Making Ripples: post-corporate adventures in Floyd County Virginia

Neighbors Win Court Round Over Wind Farm Noise

March 23, 2012, 6:55 pm

Reposted from http://green.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/03/23/neighbors-win-court-round-over-wind-farm-noise/

By DIANE CARDWELL

Matt McInnis for The New York TimesOne of the three wind turbines in Vinalhaven, Me., illuminated by moonlight. The turbines, which residents say are especially noisy at night, have red flashing lights to alert low-flying aircraft.

A legal petition aimed at reinstating a state rule for limiting noise at a controversial wind farm in Maine can proceed, a judge ruled on Friday, denying a motion from the farm’s developer, Fox Islands Wind, for dismissal.

Since the farm – three 1.5 megawatt turbines – began operating on the island of Vinalhaven in late 2009, neighbors have complained about the noise from its 123-foot spinning blades, especially at night. After receiving many complaints, the Maine Department of Environmental Protection found in 2010 that the installation had been too noisy on two occasions. In 2011, Fox Islands Wind submitted a new operating procedure to remedy those infractions.

The state agency then drafted a new set of rules, a condition compliance order, that accepted the wind company’s proposal but added a requirement that it actively show it was complying during certain testing periods and to stop operating if it was not.

Then last June, according to Friday’s ruling, Patricia Aho, a deputy environmental commissioner and former lobbyist for the power company’s law firm, took over as acting environmental commissioner. She finalized the new regulations but removed the provision that Fox Islands actively prove its compliance.

The next month, the group of neighbors filed their petition to review that order, saying that it was “politically motivated, arbitrary and capricious, contrary to law, unsupported by substantial evidence, and the product of an abuse of discretion,” Judge Michaela Murphy of Kennebec County Superior Court noted in Friday’s ruling.

The power company then filed a motion to dismiss the petition, saying that the court did not have jurisdiction over the matter. But Judge Murphy found that it did.

Whether or not Ms. Aho’s decision ultimately holds up, she said, its legality or lack thereof “must be argued and considered at a later stage of these proceedings.”

We are invited to be the Earth Healers

I see that the Concerned Citizens Network has the solution to global warming, unemployment, and our huge deficit and it will only require a totalitarian government, presumably run by the CCN.

For those of you who are skeptics and unbelievers, the following quotes are taken verbatim from their latest letter which urges us to support their version of the 2012 Farm Bill.

The fundamental point of their ultimate solution is this:

"For the continual survival of the human race, food choice is no longer a personal preference."

How could we have overlooked that fact? We must obviously adopt a slave mentality and eat what the government tells us to eat.

Their way to attain this utopian state is unbelievably simple:

"A shift to plant-based Organic Agriculture is the quickest way to restore the health of each American and the health of our Planet."

Just in case you missed the flag they are waving, it is vegan totalitarianism:

"We urge you to help American recognize the cruel truth about the meat culture."

They want to subsidize plant-based organic agriculture, not sustainable organic farming. This isn't about making healthier people, it is all about taking control of your life and your diet. These are fascists masquerading as vegans.

Kiss those cheeseburgers goodbye if these zealots ever get their way.

Here is their letter in full:

December 6, 2011

Food Policy Determines Our Destiny

Dear Fellow Journalist David,

If you know of an important solution which could save millions of lives and the world, would you choose to keep quiet or to help to put out  the fire?

We all want a healthier nation with cleaner water, cleaner air, food free from toxic chemicals and genetic modification, and to curb the climate change crisis. With a huge financial deficit, high unemployment, food security issues, water shortage crisis, and rising health care costs, with just one single change in our food policy, we can significantly alleviate each  of the issues above and reset things back to the right track. Now is the time to do it.

The 2012 Farm Bill does not only impact to the future of United States, it also affects the welfare of people all over the world. Tell Congress to start subsidies for Organic Plant Farming. By helping farmers transition and succeed in Organic Plant Farming, United States will build a solid foundation for sustainable agriclture. It is a win win policy for the government, farmers, taxpayers, consumers and the world. This new food policy will determine our destiny.

