The Way the Wind's Blowing

Headwinds for Wind Farms

Sep 20, 2023

mass insanity, windfarm problems, whales, Australia’s lack of refineries, Ukraine war, sanctions loopholes, censorship of doctors, gender denial, investing, oil, UFOs, and how the Passover pictured Jesus

If you’re new to substack, underlined words are links to sources. Recently, I started doing my best to arrange text loosely under 3 main topics of interest - science, finance, and faith, and will have something on each once a week. My comments are in italics. Your comments, questions, and suggestions are welcome.

SCIENCE

There’s science involved in energy, war and gender…

political science

the UN’s 78th General Assembly this week apparently is not considered important enough for the leaders of France, UK, Russia, India, or China to attend. But the president of the US and Ukraine will be there, so not to worry… “The Lord brings the counsel of the nations to nothing; he frustrates the plans of the peoples. The counsel of the Lord stands forever, the plans of his heart to all generations.” Psalm 33:10-11

Insanity

From Irina Slav “The transition push is not a grift. There are elements of grift but they are not the main story. The main story is one of mass psychosis that reaches high into decision-making levels. Indeed, it has reached the highest levels of the Western political, for want of a better word, elite.”

for it is written “I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and the cleverness of the clever I will set aside” 1 Corinthians 1:19

Pushback on wind farms

From Robert Bryce Sept 12

“.. June riots by members of the Druze community in the Golan Heights against a wind project. …The Jerusalem Post wrote “the wind project “rocked the region” and that the riots “resulted in one officer being shot and another injured.” …The battle over the wind project in the Golan Heights has been ignored by the American press. Despite the lack of coverage, the refusal of the Druze* community to accept the wind project shows, yet again, the split between urban voters (who like the idea of wind and solar) and rural landowners who are resisting the landscape-destroying sprawl that comes with weather-dependent renewables. Indeed, the conflict in the Golan doesn’t fit the narrative about “clean” energy. But the June riots provide yet another example of wind energy’s incurable problem: it requires too much land.” *Druze are ethnically Arab and Arabic speaking, but many do not consider themselves Palestinian. Their monotheistic religion incorporates many beliefs from Islam, Judaism and Christianity, and is also influenced by Greek philosophy and Hinduism.

I remember when T. Boone Pickens, the oil tycoon, decided in 2008 to get into wind turbines. He ordered 687 wind turbines to build a 4000 megawatt wind farm in Tampa, Texas. He backed out in 2010, when he figured out the expense of connecting the energy to the grid with transmission lines. He also realized natural gas is a much more efficient way of producing electricity. So if you’re interested in building a wind farm, you might be able to get a pretty good discount on the turbines – make Mr. Pickens estate an offer!

(It never occurred to Boone Pickens to look for federal subsidies – he’s not that type of guy. But since 2010, wind farms have popped up all over Texas, because of huge subsidies. Of course they wouldn’t be profitable without the subsidies, and soon might not be profitable even with subsidies, because of overbuilding.)

Along with his investments in oil, Pickens built business plans on water, wind and natural gas. His plan for a $10 billion, 4,000-megawatt wind farm fell victim to the financial collapse of 2008 and the declining natural-gas prices that accompanied it

Also, Power Grid International reported in October 15, 2012 — “Texas billionaire T. Boone Pickens’ company American Wind Alliance has sold 100 percent of its stake in the proposed New Era Wind Farm LLC in Goodhue County, Minn., according to The Minneapolis Star Tribune…The proposed $180 million, 50-turbine wind project has encountered opposition from citizens concerned about noise and threats to wildlife.” - You’ve probably heard about eagles being killed by the blades, and the vibration of the machinery causing a ‘hum’ (some call it a ‘ghostly shoop-shoop’ sound) that can really bother people. Of course the noise increases when the wind picks up.

Bev and I have a Bonneville Power (BPA) easement across the lower corner of our property. The easement is 60’ wide, so that the BPA can access the towers (“pylons”) and also cut large trees back if they get big enough to endanger the 230,000 volt lines. So just one mile of transmission lines takes 60’X5280’ = 316,800 sq.ft. of land.

