Briefly Noted: Wind Power A Total Fail, Austin Jail Break Takes On New Meaning

For your edification. Green energy is turning out to be not only impractical but also very bad for the environment. You knew that already, but this is a nice article focusing on wind power:

Eminent Oxford Scientist Says Wind Power “Fails on Every Count”

It could be argued that the basic arithmetic showing wind power is an economic and societal disaster in the making should be clear to a bright primary school child. Now the Oxford University mathematician and physicist, researcher at CERN and Fellow of Keble College, Emeritus Professor Wade Allison has done the sums. The U.K. is facing the likelihood of a failure in the electricity supply, he concludes. “Wind power fails on every count,” he says, adding that governments are ignoring “overwhelming evidence” of the inadequacies of wind power, “and resorting to bluster rather than reasoned analysis”.

“Bluster” is one way to put it. It’s actually more like a cult, which is why it’s impervious to reasoned analysis. For cultists, “Follow the science” is simply a bit of mindless sloganeering, a club with which to beat one’s opponents.

Others have recently looked in more detail at the costs of battery storage. The American lawyer and mathematician Francis Menton, who runs the Manhattan Contrarian site, reviewed recent official cost reports and found that “even on the most optimistic assumptions” the cost could be as high as a country’s GDP. On less optimistic assumptions, the capital cost alone could be 15 times annual GDP. Last year, Associate Professor Simon Michaux warned the Finnish Government that there were not enough minerals in the world to supply all the batteries needed for Net Zero. Michaux observed that the Net Zero project may not go fully “as planned”. Meanwhile, Menton concluded, with an opinion that some might consider unduly charitable: “It is hard to avoid the conclusion that the people planning the Net Zero transition have no idea what they are doing.”

And then this from Austin, TX. We serve and protect:

Austin Jailer Breaks Elderly Deaf Woman’s Arm After Misunderstanding at Airport

After three days in jail with only Aleve as treatment, she has received surgery

Karen McGee, 71, hyperventilates as police begin moving her out of the airport (screenshot via APD Body Cam Footage)

Karen McGee, a deaf, 71-year-old Florida resident, is considering a lawsuit against the city of Austin after what was supposed to be a three-hour layover at Austin-Berg­strom International Airport turned into an arrest, a weekend in the Travis County Jail, and an arm broken by a jailer and left untreated for three days.

McGee's ordeal began on the afternoon of Sept. 13, 2022, as she waited for a connecting flight from Austin to Seattle. She was flying alone for the first time in her life and nervous because her hearing aids weren't working well, …

Read the whole thing. Basically what happened was that she was unable to hear the announcement that the gate for her flight had been changed, so she missed here flight. Then …

she texted with her cousin and learned there was another plane parked at the same gate, going to the same destination. She approached the ticket agent and asked if she could switch her ticket to this flight. She had trouble hearing the agent's response but understood the answer was no. She then made the same request to a different agent. Unbeknownst to McGee, this second agent called the police.

So it seems the second agent regarded this deaf woman who was having trouble hearing what was said to her as a pain in the ass—so the agent called the police and had her arrested on “suspicion of trespass”. Think about that. Trespassing by being in the airport in a public space with a valid ticket, but asking questions while being hearing impaired.

The rest of the article describes her ordeal at the hands of the police. This 71 year old woman was carted away, strip searched, had her arm broken, left in jail untreated for three days until a real medical emergency resulted.

This actually reminded me in a way of my own experience after being run down by a car and sent flying. I thought my arm was broken. The police said I was fine because I could wiggle my fingers so I should just go home. I insisted on being taken to the emergency room, where it was confirmed that my arm was broken—I ended up going through months of therapy to get back to normal. The police also showed up at the emergency room—to try to convince me not to show up at the court hearing for the moving violation. I declined their advice. My guess is that the officer knew the woman who ran into me—something of the sort. I probably should have made some sort of complaint. As a lawyer myself and retired LE I didn’t see what business the police had to be dispensing medical and legal advice.