Slashdot Mirror
Tilting At Windmills
GreedyCapitalist writes "Anne Applebaum writes in the Washington Post about environmentalists who are opposing renewable energy sources." From the article: "Already, activists and real estate developers have stalled projects across Pennsylvania, West Virginia and New York. In Western Maryland, a proposal to build wind turbines alongside a coal mine, on a heavily logged mountaintop next to a transmission line, has just been nixed by state officials who called it too environmentally damaging. Along the coast of Nantucket, Mass. -- the only sufficiently shallow spot on the New England coast -- a coalition of anti-wind groups and summer homeowners, among them the Kennedy family, also seems set to block Cape Wind, a planned offshore wind farm. Their well-funded lobbying last month won them the attentions of Rep. Don Young (R-Alaska), who, though normally an advocate of a state's right to its own resources, has made an exception for Massachusetts and helped pass an amendment designed to kill the project altogether."
The problem plaguing new energy developments is no longer NIMBYism, the "Not-In-My-Back-Yard" movement. The problem now, as one wind-power executive puts it, is BANANAism: "Build Absolutely Nothing Anywhere Near Anything."
:-P
If it wasn't so true, it would be hilarious. Instead, we're currently faced with a no-win scenario. Don't want Power Plant technology X in your back yard? Fine, we'll move it to the middle of the desert. You don't like that because there's a fault there that *might* cause a teeny Earthquake 500 years from now? Fine, we'll move it to the swamp land. What's that? We'd be destroying the natural habitat of mosquitoes? Why do you want to keep mosquitoes around? FINE! Then we'll move it to the ocean where we can... what? You don't want it there, EITHER? Why the hell not? Because it might damage a coral reef? What if we build an artifical one? That will change the ocean currents?
NNNGNGGNNGGGG!! HUMANS #$!@@!# CHANGE #@$!#!@! THINGS !@#!#!!!! IT'S !@#!@# WHAT @!#@!# WE @#$!@#$ DO!
Call us when you don't have power and really, really want some. Good-bye!
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
Is the "liberal" community of Cape Cod opposing windmills offshore since it would ruin the wonderful view.
Ted Kennedy a hippo-crite? No!!! Of course, many liberals are do as i say not as i do!
Give a liberal a thought, and he will repeat it all day...
Teach a liberal to think, and he'll vote republican.
..and it's the paper one that holds the final say.
...are full of hot air.
Perhaps we could use them to power turbines.
Now they're breaking our wind
Faith: n. -- That human impulse that drives them to steal appliances when the power goes out
This is impossible - everyone knows that it is the republicans and big business that are against the environment and that all liberals and environmental groups are for it...
*bangs head into wall*
Their major complaint, from previous coverage that I've seen on the issue, is that the turbines will be visible from shore and may interfere with fishing and pleasure boating (i.e. tourism) in the area - which is just about the *only* local industry aside from domestic labor (housecleaning, cooking, etc for the filthy rich).
These are anti-capitolists!! They HATE the human race. In fact, they would rather wish all human beings die. They see us as a virus, and not a natural part of Earths evolution.
Fuck em!!! Time they are made irrelevant by the worlds population. Just fucking burry them.
Life is not for the lazy.
...to calling aestheticians environmentalists.
a proposal to build wind turbines alongside a coal mine, on a heavily logged mountaintop next to a transmission line, has just been nixed by state officials who called it too environmentally damaging.
Yeah, because in 2 or 3 decades, when the sea rises and countless disaster stories that will make the LA flooding look like a joke will occur every year, the weather will turn hot and sterile, or brutally cold where it was mild before,... I'm sure we'll all be happy that the mountaintop's view has been preserved...
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
Why's that Don? Are you going to help us build a 35-mile bridge from Hyannis to Nantucket instead?
Fine. If they want to opt-out of the other solutions, then cut the power lines to the houses along the coast and let them figure out a solution to the problem that they will find satisfactory.
Whoever you are, you owe me a new keyboard...
They are just thinking longer term than us. Running out of oil, we can deal with. But running out of wind would be a true ecological disaster.
This space intentionally left blank.
I am agianst wind power, the cumulative effect of removing that much wind energy from the environment will reduce the total air movement around the world. With the reducion in wind currents the earth will be unable to cool itself, causing global warming. ;)
Republicans advocate states rights up to the point your state goes medical marijuana, pro gay marriage, physican-assisted suicide or anything else they don't like.
The problem with these theoretical wind-mills is that know one I know has actually been about the chase one down and capture it. Plus the wind is invisible, which leads me to think that it really does not exist and after all this technology is idealistic and impractical and some would go so far to say that it is quixotic!
Don.
I agree. These people aren't environmentalists. They're too wrapped up in their property values to sacrifice for the greater good by allowing pollution free power that might be visible from their backyard.
Calling these people environmentalists is an smear attack against actual environmentalists.
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
Let's convene a conference about birds being killed by paned glass.
Maybe the UN can get hold of the issue and negotiate a deal with glassmakers that would see them manage a fund dedicated to supporting the abandoned chicks of deceased winged parents cut-down by clear glass panes.
Then they could siphon a little off for themselves and their immediate relatives and remain beyond the reach of the law, even as they grandstand as the judges of right and wrong in the world.
Birds are also being killed by the avian flu. Those concerned should be developing and distributing an innoculation for birds everywhere, but they're not, are they?
Perhaps those claiming to be avian rights supporters should be placed on trial by the UN after the UN has first secured the aforementioned sweet deal over the glass panes, at which point it might accuse the world's chief bird rights organization of fraud, misrepresentation, malfeasance and the mismanagement of the public trust.
This organization might become the subject of various resolutions, after which it might be accused of developing weapons of mass destruction, preparing the way for sanctions, an economic embargo and eventual invasion.
If you're going to go around claiming to care for birds, you'd g*ddam*ed well better be caring for birds, and not just pretending to while you pursue your hidden, nefarious anti-windmill agenda.
Whatever happened with the idea of building a giant pipeline to generate power? It would be 100 miles or so long, and 10 feet wide. The last half-mile at each end it would taper out to about 20 feet. As weather fronts passed over it, the pressure difference would push air through the pipe, where it would achieve supersonic speed (due to the tapering).
In the middle was a turbine that would work in both directions (as the pressure difference could go either way).
Bigtime Consulting - "We're the best because we cost the most"
i'm anti-capitolist too! i think we should decentralize government and not have any capitols at all. we should also do away with all upper case letters.
oh, wait. Nevermind.
What if the Hokey Pokey really is what it's all about?
I've got a different kind of green in my underwear
Sig cannot be found.
In western WI, a private company is looking at building a wind farm in my county.
I thought people would be happy about it, usually anything renewable is looked well upon, hell 5 miles away there is a manure digester that was praised for being "forward-looking".
But this project is facing major opposition from the local residents because of supposedly lower property value.
Funny thing about it, they don't want a windfarm ruining thier view, but they have no problem building a $500,000 house on a previously wooded hillside, and running the nice road up the side of the hill to drive there.
They can kiss my ass, as least i am getting something from the windmill.
Folks are in denial of the seriousness of the energy crisis, and the realities of energy production. They assume that some miracle, somehow, will provide them with the energy to drive out and live in in their beautiful second homes, free of any aesthetic and environmental problems. They want to be close to some idyllic nature, free of stress. And the reason they can be in denial is that energy production - through the magic of long distance ac/dc wires - shifts production burdens to some poor sap somewhere else.
Consider the opposition to wind: why build a wind farm near some lovely guest home on the Cape when you can build a coal plant in West Virginia? The poor folks (and WV is a very poor state), will take the coal plant and see their homes turn grey, their mountains cut to shreds, their lungs turn black. And Cape Cod will be sunny, pretty, free from harm, at the cost of someone else's life.
I realize this sounds extreme, but look at the coal / oil / hydrocarbon executives who lobby Congress for tax breaks for gas and coal production, freedom from pollution controls, etc. and then spend the weekends in Bozeman, Montana. They don't see the effects of the damage they're doing, as, well - they get to live in an idyllic mountain valley.
Until we can develop fusion, energy production will be ugly. Sad, but true. Windmills are not at all perfect, but are hell of a lot better, IMHO, than some coal plant choking the lungs of those folks who cannot afford a second home in luxury land. I wish those who always say NIMBY! would accept some responsibility for their own choices, and recognize the need to share the burden of energy production.
This is an economic case of externalities being allocated to those with the least political power, the least influence, the least chance of fighting back. Putting the plant on the cheapest land may be accounting wise efficient, but may be bad policy. We either have the windmills, or the coal plant, or the nuke, but somewhere power must be generated.
/* Dang, I can't type that well. */
Well in general wind farms suck. They actually take enough energy out of the air to make a difference to the environment. That shouldn't be a big surprise, after all wind doesn't really have that much energy in it in the first place compared to water, geothermal, etc.
Nuclear is great if done right, like reactors that cannot melt down. If only the administration's nuclear policy was promoting those. Nope, they want the crappy ones that can poison everything for hundreds of miles so they can get more corporate welfare and tax breaks maintaining them.
It would be pretty good if we liquified coal and removed the sulfur and other pollutants, but instead we are just relax the quality standards so we can put even more murcury into the air to poison us.
So green energy is not really about the source, it's how it is done. You can put some windmills in, but not a freakin million of them. But I can tell you, if we spend 500 billion dollars on any kinds of green energy we would be in a much better place than we are now.
Live with that 24/7/365 and tell me how great it is!
