Newgeezer:
Below are photographs of windmills, and oil derricks. Is there an esthetic difference, aside from oil derricks tend to be in out of the way places, and windmills are prominently displayed on otherwise pristine hilltops?
These monstrosities are festooned all over what would otherwise be the scenic Altamont Pass. I suspect they generate more Govt. Subsidy $$$ for the owners than electricity for Californians.
Please disabuse me of my mistaken notion that windmills are ugly, noisy, subsidy dependent despoilers of our landscape.
I'm sure there was a time when people lamented the aesthetics of littering our pristine countryside (not to mention the wide swaths cut through the forests) with such mostrosities as those towers employed to support high-voltage electrical wires. D*mn those ugly things; why can't people just be happy with oil lamps?!
Same goes for highways, airports, etc., etc. Noisy, ugly, ruining good land, tearing down some beautiful old buildings, blah, blah, blah.
aside from oil derricks tend to be in out of the way places
With the exception of a few, all of the 500 or so windmills I've ever seen in person have been in out-of-the-way places in Iowa and Minnesota. The few were single turbines situated in or near small towns. But, Senator Kennedy, if you don't like the idea of having windmills in your backyard or in your "pristine" places, go ahead and fight to block their construction or have them removed. Let me assure you, just as there are those who think beachfront property is not spoiled by rocket launchpads and/or private boat clubs, there are plenty of us who think wind turbines are beautiful. As they say, beauty is in the eye of the beholder.
If you'd rather pay higher and higher prices for natural gas and crude oil than look at a windmill, make your voice heard. By the way, my fossil fuel of choice for generating electricity is coal. How about that for ruining your landscape? Oh, you probably don't live near any sizable coal deposits. Nevermind.
As for the numbers and the noise and the subsidies, go look for some data from this century, and stop looking at those puny little toy antiques at Altamont Pass. Otherwise, you might as well be saying the automobile will never replace the passenger train for cross-country travel, based on your continuing experience riding in the back seat of a Model 'T'.