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A Mighty Wind
DoraLives writes "Fascinating New York Times piece regarding a proposed wind farm for Nantucket Sound. Suddenly, all the environmentally friendly locals are going ballistic over the prospects of seeing an 'industrial energy complex' in their backyard. Walter Cronkite decries it, as do many other local checkbook environmentalists. Greenpeace says 'Jim Gordon (the developer) is the real thing, there aren't many entrepreneurs out there willing to take risks to clean up the environment.' Who's right?"
It's the "Not In My Back Yard" syndrome. Everyone thinks these ideas are great... as long as it's not where they live. If you want the benefits though, someone has to live with the negatives.
1. Plant wind
2. Raise wind
3. Harvest wind
4. PROFIT!
Windmills are funky looking, sure. That section along I-10 in California is proof enough of that.
The thing is, they are quiet, clean, and often installed in places that there wouldn't be much other human habitation/recreation anyway. They're not good targets for terrorist attacks, since there's not really much to blow up, and jamming them isn't going to work either.
N.I.M.B.Y. syndrome needs to be reckoned with anyay. And yes, I do live near a power generating station. There is a Natural Gas facility that also does experimental development on the grounds, like solar, less than two miles from where I live. It's in the middle of the city, and not really close to a major industrial section. If you don't want to see it, there are three other cardinal directions to look toward. I'll take the cheap electricity, myself.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
This is just unbeleivable! Nantucket island is filled with greener than thou environmentalists.
Apparently, windfarms are only acceptable in places where they don't offend the rich and the green. The middle of the dessert or the middle of a farmer's field is ok... but ruining they're prestine ocean view? Unacceptable! That ruins the environment for.... umm.... seabirds... thats it, it kills seabirds.
This is rediculous, those people make me sick.
"Entropy is the bad-guy, and he is everywhere"
...who thinks these windmills look cool? A similar controversy is taking place near where I live (except not in the water), and I don't see the problem. I wouldn't mind having one of these in my yard. Plus I could mount my DirecTV dish on top of it for great reception. :-)
I live in the midwest, where it's really flat and windy pretty much all the time. I bet wind power would really take off here,
i live on cape cod, and i am sick of the people who are protesting this. the major arguments against it consist basically of the lessening of aesthetic appeal for beach-goers and boaters. it irks me that the same people who realize the necessity of easing the power demand on the canal power plant (a vile, coal burning smoke belcher) are unwilling to take steps to find alternative energy resources. stupid rich tourists, afraid of seeing a few gulls chopped up in windmills on their way to the islands.
....call me crazy, but i'm thinkin those two might be a fuggin gold mine for any 'wind harvesters'....Hot-air balloon industry might like a heads-up on this too...
;-)
NYT Story
I once knew a girl from Nantucket...
Oh wait, that's related to another story....
I have a friend who is an attorney who had been litigating a case down there. A person bought an empty lot, and one of the neighbors been fighting in court to prevent him from building the house because it interfered with his view of the beach.
If the person was really concerned about the view of the beach, he could have bought the lot.
Fight Spammers!
Hypocrisy of this nature is not just emotional.
Somewhere, sometime, highly populated states are going to realize that they are not entitled to simply purchase energy production from other states without suffering the drawbacks of that production.
This is a major public policy and national security issue. There will be much more of this to come.
Regardless of the fact that there may have been energy market manipulation, states like California fail to build a power plant for decades and complain that they have to pay an 'unfair' price. Their populace is not entitled to purchase at cost that which other states take the initiative to produce to fill their own demand, tolerate risk, deal with pollution, and expend capital.
There is no obligation for other states to acquiesce to large population states' lack of discipline, foresight, and planning.
Lastly, this type of conflict is a perfect example of why we have a bicameral legislature and the benefits of the elcectoral college system.
Game: Player 'Donald J Trump' now has AI skill level 'experimental'.
Just put a nuclear power plant there instead. That should make them satisfied.
If it doesn't, say, hey, what's the problem? It isn't blocking your precious view...
The "renewable" energy sources such as Wind, Solar, and Geothermal energy don't have a lot of chance of being particularly useful. However, if they're going to be useful at ALL, people have to recognize that they're only going to be useful in *very specific places*. If "renewable" energy is to go anywhere at all, we need to recognize the places where they can run continuously and effectively, and install them there, *no* exceptions. Installing a bunch of wind farms in Houston isn't going to power anything. Installing a bunch of wind farms in a constant high-wind area like an island like Nantucket Sound could potentially power a decent area larger than Nantucket. If we don't recognize these choice spots for renewable energy and take advantage of *all* of them, and only pick and choose well, where would be convenient for the locals, Wind power is going to continue to be NOTHING more than a gimmick.
