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Posted on 07/20/2011 11:45:40 AM PDT by Hunton Peck
Reality has overtaken green hope.
Facts are pesky things. And they're particularly pesky when it comes to the myths about the wind energy business.
For years, it's been an article of faith among advocates of renewables that increased use of wind energy can provide a cost-effective method of reducing carbon dioxide emissions. The reality: wind energy's carbon dioxide-cutting benefits are vastly overstated. Furthermore, if wind energy does help reduce carbon emissions, those reductions are too expensive to be used on any kind of scale.
Those are the findings of an exhaustive new study, released today, by Bentek Energy, a Colorado-based energy analytics firm. Rather than rely on computer models that use theoretical emissions data, the authors of the study, Porter Bennett and Brannin McBee, analyzed actual emissions data from electric generation plants located in four regions: the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, Bonneville Power Administration, California Independent System Operator, and the Midwest Independent System Operator. Those four system operators serve about 110 million customers, or about one-third of the U.S. population.
Bennett and McBee looked at more than 300,000 hourly records from 2007 through 2009. Their results show that the American Wind Energy Association (AWEA) and other wind boosters have vastly overstated wind's ability to cut sulfur dioxide, nitrous oxide, and carbon dioxide.
Indeed, the study found that in some regions of the country, like California, using wind energy doesn't reduce sulfur dioxide emissions at all. But the most important conclusion from the study is that wind energy is not "a cost-effective solution for reducing carbon dioxide if carbon is valued at less than $33 per ton." With the U.S. economy still in recession and unemployment numbers near record levels, Congress cannot, will not, attempt to impose a carbon tax, no matter how small.
(Excerpt) Read more at forbes.com ...
Bad news for greenie weenies.
How do I get this message to the dimwits who run our state electric utility? Right now they are offering us the opportunity to pay MORE if we want our electricity generated by wind power.
Unpossible! What the article does not tell you is that this study was financed by Big Solar.
Well, proof positive that wind turbines suck in more ways than one.
One problem with wind is that it isn’t there when you need the power most. It tends to be hottest or coldest in the center of air masses where the wind tends to be stillest.
Today we’ve hit 97 degrees with winds topping out at around 5 mph.
"If"
This was taken on my way back to Seattle. These generators are ugly and half of them were not working.
One thing I’ve never understood. Because wind is NOT consistent, anywhere on earth, and periods of calm are very common, it seems (to me) that there is not a single existing power plant that can be either replaced OR shut down.
The wind (anywhere) can die to nothing in a matter of moments, ceasing the “production” of electricity. Since a “fossel fuel” plant takes a matter of hours to begin generating power after a cold start, there is not the possibility of SHUTTING DOWN a single current power plant.
In my part of New England, we are staring 100 degree heat in the face. Without CONSISTENTLY available electricity, without pause, the shut down of air-conditioners will cause the rapid deaths of thousands of elderly and younger ill people.
Remember the catastrophe in France a few years ago when a rare (for them) heat wave killed 40,000 elderly people in a land without air-conditioning?
Don’t need or want that here (I’m one of those elderly)
Then there's only one solution. Change $33 to another number so it will start making sense again.
Dang, that was so easy. Can I get my grant money now?? /sarc
I’ll add this to my new book I’m writing called “Leftist are so full of sh!t... and are damned proud of it”
Wow, what a deal,huh? We drove from nc to oregon ... Windmills littering the skyline for miles out west. I also estimated 5 to 7 flatbed trucks... and I do not mean standard size flatbeds. Not to mention the miles of earth razed to place them. I thought they were eerie as well. So we paid for them through stimulus, and I bet state and local tax I’m credits were issued.... And they want you to pay again, monthly. Wow, that takes nerve or a lot of idiots. Wonder how much each one costs after all of that,
"Denmark, the world’s most wind-intensive nation, with more than 6,000 turbines generating 19% of its electricity, has yet to close a single fossil-fuel plant. It requires 50% more coal-generated electricity to cover wind power’s unpredictability, and pollution and carbon dioxide emissions have risen (by 36% in 2006 alone)."
I have heard that sometimes the large blades crack (can’t confirm that). But, if so, what happens when one breaks and goes flying across the landscape? Wouldn’t you love to have that land on you?
The entire idea is ludicrous. Apparently some people long for the lifestyle of a 15th century peasant.
Wind energy is today's snake oil, being forced on us by corrupt governments (at all levels) and their crony capitalists, all of whom stand to gain billions of dollars by jamming these beastly things wherever they can.
The vast majority of those who live anywhere near the things hate them due to noise, flicker (light strobing), unsightly appearance, reduction in property values, bird and bat destruction, leakage, fires, ice throws, etc.
The people pushing turbines like to sell feel-goodism to the gullible masses, never mentioning the reality of them, which also includes no reduction in electric rates, never once shutting down a conventional power plant, and unreliability.
The simple question to ask folks is who you going to believe in this debate, the side with billions of dollars at stake or those who live near them with nothing at stake but their health and home?
I pray God has a special place in hell for these wind bastards and their enablers.
And they chop up birds.
A while ago there was a freeper (can’t remember who, or I’d ping’em) who was involved with wind power in a professional capacity.
He basically said that what makes them sound practical is that they always figure in all the government tax breaks and grants when then talk about them. Without those breaks, wind power is a financial black hole. They are a huge scam.
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