Dale Guldan, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
March 6, 2005
March 3, 2005
References to anti-wind site removed
Renewable Energy Access removed a comment to one of their news articles, apparently because it referred readers to www.aweo.org for a good presentation of the arguments against industrial wind power. It followed a comment that similarly cited four pro-industry sites. An earlier comment cited on-line articles aginst wind turbines' destruction of birds. The correspondent who noticed the removal and brought it to my attention added a new comment recommending aweo.org, and I added one as well. Both were gone the next morning. I wrote to the webmaster on Tuesday and to the news editor on Wednesday for an explanation but haven't received an answer yet. No doubt the American Wind Energy Association (awea.org) is peeved and too big an account to reject their cowardice.
March 1, 2005
Mole Chaser windmill
"The Mole Chaser Windmill takes even a gentle breeze and creates underground vibrations so intolerable, moles quickly vacate your premises ..."
"Our Natural Mole Chaser Drives Them Crazy! Our durable windmill is fun to watch, but that's only part of the story. While the 18" rustproof steel blades spin silently above ground, they rattle and vibrate relentlessly underground. Moles can't stand it and quickly move out."
If this is the effect of a tiny $20 contraption, imagine what havoc a collection of 160-ton versions can wreak. Here is an account from the Mountaineer wind facility on Backbone Mountain in West Virginia (which ridge is targeted for hundreds more turbines in West Virginia, Maryland, and Pennsylvania).
"Our Natural Mole Chaser Drives Them Crazy! Our durable windmill is fun to watch, but that's only part of the story. While the 18" rustproof steel blades spin silently above ground, they rattle and vibrate relentlessly underground. Moles can't stand it and quickly move out."
If this is the effect of a tiny $20 contraption, imagine what havoc a collection of 160-ton versions can wreak. Here is an account from the Mountaineer wind facility on Backbone Mountain in West Virginia (which ridge is targeted for hundreds more turbines in West Virginia, Maryland, and Pennsylvania).
"I looked around me, to a place where months before had been prime country for deer, wild turkey, and yes, black bear, to see positively no sign of any of the animals about at all. This alarmed me, so I scouted in the woods that afternoon. I am accustomed to these woods, and know them and the signs of animals well. All afternoon, I found no sign, sight, or peek of any animal about.
"I did notice, in the next few months, that the animals were more abundant down here in the valley, in the farmers' fields and such. Places that they had steered away from before, they now were in, and causing trouble for man, and, in turn, getting shot. I saw more bear and bob cats in the populated areas than I had ever seen. I went up to the windmills several times to check, and it seemed that the animals had moved away from that area. There were no sight of them, no prints, no sign."
February 26, 2005
"The menaced landscape"
Here is an excerpt from Robert Macfarlane's essay in today's Guardian about the "wind rush," in which he asks, "Wind farms? You may as well take a knife to a Constable":
'Wild and open spaces, for obvious reasons, are proving most attractive to candy-grab developers, and some of the most extraordinary mountain, moor and coastal landscapes in the British Isles - unique as a Turner or a Spencer - are currently menaced with ill-thought-out development proposals.
'The debate over wind power in Britain suffers, as do so many "countryside" issues, from a crippling polarity. Both sides are guilty of this, but let me take as a relevant example Polly Toynbee, who has voiced in these pages the standard leftwing, pro-wind position.
'Those who resist the spread of wind farms, wrote Toynbee, are Tory-minded "rural nimbyists", worried about the depreciation of their properties, or peddling "sob stories" about the visual pollution of their precious views. As climate change accelerates, these people are fiddling while the world heats up. They are, she ringingly concluded, "small, selfish and short-sighted".
'Toynbee should take a trip to Lewis in the Outer Hebrides. There, the energy giant Amec is pushing to establish the world's biggest wind farm. The local community is resisting as best it can. The farm is to be built on the northern part of Mòinteach riabhach Leòdhais, the Brindled Moor of Lewis - a wind-swept, hyena-coloured expanse of bog, waterfall, cliff and scarp. The moor is one of the world's last great peat-bogs, whose ecological significance has been compared to that of the Serengeti. It is under protected status as a UN Ramsar Site, a Special Protection Area, and a Berne Convention Important Bird Area: designations that Amec would steamroll. Its biodiversity and appearance make it the centrepiece of the Hebrides' £60m-a-year tourism industry.