-super ugly ultraman
More efficient omnidirectional prototypes were tested in the 1980's but they were banned because they tended to attract and kill birds.
Ok, theres an obvious solution to this... build a damn mesh cage around the propeller blades.
I guess this is too much of a duh solution for people to accept though, without getting a five million grant from the government to "study" it.
If I have been able to see further than others, it is because I bought a pair of binoculars.
Ok, I consider myself an environmentalist and these people who bitch about wind farms really have no business claiming to be so. Their choices are according to my recent utility supplied info are along with my half-assed pissed-off descriptions:
1) Oil - Polluting
2) Coal - Seriously Polluting
3) Natural Gas - Clean compared to other fossil fuels, but still requires us to fight wars for it.
4) Nuclear - Cart toxic waste across country to bury it in Yucca Mountain. Also, BOOOM!
5) Wind - Unsightly, similar in price to fossil fuels.
6) Solar - Still too expensive in cents/kWh.
7) Biomass - Can't really increase the supply unless you want to start collecting cow farts.
8) Hydro - Most rivers that can generate hydro already are.
9) Imported Power - Mysterious Power!
10) Municipal Trash - Burning stuff is not clean.
Now, of the above choices, what should we focus on until something better becomes available? I think wind is the obvious choice. But no, they are unsightly! OMG! Everything has a negative and wind power's is pretty minor compared to the others. The land that wind power is on can also be used for other purposes such as farming or grazing.
I have a feeling that the people who whine would really like all their power to come from number 9, Imported Power. You know, that magical, free power that some poor schlub in another community has to suffer the environmental consequences for. Now, unless they want to whip out their magic fairy-wand and produce energy out of thin air, they have to use something and they should wake the hell up and realize that wind is a very good choice.
If you are interested in costs, check out the California 1996 Energy Technology Status Report Summary. For a summary, it weighs in at 93 pages. Bleah.
Correction, these structures will HELP the fish stocks. The windmills will create habitats for the sealife and prevent trawlers from ripping up the sea floor and destroying breeding grounds. While I tend to believe there will be a short term disruption of Nature during construction, the long-term benefits will outweigh it. Being a seventh generation native of Martha's Vineyard, this project is also in my backyard, the planned windmills are quite massive. I just find it very amusing that the same wilted-flower children who have been writing letters to the editor and such, pleading all of us to stop using fossil fuels are the same people protesting the windfarm the loudest. Remember folks, the definition of a conservationist, is it's someone who already owns a summer home.
Multiply that by at least 10 if we were to switch over to fusion, porobably even more than 10X that.
Posting from the future, are we...
They're going to use public land (term used loosely, as it's actually water covered land) for a private, for-profit organization. Either a government venture (which I'm not that interested in), or a non-profit organization would be better suited for using public land.
The NIMBY factor is obviously huge here. The part of the article that really stated everything right on the nose was on the last page (did you get there? I did)
To them, the national illusion that you can have electricity, clean air, a stable climate and independence from foreign oil without paying a steep price is ludicrous.
Where "them" are the local residents screaming NIMBY!
There's another great example discussing a local oil tanker that leaked oil into the sound. It basically did far more damage than any wind farm could ever do.
Many of the complaints are rediculous.. The oil lubrication oil will leak from the wind mills and pollute the sound. Birds will die. Arguments that just aren't thought through.
Personally, I'm with some other people here that say windmills aren't particularly ugly, and to me it's like coffee or beer. I didn't like the taste of either initially, but once I realized what they did, they became much more pallitable. Even if I don't really like looking at a siteline spattered with windmills, I know that they're creating electricity in an environmentally friendly way.. and that makes them much more acceptable to me.
The whole reason you earn enough money to live in Nantucket is to live life the way you want.
And when you're that rich, you're subject to "noblesse oblige", which means, you'll help the poor sods to make sure they stay the hell away from your house in Nantucket.
I *get* why they feel that way; if I had their money, I've feel the same way.
Please don't lump all environmentalists together in such a way. These people are not environmentalists, they are rich schmucks who just want everything their way.
There are critical thinking environmentalists too. I like to think that I am one, but I know that that would be a stupid assumption to make.
