Ignoring the obvious: wind sucks

In a short article in the June 2011 North American Windpower about the Goodhue County wind project in Minnesota, Angela Beniwal quotes Minnesota Office of Administrative Hearings judge Kathleen Sheehy, who ruled that the county's rules for wind facilities should not be applied, that

there is no scientific support in peer-reviewed literature for the proposition that wind turbines cause any adverse health effects in humans.

That is a meaningless statement, since there is also no scientific support in peer-reviewed literature (i.e., original epidemiological research) for the proposition that wind turbines do not cause any adverse health effects.

Therefore, the consistent direct testimony from around the world must stand as strong evidence that there are indeed adverse health effects for many people who live near giant wind turbines.

What Judge Sheehy really said was:

I know that some people get sick from wind turbines, and the county rules would do a lot to protect them. But my job is to add an official state government "fuck you" to that of the developers.

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Also in the same issue, another item notes "Rising Temps Won't Affect Production", describing an analysis of how rising temperatures might affect wind energy over the nest 30-50 years.

Unspoken is the necessary converse: Rising wind energy production won't affect global warming.

wind power, wind energy, wind turbines, wind farms, environment, environmentalism, human rights

Quick replies re recent pro-wind articles

Wind Farms Mean Money for Sherman County, Ore., New York Times

The article says that Oregon spent $11 million in tax credits per project. Federal tax credits amount to even more. What the people of Sherman County are getting is crumbs. Taxpayer funds could have been much more efficiently spent if the goal is to help rural communities.

Support windfarms? It would be less controversial to argue for blackouts (George Monbiot), Guardian

The ridiculous thing about wind - and the needless cost - is that you still have to have a complete grid besides to generate power when the wind isn't blowing just right. Wind is an additional cost. Wind is an additional impact.

tags:  wind power, wind energy, wind farms, environment, environmentalism

Coal versus wind or nuclear

"Global warming is a huge threat," Walter said, ... "but it's still not as bad as radioactive waste. It turns out that species can adapt a lot faster than we used to think. If you've got climate change spread over a hundred years, a fragile ecosystem has a fighting chance. But when the reactor blows up, everything's fucked immediately and stays fucked for the next five thousand years."

"So yay coal. Let's burn more coal. Rah, rah."

"It's complicated, Patty. The picture gets complicated when you consider the alternatives. Nuclear's a disaster waiting to happen overnight. There's zero chance of ecosystems recovering from an overnight disaster. Everybody's talking about wind energy, but wind's not so great, either. This idiot Jocelyn Zorn's got a brochure that shows the two choices — the only two choices, presumably. Picture A shows this devastated post-MTR[*] desertscape, Picture B shows ten windmills in a pristine mountain landscape. And what's wrong with this picture? What's wrong is there are only ten windmills in it. Where what you actually need is ten thousand windmills You need every mountaintop in West Virginia to be covered with turbines. Imagine being a migratory bird trying to fly through that. And if you blanket the state with windmills, you think it's still going to be a tourist attraction? And plus, to compete with coal, those windmills have to operate forever. A hundred years from now, you're still going to have the same old piss-ugly eyesore, mowing down whatever wildlife is left. Whereas the mountaintop-removal site, in a hundred years, if you reclaim it properly, it may not be perfect, but it's going to be a a valuable mature forest."

—Freedom by Jonathan Franzen (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2010, p. 323-324)

*MTR, mountaintop removal.

tags:  wind power, wind energy, wind turbines, wind farms, environment, environmentalism

Wind Energy

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Leonora Carrington, 1917-2011

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