Here’s what we know about modern windmills:
- They seem to slaughter migratory birds (maybe less so now)
- They drive people crazy with noise (I find this hard to believe)
- They drove the Kennedy family crazy for disturbing their view (who cares in the folks in Appalachia have their views spoiled)
- They require backup fossil fuel electric generation
- They are often running are well less than advertised capacity
- They cannot scale up to meet any serious future energy demands
- They replace our dependence on foreign oil with dependence on foreign rare earth metals. Why one is “preferable” to another is beyond me.
- We import most of our windmill parts from Germany. I applaud this. But the “green” crowd is a local one, no? Would wind satisfy the green jobs crowd if much of the material and technology comes from abroad? In this sense, we are like China is to our manufacturing sector.
- And now I learn that they kill a heck of a lot of bats, among other things.
- Dead bats are turning up beneath wind turbines all over the world. Bat fatalities have now been documented at nearly every wind facility in North America where adequate surveys for bats have been conducted, and several of these sites are estimated to cause the deaths of thousands of bats per year. This unanticipated and unprecedented problem for bats has moved to the forefront of conservation and management efforts directed toward this poorly understood group of mammals. The mystery of why bats die at turbine sites remains unsolved. Is it a simple case of flying in the wrong place at the wrong time? Are bats attracted to the spinning turbine blades? Why are so many bats colliding with turbines compared to their infrequent crashes with other tall, human-made structures?
Dead bats = more bugs = more insecticides
So green!
I think it should be called the Fluorescein (or Uranine WSS) Movement. More appropiate color.
http://www.bing.com/images/search?q=Fluorescein&view=detail&id=E58ECBEA195071A1D679E417D946CED58160E44C&first=0&FORM=IDFRIR
There’s also the myth of them being essentially maintenance free. (They do look somewhat like a large lit candle stick when the control oil fails, or some other problem.) Also they tend to produce electricity exactly when we don’t need it; at night and in the shoulder months. (shoulder months: spring and autumn, not much heating or air conditioning.)
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