Monday On Turtle Island

Dementia Joe’s America:  A society that exalts sin.  The latest Biden gaffe.  A nation of dress codes.  Biden and the UAW.  Your morning meme.

Global Warming Scam News:  Eco-terrorists attack Berlin marathon.  Everyone is going to die because of climate change.  Old Joe wants to raise your energy costs.

Blackie’s Canada:  The One Million Person March.  Ontario city reported to the UN. (CBC).

Today In Islam:  Tea and cake for Jihad apologists (JW).   Praise for Islamic misogyny (JW).

The University of Waterloo’s New Woke President

In the mail:

24 September 2023

Dr. Vivek Goel, President (president@uwaterloo.ca)
University of Waterloo
200 University Avenue West
Waterloo, ON N2L 3G1

Dear President Goel:

We are writing as members of the Executive Committee of the Waterloo chapter of the Society for Academic Freedom and Scholarship, an organization of university faculty members and others dedicated to the defense of academic freedom and the merit principle in higher education. (For further information, see our website at https://www.watsafs.ca.)

On September 19, 2023 you emailed faculty and staff a letter titled “Standing in solidarity with Canada’s queer community”.

The letter is inappropriate for a university president: it is factually incorrect, it violates the principle of institutional neutrality, and it is uncivil. It will divide the university community and create a climate of self-censorship. We condemn it in the strongest possible terms.

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“Public anger at the hidden costs of net zero energy policies”

Our old friend Eaun Mearns, in the Aberdeen Press and Journal;

Reading your letters pages in recent months, there seems to be significant anger within local populations at the implementation of Scottish and UK energy policies, and justifiably so. Here, I try to cast some light on the origins of that anger. In the recent past, sound electrical engineering design dictated that electricity generation centres were located close to the population centres where the electricity was to be consumed. This was because transmitting electricity through high voltage alternating current (AC) lines results in losses that had to be paid for by the consumer, and the lines themselves were expensive to build and scarred the landscape. In the recent past the driving motives of politicians, planners and industry was to optimise the service provided to constituents and consumers.

During the early days of “the transition” renewables initiatives were sold to the public based on the proposed benefits of distributed as opposed to centralised generation (coal, gas and nuclear) where members of the public were encouraged, via generous subsidies, to install roof top solar to generate their own electricity at home. If you were lucky enough to own a farm, then you could generate your own power using a small wind turbine. Honourable goals perhaps, where wealthy property owners could harvest subsidies that were paid for by the whole population, who on average were much less well-off.

What we now have instead are vast centralised wind and solar power stations distributed outside of population centres, and quite distant to the eventual market for the third-rate power that is being produced. This is the exact opposite of the original proposals for distributed power located within population centres. In January 2022, The Crown Estate Scotland alone, licensed 17 vast offshore wind projects amounting to 25GW peak power capacity that may deliver next to nothing when the wind does not blow. Some individual projects are rated at 3 GW. These individually represent the equivalent of 3 nuclear power stations located in the middle of the North Sea, fifty miles from shore and several hundred miles from the eventual market for this power that is likely to lie somewhere in the Midlands of England. What politicians, and members of the public need to understand, is that these giant power stations will need 25GW of dedicated power lines to connect them to their market – where are these power lines going to go and who is going to pay for them? The protest banners that now line the A90 are a mere shadow of what is planned for the future.

So, what about exports to Europe? The fantasy of local politicians is that Scotland will become some kind of renewable power house, exporting electricity to England and beyond. In 2010, the UK had 2.5 GW interconnector capacity with the rest of Europe. By 2021, this had grown to 7.5 GW. In that period, electricity exports to Europe were effectively flat. On the other hand, net electricity imports in 2010 were 2.7 TWh. By 2021 these had grown to 24.6 TWh (UK government statistics). A 3-fold increase in interconnector capacity has led to a 9-fold increase in net imports. The explanation is quite simple. The UK has closed down significant amounts of dispatchable coal and nuclear generating capacity creating supply vulnerability when the wind doesn’t blow and the sun doesn’t shine. Conversely, there is a high degree of correlation in wind supply between the UK and Europe and this means that when the UK generates a surplus, Europe has a surplus too. The UK surplus has no market resulting in high constraint payments paid for by already hard-pressed consumers.

