Seasick: The Global Ocean in Crisis – Book Review

March 7th, 2010

Alanna Mitchell, former environment reporter for the Globe and Mail, and author of Dancing at the Dead Sea has written a major and important book about the sea. Or maybe it is about climate change, and it impact on life in the sea. It is a must read for anyone concerned about climate change. It stands beside The Weathermakers for its importance to our understanding of the science behind climate change.
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Removing Stimulus: Conservative Budget

March 5th, 2010

This year’s Federal budget is wildly over the top in its claims to be stimulating the economy. And in the renewable energy sector, the only Federal program of note has lost its funding. There will be less jobs building renewable energy facilities in the future.
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Wind Dominates in Europe Again

February 5th, 2010

The European Wind Energy Association released statistics on newly installed wind in 2009. The number demonstrates clearly that other sources of generation are threatened by wind.
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Quotes from System Operators

January 10th, 2010

I have been catching up on some reading of wind publications, and came across an interesting article in WindSight. The article is titled “System Operators find Integration Solutions”.
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Winning the Battle

January 3rd, 2010

With the New Year upon us, I thought I would reflect on the state of the world. It is sometimes easy to get discouraged. The climate denial machine, funded by fossil fuel lobbies, continues to have more ink than they deserve. Copenhagen collapsed in disarray – it’s a wonder our species has made it this far. The anti wind crowd, for the benefit of few – the fossil and nuclear business – continues to make noise, and fabricate no end of misinformation to scare people and divide communities. But what is happening on the ground?
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Canada the Treaty Breaker

December 1st, 2009

Prime Minister Stephen Harper finally agreed to go to the Copenhagen conference on climate change. After calling climate science a “socialist plot”, and working diligently as a friend and ally of George Bush’s America, he has reluctantly agreed to engage. But Canada’s role appears to be one of deal breaker. The government has done very little on the climate file, and is allowing its only programs that do something about it to run out of funds. Meanwhile, emissions, which were to have declined by 6%, have risen by 26%. Canada has not honoured, and worse, has not even tried to honour its treaty obligations. Read the rest of this entry »

Wind in Spain

November 27th, 2009

Recent reports from Spain indicated that a record amount of wind was integrated into the grid. Wind supplied 53% of total demand on November 8th.
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Irony

November 19th, 2009

A recent report caught my attention. There is a proposal for a large natural gas generating station in Oakville Ontario. Read the rest of this entry »

New Connection to Quebec

October 23rd, 2009

An upgraded transmission line to Quebec has just been completed. From Hydro One: “Monday October 19th
at 2 p.m. the A41T and A42T (Hawthorne x Outaouais) circuits were declared ready for full commercial
transactions between Ontario and Quebec. This brings the full interconnection capacity to 1200 MW.”
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Wind and Tourism

October 14th, 2009

Many people in my community depend on tourism for their livelihood. So naturally, opponents of wind energy like to claim that a wind farm will drive tourists away. But is this really true?
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