The University of Alberta professor says they “did a bunch of analysis” but “a scenario of the prices being where they are today wasn’t there.”
The University of Alberta professor says they “did a bunch of analysis” but “a scenario of the prices being where they are today wasn’t there.”
Andrew Leach is a raving lunatic. The guy should never be listened to. He is an NDP hack.
The CLP was a boondoggle from the start with FAR to much input from CANWEA and Pembina.
Now the panel chair is saying “oops.”
Ironic that the NDP govt is taking legal action affecting the major generators…and these are the same companies Shannon “I know everything” Phillips wants to invest tens of billions in wind. The energy companies (despite what the Suncor CEO says in public) are going to crush Rachel and her socialist thugs.
(In case you do not know, the majors own 95% of Alberta’s wind turbines.)
CAS
An old quote comes to mind: “As God as my witness, I thought turkeys could fly!”
This is just awesome! From U of Alberta’s website: “Andrew Leach, Associate Professor, Alberta School of Business”
Dear alumni who had this “professor”: How do you feel now about paying this guy’s salary? Please put this “professor” on your CV. Your degree is now worthless. LOL!
Any reasonably competent long-term business plan includes purchasing insurance (in one form or another) against unexpected events. The “professor” quoted in the article is saying, in effect, that nobody did this – and thought they had discovered a money-saving hack that nobody else in the history of business ever had.
Twas ever thus with true believers.
Another ivory tower socialist activist masquerading as an academic. Lousy research and piss poor planning supporting a weak premise based on a fantasy. He should be sent packing before he ever gets a chance at tenure.
WKRP Cincinnati:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lf3mgmEdfwg
anyone who is a socialist or has socialist leanings should never be allowed to vote.
Only an NDP Alberta could run into trouble because of “low electricity rates”.
Brains behind the Notley climate change plan? Isn’t that a bit of an oxymoron? I mean, shouldn’t that headline have been, “The Brainless behind Notley Climate Change Plan?”
I’m not surprised at this.
One thing I found out while I was a grad student, getting a doctorate is more about politics and cozying up to the “right” people than talent and hard work. Presumably, this also applies to getting a faculty position and, by extension, tenure.
Can someone explain what’s causing electricity prices in Alberta to be dropping? They seem to only go one way here in Ontario…
Depends what you mean by rates. Ontario’s generating costs with fossil fuels have dropped, but they are committed to buying wind and solar generated surplus electricity at high prices they can’t re-negotiate, so they have to charge their consumers way over fair market value and subsidize the sale of their surplus to export markets.
(I’m not complacent. Whether they believe it or not, our provincial government here pays at least lip service to the green scam and wastes money on “carbon capture”. If an electorate falls for stupid ideas, its political “leaders” will follow.)
As Kate has said elsewhere, “Just because a person thinks he’s Napoleon, it doesn’t mean you give him two French divisions and a map to Moscow”.
In this case, someone put him in front of a class room and called him “professor”. Then, they put him in charge of determining policy that effects the jobs, wealth and very lives of millions. He didn’t get there on his own. Someone put him there, the “right” people as you say (and not just Notley and her ilk; she was just happy to have this “professor” around to make them look smart). Those people need to wear this around their necks.
Now, where to start? The people who put up the money to study under this guy. They know who they are. They need to know the painful truth that the worth of their precious degrees just dropped a whole lot. Then let them pressure the UofA administration to unload this catastrophe. Make them stand on a street corner with signs around their necks saying “Will lecture you for food”.
Socialists don’t understand economics.
If they did, they wouldn’t be socialists.
Like Justy, this idiot in Alberta is late to work every morning because she too, spends half the morning turning over the toilet paper looking for the instructions. Her entire administration are clowns morons and fatties, god help Alberta through this nightmare, thanks dopey radio host.
I doubt that the university administration will get rid of people like him, given his ties with Premier Knothead.
As a long-time U of A alumnus, I’ve seen how successive presidents have toadied to whatever provincial government was in power. The story is told of how, many years ago, the university was approached to bestow an honorary degree on then premier Bill Aberhart. Apparently, the U of A senate said no and the government accepted the decision, but it was the last time that the institution showed such boldness.