Do we really want 'em running the country? Yes, if the alternative is the current administration. In case you hadn't noticed, the world is getting smaller. We're going to have to learn to live with the rest of that world.
I'm not exactly a liberal (more all over the place, issue to issue), but I'll defend them against some really bewildering claims. Your rant, point by point:
Saving nature - I'll have to disagree with you and say this is a good thing.
Stopping business - absurd. I thought the 8 years before Bush were going pretty damn well.
Building big government - again, absurd. Bush is building big government - and huge deficits. He's setting the all-time deficit record, beating the high water mark set by his father.
Clean energy - lots of people pay extra for environmentally friendly products and services. If some of them are arguing against a certain project, they may still be better than the environmentally unconscious.
Women's rights - not sure what you're getting at there. Care to expound on that claim?
Freedom of choice - good for them, representing the majority of their constituency instead of caving to a vocal minority.
School vouchers - I'm for school vouchers. Are liberals (democrats?) against them?
Do we really care what they have to say about anything? - Sure do. The thought of a country run by the old guard of the GOP without anyone even trying to keep them honest is a frightening thought.
GO FUCK YOURSELVES.
Sincerely,
The rational libertarian, moderate and liberal people of the United States who want to see clean, cheap energy so as to save our environment and power our lives at the same time
We have the same people living here in SoCal - who don't want to widen freeways - or build rail systems for that matter, and prevent all forms of growth. They would rather increase the pollution by having cars running in their least-efficent mode (stop and go traffic) instead of them zipping around at 60 MPH (when cars are by far the most efficient).
Here in Los Angeles, the number of hybrids are growing exponentially, with next year's hybrid SUVs on the way (Ford Escape Hybrid), Near-Zero Emmission Vehicles (NZEV's) like the Prius, the Insight, and Escape are going to be the rage of Los Angeles. SoCal car dealers cant keep hybrids in stock here!
We are the largest buyers of NZEV's and with increasing numbers of NZEV's, freeways are the cheapest, least-polluting form of transportation. Rail systems cost far more to build, upkeep and power (central power plants). NZEV's lose near zero energy in transportation (unlike electricity), and they do not require polluting central-plants to produce electricity, they simply use the jouels in gasoline extremely efficiently, and easily can be converted to hydrogen thereafter (hydrogen burning ICE + electrcity storage may be cheapest, most effective means of vehicle power instead of fuel cells which are very expensive to make and power)
The same NIMBY's are crushing the addition of an Orange County airport which would take the load off of LAX, which is 60 miles from Orange County - causeing all those people to DRIVE their cars (read: clog the freeways), and increase current poolution and congestion - not to mention watsting about 2 hours every time you want to fly out of SoCal.
I swear, i just want to put you fscking NIBMY's on a boat and sink the ship sometimes. YOU ALL SUCK!
guns kill people like spoons make Rosie O'Donnell fat.
Suddenly, all the environmentally friendly locals are going ballistic over the prospects of seeing an 'industrial energy complex' in their backyard.
I live in The Netherlands; a nice, flat, windy country in the west of Europe, sometimes wrongfully call Holland (Holland is a part of the Netherlands, sort of like England is a part of the UK).
Anyway, 30 years ago most foreigners thought of 4 things when they heard about NL: tulips, wooden shoes, Rembrand and windmills! (today our excellent pot would also be mentioned). Those old-fashioned windmills are pretty big and bulky, and you can see them from afar.
Funny thing is, when someone wants to build an environmentally friendly windmill for electrical energy, he or she cannot get a permit for that. We even have a special word for it: horizonvervuiling (horizon pollution)
I cannot stop to wonder how our country would have looked like if that word had been invented in the 17th century.
Wenn ist das Nunstueck git und Slotermeyer? Ja! Beiherhund das Oder die Flipperwaldt gersput.
The bird issue is a standard one brought up by anti-wind people. In at least one instance, a study proved that the turbines did not contribute to bird deaths. In the report linked, decoys were used in an attempt to draw eiders in close to the turbines, but the ducks overcame their normal social nature, and stayed at least 100m away from the turbines.
really, moderators suck today.
There's a wind farm at South Point on Hawaii's Big Island.
