The biggest inconvenient truth about Al Gore's Oscar-winning
Inconvenient Truth was that it was largely propaganda -- lacking
scientific validity. But does that matter to the voters in the Academy,
most of whom
lack
college degrees, and some of whom, for example, leading liberal
Barbara Streisand
cannot even spell? Recall that Barack Obama called Republicans
members of the flat-earth society who do not believe in science.
Wind farms are not cheap, nor is the power they produce. On
account of the expensive nature of the absolutely necessary standby
power generation required by wind farms during so much of their
operating time, the power generated by wind farms is just about the most
expensive electric power imaginable that is on the market.
Alter NRG Corp. announces the finalization of the plant
siting for the first Integrated Gasification Combined Cycle (IGCC) power
facility in Canada.
TSXV - NRG CALGARY, Sept. 15 /CNW/ - Alter NRG Corp. (”Alter NRG” or the
“Company”) is pleased to announce that it has closed the previously announced
acquisition of a project site in Bruderheim, Alberta (approximately 60
kilometers northeast of Edmonton) for $3.1 million, including $0.6 million in
costs related to settlement of existing transmission commitments. The Company
plans to use the site to develop Canada’s first IGCC facility with the first
phase to be operational as early as 2010. On commencement of operations, the
facility is expected to be capable of producing approximately 120 megawatts (MW)
of electric power using a blend of natural gas as well as synthesis gas (syngas)
produced using Alter NRG’s proprietary plasma gasification technology. The
facility will be designed for carbon capture and storage (CCS) with
approximately 600,000 tonnes per year of captured CO2 to be injected into nearby
geological formations or used at nearby oilfields in enhanced oil recovery (EOR)
projects….
The proposal is of great concern to residents of Bruderheim and in the vicinity
of the proposed power generating plant.
35 Inconvenient Truths : The errors in Al Gore's movie
By Lord Monckton, UK
A spokesman for Al Gore has issued a questionable response to the news that
in October 2007 the High Court in London had identified nine “errors” in his
movie An Inconvenient Truth. The judge had stated that, if the UK Government had
not agreed to send to every secondary school in England a corrected guidance
note making clear the mainstream scientific position on these nine “errors”, he
would have made a finding that the Government’s distribution of the film and the
first draft of the guidance note earlier in 2007 to all English secondary
schools had been an unlawful contravention of an Act of Parliament prohibiting
the political indoctrination of children....
Ms. Kreider says the IPCC’s results are sometimes “conservative,” and continues:
“Vice President Gore tried to convey in good faith those threats that he views
as the most serious.” Readers of the long list of errors described in this
memorandum will decide for themselves whether Mr. Gore was acting in good faith.
However, in this connection it is significant that each of the 35 errors listed
below misstates the conclusions of the scientific literature or states that
there is a threat where there is none or exaggerates the threat where there may
be one. All of the errors point in one direction – towards undue alarmism. Not
one of the errors falls in the direction of underestimating the degree of
concern in the scientific community. The likelihood that all 35 of the errors
listed below could have fallen in one direction purely by inadvertence is less
than 1 in 34 billion....(Full
Story)
2008 06 12
The calculations done by General Circulation Models (GCMs) are
the main source of the information that fuels the global warming hysteria.
Nevertheless, not one of them comes acceptably close to accurately calculating
what the climate presently is at any location, let alone of the whole Earth.
Not only that, but all of the GCMs differ widely from one another as to what the
climate was in the past, and as to what it is supposed to be in the future.
Therein lies the problem. No one in his right mind will base any decisions
about the future on tools that cannot determine with acceptable accuracy what
the present is and the past was.
This is the most comprehensive
compendium of temperature graphs I have seen. It quite nicely illustrates
that the only constant of climate change is constant change. The graphs
cover records and reconstructions of temperatures covering intervals ranging
from 1980 - 2007 to 542 million years before the present to now. The
gallery shows ten graphs in all.
And, yes, there were times during the past 542 million years when it was much
hotter than it is now, but there were also times when it was much colder.
It is unavoidable to conclude that we will almost certainly soon have another
interval when it will be much colder than it presently is. In fact, the
current levelling-off of the global average annual temperature trend (something
that no self-respecting climate alarmist dares to tell the public about) could
well signify the beginning of that cold period to come.
Wind power and agriculturally-produced ethanol
By Walter Schneider
2007 09 27
Wind power produced from free wind, and ethanol produced from agricultural crops
grown specifically for the production of ethanol and not for food have been
hailed for a number of reasons and are being embraced by politicians, some
governments and even by the general public in the developed nations.
That will save the globe from pollution and stop global warming, especially when
"conventional wisdom" and "public opinion" are in full support of the drive
towards cleaner and cheaper alternative energy sources for general consumption.
All is well, and soon we will have sufficient, clean, renewable energy for cars,
trucks, farm tractors, trains and ships, and for the electric transmission- and
distribution networks. According to conventional wisdom and public
opinion, wind power costs nothing, and agricultural ethanol production is
cheaper, cleaner and safer than all other sources of conventional energy
production and consumption. However, hold on for just a moment.
Conventional wisdom and public opinion are not necessarily to be equated with
common sense. They are being manufactured by industry, politicians and
governments with the full support of the popular major media (including the
education system, which is in the process of educating a new generation to be
environmentally conscious).
Can we, as far as nations and humanity go, afford to have wind power and
agriculturally-produced ethanol replace all or even a substantial portion of the
products of conventional energy sources?
Take just two issues, both based solidly on reality and not on speculation or
propagandistic hype and hysteria:
Wind does not blow all the time or even always at desired or maximum
strength at any given location. The actual generating capacity of wind
turbines is only about one-third of their rated capacity (that varies a
little with location). Wind turbine installations are extremely
expensive. Not only that, but whatever generating capacity a wind farm
contracts for has to be backed up by standby generating capacity. The
price of standby generating capacity — produced when wind farms don't supply
sufficient amounts of energy — is extremely high, presently in the order of
20¢ per kWh, as high as or higher than the energy costs required to pay back
the capital and construction costs for wind turbines.
Ethanol production from agricultural crops is a growth industry and has
driven up grain prices. That is without a doubt welcomed by many
farmers, but it causes malnutrition and starvation amongst those for whom
regular food staples were already almost unattainable. Ethanol
production for fuel kills! China and other developing nations have outlawed
growing crops for ethanol production. However, that is not all.
Politically-correct estimates of the energy requirements for
ethanol production identify that about 23 percent more energy is required to
plant, grow, harvest and refine corn than the ethanol produced from that
corn contains. More objective and realistic calculations of net-energy
losses in ethanol production put those losses at a little over 70 percent
over the energy contained in ethanol.
To give everyone in the US the popularized blend of one-fifth
ethanol in motor fuel will require all of the agricultural land in the USA
to be used for motor fuel. Many people in Mexico, for example, now buy
pre-cooked Ichi-Ban noodles made and flavored in China because they can no
longer afford to buy tortillas produced in Mexico.
Hitler once asked his people: "What do you want: butter or cannons?" The
people thundered back: "Cannons!" We still mourn and celebrate the outcomes and
consequences of that decision.
Now, in ostensibly more enlightened times, the question put to the properly
conditioned people was: "What do you want: food or "green" cars?" The decision
was made, more or less just as spontaneously, and the costs of that war will be
far greater than that started by Hitler.
We already know what the consequences of the decision desired by the powers and
supported by environmentalists are. The question is whether there will be a
time when we mourn those consequences and celebrate their defeat. Nevertheless,
it is all for a good cause for which no price is too high: the reduction of
man-made contributions to global
warming, right?
Dire [global climate] forecasts aren't new
The Deniers -- Part XXIV
By LAWRENCE SOLOMON, Financial Post
Published: Friday, May 25, 2007
Germany's Hans von Storch, one of the world's leading climate scientists,
believes that climate change is for real and that humans are responsible. He
also believes that we shouldn't fear climate change, that predictions of
doom are "hysterical" when they aren't "completely idiotic and dubious," and
that many of the science establishment's pronouncements on climate change
are bereft of scientific merit....(Full
Story)
The National Post published a long series of articles on climate change, by
Lawrence Solomon:
The Deniers
The Post's series on scientists who buck the conventional wisdom on
climate science.
Here is the series so far (June 21, 2007).
To gain access to the the very latest version of the index of articles in the
series, got to the
National Post Index, scroll down to Current Features and then click
on Climate Change: The Deniers.
folc.ca
Deerland Peaking Station [North of Bruderheim]
By accident, I
came across the following information:
MAXIM is proposing to construct and operate a 190 MW natural gas-fired
power generation facility on a site immediately south of the existing
Deerland high voltage substation in Bruderheim, Alberta. The company has
obtained an option for the site and commenced a public consultation process
on July 26, 2007. MAXIM anticipates that the first phase (95 MW) will be
operational in 2009. The facility will use state-of-the-art combustion
turbine technology.
The article describes how the schools are being used to promote the
propaganda that fuels the global warming hype. The title of the
article indicated above should have been "Why did An Inconvenient
Truth become required classroom viewing?"
I started school in and during the Nazi regime. I learned as a
child how propaganda is made to work.
Hitler knew how propaganda is made
to work. He used that knowledge to indoctrinate a whole nation. Al Gore and his supporters
make propaganda work. Propaganda requires total indoctrination. It
best starts in schools.
Although the truth is a different and more important matter, it is
easily overpowered by never-ceasing, all-pervasive propaganda.
Some of the truth about global warming trends is that,
The most important greenhouse gas is water vapor (some of which
is visible as clouds). It constitutes about 1 percent of our
atmosphere.
CO2 constitutes about 0.038 percent of our
atmosphere. Depending on the sea temperatures, between 60 to
80 percent of CO2 in our atmosphere originates from the
oceans. A good portion of the rest comes from natural sources
such as volcanoes, forest fires and decaying vegetation. Roughly one
hundredth of the CO2 content of our atmosphere comes from
man's activities. That is a minuscule amount and can hardly be
credited with being a controlling influence that drives climate
change.