Fill my lungs with soot but don't make me hear a Whispering Homer!
Irradiate my nuts into useless glowing rasins but don't make me crosseyed staring at PinWheels!
Besides aren't there poor people somewhere with wind?
This
There is a bank of windmills visible from the PA Turnpike, somewhere in the western half of the state. I would suggest that such areas - those adjacent to major traffic arteries - would be excellent locations for wind-based power generation. Quite often the land surrounding the turnpikes and interstates isn't exactly prime residential land, so the NIMBYism might be kept to a minimum.
From The Fine Article: They are right to note that wind will not soon replace coal or gas, that wind isn't always as effective as supporters claim
I find this viewpoint frustrating: "it won't solve all of our problems at once so it is not worth pursuing". We might actually need a combination of solutions to the energy problem - imagine that.
I want to drag this out as long as possible. Bring me my protractor.
It's as simple as that. Everybody wants cheap renewable energy, nobody wants to have it generated in their own back yard.
No matter how unobtrusive, there are downsides to all power generation. Windmills happen to have viewshed issues. From the numbers I've seen, the return on investment isn't ver good either. A project in VA had a ROI of less than 12%, assuming the turbines were running at design output 24/365 (I know, it's usually 24/7/365, but that seems redundant), and disregarding any maintenance costs and infrastructure improvements. Not exactly a formula for riches.
What is apparent is what we've known all along: Regardless of political stripe, rich people don't want to be bothered with the stuff that runs their lives. Ugly is what happens elsewhere...for the good of mankind, of course.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
Is this backed by the oil industry? You know, the people who'd like us to have low fuel economy, encourage us to drive during a fuel shortage... Well that, and the age old NIMBY (Not In My Back Yard).
I don't know about you but I personally would not mind a few windmills in my view. I used to drive from wisoncins to illinois and I always liked going past the windmill farms. Kind of mixes up the scenery a bit and its for a good cause. Would I want to directly live below one? No.
No wonder the richies are building their 'green' power-neutral homes. It might take 300 years to pay off the investment, but they can afford it and can leave the condition of power to the common masses.
But with this complaint, I guess we're back to nuclear power.
Sheesh...
I don't read AC A human right
Nowadays, there's no way to legally replicate such marvellous accomplishments as our fathers bequeathed to us. No more Hoover Dams, no more offshore drilling, no more drilling in the wilderness. Mind you, I hold nature worthy of preservation but I also hold technology worthy of furtherance. There must be a balancing point somewhere; we seem to have missed it.
You ever think that our grandparents are only dieing of old age because their progeny is embarassing them? Just sayin', is all.
This is just another example of a larger trend. Enviornmentalists and Enviornmental groups sabatoging enviornmental progress by insisting on perfection. By refusing to comprimise or to throw their weight behind the less damaging projects/praise those who implement them enviornmentalists sabatoge their own cause.
I mean consider this from the perspective of a company, or even country thinking of implementing some measures to minimize the enviornmental harm of their actions. If they know that they will still get bad press from the enviornmental lobby for the damage/harm they are still doing rather than praise for improving their act they have little incentive to improve. In fact making small steps which will be met with criticisms that they don't go far enough can actually make for worse publicity than doing nothing at all.
This is part of a greater refusal on the part of enviornmentalists to prioritize and to admit that enviornmental values, while important, need to trade off with human values. For instance by refusing to even consider (maybe it won't turn out to be worth it but it should be considered) nuclear power enviornmentalists guarantee that we will continue to use coal fired power plants and risk global warming. Sure it might be possible in theory to acheive this goal by all using our own solar panels and other solutions in practice this has a great deal of problems and people are resistant to this level of change. Only by favoring comprimise and slight improvement where politically possible can we get real progress.
Worse, by refusing to prioritize the enviornmental movement makes sure many people don't take them seriously. Go look at the pages of major enviornmental groups or read their newsletters. You see articles about the extinction of some fuzzy forest creature written in the same alarmist tone and message of impending disastor as the warnings about global warming. No wonder people don't take global warming as seriously as they should when implicitly the enviornmental groups put it at the same level as the sort of species extinction that has been occuring for years with limited impact.
If we want to get anything done the enviornmentalists groups need to buckle down and make some hard choices. They need to stop appearing to favor the enviornment over people and instead tell people why saving the enviornment is in people's best interest. Also they need to clearly prioritize and tell us that globabl warming is far more serious than threats to habitate and wildlife and praise projects that help prevent global warming EVEN IF THEY DESTROY HABITAT OR HARM SOME ANIMALS.
If you liked this thought maybe you would find my blog nice too:
I don't doubt that there are those who think that windmills would ruin their property values. To them I say, gee, windmills didn't seem to hurt Holland too much that way. On a nasty thought, I think that the utilities trying to build the windfarm should have first proposed a garbage or coal-powered plant that would belch thick black soot all over their mansions, and then backed off to a wind farm saying, "OK, OK, FINE! We'll build a wind farm instead."
However, my suspicious side wonders if this isn't a subtle and carefully orchestrated case of Big Oil FUD. Who better to benefit in times of astronomic oil prices when the public is screaming to politicians then to point to these anti-wind groups and say, see, they're no better.
Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.
From the article "Already, there are activists gearing up to fight the nascent biofuel industry, on the grounds that fields of switch grass or cornstalks needed to produce ethanol will replace rainforests and bucolic country landscapes." This sounds like a script from an 80's sci-fi movie where a comp is trying to reason: biofuel farms bad.... biofarms bad... bio bad... people are bio... ... people bad
Now I've always wondered, how much power does the average windmill make in its life time, as apposed to the energy used to extract the aluminium, machine/shape it into a windmill, build it then hook it up.
If i had to bet on the windmill making up all that lost energy on making it exist I'd not dare put on more than a few pennies.
"I may be full of crap about this game, and I may be wrong, and that's fine." -Jack Thompson
People really need to differentiate between environmentalists (ie, people who have a sincere concern about the air we breath, the water we drink, the land we cultivate, and everything inbetween) and NIMBY rich people who don't want an eyesore in their costly scenic view.
Sure, NIMBY rich people might claim that what they want is to save the environment, but really, all they want is to maintain their property values.
I've seen no end of moronic arguments about this stuff. Some of the "better examples":
I hate this crap. They're terrified of their property values dropping, so they are desperately trying to fight it any way they can, digging up any idea they can come up with for why this is stupid. Wind power works great in a lot of european countries, without any nasty "ecological impacts".
Maybe they'd like a nuclear power plant on Nantucket instead? How about a coal-fired electric plant? Maybe they'd like their electric bill to quadruple to pay for solar panels that won't last more than 15 years?
Please help metamoderate.
You know these people aren't environmentalists when they get Don Young on their side. Let's look at some Don Young quotes:
Yeah, Don, it's the environmentalists that are leading us into environmental disaster. Riiiiiight....
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
To be clear yes I realize that major responsible enviornmental groups favor wind energy even when it kills birds and will make other small choices like this one.
However, in less clear cut cases they usually choose not to antagonize their members/activists by dismissing concerns about habitat or extinction as less important than those about global warming or even other sorts of habitat.
Or to put it differently there is a fringe group of enviornmental activists who believe that the enviornment is more important than people and that we should entierly give up our modern style of living to save this enviornment. Also there are many small groups of activists who each have their own favorite cause/creature. As one might expect these organizations try to avoid antagonizing these core members by explicitly deprioritizing their concerns or praising projects which harm these causes but help more important goals.
This is a strategy that works great if you want to stay a vocal minority but if you want to go mainstream and convince Americans in general that enviornmentalism is a serious concern and global warming isn't just another fuzzy creature extinction (might be bad but isn't that big a deal) you need to create public confidence that you have similar values and priorities as they do and that means very publicly and explicitly prioritizing in this case.
If you liked this thought maybe you would find my blog nice too:
Atomic plants would have had a strongy lobbying group behind it than windmills...
if you didn't get the memo you should look up the data on raptor and bat deaths associated with large wind farms. just because its not a hydrocarbon creator doesn't make it clean. look at the effect of hydroelectric plants on salmon and other fish species. if this is a NIMBY issue then ask yourself why would it be a NIMBY issue if they are so charming as Anne Applebaum says they are.
no sig today, come back tomorrow
When i was a kid growing up in Cali. I remember hills and hills full of windmills generating power. I'm sure there weren't that many, but I liked to watch them. The big problem in america today is that everyone is paying attention to one thing: "ME RIGHT NOW". Without the windmill's the scenery looks better... but in 10 years, we'll all be in a major energy crunch and they'll beg for alternative power. Fossil Fuels won't last forever (the oil companies have THAT part right) and sooner or later people will realize alternative power means more power, and more power means less cost. Untill then lets all enjoy the costs of fossil fuels as major oil producers continue to report record profits for the third quarter running.
He whom you called four-eyes yesterday, you call Sir tomorrow.
Fusion will lead to thermal pollution. Most of our problems can be reduced by (a) birth control and (b) energy conservation.
got to take the good with the bad now don't we?
BC
No, not quite. The best and most effective solution is: HAVE NO CHILDREN. I love it when environmentalists try to preach to me, while towing 6 kids behind them. Humans, by far and away, have the largest impact on the environment. Fuck "Reduce, Reuse, and Recycle". How about "Get a vasectomy"?
It seems wildly inaccurate to call these guys environmentalists...
s _1_13/ai_82352618 ...
