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Friday, August 02, 2013

Windmills Thousands of Times More Dangerous Than Nuclear

   Delingpole recently covered the issue of the low frequency sound which windmills create:

"the industry has known for at least 25 years about the potentially damaging impact on human health of the impulsive infrasound (inaudible intermittent noise) produced by wind turbines. Yet instead of dealing with the problem it has, on the most generous interpretation, swept the issue under the carpet – or worse, been involved in a concerted cover-up operation.

A research paper prepared in November 1987 for the US Department of Energy demonstrated that the "annoyance" caused by wind turbine noise to nearby residents is "real not imaginary." It further showed that, far from becoming inured to the disturbance people become increasingly sensitive to it over time.

This contradicts claims frequently made by wind industry spokesmen that there is no evidence for so-called Wind Turbine Syndrome (the various health issues ranging from insomnia and anxiety to palpitations and nausea reported by residents living within a mile or more of wind turbines).

....the 1987 report, based on earlier research by NASA and several universities, tells a .
It found that the disturbance is often worse when indoors than when outside (a sensation which will be familiar to anyone who has heard a helicopter hovering above their house)....

Last month the Department of Energy and Climate Change  (DECC) published a report by the Institute of Acoustics examining whether ETSU-R-97 was still adequate to the task. Remarkably, instead of stiffening regulations, it made them more lax, not only continuing to ignore the Low Frequency Noise and infrasound issue, but actually giving wind farms leeway to make more noise at night and to be built even closer to dwellings.....

“We’re often hearing these weird and wacky reports on the effects of wind. It seems anyone can stand up and say anything, which we find somewhat worrying because it gives a false impression. We don’t accept the suggestion that there are any health impacts caused by wind turbine noise, though we welcome any new research into the issue," a spokesman for Renewable UK told me.

However this is contradicted by the author of the original reports Neil Kelley. Kelley has told Graham Lloyd – the environment editor from The Australian who (uncharacteristically for an environment editor puts truth before green ideology) broke the story – that research has shown that it is still possible for modern wind turbines to create "community annoyance."....

US acoustics expert, Rick James – who thinks it somewhat unlikely that the wind industry is unaware of the problem:
 The “Kelly paper” is just one of many studies and reports published in the period from 1980 to 1990 by acousticians and other researchers working under grants from the US Dept. of Energy (DOE), NASA, and other agencies and foundations. All of these papers are still available on web sites open to the public.... few acousticians in that period would have discounted the premise that for some people these types of sounds posed serious issues.
Can anyone imagine a potential scandal of this magnitude in the fossil fuel industry going uninvestigated by the green lobby – and hitting the front pages of all the newspapers?

I can't."
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    He is clearly right on this indeed more than right as a comparison with the nuclear radiation "no lower threshold" shows.

   This is from one of these papers mentioned:
The low frequency sensitivity syndrome includes: feelings or irritation/unease/stress/undue fatigue; headache; nausea; vomiting; heart palpitations; disorientation; swooning/prostration.

     If, in examination of a small group you find real people suffering from heart palpitations and swooning you are talking about something which over time and a large population is undoubtedly going to result in death on a significant scale. Certainly a scale thousands of time worse than passive smoking, which was "discovered" only by a statistical variability in a population of many millions which was well within the limits of statistical error.

      Almost all the government funded scare stories we see (salt/weight/passive smoking/mobile phones/watching TV/margarine/butter/salmon/GM etc etc) are of that nature (or for mobile phones and GM less than that in that there is no claim of statistical evidence they are harmful, or as our state broadcaster says "the jury is out" as to whether they are harmful). Windmill low frequency noise is clearly a genuine proven threat to health and killer - these others are at best, speculative.

     This goes further for another scare I have discussed before. The linear no threshold (LNT) theory that nuclear radiation, no matter how low the level, even when it is under 2% of natural background radiation is dangerous. There is no evidence for LNT whatsoever - even supporters of the theory (technical actually a hypothesis at best) or scare story acknowledge this. Indeed there is a large amount of data proving the opposite theory, known as hormesis, that such radiation is beneficial to health.

      With the disparity in evidence we can say with certainty that windmills are, at the very least, thousands of times more dangerous to outsiders than nuclear plants. For those working on them the fact that Britain has had 4 industrial deaths from windmills in 5 years whereas the entire world has seen 2 nuclear deaths (Japan but not Fukushima) in 20 years. Nuclear provides about 15% of world electricity and windmills under 1%.