Sea levels increased by a grand total of 25mm to 30mm (about one
inch) since 1888.
More than 50 percent of the Earth's glaciers at high latitudes
are advancing, compared to only about 5 percent in the 1950s.
The average annual global temperature has increased by a total
of about 0.6°C (about 1°F)
in the last 100 years. Most of that temperature increase
occurred prior to the massive increase in
industrialization after the second world war.
The typical length of climatic cycles in the last 2 million
years was about 100,000 years, divided into 90,000 years for Ice Age
periods and 10,000 years for the warm, interglacial ones. Going by
the average length of the intermediate warm periods, the end of the
current warm period is already 500 years overdue.
Hitler stated that the purpose of propaganda is not to present the truth
with academic fairness. Fairness in the education system demands
that facts that oppose the climate-catastrophe television evangelism are
presented as well. As the National Post article identified above
indicates,
In B.C., a Surrey school trustee, Heather Stilwell, has been
fighting for a policy to ensure teachers in the Vancouver suburb
also present a balancing viewpoint.
Meanwhile, Vancouver-based businessman Michael Chernoff, says his
charitable foundation will provide to high schools DVD copies of the
new British documentary, The Great Global Warming Swindle, featuring
interviews with scientists who dissent from Mr. Gore's claims, as
soon as the producer is ready to ship the discs.
"And if they start sending [An Inconvenient Truth] to all
Canadian schools, then I'll buy a copy of Swindle for all the
schools, too," Mr. Chernoff says. "I think showing it is fine, but
they should present the other side as well."
But even with Mr. Chernoff 's gift, there's no requirement [for]
teachers to show both sides of the argument unless school boards
demand it....
(Full
Story — off-site)
A new tally of reported outages showed that about 900 services in the
Battle River REA service area experienced loss of electric power due to
last Wednesday's snow storm.
As of Apr. 23, a small area in Hampton (Roundhill) was left to be
restored.
About 600 services in the Battle River REA service area experienced loss
of electric power due to last Wednesday's snow storm. Between 80
to 100 power poles broke. A total of about 20 miles of power lines
were downed and needed to be repaired or reconstructed.
20 members in the area covered by the former Chipman REA area lost power
service. 16 of those services have been restored. In the Chipman area
about 5 miles of power lines had been downed and needed to be
reconstructed.
Almost all of the necessary repairs been made. The few remaining
outages are expected to be fixed by this evening. (Details)
Blackout persists southeast of city [of Edmonton] (3 p.m.)
Crews working to restore power to 3,500 customers
edmontonjournal.com
Published: Thursday, April 19, 2007
EDMONTON — About 3,500 Fortis Alberta customers are still without
electricity today.
The blackout, which earlier today affected much of Camrose county, rural
areas southeast of Edmonton, and the Boyle area north of Edmonton, is in
its 12th hour for some. Loss of power was staggered in each area.
Fortis Alberta spokeswoman Lisa Brake estimates half of Tofield, about
50 kilometres southeast of Edmonton, is back online....
(Full
Story — off-site)
ENMAX announces 1,200 MW Power Station
Calgary, 19 Apr 2007
ENMAX Energy today announced its intention to build a major generation
plant in southern Alberta to serve its growing customer base. The new
power plant will provide enough electricity for about two thirds of
Calgary’s requirements. It will be using the best available gas
technology and would produce 50% less CO2 than current coal plants.... (Full
Story — off-site)
Posted 2007 03 26
ISSUED BY ENVIRONMENT CANADA
AT 4:14 AM MDT MONDAY 26 MARCH 2007
Winter storm watch for:
Fort Saskatchewan-Vegreville-Redwater-Smoky Lake
SPRING STORM TUESDAY WITH POTENTIAL FOR HEAVY SNOW. THE
POTENTIAL FOR SEVERE WINTER WEATHER EXISTS OVER THESE REGIONS.
Posted 2007 02 26
Premier Ed Stelmach and King Canute not in
same
league
Their respective attempts to influence the forces
of nature differ in scope and objectives
Saturday, Feb. 24, 2006, Ed Stelmach, now the new Premier
of Alberta, said something more that is clearly not
compatible with, and contradicts, his 2002 promise of
"putting more money back into the pockets of Albertans". (Full
Story)
Plans for Indiana coal-gasification plant narrowed
to several sites
NIPSCO would purchase energy produced there
nwi.com, Saturday, February 17, 2007 1:15 AM CST
By The Associated Press
...Rosenberg's company is helping Indiana Gasification LLC develop a
coal-gasification plant that was expected to produce 40 billion cubic
feet of gas annually -- enough to meet 15 percent to 20 percent of the
state's natural gas needs.
Construction of the plant, which was announced in October, is
tentatively set to begin in 2008, with the plant going online three
years later. It would employ 300 to 400 workers....
"We need to be able to negotiate contracts for coal on a very long-term
basis, about 3 million tons annually over a 30-year period," said
Rosenberg, a senior fellow at Harvard University's John F. Kennedy
School of Government.
The plant would use southwestern Indiana's high-sulfur coal deposits,
but as part of the gas-extraction process, it would remove sulfur,
mercury, particulate matter and other pollutants, significantly reducing
its emissions.
The plant will mix coal with oxygen and water to create a coal slurry
that's treated with heat and pressure to extract gases the company said
are molecularly identical to natural gas. It will include a gas turbine
that produces steam to drive an electricity-generating turbine....(Full
Story)
Posted 2007 02 15
TVA adding
emissions controls to Rogersville plant
Wate, Knoxville, Tennesse,
February 14, 2007
ROGERSVILLE (WATE) -- The Tennessee Valley
Authority says a plan for adding new equipment at its John Sevier
Fossil Plant will reduce some emissions by as much as 95 percent.
TVA plans to install equipment to further reduce sulfur dioxide
emissions and nitrogen oxide emissions at the 712-megawatt plant in
Rogersville.
Sulfur dioxide contributes to the formation of acid rain and haze
problems. Nitrogen oxide contributes to ground-level ozone
pollution. (Full
Story
Posted 2007 02 14
BY MARK STEYN
Chicago Sun-Times Columnist
Chicago Sun-Times
February 11, 2007
Mark Steyn is not too impressed by the IPCC's recent publishing of a
"summary" on a climate change report awaiting to be published only a
few months from now. He writes:
Our Thought For The Week comes from the
Boston Globe's Ellen Goodman: "I would like to say we're at a
point where global warming is impossible to deny. Let's just say
that global warming deniers are now on a par with Holocaust
deniers, though one denies the past and the other denies the
present and future."
That would be yours truly: the climate holocaust denier. ...
It bothers Mark Steyn just a tiny wee bit that
global warming during the last century has not yet added up to more
than about a 1°F increase in annual average temperatures, and yet
many people the world over have their knickers in a knot over global
warming, but you better read
the full story.
The MIT article accessible through the first link in the preceding
quote concludes by stating: "There is also evidence that nuclear power
can be utilized in the production of oil from sand and shale."
That statement is incorrect, as oil can be recovered from oil- or tar
sand and from oil shale but not from sand and from shale that don't
contain oil or bitumen.
The intention of producing synthetic fuels through the application of
nuclear power to the generation of hydrogen through electrolysis of high
temperature steam and to the generation of carbon from captured CO2
is based on the false premise that the extremely large expenditures of
the energy required for that can be justified by staving off global
warming allegedly caused by CO2 emissions, as thereby large
volumes of CO2 would be prevented from entering the
atmosphere.
The reality of those circumstances is that man-made contributions
amount at worst to no more than about a quarter of observed global
warming and that a large portion of that contribution is due to waste
heat released through energy production but is not a consequence of CO2
released in combustion. Credible climate scientists with cooler
heads than those owned by climate alarmists assert that the vast majority of CO2 increases in
Earth's atmosphere are a consequence but not the cause of global
warming. (See Global Warming Explained: If
greenhouse gases are bad, how come rising CO2 levels increase
agricultural productivity?)
Posted 2007 02 09
Power to the people!
Province [of Alberta, Canada] will allow you to generate
own electricity at home
Edmonton Sun, 2007 02 09
The article states that,
ENMAX CEO Gary Holden told the federation [that is, the
Alberta Federation of Rural Electrification Associations — ed.]
that his company plans to install "smart meters" in homes to not
only allow consumers to sell the power they generate, but also to
enable them to take advantage of lower electricity prices at
off-peak hours.
Which says nothing about expectations that the default rate tariff
will climb within a short while to about 20¢ and even 40¢ per kWh, but
the story continues,
He said ENMAX plans to spend $50 million installing 350,000 smart
meters in Calgary homes this year.
The technology exists today for home-owners to generate much of the
electricity they require through solar shingles, wind turbines and
residential natural gas powered generators, Holden said....(Full
Story)
It will be somewhat difficult to have an appreciable portion of
Alberta home owners' energy requirements generated through natural gas
powered generators at their homes, given that Alberta gas reserves are
coming to an end within about ten years. In anticipation of that end, a
system whereby synthetic gas will be generated from coal to be mined at
the coal mine to be opened south of Tofield and Riley, south-east of
Edmonton is being launched. (See
Teachers, Sherritt team up on 'syngas', Globe & Mail, Jan. 17, 2007)
At the current rate of consumption (25 million tonnes per year),
Alberta's proven coal
reserves will last for more than 1,300 years.
A very attractive method of generating heat (or cooling) and electric
energy, using a Stirling engine as a source of power, is available from
a German manufacturer at a cost of €23,000 (with a generating capacity
of 15 kW). That would be enough capacity to run about three
average households, with either solar energy, natural gas or wood
pellets as a source of energy. The manufacturer asserts that its
Stirling engine will run for 80,000 hours without the need for
maintenance other than an annual oil change. Given that a Stirling
engine is not an internal combustion engine, that claim is quite within
the realm of the possible. (More
— 486 kB PDF file)
No doubt, similar schemes will become available at perhaps comparable
or even lower costs on the North-American market.