Don Young in particular is one of the guys trying to get us to drill in ANWR (alaska national wildlife reserve). He receives a lot of money from the oil industry, and in the past suggested that the world trade center attacks might have been carried out by "eco-terrorists"...
http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1594/i
>Young told a reporter for the Anchorage Daily News that responsibility could lie with groups other than
>Islamic fundamentalists. "If you watched what happened in Genoa, in Italy, and even in Seattle, there's
>some expertise in that field," said Young. "I'm not sure they're that dedicated, but ecoterrorists
>there's a strong possibility that could be one of the groups."
Its surprising how often oil industry figures and others are able to hijack environmentalist sentaments in this country...
500,000 for a house? On a HILL no less? That's so cheap:( where do you live?!
It amazes me how idiotic people can be. The primary things that are stopping wind power from becoming more widespread: 1) As the FA points out, people don't like seeing them. 2) Government restrictions. 3) Lobbyists, such as the coal lobbies in North Dakota. North Dakota is considered the Saudi Arabia of wind power, yet they aren't using most of it. Why? Coal miners want to keep their jobs. Farmers don't want to see wind turbines on the horizon. Government bends to the existing thinking and doesn't allow new turbines to be erected. It's very, very depressing. A well-placed wind turbine can make well over $100,000 per year for the owner. There's plenty of money to be made here, and there are lots of people willing to invest in it. The problem is that we have coal miners who are unwilling to get new jobs and government workers who don't care about pollution. Wind power is a fantastic option, we just need to fix our government first.
rm -rf
Thanks. It needed to be said. These are not environmentalists, they are simply asshats who call themselves environmentalists. Environmentalists can be wacky and contradictory, but I doubt you'd find many who wouldn't JUMP at the chance to have a wind farm near them, if only so they could brag to their environmentalist friends.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chernobyl_accident
Mod: +1, crazy
- jon
Ganymede, a GPL'ed metadirectory for UNIX
I don't get it. We have a big wind farm in Southern Alberta and people go there to look at the windmills. They're pretty. I have pictures! The Dutch agree!
Why not just build huge rows upon rows of windmills in the desert?
No danger of doing much of a damage (enviornmentally).
Quite flat area with no trees or anything to decrease wind power.
And lots of real-estate too..
One issue I can see is that the windmills might get all domed up, due to the sand flowing around.
But not all deserts are made of sand....
Possible even the sand etc can be take care off.. with the power from maybe just one mill...
This should have been thought about before. So, anybody knows why it was rejected?
rajmohan_h@yahoo.com
I hate all human beings and wish they would die ....When I become supreeme evil overlord, the people who go around protesting everything they can find, just for the sake of protesting, like these ones are, will be second against the wall.
Of course it does [include myself]. I just want to make sure everyone else goes first. (If I can't get them all at once, it's not worth it though...)
Something that you might want to try. It will help, I promise.
Well... these are mostly the fringe nutjob environmentalists, I'm assuming... the same ones that kept all those third world countries from using genetically-modified crops so people wouldn't starve to death, the ones that shouted shit like "DON'T EAT FRANKEN-VEGGIES!". Yeah, the ones that really, really piss alot of liberals off for giving the left a bad name and just being complete retards that feel their only use in life is to try and change shit (or rather, keep nothing from changing and live in a fucking cave, nevermind hold a job), and the only shit they can change is by somehow intuiting from their weed-induced idiocy what they perceive as a threat.
Ex nihilo nihil fit.
Thank you for pointing it out.
.. pa-ra-bo-la, pa-ra-bo-la, 2 pi R, 2 pi R, where's your latus rectum, where's your latus rectum, 2 pi R
look, environmentalism has nothing to do with the environment. it has everything to do with anti-capitalism and all sorts of far left extreme politics. it's neo-ludditism. lots of /.'ers might lean left, but it's usually libertarianism, and I doubt few around here hate capitalism, unless you wonder who's going to produce chips and technology to play with. environementalism is the front for a poltiical movement, nothing more. look, in my school district, we get sued every time we try to build a new school. it doesn't matter what the reason. it costs us millions more and delays building by years. do they care? not at all. I asked a former asst. principal who'd been in the district 20+ years, if any new school site had not been challenged. he said no, every one has. We finally got a couple new schools built, but I was at a school that was built for 900 and had over 1600 by the time I left. I hunt and fish, and I love the outdoors. but the environmentalists are not about the environment. they're extremists, pure and simple. the other day, the founder of Greenpeace came out in support of nuclear energy. It's clean, cheap, safe, and would free us from foreign oil. he pleaded with his enviro friends to join him. don't expect it.
My problem? I was perfectly gruntled, until some numbnuts came by and dissed me.
Then the world will be a peaceful place.
The world is not black and white. There are many problems in our world, and the solution to one can be a cause of another. You can't divide everyone there is into the two groups 1) those with a conscience (activists) and 2) those who don't care (politicians).
Here are some of the world's undisputed problems: war, poverty, that hole in the ozone layer, famine, HIV/AIDS, drought, the arms trade, the destruction of habitats, extinction, loss of biodiversity, nuclear proliferation, lawlessness, discrimination, deforestation, exploitation of resources, unsustainable development, urbanisation, malaria, malnutrition, dictatorships, censorship, the energy crisis, exploitation of workers, climate change, natural disasters, unfair trade. Prioritise them. It's tough. Were you selfish? Did you choose those that affect you? How would you explain to a mother of five that the money that should feed her children is being spent on reducing emissions of a gas she can't even see.
If you're a politician things you dreamed of changing are pushed to the back of your filing cabinet as soon as any problem arises locally. So a politician who has a window on the world and chooses to address even one issue should be respected.
Renewable energy CO2. Wind farms kill birds. Dams flood villages and deplete asgadghadhadh
The Americans have this thing called a "batshit insane media" (or is it the readers/viewers/listeners?). It's made a big case of a few people who were worrying about property values decreasing due to wind mills, and now everyone else is worrying about it too.
Back in the 1980ies here in Denmark, a left-lunatic-fringe school built the first windmill and published a report titled "Let a thousand windmills bloom"
They were ridiculed and everybody were adamant that windmills would spoil the landscape and do things to the cows milk etc.
Then the government introduced a subsidy on electricity from windmills and suddenly all the farmers could see a good business case and today we have most of the country plastered with windmills.
As a result Denmark gets around 20% of its electricity from wind nowadays.
Once energy prices get high enough, windmills will stop ruining USA and become "a sensible economic investment".
BTW: The trend here is to put new windmills off the coast because water disturbs the wind less than land.
Poul-Henning
Poul-Henning Kamp -- FreeBSD since before it was called that...
Ah. That would explain it. Well, excuse me, I have to go catch the wind-powered electric light train. They paint them blue with windmills on them so they're pretty like the wind farms.
I can't remember if it was a Florida Senator or Gov. Jeb Bush, but the article I read was discussing how someone who had originally been anti-drilling was reversing their position.
Currently, there are moratoriums on drilling off the Atlantic and Pacific coats. But the Oil/Gas industries are pushing a bill to open up drilling as close as 25 miles offshore.
Naturally, everyone is pissed. I'm not sure what happened with that bill, but other legislation is being worked on that would allow drilling about 100~150 miles offshore. People are also unhappy about that.
Offshore drilling is a very sensative subject. Much more so than offshore wind power.
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
Yes but Americans would not make them pretty, making them pretty would mean they would cost more and you know what that means, less money to love. I am not sure I want Americans putting up windmill farms contracted out to the cheapest bidder, we will have windmill fans flying all over the place.
Nice long comment.
Forget about RTFA, RTFS, not just the heading!
If you read the summary you must realize that it's not environmentalists objecting to destroying habitat, but rich people playing NIMBY.
Now, please post a similarly long rant about how rich people, even congressmen, need to clearly prioritize and tell us that global warming is far more serious than threats to their neighborhood and praise projects that help prevent global warming EVEN IF THEY DESTROY THE VIEW FROM THEIR YARD.
As the humor goes flying over your head!
You think a few wind turbines will stop the eco catastrophe? With millions of cars, trucks, ships and airplanes still pumping CO2 into the atmosphere, with 2 billion Chinese mining and burning coal like it was going out of style, with all the greenhouse gas-producing industry, a few wind turbines to power homes mean NOTHING.
They are a good start, but by themselves aren't going to save anything.
Freedom: "I won't!"
Hm... you might have a point.
On the other hand, I think most of the windmills come from the Netherlands (you still have to put them together though...). I recall seeing something about an initiative to start up windmill manufacturing here so we could sell them to the Americans whenever they realise they need them.
Now, Mr. Environmentalist-telling-the-rest-of-us-we-are-not -trying-hard-enough-to-conserve, how do you dispose of such a thing? Our garbage czar first told us to store these lights in our basement in the manner that the power companies pile up spent fuel rods because there is no place to put them. Then we could put them on the curbside, but separated from the other garbage, wrapped in some cushioning that they don't break and spew mercury fumes, but identifiable as CF lights. Now, we are no longer permitted to do that -- we are supposed to drag these things back to the retail establishments that sell the things. So far, a home products store will take them back no charge, but a hardware store wants to charge a buck each.
That is the whole point about this NIMBY BANANArama everything. You think a CF is a benign, simple solution to energy wastage that not everyone is adopting. It creates toxic waste. There are no simple answers.
I pay upwards of $5000 year in property tax in a house so small I have to step outside to change my mind, but if I want to dispose of a microwave I have to pay $15. If I want to dispose of a fluorescent fixture (I may not be a wastrel suburban rip-up-the-kitchen type -- the fixture may have conked out, especially if it is one of those Lights of America types, and I will replace it with another energy-efficient fixture) -- I have to pay another $15 bucks. A microwave, by the way, is an energy-saving appliance over a stove top, and these things konk out too.