Yet another frailty of the current strategy is the need to maintain significant amounts of dispatchable generating capacity to cover supply when renewables fail. In effect, 20 GW of combined cycle gas turbines will have to be maintained to back up the 25 GW of proposed offshore wind. In addition, gas import facilities (pipelines and liquefied natural gas) will need to be maintained for occasional use. The high cost of maintaining backup supplies is normally ignored when the levelized cost of wind and solar power is reported. The proponents of the net zero strategy seem content to pile these costs on to hard pressed consumers while politicians seem content to blame the high cost of energy on Vladimir Putin.

I urge politicians in Holyrood and Westminster to suspend all new large-scale wind and solar developments and grid expansions until a comprehensive analysis and report on the real environmental and economic costs of current net-zero energy policy is presented to the public for scrutiny. This report must be based on sound thermodynamic and economic principles and not upon wishful thinking and net zero dogma that appears to underpin much of current energy policy.

Dr Euan Mearns
Aberdeen

(republished with permission)

Stalling out

When regime water carriers like the CBC start to run stories about an imminent recession, that’s a pretty good indication that they’ve run out of ways to sugar coat bad news and are coming to the same conclusion that many SDA readers arrived at months ago.

Soaring inflation has eroded purchasing power, and climbing interest rates have clobbered households. Now, cracks have begun to appear in the data, and economists expect those cracks to grow. GDP contracted in the second quarter of this year.

Next week, new data is expected to show economic growth flat-lined in July and perhaps contracted again in August. Some of that can be chalked up to specific factors, including labour actions like the port strike in B.C. or wildfires.

But before any of that, momentum was clearing being sapped out of the Canadian economy.

Down The Primrose Path

Ivan Katchanovski: This is truly unbelievable. This SS Galicia division veteran was also called by Canadian parliament speaker “Ukrainian hero” & “Canadian hero” & thanked “for his service.” Did anyone in parliament or Zelensky realize that he served in Waffen SS division?

Additional background here from Lev Golinkin, at the Jewish magazine Forward.

Related:Problems with Poland

Sunday On Turtle Island

Today In Islam:  The shocking history of Islam.  Dating in Malaysia (JW).  Interfaith outreach in Uganda (JW).

Dementia Joe’s America:  Biden can’t tell Black and Hispanic people apart.  The DIE cult.  Joe Biden is a liar.  Old Joe helped incite the India crisis with Canada.  Your morning meme.

Everybody Is Going To Die News:  A new pandemic is coming?   Newsom declares war on fossil fuels.

Blackie’s Canada:  Parental rights don’t exist.  Grooming kids in Nova Scotia (CBC).  Foreign Affairs Barbie fights online misinformation.  Ottawa tried to freeze out Freedom truckers.  Manitoba will get a socialist government.  Free stuff for everybody!!

Shoulda Mowed Your Own Lawns, America

They just can’t quit slave labour.

Longtime migrant workers are disgruntled with new waves of arrivals to New York City who they say are undercutting them — claiming anyone hiring them should “get the f—k out of here”.

City data shows over 116,000 migrants have flocked to the Big Apple since last spring and most are making ends meet working in the illegal underground economy — many while still living rent-free at taxpayer-funded hotels and shelters, as the New York Post exclusively revealed.

This poses a problem for more established migrants who have been working cash-in-hand for years.

They say newcomers accept next-to-nothing for work such as painting and concreting, driving down their own earning potential.

A tradesman known as “Parrow” who described himself as an “old timer” said he has been going to the Home Depot on Merrick Boulevard in Queens to pick up construction, plumbing and home improvement work for “20 plus years” but is now struggling.

The Milquetoast Party

In Weimar Germany there was a political party, the Democrats, whose motto was “Nothing will sway us from the middle road”. By creating a party based on the non-concept of “moderation”, however, they wound up helping to build a society that embraced outright statism. It seems that history is rhyming again in Canada. Hopefully, voters won’t fall for it.

Canadian Future is the brainchild of Centre Ice Canadians, formerly known as Centre Ice Conservatives. It was founded in April 2022 when it became clear that Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre had a huge lead in the Conservative leadership race. They preposterously claimed the party was moving too far to the right, and desired a supposedly more moderate political alternative.

Radical centrists are more naturally at home with the Liberals, NDP, Greens and others on the political left. How do they expect to gain support in an even more crowded political field? With ex-Conservatives at the helm, and policies on trade, democracy, the environment and health care that wouldn’t sway many left-leaning Canadians, I have no earthly idea.

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