Originally Posted by sharper

You must have missed the post he made on that site months ago

And the comment from Ultan on that article is interesting.

The Arrhus Convention is a useful mechanism to fight bureaucracy with bureaucracy. It’s like the spider being caught on their own web.

Ultan,
Sometimes spiders build webs which are extremely resistant to prevailing conditions.

And sometimes spiders can defend themselves.

Originally Posted by Pat Gill

rash,

I believe the gentleman in question already posts on P.ie.

The arguments advanced in his article are interesting. I wonder though have the principles of the Aarhus convention ever been applied to a thermal energy project or policy ?

I don't believe they have.

Originally Posted by rash mulligan

I see Turn 180 have recruited another heavy hitter.

How Legitimate Is EU Wind Energy Policy? | Turn 180

Super article. Mr Swords is clearly a smart, educated and qualified person who is acting in the Irish national interest. There are plenty of charlatans involved in the wind energy debate in Ireland who cannot make that claim (e.g. Pat Gill or Charlatan Williams).

However I personally have strong reservations about connecting the wind power and global warming issues. Wind power on the proposed scale makes no sense whatever your views on climate. Personally, I find the scientific case for AGW compelling. The point is that wind power is an ineffective and extremely costly way of dealing with the problem.

There is a whiff of fascism (state helping corporations to fleece citizens) about the EU's fanatical renewables policy. The main beneficiaries will be the suppliers of eco-junk. Climate science is not wrong, but it is being cynically exploited by some very unpleasant people.

Originally Posted by GreenIsGood

Super article. Mr Swords is clearly a smart, educated and qualified person who is acting in the Irish national interest. There are plenty of charlatans involved in the wind energy debate in Ireland who cannot make that claim (e.g. Pat Gill or Charlatan Williams).

However I personally have strong reservations about connecting the wind power and global warming issues. Wind power on the proposed scale makes no sense whatever your views on climate. Personally, I find the scientific case for AGW compelling. The point is that wind power is an ineffective and extremely costly way of dealing with the problem.

There is a whiff of fascism (state helping corporations to fleece citizens) about the EU's fanatical renewables policy. The main beneficiaries will be the suppliers of eco-junk. Climate science is not wrong, but it is being cynically exploited by some very unpleasant people.

From his biography: "Pat Swords is a Fellow of the Institute of Chemical Engineers and a Chartered Environmentalist"

Can somebody tell me what a "Chartered Environmentalist" is?

As far as I understand the Aarhus Agreement it is meant to keep locals more involved in the development, e.g. give them a say when it comes to windfarms in their area. This is taken care of. But the AA has not been designed to force referenda on each European intergovernmental agreement on carbon reductions. That is a matter of our elected representatives, the government.


Pat Swords is trying to sell himself as a (chartered) environmentalist. On the other hand he is following the long ago debunked climate change denial version by McIntyre and McKitrick about the "hockey stick" graph and claims that the "IPCC had ‘sexed up’ global warming to the point of falsifying their output". This is quite rubbish and not confirmed by any other peer reviewed study.

Also, without any explanation and proof, he claims that "to save the planet about €10 million per annum in environmental damage related to slightly warmer temperatures, we are undergoing a capital investment of over €30 billion which has already added €0.5 billion per annum to our electricity bills and will result as an extra €3 billion per annum". This is not only nonsense (An extra €3 billion per annum would mean the electricity bill of an average household would rise by about €2,000 every year. Have we seen that? Of course not!) . He does also not deliver a single source for his claim and his weird numbers. [*]

The Eirgrid study, Impact of Wind Generation on Wholesale Electricity Costs, tells us a different story:

"Key Messages

• The wind generation expected in 2011 will reduce Ireland’s wholesale market cost of electricity by around €74 million.

• This reduction in the wholesale market cost of electricity is approximately equivalent to the sum of Public Service Obligation (PSO) costs, estimated as €50 million, and the increased constraint costs incurred, due to wind in 2011.

• The total cost of generation is the sum of the wholesale cost of electricity, the PSO cost of wind and the dispatch constraint costs. The total cost does not increase with the inclusion of the 2011 wind capacity."

Can it be any clearer? Wind energy is already paying off its higher capital costs by fuel savings. Not to forget that PSO levies also pay for peat burning which has a bigger carbon footprint than burning coal.

---

Here another interesting article about that "heavy hitter", "Pat the Engineer". Enjoy.

=> Green energy advocate challenges ‘fossil fired school of scientists’

---

Climate change deniers are coming up with the weirdest claims of the weirdest people.

If increases in CO2 are not causing modern day global warming then two things must be true:

1) Something unknown is suppressing the well-understood greenhouse effect (and doing so during massive increases in greenhouse gases).

2) Something unknown is causing the warming that mirrors the greenhouse effect.

So we can accept what we know to be true (anthropogenic global warming) or we accept two unknowns. (Powell, 2010)

Also => Climate half-truths turn out to be whole lies

Originally Posted by rash mulligan

The debate is over,

Long over at that. There are very few in the US that do not believe that Al Gore and his loonietune followers are complete fruitcakes.

98% of Irish voters agree. Time to put an end to this money racket

I don't know Pat Swords, but he is clearly an educated professional person with bona fide qualifications such as Chartered Environmentalist.

http://www.socenv.org.uk/chartered-e...st-cenv/highly

Pat Swords is not the only qualified, honest and committed Irishman fighting wind industry vested interests and ideological fanatics in the interests of Ireland and her people. Other Irish professionals and professional bodies (Colm McCarthy, IPCC, IAE, NPWS etc) have called into question the extremist wind power policy being pushed here by vested interests such as Siemens AG etc.

No surprise that the lying German troll on this thread has tried to smear Pat Swords. In fact this arrogantpot-smoking fanatic denounces any decent Irish person who dares to expresse a view which is not in German corporate interests.

Originally Posted by SirCharles

If increases in CO2 are not causing modern day global warming then two things must be true:

1) Something unknown is suppressing the well-understood greenhouse effect (and doing so during massive increases in greenhouse gases).

2) Something unknown is causing the warming that mirrors the greenhouse effect.

So we can accept what we know to be true (anthropogenic global warming) or we accept two unknowns. (Powell, 2010)

Anyone who rejects a scientific theory dating back to th 19th century, upheld by brilliant scientists like Arrhenius, Callendar, Revelle, Keeling and Plass & verified again and again, should be regarded the same way Evolutionists regard Intelligent Designers/ Creationists.

We should not even bother to give them a hearing. They are the denier's denialists.



The whole story rapidly told in 1 minute:

Turn 180 has consistently avoided the question of whether they accept the Greenhouse Effect is real, or not.

It is such a basic question and the answer identifies them as either an organization supportive of science, or of pseudo-science.

Ultan Murphy owes the public a straight answer to a straight question. Does Turn 180 accept the reality of the Greenhouse Effect, or not?

There are many, many sites which describe the Greenhouse Effect. Here is just one:

Atmospheric Radiation and the “Greenhouse” Effect « The Science of Doom

One might say that Ultan Murphy's refusal to answer is an answer in itself.