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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."
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.
More than that, the hard core "environmentalists" want the downfall of industrial society. Extreme environmentalism is just the best way to accomplish this. Look at groups like ELF, what are they really fighting for, the environment? By setting things on fire? I think not.
Actually, no. Most of Cape Cod's residents are pretty poor, relatively speaking. Living costs are insane. Nantucket and Martha's Vineyard both have huge problems with drug and alcohol abuse because there's nothing to do on the islands, and life is pretty rough. Outside of the tourist seaason, practically nobody is around.
The Cape isn't dominated by million dollar homes; to a large extent it's "middle class" people who have a small summer place.
These issues are largely being driven (read: funded) by a very small minority that doesn't even live there.
Please help metamoderate.
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.
Wikipedia has a lot more balanced discussion of the pros and cons of wind power:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wind_power
To sum up: Intermittancy is a non-issue where associated with pumped storage. Europe's hydroelectric dams, for example, have enough water behind them to power the entire continent for a month, and only take minutes to change their output. There are plenty of other efficient ways to deal with the intermittancy issue; it just requires preplanning instead of using wind as a patch. For most systems, no extra storage is needed and no waste occurs unless you start getting to a large percentage of your power coming from wind. This is due to the fact that normal powerplants can fall off the grid without notice as well. This doesn't occur as often as wind cycles up and down, but because it can occur, and the results of a loss of power are unacceptable to Americans, we have to have the surplus capacity anyways. Wind power output can generally be predicted well for hours in advance, which is more than enough for most existing plants to ramp up their generation (some plants take as little as 30 seconds). This ignores demand-side management as well. For example, if you have wind power running an electricity-intensive industrial process (such as aluminum refining or desalinization), you just ramp up and down plant capacity as the power situation dictates. The wider the turbines are spread out, the more constant the wind is. Also, wind tends to be inversely correlated with solar energy (cloudy days and nights tend to be windier)
There are lots of refs at the bottom of the page.
Also, your linked article may want to recheck how "little" global warming hydroelectric power (which wind often displaces) causes. Dams displace CO2, but they increase methane production; methane is a much more potent greenhouse gas. In some cases, hydroelectric plants are worse global warming contributors, per MW, than coal. Pairing wind with hydroelectric allows you to reduce the scale of the hydroelectric plant use (or, conversely, to get a lot more power out of a give amount of hydroelectric potential)
"This may be presumptuous..." "That's my favorite kind of 'This'."
In my backyard we have some wind mills. Well, figuratively speaking (they are in the backyards of friends of mine, actually and within maybe 15 miles). In my state, Wind power is taking off. There has been some controversy exactly as you describe from the "I built my house here and don't want to see your windmills" crowd, but all and all this has not been a huge concern.
What is driving the projects here in Washington State has been a set of deals with local farmers to rent space on farmland for the windmills. The farmer then gets a percentage of the proceeds (and is thus farming wind), and the power company (usually a county PUD) gets the space for the windmills. Works out well for everyone.
Now, it is true that there are some environmental hazards of windmills, regarding migrating birds, and the like. However, these are small in comparison to the problems of coal, nuclear, and even hydroelectic on the scale that it has been implemented in our state. Wind is a good option if approached well and built up in moderation.
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
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.
Noise is a concern to people who have seen the California wind turbines from the 70's in operation. The lower RPM's, improved blade design, and increased tower clearance make the new, larger designs much quieter. I think it's almost eery how quiet they are.
Birds are a pretty minor concern as well. Some people like to point to a valley in California where the hawk population decreased by 90% after the turbines were installed. That was one exceptional region, and the newer designs are also better in that regards. The newer 1.5 MW turbines are huge! The blades typically clear the ground by about 50 meters and the birds generally below the swept area. The lower RPM's also give them more time to dodge the blades if they do get the crazy notion to fly through the swept area.
By the way, I have a bone to pick with you about your turbines over there in eastern Washington. One of your boys got dropped in the middle of our freeways here in Portland last fall. Really messed up traffic to have a 100 ton generator sitting in the road. If that ain't proof that wind power is evil, I don't know what is.