The look really cool from far away but when you get get close to
them, they're pretty nasty. These are big Mitsubishi units. Granted
these mills have not been maintained as well as they could but they're
rusty and leaking lots of oil all over. Many are not working, with pieces
missing; blades, access panels and such, which looks like they are just
scavenging the broken ones for parts. Politics played a large part in getting
them built but the farm has changed hands and they are dying from neglect.
They do sound very cool when you're under them, a big stereoscopic whirr.
The programs that you are probably talking about were run by the federal government. They tried building large windmills on the order of 1-2 MW with synchronous generators which is the reason that they had problems. Synchronous generators have been abandoned at this point and people with brains make windmills using induction generators.
The other thing that they do is make smaller windmills and make lots of them. This is why they are called wind farms. The prototypes you refer to were likely meant to be large individual sources. This is another advantage of wind power, it is modular. When a windmill needs maintenance, you can shut it down and only take a few hundred kW off the grid.
Also, if you see my other post in this article, and take the link to the California report you will see that wind costs are comparable to the fossil fuels.
As for liability for broken windmill parts, I have never heard of such a thing. Please point out your source. There is a safety measure for this sort of thing anyway. Windmills have a brake put on them and their blades feathered when the wind is too strong to prevent them from centrifugally ripping themselves apart.
I think at one time people though Power Lines looked cool. They were a novelty when they were new and not a lot of people had seen one. Now they are about the worst of a city's common eyesores. The same thing applies to Wind Turbines. At some point they will be viewed just like power lines. Ugggg-LY!
And these windmills won't in fact make a dent in the big picture. People want the people near Cape Cod to suck it up for the greater good. But this project would not improve the greater good as defined by green house gas production. The article said they would handle 75% of local power needs but that was only 1.8% of New England. And the damaged view would be permanent.
Now if the people of New England really wanted to (as the article says) produce power "without emitting a single microgram of greenhouse gases, carbon dioxide, nitrous oxide or mercury and without burning a single barrel of Middle Eastern oil" AND in addition do so with an absolute minimum use of land and shoreline, they would build a typical modern Nuke plant in the multi-GW range. That would impact much more than 1.8% of the region's power needs.
The only downside to Nukes is a Chernobyl-like operating mess. But that has proved extremely rare (one such event in the history of Nuclear Power, 50+ years) and probably even less likely by an order of magnitude given the plant designs and operating policies in Europe, Japan, and the US vs. the former Soviet Union. I'd rather live with that risk than the risk presented by thousands of trolling supertankers in the world's oceans.
Say what you want about the French, these folks know Nuclear power. Imagine if the US were 70% emission free power like they are. Electric cars would suddenly make sense, hydrogen economy would make sense... because the ultimate source of the juice was emission free.
d
Who's right?
In this case, none of them are right but there is a high hypocracy quotient.
Some other players in this battle for two faces are Sen.s Edward Kennedy and John F. Kerry. Both bashing any effort to increase US oil production, both wanting to preserve the scenic views of their porperty in Nantucket by opposing wind power there.
In the first place, this wind power business is fine for experimenting at this time, even large scale, but don't fool yourself into thinking it can dent the energy requirements of the US. Same with solar and biomass, it is just so much hot air and BS.
My vote is for wacky schemes like these to be constructed on the property of the politician wishing to impose it on the rest of us. Obviously the Kennedy/Kerry alliance wants the issue for something to complain about. The longer it is delayed the more they can complai
Eve Fairbanks says I drive a hybrid!LOL
Just 2 km outside the harbour of Copenhagen (Denmark) there is a wind farm with 20 very large mills.
Great pics here and info in english here.
You can see the energy production from the mills online!
IÂm an avid sailer and love the mills - great symbol of enviromentalism and the danish heritage as a country dependent on the wind. No complaints from anyone anymore. Most people like the Wind Farm - and much more than the nuclear powerplant on the other side of the sound in Sweden.
Yenz
Yes, there are some plants which are clean. However, you are leaving out the coal extraction process which often rips the tops off of mountains in order to get at the coal. Coal mining is also dangerous and deadly when it isn't ripping the tops off and is instead staying underground.
The danger or at least inconvenience to pleasure boaters and commercial fishermen is a big reason the locals say they're against this offshore windmill farm. That makes no sense. It looks to me like there would be plenty of space between the towers for a pretty large yacht or fishing boat to pass through the line of windmills.
:)
Not only that, how hard would it be to provide several wide passages between selected towers for the big-boat people, and mark them with standard channel navigation buoys?
I have trouble understanding how any sailor could be against this project. I mean, if you take a look at my boat, you'll see that it openly and unashamedly uses wind as its primary power source.