'The moor, in its strange, wild beauty, is also at the core of Lewis's embattled Gaelic self-identity. For centuries, the people of Lewis have worked the moor. As Finlay McLeod of the Lewis protest group has put it: "Language and even a people may go - but the land was immutable, a last and lasting bastion for human sanity and belonging. Now, this itself is seen to be under threat."
'Amec has not, of course, come to Lewis out of the greenness of its conscience. It is there for the money. It hopes, with the help of government subsidies, to make about £68m a year if the farm is built. "Farm", though, is far too homesteadish a word for what will happen if Amec gets the go-ahead. It will erect 234 turbines, each nearly 140 metres high with a blade-span of more than 80 metres. (Imagine 234 structures, each more than twice the height of Nelson's Column, and carrying a propeller with a diameter greater than the length of a Boeing 747.) The energy will be carried off the island by 210 pylons, each 26 metres high, and their adjoining overhead lines. To service the turbines, 104 miles of roads will be built, as well as nine electrical substations. Lewis, it is clear even from these bald statistics, is to be turned not into a wind farm but a wind factory.
'The Lewis development will be irreversible. Wind turbines, it is often forgotten in the organicist rhetoric of the pro-wind farmists, require anchorage. One does not simply plant them like outsize seedlings. Each turbine will be counter-sunk into 726 cubic metres of concrete. In total, 5m cubic metres of rock and 2.5m cubic metres of peat-bog will be excavated. Such statistics render ridiculous Toynbee's claim that if another renewable energy source is found "the wind-turbines can be dismantled and taken away, no harm done".
'The Lewis project is a salutary case study. It reveals that an American-Puritan error - that wild land is waste land, there to be put to industrial use - is rearing its head. Wild places, it has come to be understood, are the "uplands" of civilisation: landscapes that can renew, console, and lift us in unique ways.
'Lewis's situation also reminds us of the spiritual, aesthetic, historical and ecological values that are put at risk when extraordinary landscapes are industrially menaced. These values are harder to measure, and harder to articulate than the hard numerical wattage of the turbines. But they are, unlike the wattage, non-transferable.
'A new study by the German energy agency, the world's leading producer of wind energy, has concluded that wind farms are an inefficient tool in our desperate battle against climate change. But even if this were not the case, certain types of landscape are too valuable to be turned into outdoor power-stations. The Lewis development is only the biggest instance: one grimly thinks of the 150-turbine development in Eisken on Harris, the planned development on the Sleat peninsula on Skye, and the "interconnector" - the 50m-high pylon-line required to carry the power from the wind farms of the Scottish west coast to the southern demand centres: a knife-slash through some of Britain's wildest vistas.'
'Wild and open spaces, for obvious reasons, are proving most attractive to candy-grab developers, and some of the most extraordinary mountain, moor and coastal landscapes in the British Isles - unique as a Turner or a Spencer - are currently menaced with ill-thought-out development proposals.
'The debate over wind power in Britain suffers, as do so many "countryside" issues, from a crippling polarity. Both sides are guilty of this, but let me take as a relevant example Polly Toynbee, who has voiced in these pages the standard leftwing, pro-wind position.
'Those who resist the spread of wind farms, wrote Toynbee, are Tory-minded "rural nimbyists", worried about the depreciation of their properties, or peddling "sob stories" about the visual pollution of their precious views. As climate change accelerates, these people are fiddling while the world heats up. They are, she ringingly concluded, "small, selfish and short-sighted".
'Toynbee should take a trip to Lewis in the Outer Hebrides. There, the energy giant Amec is pushing to establish the world's biggest wind farm. The local community is resisting as best it can. The farm is to be built on the northern part of Mòinteach riabhach Leòdhais, the Brindled Moor of Lewis - a wind-swept, hyena-coloured expanse of bog, waterfall, cliff and scarp. The moor is one of the world's last great peat-bogs, whose ecological significance has been compared to that of the Serengeti. It is under protected status as a UN Ramsar Site, a Special Protection Area, and a Berne Convention Important Bird Area: designations that Amec would steamroll. Its biodiversity and appearance make it the centrepiece of the Hebrides' £60m-a-year tourism industry.
'The moor, in its strange, wild beauty, is also at the core of Lewis's embattled Gaelic self-identity. For centuries, the people of Lewis have worked the moor. As Finlay McLeod of the Lewis protest group has put it: "Language and even a people may go - but the land was immutable, a last and lasting bastion for human sanity and belonging. Now, this itself is seen to be under threat."
