The Current FReepathon Pays For The Current Quarters Expenses?
Posted on 11/19/2011 12:59:33 PM PST by afraidfortherepublic
As Jimi Hendrix may have put it: “And the wind cries bankrupt…”
Minnesotans for Global Warming report that in the last 30 years, the United States has had 14,000 wind turbines abandoned. Apparently, once the subsidies and the wind run out, these 20-story high Cuisinarts are de-bladed and retired. This means more bats and migratory birds will live.
From Minnesotans for Global Warming: “The symbol of Green renewable energy, our savior from the non existent problem of Global Warming, abandoned wind farms are starting to litter the planet as globally governments cut the subsidies taxes that consumers pay for the privilege of having a very expensive power source that does not work every day for various reasons like it’s too cold or the wind speed is too high.”
Andrew Walden of American Thinker explored nearly 2 years ago the demise of the 37-turbine wind farm at Kamaoa Wind Farm in Hawaii: “Built in 1985, at the end of the boom, Kamaoa soon suffered from lack of maintenance. In 1994, the site lease was purchased by Redwood City, CA-based Apollo Energy. Cannibalizing parts from the original 37 turbines, Apollo personnel kept the declining facility going with outdated equipment. But even in a place where wind-shaped trees grow sideways, maintenance issues were overwhelming. By 2004 Kamaoa accounts began to show up on a Hawaii State Department of Finance list of unclaimed properties. In 2006, transmission was finally cut off by Hawaii Electric Company.California’s wind farms — then comprising about 80% of the world’s wind generation capacity — ceased to generate much more quickly than Kamaoa. In the best wind spots on earth, over 14,000 turbines were simply abandoned. Spinning, post-industrial junk which generates nothing but bird kills.”
When an honest history of this period in the United States is written, it will no be kind to the corporate cronyism that preyed upon public ignorance of earth science to create a crisis — global warming — to exploit and loot the Treasury.
Just nuke 'em! ; )
They’ll try to blame business instead of friends of bureaucrats and politics helping to loot the nation.
These things make no economic sense and are totally unsustainable.
Could I get one of those cheap to replace my KitchenAid mixer?
Perfect cell phone tower! And they are usually not too near population centers, so the "rural" areas will get additional cell phone coverage .. it's just wonderful ...
Those were the old tiny ones, never were effecent.
Tell the mexicans they’re full of copper.
They’ll be gone by sunrise.
LMAO !
Brilliant solution !
The Current FReepathon Pays For The Current Quarters Expenses?
A blight on the Earth - and by supposed Greenies.
That’s the result of suspect science and stupid - who are the birdbrains now?
This is why the U.S. government did not spend millions of dollars on the development of internal-combustion gasoline engines in the year 1815.
This is why the space program goal of landing on the moon before 1970 was not financially wise.
Ambitious government technological goals during peacetime are great for politicians but never financially worthwhile.
The only successes that are had is because the actual work was performed by private-sector companies. And in cases where “the fix is in”, like green energy (meaning the private sector company has assurances that wasting the money would be fine as in the case of Solyndra), the private sector simply takes the money they are given by their political crony.
The Hoover Dam is a classic example of a project being completed only because of private sector efforts - in spite of government attempts to mess it up for political reasons.
The windmills I estimated to be several hundreds in number. They stretched as far as the eye could see east and southeast. The land there is all flat farmland, and farmhouse dotted the landscape here and there around the huge mills.
Sleek and silver, blades turning slowly despite forceful winds that buffeted my heavy car, the scene dominated by these silent giants was both fascinating. and rather scary. I could only think of one word to describe the visual effect of a wind farm.....Dali-esque.
Leni
The author missed another key reason for the AGW scam.
With the alleged fall of communism (which didn’t go anywhere except to the White House), the global elite needed another control device to scare the crap out of an uninformed and gullible population so they would willingly and gratefully surrender more of their God given rights to the state for “saving them.”
Orwell wrote a book about it called “1984.” He just had the date wrong. And it damn near worked.
But.. but.. the green boosters claim that this will save us ALLL! /sarc.
And this illustrates why green initiatives, whether it is the Chevy Dolt or a windfarm, are bad investments.
Denmark, the world's most wind-intensive nation, with more than 6,000 turbines generating 19% of its electricity, has yet to close a single fossil-fuel plant. It requires 50% more coal-generated electricity to cover wind power's unpredictability, and pollution and carbon dioxide emissions have risen (by 36% in 2006 alone).
The original National Post link has been taken down. I am sure it is because they were hounded into it.
One can hope.
Far more obnoxious to ranch homes than the twirling things during daylight!
If Wind Power is so great how come Holland isn't a World Power?All Holland has contributed to the world has been Wooden Shoes and Tulips.Oh. And Clog Dancing. Can't forget that. Heck, where would we be without Clog Dancing.
The same thing happend with these stupid subway systems in most cities
“If you build it, they will come- unless it is a government subsidized project”
The fed handed out millions to build rapid transit systems in cities, and killed most places they were built.
Buffalo NY was once a hub of the country- more important than NY city. IN the 70’s they feds gave them millions to build a subway, so they closed MAIN STREET in buffalo, killed every single business along the steet, and buffalo is now nearly abondoned except for law offices and welfare offices
The people who use the subway to get to the welfare office would be better off if they just put the office closer to where they live. And the people who work there could save $8 per day parking
First rule one learns to ask as a reporter is; "Who says so."
In this case, it's a bunch of environmentalist wackos.
Story is BS
Holland once almost collapsed the world economy of the day with those tulips.