But don't worry about me, Nantucket Sound people, I promise not to sully your view with my litle wind-powered boat. It's a lot cheaper to live and sail here in Florida... and we can sail year-round, too.
- Robin
PS - I'd be okay with windmills off the shore in the Gulf of Mexico. They'd be a lot better than the environmentally destructive offshore oil rigs Pres. Bush wants to put here -- but his brother Jeb, FL governor, keeps fighting against, so far successfully, although the oil people keep attacking and handing out the bribes, so sooner or later they'll probably get to do their damage unless we manage get the reflubicans out of office first.
I'm not for dubya, and I'm pretty sure he's anti-renewable since that's bad for oil, but I don't know about that evidence. Michael Moore is famously partisan and is known to skew (or outright fabricate) evidence to fit his case/cause, as in his Columbine documentary. Second, Kyoto was simply in(un?)feasible and was overly idealistic - Europe is now admitting it can't meet the deadlines Bush said were impossible, for which they criticized him at the time.
That said, I wouldn't doubt he's on board with H2, simply because it can be generated from oil and coal. This, as opposed to methanol fuel cells, which is more likely to be generated from non-fossil sources. I've wondered for years why they prefer h2 to methanol, since methanol has a bunch of advantages (safety, higher energy density, less complicated and heavy storage equipment. Could be big oil?
-Looking for a job as a materials chemist or multivariat
Bug me. There have been several such stories in the NE about this lately. The other one I can remember was in upstate New York. Rich people there complained about their views being ruined too. Like other posters, I agree that the developer should acquiesce and give them a coal-burning power plant instead.
It makes me think that perhaps the wind-farm developers are going about it all wrong. They should first say they're going to put a nuke power plant in Nantucket, and let the residents get good and riled up about that. Let their faces go beet-red with fury, let them picket the site, and give them tons of air time on the local news channels. Then you throw your hands up in the air and say, "OK, OK, I give up! I'll only build a wind farm! Boy, you environmentalists sure make it hard for honest entrepreneurs to do business..." The locals will say, OK, that's more like it. They'll think they've won, and you get to build your wind farm.
Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.
REPP has a paper on how wind the top five or so wind farfarm projects have affected housing and property values. See the report in PDF here:n d_online_final.pdf They refer to "view shed" as a way of indicating how far around the area the wind generaters are visible. Very interesting look at wind energy.
http://www.repp.org/articles/static/1/binaries/wi
http://tinyurl.com/4ny52
My hometown is in the northwest of Germany (Emsland) and about half an hour drive from NL. The landscape is very similar to the Netherlands and therefore quite attratctive for windfarms.
About 15 years ago when the first windmills were being built nobody objected them and it was no problem to get a permit. So many farmers sold a bit of their land to some investor and windmills were built everywhere.
What we have now in my hometown is probably the perfect example for 'horizon pollution'. Anywhere you look, you see windmills.
Believe me, you really don't want this in your neighbourhood anymore than a nuclear power plant!!!
I think wind power is a great idea since it is a renewable technology. But wind farms shouldn't be built anywhere close to where people live. There is enough space in Germany (which is quite crowded!) to build wind farms where they don't bother anyone so I think it is possible in any country to find such places.
Off-Shore platforms are a great idea and are possible, even in tough environments as this article shows: Off-Shore platforms in the Baltic Sea
Tidal power plants are also an interisting renewable energy source.
Last I checked, the Koreans, Panamanias, Somalis, Vietnamese, Grenadians (?), Bosians, Croats, and Muslim residents of Kosovo don't have any oil. That pretty much covers every signinficant US military action in the last 50 years leaving the one exception being the collective Gulf Wars. So actually when you think about, the US fighting for oil is the exception, not the rule.
"It takes considerable knowledge just to realize the extent of your own ignorance." - Thomas Sowell
According to your own link, Defense gets over 360 billion, and for each of the others you lump together several categories, such as Medical into "welfare programs", meaning that you seem to think HMO regulation costs, hospital insurance costs, government employee health benefits, the cost of funding the FDA and health research, as well as disease control and training all fall under the heading of "welfare programs".
Just a wee bit of bias, perhaps?
That Jesus Christ guy is getting some terrible lag... it took him 3 days to respawn! -NJ CoolBreeze
-- from the AWEA FAQ, 2002, emphasis mine.
