Real Extinction Rebellion: Environmentalists Furious as Wind Industry Slash & Burn Entire Forests

Stop These Things ^ | 15 November 2019 | Stop These Things

[Erik Latranyi]

In Germany, real environmentalists are mounting a well-drilled revolt against the destruction of forests – the natural habitat of apex predators, like the endangered Red Kite. Environmentalists are also furious at the fact that Kites, Eagles and dozens of threatened bat species are being sliced and diced with impunity across Europe. Rural residents, driven mad in their homes or driven out of them by practically incessant turbine generated low-frequency noise and infrasound have taken their cases to law seeking injunctions and damages.

The result being is that new wind farm construction in Germany has ground to a halt: so far this year a trifling 35 onshore wind turbines have been erected.

The fact that chaotically intermittent wind power can’t be delivered as and when power consumers need it means the wanton destruction of pristine wilderness, bucolic landscapes, rural communities, and millions of birds and bats (including plenty of species on the brink of extinction) is pretty hard to justify.

There is a kind of irony in the fact that environmentalists have turned out to be the wind industry’s nemesis, given that the entire subsidy-soaked scam once traded on its ‘holier than thou’ environmental credentials.

In Germany, the wind industry’s wholesale destruction of forests has drawn the focus of environmentalists, once again, in relation to a 7 turbine project set to wipe out a square mile of Germany’s shrinking woodland.

[Bernard]

How much more surface area do the horizontal turbines take than the traditional stand-up windmills? And I guess that would have to factor in access roads, clearance, etc.

In other words, is the benefit of horizontal turbines that you don't see them when driving by?

[VTenigma]

If you had enclosed wind turbines around here they would look like a horizontal popsicle in a week. They actually paint the blades black to mitigate icing on the ones we have already.

[DugwayDuke]

mdmathis6 wrote: “There is a wind turbine design that was used in Spain where the turbine sits horizontally in side of a tower and the wind comes in through openings in the tower and drives the turbine.”

Do these horizontal towers rotate to follow the wind?

[Clutch Martin]

Go figure, that it would take more than just one gigantic windmill to harness all the wind power needed to power the entire country of Germany. I guess foresight of expectations was somewhat lacking..

[rdcbn]

This is the dirty secret nobody wants to talk about with wind energy.

wind farms tear up the environment and destroy ecosystems because the site work is extremely expensive and the turbine don't produce enough revenue to develop the sites, install foundations and turbines and the. remediate the areas back to pristine condition.

Roads are rough graded onto hills and mountains in high density patterns and left unpaved and minimally improved which causes eroision and alters natural drainage patterns

With the large multi megawatt generators , huge and very heavy components must be lifted by even huger and heavier cranes which tear up the environment

Power lines are either strung out or dug into the ground, which tears up the surrounding earth from digging and running heavy equipment over the site
Spare parts and site heavy equipment are stored in open air lots

As a result, most wind farms look more like a World War battlefield such as the break out from Anzio in Italy than some green utopia in the publicly photos

Really love wind turbines as they are awesome pieces of machinery and engineering. They are an indispensable way to quickly install inexpensive ( relatively) power to remote areas with good wind resources but lacking in preexisting power distribution infrastructure, especially third world countries

But they are not environmentally friendly nor are they green

Shutting down perfectly good utility grade power plants to replace them wind turbines is one of the most environmentally destructive and economically irresponsible actions any government can do.

As Germany has learned, wind turbines are fundamentally incapable of producing reliable, utility grade power.

And the environmental impact is highly negative and far from the green utopia the disconnected armchair environmentalists living in filth in their San Francisco high rise apartments or Malibu private jet set celebs think it is.

[Vinnie]

And we used to complain about cell towers defacing the countryside....

[beethovenfan]

I HATE wind farms. Inefficient, destructive and butt ugly.

[bill1952]

You would allow the government be in charge of any of that?
Blocking the sun?

Restart Nass and they will get respect

[Tucker39]

Breaking Wind. Yep! That’s where it belongs. Or perhaps a new category: Economic Flatulence.

[bill1952]

NASA ^

[rdcbn]

That kind of a turbine does not scale up to utility grade power because of energy capture to structure ratio issues and the fact that they must be built too close to ground to get best airflow.

Like many alternative energy concepts it is fascinating from an elegant engineering perspective but impractical and fundamentally unworkable as a form of large scale utility grade clean power

Not sure if you are aware of this ( few are), but the term politically correct was first coined back in 1917, the early days of Post Revolutionary Soviet Russia, for a totally unworkable scheme by two uneducated, peasant class Heros of the Revolution who came up with a crazy idea on how to generate “ socialist electric power” based on superior, sound communist theory and principles.

