Posted on 07/19/2009 2:22:57 PM PDT by smokingfrog
The landscape of West Texas is changing.
Standing hundreds of feet tall, like alien structures on the featureless plains, fields of shining white towers have sprung up seemingly overnight to harness formidable winds known all too well by those who have made the land home.
Call it what you will - alternative energy, a green solution, renewable resources - one thing is certain: like the oil booms of yesteryear, wind harnessing is sweeping across the Plains with the promise of a new tomorrow for the U.S. energy market.
Similar to transformations brought by oil and agricultural industries in past decades, the industry's impact is more than skin deep. Some researchers have found going green through a new generation of windmills may not be what's best for the environment.
"There's almost no understanding of the environmental impact of these wind turbines," said Ronald Kendall, director of Texas Tech's Institute of Environmental and Human Health. "I'm all for alternative energy, but I'm for getting it right."
Kendall and his colleagues have been looking past the benefits of pollution-free energy and focusing on how the industry will harm the region's oldest natives: its wildlife.
The spinning blades - many of which are more than 100 feet in length - present a unique challenge for birds and bats, and the mere presence of the mammoth towers could disrupt one the area's most threatened inhabitants, the lesser prairie chicken.
"If an agricultural pesticide killed as many birds as these turbines probably are, they'd be regulated right out of the market," Kendall said, adding one report in Canada found a single turbine could kill more than 100 birds a night. "Why don't we get ahead of the curve for once?"
And it's not just the turbines that have researchers worried.
(Excerpt) Read more at lubbockonline.com ...
They want to fight climate change with large scale use of huge wind turbines to extract large amounts of energy from the climate. They are insane.
If you presented a statement like this to support a college thesis you would get a big fat 'F'.
Nopers, has to be on your land. However, most people don’t want that land.
Attwater. Those were the days. He took no prisoners. A Sun-Tzu acolyte I believe.
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