Monday, February 4, 2013

On Wind-Farms and Turbines

I think that every politician who voted for these suckers should have a bunch of them constructed in THEIR communities. That way they could also secure the "benefits" of noise (and, hence, disrupted sleep), lights, odor, dust, vibration, obstructed view, and property devaluation that the rest of those out-of-sight-out-of-mind property owners have had to deal with for years now. It's only fair, no?

26 comments:

Jerry Critter said...

Which would you rather have next door, a wind farm and turbines or a coal-fired power plant?

dmarks said...

Jerry: Good point... seems of all of the things Will listed, most apply to coal power, and not wind power.

Smelly wind? View obstructed by something that is no wider and view-blocking the the trunk of one very large tree? I expect better of you than this.

There's lights, granted, but they are so high up (to protect aircraft) that you have to crane your neck. And they aren't very bright.

Rusty Shackelford said...



Jerry,wind power is a sham.Its been around forever....hell,back in the late 70's and early 80's it was one of the biggest tax deductions going.

Hell Jerry,the famous Rolling Stones concert at Altamont was smack in the middle of a wind farm and that was 100 years ago.

Jerry,dont you realize if there was any money to be made with wind power there would be one in everyones backyard.

dmarks said...

Rusty: It's fine with me if the free market decides on wind mills. No special advantage for them... but also block all frivolous lawsuits of the "I might see it out of the corner of my eye" type. You shouldn't have the right to take away others' property rights by filing frivolous lawsuits like this over what they do on their land.

"Jerry,dont you realize if there was any money to be made with wind power there would be one in everyones backyard."

Yeah, and left to the free market, there would be some. But not nearly as many as we have now.

Will "take no prisoners" Hart said...

People are literally being driven a) insane (the constancy of the infrasound at night) and b) out of their homes - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SNxvkrgoPLo - And the Kennedys and Walter Kronkite sure didn't want them in THEIR backyards. And, yes, there are problems with coal. But the only tangible replacements for it, considering the massive scale involved, are natural gas and nuclear.......I totally agree with Russ on this one. Wind has the potential to be an even bigger scam than ethanol; the massive amounts of subsidies, the fact that you're going to need coal back-up anyway, the massive amount of steel that's required to make these suckers (powered by energy that comes from, yes, coal powered plants!!!), the pitiful power density of windmills, the fact that they take up precious amounts of land (the Kennedy's didn't want them off Hyannis but had zero problem with the cutting down of trees in the beautiful Alleghenies to put these ugly bastards up). Spain tried this same policy from 1997 to 2009 and it did nothing to reduce man-made CO2 and it gave them a powerful deficit to boot. Central planning - it doesn't work!

dmarks said...

I am with both of you 100% on leaving it to the free market.

But free market works both ways: no frivolous lawsuits.

BB-Idaho said...

Must have some attraction. The
Chinese have jumped on wind power .

Will "take no prisoners" Hart said...

If the Chinese want to subsidize an expensive, power diffuse, and land gobbling energy source that doesn't appreciably reduce CO2 emissions, I say let 'em.

BB-Idaho said...

Could be the Chinese attraction to
windmills relates to their coal .

Will "take no prisoners" Hart said...

Like I said, there are serious drawbacks to coal. But if the Chinese think that windmills are going to be a practical alternative to them, then THEY are smoking something.

Will "take no prisoners" Hart said...

And dmarks, I agree with you on frivolous lawsuits. I just don't think that not being able to sleep without medication and having your property values plummet is frivolous.

Unknown said...

What about nuclear energy? To me, that seems to be the most viable renewable energy source I can think of and it sounds cleaner than coal to me.

Unknown said...

Correction: Nuclear isn't really defined as "renewable" and there seems to be some controversy over whether the fission process is renewable or not, but it still sounds like a good energy source to me.

BB-Idaho said...

In discussing energy sources, costs and efficiencies, it seems logical to find a chart listing.
These comparisons appear
interesting and fair...with the caveat that they were collected by
a pschycology prof at Loyola Marymount U ! Nuclear has some merits, although initial cost (and Chernobyl) are a downside.

dmarks said...

Nuclear is far "dirtier" than clean coal. The waste is so toxic that no one even has a good plan to handle it.

And if you doubt the reality of the realtive danger, I have a challenge: go to bed tonight with a box of coal dust under your bed. Or a box of spent nuclear fuel. Your choose which.

dmarks said...

Will the property value suits are indeed entirely frivolous, unless they are building the windmills on your property against your will.

BB-Idaho said...

