Free Republic

Enlarge ImageWind school. Placing vertically aligned turbines closer together gives more wattage for the buck.Credit: Mariah Power Arranging wind turbines like a school of fish could reduce the amount of land they take up by 100-fold while maintaining their electrical output, say researchers. Wind farms based on the approach might also be considerably safer for migrating birds. Whether it's Lance Armstrong bicycling behind his teammates in the Tour de France or a storm of fish slicing their way through the ocean, animals benefit from drafting. The leader breaks through the calm air or water, while the followers enjoy the...

Mashpee, Mass. -- From a blustery perch over a Cape Cod beach, Chuckie Green gestures toward a stretch of horizon where he says construction of the nation's first offshore wind farm would destroy his Indian tribe's religion. The Wampanoag - the tribe that welcomed the Pilgrims in the 17th century and known as "The People of the First Light" - practice sacred rituals requiring an unblocked view of the sunrise. That view won't exist once 130 turbines, each over 400 feet tall, are built several miles from shore in Nantucket Sound, visible to Wampanoag in Mashpee and on Martha's Vineyard....

The Enercon E-126 is purported to be the world's largest wind turbine. Wind-power advocates say it's rated at 6 megawatts, but most likely will produce 7, or enough to power 1,776 — that's the spirit! — American homes. The E-126 also is a NIMBYs nightmare. Now under development in Europe, the E-126 stands an imposing 650 feet — the tallest building in New England, Boston's John Hancock Tower, is 790 — and has three, 413-foot blades. Each E-126 goes for $15.5 million, installed, and comes with an engineered base that is 100 feet across and 13 feet thick to keep...

Gone With The Wind By: Tait Trussell FrontPageMagazine.com | Thursday, July 30, 2009   The statuesque and towering windmill represents one of Barack Obama’s grandiose hopes for renewable energy in our future. But windmills also have a troubling feature: They can be bad for your health. Dr. Nina Pierpont has conducted substantial research on what she calls “wind turbine syndrome,” the clinical name she has given to the “constellation of symptoms experienced by many (though not all) who live near industrial wind turbines.” These include sleep problems like insomnia; headaches; dizziness; unsteadiness and nausea; exhaustion; anxiety; anger and irritability; depression;...

Al Gore’s campaign against global warming is shifting into high gear. Reporters and commentators follow his every move and bombard the public with notice of his activities and opinions. But while the mainstream media promote his ideas about the state of planet Earth, they are mostly silent about the dramatic impact his economic proposals would have on America. And journalists routinely ignore evidence that he may personally benefit from his programs. Would the romance fizzle if Gore’s followers realized how much their man stands to gain? Earlier this year Gore experienced a notable public relations debacle. The Tennessee Center for...

The man backing part of the Global Climate scare can't even calculate how to place his windmills correctly, never mind his hot air about the much more complex subject, the climate. Plans for the world's largest wind farm in the Texas Panhandle have been scrapped, Pickens said today. He's now looking for a home for 687 giant wind turbines that he has already ordered. The windmills stand 400 feet tall—taller than most 30-story buildings. "When I start receiving those turbines, I've got to ... like I said, my garage won't hold them," the oligarch said. "They've got to go someplace."...

The idea of wind generated electric energy is being sold by environmentalists as an overlooked opportunity to reduce greenhouse gasses. Global warming advocates claim that this discounted treasure could be a major part of an effort to reduce the burning of fossil fuels and eliminate the need for some of our nuclear power plants. Is it true that we are passing up on a gold mine of renewable energy in favor of unnecessary and harmful fossil and nuclear fuels? Let's start by looking at what we use to generate the power we use today. Renewables, such as wind, solar, biomass,...

CLIMATE CHANGE PARADOX Wind Turbines in Europe Do Nothing for Emissions-Reduction Goals By Anselm Waldermann Despite Europe's boom in solar and wind energy, CO2 emissions haven't been reduced by even a single gram. Now, even the Green Party is taking a new look at the issue -- as shown in e-mails obtained by SPIEGEL ONLINE. Germany's renewable energy companies are a tremendous success story. Roughly 15 percent of the country's electricity comes from solar, wind or biomass facilities, almost 250,000 jobs have been created and the net worth of the business is €35 billion per year. But there's a catch:...

Officials are investigating a fatal accident along Highway 15 and 2nd Street South in St. Cloud Wednesday morning. Police have rerouted traffic while the Minnesota State Patrol is reconstructing the accident that occurred shortly after 11 a.m. According to witnesses, a series of semi trucks carrying wind turbines hit a minivan. Investigators have been mum on details, and the number of vehicles and victims involved has not been released.

SAN FRANCISCO — With the California blackouts of 2001 still a painful memory, Chris Beaudoin wants to generate some of his own electricity. He marveled the other day at how close he is to that goal, gazing at two new wind turbines atop his garage roof. They will soon be hooked to the power grid. “I don’t care about how much it costs,” said Mr. Beaudoin, a flight attendant with United Airlines. That would be $5,000 a turbine, an expense Mr. Beaudoin is unlikely to recoup in electricity savings anytime soon. No matter. After shoring up the roof and installing...