Here’s just one example of a current new transmission line project:

“Great River Energy and Minnesota Power are in the early stages of building a 150-mile, 345 kilovolt transmission line from northern to central Minnesota. It’s called the Northland Reliability Project and will cost an estimated $970 million.” That’s almost 6.5 million dollars per mile, with ugly towers and lines covering over 1000 acres of land! The cost will be paid by increases in customers’ electric bills.

Whales

From David Blackmon

“Also note that, where the Northeast wind farms are being sited smack in the middle of what Meghan calls a “migratory superhighway” for whales, the proposed Gulf wind farms will be sited smack in the middle of what the federal government knows is a migratory superhighway for well over 300 species of migratory birds. I recently posted slides from a presentation made by the Department of Interior that admits that more than 3 billion birds traverse this migratory corridor every year.”

See also Save the Right Whales

The Greek word for wind is pneuma, from which we get ‘pneumonia’. Pneuma can also be translated as ‘breath’, or ‘spirit’. “The wind (pneuma) blows where it wishes, and you hear the sound of it, but do not know where it comes from or where it is going; so is everyone who is born of the Spirit (pneuma).” John 3:8

Australia’s lack of oil refineries

From Doomburg Sept 12

“Australia has practically no capacity to refine oil and relies on imports to meet the vast majority of its demand for diesel, the fuel that makes its entire supply chain work: -Resource flow map | www.energy.au.gov -pic – Aus.Diesel …diesel fuel makes the world go ‘round; almost all heavy equipment uses diesel

Ukraine – the science of war

From Jeff Childers’ “Coffee & Covid”, Sept.12

“Ukraine is running out of bodies to throw at the front lines. Yesterday, former comedian Zelensky, not kidding this time, posted on his Telegram channel that the government will be “revisiting” medical exemptions previously granted to Ukrainians seeking to avoid military conscription, and also its plan to pursue dastardly draft-dodgers who fled the country to avoid being turned into human hamburger. …Displaced Ukrainians who fled the country to escape the press gangs now have to consider re-locating again, this time to a country without an extradition agreement with Ukraine. Not surprisingly, Russia is warmly inviting Ukraine’s wandering citizens, and most pundits suspect a lot of them will accept, so — ironically — Zelensky’s new crackdown will probably result in turning even more Ukrainians into Russians.” I doubt he’ll mention this in his speech at the UN this week…

from Jim Rickards’ “Strategic Intelligence”: …wars have a way of escalating out of control… “The war (in Ukraine) began with a limited special military operation by Russia in Ukraine and has now escalated to the largest and most deadly land war in Europe since World War II. That escalation includes deliveries by the U.S. and other NATO members to the Armed Forces of Ukraine of advanced weaponry including Patriot anti-aircraft batteries, HIMARS mobile precision missile launchers, drones, Leopard tanks Challenger tanks, Bradley Fighting Vehicles, Storm Shadow cruise missiles and much more. Russia has responded by increasing its troops in Ukraine from 100,000 to perhaps 500,000 (the exact number is secret) and deploying GPS jamming devices, hypersonic missiles, drones, landmines, and its highly effective S-400 anti-aircraft missiles. The danger in Ukraine is not just the obvious one of escalation. The danger is that both sides (Russia v. NATO) are nuclear powers.”

prophecy unfolding…

“⁶You will be hearing of wars and rumors of wars. See that you are not frightened, for those things must take place, but that is not yet the end. ⁷For nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom, and in various places there will be famines and earthquakes. ⁸But all these things are merely the beginning of birth pangs.” Matthew 24:6-8

where there’s will, there’s a way

sanctions don’t work very well…from Stu Turley’s “Energy Newsbeat”:

“European nations continue to find ways to get around their own sanctions on Russian energy imposed in the wake of Moscow’s renewed invasion of Ukraine, with Germany now admitting their imports from intermediary India are soaring. Imports of petroleum products from India by Germany — accused of reselling imported Russian oil to the rest of the world by the EU and others — have soared this year, including from $40 million in the first seven months of 2022 to $484 million in the same period of 2023. The meteoric rise is a 1,110 per cent increase in 12 months.”

Censorship of doctors who disagreed with the “science”

More from “Coffee & Covid”: Doctors who disagreed with the consensus on covid were persecuted, especially in California..but now the CA legislature is admitting their mistake…

“A few days ago, California bill SB815 was sneakily amended to include a provision to repeal AB2098, the state’s currently-enjoined doctor censorship law. Everything you need to know is in the LA Times’s description of that law as “a well-intentioned poorly worded and ultimately doomed effort to curb the most flagrant cases of COVID-related falsehoods by people wielding medical licenses.”

