June 18, 2004

A brief explanation of why industrial wind plants don't work

The biggest problem with large-scale wind-powered electricity generation is the grid. A home system can work well because the fluctuating output (even in the windiest places it is highly variable) can be regulated by batteries or flywheels, and another source (the grid or a gas-powered generator) is tied in to kick in when need be. This is the model where larger systems work in isolated villages, too.

But industrial-scale wind plants designed to supply the grid do not work well, even where the wind is superb. The grid is meant to respond to demand, constantly modulating the various suppliers to match the demand exactly. Wind plants respond only to the wind, forcing the more controllable "conventional" plants to change their output in response to wind production as well as grid demand. And the need to respond within seconds to a drop in wind production requires a plant that runs more inefficiently than one that could run if the grid didn't have to cope with the fluctuations of significant wind-powered sources. That is to say, wind farms may actually cause more fossil fuel burning.

The huge turbines designed for the grid can't work without electricity from the grid, either. They produce on average 25%-35% of what they are capable of, but they are using electricity (apparently free) 100% of the time.

And a problem about sites with good steady strong winds is that they are too windy. The turbines can't handle strong gusts and automatically shut down (typically around 55 mph). So "good" sites turn out to be very little more productive than less windy ones.

June 17, 2004

The shining city

turns out to be a prison: "Since 1971, U.S. prisons and jails have grown ten-fold -- from less then 200,000 inmates to 2.1 million -- while whites have dwindled to only 30 percent of the prison population. With only five percent of the world’s people, the U.S. accounts for 25 percent of the planet’s prisoners -- fully half of them Black. One out of eight prisoners on Earth is African American."

South African town suffers as living metaphor of Dubya's coup

'REUTERS -- Residents of a small South African coastal town are threatening to declare all-out war on baboons who have terrorized pre-schoolers, raided homes for food and urinated on clothes after pulling them out of closets.

'Diana Head, the chairwoman of the local taxpayers' association in Pringle Bay, an hour's drive east of Cape Town, told AFP that baboons broke into the local nursery school -- located in a church -- three times, using the same method. "The baboons lifted a window latch and stormed a church hall where the children were," she said. "They grabbed sandwiches and cold drinks out of the children’s hands. "The kids were traumatised afterwards. One teacher was so upset that she resigned." Head said baboons were breaking into houses about 15 times a month on average.

'"They have strong nails which they use to pull sliding doors off the hinges. When they get inside the houses they ransack the cupboard for food and have parties on the beds. "On a few occasions they have pulled clothes out of the cupboards and urinated on them."

'... Head said the problem escalated late last year when the head male in the baboon troop changed. "An alpha male who we named Charlie kept the troop under control but then he was replaced by a newcomer ..."'

June 16, 2004

Dreaming v Wind Farm... Which to lose?

Just as self-styled environmentalists have gone mad from being invited into the boardrooms of the powerful and managed to convince themselves that protection of mountain wilderness doesn't apply to wind facilities, so in Australia the protection of aboriginal songlines and sacred sites is to be thrown out the window for the dubious utility of wind plants.

The industrialists have successfully bought off their usual opponents, even placing themselves on the boards of environmental groups to show how much they care (not to steer decisions in their favor -- perish the thought!). In Australia, their response to the threat to the aboriginal "dreaming" is to -- hold hard, now! -- buy them off.

Nothing more than vandalism with a "green" label.

Click here for links about Australia's sacred sites.

The end justifies the means

The "Mayberry Machiavellis" still hard at it. Nazi Germany was a nation of laws, too.

Public health

A medical article I was editing contains this casually stated bit of
information: "A special program in the federal government of Brazil allows
for free distribution of antiretrovirals to all HIV-infected patients."

June 14, 2004

Bush asks Vatican to join campaign

The June 11 National Catholic Reporter's web-only "Report from Rome" reports that on his recent trip to Rome Bush asked the Vatican to get the U.S. bishops to speak out more against gay marriage to help his campaign for re-election. There was no response.

It might have helped Bush to remember that John Kerry is against gay marriage, too. And both candidates go against the church on almost every other issue: judicial murder, shafting the poor to further enrich the robber barons, invasion of Iraq, Israel's intransigence against the Palestinians, justice around the world, and so on.