      Which in turn means that any honest broadcaster or newspaper must have spent thousands of times more promoting scare stories about windmills than nuclear plants.

     Or any which is 1/1,000th part (0.1%) honest must have spent an equal amount on each.

    Anybody able to name any MSM broadcaster or journalist that is not at least 99.99% corrupt?

 

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Thursday, August 01, 2013

Solar Flare Misses Earth - This Time

On Jerry Pournelle's:
Solar Flare Narrowly Misses Earth…
http://washingtonexaminer.com/massive-solar-flare-narrowly-misses-earth-emp-disaster-barely-avoided/article/2533727
"There had been a near miss about two weeks ago, a Carrington-class coronal mass ejection crossed the orbit of the Earth and basically just missed us," said Peter Vincent Pry, who served on the Congressional EMP Threat Commission from 2001-2008. He was referring to the 1859 EMP named after astronomer Richard Carrington that melted telegraph lines in Europe and North America."
Not to worry, though. I am certain all the. "climate change" models have thus factored into their data bases.
Charles Brumbelow
I have not done a systematic study, but I believe that northern lights were seen in Alexandria about every 300 years since classical times.  That probably indicates a Carrington class solar event. In 1859 the only long insulated wires in the world were telegraph lines.  So far as I can tell, during the 1859 event there were electrical events in every telegraph station, and many of them caught fire. We have a lot more long electrical lines now, and of course the effect on the electrical power grid cannot accurately be predicted. Some would make it the end of civilization.  Something of this sort is the premise of Lloyd Tackitt’s A Distant Eden and its sequels, which presents a grim picture of post disaster life.
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        I have written about the Carrington Event before as one of the serious threats to civilisation.

        It strikes me that, since it is so directionally focused when it coincides with the presence of out particular planet is virtually random. That we last had a major one in 1859 does not make it more or less likely now (unlike say Vesuvius where the pressure builds up and the fact they haven't had once since 1945 suggests the next one will be spectacular). On the other hand if our solar observation is now good enough that we can see and measure coronal mass ejections we must have a large statistical population. Dividing the total area where such ejections, at different levels of intensity reach the height of Earth orbit by the areas actually hit each year at each level of intensity gives the odds for any one year. It will vary depending on the sunspot season, making it more complicated but in principle this can be done.

       It also means we can tell the odds of something more serious than Carrington and how much more. Before electricity we have no way of telling more accurate that the northern lights of old Alexandria records which say little about the possible maximum strength.
 

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Wednesday, July 31, 2013

Getting Behind the Curtain of the "Anti-Fascist" Movement

   My latest article is up on ThinkScotland. It is about our attendance at a meeting of an SWP influenced "anti-fascist" organisation trying to drum up an anti-UKIP campaign. They were forced not only to acknowledge UKIP actively isn't fascist or racist but that the Radical Independence mobbing of Nigel Farage (in which the SWP were clearly implicated) was.

    The full article is on there with links referred to. As are the first 10 of the UKIP policies I mentioned which are, by a traditional definition of "left" & "right" too far "left" for the Labour party. The full 20 were blogged on Monday.

   Please put any comments there. This is excerpted:

Lord Monckton was less confrontational than I. He made it absolutely clear that our party is absolutely opposed to racism and actually asked HNH to find evidence since he would personally ensure that nobody involved in racism would remain. This placated everybody but ELE (extreme leftist element - one guy) number 1 who made the, as I see it paradoxical argument, that making that offer must be an admission that it was happening. Even more paradoxical as it had already been acknowledged that there were two Labour councillors formerly in the BNP, and Labour clearly weren't being so helpful.

But with that exception everybody now accepted that UKIP wasn't racist.......

Then as a final point I mentioned that main real act of fascism we have seen in Scotland was the attack on Nigel Farage recently and I hoped they would campaign against such behaviour by Radical Independence. They accepted this with a perhaps slightly grudging "that goes without saying". Since Radical Independence appears to be an Trotskyist front that is a significant statement and suggests to me that that bit of intimidation did its supporters no good. Let us hope that Salmond, who so disgracefully defended the perpatrators will follow their example.

Chris actually asked if UKIP could become associate members of HNH which produced a somewhat bewildered "I'll have to put it to the committee".