RE: "..no one even has a good plan to handle it". In countries like
France & UK, which are heavy into
reactors, it is reprocessed , a separation technique in which the
long half life isotopes are reclaimed for reactor re-use, the remaining material is of relatively low halflife. The US
avoids that because of costs. I
took a most interesting tour of
the Hanford nuclear site (where
numerous nuclear sub reactors sit
'cooling') and our IEL site in
Idaho receives nuclear waste for
proper storage. Production of electricity relies on turning a generator and there are numerous
methods of doing it. While coal
is efficient for this and readily available, its combustion produces
mercury and sulfuric acid (which I
challenge dmarks to sleep with)...

dmarks said...

Strong evidence on the "wind turbine noise syndrome" hoax:

http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Wind_Turbine_Syndrome

Thie reminds me a lot of the kooks who have over the years filed similar frivolous lawsuits over power lines being nearbye. But none of this, Will, is an argument for any subsidy or special treatment for windmills. Let the government be neutral on this energy source and leave it entirely up to the free market.

And yes, BB, i'd much rather have the box of mercury or sulfuric acid than the plutonium under my bed. The coal plants can remove these from emissions anyway, and they are infinetely easier to re process and re use than plutonium.

Will "take no prisoners" Hart said...

The negative effects of nuclear energy have been overstated. Yes, ounce for ounce the waste of nuclear is worse than coal but when you consider the fact that the coal industry annually pumps out 176,000 pounds of lead, 161,000 pounds of chromium, 100,000 pounds of arsenic, and 96,000 pounds of mercury AND 130 million tons of solid waste (ash and rubber sludge), it may in fact be a cleaner option overall.......Dmarks, property right are like free speech and gun rights. They exist and they're important but they aren't absolute. If somebody moved into my community and made it so that I couldn't sleep or sell my property because nobody in his right mind would want to live next to dozens of windmills, each of which is 33% taller than a football field is long, I would be pissed and I strongly suspect that you would be, too.......Hoax? So, is the French Academy of Medicine in on it? Nina Pierpont from Johns Hopkins University? My own doctor who gave expert testimony against these behemoths? The Oak Prairie Windfarm Study which freely admitted that these things give off 42 decibels from 1,300 feet?

dmarks said...

You do have a good point about the volume of waste.

As for the dangers of nuclear energy, what of the cost? Consumers Power (an energy monopoly in Michigan created by the interference of the government in what should have been a free market) tried to build a debacle called the Midland Dow Nuclear plant.

They wasted hundreds of millions on this monster.... and passed the cost of the mistake onto consumers who had no choice.

And guess what; the thing never evenr produced nuclear energy. Consumers Power, hardly an atypical power company, was too incompetent to ever complete it.Nuclear energy in this instance was massive waste of money without even one volt coming out of the place.

Or the Big Rock Nuclear Plant in Charlevoix (yes, I had seen this many times) One of the nation's oldest. It cost close to half a billion dollars just to shut it down!!!. And they still left the waste at the site. Ridiculous. I can't find anything even a fraction of this for decommissioning a coal plant. And former coal plant sites have in cases become high-density housing. How many times does this happen with former nuclear sites?

Back to the danger there are other considerations. If the nuclear plant fails and has an accident, there is probably an area at least the size of a county where no-one can live for thousands of years. If a coal plant fails, nothing like this happens at all.

BB-Idaho said...

My state is peculiar in some respects. One is source of electricity:
hydro 79.6%
nat gas 13.0%
wood biomass 4%
wind 1.9%
coal 0.6%
...which makes for very cheap electricity and clear skies.

dmarks said...

Are they destroying the dams there too?

There's a river near here, and the government decided to shut down the hydro plant and basically break the dam. They flooded and trashed scores of houses as a result. Lots of damage.

Les Carpenter said...

Windmills would look great dotting the Iowa, Nebraska, and Kansas landscapes.

Jerry Critter said...

Renewables now cheaper than coal and gas in Australia.

Will "take no prisoners" Hart said...

There is no way in hell that Australia or any other country is going to be able go predominantly with renewables. Just on scale alone the world consumes 226 million barrels of oil equivalent per day and less than 1% of that is wind and solar....And what about jet fuel and diesel fuel? What, pray tell, is the green agenda's alternative to that? Grow even more corn?

dmarks said...

A fossil fuel with reserves of hundreds of years might be said to be renewable in a way.

Turning the globe into a dustbowl for corn fuel... well, that might be less renewable than one thinks.

Wind turbines depend on rare earth metals mined in China. Rather scarce....