Posted 2007 01 16
Energy-purchase-contract
information session in Bruderheim rescheduled
The information session has been rescheduled to January 19, 2007
Battle River REA Invitation
Come for a coffee and sign your Battle River Energy Contract.
Employees of Battle River will be assisting a group of people, every
hour, beginning at 12:00, the next group of people would be at 1:00,
etc., until 7:00 p.m.
Please dare to compare before you attend
Price: 6.9 cents per kWh
Term: February 1, 2007 – December 31, 2007
Location: The Bruderheim “Boardroom” (formerly the Chatterbox Coffee
shop) 4924 – 51st Ave.
Date: Friday, January 19, 2007
(Weather Permitting)
Time: 12:00 – 8:00 p.m.
Toll Free Call: 1-877-428-3972
Battle River Rural Energy Division would like to inform members &
customers that they are free to select a retailer of their choice.
For more information about the changes to the electricity industry
and for a list of licensed Alberta retailers, visit the government
website at
www.customerchoice.gov.ab.ca or you can call 310-4455 (toll free
in Alberta)
Posted 2007 01 11
Today's energy-purchase-contract
information session in Bruderheim has been cancelled.
Due to today’s extreme
winter driving conditions, today's energy-purchase-contract information
session in Bruderheim for members of the Battle River REA in the areas
of the former Bruderheim- and Chipman REAs has been cancelled.
Please accept our
apologies for the cancellation.
A new date for the
information session will be set within the next two days and announced
at this web page.
In the meantime, if
you need contract forms and feel that you don't need assistance with
filling them out, contact the Battle River REA:
If you obtained
contract forms already and wish to have assistance in filling them out,
feel free to contact Walter Schneider for help (Tel: 796-2306; dial
413-9153 first if you wish to make a toll-free call from outside the
Bruderheim telephone exchange area).
The energy purchase
contract will provide you with a guaranteed electric energy price of
6.9¢kWh for the rest of the year 2007.
Posted 2007 01 10
The Alberta "Blizzard" of January
10, 2007
Weather conditions 2007 01 10, 09:30
Temp.: -14°C
Wind Speed: about 10 - 15kmh
Light snow
Visibility about 400m
The Bruderheim School is open, school buses are not running
For the past two days we were being prepared for today's snow storm.
It had been announced as a blizzard.
We have become accustomed to the inability of forecasters to
accurately forecast weather conditions a day or more into the future.
As to be expected, as of this morning the weather conditions do not
quite measure up to what had been predicted.
Without a doubt, weather conditions are bad in most parts of
northern, central and eastern Alberta, but they don't quite measure up
to the conditions that make the current storm a blizzard.
With the news announcers having been conditioned by their weather
forecasters that this storm was to be a blizzard, the news announcers
almost without exception keep on insisting that the current snow storm
is a blizzard. For most of Alberta the storm is bad, but it is not
a blizzard.
Depending on location, specific standards apply for the conditions
that must be met before a winter storm can be classified as a blizzard.
For Canada, the second one of the standards shown below applies:
Precipitation
Visibility
Wind Speed
Temperature
Duration
1.) "A major consensus" (apparently in use in much of
the US)
...Brown ["at the Earth Policy Institute, a little-known Washington
think-tank with an excellent track record for spotting potential
environmental disasters."] says a distillery moratorium is urgently
needed because new projections forecast that the global auto industry's
appetite for corn-based fuel will rival that of humans by 2008....the
uncontrolled growth of Big Ethanol will wreak havoc on the global
economy with near apocalyptic implications for the world's nearly 2
billion chronically malnourished people....With corn supplies tightening
fast, Brown says rising prices will hit not only products made directly
from corn such as breakfast cereals, but those from animals that rely on
corn for sustenance - including pork, poultry, beef, milk, eggs and
cheese....Filling a 25-gallon tank on one midsize vehicle consumes
enough grain to feed an Egyptian peasant for a year. Yet converting the
entire U.S. grain harvest - corn, rice, wheat, barley and oats - to
ethanol would supply only 16 percent of America's motoring fuel....
Full Story (That link no longer function, and an archived copy of
the article cannot be found.)
Posted 2006 12 31
Carl Purschke, a director of the Bruderheim REA,
passed away early this morning at the Lamont hospital.
Battle River REA is looking for housing for their
staff who will be operating the Lamont maintenance centre.
Effective January 1, 2007, the Bruderheim REA will be amalgamated
with Battle River REA. Battle River REA is setting up a maintenance centre
(south of Lamont) for trouble-shooting and constructing electrical
distribution facilities in the rural areas near Bruderheim, Chipman,
Fort Saskatchewan and Lamont.
If you own a rural family home in these areas that you wish to rent
to a lineman and his family, please call Battle River REA (toll-free, 24
hours a day, 1-877-428-3972) and let them know.
Posted 2006 12 09
Efforts to provide assistance with
filling out forms for energy purchase contracts were a great success.
Saturday, Dec 9, 2006, The Chipman and Bruderheim REAs held a workshop at the Chipman Senior Centre, to assist people who wished to have that
assistance with filling out the forms required for their energy purchase
contract.
A great number of people dropped in at the workshop, and I met many
people whom I had not seen for a good number of years. The workshop was
a success. When the doors of the senior centre could finally be closed
that day at about 3 p.m., 134 contracts had been signed.
In the meantime, energy price fluctuations are on the upswing. Epcor
announced that its price per kWh for the regulated rate tariff for
January will increase to more than 9 cents per kWh and that the February
price for the regulated rate tariff will climb to more than 11 cents per
kWh. (Details
on that of interest to owners of farm services in Fortis service areas
- PDF file, off-site)
According to Mr. Fluckinger from the Alberta Government, everything is
going according to plan with the deregulation of the electricity services, and we
can expect that within short order the price per kWh of electric energy
will increase to 20 and 40 cents per kWh.
Good for the people who signed energy purchase contracts with Battle
River REA. They will have the assurance that their electricity rate
will be at 6.9 cents per kWh from January 1 to December 31, 2007.
Remember that time before deregulation got crammed down our throats?
Let me refresh you memory. In Dec. 2000 the cost of electric
energy to farm services was 2.92 cents per kWh, and our total bill for
our electricity services that month (990kWh) was for $78.99.
Isn't deregulation great, and don't we have much to be thankful for to
our glorious Alberta government that is so firmly committed to "put more
money back into the pockets of Albertans"? (Statement
by Ed Stelmach)
Posted 2006 11 25
Final meter reading for
electricity services in the areas of the Bruderheim and Chipman REAs
During the week between Christmas and New Year 2006 meter readers and
linemen of the Battle River REA will come around to members of the
Bruderheim- and Chipman REAs to take the final meter reading for 2006.
The readings will serve to reconcile the final power bill for 2006 for
service locations in the areas of the Bruderheim and Chipman REAs
(presently served by Fortis Alberta and Epcor). In addition, those
readings will also serve as the starting points for electricity bills
that Battle River REA will be issuing after January 1, 2007.
When the Fort Saskatchewan REA amalgamated a few years ago with Battle
River REA, the final meter reading in that service area showed that
electric services in the area of the Fort Saskatchewan REA had overpaid
on average just about exactly a thousand dollars. The members of
the Fort Saskatchewan REA received a reimbursement of the overpaid
amount.
Although it is possible that the members of the Bruderheim and
Chipman REAs overpaid as well and will then also receive a reimbursement
of the overpaid amount, it is not expected that the overpaid amount will
be quite as large as it was in the case of the Fort Saskatchewan REA.
The load settlement procedures designed and implemented under the
deregulation process have been sufficiently refined to make it quite
unlikely that billing discrepancies now will be as large as those
experienced a few years ago. At any rate, the final meter reading
to be taken by Battle River REA now will make it possible to identify
and settle discrepancies between billed and actual consumption figures,
no matter what their size may be.
Posted 2006 11 23
Need assistance with filling out the forms for the
energy purchase contract?
Help will be available December 9th, 2006, at the Chipman Senior
Centre; Time: 9 a.m. to 2 p.m.
Battle River REA and Chipman REA will at that time and location hold a seminar to provide
assistance to people who may wish to have someone assist them with
filling out the forms for the energy purchase contract with Battle River
REA.
___________________
Battle River Rural Energy Division would like to inform current
and future members & customers that they are free to select a
retailer of their choice. For more information about the changes to
the electricity industry and for a list of licensed Alberta
retailers, visit the government's website at
www.customerchoice.gov.ab.ca or you can call 310-4455 (toll free in
Alberta).
Posted 2006 11 23
Battle River REA Energy Supply
Contracts very popular
Battle River REA just a little while ago stated in its newsletter
that members of the Bruderheim REA and Chipman REA can now apply for
energy supply contracts with Battle River REA. The offer of energy at
6.9¢ per kWh is being enthusiastically accepted by the membership of the
two REAs. Already more than 150 members asked to have application
forms sent to them, and more than 30 of them signed energy supply
contracts.
The popularity of the offer should not surprise anyone.
Consider that the Registered Rate Tariff, the default rate charged by
Epcor for farm services is now in the order of 8.778¢ per kWh and has
been increasing on a monthly basis, while the contract price available
through Battle River REA is a rate that is considerably lower and fixed
for a whole year.
For details regarding the contract offer, or to obtain a set of
application forms, contact Battle River REA at 1-877-428-3972 (e-mail;
website)
Don't forget, to be able to get energy at the rate of 6.9¢ per kWh
by Jan. 1st, your completed and signed application must be returned to
Battle River REA before Dec.19th, 2006.
Battle River REA gets ready to set up maintenance centre in Lamont
County
Battle River REA, in connection with the
amalgamation of the Battle River-, Bruderheim- and Chipman REAs,
entered into a lease agreement with Lamco Gas Coop Ltd, south of the
Town of Lamont.