Inspirational poster framed on Andrew Leach’s office wall is the paraphrased Maya Angelou, “Hoping for the best, prepared for the best, and surprised by anything in between.”
Thank God Andrew Leach didn’t take a job as an emergency room surgeon, a financial planner, a platoon leader, or a parachute packer.
I was having trouble deciding which Neils Bohr quote fit better:
“Prediction is very difficult, especially about the future.”
“An expert is a person who has found out by his own painful experience all the mistakes that one can make in a very narrow field.”
If you’ve followed the development of the Alberta NDP’s committee and carbon tax saga you’d have noticed the snarky tone and arrogance by Leach and his buddies in the academic, economist and journalist fields when anyone disagreed with their prognostications. Considering the condescending attitude and the level of certainty and confidence projected, I’m surprised that Leach wrote this at all. Most people who get it wrong fade away or ignore their mistake unless they can’t dodge their error – the famous Simon-Ehrlich wager. Perhaps predictions where the foundations are based on catastrophic doom are even less reliable because proponents feel like they are on a Great Mission which hinders objectivity.
Remember, in CAGW they have completely removed the possibility that they could be wrong: that AGW is not catastrophic, that warming might be mild or even beneficial (heretical, right?), that massive government intervention is not required. More CAGW “experts” should read opinions by sceptics like Freeman Dyson, a physicist, like Bohr. Dyson “believes that existing simulation models of climate fail to account for some important factors, and hence the results will contain too much error to reliably predict future trends.” Apparently the CAGW economic models suffer from the same problems.
So, how is it that not a single member of the media has asked our NDP overlords one simple, basic question regarding the lawsuits? The most pertinent question that needs to be asked is this: Which legal precedent does the Alberta government intend to cite, that grants the Crown the right to force private companies to sell their products at a loss? Ask the question, then press for an answer. (Yeah. I know…)
Exactly! They are catering to a segment of society that has bought into the climate change fraud hook, line, and sinker. Generally the same crowd that purchase organic foods.
Bingo!
Always been so.
“That’s kind of why you didn’t see the government planning on that because it wasn’t the expected outcome.”
Why should he worry about “outcomes”? He still gets his paycheck from the U of A**holes,no matter how bad he effs-up. But I thought that was one of the main propaganda points put out by the Eco-terroists: that green sh*t projects would LOWER power costs! Thank God I opted for Queens back in the late 70’s, when universities at least taught a bit of common dog-f**k. At least he the right last name, (although spelled at little different to fool the LIV’s, who seem to be increasing in magnitudes every year).
One would get the impression from Leach that the NDP was aware of the ‘Enron Clause’ but chose to ignore it because they didn’t think their actions would drive down the price of electricity. Of course theirs is a common mistake made by socialists everywhere who think that the economy/business is something fixed and thus can and will cough up the cash when demanded by the socialist hoards. Maybe they should all go back to kindergarten and learn the lesson of the fable of the goose that laid the golden eggs.
And as an afterthought…The University of Alberta professor says they “did a bunch of analysis” but “a scenario of the prices being where they are today wasn’t there.”
What kind of idiot doesn’t do a cost analysis on a project,or even ask for one??? Never mind,moot question.
The U of A wasn’t always like that. I got a quality education when I was an undergrad there during the 1970s. Its decline began during the 1980s when it, like many other universities, started behaving like it was a corporation, dispensing education as if it was a commodity.
I was a grad student there during the 1990s and I saw first-hand how things had changed since I received my B. Sc.
actually Ken, many religious people, who are “believers” also buy into this fraud. It’s easy to buy into one fraud, when you are already immersed into BS like religion. First to “debates” I had on AGW were with bible bangers. They had no stats, just belief.
And then there is P Manning, who can also take a bow for the Newfberta mess, and Manning is a PREACHER
Notley’s an idiot, NDP are idiots, socialists are idiots, UofA are idiots, blah blah blah..
Fact is we live in a low information society. People don’t know what a PPA is.
