists as a new priesthood of truth, a hatred of population growth, a revulsion against the spread of wealth and a belief in world government.
Above all, there is a dislike of the human race. The Club of Rome’s ” Mankind at the Turning point” said,” The world has cancer and the cancer is man.”
The final push of Strong and his ilk was to be Copenhagen in 2009. Gordon Brown warned of “50 days to avoid catastrophe”. Catastrophe for the green movement arrived nevertheless.
Now the war on carbon lumbers on with the political and bureaucratic elites in thrall to warmism.
We face the modern equivalent of the Thirty Years war.
http://fullcomment.nationalpost.com/2013/01/24/chris-selley-on-the-mcguinty-years-how-does-a-premier-like-this-stay-in-office/
Leo Geiger says:
June 3, 2014 at 1:25 pm
What is the subsidy per KWh? That is the critical metric – not the gross amount. Although the gross amount is important.
We get the same in the US – billions in subsidies for extracted fuels. Somewhat fewer billions for “green energy”. It is when you look at the costs per KWh that you see how out of kilter “green” energy is.
Harry Passfield says: Can you define what you mean by subsidies, especially in relation to fossil-fuels?
Not what I mean, what the Drummond Commission meant. Their number was based on Natural Resources Canada program spending (for example, federal money for carbon capture and storage programs) and tax breaks (such as federal tax credits for machinery purchased in the oil and gas sector). Since the Drummond report, some progress has been made such as ending support for oil and gas in the Atlantic investment tax credit. You can read about that on one of the “Action Plan” web sites the government has spent tens of millions of tax dollars advertising:
http://actionplan.gc.ca/en/initiative/phasing-out-atlantic-investment-tax-credit-oil-gas
Ontario’s election is June 12th. Ontario voters are highly likely to re-elect the totally disgraced liberal party. They must be putting pschotropic drugs into the drinking water of a brain-numbed electorate to get away with what they have done to this rich, splendid place. A very uninspiring Hudak, leader of the Conservative party, is essentially one of the Liberals more potent weapons.
herkimer says: A carbon tax to fight a non existing global warming threat makes little sense to me. A tax to deal with major pollution control and spills, global cooling and repair after winter disasters , flood control, etc., might get people to listen.
Your comment suggests some misunderstanding of what a revenue neutral carbon tax is. There is no extra money to spend on anything. All the revenue that comes in from the carbon tax is offset by other tax cuts such as income tax cuts. In British Columbia, by law they have to keep adjusting income tax rates to offset the carbon tax revenue.
In any case, tax payer money shouldn’t be spent on major pollution controls and spills. That should be the responsibility of the polluter or the spiller. Otherwise it ends up being another taxpayer subsidy. If a resource company makes an environmental mess, the resource company needs to clean it up. Unfortunately, time and time again, the scenario has played out where resources are extracted, “profits” flow to the resource company, and then they disappear leaving taxpayers to pay for the cleanup.
People who dislike subsidies for renewable energy should be just as upset about these types of hidden, deferred subsidies.
A link to a graph of electricity prices in Ontario Canada
http://www.ontario-hydro.com/index.php?page=historical_rpp_rates
They doubled between 2003 and 2013 and will increase even further into the future. There is a provincial election going on right now and while electricity rates are not being talked about the Liberals look like they might lose to the Conservatives based on wasteful policies and blunders.