A good practice goes a long way beyond staying with the law. We urge you to help American recognize the cruel truth about the meat culture. A shift to plant-based Organic Agriculture is the quickest way to restore the health of each American and the health of our Planet. For the continual survival of the human race, food choice is no longer a personal preference.

Join us. Sign the letter today and  share the solution.

For more information, please visit http://http://www.concernedcitizensnetwork.org/take_action/.

Minnesotans For Global Warming

This could have been shot in Floyd this week. Note the woodstove in the 1977 Argosy.

 

 

If you liked the video above, you may also like: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TF5F6eYho8U

Climate Data-Fudging Exposed - ClimateGate is here

Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW) has been exposed as the greatest hoax since the Piltdown Man.

In a caper reminiscent of the Pentagon Papers, a hacker broke into the computers at the University of East Anglia’s Climate Research Unit (aka Hadley CRU) and released 61 megabites of confidential files onto the internet.

These emails, now available for all to read on the Internet, expose conspiracy, collusion in exaggerating warming data, possibly illegal destruction of embarrassing information, organised resistance to disclosure, manipulation of data, private admissions of flaws in their public claims and much more.

Google ClimateGate and AGW hoax for more data than you can read in one sitting.

Perhaps the Global Warmists will quietly fold their tents and leave the true environmentalists to saving wetlands and safeguarding water supplies.

I do not see a great future for Al Gore's carbon credit trading schemes.

CO2 and life

Carbon Dioxide in the atmosphere is essential to life on earth and is directly responsible for the food we eat and the oxygen we breathe. As of March 2009, carbon dioxide in the Earth's atmosphere was at a concentration of 387 ppm by volume.

The images below demonstrate how added CO2 affects plant growth:
(Numbers are parts per million OVER THE AMBIENT LEVEL of 387ppm)

For more information see: http://tinyurl.com/mpo4rl

Our food supply depends on plant growth.
Maybe we should not be so cavalier about assigning a level that is less than optimum.

Some say 350ppm has some significance. Why not 700ppm or 1000ppm?

Eaten any Slimehead or Toothfish lately?

You might be surprised how good they taste. This fish on the left used to be known as an anglerfish. Now you enjoy it as monkfish.

Overfishing has depleted most of the ocean's fish population. Today's seafood is often yesterday's trash fish.

For at least the past 40 years, fishermen have been harvesting fish that were previously considered undesirable and have been renaming their products to make them more appetizing.

The customer is not being cheated in this regard, it is mainly a matter of giving a product a name that will not induce revulsion. Slimehead and chips does not sound nearly as appetizing as Orange Roughy and chips, but it is the same product.

A slimehead (now called Orange Roughy) is a long-lived fish with the look of a prehistoric fossil. Slimeheads are named for the network of mucus-filled canals riddling their heads. In the 1970's, seafood dealers came up with the name Orange Roughy and the fish started appearing on dinner tables.

Other tasty fish under new names include the Patagonian toothfish which were rechristened "Chilean Sea Bass", Angler fish which were renamed "monkfish", and Snakeheads which are sold as "Channa". In Maine, sea urchins are known as 'whores' eggs' but they appear on your sushi menu as "uni".

Dr Boris Worm,Professor of Marine Biology at the Dow-Hawse University in Halifax, Nova Scotia, has recently published a report on the Impacts of Biodiversity Loss on Ocean Ecosystem Services in  Science.

Bloggers and media are busy drawing conclusions and pointing fingers. Some even manage to work in Global Warming as a cause of overfishing.

If you would like a more reader friendly version of the story direct from the source, you might enjoy Mike Adams interview of Dr Worm,

You will find more information on the study of marine biodiversity, its causes, consequences of change, and conservation at the Worm Lab website.