out of Kirby Mountain out of

Friends of the Earth say giant wind turbine facilities will attract tourists.

In today's Telegraph (U.K.):

'A damning report warning that wind-farm programmes will greatly increase energy costs and that "greenhouse gases" can be reduced easily by conventional methods has been shelved.

The findings of the 490-page report, commissioned by the German government and due for publication last week, were so embarrassing that ministers have sent it back to be "re-edited". Jürgen Trittin, Germany's Green Party environment minister, said: "We do not want the findings of this report to be misinterpreted. ..."

'The findings of the unpublished report were leaked to Der Spiegel magazine last week. They suggest that if Germany presses ahead with its plan to double the number of wind turbines, annual energy costs for consumers will rise from €1.4 billion to €5.4 billion ...

'The research also cast doubt on one of the main arguments for wind power: that it cuts the amount of "greenhouse gas" polluting the atmosphere. The report says that almost the same effect can be achieved -- at substantially reduced costs -- by installing modern filters at existing fossil-fuel power plants.'

The dramatic effects of "stray voltage" from the wind facility in Kewaunee County, Wisconsin, seem to be awfully extensive for simple leakage from the buried transmission lines, particularly as those lines were brand new.

The electrician who helped the affected farmers noted that except in California there is no limit in the U.S. of how much electricity can be dumped into the ground. Consider, then, the fundamental problem of aerogenerators on the grid: Their production depends on the wind and cannot be adjusted according to actual demand (the grid must keep production and consumption in constant balance). What, then, is done when the grid is meeting demand and the wind rises unnecessarily? The electricity from the aerogenerators is an excess and must be dumped. In western Denmark, the grid operator calculates that 84% of the wind-generated power must be exported, because it is not needed when it is produced.

Wind facilities complicate the balancing act of the grid. In Ireland, connections were halted last year because of the instability they cause. The German grid operator Eon Netz describes the problem of wind-generated power suddenly dropping off and the unpredictability of production levels, requiring substantial backup facilities that would seem to negate any benefit claimed for the aerogenerators.

Yet they are highly profitable because of tax breaks, mandated sales, and, most significantly, the market for "renewable energy credits" (or "renewables obligation certificates"). Logically, the best situation for a utility involved in a wind facility would be to not have to deal with its erratic supply yet still be able to enjoy the sale not only of the power produced but the "green credits" as well. They need only record the power that arrives at a substation from all of the turbines and then "ground" it whenever it's not actually needed, which is most of the time. The utility sells what is produced whether or not it is actually used.

Other production plants can adjust their output, but aerogenerators can't. Theirs is subject only to the wind. The only way to control it is to direct it into the ground instead of the grid. Is this what is happening in Kewaunee County? Is this the normal design of wind "farms"?

Mark Jacobson of Invenergy, which is seeking the use of 6,000 acres in Monroe County, Wisconsin, for 30-50 wind turbines, provided a prime example of developers' lack of respect for their marks, much less for the truth. (His partner's estimate of payment to landowners of $3,800/turbine/yr also is deceitfully low. At a meeting Wednesday, backed by two of his coconspirators, Jacobson "provided information" by answering one concern after another by simple denial:

'Jacobson said he knows of no documented cases of stray voltage connected to wind turbines.'

'Turbines generate less than 50 decibels. As a comparison, a quiet room measures 40 decibels, Jacobson said.'

'[Birds -- a] "hot topic in the 70s," Jacobson conceded due to early designs because birds could perch in turbines. Now tubular designs have limited bird mortality rates to an average of two birds per year per turbine.'

'Jacobson has not heard of any cases where property values decreased because of turbines. Due to the potential economic return of having a turbine on your land, property values may increase. Jacobson encouraged landowners to call local assessors to seek their input.'

Let's help Mr. Jacobson out here, with information gathered in Lincoln Township, Kewaunee County, Wisconsin, after the construction of a 22-turbine wind facility.

Stray voltage: The fact is that it's completely legal to ground any amount of electricity, including dumping excess production (e.g., when the wind is good but there is no corresponding increase demand on the grid), so there is no reason for developers to worry about the effect of it. Dairy farmers near the wind facility noticed high rates of cancer, birth deformities, and other illnesses, including dehydration because the water had become electrified, in their herds. Each farm has had to spend tens of thousands of dollars to isolate their land from the stray voltage. Their families, as well as visiting workers, also suffered ill effects.

