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British Court Rejects Donald Trump's Attempt To Block Wind Farm (nytimes.com)
HughPickens.com writes: Sewell Chan reports at the NYT that Britain's highest court has unanimously rejected an attempt by Donald J. Trump to block the construction of a wind farm near his luxury golf resort in northeast Scotland. Trump has vowed to stop further development on the project if the offshore wind farm — 11 turbines, which would be visible from the golf resort 2.2 miles away — goes forward. Trump spokesman George A. Sorial denounced the ruling as "extremely unfortunate for the residents of Aberdeen and anyone who cares about Scotland's economic future" adding that the wind farm will "completely destroy the bucolic Aberdeen Bay and cast a terrible shadow upon the future of tourism for the area. History will judge those involved unfavorably, and the outcome demonstrates the foolish, small-minded and parochial mentality which dominates the current Scottish government's dangerous experiment with wind energy."
Nicola Sturgeon, first minister of Scotland, withdrew Trump's status as a business ambassador to Scotland last week after Trump called for Muslims to be barred from entering the United States. Robert Gordon University in Aberdeen has stripped Mr. Trump of an honorary degree it awarded him in 2010. Trump's mother was born in Scotland and moved to the United States in the 1930s. " I think I do feel Scottish," said Trump at one time.
Nicola Sturgeon, first minister of Scotland, withdrew Trump's status as a business ambassador to Scotland last week after Trump called for Muslims to be barred from entering the United States. Robert Gordon University in Aberdeen has stripped Mr. Trump of an honorary degree it awarded him in 2010. Trump's mother was born in Scotland and moved to the United States in the 1930s. " I think I do feel Scottish," said Trump at one time.
I think if history judges the presence of this wind farm unfavorably, they can, you know, just tear it down. It seems much easier to undo the damage of a wind farm than it does, say, a coal plant.
It doesn't hurt to be nice.
.. or there will be hell toupee.
Have gnu, will travel.
Robert Gordon University in Aberdeen has stripped Mr. Trump of an honorary degree it awarded him in 2010
You kind of have to question why they awarded it in the first place.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
Wind Farm? Not Off My Back Porch
But another obstacle is a political heavyweight with a famous name, a local Cape Cod address and hardline opposition to the project.
U.S. Sen. Edward Kennedy's primary residence is in Hyannisport, Mass., on the Kennedy family compound. It's one of the closest landfalls -- about 6 miles -- from the proposed site of the 440-feet turbines, which would be visible from his house as well as other surrounding coastlines.
In all fairness, Kennedy's aides were probably afraid he'd try to drive over to the windmills out at sea.
A blow hard is trying to stop a wind farm?
Yeah, that left wing, it's all to blame, nobody could just be calling Trump the pompous ass he is without being a member of the Secret Left Wing Cabal.
Why do people make unfounded comments like this!! There is no proof that it is a cat, or that it is dead.
My theory is that it is the "thing" on his head is making the decisions....
Aberdeenshire and Grampian attracted
1.62 million visitors in 2011.
Palm Springs attracts around 1.5 million visitors, and it is adjacent to the San Gorgonio Pass Wind Farm, with over 3000 wind turbines!
OK, let's start with the most recent.
The verification of that quote is in this video:
http://money.cnn.com/2015/12/0...
And here is the definition of Fasicism, from history Professor Emeritus Robert O. Paxton of Columbia University:
My explanation as to why I "feel" this statement is Fascism is not required. My feelings on the subject don't matter because this (and many other) statements from Donald Trump and the behavior of his followers perfectly fit the definition.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Giant windmills constantly turning just makes scenery more awesome.
N4st0r, trixx0r h0bb1tz0rz! Th3y st0l3 0ur pr3c10uzz!
At least with Reagan, we enjoyed decades of economic growth and foreign policy achievements which where positive.
Sure, if you were a multinational corporation or one of the 1%. For everyone else, the Reagan years brought about stagnant household income when adjusted for inflation. It was also under Reagan's regime of nearly 2 trillion in deficit spending that we switched from being the world's largest creditor to the world's largest debtor.
The whole world was better off with Reagan in office, even if your history text book says otherwise. I know, I was a young adult working for a living at the time.
This is prime trolling. +5. Would laugh again.
Truth is no one in Scotland (including me) wanted his dam golf course. He abused legislation and land laws to force out well established and productive farms to build the thing. And despite the PR it brings almost nothing to the local economy and very little to the Scottish economy (come on its only a single golf course and luxury hotel.. we have 100s of them - all with more history, a few even older than the USA). The only reason he got to build it was because the locals couldn't afford the lawyers to fight and he bribed a few politicians. Its sweat justice that they are now going to 'spoil his view'
It seems like you are under the illusion that Trump is something other than a catchphrase spouting blowhard racist 1%er who doesn't give a shit about anyone or anything but Trump. Renewable energy is important, Trumps view from his golf course isn't.
Look I'll grant you that every media outlet has a narrative whether they are trying to or not (hint though: the left's isn't the only one).