So what is another $15 bucks on top of all I shovel out in property tax? What is the gas spent getting the sticker?
But mark my words, this stupid policy will create an opening for a creative criminal enterprise. One day, a person will return from vacation, press the clicker to raise the garage door, and find that some outlaws have stuffed your parking space full of busted microwaves.
I'm related to an anti-wind activist and I'll tell you what they think. First off, they complain that there is far too much population on the planet. They think people should stop having children, etc. Think euthanasia is a good thing, etc. They are the basically lower the population at any and all costs and don't go creating any more energy or else it will encourage people to have more babies. They think that since they have lots of money they'll be the last ones kicked out of the lifeboat when the difficult times come. Really, they are living so damned well that a huge drop in their standard of living wouldn't really mean that much to them if it meant that all the less desirable inhabitants of the planet were eliminated. This position has actually become quite popular in recent years and I hear it more often and more vehemently. I just wish people would come right out and say it. Instead they take positions on various issues that they think will promote their aims and just pay lip service to whatever window dressing makes the rest of the coalition they're with happy.
I would definately feel better if a Dutch company were making them. But unfortunately the Dutch are concernced about useless things like quality and safety and thus could never be the lowest bidder.
I know someone in West Virginia who claims a lot of these anti-wind groups are secretly funded by the Coal and Oil companies. I know it sounds paranoid but I wouldn't be surprised if it was true. Also, it's pretty hard to support wind when you rely on Coal mining, and therefore Coal energy usage to put food on your table. Pennsylvania and West Virginia being against it is no big surprise.
Remember, Wind Turbines don't create jobs.
Where I live in Vermont there is a proposal to place a industrial wind farm along the rigde line of the local mountain .The energy generated from the wind farm was going to be sold off to out of state energy producers for "Green Credits" so they could continue to to pollute while adhearing to regulatory reqirements by purchsing green energy from the wind farm project .
.The local utility did not offer any reduced energy rates to the local residents either and is one of the main reason Im opposed to the wind project and the fact the project is a scam for polluters to aviod their regulatory requirements .
The locals where railroaded and the proposed size of the project was increased and their where no concessions provided to rate payers by the town or state for taxpayers
More Info here http://www.glebemountaingroup.org/
...Slashdot moderators are clueless when it comes to selecting their sources when talking about any political issues. Guys, stick to the tech posts, please.
for being such an obvious karma whore telling all the little Slashdotters exactly what they want to hear.
Here let me try:
Evolution is proven fact. +5 Insightful.
There are no bad elements in the environmental movement. +5 Interesting.
Windows doesn't scale. +5 Informative.
Walmart is poopy. +5 Funny.
Yep, it's easy to play the mindless majority here.
We just need to put windmills in Congress, along with heat exchangers.
InThane
The question we face as a nation and as a world is, are we going to allow the few to dictate to the many? Are we going to allow people to suffer, in some areas of the world opposition does lead to suffering or furthering of it, because of a few?
Too many times those opposing any development live no where near it. They travel to the sites to protest or wage dissent from afar.
What it comes down to is that there are groups that feel as if they are above us. They think it is their place to tell others what is good for them and that these "others" must do without because it is for "the best".
Power is a valuable resource. With it we can bring the standards of living up for those it is provided too. With renewable resources we can accomplish this with very little impact on future generations except for perhaps a better environment. Keeping development of alternative and renewable resources only furthers the negative impact currently "dirty" methods cause.
What is ever so appalling is that many of these elites are politically connected, well off, and imposing on those who cannot afford alternatives to live a lesser life. They would rather sacrifice the comfort of others just so they can feel righteous in their position. Sure some are truly out to help the environment but they are misguided as nothing will ever meet their standards. As soon as their standard is met they will update it or another group will step in with more stringent requirements.
We have to face one thing, whether or not we do something to free our dependance on dirty sources of power and dependance on others for power, other countries will move forward. They will do what is necessary to improve their lives while we forever come up with excuses to sit back and do nothing.
Civilizations do not advance by sitting still. They do not advance by listening to every naysayer who pops out of the woodwork. But they do decline when they do sit still and become hamstrung by the naysayers into doing nothing. It is no different on the political front in the world as it is in the environmental front. Both will go from bad to worse if we reason ourself into a corner.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
Essentially you can have a few dozen windmills or a massive power station with smoke stacks or cooling towers. You can have the remote chance that the occasional bird will hit a fan, or a leaflet through your door advising you which pills to take if you hear a fallout siren. Ugly, overpowering, rotating fans or soot stains on anything white within 10 miles. Devalued property or devalued property and lung cancer? Ruined landscape or Saudi rule when the oil runs out.
Most people would rather have neither power station or wind farm but as they say, some poor schmuck is gonna have to take one for the team. Thats if they want their TV to turn on.
This comment does not represent the views or opinions of the user.
What we really need in this country is CONSERVATION. People need to learn how to operate and use less power. This can be achieved through building design, other innovations such as automatic lighting that turns off when you leave the room, adaptive climate control, etc. We don't really need more power, we need to use the capacity we do have more wisely.
That being said, it is sad and stupid that these special interest groups have the power and ability to prevent the entire nation from taking advantage of renewable energy resources. How shortsighted.
Hey politicians, could you at least try to be a little less obviously for sale?
Slashdot needs an auto-opensecrets-linker that automatically detects the politician's name, links to their opensecrets page and pulls in the contribution from the discussed industry out of the appropriate industry from the top industries list...
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
The definitive work on the American conservative movement is Russell Kirk's "The Conservative Mind." What conservatives seek to conserve is tradition, freedom, and liberty. Conservatives may be in conflict with Libertarians because Libertarians may emphasise the freedom and liberty and free markets part while traditionalist-conservatives may emphasise the tradition aspect.
What is so special about tradition -- are conservatives "stand-pat" advocates who want no change for the better? What is special about tradition is that there are some aspects of human life that are amenable to reason and can be readily improved through reform, but there are many aspects of individual life and the greater society that are traditional -- marriage, men in combat arms, the institutions of government, religion, respect for elders -- that are not readily amenable to tidy analysis but are organic to the culture, got to be that way over time, have withstood the test of time, and reflect the collective wisdom of our forefathers.
Conservatism has matters to answer for -- the Civil Rights revolution was quite anti-conservative in that racial segregation was very much a tradition and an institution in American life. On the other hand Conservatism generally believes in a "Higher Power", and it is hard to reconcile such beliefs with having an institutional racism. As a conservative, I support some kind of government social safety net because I believe that an orderly society requires not leaving people who fall through the cracks to jungle law. On the other hand, I believe that if the poor are protected, there is no problem having a lot of rich people around, and I don't take equality of outcomes as an ultimate social goal.
What about the environment? Stewardship of our natural resources and heritage is perfectly compatible with conservatism, but many environmental groups have an anti-conservative agenda. I have heard environmentalist friends more than once talk about humankind, our population as being an environmental "cancer" that is busily polluting the earth. That kind of talk of turning the natural world back to nature and leaving humans out of the equation is especially anti-conservative.
Jobs is dumping Apple stock. What does he know that you don't? ;)
That he needs to pay taxes on his grant?
Awesome furniture, accessories and cabinetry in Santa Rosa, CA: http://humanity-home.com/
Hmm.. just how much do those rich folks pay in property taxes on their compounds anyways? Now how much would a wind farm have to pay? I thik this would be an excellent use of the Kelo decision to sieze the property of the anti-wind protestors and build the wind farms so the local authorities would reap the benefits of the overal economic improvement.
Yes I know the protestors are not sitting on the prime site for the windfarms, but obviously they constitute a "blight" preventing economic development.
You either believe in rational thought or you don't
The Nantucket fight is not typical and had cogent arguments on both sides.
I agree that most the time it comes down to property values; having seen how people react where I live to low income housing, white castle, or when the black family moved in down the street -- property values can bring out the worst in people. More amazing is how they try to cling to any reason except the actual one.
Democracy Now! - uncensored, anti-establishment news
Ah, yes. I heard that Calgary's C-Train is completely powered by wind. It's good to see that we Canadian's are open to it, at least to some extent.
testing out my trending skills
We don't need windmills cause we already know how to run everything off of CRANBERRIES! This is the biggest conspiracy ever because Rep. William Delahunt burried the study by Dr. Edward Shawmut Finlay, when he revealed the amazing and effective power generating technique from CRANBERRIES. Everyone down the cape knows how to full an entire bean processing facility. Using CRANBERRIES. Just one CRANBERRY bog will provide enough fuel for all of New England. The secret must get out. These CRANBERRIES are wicked. CRANBERRIES!
Observation 1: We really are badly messing up the ecosystems and climate of the planet, so dissing environmentalists; those who have noticed this and are justifiably concerned about it, is inappropriate.
Observation 2: Environmentalists need to be scientific in their assessment of what are the most serious problems, and what are the most likely effective solutions.
Observation 3: The biggest obstacle to solving anthropogenic environmental problems is a problem of scientific education, philosophical education, and values inculcation. The technical problems and solutions that would work are much easier than solving the knowledge and motivational gaps.
Observation 4: Environmentalists need to have bottom lines in that they have to insist on effective solutions and they need to call "greenwashing" when it occurs, as it usually does,
but above all, they need to be pragmatic, and accept some trade-offs.
So environmentalists who oppose windmills really do need to get their heads examined.