The agreement covers space for a maintenance centre for electrical
distribution facilities in rural areas surrounding Fort Saskatchewan
(amalgamated with Battle River REA some years ago) and those of the
amalgamated REAs in the County of Lamont.
Posted 2006 10 21
Deregulation expensive for small consumers and risky for big business
Canexus Income Fund Announces Third Quarter Results
CNW Group, 2006 10 20
From the announcement:
Expenses and Other Income: General and administrative
costs were up slightly from the second quarter of 2006 and in line
with expectations. Interest expenses incurred on credit facility
borrowings were higher in the third quarter of 2006 as compared to
the second quarter due to higher average borrowings outstanding in
the quarter and higher borrowing costs. Other income includes the
impact of our foreign currency management programs. In addition
we recorded a mark-to-market loss of $0.3 million on electricity
forward rate swap contracts entered into to protect our exposure to
deregulated electricity prices in Alberta for 2007. We
have entered into electricity forward rate swap contracts covering
over 70% of our 2007 electricity requirements for our Bruderheim,
Alberta plant. In Brazil, due to the planned maintenance
outage, we were able to purchase electricity in excess of our
requirements at our contracted rates and resell it into the spot
power market for a gain of $0.5 million.... (my emphasis --WHS)
(Full
Story)
Money can be made and lost in the electricity market, but in the end
it is always the little people that bear the consequences in one way or
another. Enron had used the deregulated electricity market in
Alberta to make about $50 million in an hour's worth of trading, in a
pilot project for far bigger trading ventures it entered into later that
gained it infamy, ultimately caused its collapse and large numbers of
investors to lose their life savings.
Things don't always turn out good for those more well-intentioned but
forced to speculate in the futures market for electricity. In June
2006 Superior Plus Inc. announced that ERCO Worldwide would
close its Bruderheim sodium chlorate manufacturing facility
late 2006, removing 80,000 tons of sodium chlorate from the market. (ErcoWorldwide-news,
Updates:
Nov. 2006)
Superior Income trust stated in its 2005 annual report that,
"electricity comprises 70% to 90% of variable production costs," while
they stated in their 2004 annual report that, "electricity comprises 75%
to 85% of variable production costs. The vagaries and costs of the
deregulated electricity market were identified as a major factor in the
decision to close Erco Worldwide's Bruderheim sodium chlorate plant.
About 50 jobs are being lost as a result.
Posted 2006 09 19
Ethanol scam?
The September 19, 2006 issue of the Edmonton Journal carried a small
article titled "Researchers unveil ethanol-only tractor" (p. A5).
The article states that,
The Saskatchewan Research Council has unveiled a prototype of
what it says is the first tractor to run entirely on ethanol.
Ethanol is a high octane, waterfree alcohol made primarily from
grains and other renewable agricultural stock.
The year-long project involved converting a regular 20-year-old
diesel tractor to the more energy-efficient model.
The article triggers two concerns.
If a tractor running on ethanol can be made to be more energy
efficient, could the same not be done also with one running on
diesel? However, a far more important concern is that,
Agricultural ethanol production for motor fuel is far from being
a clear and obvious solution to shortages of energy supplies.
About 71% more energy is required to produce a gallon of
ethanol than the energy that is contained in a gallon of
ethanol. (Pimentel, 1998)
The ratio of production of energy vs. input of energy for energy
produced from fossil fuel is perhaps worse, but it does not
require the vast area of crop land to satisfy the requirements
if ethanol were used to replace all conventional motor fuel for
cars.
To fuel one car with ethanol for one year means that nearly
7-times more cropland would
be required to fuel one car than is needed to feed one American
(USDA, 1996).
Assuming a net production of 50 gallons of fuel per acre of corn,
and assuming that all cars in the United States were fueled with
ethanol, a total of approximately 2 billion acres of cropland
would be required to provide the corn feedstock. This amount of
acreage is more than 5-times all the cropland that is actually
and potentially available for all crops in the future in the
United States. (Pimentel, 1998)
See also: Smell of
Gigantic Hoax in Government Ethanol Promotion (189
kB PDF file at 21st Century Science & Technology), by Laurence Hecht
Posted 2006 09 16
Looking for high-speed Internet Access in rural central Alberta?
There is a new telecommunication-service provider who can give you wireless
high-speed access in Lamont County and elsewhere in central Alberta.
(See
service areas)
The following provides you with a bit more information on that.Ethanol
15/09/2006 8:54 PM
....Alberta Communications put up a tower on the Agricore elevator
at Star, and have been doing installations ever since.
A couple of weeks ago I phoned Telus to see when they would be
providing high speed to us "rural customers" and the young fart I
got on the phone said "NEVER" and, when I commented on that,
helpfully suggested....."well, you could relocate somewhere nearer
an urban area".
Welcome to my blog! This is going to be my personal
leadership campaign diary.
I'm going to write about the things I see and hear and the
people I meet. I'll respond to some of your questions and let
you know what part of the province I'm visiting. Hopefully we'll
meet in person!
Certainly feels like the campaign has started! Over the
course of the day I've attended two fundraisers, shot up north
where I met up with Mike Cardinal and went on to meet the Town
Council in Gibbons. Then off to a coffee and donut session with
Mike in Redwater. I also had the chance to meet with the MS
Society, the Canadian Federation of Independent Business and a
group representing Rural Electrification Associations (REA's)
and Gas Co-ops.
A word on REA's... many folks in the cities might not know
that REA's are not-for-profit cooperatives that own an electric
distribution system (the wires that run to your house) and
supply power to members in a rural region or new subdivision of
Alberta. There are 63 REA's serving electricity customers in
rural Alberta.
In all the hubbub over deregulation it's easy to forget that
these 63 non-profit corporations exist around the province
providing service and prices that rival the 'big players' in the
industry. And the REA's are holding their own against
competition. Here's to rural Alberta's entrepreneurs!
By the way, rural residents in portions of Lamont County are
being served by REAs and Lamco Gas. Residents of any of the
towns in Lamont County are not being served by REAs and Lamco Gas.
We had the opportunity to inform Jim Dinning, amongst other
things, that the deregulation of utilities was less than a total
success, and that in consequence utility bills increased on Jan 1,
2001 to about three times (and stayed there) what they had been
before deregulation was imposed on us. That is a great hardship for
retirees and other people with limited or fixed incomes, of which
rural communities have a share that is far greater than the
provincial average.
We have met with other leadership candidates during the past little
while and will meet with others during the next few weeks.
Posted 2006 08 31
The
strategy of using food as a weapon made another step in its
transformation from the planning stage to reality.
Monsanto Buys ‘Terminator’ Seeds Company
- by F. William Engdahl - 2006-08-27
The US Government has been financing research on a genetic
engineering technology which, when commercialized, will give its
owners the power to control the food seed of entire nations or
regions.
....With Terminator patent rights, once a country such as
Argentina or Brazil or Iraq or the USA or Canada opened its doors to
the spread of GMO patented seeds among its farmers, their food
security would be potentially hostage to a private multinational
company, a company which, for whatever reasons, especially given its
intimate ties to the US Government, might decide to use ‘food as a
weapon’ to compel a US-friendly policy from that country or group of
countries.
Sound far-fetched? Go back to what then-Secretary of State Henry
Kissinger did in countries like Allende’s Chile to force a regime
change to a ‘US-friendly’ Pinochet dictatorship by withholding USAID
and private food exports to Chile. Kissinger dubbed it ‘food as a
weapon.’ Terminator is merely the logical next step in food weapon
technology.
The role of the US Government in backing and financing Delta & Pine
Land’s decades of Terminator research is even more revealing. As
Kissinger said back in the 1970’s, ‘Control the oil and you can
control entire Continents. Control food and you control people…’
In a June 1998 interview, USDA spokesman, Willard Phelps, defined
the US Government policy on Terminator seeds. He explained that USDA
wanted the technology to be ‘widely licensed and made expeditiously
available to many seed companies.’ He meant agribusiness GMO giants
like Monsanto, DuPont or Dow. The USDA was open about their reasons:
They wanted to get Terminator seeds into the developing world where
the Rockefeller Foundation had made eventual proliferation of
genetically engineered crops the heart of its GMO strategy from the
beginnings of its rice genome project in 1984. ....
(Full
Story — off-site)
In a scientific breakthrough that has stunned the world, a team of
South African scientists has developed a revolutionary new, highly
efficient solar power technology that will enable homes to obtain all
their electricity from the sun.
Full Story (off-site) and
related comments and links)
Posted 2006 08 12
The death of the electric car
By Finlo Rohrer
BBC News Magazine; 2006 08 04
Electric cars were once widely touted as the solution to all our
pollution ills and energy concerns. Now they're not. A new documentary
asks what happened? (Full
Story — off-site)
2006 07 21
Beware of predatory energy sales schemes
Competitive- or Predatory Marketing of Electric
Energy?
Amalgamation of the Battle River REA, the Bruderheim REA and the Chipman
REA is a fact
The three REAs all voted in favour of amalgamation. As the
terms of existing contracts for energy and services for Bruderheim REA
and for Chipman REA will not run out until later this year, the
amalgamation will not become effective until January 1, 2007.
Final meter readings will be taken at the end of 2006, probably
during the period between Christmas and the end of the year.
Except for the final electricity bill for December 2006, all
electricity bills received by members of the Bruderheim and Chipman REAs
will from January 2007 on be issued by Battle River REA. Battle
River REA will do the meter reading as well as the billing and moreover
will include a copy of a monthly newsletter with each bill.
2006 07 21
The Chipman REA Amalgamation Meeting voted in favour of
amalgamation
Yesterday, July 20, 2006, at a special general meeting, the board of
directors and the members of the Chipman REA voted in favour of
amalgamating with Bruderheim REA and with Battle River REA.
49 votes were given. Of those, 47 were in favour of
amalgamation and two votes were opposed.
2006 07 19
The Bruderheim REA Amalgamation Meeting voted in favour of
amalgamation
Yesterday, July 18, 2006, at a special general meeting, the board of
directors and the members of the Bruderheim REA voted in favour of
amalgamating with Chipman REA and with Battle River REA.
