Slashdot Mirror
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...
;-)
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'.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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.