But seriously, with Trump, what is there to filter? Where is the missing narrative of the time he proposed a policy that made any goddamn sense whatsoever (another hint: yelling at somebody you don't like is not a policy)? I mean, there are people with whom I strongly disagree on how implement solutions (i.e. Cheney: I hate you but you are a clever sumbitch), and then there are complete lunatics brimming with extreme personality disorders proposing things that make a bridge to the moon sound sane.
Please tell me, what did I miss? I would honestly like to know what actual action Trump has proposed that you (or anybody) thought was appropriate, feasible and constitutional?
They hauled it off in pieces and then built a lecture hall in it's place.
When they haul it off in pieces, they don't just disappear. They have to be securely stored somewhere. And even if they can return the site to a useful state, the original claim was that it was easier to do this for a wind farm, not that it was impossible to do it for a nuclear power plant.
My first impression of the windswept bucolic views of Scotland is,
"Why aren't there any fucking trees?"
Was Alba always barren of flora or did cutting down the forests in ancient times for firewood change the landscape forever into eroded coastal dunes where nothing will grow?
Actually, it's a long, complex story. 1000 or so years ago, Scotland was mostly forested. At the other end, the Highland Clearances in the 1700s and 1800s didn't just force most of the people out; the major intent was to clear the land for sheep farming, which had become a good income source for the landowners with the development of modern cloth-production techniques. This led to the conversion of most of the countryside to grazing land, eliminating most of the remaining trees.
But that was merely the last blow. Before that, the forests had been heavily mined for wood for shipbuilding, and for producing charcoal to power the growing factories.
It didn't help that Scotland (and Ireland) was on the edge of the tree-supporting area, with the tree line roughly along the northwestern coasts. This meant that the forests were naturally rather slow-growing, and the tree species weren't the largest. So it was easy to over-harvest them if there was any sort of profit from the wood or a more profitable use of a tree-free land area.
Do a bit of googling; you can find lots of info on the history scattered around the internet. Similar things also happened in Scandiavia, so you might look for histories of forestry there as well. But the people there were mostly along the coastlines, and the center had much taller mountains, so the forests survived a lot better than in the British Isles.
The summary is that the treeless scenery of much of Scotland isn't at all natural; it's directly attributed to human "management" of the land. There's plenty of evidence that it would have been mostly forest without its human population, at least for the past 5000 or more years as the last Ice Age slowly faded out..
Those who do study history are doomed to stand helplessly by while everyone else repeats it.
Structures built in/on the ocean aren't typically torn down. The metal superstructure would either be dismanntled and sold for scrap, or just dumped into the nearby sea if the scrap value isn't high enough. The concrete foundations would either remain, or if they're judged to be a hazard to shipping they'd be blasted into small pieces and left in the sea. I'm not sure what would happen to the fiberglass blades. They're not typically recyclable, but aren't heavy enough to sink and form an artificial reef. So they'd probably have to be transported back to shore and buried in a landfill.
Yes the damage from the coal ash and exhaust makes it pretty much the worst possible choice for power. However, for an equivalent MWe of generation capacity, the amount of steel and concrete needed to construct wind turbines is about 5x more than for a coal plant, an order of magnitude more than for a nuclear plant, and two orders of magnitude more than needed for a gas plant.
Wind is even worse if you compare based on the actual amount of electricity generated, since wind has about half the capacity factor of coal and gas, and nearly 1/4th that of nuclear. (Capacity factor is what fraction of the plant's generating capacity is actually fulfilled on average over a year of operation. Wind is around 0.25, coal and gas about 0.4-0.6, nuclear around 0.9.)
Note: I don't oppose wind. I actually support it, as its cost has come down enough that it's starting to become cost-competitive with nuclear and coal. I just try to counter the misinformation put out there by the unicorn and rainbows crowd who've convinced the public that wind, solar, and hydro have no drawbacks. Every power source has drawbacks, and picking the right one requires an honest and thorough comparison of all the real advantages and drawbacks.
"free" stuff
You say it like it's cigarettes and beer. It's fucking health care and financial assistance programs for people (you know, humans like you and I), and the transition of some of our tax burden to the mega corporations that currently pay jack shit. Disagree with the programs if you want, but don't be the disingenuous prick who reduces the whole thing to your idiot fiction of a black Friday mob of welfare mothers.
Even ignoring your hyperbole, the distance in this case is more than double your example, a wind turbine is around 40 decibels at 300 meters which is about as loud as a modern fridge (not exactly something terrible outside, and something you won't here inside). Compared to the noise pollution many have from major roads, airports, sports stadiums etc wind turbines are nothing. I'd happily live near wind turbines, especially if it means there's less pollution from conventional power plants in the air.
In a local TV interview he expanded on the tweet."The turbines are made in China for the most part and certainly outside the United States, but mostly in China. They are a bird killing machines, they kill birds,"
Current estimates are that windmill are the cause of 3 out of every 100,000 human-related bird deaths and are way, way below #1, windows (think "Trump Tower") and #2, domestic cats. As to the place of manufacture, at least those windmills are imported from the USA. Yes, Made in America. But the Donald has never been one to let facts interfere with a good sound byte.