All in all a remarkable experience. I have been at the sharp end of an SWP organised mob but when you get to a meeting, where they are trying to recruit, reason remains powerful.
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   Serendipitously there is an another article on ThinkScotland, a bit of real journalism, today exposing "Labour for Independence" as an SNP front with barely anybody in it from Labour.

   You have to at least give the SNP points for effort. Compare the No campaign who have actively refused the support of UKIP a genuine movement against separation.

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Tuesday, July 30, 2013

Detroit - A Glorious Experimental Opportunity


   This was by Patrick Barron is on the Mises libertarian site and seems to me to be something worth trying in bankrupt Detroit. What Detroit has going for it is that there is no real downside it doesn't work. Indeed from my answer posted below you will see that I think it would work faster and perhaps better than the author does: 

Detroit as a test case for economic freedom

The decades’ growing tragedy of a now bankrupt Detroit provides a unique opportunity to test our fundamental principles. What if Detroit became a free city in which government provided for public safety, honest courts, protection of property rights, and little else? Might not unabated free enterprise take hold as it always has in America?


Detroit is bankrupt, and its problems appear to be unsolvable. Its population peaked in 1950 at 1,850,000 only to fall to 706,000 in 2011, surely representative of people voting with their feet. As British politician Daniel Hannan has written, the Detroit disease may be well advanced in the rest of American cities and perhaps in all of America as well. Before the disease can kill the rest of America we have the opportunity to give free market reforms a chance in a fairly controlled setting — the bankrupt and dysfunctional city of Detroit.

All that Detroit really needs is economic freedom and secure property rights. Give Detroit its freedom from all manner of government, including the federal government. Declare Detroit a free city. (You can rest assured, Detroit, that America will come to your rescue if those bloodthirsty Canadians attack!) In other words, no one would pay any federal taxes whatsoever or be subject to any federal regulations whatsoever. Wouldn’t it be nice not to pay federal taxes, not even Social Security and Medicare taxes? Do the same with Michigan taxes. No taxes BUT also no federal or state aid either.
A Free Detroit would have absolutely no labor and workplace regulations, including minimum wages, mandatory insurance, equal opportunity rules, occupational safety rules, etc. People would be allowed to work together cooperatively for whatever terms their marginal productivity of labor will secure.

End all red tape that thwarts business startups and hobbles its expansion, such as licensing, public health regulations and inspections, zoning restrictions, etc. Do not be concerned that people may be employed in low wage, dangerous jobs against their will. The reality is that business owners must recruit workers and not dragoon them and chain them to their workplaces. Nor are business owners interested in harming either their workers or their customers. If they do, normal civil and commercial law will suffice.

Privatize all government services, such as garbage pickup, water and sewage services, and allow for unbridled competition in these and other areas, even fire protection


My comment:

   "This is essentially a less extreme version of what happened with Hong Kong. Less extreme because HK started as one of the poorest places in the world, far worse than Detroit; that in 1948 their troubles were made worse by 2 million refugees without property, fleeing Mao; that Detroit's trading hinterland would be the USA & Canada; and that I assume anybody who wanted to leave Detroit (ie anybody simply unable to survive without welfare) would do so.

That latter might make the rebuilding, through the establishment of new, probably gated, communities of tax exiles rather fast.

If it included no external trade restrictions, if only by water, I can see it as a good place to establish a factory for mass producing nuclear plants.

Thanks to the benevolent non-rule of people like the Scot, Sir John Cowperthwaite, Hong Kong is now the wealthiest, non-oil, community in the world and the example to China (though not unfortunately to its former colonial master."                                                                                                                                                        

    I am thinking that it would quickly mean the suburbs spreading back into the centre in the form of a gated community of people not wanting to pay Michigan taxes.

   There is nowhere in Britain remotely as bad as Detroit. Nonetheless we have had a very successful Enterprize Zone in London Docklands, now possibly the most moneyed square mile in the world and if that is not justification for cutting a lot of regulation and some taxes in chosen depressed areas I don't know what would be.

   And I have previously suggested such entreprize zones on Scotland's more remote places or islands.
   

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Monday, July 29, 2013

20 "Lefist" Policies From UKIP

     This is not to say that UKIP is a "leftist" party it is to say that even the original definition of "left" and "right" in politics means little; that over the years the definition of which is which has changed, sometimes more than once and that nowadays most of the most important political questions do not relate to either. The term originally derived from the fact that the door into the first French assembly in the 1790s was on the left of the chamber. All the nobs, great and good, aristos and politically connected entered first and therefore found themselves seated on the right as the last to enter, the most common, were left nearest the door.