Noise: 67% of residents living 800-1,300, and 52% of residents 1,300-2,600 feet from the turbines complained of the noise. The developer (Wisconsin Public Service, WPS) was ordered to do a noise study, which, though laughably spotty, showed that the turbines added 5-20 dB(A) to the ambient sound level. Ten dB is perceived as a doubling of the noise level. As a result, WPS offered to buy the neighboring homes and raze them.

Birds: Jacobson and his pals might like to know that the effects on birds are still an issue, and a new concern for bats is growing. On Backbone Mountain in West Virginia, for example, 2,000 bats were killed in just 2 months last year. In the Altamont Pass, where thousands of raptors have been killed, the Fish and Wildlife Service says that new turbines will not mitigate the problem; the only solution is to shut them down. Like the raptors in Altamont Pass, migrating songbirds fly by the hundreds of thousands over the ridges targeted by wind-power developers. They are not equipped for dodging a giant blade chopping through the air at up to 150 mph, particularly at night or in fog.

Property values: WPS's buyout offer of the uninhabitable neighboring homes is pretty strong evidence of a decline in value. Even without considering those, it was found that properties in Lincoln Township decreased in sales value from 104% to 78% of assessed value within 1 mile of the wind turbines and from 105% to 87% beyond 1 mile.

The Black Commentator has some good articles this week: "The Condi and Colin Follies" by Margaret Kimberley, "Rice Arrives Just In Time To Oversee U.S. Decline," and "The Global Descent of America" by Aijaz Ahmad.

Excerpts from an article by Brian Cloughey about some of what is being done in the name of our values:

'The New York Times reported that "Residents trickling back to Falluja ... enter a desolate world of skeletal buildings, tank-blasted homes, weeping power lines and severed palm trees. Sullen and anxious, tens of thousands of residents have passed through stringent checkpoints to find out ... whether their homes and shops were reduced to rubble or merely ransacked . . . people have to file through huge coils of razor wire and a gantlet of armed marines to pick up their supplies. On the road ... Lt Col Patrick Malay ... watched the scene with satisfaction. 'This is how I like it, just like Disneyland,' he said. 'Orderly lines and people leave with a smile on their face.'"

'The Director of Falluja hospital told the BBC that "about 60% to 70% of the homes and buildings are completely crushed and damaged ... Of the 30% still left standing, I don't think there is a single one that has not been exposed to some damage."

'... Marine Lt Gen John Sattler said his troops had "taken away this safe haven" of Falluja, which he stated was the base for the entire Iraqi uprising (he called it "rebellion") against US occupation troops. The Marine offensive, he said two months ago, has "broken the back of the insurgency" across Iraq. "We have," he announced proudly, "liberated the city of Falluja ... the enemy is broken."

'Following General Sattler's declaration that his enemy was broken there was a massive increase in ferocious anti-US attacks throughout the country. In the weeks after he mouthed his idiot words, over 150 US soldiers have been killed and scores more maimed. A few hundred Iraqi fighters against occupation have died. And hundreds, perhaps thousands, of Iraqi civilians have been slaughtered.'

"The other major reason I am voting in favor of Dr. Rice's nomination is that I am the Ranking Member of the Foreign Operations Subcommittee. In this capacity, I have a responsibility to work with the Secretary of State, on a daily basis .... I hope that Dr. [sic] Rice will meet me half way."

So Patrick Leahy, "liberal" Democrat from Vermont explains why he had to vote in support of Rice's appointment to Secretary of State. Because he's scared of her! Yet he didn't hesitate to outline the long list of reasons to vote against her, as if she's not going to hear about it.

One thing he mentioned is her inability, characteristic of all Bush loyalists, to admit mistakes. Yet he says she is "capable of learning from her mistakes and changing her ways." What mistakes? What would compel her to change, Pat? The only possible lesson, since she won't admit there are any mistakes to learn from, would have been to reject her nomination. She's a liar (not even a good one) and a bully, and Leahy hopes she'll meet him half way with the many issues he hopes to deal with. Has he learned nothing during the last 4 years?!!