But this does not characterize the vast majority of more level-headed environmentally
concerned people who would of course prioritize non-GHG-emitting and perpetual energy
sources over a few viewscapes. Windmills look cool and elegant and almost biological,
anyway.
Where are we going and why are we in a handbasket?
If anyone is still reading, here's a Massholes take on this.
n cha.html
http://deanasc.blogspot.com/2006/03/sick-of-la-ma
I've hit Karma 50 and gotten a Score:5, Troll... I win!
from stopillwind.org... (which sounds like an anti-flatulence organization to me)
"government should mandate standards for siting huge wind generators which... protect heritage views and property values, and allow nearby residents the quiet enjoyment of their property."
I never thought of eviromentalists as Harvard graduates.
It's part of the conservative backlash mythology that all liberals are intellectual and cultural elitists. An Ivy League education is frequently used as short-hand for being one of these out of touch types. Of course, the people with money and power aren't the elites -- it's the snobby liberals. It's class warfare without economics -- a world where liberals try to get in the way of God-fearing, hard-working Americans for no reason other than their loony, secular dogma.
I suggest reading the book What's the Matter With Kansas sometime for a good perspective on this. The author shows how the liberal / populist arguments of the turn of the century when Kansas was a seething hotbed of liberal agitation have basically been recast in the modern era as a class struggle against an illusionary foe -- the mythical liberal elite from Hollywood, New England, and the "Left Coast" that rules America in spite of the efforts of trod-upon, underdog conservatives.
Personally, I just want to know what the heck "waffle-stomping" is supposed to mean.
I also never thought of government not owning property. What? They are supposed to pay rent of some sort for the rest of the country's life?
His specific objections are to federally-owned nature preserves (as opposed to parks used for camping, etc.). In his opinion, if something isn't being exploited for commercial gain, then it isn't worth anything, and he views wildlife preserves as an obscene waste.
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
Already, activists and real estate developers have stalled projects across Pennsylvania, West Virginia and New York. In Western Maryland, a proposal to build wind turbines alongside a coal mine, on a heavily logged mountaintop next to a transmission line, has just been nixed by state officials who called it too environmentally damaging.
Whenever you see this kind of post, remember that there are people out there that are disguised as environmentalists that are really just anticapitalists. These people don't want us to invent new technologies that conserve energy. They know that energy is what fuels capitalism and by doing what they can to cut off the energy supply, they are effectively shutting down the system that they oppose.
No Sigs!
What we have to keep in mind here is that in 25 years all we'll be hearing from people living on Cape Cod is "glug glug glug". :D
Coding with assembly is like playing with Legos. Coding an application in assembly is like building a car with Legos.
The fact I can use it to haul stuff is secondary.
Being able to make a left turn when you want is also nice (as opposed to only when they put a break in the 'crete islands in the road).
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
You can request that your home power be supplied by wind too. There's a slight premium, but it isn't too bad. I couldn't actually find a number for the percentage of Alberta's electricity that's supplied by wind -- it was about 2% in 1996 but it's grown quite a bit since then. That's in Alberta, the province that became Canada's richest because we have oil.
As for windmills being ugly:
http://www.fotosearch.com/DSN008/1776641/
It serves a city full of granola (fruits, nuts and flakes) that can afford all their water to be brought in in bottles.
Fuck 'em. Let them put their water supply where their mouths are.
Anybody that opposes three gourges should be for breaching Hetch-Hetchy. The cost/benefit for three gourges is much much better. Unless the benefits of Hetch-Hetchy are coming to you only (San Fransicans) and the costs are born by all.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
Just because the Soviets couldn't build a proper power plant (the last set of Soviet MIGs were made of ALUMINUM and PLYWOOD, what do you expect?!) doesn't mean it's a bad idea.
From what I understand, the Soviets were aces at building good fighter planes (and other military hardware), and they would have used plywood and aluminum because they didn't feel the need to build them out of anything more sophisticated. The MiG-25 Foxbat (made of steel) had protruding rivet heads all over and still managed to reach Mach 2.8...
Freedom: "I won't!"
This has been repeatedly confirmed in both the US and abroad. Anyone who claims this now is either and idiot or a liar, and their claims should be immediately dismissed as uninformed.
I think living in the real world prevents supersonic airspeeds at the intakes just fine thank you.
Have you actually looked at what's required to make a supersonic wind tunnel? Did'nt think so. Crack head.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
millions.
Just for perspective.
Someone had to do it.
No they're already dead from all the coal that has accumulated in their lungs from when they worked at the mine.
Nice troll though, i mean "we cant progress technologically unless we destroy nature" is bound to appeal to contrarians like the ones who modded up your post. I mean if it is something people are FOR (ex: nature) then we must be AGAINST it because we are the contrarions!
Up with child porn! down with drugs! Hooray for contrarianism!
Bet Dr. Allan Williams has a Phd in environment studies or some such waste of time.
Problem: When you extract energy from rising hot air more energy remains in the hot air then you can collect with a turbine.
Solution: Use a heat exchanger to cool the hot air before running it thru the turbine (begining to see a problem with his approach?). Reuse the heat to make more air rise. (profit!)
What a moron. What would be the energy budget to build a Solar Chimnet?
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
Echoing cduffy's comments, it's not about how rich or poor you are, it's about how serious you are about reducing your ecological footprint. Check out that calculator to get an idea about things you can do in this regard. Mind you, such calculators are necessarily somewhat simplistic, but it helps to get a flavor of things you can do to help.
In reality, it's the weakest link that breaks the chain. If there's more than enough food to support us, but not enough water, then it how much food there actually is doesn't really matter (to us humans, at least). Nevertheless, the simplest solution is to try to make sure there's enough of every resource (e.g., water, food, air).
In this vein, it's actually easier for rich people to acheive a smaller footprint than poor people. You could probably find a reasonably reliable car for ~$1000. Chances are, it won't be an environmentally friendly car (factoring in the cost of building a new car changes the equation quite a bit though). Heat pumps are very environmentally friendly, and eventually pay for themselves, but poor people often don't feel like they can look that far into the future (~20 years in the USA, I believe - but far less time over in Europe where energy is more expensive). Of course, the reality is that poor people have a smaller footprint than rich people. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if the average footprint of all self-identified environmentalists making more than $200k/year is significantly larger than that of all poor people (environmentalists or not)! I believe this is similar to the adage about a camel passing through the eye of a needle...
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
There is a problem with your idea. A good classical physics sequence is the place to start.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
... as far as I can tell, Heinlein's later books were literally dedicated to the concept of the free lunch.
Not only that, but his style of free lunch is exactly the thing that drives our wasteful energy usage.
watches reader's heads spin "Say what?"
Heinlien was writing all about a libertine hypersexual society; indeed his later books seemed to be almost indecently personal.
Quite simply, us humans are pretty much designed to require our *partners* to be monagamous. Trying to violate that builds rage. Rage brings violence, which causes people to want to live farther away from each other. We want to spread out in the presence of violence. That drives suburbanism.
The soviets, for all their evils and environmental disasters, managed to avoid suburbanism. You could do all your business within 3 square miles, and you lived like sardines in a cinderblock apartment in the middle of a bunch of cinderblock apartments. Weekends, you went out to the country to your garden house, and gardened. They managed it by "planning" it. I don't advise that method.
But that type of community would be practical here *if* we could get along. As time progresses though, we are more and more unable to. Our society is falling apart, and one of the ways this happens is through suburbanism.
Correct Horse Battery Staple: 72 bits of entropy. Enter "Correct H" into google. When it generates the phrase, that's
I have really strong feelings about this, so excuse me if I rant a bit.
The so-called Alliance to Protect Nantucket Sound, i.e. those people trying to stop wind turbines in the water off of cape cod, is headed by William I. Koch, who is a billionaire by way of his family's Oil & Gas fortune. The Alaska congressmen are just trying to protect the value of the what Alaska is worth - which is a lot of money when the US can get oil from nowhere else -- of course they don't want competition from states who would rather generate the power at home without expensive Alaskan oil. Ted Kennedy is opposed for an unknown reason - but the other Massachusetts senator, the famous John Kerry, is a supporter of Wind Power.
There was a document leaked a while back showing the fund raising strategy of the professional fund raising company from new york who was hired by this Alliance - and the strategy biols down to "Don't bother with the poor or middle class - raise money from the ultra-rich" -- the rich who don't have to suffer from energy crisis that we are going through, or some who even get richer because of it.
I am going to stop now, before I burst an artery...
The funny thing is China recently called tenders for 3 GW of wind power installations, so there may soon be more US built wind turbines there than in the USA.
Some nuclear advocate is bound to post and consider it on topic here since energy was mentioned, and my only answer to that is that anyone pushing anything as "the one true energy to replace all" is selling something or has been fooled by salesfolk. Wind has advantages in a lot of situations - not every application requires a huge base load thermal power station that takes more than five years to build.
http://www.enviromission.com.au/project/project.h
They recently refigured things and decided the replication and structural engineering in building 4x50MW units would make it more econimical than the originally planned 200MW unit.
If they can ever get off their asses and actually build it, it should be a very interesting project.
Someone had to do it.
If they don't get enough energy they just run it faster?
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
I think you will find the Sierra Club supporting wind and solar up to the point that it starts touching heavily on their other concerns ... the protection of public lands. I suspect that the windmill farms will soon start encroaching on areas that the Sierra Club wants to preserve. Then they will flip flop. Supporting a windmill farm requires a roads, mining for the material to build the windmills, etc..