48 votes were given. Of those, 47 were in favour of
amalgamation and one vote was opposed.
2006 06 29
The Battle River REA Amalgamation Meeting voted in favour of
amalgamation
Yesterday Bill McDougall, I and our wives attended the Battle River
REA 2006 Annual General Meeting and their Special Amalgamation
Membership Meeting.
269 members and guests attended initially. Of those, 121 were members
that were eligible to vote on amalgamation.
The Battle River REA AGM was held from 6 pm to 8:30 pm. Because of
the distances they had to travel to get back home, a few members left
after the AGM was adjourned.
The Battle River REA Special Amalgamation Membership Meeting was held
from about 8:30 pm to about 9:00 pm. 115 votes were cast. All votes
were in favour of amalgamating with Chipman REA and Bruderheim REA. No
votes were opposed.
Make sure to mark your calendars for our Special Amalgamation Membership
Meeting, 7 pm, July 18, 2006, at the Bruderheim Memorial Centre (also
called Bruderheim Community Hall) on Queen Street.
On a related issue, the signing of the updated service contracts is
progressing well. No more than close to 70 contracts still need to
be signed. Service contracts must be signed by the landowners, not
by renters.
New contract forms for members whose present service contracts do not
agree with what is on record regarding land title records had been sent
out to all affected members in the Bruderheim REA.
There have been a few inquiries as to why the updated service contracts
need to be signed. In a nutshell, here is the reason for signing:
if you are eligible and wish to receive the estimated $1,400 refund per
member, your signature better be on the contract. Furthermore, you
will be eligible for voting at the Special Amalgamation Meeting of the
Bruderheim REA only if your contract is signed.
If your contract has not yet been signed by you, contracts requiring to
be signed will be available for signing when you register at the
Bruderheim REA Special Amalgamation Meeting July 18.
More information (see update below) will be posted at this web page when the meeting
notices for all members of the Bruderheim REA have been mailed out.
That should be no later than tomorrow, June 30th.
Bruderheim REA contemplates amalgamating with a larger REA
The Directors of the Bruderheim REA met November 23, 2005 to discuss,
amongst other things, the feasibility of amalgamating the Bruderheim REA
with a larger REA. No decision has of yet been made as to which
larger REA will be approached with the proposal to amalgamate with the
Bruderheim REA. However, it was decided that in the interest of the
members of the Bruderheim REA amalgamation will offer advantages through
economy of scale.
The issue of amalgamation will be pursued mainly for two reasons:
The business of providing electrical services to the members of a
Rural Electrification Association has become very complex and very
expensive on account of the deregulation of the electricity industry
imposed by the Government of Alberta. The directors of the
Bruderheim REA, as in many other smaller REAs, are advancing in age.
Replacements are hard to come by.
Moreover, the increasing complexity and expense of the electricity
industry require more and more involvement by individual directors.
A larger REA is better able to look after the interests of rural
electricity consumers, mainly because a larger REA will have a
complement of full-time staff.
A larger REA is able to provide a comprehensive package of services
to rural electricity consumers. An REA as small as the Bruderheim
REA can't do that and must instead rely on contractors, and on the
subcontractors hired in turn by them, to perform the services required
to keep its electricity distribution system operational.
A larger REA will have its own staff to do meter reading and
billing, power line maintenance and construction, as well as have the
ability to provide electricity at attractive rates, quite possibly more attractive than
the electric energy rates we can obtain through Epcor, currently the
only
supplier of electric energy available to the Bruderheim REA for REA members who don't wish to buy power
through an alternative energy provider.
As a result of that, the amounts shown on the bottom line on the
power bills received by members of the Bruderheim REA will be very
likely be lowered through amalgamation and, in the long run, stay lower
in comparison to the trend we have experienced and will otherwise
experience. That is not only due to better economy of scale but
also because an REA is not obligated to provide a financial return to
shareholders. REAs are non-profit organizations.
Visit this page again to read updates on the progress of the
amalgamation process as time goes on. If you wish to receive more
detailed updates with respect to amalgamation issues as the amalgamation
process evolves, (or call 796-2306) and ask to be subscribed to the
amalgamation e-mail list (it's just a distribution list, not a discussion forum
or chat room). The mailing
list will be open only to members of the Bruderheim REA. We hope to
hear from you.
2005
10 16
Heating Fuel Cost Comparison Calculator
A web page with a spreadsheet that permits to
calculate the cost of the heat value delivered by a furnace or heating
appliance has been added to the web pages of the Bruderheim REA.
The rising energy costs affect heating fuel prices and consume a
steadily increasing portion of our disposable income. It is high
time that we do our best to choose the fuel that heats our homes at the
lowest possible costs. Full Story
2005 05 10
Michael Woitas, the president of the
Bruderheim REA, passed away May 9th, 2005
calgary news – 2005 08 31
Rising heating costs may leave seniors in the cold
CALGARY (mytelus.com) – With natural gas heating costs set to double, the
executive director of Seniors United Now has warned that some people on
low, fixed retirement incomes may have to choose between food or heat.
Ron Ellis noted the on-again, off-again
provincial government home heating assistance plan only applies in the
winter, while prices are already marching up.
ATCO Gas North just applied for a rate
increase for customers in central and northern Alberta while Direct Energy
won approval for a September rate hike of nearly $10 per gigajoule.
__________________
[Check: Fuel Cost Comparison
Calculator and the Alberta Government Natural Gas Rebate Forms &
Guides. Keep in mind that any rebate paid out comes out of tax
revenues paid by taxpayers.
Isn't deregulation great?]
2005 05 01
Climate Experts Speak Out in New Video - Science
underlying Kyoto Protocol seriously flawed
Climate Catastrophe Cancelled: What You're Not Being
Told About the Science of Climate Change
A press release (and video) by researchers at the University of
Calgary, in cooperation with the Friends of Science Society (original date
of release 2005 04 13)
Full Story
(off-site)
According to Space.com,
"the recent trend of
a .05 percent per decade increase in Total Solar Irradiance (TSI) ...
was measured between successive solar minima that occur approximately
every 11 years." As the chart shows,
the solar minimum of the mid-1990s was hotter than the previous minimum
of the mid-1980s. Solar minima provide the opportunity for the Earth to
`cool off' after the enhanced radiation of a solar maximum; however, the
strong radiation of the 1990s minimum has kept earth's climate `on the
boil' so to speak....
Environmentalists can't save
Kyoto: Without Russia, the global deal is dead and green lobbyists
have to accept it
By Lorne Gunter
...Russia's
objections to Kyoto are threefold, not merely economic. Russia's economy
has recently begun to grow rapidly -- in the range of seven to 10 per
cent a year. It could double by 2010, bringing Russian per capita income
on a par with that of its eastern and central European neighbours. To
bind itself to Kyoto now, Russia would have to forego such growth.
That's enough justification for remaining outside Kyoto....
Willis Eschenbach shows that the global
surface temperature record is riddled with errors and that it just doesn't
measure up to the quality of the satellite-measured temperature data that
has been compiled since 1979. There isn't much global
warming, and what of it exists is obviously not due to CO2
emissions, or else, according to the IPCC, the polar regions would be
showing the largest temperature increases over time. Instead, the
Arctic temperatures are showing only marginal increases, while the
Antarctic experiences a cooling trend.
Full Story The
link to that web page no longer functions. The page had been
archived in the Internet archive, but the archived version is not always
accessible. Here is
a more a expansive compendium of research and commentaries on the
quality of the global surface temperature records.
A summary of
satellite-measured temperature-trend data compiled by the NASA Global
Hydrology and Climate Center agrees with the conclusions reached by Willis Eschenbach....
(Unfortunately, the link no longer functions, and it has so far not been
possible to find a copy of the article)
This link
will lead to an article that presents some of the uncertainties that
prevent accurate modelling of global atmosperic circulation and
long-term forecasts.
Caution: Reading this article may prove dangerous to your
perceptions about nuclear power, energy in general, and low-grade but
well-heeled environmental activism.
Full Story
2003 10 10
More on cheap solar
power
A closer look at the announcement by STMicroelectronics shows that
there is more to the story than first meets the eye. However, if the
announced technological breakthrough materializes, it will still quite
possibly be attractive. Full
Story
By
Sherwood, Keith and Craig Idso Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide and Global Change Editorial Commentary Volume 6, Number 37: 10 September 2003
...[T]wo scientists from the Institute of Solar-Terrestrial
Physics of the Siberian Division of the Russian Academy of Sciences
challenge the politically-correct global warming dogma that vexes the
entire world. Bashkirtsev and Mashnich (2003) say that "a number of
publications report that the anthropogenic impact on the Earth's climate
is an obvious and proven fact," when in actuality, in their opinion,
"none of the investigations dealing with the anthropogenic impact on
climate convincingly argues for such an impact."....
In light of these several sets of real-world observations, we
would not be at all surprised to find that Bashkirtsev and Mashnich will
indeed be proven correct in their prediction of imminent, if not
already-in-progress, global cooling.
New study puts paid to overheated theories on climate change
By Lorne Gunter
It's the sun. And apparently the stars, too. But that
shouldn't surprise anyone, since the stars after all are just other planets' suns.
Fluctuating levels of solar and stellar radiation are the cause of climate change on
Earth, not rising carbon dioxide levels. Ebbs and flows in the sun's energy raise and
lower Earth's temperature far more than CO2 ever could, according to an extensive new
study by Jan Veizer, a University of Ottawa geologist and paleoclimatologist, and Nir
Shaviv, an astrophysicist at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem....
Full Story)
2003 06 14
The Alberta deregulation
fiasco revisited
Not much has changed since it got launched. It remains a fiasco.
The Report, January 22, 2001, pp.