What a loser! It won't be long before Leahy and the 31 other Democrats with him will be denying they made a mistake in approving Rice. Remember how Russell Feingold voted to send John Ashcroft's nomination for Attorney General to the full Senate? He said much of what Leahy said about Rice, that Ashcroft would rise to the challenge and they would work together happily and productively. Unfortunately, Ashcroft didn't respond to the magnanimous gesture and -- because of one idiotic Senator's vote (for which he never expressed regret) -- we got a taste again of the days of J. Edgar Hoover. Feingold at least now opposes Ashcroft's replacement with the even more odious Alberto Gonzalez, though now it won't make any difference. Leahy is voting against Gonzalez, too. Yet they'll have to work with him! What guts! Lest we get carried away by this example of integrity (watered down as it is by their mealy words of respect for this monster), take comfort that Feingold joined Leahy in the big bipartisan thumbs up to Rice.

Democrats shouldn't be talking about getting along with the mockery of a government that Bush represents. They should be talking about locking them all up in Guantánamo for the rest of their lives. Their guiding strategy should be obstruction, not collaboration.

But where do I think I am? We don't have a representative parliament. There is only one party, the plutocrats playing good cop bad cop in an expensive entertainment that is all the politics we get. Feh!

Editor Jim Motavalli writes in E (The Environmental Magazine), "Trust the chairman of the House Resources Committee, Richard Pombo, to seize upon consumer anxiety and twist it to his own anti-environmental ends." Motavalli's subject is the high demand for natural gas, which he takes as another reason we need large-scale wind power facilities. The funny thing is, Richard Pombo, seizing upon consumer anxiety and twisting it his own anti-environmental ends, also is an enthusiastic supporter of wind power. The American Wind Energy Association even donated to his election campaign last year. Who's "right"?

To the Editor, Burlington Free Press:

Mary Sullivan, spokesperson for Burlington Electric, scoffs that "some people" worry about the effect of giant wind-turbine facilities on our ridge lines while global warming and acid rain pose a much greater threat ("Let's not wait to reduce greenhouse emissions," opinion, Jan. 24). Her implication, one must assume, is that the giant wind turbines, occasionally spinning enough to generate more electricity than they use, are essential to reducing global warming and acid rain.

Despite warning us about ethically challenged pseudoscience, however, Sullivan does not explain her reasoning. How, in a state that gets no electricity from coal, would wind turbines reduce coal use? How, in a state where electricity accounts for only 1% of the greenhouse gas emissions, would wind turbines reduce global warming?

In fact, even if 100% of our electricity came from coal, wind power would not reduce its use. When researching the issue it does not take long to realize that there is no evidence anywhere that wind power on the grid reduces electricity generation other sources.

I support the challenge to reduce our energy use and make it cleaner. Nobody wants to see our mountains destroyed by pollution. "Some people" don't want to see them destroyed by useless wind facilities, either.

[Published Jan. 29, 2005, as "Turbines on ridgelines"]

KCBS radio, San Francisco, reports that California is recommending that the wind turbines in Altamont Pass be shut down through the fall and winter to save the lives of perhaps up to 800 raptors (of the acknowledged 1,300 that are killed there each year). This is apparently a period of lower winds, so the 4,550 remaining turbines (the state also recommends that 650 of the current machines be taken down) would produce only a third less each year. I hope California can cope with losing that source of 0.1% of their electricity!

(a poem)

Six thousand police and secret service, 7,000 soldiers, rooftop sharpshooters, anti-aircraft batteries, river patrols, sky patrols by helicopter gunships and fighter jets, spy cameras, chemical sensors, all to protect that little man speaking from behind the bulletproof glass -- yes, Bush must be doing something right! We are at indeed at war: Bush's Washington against the people.

... and as I walked down the hill by the Capitol it suddenly struck me that this isn't about me and you; it's about them. We are being governed by some intensely frightened people. From George Bush on down. Much of the homeland security business, in Washington at least, is to provide personal protection to important people from the consequence of the extremely bad things they are doing. We are the victims of both Al Qaeda and Il Dubya, told to give up our rights and freedoms so that the worst leaders of our entire history can go about their business without having to suffer for it. The whole city of Washington has become the armored vest of the Bush administration and Congress.

-- Sam Smith

[Sing with harp accompaniment.]

Who will go ride with Fergus now
And pierce the deep wood's woven shade
And dance upon the level shore?

Young man lift up your russet brow
And lift your tender eyelid maid
And brood on hopes and fear no more.