Oil leakage is an old-technology problem,and then only in the case of poor maintenance. New turbines, like the Lagerwey we built in Toronto, don't use hydraulics.
Turbines failing in high winds seldom, if ever, happen. New generator technology allows wind turbines to generate -- small amounts of power, admittedly -- in winds you can barely feel. There's nothing generates bad feeling like a stopped wind turbine.
Until the baby boomers retire, and then we're totally screwed.
The heavily subsidized typical cost for U.S. nuclear power is around $0.12/kwh. That doesn't include the blanket insurance policy courtesy of the Price-Anderson Act, nor the cost of waste disposal and other externalites like terrorism and natural disaster vulnerability, which can not be measured until it's too late.
The unsubsidized, fully amortized cost of wind power is about $0.04/kwh. Most jurisdictions also apply a subsidy to wind.
The entire United States of America can be converted to wind powered electricity using only 14,000 acres of turbine footprint area on existing farmland, pasture, and prarie. That's about twice the area of the Stanford University campus, or about as much oak forest lost in California each year.
There is no reason that wind should not be the major U.S. source of electricity in 2018.
Please tell Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan. Based on his Energy Committee testimony last week, nobody has explained this to him yet. Please phone +1.202.452.3204 and ask for Michelle Smith or Andrew Williams.
Wind energy is actually the only alternative energy form outside of hydro that is economically feasiable at the present time.
Wind technology is also vastly improved over the last twenty years; quieter more efficient bigger wind machines. The blades of the larger wind machines actually spin slower (50 RPM on older machines 15 on new bigger ones) which I think would be more astheticly pleasing to look at.
According to a recent (24Feb2003) Chemical & Engineering News article
I think wind in general is a good idea, but if the machines keep getting bigger I wonder what affect this will have.
Not being from the US, I didn't know that welfare got >2x what defense got (would I have known if I was American? ;). But here's an idea - draft welfare recipients. No more street people and defense gets more money (somewhat offset by the low-ranking, low-pay conscripts). It's a winning solution, well, except for the welfare recipients, but what an incentive to get off the dole!
Of course, I don't believe that, but you can bet there's at least one clown on the Hill who thinks that's a good idea (and he probably has half his staff telling him to shut up about that idea until pension kicks in...).
Sure I'm paranoid, but am I paranoid enough?
Wind farms aren't all that...
Environmentally and economically there are good reasons to dislike them. They kill a lot of birds. They break down a lot, requiring a fair energy input to maintain, and they only work when the wind blows.
Here are some alternatives that may be better:
Cogeneration of heat and power. A decent quality diesel engine runs in a soundproofed enclosure. The coolant liquid runs through radiators in your house, or to a heat pump that heats your house. Electricity from the generator is sent back through your meter onto the grid. This works with TODAYS technology. Some states already allow it. It produces power at much higher fuel efficiency than centralized plants and its distributed nature allows reduced transmission loss and increased reliability.
Conservation: instead of building million dollar wind farms, change the way people consume energy. The biggest consumer is probably heating and cooling. Therefore, white roofs, and geothermal heat pumps are both probably going to save thousands of kilowatts vs. older heating and cooling techniques. White roofs considerably reduce heat gain during the summer.
Geothermal heat pumps use heat from groundwater to heat, and reject heat into the groundwater to cool. Much more efficient than regular heat pumps which are already quite efficient.
Combine this with cogeneration and you have a very attractive heating/cooling/power generation technique.
The life of a typical quality diesel engine is about 20-30,000 hours. Then it needs an overhaul then it gets another 20-30,000 hours. Some run as long as 40 or 50 thousand. This means that with a monthly service contract and overhauls every 3 years or so you can have high efficiency reliable distributed generation.
One engine will put out typically say 10 kilowatts of electric power, which will on average power 10 houses, though at peak times it might only power 1 house. A decent engine costs around $5000. It can burn the same #2 heating oil probably already in use for heating.
By running the cogeneration plants only during the appropriate peak heating/cooling/electric demands you could probably stretch the life of the engine to 10 years or so.
Schools, govt buildings, hospitals, gyms, apartment complexes, and other reasonably large energy consumers can usually do quite well with cogeneration units in their basements, making money off the power, and saving a bundle in heating or cooling (the reject heat can be used with the proper type of refrigeration unit to cool the building).
Plus this technique acts as a "backup" generator for power outages and bad weather situations.