A huge amount of scarce and precious post revolutionary Russian assets and resources were squandered on this scheme to demonstrate the superiority of Socialist Power based on Communist theory to the capitalist world and its utter and complete failure was a serious blow to Soviet economic development. This monumental failure and waste of resources ( just the first of many for the USSR) in the pursuit science and technology based on communist ideology was excused and actually praised by propaganda arm of the Soviet Communist Party Apparatus on the grounds that while it was a total failure and technically and economically the incorrect thing to do , it was done by committed communists so, their words, “ the project was done by two stalwarts of the Revolution who were proving the superiority of Communism so, while a failure, it was the Politically Correct thing to do”

The term stuck as an ironic euphemistic phrase to refer the many politically and ideologically driven scientific, technological, economic and sociological failures of the Soviet Union over the years.

Very little has changed since then it seems

[AFreeBird]

So, how much carbon would those forrests have sucked up, that won’t any more?

[mdmathis6]

From what I remembered when I saw the specials on wind energy the inlets were designed so that no matter the wind direction , a breeze would always get to the turbines. I think that is why there was a little less efficiency than with the exposed turbines. Now I have seen some designs and you-tubes done by engineering students that suggest such enclosed vertical turbine systems, depending on the angle of the blade and how the wind would be channeled, could have greater efficiency at a given wind speed(than exposed conventional turbines) by means of venturie effects of how the wind could be channeled into a smaller space; but like anything else involving a conservation of mass and energy, you can have a greater push but loss of over all current(again probably why the Spanish “Towers” had lesser start up efficiency).
Now Spain also has conventional wind turbines as well but the ones I saw were looked like chimney towers poking up out of the ground.

It seems to me wind power could be good supplements to power in marginal areas but couldn’t replace what the big plants do. If you want to protect birds, and one is looking to improve wind power devices, then enclosed vertical spiral type turbines would be the way to do it. The inlets and towers could be screened to keep the birds out.

[butlerweave]

yep , Merkel is a Russian Spy

[butlerweave]

Each turbine must have a House sized concrete and steel footing to keep it in place . https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q2o5P-6zm6Y

[PIF]

Still a very bad idea

[dfwgator]

The Communists in Merkel’s DDR, almost destroyed all the forests there from factory pollution.

[mdmathis6]

I see smaller versions as being practical for off grid out in the country use with storage batteries and large capacitors used to store current, though solar cells would be better for sunnier climes.

If Return of Investment is the prime motivation then no, these systems will never be practical as a money return rate of profit vehicle. For a SHTF or just want to run a few lights and a low watts led tv out in the boonies with your huntin’ buddies out in a deep woods cabin, these might be ideal. If your combo wind/solar system keeps a few lights on when others have gone dark, yours will be the most important house in the neighborhood. No they won’t keep the fridge or heater going but they’ll keep a few lights on and power a radio and some power tools(battery operated rechargeable) and might make a difference between a miserable demise and a chance to “get over the worse of the hump” and survive.

[rdcbn]

Was actually involved as consultant in the design and development of that turbine concept.

Makes nice little turbines in kilowatt size form factors but starts becoming a hard sell after 50kw.

Company was trying to get investor funding for megawatts sized turbines.

Did a design scale up of turbine concept to megawatt output and the turbine was roughly the size and shape of the Huston Astrodome - and a lot more expensive to build.

Very short term employment after that but I at least I stayed away from scrutiny by Securities and Exchange or the bunco squad.

Oh well, at least their check cleared the bank, which kind of surprised me

[UCANSEE2]

A turbine that is safer from slicing birds still does not stop the death of bats, the sound pollution driving people/animals insane and the fact wind cannot meet any cost/benefit analysis.

The SOUND that comes from the WINDMILL style( like an airplane propeller) is totally eliminated when using an airfoil (the blades) that is mounted vertically. Also, bats and birds can 'see' the helix style whereas the the propeller blade style is 'invisible'.

These HELIX designed systems take up a minimum of ground space, do not need braking to keep them from tearing apart, and pretty cheap (compared to the giant propeller type blades on the large 'turbines').

Instead of us buying the giant windmills from CHINA and buying the electricity from the utility, we could have multiple HELIX style systems set up on our properties. City buildings could have dozens of them mounted on the roof. No one would even see them. And it's usually WINDY on the roof of large buildings.

The reason our nation went with the WINDMILL style is because our corrupt politicians made deals with the CHINESE to get kickbacks from the sale of those windmills.