And no more turn aside and brood
Upon love's bitter mystery
For Fergus rules the brazen cars

And rules the shadow of the wood
And the white breast of the dim sea
And all dishevelled wandering stars.

-- William Butler Yeats

ARCHIE. ... What makes a cow give milk?

RICHARD. [Takes his hand.] Who knows? Do you understand what it is to give a thing?

ARCHIE. To give? Yes.

RICHARD. While you have a thing it can be taken from you.

ARCHIE. By robbers? No?

RICHARD. But when you give it, you have given it. No robber can take it from you. [He bends his head and presses his son's hand against his cheek.] It is yours then for ever when you have given it. It will be yours always. That is to give.

...

ARCHIE. Are there robbers here like in Rome?

RICHARD. There are poor people everywhere.

-- James Joyce, Exiles

Clarence (The Riverend) Sterling died on January 7. A nice obituary appeared in the January 16 Ventura Country Star (registration required). He was much loved by the people around Ojai, California. The Ventura Red Cross disaster operations center was named for him in December. He died of esophageal cancer at the age of 59.

His humanity set him apart from most scholars of Finnegans Wake, which he elucidated along with Joyce's other works with fresh and penetrating insight, supported by a wide range of interests. He was extremely generous with his knowledge and enthusiastic about the work of others. I corresponded with him while working on my book about Finnegans Wake. Not just about that book but also about our respective lives on our respective mountains. He had wonderful tales from his family's past, particularly one about a great-aunt's dance date spontaneously combusting (if I remember correctly). He also wrote about the people of the region, including the native Chumash.

He showed James Joyce to be a humane writer who gave voice to the victims of history's brutality. Notably, he realized that the central number in Finnegans Wake, 1132, referred to the sacking of Kildare, the house of St. Bridget, on the eve of her saint's day of that year. The abbess was raped. The event contains all the violence -- political, sexual, technological -- inflicted by humans on each other and the earth. The famously beautiful Book of Kells, a model for Finnegans Wake, may have been produced at Kildare. Sterling wrote that all of Joyce's work invoked the ancient mother Brigid (who became St. Bridget).

Joyce gave voice to that which is lost. Clarence Sterling helped us to hear it.

... there fell a tear, a singult tear ...

The Scottish government has announced plans for a web site to give people "'the hard facts' on renewables and wind energy and allow for informed debate -- something pro- and anti-windfarm campaigners have long called for." They say it will "blow away the myths."

But it will attack only charges by opponents. It will leave untouched all claims made by supporters. It will also feature long-refuted polls showing public support, even as they receive thousands of letters opposing the proposed wind farm in Lewis.

Deputy First Minister Jim Wallace, in announcing the site, urged those opposed to wind energy to "engage in a debate based on the facts." Ah, Mr. Wallace, that is in fact what we ask of you. Republishing on a government site the trade group British Wind Energy Association's spiel does not make it true.

On Greenpeace U.K.'s Yes2Wind forum, a simple question was recently posted: "I gather that the question is whether whatever benefit they provide is worth the expense and impact of their construction. Can someone cite some data showing how much fossil and nuclear fuel use has been reduced where wind farms are operating?" There has yet to be an answer.

Nobody arguing for utility-scale wind power has been able to cite such basic data to support their claims. It seems, Mr. Wallace, that it is you and your friends in the wind biz who are averse to facts.

From address to Clergy and Laity Concerned about Vietnam, Riverside Church, New York City, April 4, 1967, by Martin Luther King, Jr.

A few years ago there was a shining moment in [the struggle I and others have been waging in America]. It seemed as if there was a real promise of hope for the poor, both black and white, through the poverty program. There were experiments, hopes, new beginnings. Then came the buildup in Vietnam, and I watched this program broken and eviscerated as if it were some idle political plaything of a society gone mad on war. And I knew that America would never invest the necessary funds or energies in rehabilitation of its poor so long as adventures like Vietnam continued to draw men and skills and money like some demonic, destructive suction tube. So I was increasingly compelled to see the war as an enemy of the poor and to attack it as such.