Economically and environmentally speaking there are plenty of other responsible techniques for decreasing power requirements and increasing availability.
perhaps this article is biased so as not to report the good technical reasons against this project?
((lambda (x) (x x)) (lambda (x) (x x))) http://www.endpointcomputing.com a scientific approach to custom computing.
For as long as it had a choice, the US chose to stay out of the war.
Or, as Churchill put it, "the Americans always do the right thing after they've exercised every other option."
The many, many, many many other US military invasions of the past 50 years(insignificant, perhaps, to US citizens, not so for residents of invaded countries) usually had a lot more to do with installing pro-US dictators, deposing leftward-leaning popularly elected governments. There are some exceptions. These involve either power/resource grabs(Iraq) or the policy of containing the Soviet Union(North Korea).
Too lazy to find links - Google will back me up on this one.
Valete!
Gun control was certainly one of his causes. Also slamming anything right of flaming liberal was another. If you missed that, YOU weren't watching. Also remember his little acceptance speech at the Academy Awards?
Seriously, if you don't think that Moore is completely political and completely left, you're either too daft or farther left than him to even notice the difference. Nothing wrong with either, but it makes Moore less than objective.
I would say he's never done a documentary in his life - rather, all his work are conflict pieces where he creates the conflict to expose his cause. That's not a documentary, that's propaganda, whether you happen to agree with the cause or not.
Oh, and as for his fabrications:
# The Charlton Heston speech supposedly given at Denver is edited from two different speeches, one a year later and a thousand miles away. The audio is edited, with the cuts hidden by visual and pans of crowds, so as to create a misleading impression that Heston's remarks were one contiguous speech. Nor were both speeches entirely of the same general content: in fact, at least two sentences from each speech have been spliced together to form a brand new one.
# The sequence in the bank is staged, again to create a false impression. Forbes reports that an early scene in "Bowling" in which Mr. Moore tries to demonstrate how easy it is to obtain guns in America was staged. He goes to a small bank in Traverse City, Mich., that offers various inducements to open an account and claims "I put $1,000 in a long-term account, they did the background check, and, within an hour, I walked out with my new Weatherby," a rifle. But Jan Jacobson, the bank employee who worked with Mr. Moore on his account, says that only happened because Mr. Moore's film company had worked for a month to stage the scene. "What happened at the bank was a prearranged thing," she says. The gun was brought from a gun dealer in another city, where it would normally have to be picked up. "Typically, you're looking at a week to 10 days waiting period," she says. Ms. Jacobson feels used: "He just portrayed us as backward hicks."
# The "missile manufacturing plant" actually builds civilian rockets, and converts former military missiles to carry out civilian launches.
#Mr. Moore makes the preposterous claim that a Michigan program by which welfare recipients were required to work was responsible for an incident in which a six-year-old Flint boy shot a girl to death at school. Mr. Moore doesn't mention that the boy's mother had sent him to live in a crack house where her brother and a friend kept both drugs and guns--a frequently lethal combination.
#Mr. Moore repeats the canard that the United States gave the Taliban $245 million in aid in 2000 and 2001, somehow implying we were in cahoots with them. But that money actually went to U.N.-affiliated humanitarian organizations that were completely independent of the Taliban.
I could fo on, but I think you get the idea. When confronted with inaccuracies in his books, he has this answer to why he doesn't care about inaccuracies:
"No, I don't. Why should I? How can there be inaccuracy in comedy?"
So just remember, Moore is doing 'comedy.' Real funny too.
-Looking for a job as a materials chemist or multivariat
> That's really not fair. Specifically what did he fabricate?
Obviouslt you haven't read any of the HUGE LISTS of fabrications in that movie so you aren't likely to do this, but I'll bet you can find a good one by googling for "Michael Moore is a big fat fucking liar" or something like that. The one that springs to mind immediately is how he rearranged some of Charleton Heston's speeches to sound bad, he claimed that that speech was immediately after Columbine, which it wasn't, and same for the one in Flint. He also claimed that Heston went to Columbine (actually Denver) JUST BECAUSE of the shooting, which is entirely false: he was planning on going there before the shootings happened. He also did not have the authority in his group to cancel the meeting, but he was able to shorten it dramatically because of the shooting. Still, somehow he's a horrible person.
14,000 acres is the amount of land taken from use, not the area of the total land needed to accommodate the turbines.
The point being, that the land in between the turbines is still fully available for farming or pasture.
don't put them in migratory paths.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on