36, 41
Alberta's self-inflicted crisis
The government's costly electricity fiasco provides a national example of
how not to deregulate electricity
Power line construction always cost us, but now the costs that the Alberta
government wants Alberta consumers to pay will be for the construction of transmission
lines used to export electrical energy from where it will be generated, in Fort Mc
Murray, to be exported to the USA. Full Story
2003 04 29
The
British are coming! Actually, they are here already.
Edmonton Journal
ATCO seeks approval to sell gas, power arms
Calgary: The Atco group of companies announced Friday it has filed an
application with regulators to sell its gas and electricity retail businesses to Direct
Energy. Direct and Atco agreed in December to a $128.5-million deal that would see
Direct—a Canadian subsidiary of a British company—pick up Atco’s one
million retail customers. The agreement was contingent on the province revising
legislation to permit the sale. Atco has decided to focus on delivery systems in power and gas. If the Energy
and Utilities Board approves the deal, Direct would become Alberta’s third retail
marketer after Epcor and Enmax.
Angela Fearon Olthoff
Administrative Assistant, AFREA
2003 04 29
No evidence in sight that the Arctic is
warming. To the contrary...cooling, cooling everywhere!
Arctic Temperature Trends — Summary
By the Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide and Global Change
A long succession of climate models has
consistently suggested that CO2-induced global
warming should be significantly amplified in earth's polar regions, and
that the first signs of man's expected impact on the world's weather
should thus be manifest there. In the words of Meadows (2001), "the
place to watch for global warming - the sensitive point, the canary in
the coal mine - is the Arctic." In addition, the IPCC-endorsed
temperature history of Mann et al. (1998, 1999) suggests that
earth's temperature has been gradually declining since the Middle Ages,
but that it began an "unprecedented" warming around 1910 that has taken
mean global temperatures to their highest level in perhaps the past two
millennia (Mann
and Jones, 2003). In light of these claims, if they are indeed
true, we should have no trouble at all detecting a huge increase
in the mean temperature of the Arctic over the 20th century, and
especially its last two decades; so let's take a look and see what we
can learn from studies of past temperatures in that northernmost part of
the world.
Full Story
Middle Ages were warmer than today,
say scientists
By Robert Matthews, Science Correspondent (Filed: 06/04/2003)
Claims that man-made pollution is causing "unprecedented"
global warming have been seriously undermined by new research which shows that the Earth
was warmer during the Middle Ages....
This announcement followed research published in 1998, when scientists at
the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia declared that the 1990s had
been hotter than any other period for 1,000 years.
Such claims have now been sharply contradicted by the most comprehensive
study yet of global temperature over the past 1,000 years. A review of more than 240
scientific studies has shown that today's temperatures are neither the warmest over the
past millennium, nor are they producing the most extreme weather - in stark contrast to
the claims of the environmentalists....
Dr. Theodor Landscheidt from the Schroeter Institute for Research in
Cycles of Solar Activity predicts that it will remain dry until 2007, upon
which there will be seven to eight years of wet weather followed by another dry period
that will peak in the 2025-2030 interval. There are good reasons to believe
the prediction. Unlike the general circulation models used by climate alarmists, Dr.
Landscheidt's forecasting technique produced other predictions that were right on the
nose. Moreover, his technique accurately simulates the climate the way it was –
going back to the year 1900, a level of accuracy that the climate alarmists still only
dream of and hope to be able to achieve if only they were to receive increased funding
from our hard-earned tax-dollars.
More
2003 03 05
Determining the Growth
Response of Trees to Elevated CO2: The Need for Long-Term Experiments,
Sherwood, Keith and Craig Idso
Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide and Global Change Editorial Comment, Volume 6, Number 10: 5 March 2003
A long-term study of the growth response of trees to eleveated levels of CO2
provides,
repeatedly, surprising results.
Full Story
The speech is not exactly news, but its words still present accurate facts
in the debate over global warming. Given that during the time since no other
Canadian politician offered anything better, it is perhaps the best statement available to
us today on the state of affairs of the politics of global warming. Here is some of
what Preston Manning said:
...climatologists observe that global temperatures in the 1960s and 1970s were cooler
than in the 1950s. If you go back and look at their literature, particularly the popular
literature of that period, the global warming theory lost ground during those years to the
ice age theory.
Books such as Ice by Sir Fred Hoyle, an eminent scientist,
The Cooling
by Lowell Ponte, The Genesis Strategy by Stephen Schneider,[1] all purporting to
be based on solid science, argued that global temperatures were falling, not rising.
In 1988 however - and I am talking mainly about the North American context; you can
follow a line of development in Europe and other parts of the world - the global warming
theory regained attention from testimony before the U.S. Senate energy subcommittee of the
commerce committee by James Hansen, head of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies.
____________________
1.) Dr. Stephen Schneider, although he was in the 1970s one of the most prominent
advocates of the theory of the coming ice age and all of the hype that accompanied that
theory, is today one of the most outspoken advocates of the opposite of that, global
warming and all of the hype that accompanies that theory.
So, depending on which day or year you listen to people like Dr. Schneider (thankfully,
he is not my relative), you have your choice of being scared of freezing to death or of
being scared of baking to death. Nothing illustrates the lack of professional
integrity in the endeavours of the climate alarmists better than a famous statement Dr.
Schneider made in an interview with Discover magazine (quoted more extensively in
Preston Manning's speech) from which I quote here:
...we have to get some broad based support, to capture the public's
imagination.
That, of course, entails getting loads of media coverage. So we have to offer
up scary scenarios, make simplified, dramatic statements, and make little mention of any
doubts we might have. This "double ethical bind" that we frequently find
ourselves in cannot be solved by any formula. Each of us has to decide what the right
balance is between being effective and being honest.
How is that for rationalizing support for either or both of totally
opposed theories? Even David Suzuki couldn't have said it any better, and he is one
of the best climate alarmists we have. In other words, the truth doesn't matter,
what matters is what the climate alarmists and the politicians and government bureaucrats
supporting and funding them want us to believe in.
It is too bad that Preston Manning could not become our prime minister.
It appears that there was and still is none better for the position.
The net difference to the average Albertan (every man, woman or child) of
federal transfer payments is currently a net loss of $2,900 annually. It is anyone's
guess to what levels that loss will climb on account of the Kyoto accord.
The rising prices for fuel, electricity and heating our houses are a good
indicator of worse things to come.
The price increases ... needed to bring energy consumption down to Kyoto levels will
reduce annual real net household income by about $2,700 annually. In light of the fact
that Kyoto yields no economic or environmental benefits this is obviously a bad deal for
Canadian households and should be rejected.
- Ross McKitrick, economics professor, University of Guelph National Post, Nov 13, 2002
The government doesn't come out with figures that are more credible.
I would be inclined to believe what our government tells us if its performance
record in regard to telling the truth weren't so abominable. As it is, the federal
government tells us that it estimates the impact of the Kyoto accord will be a reduction
of the annual net income of the average household in the order of $1,700 over the next ten
years. I fear that estimate is about as credible as the initial cost estimate of $2
million for their gun-control scam, perhaps no more credible than the unforgettable
promise by Jean Chretien that he would kill the GST, on the strength of which he became
our elected dictator.
By Ottawa's own estimates, implementing Kyoto will cost the national
economy $16 billion and kill 200,000 jobs by 2010. Others - sensible others, with very
much better track records at doing economic projections - have pegged the cost much
higher, at 450,000 jobs or more and $40 to $60 billion in lost growth. [About $25
billion of that lost growth will occur in Alberta. —WHS]
Lorne Gunter EDMONTON JOURNAL Liberal arrogance on Kyoto: Disdain for voters evident in refusal to divulge costs of accord Friday 27 September 2002, p. A16
Electrical bills could easily jump 50 per cent, or more. Home heating may
double. A litre of gasoline may well reach $1.10 to $1.30 over the next three or four
years.
...even if manufacturers are hard hit by rising energy costs over the next
decade, the impact on them will be less than the impact on Alberta's energy companies.
Energy is but one of the manufacturers' input costs. A 40 per cent rise in the price of
energy does not translate into a 40 per cent rise in the cost of manufactured goods --
more like a 10 or 15 per cent rise. That's enough to scare away some customers, sure.
But energy is THE product of energy companies....
In a good year, Canada creates 425,000 to 450,000 new jobs. A recession
reduces that to about 250,000. And Ottawa is projecting that Kyoto would reduce that
output to about the equivalent of 175,000 to 200,000 in a year. Admittedly, those losses
would be spread out over 10 years, not concentrated in one year. But it's unnecessary
pain. And you have to trust Ottawa to be honest and correct to believe even that number.
Lorne Gunter EDMONTON JOURNAL Only arrogant Liberals would trivialize job
loss: Alberta will bear most of the pain if Kyoto passes, and that's just fine with the crowd in Ottawa Wednesday 16 October 2002, p. A14
All of that could be news if Preston Manning had not talked about it so
well already in 1997 and if we were sure to hear the truth, all of the truth and nothing
but the truth from the Liberal government. Failing that, we have to go by the facts
that the Liberal government doesn't tell us about.
Norwegians are set to receive their highest electricity bills
ever, after rates hit another new record on Friday. Consumers are being told to expect
first-quarter bills of anywhere from NOK 4,500-8,300 (USD 640-1,200 [Cdn$994-$1,865]).
Rates in Norway's now-deregulated power
market have been climbing for months, but eased just before Christmas. The rate-relief was
short-lived. On Thursday, rates hit NOK 0.7264 per kilowatt hour. On Friday they edged up
even more, to NOK 0.804 [Cdn$0.181]. That's more than three times the rate on October 1,
when consumers already were getting worried about higher electricity bills....
Full Story
Aquila, who owned a share of the Scandinavian wholesale energy market, nevertheless saw
its share values remain relatively unchanged. After falling from about US$28.40 on
March 18, 2002 to US$5.00 in September of 2002,
on
January 9, 2003 Aquila shares closed at US2.15 at the New York Stock Exchange.