Windmill farms require restricting access to public lands. As the windmill farms turn mainstream and the farms are used as an excuse to build roads into undeveloped lands and as they are used to close access to other lands, we will see the environmental community turn against the farms en masse. The first million windmills will be quaint statements for alternative energy. The next 10 million will be seen as evil.
Similarly, windmills dotted on the landscape are picturesque, provided they aren't visibly rusted and falling apart. (And even 1 or 2 that are rusted and falling apart can be quaint.) But an army of windmills in a rank and file, like an invading army of robot warriors, is downright ugly.
In my opinion, all large scale infrastructure like interstate roads, windmills, buildings and plants visible from a distance, should be designed with artists as well as engineers.
I just got back from visiting St Louis. It isn't a power plant, but a great example of combined art and engineering is the City Museum. Built mostly from recycled junk, but engineered to be safe for children and adults to play on - and pleasing to look at.
People who think like me* are centrist. It's all those other people that have extreme views that should be repressed.
*ok well not me personally, I tend to think I actually do have some rather extreme views. I also happen to think those views are correct. Obviously. If I didn't, I'd switch 'em.
Can you be Even More Awesome?!
Economic differentials have always been the driving force behind the environmental movement. Which is why it's so amusing when folks start jabbing fingers at their ivory-tower environmental straw men. Although the environmental lobby depends on the guilty privileged class for funding, and on the academics for both practical and theological support, the environmental movement is not, has never been, driven by the well-off, educated elite. (If it was, we'd all be taking lukewarm solar-heated showers before slowly driving our tiny cars to work.)
... not sure why I thought that was worth saying in the first place, but there you go.
The privileged class, to which I admittedly and blithely belong, are dutifully outraged and sincerely frightened at (primarily) the havoc we wreak on the environment, and (secondarily) the fate of the people who have the misfortune to live in said environment. But unless you've had a strip mine opened across your backyard, or have to keep a constant ear out for the sound of sirens from the local refinery, the fear and outrage lack a certain zing. Which is why the environmental movement has always been driven by grass-roots organizing. The people with their feet on the road tend to be the ones who understand, in a very personal way, what it feels like when they, their loved ones, and their neighborhood get crapped on.
The really tasty irony is that the so-called environmentalists who so loudly oppose windmills, whose real concern is typically the delicate value of their real estate investments, who are actually the very self-centered waffle-stomping (waffle-stomping?) Harvard-graduating intellectual idiots that we keep hearing about, are sharing power lunches and country clubs with the same grizzled ole straight-talkin congressfolk who are constantly windbagging about the philosophical dishonesty of the environmental movement.
Anyway, good thing I wrote the subject line first. The point I was setting out to make here is that disassembling the large regional/national power grids would be a long step in the right direction. Get rid of the grid and you get rid of the transport mechanism for reshuffling environmental unpleasantness. If every locality was forced to cope with its own power requirements, the NIMBYs would vanish overnight, and I bet we'd see a lot more creativity, and a lot less grandstanding.
And you know what I say to them?
"You go first."
Why did they stop the videotaping JUST for his little eugenics lesson?
No answer, right? A "coincidence", means nothing? Sorry, you lose, the guy is nuts.
The guy is a demon worshipper, one of those who loves gaia and hates humans and really DOES want most of the people dead. He's a paranoid with delusions of grandeur eugenicist. In his terms "aids isn't fast enough". this is a clue. He's one of those refers to humans as "useless eaters" He has stuffed ebola dolls and his bison bull is named lucifer, he is a prime evil nutcase, and serious bad news and doesn't need to be anywhere close to young impressionable minds. I am GLAD he got exposed and the debunkers are obvious as all get out spin control, because usually they don't get found out. I have run into some of these cretins during my work in conservation, the "movement" is packed at the top levels with some serious humanity haters. And academia is equally rife with insane people who stay there because it suits their cultish behavior patterns and fruitcake views, they can get away with it and not get fired, whereas in the "real world" they wouldn't last two weeks around normal people.
To sum up - nuclear power is not a mature technology. Pebble bed doesn't live up to the promise either due to the lack of an economy of scale but there are other promising things that are almost at the prototype stage. Nuclear has been proposed as the short term solution by the clueless - but it takes so long to build any sort of big thermal plant that it misses the short term, so you need a better reason than that. It's also pushed as being "zero emissions" by the clueless - but it's is powered by a mineral we need to get out of the ground and refine and not magic beans. The emissions in a good case are less than one third of a natural gas fired turbine sited at a gas field, which is very low emissions, so argue on merits and not on fairy tales of magic beans.
I'm not opposed to nuclear power as a concept - It's the years of bullshit and now attempting to drive environmental hysteria while ridiculing all other forms of energy production that I see as the problem. Wind power is already very useful in places where there is a lot of wind and you only need a small unit size - a situation where nuclear just will not work. Similarly a military submarine cannot be powered by wind - more than one form of energy production is useful so it makes sense to consider several and not just the "one true energy" pushed by some groups like nuclear lobbies.
There are various wind farms being opposed in Vermont, the most currently notable of which is proposed for a former radar base on top of a remote mountain which already has a road up it to the base. In more populous parts of the state (which is the most rural in population distribution of any state), a totally assinine outfit calling itself the Glebe Mountain Group had been running seriously dishonest advertisements in all the local papers claiming that due to energy credits wind power generation just enables more coal generation elsewhere, so is bad for the environment. They also lie and claim that intermittency means that wind has no real effect in reducing generation needs from other sources. They'll say anything, and their refrain is always that they're revealing the "facts" the the evil, "corporate" people are hiding - totally perverse considering these idiots almost entirely consist of retired corporate hacks and their various whores.
... well, me.
Meanwhile, Vermont is getting most of its energy from a vibrating nuclear plant and Hydro Quebec dams, which have flooded large areas of Native American land and release massive amounts of mercury from the flooded soils. Yeah, fucking Vermont, home of
"with their freedom lost all virtue lose" - Milton
lobbying should be made illegal,how can a so called democracy stand for these sort of bribes ???? Its like cash for questions.The situation may get better once bush is outed,but until then its more global warming,and the world on the brink of anarchy.
Ted Kennedy and his buddies are the reason. They want everyone else to live by their rules. They are truly elite, and they don't care how the rest of us have to suffer, just so they don't have to live with windmills in their backyard.
Rich liberals don't care about you and me. They don't care about taxes. They like to vote like they care, but they don't. They made their money. They inherited their money. They don't pay taxes because they don't earn anything, so there's nothing to tax. For the most part, they're immune to every crazy law they create.
How many times have you seen Ted Kennedy driving a Prius? How about any of these knuckleheads that claim they can't stand oil? They all are chauffered around in private limousines, private jets. They have little or no idea how the rest of the world lives. They want to be able to say that they did something, that they showed some concern for the environment, so they voted some tax credit for renewable energy... then profited from it in some way.
Why doesn't the media start carrying this story about Teddy Kennedy and his hatred for Windmills in his backyard? Where's Dan Rather, Katie Couric and the rest of the treehugging liberal newsmedia?
in Texas where a professor said it would be a good thing if a virus whiped out 90% of the population. Is that close enough?
They are a political action committee who spends the vast majority of their money on left-wing political activism and fundraising. If you want to find an organization that actually spends money on the environment, try the Nature Conservatory. Better yet, sign up for your local green energy program (available in most places for a 10% premium or so), replace all your incandescents with compact flourescents, and get better insulation for your attic, windows, and water heater.
I will give the Sierra Club the proper acknowledgement for being on the right side of the wind farm debate, however. They aren't ALWAYS wrong, of course.
Like so many movements, environmentalist groups are driven by the fringe and the fringe of environmentalism are luddites who seem to think we should be living in caves or something. Throw them together with Nimby types and some rich folk that think that coal-fired powerplant would look just fine next to some slum and you've got a coalition that will make it impossible to deploy any renewable or *gasp* nuclear sources in anywhere near the #s we need. Y'know, we don't have much natural gas in this country either and it's already nearly impossible to site a LNG terminal, so pretty soon it's gonna be coal again or $100/barrel oil, take your pick.
The sort of intellectual dishonesty practiced by most environmental groups is as American as apple pie, unfortunately.
and the evidence points to the fact that they INCREASE local property values. Those whining shits in Cape Cod should have their houses eminant-domained and turn into nuke plants ASAP.
Ever been to western Texas? There are hundreds of them. However, you have to put them where the wind blows, and as close to the actual point of use as possible (you lose energy upon transmission).
"won them the attentions of Rep. Don Young (R-Alaska), who, though normally an advocate of a state's right to its own resources, has made an exception for Massachusetts and helped pass an amendment designed to kill the project altogether."
No, Representative Young is an advocate of "Get Representative Young re-elected." Calls of federalism are only used to try to scuttle federal legislation you personally don't like, and conveniently forgotten when one state or another does something you personally don't agree with ("ZOMG! California's legallized marijuana! Interstate commerce!").
Seriously, Alaska wants Massachusetts to buy more oil. Duh!
Which is to say:
"When two things you support conflict and you support the one with a higher priority, that's flip-flopping. When I sign a bill allowing destitute brain dead people to be terminated, but a few years later organize a national hypocrites convention to attack the hell out of a non-poor person doing the same thing, that's just being a servant of God. Cause God wants poor people to die."
People who can't use the term "flip-flop" correctly should be flogged any time they use it. It's a really simple term.
Traditional utility companies want to build them -- and thus the traditional environmental movement (which supports wind energy) has produced a handful of untraditional splinter groups that are trying to stop them.
