Odious at Odious and Peculiar has a post on why wind is hardly a major energy contributor, and why it most likely won't be:
"Distressingly little of the country is suitable for this type of power generation.
"Moreover, you really want to find a place where, to start with, no one lives, no one cares about the view, and no birds sing. Whether it is necessary for the sedge to have withered, I leave to committee. But wind turbines tend to chew up birds and spit them out, much in the manner of the comical antics of Warner Bros.' Tasmanian devil.
"I am all for "alternative" energy sources, by which I mean "not coal". I believe in man's influence on global warming. I like things that are free--wind, sun, water. But, leaving aside the fact that they aren't really free, they don't scale. It is difficult to tell the wind that, come five o'clock, we need a quick boost in power production. Add to that the ugliness of a turbine field, and the potential loss of, say, a California condor, and I find myself thinking nuclear thoughts."
Many more good things there, on everything from Sappho to the Supreme Court. Odious has been productive.
2 comments:
The problem of wind turbines killing raptors in particular was acute at one site in California. However, I heard a recent report that indicated new windmill designs are much less harmful. The problem still rates watching.
Some ranchers see wind power as an economic boost.
I used to live in Tehachapi, CA which has about 4500 turbines in the area. No one every seems to talk about how noisy they are. I was surprised the first time I stood next to the SeaWest turbine field in a wind and heard how loud they are.
People in Tehachapi have some mixed emotions - there is a local group called "Enough is Enough" that opposes more construction. One of the local arguments against more is the fact that the leases of BLM and USFS land that the turbines take up are very much larger than the actual footprint of the windfarms themselves. But the locals are kept out of the entire lease area. Hunters and other recreation users are alienated, not just aesthetics NIMBYs and bird lovers.
Apparently bird strikes are less with the newer models of turbine. The turbines are getting larger and larger (economies of scale with maintenance etc) and the blade RPMs are slower resulting in better situation for the birds.
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