Aquila Selects SunGard for Energy Trading and Risk Management Panorama to provide cross-commodity, real-time valuation and scheduling
NEW YORK, December 10, 2001– SunGard Trading and Risk Systems, an operating group of
SunGard (NYSE: SDS), today announced that Aquila, Inc. (NYSE:ILA) has selected Panorama
for cross-commodity trading and risk management... Outside North America, Aquila provides wholesale energy services in the
United Kingdom, Scandinavia and Germany. Aquila is 80 percent
owned by UtiliCorp United, a multinational energy company also based in Kansas City with
more than 4 million customers.[My emphasis] It operates in the United States,
Canada, New Zealand and Australia. (Source: SunGard Trading and Risk System press release)
Aquila Announces More Asset Sales, Raising Total to $976.6
Million Wednesday October 16, 4:20 pm ET Winds Up European Energy Merchant Operations
KANSAS CITY, Mo.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Oct. 16, 2002--Aquila, Inc. (NYSE:ILA -
News) today reported additional asset sales
under its previously announced restructuring program, bringing the current total of assets
it has sold or agreed to sell to $976.6 million. The company's stated goal since May has
been to sell at least $1 billion in assets to strengthen its balance sheet and credit....
As part of the ongoing reduction in Aquila's energy marketing and trading activities,
the company is on track with plans to close its European headquarters in London and its
office in Essen, Germany by the end of this month. The office in Sandefjord,
Norway has been closed and all of Aquila's trading through Nord Pool, the trading
organization that handles energy in Scandinavia, has ceased....(My
emphasis) Full Story)
It looks as if, just as in many other localities, deregulation of the energy market in
Scandinavia was somewhat less than an unmitigated success. The Norwegian energy consumers are now left holding the bag. What
compounds their problems is that for ten years no new substantial energy production
capacity has been added to the grid other than minuscule additions of generating capacity
from renewable resources. Apparently the powers thought that global warming would
make worrying about the vagaries of the weather unnecessary. No construction of
fossil-fuel-based power plants has taken place in Norway during that time. It appears that the present Norwegian energy-production capacity is being
stretched by the extreme cold winter weather and is about 10 percent short of the demand.
Some Norwegians died on account of that.
Well, even if global warming won't provide relief, at the very least the coming summer
should. Let's hope that nobody else will have to die in the meantime.
2003 01 09
Europe and Asia gripped by
coldest winter weather since 1948
Gulf of Finland icebound, about 40 ships are stuck...fears that Baltic Sea may
freeze over — including the Strait of Denmark...close to a thousand people perished
so far in Europe and Asia. Full Story
2002 11 24
Is the Kyoto accord something
new?
There is nothing new under the sun. If we think there is, it is most likely just
something that happened before under a different name or under another cloak.
One might think that the tax-grab under the Kyoto accord is new. Sure, it is new, as
much as names go – and it is such a catchy name and for such a "good"
cause. Some estimate it will add $2,700 to the annual average cost of living in
Alberta (in addition to the $2,000 per year that got added to living costs for the average
household through deregulation). But it will add comparable penalties that Canadians
living elsewhere in Canada will pay as well. However, a tax-grab is a tax-grab, and there always has to be a
"good" cause or a catchy name for it. How else will we swallow what is
being rammed down our throats? Consider how things were done in 1980.
September 26, 1980
Stratagem for a coup
"The disclosure of a confidential federal "strategy" memorandum, prepared
for the "eyes only" of Justice Minister Jean Chretien, was credited with dooming
a historic first ministers' conference on the constitution before it ever got started.
Provincial premiers privately greeted the document in shocked dismay... [describing] it as
'cynical'..." This story sets up the following two Classics on the National Energy
Program...
November 7, 1980
Industry in chaos
"In what will no doubt go down as the darkest day in Alberta history, the Trudeau
government moved last week to take over control of the oil and gas industry, creator of
the economic renaissance in western Canada. In retaliation the provincial government
announced plans to turn down the taps which supply central Canada with oil, in fact a
declaration of economic civil war"...
November 14, 1980
The oilpatch aflame
The dreaded National Energy Program was only a week old and already the repercussions were
being felt across the West...
2002 11 21
The
mythical melting arctic sea ice
The polar ice is supposed to be shrinking. It doesn't and grew instead.
It doesn't seem that anyone is trying to determine what is happening to it at the
South Pole at the same level of detail, but a group of Canadian climate scientists has
done wonders with the data available for the northern hemisphere.Full Story
The area covered by arctic sea ice was larger in the summer of 2001 than in the summer
of 2000, and larger in Feb./Mar. 2002 than in the corresponding interval in 2001? Should we allow David Suzuki and Jean Chretien to do that to us?
2002 11 16
Is the "Ozone Hole"
a hole? Should we worry about that?
Does Kyoto Treaty pose
more harm than global warming?
Should we worry about changes in climate? Does "global warming" really pose a
threat to human health and well-being?
Full Story
Oct. 30, 2002
The
Kyoto accord and Canadian Families
You may think that global warming or, better, the ratification of the Kyoto accord that
our Leader, Jean Chrétien, the head of the Liberal Party of Canada, threatens to have
passed by Parliament before Christmas and to ram down our throats will have little impact
on you or your family. You would be seriously wrong in thinking that. Gwyn Morgan, president and CEO of Encana Corp., stated in a letter to Jean
Chrétien that the Kyoto accord is "one of the most damaging international agreements
ever signed by a Canadian Prime Minister." Fortunately, what worries Gwyn
Morgan and other Canadians with respect to the Kyoto accord is a problem that will affect
only Canadians and is entirely made-in-Canada. If you are not Canadian and don't
pay taxes- or don't live in Canada, count your blessings.
Full
Story
Distributor says it must borrow to meet obligations
Steve Erwin canadian press
Hydro One Inc. warns it will have to borrow heavily to finance its business because the
company can't generate enough cash to meet its financial obligations and operating needs.
"Funds from operations, after the payment of dividends, are not
currently sufficient to fund our repayment of existing indebtedness and to meet our
anticipated liquidity, maintenance and other capital resource requirements," the
crown-owned electricity distributor said in releasing its financial report yesterday. (Full
Story)
I guess that the wellbeing of its investors is more important than that of Hydro
One's customers. Ostensibly, dividends are what is left over after the needs of a
business are met. In this case, it appears that the board of directors decided that
the business needs will be satisfied only after the shareholders are. For Pete's
sake, we are not talking about having to make mortgage payments that are overdue.
–WHS
One should run the grid, the other local utilities
John Spears business reporter
Hydro One should be broken into two separate companies — one to run the province's
electricity transmission grid, and the other to run the 88 local utilities it has acquired
— according to a study by two energy economists.
But Hydro One retorts that the report serves the interests of small utilities rather
than their customers.
The report has created stresses within the Electricity Distributors Association, which
financed the study, since Hydro One is its largest member.
Amid
widespread concern that deregulation of Ontario's electricity market will produce nasty
price shocks, Ian MacLellan has an offer to make.
MacLellan's company, ARISE Technologies Corp., is part of a $1 million federal pilot
project that will subsidize the cost of installing solar power at eight to 10 new homes in
a Waterloo subdivision. Participants will have to pay for the equipment, expected to generate most of the homes'
electricity needs, but it will be as if they're buying five or so years from now, when
prices are expected to be much lower.
...California
experienced a mini-boom [for solar power project construction] after its deregulation
scheme sent electricity prices through the roof.....
...when
it comes to house-scale projects [in Ontario], solar power has been embraced mainly at
remote cottages and by a handful of homeowners who don't mind spending up to $100,000 to
either combat global warming or ensure themselves of a secure power supply.
You will most likely be alone if a heart attack hits you. Here are simple
instructions on what to do to save your own life. (Full story – short and simple)
May 2, 2002
Global Warming
An inquiry by Lorne Gunter
(from the Edmonton Journal) relating to global warming trends, and the response by the
"IPCC" (UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change)
The exchange is very heart-warming and may keep you from the shivering caused by the
25°C drop in temperature we experienced during the 17 hours following the high of +17°C
at noon, May 2, 2002. (At noon, May 3, it was -2.1°C)
From: Lorne Gunter Thu 2002-05-02 07:39
Memo to the IPCC (not really)
Dear Global Warmers:
It's May 2 and I have yet to sleep with the windows open; most nights our lows are
still below freezing. The night before last, the furnace came on. March, here, was
the coldest on record since 1899. For nearly two months our daytime highs have been five
to 15 degrees below normal. Yesterday, it finally got up to 13C (55F), and it seemed as if
everyone in town donned shorts, so great was their fear that it would be their only
chance to do so this summer. Two weeks ago we had 12 inches of snow, the most ever for
that particular date in April. The trees in my yard have yet to bud. Our bulbs have yet to
breach the soil, much less bloom. Yesterday, May 1, the ice finally broke up on the river
below my house, the latest spring break-up since God knows when.
Now I know that in those twin centres of the universe, New York and Toronto, there have
been freakishly warm days this spring, the exact opposite of here. (Although I feel
constrained to mention that the day NYC reached 91F a few weeks back it broke a 106-year
old record by one degree, which means it had been 90F on that same date in 1896, at least
80 years before the anthropogenic warming of which you are currently warning us. But I
digress.) What I want to know is, once you have finished saving the world by
social-engineering a safer climate, could you please consider imposing a temperature
redistribution program? It really isn't fair that parts of the world enjoy temperature
riches, while decent people such as those of us on the Canadian Prairies are freezing our
behinds off and shovelling out our drive ways a month into Spring. And if you can pull off
an end to climate change by creating a worldwide nanny state, then surely to God it's not
too much to ask that you impose a temperature welfare scheme after that. --Lorne Gunter
And, lo and behold, unbelievably quick for such a large and cumbersome
organization, the "IPCC" responded right away.
From: Lorne Gunter Thu 2002-05-02 18:48
The IPCC responds (sort of)
[Actually, the clever author of this witty reply is Ross McKitrick,
economist and global warming skeptic from the University of Guelph.]