Big energy companies are handing back their contracts because they’re greedy and they’re evil, and polluters and whatever rhetoric a warp and deceived mind can contrive. Urbanites with their nose in their tablets playing Pokemon will demand something be done. So Notley will come out of this as a champion of the little people.
Thanks for posting that link, Bob. Still funny. I had it wrong in my memory, thought that was Herb Tarlek’s line.
I used to think you were an idiot. But I don’t know any idiots as stupid as you.
Who could have predicted that the NDP destruction of the Alberta economy would be so absolute that the price of electricity would go down so much? That’s the question. Every one who voted Wild Rose is the answer. Alberta was doing better with $10 oil and a Conservative government than it’s doing with the NDP and $50 oil.
Leach is an idiot. I’m not a university professor with a fancy degree but even I know: Past performance is not an indication of future prices.
How could Leach not be aware of what was going on? When asked what he should have said in his report, he gives this answer: “In the environment where Alberta electricity prices are on a long-term decline and there are going to be decades-low power prices for the next two to three years then these PPAs are not profitable or weakly profitable.” Is he saying that he just discovered that prices were low?
You can track Alberta electricity prices on the Utilities Consumer Advocate site
http://ucahelps.alberta.ca/historic-rates.aspx
Prices for the last 2 years indicate stability or a downward trend. How could Leach not know this?
I think that the NDP is too caught up in their notion that everything the former government did was bad. They could have avoided this boondogggle had they been willing to admit that privatization has been a success.
The Progressive Alberta government was taking the Alberta economy and their response to CAGW in exactly the same direction as the NDP is.(not to forget the plans they had for the queers in schools)
Let’s not forget that Stelmach scrapped contracts with the Oil/Gas sector that would still be in effect and run through this year because they hadn’t taken into account the possibility of the world price per BBL dropping as it did.
The Progressives ruined a debt free province with an $8 billion surplus and took it to $10s of billions in debt by projecting continued high oil prices and promising(obligating) the Alberta government to the Public Unions the sky, the moon, and the stars against the best interests of All Albertans.
NME666:
You are incapable of commenting without referencing your hatred for people of faith. That makes you as fanatical as any lame brain Islamist. In other words you are a raging asshole. And you will never STFU.
“Urbanites with their nose in their tablets playing Pokemon will demand something be done. So Notley will come out of this as a champion of the little people.”
True in the short term, but (despite low elec prices now) just wait til our elec is $0.40/KWh. The little people (bone fide poor, millenials and the pussy generation) will be hit hardest. The little people will pay subsidies to to the wealthy to put fashionable solar panels on their roofs. When the money runs out, the little people will all be standing in food-bank lines when their EI runs out and we are bankrupt an say, “WTF happened?!”
“If we make it through May 2019, we’ll be fine.” Good song title. ☺
The ideologically driven damn the torpedoes Gov’t that Alberta has is NOT DEMOCRATIC. Their responsibility to serve their constituents has been forgotten. Intentional destruction of a stable economic environment costing many tens of thousands of full time good paying jobs while dramatically increasing living costs for everyone is causing real harm – not computer model imagined. Accountability to the electorate must be securely instilled in Canadian government so the government’s responsibility to its’ citizens is maintained thus keeping Gov’t policies fair and reasonable. We need recall legislation for every Gov’t level. If the electorate is the Gov’ts employer and those we elect into power care more about ruling instead of serving the people need the ability to say to incompetent politicians “You’re Fired!”
The whole purpose of the NDP is not to be democratic. Its objective isn’t to govern but to destroy society and rebuild it in its own image.
That’s been the way that communists have always done it. In what became the USSR, one had a choice: conform, endure forced re-education, or die either by execution, starvation, or hard labour. (Gee, that sounds like the doctrine of a certain religion of “peace”, doesn’t it?) It happened that way in China. It happened that way in Cuba. It happened that way in Cambodia. It’s getting close to that in Venezuela.
Red Rachel might not mind if Alberta went the same way.