Putting aside for the moment that names are not named, this is the only indicator that some environmentalists are anti-wind. That statement, in and of itself, while possibly true, is highly suspect, and thus requires factual backing. I see none here. Wind power is an environmentalists wet dream and I seriously doubt that any real environmentalist would oppose it.
I think you've been spin-flammed (the fact that it's WaPo tends to lend itself to this). These anti-wind people are either NIMBYs or BANANAs or whatever trying to protect their pristine home values under the guise of aesthetic concerns, or they're big energy plants stirring the NIMBYs to keep money flowing to traditional energy sources.
Environmentalists against wind power. Next you're going to claim Linux developers are against open source.
As his argument has turned religious (as is common among environmentalists). "Pristine" is little different than "holy" and has no place in political discourse.
You are right, wind has tax breaks. So do petro and nuclear. Eliminate them all or at least make them equal.
It seems that some people just dont get it. They are the ones that throw a fit about coal and other "dirty" power generators but when we come up with a solution that is more enviromentally friendly they find something with it to complain about.
They need to realise that there is no such thing (at least for now) as the perfect renewable energy source, they all have their downsides. From solar being inefficient to nuclear having the issue with waste to coal producing harmful smoke.
They really need to be focused on what these alternative energy sources do to HELP rather than their smaller downsides when compared to other energy sources
The best argument against democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average voter.
- Winston Churchill
National Park, visited every state park within 500 miles, and been to at least fifty national parks outside of the US, please get back to me.
Until then, please quit whining about the "natural" view from the highway. For Christ's sake. You can drive through the desert forever and see nothing but dirt.
Try asking these people of they believe in God...
:-)
If they say no, then simply say that we have evolved over the Earth and are at the top of the food chain based upon our intellectual capability. Thus we have the ability and the predatorial right to do what we want.
If they say yes, then simply respond with the fact that in the Bible it says that humans have dominion over the animals and can do with them what we wish.
It confuses the hell out of them and is fun to watch them try to talk themselves out of their anti-logic.
Libertas in infinitum
This is a PRIME example of why we need LIMITED government!
If the government has the power to legislate and regulate in favor of you when your buddies are in power, then when your enemies (or competition, etc) are in power, they can also do the same.
And not just for business. This can apply to religion, free speech, etc etc.
The US government should stick to its original principals as set forth in the Constitution of limited government, free markets, free trade, non-entangling alliances, individual liberties, and personal responsibility.
Libertas in infinitum
Which county?
They also want to put up turbines in eastern Wisconsin, on the Niagara Escarpment. Some woman wrote a letter to the Fond du Lac paper complaining that they would endanger snails (I shit you not), make the bedrock vibrate, yadda, yadda, yadda.
I wonder how much of this opposition actually comes from realtors and developers. The view from the Escarpment is lovely, and it's close to highway 41; for easy access to Milwaukee. Ideal place to plunk down some houses, but that's less likely to happen if wind turbines go up instead.
(The turbines are less harmful to the environment than all the damn houses popping up, IMHO.)
Stop trying to build stuff and go into the environmental activism business to earn your profits. You don't have to build anything, just generate heat.
Environmentalists don't want renewable energy. Their support of "alternative" energy is just a pretense for their attack on industrial civilization itself. As soon as alternative energy becomes viable (as nuclear power has been for decades, and wind power is becoming) they oppose it.
Critics say that this rabid anti-human dogma is only representative of fringe groups. But the core of the environmentalist religion is that nature (from which man-made objects are excluded) takes a moral precedence over human life. Anyone who implicitly or explicitly accepts this moral premise must ultimately reject humanity as having a right to exist at all, since man's method of survival is the use of technology - the application of reason to change the elements of nature to achieve our values. Though only a minority ever admits or even realizes it, the goal towards which all environmentalists are working towards is the total elimination of the "unnatural" human race.
It's not just that they're NIMBYs, they're BANANAs.
Not In My Back Yard is one thing, but the attitude of some people is Build Absolutely Nothing Anywhere Near Anything.
GCHQ Quantum Insert installed. If only our tongues were made of glass, how much more careful we would be when we speak
Down the road from where I live (Wellington, New Zealand), there are a group of local residents trying to block the impending wind turbines. The complaints are a combination of property values, living aesthetics, and so on, as usually happens when this sort if thing happens. There's also a handful of trampers (that's a NZ word for hiking) who think it should be left undeveloped for recreational reasons. Fortunately (I think), it doesn't look like they're going to stop it from going ahead. The power companies aren't exactly helping, though. They've been doing the standard corporate marketing thing of trying to get consents for twice as much as what they could possibly get, simply so they can then tone it down and look like they're making a compromise from the original plan.
All that said, I do have some sympathy for the property values crowd. I like going on long walks, and as much as I dislike the way that a lot of land with great views, etc, gets divided up, sold and fenced off so that only a single person can access it, that's effectively the way that capitalist society is arranged. The incentives everywhere tell people that they have to own property and look after their finances for the future. Otherwise someone else will push in and take the money and land anyway, and you'll end up with nothing for the future.
I'm unlikely to build a million dollar summer house in a remote area with an expensive driveway and fence it off, because I don't agree with that way of doing things. That said, if I bought a $250,000 house in the city and someone decided to build a prison next door (severly lowering the property value), I'd be seriously annoyed... because a $250,000 home dropping to a $150,000 value means that I suddenly have $100,000 less towards whatever's in my retirement fund. And that's huge. This isn't even going into the possibility that a property might have a much higher value to me than anyone else. Perhaps I developed a property near the sea because I had a critical need to get a boat in and out, and it might simply not be possible to find something that meets the same needs elsewhere.
If people buy and develop properties with full knowledge of what's likely to happen, I have little sympathy for them. But we also really need systems to make sure that people can't do this sort of thing without being made clearly aware of it beforehand. If that's not possible, then I personally think that governments should arrange ways that residents can get properly compensated for the value of their property that they're likely to be losing. This might be by requiring that companies applying for consents to develop land pay out a pre-determined "fair" rate of compensation to surrounding property owners, or through some other means.
Altamont Pass (California) is the most lethal wind farm in N. America for raptors:
/ bdes/altamont/altamont.html
http://www.biologicaldiversity.org/swcbd/Programs
JET Program: see Japan, meet intere
The current generation of wind turbines are huge machines in the 1MW to 3MW range. They're up higher and more visible to birds, and there are fewer of them per unit area. The older turbines at Altamont are being replaced by bigger machines, which apparently kill fewer birds.
But nobody is happy with the current arrangement.
that 20 years ago every other house had a mast the size of a sailing ship to pick up broadcast reruns of the Dukes of Hazard and now we won't even erect windmills to stave off Global Warming/Terrorists/High Energy Prices/Retarded Birds because they look bad. Our value system in this country has certainly got off kilter
All the turbines I've seen appear to have the same aestetic as the ever popular "Apple knows how to make things visually appealing" ipod. When the county commission puts a six month moratorium on discussion, it becomes apparent that the cost of a pretty design is cheaper than the cost of spending a year doing nothing.
I Browse at +4 Flamebait
Open Source Sysadmin
Why can't we harness the energy all the people who run on a daily basis use? Lets take advantage of all the self-absorbed fitness dorks.
His specific objections are to federally-owned nature preserves (as opposed to parks used for camping, etc.). In his opinion, if something isn't being exploited for commercial gain, then it isn't worth anything, and he views wildlife preserves as an obscene waste.
The obscene waste is that churches pay no taxes. That means they're essentially subsidized. I'm waiting for someone to justify churches on a cost basis.
What is fucking wrong with all the idiots alive today and their money cult? Why is everything about how much we can get for this or that if we chop it up, dig it up, divide it, and sell it to the highest bidder?
Lets find a way to harness the energy of planets/comets flying through space. Sure it would be difficult, but if harnessed, we would have enough energy to... ignore discussions like these since windmills only contribute less than 0.1 percent of the power consumed in the U.S. We need a real solution without giving our planet stale air from the amount of windmills needed to be a real viable one stop shop energy source.
There's always more than one side of an argument, and I always want to educate myself on more than one side. Especially when everybody else buys into just one side of the argument, I get suspicious that there must be more to it. Hand-waving people as "rich people who want to protect their land-value" without investigation in the matter, is uninformed discrimination, really.
:-P
."
Call us when you don't have power and really, really want some. Good-bye!
That power is very unlikely to come from windmills, not at our current power-consumption rate, which is only rising. That is what I'm reading from all of this. I don't have a backyard myself, but I can understand why people opposite this for many reasons.
Here's some quotes from stopillwind.org:
(You might also be interested in their The Top Ten False and Misleading Claims the Windpower Industry makes for Projects in the Eastern United States". There's even an answer to your own question in their FAQ ("Locals who oppose the wind industry are NIMBYS.").
Notable Quotes on the Siting of Industrial Windplants
"I was asked to open the windfarm at Delabole. At that time nobody was talking about a gigantic programme, getting 15 or 20 per cent of the country's energy from wind turbines. It was a kind of nice green gesture. I think, now that I know as much as I do, I wouldn't have touched it with a bargepole."
--James Lovelock, the founding historical and cultural leader of environmentalism for environmentalists around the world and originator of the GAIA concept.
"The trouble with wind farms is that they have a huge spatial footprint for a piddling little bit of electricity...
--Sir Martin Holdgate, former chairman of the British Renewable Energy Advisory Group.