Perhaps a more tragic recognition of reality took place when it became clear to me that the war was doing far more than devastating the hopes of the poor at home. It was sending their sons and their brothers and their husbands to fight and to die in extraordinarily high proportions relative to the rest of the population. We were taking the black young men who had been crippled by our society and sending them eight thousand miles away to guarantee liberties in Southeast Asia which they had not found in southwest Georgia and East Harlem. So we have been repeatedly faced with the cruel irony of watching Negro and white boys on TV screens as they kill and die together for a nation that has been unable to seat them together in the same schools. So we watch them in brutal solidarity burning the huts of a poor village, but we realize that they would hardly live on the same block in Chicago. I could not be silent in the face of such cruel manipulation of the poor.

My third reason moves to an even deeper level of awareness, for it grows out of my experience in the ghettos of the North over the last three years, especially the last three summers. As I have walked among the desperate, rejected, and angry young men, I have told them that Molotov cocktails and rifles would not solve their problems. I have tried to offer them my deepest compassion while maintaining my conviction that social change comes most meaningfully through nonviolent action. But they asked, and rightly so, "What about Vietnam?" They asked if our own nation wasn't using massive doses of violence to solve its problems, to bring about the changes it wanted. Their questions hit home, and I knew that I could never again raise my voice against the violence of the oppressed in the ghettos without having first spoken clearly to the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today: my own government. For the sake of those boys, for the sake of this government, for the sake of the hundreds of thousands trembling under our violence, I cannot be silent.

... Somehow this madness must cease. We must stop now. I speak as a child of God and brother to the suffering poor of Vietnam. I speak for those whose land is being laid waste, whose homes are being destroyed, whose culture is being subverted. I speak for the poor of America who are paying the double price of smashed hopes at home, and dealt death and corruption in Vietnam. I speak as a citizen of the world, for the world as it stands aghast at the path we have taken. I speak as one who loves America, to the leaders of our own nation: The great initiative in this war is ours; the initiative to stop it must be ours.

... Five years ago [John F. Kennedy] said, "Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable." Increasingly, by choice or by accident, this is the role our nation has taken, the role of those who make peaceful revolution impossible by refusing to give up the privileges and the pleasures that come from the immense profits of overseas investments. I am convinced that if we are to get on the right side of the world revolution, we as a nation must undergo a radical revolution of values. We must rapidly begin the shift from a thing-oriented society to a person-oriented society. When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights, are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, extreme materialism, and militarism are incapable of being conquered.

A true revolution of values will soon cause us to question the fairness and justice of many of our past and present policies. On the one hand we are called to play the Good Samaritan on life's roadside, but that will be only an initial act. One day we must come to see that the whole Jericho Road must be transformed so that men and women will not be constantly beaten and robbed as they make their journey on life's highway. True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar. It comes to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring.

A true revolution of values will soon look uneasily on the glaring contrast of poverty and wealth. With righteous indignation, it will look across the seas and see individual capitalists of the West investing huge sums of money in Asia, Africa, and South America, only to take the profits out with no concern for the social betterment of the countries, and say, "This is not just." It will look at our alliance with the landed gentry of South America and say, "This is not just." The Western arrogance of feeling that it has everything to teach others and nothing to learn from them is not just. A true revolution of values will lay hand on the world order and say of war, "This way of settling differences is not just." This business of burning human beings with napalm, of filling our nation's homes with orphans and widows, of injecting poisonous drugs of hate into the veins of peoples normally humane, of sending men home from dark and bloody battlefields physically handicapped and psychologically deranged, cannot be reconciled with wisdom, justice, and love. A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death.

From Ironic Times:

A recent article misstated President Bush's solution for asbestos injury lawsuits as calling for a ban on asbestos. In fact the president called for a ban on lawsuits. We apologize for any confusion caused by our mistake.

To the Editor, Caledonian-Record:

According to an April 4 story in USA Today, US Airways CEO David Siegel was given a new compensation package last year potentially worth almost $11 million. When the airline fails, he'll be all right. Yet it's the baggage handlers of his airline whose absence is noticed (Caledonian-Record editorial, Jan. 7).

Siegel could call in sick for a couple of months from a villa in southern France and nobody would notice. Baggage handlers made it clear what keeps an airline flying, and this paper reviles their audacity to expect fair compensation and security for it.

If US Airways can't afford to pay their workers, the CEO ought to come under some scrutiny. Instead, this paper condemns the workers' desperate worries and gives the CEO a free pass to enjoy his millions.

The people separated from their luggage over Christmas should vent their wrath at David Siegel, not the people whose work he lives on.