Alberta - wind power is not clean or green or 'free.' Renewable Is NOT Doable. Not with wind farms. 1) Green Energy Killed Ontario. Ontario's economy has been decimated by wind power; people's property values have crashed, their lives and health ruined by wind turbine noise; electricity rates have skyrocketed. 2) Wind Energy Drives up Energy Prices. European electricity is 37% higher than 2005 when it was on par with the US. Taxpayers in the UK and EU have been forced into ‘heat or eat’ poverty! Climate change subsidies are paying taxpayers’ money to wind farms....multi-million dollar wind farms that can barely boil a kettle of hot water for tea when you really need power. 3) Coercion by Outside Forces – for No Environmental Benefit. Alberta energy producers are being squeezed and coerced into buying Renewable Energy Certificates to pretend that they are 'green' to ‘offset’ their ‘carbon footprint.’ But WIND POWER has NO NET REDUCTION IN CO2 – if you factor in the manufacturing, transport 4) Alberta is a Target. Foreign wind farm manufacturers and developers are targeting Alberta because of the smears that misinformed eco-activists have put on our resource industries. They corner our resource producers and banks to ‘buy’ carbon credits through Renewable Energy Certificates – worthless pieces of paper – a house of cards that will one day all collapse. 5) Carbon Market and Renewable Energy Certificates Collapse – they are not based on value added product...just ‘thin air.’ Like in Europe – this spring carbon emissions went from 34.90 euro per unit in a sudden drop to only 3 euro. 6) But we STILL have RELIABLE, DISPATCHABLE power! Don’t lose it by shutting down reliable, inexpensive coal plants – wind power is highly variable, unreliable, and can blow out the grid with its surges – that’s how Bulgaria’s government got thrown out. People were tired of grid black-outs. 7) Wind Costs Billions. Wind has already cost YOU the Alberta taxpayers BILLIONS in hidden costs for the various interfaces and connections required to hook up wind power to the grid... and BILLIONS in investment in these short-lived, low productivity wind farms. TransAlta’s Taylor wind farm was decommissioned only 7 years after construction. A coal plant will last for 50 years or more on a very small footprint of land – and produce reliable energy. But it is ‘clean’ you say.... NO! 8) 'Green' wind energy just means we are offloading tremendous environmental damage on China. That's where rare earth minerals are mined for the magnets in wind turbines. They have NO environmental regulations; MASSIVE devastation - it's not clean or green energy. It's a sham. 9) Rare Bird and Bat Slaughter. Wind turbines are the CUISINARTS of the air – slicing beautiful raptors in half; blowing the lungs out of bats due to barometric pressure differentials. This is agricultural land – we need birds and bats! They naturally take out rodents and insects. 10) Wind needs deep, massive concrete and metal footings. If you are worried about CO2 - what could be more CO2 intense than concrete? Wind farms only last about 20 years, and after ten their power output declines dramatically...then what do you do with the recycled 60,000 tonnes of concrete footings? Reclamation? HA! ONE PROJECT TO STOP RIGHT NOW: Alberta School Boards want to buy a $160 Million wind farm on a 25 year contract with a company that tells them ‘wind is free’ and ‘environmentally friendly.’ Who’s kidding who? These are YOUR taxpayer's dollars, but Alberta School Boards consortium told your local school board to keep it quiet till the deal was done. It was a bad idea to start with, but even worse to keep it from taxpayers like you and I who have a right to say what goes on with our money. This is just one of FORTY WIND FARM PROJECTS in the Alberta line-up...all just waiting for financing; with wind lobbyists and wheeler/dealers swarming in from around the world – from places where wind power has already FAILED. As the misinformed eco-crowd turn the screws on ‘carbon’ – more companies will look for a solution in wind and Renewable Energy Certificates. Why do I say ‘misinformed’? Because there has been no global warming in 16+ years...and because the sun drives climate change. Not CO2. Solar scientists see a pattern between the past and present solar cycles. It looks like an epoch of global cooling ahead of us - like the Little Ice Age - a time of cold wet weather, crop failure and famine, vast unemployment and revolution (like "Les Miz"). Wouldn't you want to be warm? We need RELIABLE, DISPATCHABLE (on demand) POWER....not wind. Canada is a cold country. Alberta is a big, modern civilization. Keep the home fires burning.... STOP WIND FARMS, ALBERTA! Please sign this petition. Say NO now to wind and hot air investments. Alberta was built on dreams and hard work... ....not pixie dust and carbon credits. “...the carbon market is based on the lack of delivery of an invisible substance to no one.” Conning the Climate by Mark Schapiro, Harper's Mag Feb 2010 Please sign. Share with your friends.