T. Boone has re-invented himself as a green wildcatter. Can he finish what Al Gore started? T. Boone Pickens can't read his lines. Squinting at his teleprompter, he is posing in front of a mile-long ribbon of wind turbines, churning against an endless Texas sky. Pickens is in Sweetwater, a town of 12,000 that bills itself as the nation's wind-energy capital, to shoot a commercial urging Americans to put themselves on a new energy diet: cutting out imported oil—which costs $700 billion a year—in favor of domestically produced sources such as wind and natural gas. "Our dependence on foreign oil...

Ah so! It seems T. Boone Pickens is not the disinterested environmental pioneer that his ads make him out to be. Michelle Malkin exposes the grand scale corruption that is behind Nancy Pelosi’s desire not to drill for more oil. It seems that she has stock in companies that create and run wind farms – T. Boone Pickens companies. Though she seemingly backtracked on labeling drilling a "hoax" this week, Pelosi refuses to consider GOP energy proposals that don't include massive government subsidies for so-called eco-alternatives that have never panned out. Which brings us to Madame Speaker's 2007 financial disclosure...

Wind Turbines Whip Up Health Fears By RICHARD COCKLE  BOARDMAN, Ore. — Sherry Eaton pulled into the driveway of her rural, high-desert home to see one of several giant wind turbines being assembled a half-mile away. "I started to cry," Eaton, 57, recalled of her first sight of the Willow Creek Wind Project in late July. "They're going to be hanging over the back of our house, and now there's the medical thing." "The medical thing" is new research suggesting that living close to wind turbines, as Eaton and her 60-year-old husband, Mike, soon will be doing, can cause sleep...

The eastern Colorado wind turbine tapped for the Democratic National Convention's carbon-offset program has one problem: It doesn't generate any electricity. Convention organizers are now being questioned for their eagerness to market those credits to delegates. The DNC has contracted with Vermont-based NativeEnergy to offer delegates "Green challenge" carbon offsets to soften the environmental impact of convention travel. That money is then invested in carbon-free "green" energy sources around the country, including a wind turbine installed this year by the Wray School District RD-2. But a Face The State investigation reveals the district's turbine has never produced marketable energy due...

Fans of U.S. Sen. Edward Kennedy have long argued that he has fought the good fight ... But today, he is defending the indefensible: special interest legislation, tucked into a Coast Guard authorization bill, that would give Gov. Mitt Romney the power to veto the proposed Cape Wind energy project, even though it would be in federal waters. The project... more than five miles offshore of Cape Cod. The equivalent of burning 113 million barrels of oil per year. Proponents of Cape Wind say it is an important source of alternative, renewable energy, and it has the backing of such...

Opponents of a plan to build the first offshore U.S. wind farm in Nantucket Sound off Massachusetts were a step closer on Friday to blocking the $900 million project. Negotiators in the U.S. House of Representatives and Senate agreed late on Thursday to give Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney the power to block a plan by Cape Wind Associates LLC to put 130 giant wind turbines near the resort islands of Martha's Vineyard and Nantucket. Backers say the project could generate enough electricity for most of Cape Cod and nearby islands. Opponents include wealthy residents with yachts and shorefront property near...

Given to environmentalist lawyer Robert F. Kennedy Jr., whose fight for "green" energy apparently stops as soon as the results might spoil his view. Kennedy penned an irate New York Times op-ed in December, condemning the proposed building of wind turbines around the Nantucket Sound. While Kennedy criss-crosses the country in his jet-fuel-burning private plane stumping for alternative energy sources, he wants an exception for his own backyard. Greenpeace spokesman Chris Miller was not pleased, saying: "It's about a vision for healthy oceans, not the view from the Kennedy compound."

<p>No one is happy about the problem outlined in the Dec. 22 article "22,000 birds gone with the wind turbines." The wind energy industry has worked hard over the past decade to reduce the impact and make sure that other sites don't have similar problems. Those efforts have largely been very successful. There are dozens of other wind sites around the country, and none has experienced a raptor mortality rate anywhere near Altamont. It remains an anomaly. Wind turbines and wildlife can and do coexist successfully.</p>

MANCHESTER, Vt. (AP) _ Some residents and business owners are concerned that a planned wind farm project on Little Equinox Mountain will ruin the view from the village. But proponents argued Thursday that project's environmental benefits far outweighed any effect on the area's scenery, noting that the mountain had been home to other wind projects in recent years. Equinox Wind Partners, a joint venture between Catamount Energy Corp. of Rutland and Endless Energy of Maine, hopes to erect five wind turbines along the Little Equinox ridgeline. The structures would consist of a 200-foot-tall tower and a rotor with three 130-foot...