There were small, old machines and no one did a proper job of planning.
New wind farm agreements include provisions for decommissioning and return of the site to previous condition.
A non issue designed to create uproar amongst luddites.
First rule one learns to ask as a reporter is; "Who says so."
In this case, it's a bunch of environmentalist wackos. Where is the proof or even source that there are 14,000 abandoned turbines?
I have always thought these things were just butt-ugly. However, the hypocrisy of the "greens" is what really galls me.
How many loggers lost good paying jobs because some enviro found some critter to put on the endangered species list. Or, simply because they didn't want the trees cut down. But now, they are willing to mow down acres of trees simply to put up these monstrosities. I have nothing but utter disdain for these people and their sham movement.
Actually, the US government wasted billions on corporate subsidies throughout the 1800s (in 2011 dollars). In the 1840s and 1850s, it was steamship lines and telegraphs. In the 1860s to 1880s, it was steel and railroads. A bit later, it was petroleum. Government subsidies led to sloppy and inefficient businesses that would not adopt new technologies, charged high prices, and provided expensive products only affordable by the very rich. In each of these cases, brilliant entrepreneurs who refused to take government subsidies beat the pants off the sluggards who lived off the government teat. But these entrepreneurs have been traditionally excoriated and reviled as "Robber Barons."
For the full story, I highly recommend Burton Folsom's excellent book The Myth of the Robber Barons: A New Look at the Rise of Big Business in America. It strongly bolsters the argument that the government should get out of the way of the private sector and end its wasteful market-distortions.
The tale is told that the dam, originally called Boulder Dam was renamed for Hoover at the cost of several thousands of dollars, for signs, buildings etc. while for about $10 Hoover could have gone to the courthouse and just changed his name to Boulder. Government...in action.
Just a little 'Rest of the Story'.
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I would assume they have outlived their life and sit rusting away
Leaving in their wake people with acoustic fibrosis.
Yup, I want pictures.
These behemoth windmills would be worth a pretty penny to them, and the probability that many of them would fall and break their necks while harvesting turbine parts would be an added bonus.
I'm very familiar with this line of windmills. There are
two such ridges running the length of Il. that are covered
with them. The other is to the west. I wish I had had a
camera with a very long lens to compress the scene south
of Rockford one morning on Rt 39. It was cold and windless
and the mills were completely becalmed. In the distance you
could see the steam rising straight up from the nuclear
plant that was providing all the energy! By the way, the
reason that the mills were running slowly even with the
strong wind is that they have variable pitch blades that
keep the speed uniform to produce the proper frequency of
AC current.
Clean up is sometimes a problem in the real world. A strip mining company, for example. has to clean up after it has removed the minerals it has mined. This involves filling in the hole, disposing of the slag (these two are usually connected) and re-contouring the land.
Green projects shouldn’t have their own set of rules. They need to cover all their costs, including clean up.
In addition to removing these cylinders, the batteries that many of them have need to be carefully disposed or possibly re-cycled.
Oh, the “school solution” when there are clean up costs is to have the company post a bond, equal to the present value of the expected clean up cost.
Don’t get off track here. I think the moral of this story is if wind power is so great why were these wind mills not replaced so they could produce more cheap energy?
What about the moonbats?
Great; these things will lose even MORE money when they break???
Holland also gave us MJ shops, legit red light districts and Pilgrims.
Well maybe you need a little more convincing that these things are often abandoned after the tax payer gets fleeced? Check this out.
Wind Energy’s Ghosts
By Andrew Walden
Bankrupt Europe has a lesson for Congress about wind power.
Wiwo...wiwo...wiwo.
The sound floats on the winds of Ka Le, this southernmost tip of Hawaii’s Big Island, where Polynesian colonists first landed some 1,500 years ago.
Some say that Ka Le is haunted — and it is. But it’s haunted not by Hawaii’s legendary night marchers. The mysterious sounds are “Na leo o Kamaoa”— the disembodied voices of 37 skeletal wind turbines abandoned to rust on the hundred-acre site of the former Kamaoa Wind Farm.
The voices of Kamaoa cry out their warning as a new batch of colonists, having looted the taxpayers of Spain, Portugal, and Greece, seeks to expand upon their multi-billion-dollar foothold half a world away on the shores of the distant Potomac River. European wind developers are fleeing the EU’s expiring wind subsidies, shuttering factories, laying off workers, and leaving billions of Euros of sovereign debt and a continent-wide financial crisis in their wake. But their game is not over. Already they are tapping a new vein of lucre from the taxpayers and ratepayers of the United States.
SNIP>>>>>>>>>>> more here:
http://www.americanthinker.com/2010/02/wind_energys_ghosts_1.html
Frost line around here is waaay deeper than that .. you're asking for trouble setting fence posts shallower than 32" !
(but if you meant dismantling their junk/footers down to 16", then nevermind)
I have a hard time believing that “bats and migratory birds” are killed by wind turbines. But whatever...
I’ve actually built my own mini-wind turbine that I plan to use at my cabin next summer. It’s powerful enough to keep a couple of deep-cycle batteries charged to help power the camp, and a nice supplement for my solar panels. Having said that (TM)...
Although I advocate wind and solar as a feasible means for self-sufficiency, the government has no frickin’ business subsidizing the industry. Companies either survive in the marketplace, or they fail. Period. If you support the technology, invest your own damn money.
NO matter the size, I used the Farm near Indio, California as a model that maintenance would eventually cost more than the overall power they produced.
Send them to the 3rd world—they might help some poor starving country or island nation that needs power. We have natural gas, coal and oil.
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