I don’t think Leach is an idiot or stupid. There’s a difference between ignorant and stupid. Most of the problems with CAGW science and economics are that’s it’s political science at best, a fundamentalist religion at its worst. The thought that CO2 is not catastrophic is simply not even considered even as new research and actual observations indicate CO2 sensitivity is not as high predicted and/or on the lower end of predictions (According to satellite data since it’s not “adjusted” when it deviates from IPCC predictions).
“The whole purpose of the NDP is not to be democratic. Its objective isn’t to govern but to destroy society and rebuild it in its own image.” Fair assessment B but shouldn’t the electorate want a mechanism to protect themselves from harmful single minded power mongers?
Well said sir and bang on.
The purpose of Marxists is to build the new Soviet man and the new Soviet society, which includes de-industrializing the west as Mo Strong advocated in 1948 and throughout his career.
There is one. And you know you can find him here.
It would be nice to be able to sack one’s elected representatives before the next election in order to limit the damage they may cause. However, to make such a process a legitimate legal procedure means that it has to be enacted by the legislative body in question.
The Dippers have an overwhelming majority in the Alberta Legislature right now. Fat chance of them ever allowing a bill which would allow voters to fire them.
Even if something like was enacted. What’s to stop a future government from repealing it?
“Even if something like was enacted. What’s to stop a future government from repealing it?”
I guess if the recall number were ‘thusly number’ of signatures by constituents, that to repeal the recall legislation an equal number of votes from every riding would probably be enough to quash government unilateral repeal or it would be seen by the mass of voters as anti-democracy on the part of government.
JMO
On the other hand, the media keeps telling voters what an onerous task it is to have to exercise their franchise.
Somebody has to counter this BS message by asking the voter which is more onerous?
To exercise your vote or to pay greater amounts of your precious seconds on this earth slaving to earn ever greater taxes required by a government which does not fear ever being replaced and depends on your taxes to pay the Public Unions whom the government depends upon to be re-elected for ever and ever, World without End, Amen?
Anyone who believes that graduates with “Environmental Studies” degrees … or even “Environmental Sciences” degrees … are ACTUALLY scientists … are sadly deluded.
#1. Am I the only one who thinks it’s funny that a guy named Leach is on the government payroll?
#2. If Captain Leach didn’t think that low electricity prices would create a non-profit environment for the providers, how can he claim that the original agreements allowing the providers to return non-profitable operations are somehow illegal? Didn’t the providers also not consider such a low price environment or is it just the government that can plead stupid?
#3. The proper thing for the government to do is ask for proposals from providers stating what rates they need to charge to make a profit and their expected internal rate of return (IRR). If they don’t like the pricing the government can elect to become the provider, set the rates themselves and rake in the cash just like Ontario.
you should read up about the popes climate conference, you’ll git the drift LIV
Has anyone ever considered that maybe the Dippers knew about this arrangement all along and are simply inventing an excuse to bleed more cash out of all and sundry?
Remember, the government is *socialist* (in name only–it’s behaving more like hard-core commies) and socialists love other people’s money, particularly when it comes to extracting and spending it.
facts are now “hatred” are they. In thread in here the fact that Manning encouraged the red rose leader to embrace “global warming” was discussed, but my mentioning this is hatred? As to believers being fooled by one belief system are also easily fooled by another belief system. Try reading up on behavioral psychology before opening pie hole. As to repletion of this meme, were were you when the like of Revenant Dream were constantly inferring all us atheists were lefties, and doing the good old gay bashing. As the Elvis song says, “clean up your own back yard” You don’t like facts, then fix the situation, or just FO!!
“Like Justy, this idiot in Alberta is late to work every morning because she too, spends half the morning turning over the toilet paper looking for the instructions.”
Howled my head off,bartinsky,until I realized it is true. The once and only “have” province left in CanaDUH will have an extremely hard slug-fest after another 3 1/2 years of Nutley and her imbecile cabinet doing their best to turn AB into a 3rd world banana republic.
More from the NDP braintrust; not ready for Prime Time, but certainly qualified for Amateur Hour…..
I’m sure Notley’s Destructive Politburo would like nothing better than to turn Alberta into the equivalent of China during the Cultural Revolution. Unleashing those Red Guard punks set that country back by at least 20 years. Its professional class was nearly destroyed in the process.