'Amec has not, of course, come to Lewis out of the greenness of its conscience. It is there for the money. It hopes, with the help of government subsidies, to make about £68m a year if the farm is built. "Farm", though, is far too homesteadish a word for what will happen if Amec gets the go-ahead. It will erect 234 turbines, each nearly 140 metres high with a blade-span of more than 80 metres. (Imagine 234 structures, each more than twice the height of Nelson's Column, and carrying a propeller with a diameter greater than the length of a Boeing 747.) The energy will be carried off the island by 210 pylons, each 26 metres high, and their adjoining overhead lines. To service the turbines, 104 miles of roads will be built, as well as nine electrical substations. Lewis, it is clear even from these bald statistics, is to be turned not into a wind farm but a wind factory.
'The Lewis development will be irreversible. Wind turbines, it is often forgotten in the organicist rhetoric of the pro-wind farmists, require anchorage. One does not simply plant them like outsize seedlings. Each turbine will be counter-sunk into 726 cubic metres of concrete. In total, 5m cubic metres of rock and 2.5m cubic metres of peat-bog will be excavated. Such statistics render ridiculous Toynbee's claim that if another renewable energy source is found "the wind-turbines can be dismantled and taken away, no harm done".
'The Lewis project is a salutary case study. It reveals that an American-Puritan error - that wild land is waste land, there to be put to industrial use - is rearing its head. Wild places, it has come to be understood, are the "uplands" of civilisation: landscapes that can renew, console, and lift us in unique ways.
'Lewis's situation also reminds us of the spiritual, aesthetic, historical and ecological values that are put at risk when extraordinary landscapes are industrially menaced. These values are harder to measure, and harder to articulate than the hard numerical wattage of the turbines. But they are, unlike the wattage, non-transferable.
'A new study by the German energy agency, the world's leading producer of wind energy, has concluded that wind farms are an inefficient tool in our desperate battle against climate change. But even if this were not the case, certain types of landscape are too valuable to be turned into outdoor power-stations. The Lewis development is only the biggest instance: one grimly thinks of the 150-turbine development in Eisken on Harris, the planned development on the Sleat peninsula on Skye, and the "interconnector" - the 50m-high pylon-line required to carry the power from the wind farms of the Scottish west coast to the southern demand centres: a knife-slash through some of Britain's wildest vistas.'
February 25, 2005
"Report doubts future of wind power"
The Guardian today (Saturday) reports the release yesterday of the "re-edited" German Energy Agency (DENA) study of integrating wind energy on the grid.
Despite having been utterly biased in favor of industrial wind power, the Guardian straighforwardly describes the implications of the study. They even quote Angela Kelly of Country Guardian without deprecation. And they print a commentary against the industrial depredation of the landscape that wind power represents. They also cite the U.K.'s own National Audit Office finding that wind power is the most expensive way of pursuing carbon emissions reduction.
A shift in opinion, perhaps? The "useful links" after the on-line article, however, are to the two most avid "green" supporters (Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth) and the industry trade group British Wind Energy Association. Fair and balanced, that isn't.
Despite having been utterly biased in favor of industrial wind power, the Guardian straighforwardly describes the implications of the study. They even quote Angela Kelly of Country Guardian without deprecation. And they print a commentary against the industrial depredation of the landscape that wind power represents. They also cite the U.K.'s own National Audit Office finding that wind power is the most expensive way of pursuing carbon emissions reduction.
A shift in opinion, perhaps? The "useful links" after the on-line article, however, are to the two most avid "green" supporters (Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth) and the industry trade group British Wind Energy Association. Fair and balanced, that isn't.
"Gale-force winds snap wind turbine propellers"
Strong winds in the Iwate prefecture, Japan, snapped the blades of three large wind turbines yesterday. One was in the city of Tono and two in the town of Otsuchi. In nearby Morioka the wind reached 31.7 meters/second (71 mph). The turbines automatically lock down when the wind speed exceeds 25 m/s (56 mph), and the blades are supposed to withstand winds up to 60 m/s (134 mph). The power company suspects that lightning strikes (at the bases of each of the blades of each of the three turbines!) had already caused cracks. The picture with the Mainichi Daily News report (click the title of this post), however, shows a completely withered, not snapped off, blade.
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