     Today the best that can be said of the definition is that it is meaningless. The medium is that it allows those who don't want to put time into politics can get pre-digested opinions simply by choosing a place on the line, even though this often means they end up with opinions on unrelated issues that make no sense. The worst is that it helps those in power distort, divide and rule.

1 - Not being ruled by an unelected elite in Brussels - or is Tony Benn a rightist? When Neil Kinnock took over the Labour party they were committed to leaving the EU without even a referendum. Since then his wife, himself and now his son have each been making about £200 K a year out of the EU and coincidentally Labour support staying in without even a referendum.

2 - Opposing unlimited immigration of unskilled workers which pushes down wage rates for the poorest - also a world class welfare system is obviously incompatible with allowing unlimited immigration from countries with average incomes of £350 a year. - in early 20thC America mass immigration was largely opposed by the trade unions, who feared the competition and supported by business owners who wanted cheap workers. Now Swedish trade unionists, following the race riots there largely unreported by our media, have launched a nationalist campaign, urging the government to impose restrictions on immigration in certain economic areas. The Swedish Trade Union Confederation (LO) complained that more than two thirds of work permits issued to people from non-Nordic countries were related to economic areas where there was already high domestic labour competition

3 - Popular right of referendums.

4 - Popular right to an EU referendum - rather like the Labour one in 1974.

5 - Being progressive as in actually supporting progress and not wanting to return to the middle ages - OK UKIP is not quite as enthusiastic for technological progress as Trotsky who said "technology, which takes nothing ‘on faith’, is actually able to cut down mountains and move them" & "that in the future this will be done on an immeasurably larger scale" but clearly Trotsky would be far closer to UKIP than to today's "environmentally aware Trotskyites with their faith based global warming scare.

6 - Against rich people passing a law to increase the price of only the sort of drink poor people buy.

7 - Opposed to fuel poverty - the other parties are all creating ever more expensive electricity through demanding we subsidise technologically backward windmills. Particularly in Scotland where Holyrood voted unanimously for the world's most expensive Climate Change Act. This is why every single honest MSP has publicly admitted supporting more fuel poverty - but only every single honest one.

8 - UKIP is opposed to poverty generally ending it in the only way it can be done. Ending recession and growing fast which can only be done with cheap energy.

9 - UKIP has been against all the illegal wars, hospital bombings, ethnic cleansing, genocide, sexual enslavement of children and dissection of living people the LabConDems did in Yugoslavia, Iraq and Libya.

10 - Opposing corruption, from the EU where, for over 10 years no accountants have been willing to certify their accounts to the Forth bridge where £2 bn is going walkabout

11 - Opposed to a state enforced licence fee to pay for the BBC a corrupt and dishonest state propaganda organisation masquerading as news.

12 - "the practical purpose of politics is to keep the populace scared and eager to be led by frightening them with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary" - as Mencken said so UKIP aren't practical politicians but then neither can any idealists be, on left or right.

13 - Opposed to unearned subsidies for landowners with windmills.

14 - Human liberty and equality of opportunity - this is the equality the French revolutionaries supported. Equality of outcome is a quite different thing, ultimately requiring massive state bureaucracy and thus incompatible with liberty.

15 - An end to EU food tariffs which add 20% to our food bills and prevent 3rd world countries developing - the average cow in Europe gets £400 a year subsidy which is more than the average Senegalese lives on. What sort of "leftist" wants higher food prices - no before the Greens became "leftist".

16 - Proportional representation.

17 - Equality under the law irrespective of race. So called "positive discrimination" ie discrimination against white people, is still discrimination and therefore anathema to anybody of the real left.
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18 - Politics being open to all rather than just those who did PPE (the bluffer's degree) at Oxbridge and went either straight into politics (or sometimes via government regulated media) without having to meet any of the common people, let alone working with them.

19 - UKIP are opposed to giving the anti-progress Greens a veto over any sort of human progress.  They are the most literally conservative and indeed reactionary political movement in Europe since the Roman Empire was replaced by feudalism and many Greens clearly yearn for much of feudalism, as long as they are in charge. The "new left" embracing the Greens has been an act of intellectual bankruptcy.

20 - Affordable housing by cutting political parasitism and allowing modular building. Currently housebuilders spend more on lawyers than they do on bricks. What sort of "leftist" supports that.
 

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