Haha, “people wielding medical licenses.” Just say ‘doctors,’ morons.

The LA Times reported there are four separate pending lawsuits attacking AB 2098. The state clearly doesn't like its chances of winning, especially since one group of plaintiffs has already obtained a preliminary injunction against the unconstitutional law. Judge William Shubb of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of California ruled that the law’s “unclear phrasing and structure” could have a “chilling effect,” and even called the law “grammatically incoherent.” - there are too many laws like that - I never did like the language of ‘legalese’.

From Alex Berenson’s “Unreported Truths”

In the US, the CDC is recommending covid boosters again for everyone, even young people who have very low risk from covid. This time, these modified mRNA boosters haven’t even been tested on humans in clinical trials, yet incredibly, the FDA and CDC still approved them.

“At the same time, giving teenagers a million additional mRNA doses will cause anywhere from 100,000 to 200,000 cases of severe short-term side effects, such as fevers and nausea.

They will also cause anywhere from 50 to 300 cases of myocarditis severe enough to cause hospitalization (depending on which estimates and what mix of Pfizer and Moderna shots are used).

That math has led most of the world, including Japan, Germany, Britain, and Australia, to stop recommending Covid boosters for children and teenagers. In fact, the latter three countries no longer recommend Covid shots for the vast majority of people under 65.”

“All the panel experts agreed that the FDA rushed booster approval through without having a scrap of evidence of safety or efficacy.”

Gender denial

I put this under SCIENCE, but could just as easily have put it under FAITH, because it involves both. The science of biology says there are only 2 genders, male and female. The Bible says God created us male and female.

The Thomas More Society is suing the Escondito Union School District (EUSD) in California

“The district’s policy forces teachers to unquestionably comply with a young student’s self-proclaimed “social transition” …(in other words, gender identity)

…and then systematically deceive their parents about what is really going on at school, in an effort to hide from parents’ crucial information about their children’s health and well-being.”

Federal court judge Roger T. Benitez has granted a preliminary injunction until this is decided in court.

“The judge granted our request for a preliminary injunction, which means that EUSD—a K-8 school district—cannot require Elizabeth and Lori to deceive parents about their own children’s “gender identity.”

Even more, the court held specifically that: “A parent’s right to make decisions concerning the care, custody, control, and medical care of their children is one of the oldest of the fundamental liberty interests that Americans enjoy.”

…Judge Benitez put it perfectly in his injunction order.

EUSD’s Parental Exclusion Policy is a trifecta of harm…

It harms the child…

It harms the parents…

…and it harms the teachers who are forced to violate their conscience and religious beliefs when forced into this scheme of deception.”

FINANCE

investing vs speculating - the parable of the talents implies we can serve the Master by investing - assuming it’s for the right motives, and for giving generously, and for His glory

Dan Ferris, with Stansberry Research, has a good tutorial:

“Stock investors usually think of investment returns in terms of capital gains. But they don't often consider the source of those gains – the cash flows of the underlying business.

After reading Graham's books, I learned to think of investing as buying a stream of future cash flows. That's true for stocks, bonds, real estate, and any other investment.

The amount of cash you can get out of them over the life of the investment determines their value.

When the markets go haywire and prices crash or soar, it might not always seem that way. But over the long term, it's all about the cash flows.

If you're buying because you think (or predict) the price will go up, you're speculating.

If you're buying because the business is selling for an attractive valuation based on its underlying cash flows and you plan to hold for the long term, you're investing.”

Oil price rising

we still need oil and gas, and right now demand is greater than supply…

“The U.S. domestic index price for West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude slammed through the $90/bbl mark for the first time since November, 2022 Thursday, as extended cuts in exports by Saudi Arabia, Russia and a handful of other OPEC+ member nations had a deepening impact on global supply. At the same time, the international Brent index price approached $94/bbl in late day trading.

The impacts of the under supplied state of the market are becoming increasingly clear over time. Houston-based Bison Interests published a chart this week showing that overall U.S. crude inventories, including the 40-year low balance in the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, have now dropped to just roughly 46 days of national crude consumption, its lowest level since 1985...”

The Way the Wind's Blowing

Headwinds for Wind Farms

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