Political equivalent of "Hold ma beer and watch this!"
When we get to the stage where brownouts are a daily fact of life the old line energy companies will be blamed. However, no one should be under any illusion that the lack of energy will trouble the Dems and environmentalists in the least. That is actually their goal.
These supporters think he is lower gasoline taxes and prices
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2128724/posts
I guess they think the government creates everything and just gives it to the rich
Find later
Americans deserve wind power. It appeals to the fantasies that are presently shaping their political decisions.
They are paying dearly for it. In states which mandate a fixed percentage of windmills (or alternatives) as generation, the utilities are fast-tracking them. It doesn’t matter whether they are overpriced and underperforming - the utilities are glad to add them to their rate base, and let the ratepayers pay goldplated prices for the duds.
I swear that Obama and the liberals are forging ahead to the middle ages.
When I say drill, I don't mean every last drop under there that is nonrenewable. But enough to tide us over until we can look into other alternatives.
Maybe a better solution are the smaller ones people buy themselves, pay for themselves in up to 5 years or less. Any excess is sold to the grid at market value.
Isn't it odd that those old windmills (we got rid of them on 2 farms) are now in vogue? I've tried to photograph a few, but haven't gotten very good ones yet. I remember climbing halfway up a very tall one when I was a kid, then got scared and climbed back down. My father's cousin was afraid to climb all the way to the top to change the light bulb. So my father did it for him, and he wasn't even a farmer any more but a civil engineer who had welded water towers and such just before WWII, so he was used to heights. Those older ones probably didn't generate as much power as the newer ones.
Why no one seems to gasp the significance of what happened in Texas on February 28, 2008. On that day doldrum weather conditions idled most of Texas windmills and lead to a power crisis that narrowly averted rolling blackouts. While the upper Midwest has been touted as the Saudi Arabia of wind energy, its windmills can be idled by both a lack of wind and too windy conditions which cause windmills to shut down least the strain destroy them. If 20% of our electricity is to come from windmills such situations could become common place given the fickle weather conditions in the Midwest.
Who needs reliable 24/7 electricity anyway? Some foreign governments and eco-maniacs might look favorably upon the USA if we cut the power off a few hours each day.
Vero Possumus!
I can imagine it now. Barack Obama in a cardigan next to a fireplace asking us to “sacrifice.”
Seems oddly familiar ...
Our state has a mandate that we have to be using 20% renewable energy in the next few years. A company contacted us and wanted to do a study to see if it was feasible to put wind generators on top of our mountain. They studied for 9 months or so and said that it wasn’t feasible, the terrain was too rough and the costs would be prohibitive. They contacted us last month and said that they were still interested, I think they’re getting desparate.
Part of the problem is that in this part of the state, places that might be suitable, belong to the government, we are just lucky that our ancestors were hardy and decided to homestead on top of a rocky mountain top.
Yesterday, the top story on the Utah news stations was that an Obama spokesman made it clear that they were going to do everything they could to prevent new natural gas and oil production in “sensitive places like Utah.” Interesting. The Dems can combine their desire to keep us weak and energy dependent with their desire to slap us Mormon Cracker Republicans, just like Clinton did when he shut down production in the nation’s biggest reserve of clean coal, which also is located in Utah.
There is no such thing as free energy and Newton's Third Law: "For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction force" hasn't yet been repealed by the Democrats.
Every megawatt of electricity we put on the grid from windmills is a megawatt of energy that we take out of the circulation of the Earth's atmosphere.
As we build millions, tens of millions and hundreds of millions of windmills and slow the atmosphere's circulation it would seem likely that the equator will get warmer, the deserts both hotter and larger. At the poles, the opposite will occur, they will get colder and the ice pack larger and thicker.
I'm guessing the EPA is too involved in Al Gore's global warming redistribution of wealth to have done a study on the effect of mass use of windmills.