Dear Mr. Gunter
The UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has convened a special panel to consider
your complaint. We want to assure you that we take all points of view into consideration
when jumping to our conclusions. The Special Joint Commission on Western Canadian Impacts
of Global Warming conducted a series of workshops last year in Montserrat, Vienna, Costa
del Sol, Canberra, Monaco, Napa, Marrakech and Cologne. During this time it was decided by
the world's top paid scientists that frigid temperatures in April and May in Calgary are
consistent with model projections of global warming. So would warm temperatures in April
and May, but this uncertainty should not be a barrier to us telling everyone else how to
live. After all, if we let that stop us, what would be left for the UN to do? We conclude
that the need for action on reducing greenhouse gas emissions is more pressing than ever.
Therefore, please refrain from turning on your furnace during cold weather.
Sincerely,
the IPCC
Now, doesn't that make you feel better? May the power always be
with you to run your furnace, and may you always have enough money, Ralph Klein and Jean
Chretien willing, to pay for the increasing costs of the fuel you need to heat your
home, run your vehicles and equipment. It sure isn't easy to do that in addition to
increasing health-care costs and defunded medical- and government services.
Can we truly afford to hand over more of our incomes for anything else they
say is good for us as we chip away at
our
national debt of $3.5 trillion by selling off more and more of
our natural resources to foreign owners? Not just the
resources, but as well the means to distribute them for
our own use are being sold. We all have seen people sell all of their personal possession to keep from
going bankrupt. Generally it didn't help them a bit.
May 1,
2002
Canadian Electrical Energy Generation
StatCan
reports that:
Warmer-than-normal temperatures across the country led
to lower net generation of electricity in February. Net generation
was 49 456 gigawatt hours (GWh), down 2.1% from February 2001.
Exports decreased 15.7% to 2 690 GWh, and imports fell
to 2 145 GWh from 2 757 GWh. (Details)
That means that the net exports amounted to 545 GWh or 1.1% of Canada's
total electricity generation. It seems hardly possible that that amount of
electrical energy exported justifies the billions of dollars Canadian consumers get soaked
with on account of deregulation that ostensibly will create a competitive market,
supposedly to produce untold wealth for Canadians. It appears that for the foreseeable future the only beneficiaries of the
untold wealth will largely be:
Our provincial and federal governments who rake in more than twice in
revenues than they did before deregulation, and
Foreign power companies who buy out our natural resources, with little or
none of their profits remaining in Canada.
Whether it is the national economy or individual Canadians, the Canadian
end-consumers of electrical energy will be paying for foreign profits and increased tax
revenues, through higher energy costs on their bills and through higher energy costs
incorporated in prices they pay for consumer products and services. It's a double
whammy. Thank you very much Messrs. Klein and Chretien.
Apr. 22, 05:50 EDT
Electric
power firms open wallets for Tories
Donations surge as hydro goes private
Fred Vallance-Jones TORSTAR NEWS SERVICE
Almost a million dollars have flowed to the governing Conservatives since 1995 from
companies and individuals with interests in the new privatized electricity market.
CALGARY / Provincial
regulators have approved the $850-million sale of TransAlta Energy Corp.'s electricity
transmission system to AltaLink Management Ltd. The Energy and Utilities Board said Thursday its approval will
include provisions that ensure the sale won't have an adverse impact on transmission
rates. It will also not include lines on First Nations land. TranAlta's System represents about half of the total high-tension
system in Alberta, with a staff of 250. Alta Link will retain the employees.
AltaLink is a consortium headed by SNC Lavalin of Montreal, plus an Ontario pension fund,
a U.S. Energy firm and an Australian bank. Alberta's transmission system remains
regulated.
Foreign ownership of Alberta electrical energy corporation changes hands, or
does it?
As per http://www.aquila.com/info/utilicorp.shtml
(Note: The preceding link to an archived copy of the article no longer
functions)
— March 18, 2002, UtiliCorp United adopted the Aquila, Inc. name and ILA as its stock
symbol. Aquila is an international energy and risk management company.
Aquila is a company that provides wholesale energy services in the United Kingdom,
Scandinavia and Germany. As of Dec. 14, 2001, Aquila was an 80 percent-owned subsidiary of
UtiliCorp, an international energy company with more than four million customers across
the United States and in Canada, the United Kingdom, New Zealand and
Australia. Aquila claims to have about $12 billion in assets and to have
had $40 billion in annual sales as of Dec 31, 2001. All of the members on the board of Aquila were also members of the board of
directors of UtiliCorp. UtiliCorp now goes under the name of Aquila, and, as you all
know, in the year 2000 TransAlta Utilities was fed to and gobbled up by UtiliCorp. Yesterday's closing price for Aquila shares was US$25.08.
Energy is the life blood of not just Canada, but of nations. What better or
more certain way to reap a profit or to tax people than to gain control of
the food they eat, the air they breathe, the water they drink and even the blood
that runs through their veins?
We'll pay any price for the basic necessities of life. Today's politicians make sure
that anything goes, the big corporations go for the jugular because they want to get
bigger and become the biggest sharks in the global market, and every price increase means
extra tax revenues for the governments. For us, the people, it means that we have to
do with a little bit less and that perhaps we even have to close down the businesses we no
longer can keep alive.
So what, right? You can't make omelets without breaking eggs. Besides, Ralph
Klein told us that deregulation is good for us. However, he also told us that we
need Swan Hills to solve the pollution problems of North America, and although we pay
for that, too, we'll pay far, far more for making Aquila bigger and to allow the
governments to take their ever-growing slices of the booty.
Regarding UtiliCorp
and Aquila:
KANSAS CITY, Mo.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Dec. 14, 2001--The Board of Directors of Aquila,
Inc. (NYSE:ILA) met today to review the previously announced offer by UtiliCorp United
(NYSE:UCU) to exchange 0.6896 of a share of UtiliCorp common stock in a tax-free exchange
for each outstanding share of Aquila Class A common stock. UtiliCorp owns all of the
outstanding Aquila Class B shares, which constitute approximately 80 percent of all
outstanding Aquila common shares. Because all members of Aquila's Board are officers or directors of UtiliCorp
and may have conflicts of interest with respect to UtiliCorp's offer, Aquila's Board has
decided to remain neutral and make no recommendation to Aquila's stockholders with respect
to UtiliCorp's offer. ... Based in Kansas City, Aquila is one of the top wholesalers of electricity and
natural gas in North America. Aquila is an innovative provider of risk management products
and services and owns and controls a diverse portfolio of merchant assets including power
plants, gas storage, pipeline and processing facilities, and other complementary merchant
infrastructure facilities. Aquila also provides wholesale energy services in the United
Kingdom, Scandinavia and Germany. Aquila is an 80 percent-owned subsidiary of UtiliCorp,
an international energy company with more than four million customers across the United
States and in Canada, the United Kingdom, New Zealand and Australia. Additional
information is available at www.aquila.com. ...
Quanta Statement on Aquila Lawsuit 21 Mar 2002, 7:55pm ET E-mail or Print this story
- - - - - /FROM PR NEWSWIRE DALLAS 888-776-3971/ [STK] PWR ILA [IN] CPR UTI TLS ENT TVN STW NET [SU]
LAW TO BUSINESS AND TECHNOLOGY EDITORS:
Quanta Statement on Aquila Lawsuit
HOUSTON, March 21 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Quanta Services, Inc. (NYSE:PWR), a leading
provider of specialized contracting services to the electric power, gas,
telecommunications and cable television industries, today issued the following statement
in response to Aquila, Inc.'s (NYSE:ILA) lawsuit seeking to prevent Quanta from
implementing its Stock Employee Compensation Trust (SECT).... Full
story
March 25, 2002
Bruderheim
Rural
Electrification Association
ANNUAL MEETING
Conference
Room – Old Walker School
April 11,
2002, 7:00 p.m.
Concerned
about rising power costs? You should be! EpCor's and UtiliCorp's reps. will be there to answer your questions.
ALL
MEMBERS WELCOME!
March 25, 2002
New budgeting tool
Forecasting your power costs — A spreadsheet model for
reconciling your power bill. It'll also permit you to do budgeting for the cost of
power according to your average monthly consumption, and more. You better have a
look at it. The cost of power will be quite a bit more than you thought, far
more than we were told by Ralph Klein.
March 4, 2002
Business Analysis:
Albertans seem to like being cheated
The Report, Mar 4, 2002
....Electricity deregulation, ...has already cost Albertans billions...
"I can't understand why there isn't outrage among consumers" says the former
senior operating officer for Alberta Power.
Under the provinces deregulation system, ...all successful bidders get paid the rate given
to the highest successful bid....The amount of money under discussion is enormous....The
cheapest tend to be big coal-fired plants....Most expensive are generating stations which
burn natural gas but cannot sell their waste heat; their costs directly reflect prices for
natural gas. Under Alberta's power pool auction system, electricity from coal-fired
plants fetches the price set by natural gas-fired generation. From the consumers' point of
view, it is hard to conceive of a more expensive pricing arrangement.
....During 2001, Albertans purchased electricity (including coal-fired) at rates
reflecting last winters high gas price....deregulation cost the province more than it
spent on education, a thought which might pique the attention of teachers now on strike
for higher wages in Alberta.
....Why doesn't the power pool simply buy electricity at the proffered prices, not the
highest price? ....Pool spokesman Wayne St. Amour says the highest-price-for-all set-up is
designed to attract more competitors. ....Even if real competition does occur eventually,
he adds, Albertans will have already forfeited so many billions that their losses could
not possibly ever be made up by future savings....Heavy industry has kept quiet because
many large companies purchased power from the coal-fired plants under provincial auctions
held before deregulation kicked in. These players are guaranteed low electricity
rates long into the future. In Mr. Provost's view, the power pool should immediately
adopt the same strategy. On behalf of residents and small industrial customers, the
pool should purchase electricity from existing generation facilities under long-term
contracts at prices which reflect generating costs. Future power needs should be
tendered for competitive bids.
