Posted on 01/12/2010 5:15:00 PM PST by ButThreeLeftsDo
ELKTON, MINN. -- Every sunny morning, shadows from the massive rotating blades swing across their breakfast table. The giant towers dominate the view from their deck. Noise from the turbines fills the silence that Dolores and Rudy Jech once enjoyed on their Minnesota farm.
"Rudy and I are retired, and we like to sit out on our deck," Dolores said. "And that darned thing is right across the road from us. It's an eyesore, it's noisy, and having so many of them there's a constant hum."
Just as they are being touted as a green, economical and job-producing energy source, wind farms in Minnesota are starting to get serious blowback. Across the state, people are opposing projects worth hundreds of millions of dollars. Opposition is also rising in other states. It's not likely to blow over quickly in Minnesota, which is the nation's fourth-largest producer of wind power and on track to double its 1,805-megawatt capacity in the next couple of years.
(Excerpt) Read more at startribune.com ...
The green economy of the midwest has begun its collapse before it ever got going.
“Michigan- BPW blows off two wind power prospects (”too expensive”)”
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2426536/posts
An hour east of Lubbock, TX there are many of these eyesores. I’m glad I don’t live near them.
Yeah, I saw that....unbelievable....
What, she left out headaches, fatigue, back pain, and the heartbreak of psoriasis? Sorry, Nina -- I'm afraid you aren't going to get any ambulance-chaser-consultant business with that kind of half-hearted "effort"!
I think we’re seeing the first dominoes beginning to fall and it ain’t gonna be pretty.
The fraud that is Ethanol, which was pushed mightily in MN, continues to cost more than it is worth...
Ding....
Ding.
This is why Pawlenty has no shot. He is the Green Police.
These massive wind farms have the potential to do a great deal of environmental damage all by themselves.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/12/081216104307.htm
The example I use is wind moving across lake Michigan. As the air moves across the lake in a steady flow it picks up moisture but may not rain over the lake. The rain doesn’t come until the air moves inland and rises over the warmer ground. As the air rises the moisture condenses into rain and falls in a line that matches the shoreline nearly perfectly. If you put up a thousand 300 foot windmills its going to disrupt the airflow and “could” cause serious changes downwind.
Captain Ethanol.
We’d be far more effective drilling for natural gas under the lakes.
Wind turbines also kill thousands of insect-eating birds and bats.
Interesting thoughts. They might as well kiss the bird migrations goodbye too. Farmers used to be concerned about the effects of high voltage lines on their cattle. These things will really make them crazy.
One thing we can all agree on is that they’re an incredibly inefficient and overly expensive tax dollar boondoggle.
Private construction projects have always been analyzed and planning requirements met and mitigation put in place.
Public projects are not.
How much intellectual horsepower does it require to set minimum distance from residential structures, and at least a cursory environmental impact statement?
I was in the design and processing end of developments and construction of both public and private projects. Fortunately, mostly at the pointy end of design and "processing." This BS has been going on for many decades.
On average wind-based generation has capacity factors in the range of 25% or so. That means to have an equivalent output compared with more reliable sources, you have to overbuild by a factor of four. Not good when you factor in things like transmission infrastructure requirements, power management and grid stability, land use, etc. Your other choice is to have available quick-start, high reliability backup generation, and right now, that means natural gas. So relying on wind for a significant portion of your baseload capacity builds in a structural requirement to burn more fossil fuel, which of course undercuts one of the main arguments for developing it as a resource.
She can't be too through; she failed to mention fallen arches, jungle rot and creeping crud.
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