Kevin Oberman, Network Engineer, Retired
You can - and people do - decommission nuclear reactors safely. That's not the point. The point is how much it costs to do so. Nuclear reactors are really expensive to safely decommission.
Although to be fair if you include the cost of damage to the environment that coal produces, then there's no comparison, coal is far far more expensive than any other form of power.
A fool and his hard drive are soon parted.
You're not saying it right, he's Scottish, so he's Trrrrrrump.
Trump is NOT a true Scottsman. He's at best a wannabe.
Wind power production has MORE than lived up to the hype. It's the single fastest growing power source by a WIDE margin precisely because it's been so phenomenally successful and the turbines trump is opposed to are some of the most productive in the world (coastal turbines in Scotland and the north sea are under wind damn near 100% of the time). Turbines are so cost effective up there (even with the cost of sinking foundation into deep water) because the wind never stops blowing and it blows with enough force that the turbines are almost always at maximum spin efficiency.
Coastal wind power is so effective that Denmark gets nearly 60% of their power from it and Scotland could EASILY be an exporter of power to the rest of the UK if they fully built out their wind resources.
Yes, exactly like those studies that show that a special pixie dust from a naturopath cures cancer and sometimes even done by the same people!
From looking at what the "victims" all have in common it looks like redneck corrupt crony politics is the major cause of windmill syndrome. The instant cure is being able to make money from a windmill.
There's a good reason for that with the stupid charging at windmills using invented anecdotes, which is what the "studies" that show a problem all turned out to be. There are a large number of professionally run investigations into the matter that didn't turn up any problem, but those are conveniently ignored by either real or pretended ignorance.
Why not temporarily ban white loners in their 20's from owning guns because most of the time it's one of them that are shooting up churches, schools, and theaters?
Banning all Muslims is not a common sense solution because your chances of getting killed by a Muslim in the US is virtually nil. It's not like people aren't getting killed on a daily basis, but the causes are much more mundane than terrorism.
The idea of banning all Muslims is a reaction to an irrational fear.
The news in my country did a segment on wind farms and revealed they were extremely loud, which can't be healthy.
You're right, watching non-credible news stories is extremely unhealthy.
If you ever see a wind farm, go in for a closer look and listen, they are less noisy than your average car and we seem to accept those every-fucking-where on earth...
You asked what's so hard about tearing down a coal plant. Cleaning up toxic waste is hard. Besides, the Minimata convention on mercury set a date of 2014 for new coal plants and 2019 (not here yet) for old coal plants to control their emissions. So basically every coal plant in the world except those finished being built sometime in the last 11 months which won't be decommissioned for a couple decades. And that's only for coal plants in nations that follow the Minimata convention. And those controls will still only stop 90% of mercury emissions and 40% of sulfur dioxide emissions. So there will still be mercury contamination. For wind, you might be left with a few concrete mooring anchors or a concrete foundation if the company goes bankrupt. And a concrete foundation would be pretty easy to clean up with little toxic risk.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
Wind power production has MORE than lived up to the hype. It's the single fastest growing power source by a WIDE margin precisely because it's been so phenomenally successful and the turbines trump is opposed to are some of the most productive in the world (coastal turbines in Scotland and the north sea are under wind damn near 100% of the time). Turbines are so cost effective up there (even with the cost of sinking foundation into deep water) because the wind never stops blowing and it blows with enough force that the turbines are almost always at maximum spin efficiency.
Coastal wind power is so effective that Denmark gets nearly 60% of their power from it and Scotland could EASILY be an exporter of power to the rest of the UK if they fully built out their wind resources.
More in fact:
Wind power generates 140% of Denmark's electricity demand
http://www.theguardian.com/env...
blindly antisocialist = antisocial
I wonder what it looks like when you have to add the steel, concrete and other materials to mine the coal, transport the coal, dispose of the ash, fuel to move the coal to the "resource price" of the coal-fired power station comparison? The thing about wind is the fuel delivers itself.
Oolite: Elite-like game. For Mac, Linux and Windows
One thing I *haven't* seen is a rational explanation of why a temporary ban on Muslim immigration isn't a common-sense response to an immediate problem. It's not unconstitutional, it's no less against "American Principles" than going to war on false premises, ordering the death of a citizen, or secret lists and laws. It's also fairly easy to implement - think it through a few minutes and you'll see that detection is relatively straightforward(**).
Because it is
A) impossible to implement
B) Alienates good Muslims
C) drives moderate to borderline Muslims to the other side.
D) And most importantly UNCONSTITUTIONAL.
YES it is UNCONSTITUTIONAL. It violates both the 1st and the 14th amendment, you know discriminating against someone based on their religion and making laws favoring one religion over the other...
But you are not really looking for a rational aurgiment against it so much as just trying to attack perople.
When you cant win, ad hominem.