"Not only are we sacrificing the beauty of our landscape, but our wildlife as well. As you are aware, the United States Fish and Wildlife Service has expressed concern about the suitability of the Allegheny Front for wind farms due to its use by migratory birds and raptors as well as bats." High wildlife mortalities recently recorded at a recent wind installation in West Virginia "underscore the fact that this area has serious drawbacks as a suitable site for wind farms."
--Rep. Alan Mollahan, West Virginia, in a January 21, 2004 letter to the West Virginia Public Service Commission.
"Renewable energy (hydropower, for example) can have horrendous impacts on fish and wildlife. But I can think of no proposed project more devastating to fish, wildlife, and the local economy than plunking a wind farm in the middle of Nantucket Sound."
--Ted Williams, Audubon Magazine (May 5, 2004).
"I'm a strong advocate of wind farms on the high seas. But there are appropriate places for everything. We wouldn't put one of these in Yosemite, and I think environmentalists are falling into a trap if they think the only wilderness areas worth preserving are in the West. The most important are the ones close to our cities, where the public has access to them. And Nantucket Sound is a wilderness, which people need to experience. I always get nervous when people talk about privatizing the commons. In this case, the benefits of the power extracted from Nantucket Sound are far outweighed by the other values our communities derive from it."
--Robert Kennedy Jr., E Magazine (November/December 2003).
"It would take thousands of these clean-energy, landscape-marring machines [wind turbines] to generate only a slice of the region's [Maryland's] power needs." "Consider a recent Department of Energy Study. It shows that nationwide, moving to 10 percent renewable energy would still see coal burning increase substantially--because of rapidly growing electrical demand."
--Tom Horton, staff environmental writer of the weekly column, On the Bay, The Baltimore Sun: "Wind farms a problem, too," February 27, 2004.
Wal-Mart did not invent supersingle wheels. Long haul trucks in Australia have used a similar tire for decades.
Have you noticed that your marginalization of those fringe groups mirrors popular society's? If you know anything about psychology you know that small minorities resort to force when they recognize that the usual channels offer no potential for them to effect change. When a society completely shuts out any movement and does not even offer them a platform on which they can freely express their views, that's when the extreme acts will occur.
It is also important to keep in mind that with any group engaged in violent rebellion, their status depends on your view. If you were British in 1776 the Americans were a bunch of violent terrorists bent on mayhem and murder. Some people actually believe in their cause enough to take up arms. That doesn't always mean they are insane terrorists (no matter how badly conservatives would like to cast them in that light for political effect).
Run what faster? The train? How do they do that, when there isn't enough energy? I think that I misunderstand your question.
testing out my trending skills
I live in BC, and only lived in Calgary, AB for about 6 months, so I'm not sure that British Columbians have that luxury of using windmills just yet. On a positive note, though, the government or power company, or whatever, is trying to build 1 or more windmills on Vancouver Island. It's up on the northern part, if I recall correctly. The newspaper, that I got that information from, portrayed it in a positive manner, so I suppose that the NIMBYism and BANANAism has been kept to a minimum if not illiminated for that instance.
Also, there was that Canadian show, Daily Planet, which did a bit on a windmill set up at a high school or college football [not soccer] field, or some kind of playing field. People who were interviewed were very optimistic about it also. I don't recall a single complaint. This shows that at the very least, somebody is supporting the technology.
I'm beginning to feel very optimistic about this for Canadians. As for Americans and others, I'll still keep my hopes up.
Thanks for the photos. Once again, this proves that the technology is viewed highly by some people. I just can't understand why more people don't do this. The photo was very well done. Was it by you?
testing out my trending skills
This reaction to wind is stupid. If it's just a few morons holding these projects back, will a few smart people please outweigh them? I have no credentials or resources to pull until summer. Somebody do it :)
I live year-round in Hyannis on the Cape, and I take issue with your statement that most Cape Codders are poor.
There is poverty and homelessness here, but only isolated pockets. Most year-round residents are solidly middle class. I'd challenge you to find actual poverty outside of Hyannis and Yarmouth.
Now, there is a housing crisis. Seasonal workers on the Cape and Islands have been known to sleep in tents in the woods, but that's more a function of summer housing rates averaging hundreds or thousands of dollars per week. Hard to afford on a $9/hr. dishwasher's wage.
k.
"In spite of everything, I still believe that people are really good at heart." - Anne Frank
We in Walla Walla are actually quite proud of our huge wind farm nearby. It is the largest windfarm in the world, actually. Also the chorus of flashing beacon lights, viewed from a hillside far away are quite a beautiful site.
Patent: from Latin patere, to be open
Choosing among priorities is good rational discourse. Flip Flopping occurs when you actually end up shifting the foundations of your system of discourse to support your chosen priority. For example, right now windmill farms are seen as politically correct. Using windpower releases one's inner butterfly spirit and is holistic.
One day, the group think will look at all of the roads made to windmill farms, the rusted out towers in need of repair and the changes to ecosystems caused by the towers. Group think will then declare windmills as the product of evil industrial pigs (spit on their graves).
The rational approach to windmill and solar panel farms is to proceed with caution. There is both good and bad points to this technology. Flip flopping occurs when you little tiny internal paradigm meter switches from windmills being good to windmills being bad.
miles away, unless you live in downtown LA or NYC, in which case it is of your own damned choosing that there is not much green in your neighborhood.
There is a thousand times more green area to play in and travel through in America alone than anyone could see in a lifetime. If you want to live in it, move to a rural area. If you want a lifestyle with lots of ameneties, live in an urban or surburban area. I am sorry that you can't have your cake and eat it too, but that is life.
The fact is that there are many cities in which you can live in the city and still have a nice view and lots of green areas. Sure, L.A. is probably too far gone. Fine, put a windmill on the top of every building if you want because things are already too fr gone. But I see no reason to contaminate miles and miles of otherwise open countryside along a highway or just outside a city with windmills. Saying that we should have to drive to a national park to escape the ugly windmills is nonsense. Just don't put the windmills there to start with!
Yes, there are cases of that happening, I was housed in an office where that happened up to an hour a day, and it is very disturbing. There is no good cure for it, and that is why in Germany, there are regulations that you have to shut down your turbine if the number of flicker hours in any given window around the turbine is exceeding 20 a year. Which essentially says, don't build these things too close to housing. But that's a good idea anyway...
Hurricane Application Group, Dept of Meteorology Control, Ministry of Proactive Defense
I think I remember reading that the idea is to eventually have wind farms supply 60% of the power to Vancouver Island.
It's not my photo -- just a stock photo I found while poking around. I have a panorama of the wind farm at Pincher Creek though. White windmills on yellow fields... very nice.
No no no, I was wondering if there was a single documented case of someone getting a migraine or a seizue due to shadow flicker, not whether shadow flicker actually occurs.
I don't doubt that it occurs and that it is terribly annoying, but the site doesn't claim that it's terribly annoying - the site claims that it can cause migraines and seizures. Had they just left it at "shadow flicker is terribly annoying" I could have nodded my head and said yes, but the fact that they say shadow flicker "has the potential to cause" migraines/seizures, rather than "has actually caused" makes me wonder.
power source so that you can drive for 10 hours without seeing any sign of humanity (except for the car and the road, of course). Try getting out of your car and slowing down, and you can you can get the same effect (actually better) without requiring uptillion square miles of empty land.
I've thought about the photo. It makes the windmill look very peaceful. If people see a picture of a windmill in a wheat field, then there may be less NIMBYism, because if the food is safe enough to eat, then it is a clean source of energy.
An idea came to me shortly after we started this discussion. It would be nice to build a lighthouse with a windmill attachment. There would probably be enough electricity to pay for it.
testing out my trending skills
True. People should visit wind farms -- they are quite peaceful. Unless you're very close you can't hear them, even if there are hundreds. The modern ones turn quite slowly (which reduces the risk to birds). Naturally they don't smell.
Do people build lighthouses anymore?
-----
How do I want my environment? Deep-fried, extra crispy, with a big, heaping, artery-clogging side of tartar sauce.
Knowing Google's lust for data collection, the Soviet Union is still alive and well inside the psyche of Sergey Brin....
You didn't notice the "oh wait. Nevermind" at then end where I started using capitAl letters again? My (perhaps too) subtle way of saying the same thing you did. But thanks anyway and thanks to AC poster for having my back.
What if the Hokey Pokey really is what it's all about?
its stuff like this that makes me SURE that the human race is bound to destroy itself
the coal, and clear cutting, and burning of millions of tons of oil and coal is ok.. but put a few windmills ANYWHERE and THEN some dipshit gets mad
our greed and stupidity is our undoing
Actually, now that you ask, I speculate that they probably don't build lighthouses anymore. If they use GPS or other electronic claptraptions, then they won't need lighthouses anymore. I guess that I brought up the idea because lighthouses were shut down, according to what I read, to save money, and not because there were technological advances.
testing out my trending skills
The problem here is that for one person to build something, (s)he has to get the unanimous consent of everyone in the damn county.
There are 2 solutions:
(1) Build it anyway, and shoot anyone who complains (this seems to be working for me, and my hogs are well fed from the politicians, lawyers, cops, and neighborhood watch types.)
(2) All land must be sold in allodial title, which means the owner really owns it. The govt can not levy property taxes. Zoning regulations do not apply. There are no environmental concerns that anyone can force on the owner. Nothing can interfere with what I do on land that I own in allodial title. Unfortunately, only Texas allows this right now, and only half a dozen people actually have such a title to their land here in Texas.
Andy Out!