Industrial wind vs. the environment

Which side are you on? (as the old union song asks) ...

Maryland is facing bills to protect industrial wind developers from environmental scrutiny as they pave roads and string transmission lines over the Appalachian ridgetops and ram in giant wind machines that serve no purpose beyond making politicians and "green" consumers feel as if they've "done something" about our energy problems.

According to the blog My Commonplace Book (click the title of this post, and thanks to National Wind Watch for the tip), "The bill would eliminate any requirement for public review or notification -- or even for informing adjacent land owners whose property values could plummet [and would suffer from the noise]. Nor would there be any environmental review of the impact on wildlife, endangered species, or forest fragmentation. All an applicant for a wind project would have to do is request a construction permit from the Public Service Commission."

For an industry that claims to be green, they sure don't like actual scrutiny. No longer able to deny the substantial negative impacts of their projects on land, animals, and people, they now hope to exempt themselves from the law. This is an industry shaped by Bush's pals at Enron, after all.

wind power, wind energy, environment, environmentalism, ecoanarchism, animal rights

Quote of the day

"It's like everything we do in this country. We jump in with both feet and we don't think about any of the consequences."

--Mike King, Illinois, on industrial wind

wind power, wind energy, environment, environmentalism

Conservation Law Foundation weeps for polluters

Like Peter Shumlin, President Pro Tem of the Vermont Senate, Christopher Kilian of the Conservation Law Foundation is worried about global warming's effect on ski areas and snowmobiling (as expressed in a column recently appearing in Vermont newspapers). He wants to appear serious about fighting global warming but ignores the fact that ski areas and snowmobiling are contributors to global warming, not its victims. As examples of environmentally harmful recreation, they should be admonished not pitied.

environment, environmentalism, Vermont, animal rights

Animal farms and deforestation and global warming

Here are some "inconvenient truths" from the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations news room last year (underscoring added) ...

Livestock a major threat to environment

29 November 2006, Rome - According to a new report published by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization, the livestock sector generates more greenhouse gas emissions as measured in CO2 equivalent -- 18 percent -- than transport. It is also a major source of land and water degradation. ...

With increased prosperity, people are consuming more meat and dairy products every year. Global meat production is projected to more than double from 229 million tonnes in 1999/2001 to 465 million tonnes in 2050, while milk output is set to climb from 580 to 1043 million tonnes.

Long shadow

The global livestock sector is growing faster than any other agricultural sub-sector. ... But such rapid growth exacts a steep environmental price, according to the FAO report, Livestock's Long Shadow -- Environmental Issues and Options. "The environmental costs per unit of livestock production must be cut by one half, just to avoid the level of damage worsening beyond its present level," it warns.

When emissions from land use and land use change are included, the livestock sector accounts for 9 percent of CO2 deriving from human-related activities, but produces a much larger share of even more harmful greenhouse gases. It generates 65 percent of human-related nitrous oxide, which has 296 times the Global Warming Potential (GWP) of CO2. Most of this comes from manure.

And it accounts for respectively 37 percent of all human-induced methane (23 times as warming as CO2), which is largely produced by the digestive system of ruminants, and 64 percent of ammonia, which contributes significantly to acid rain.

Livestock now use 30 percent of the earth's entire land surface, mostly permanent pasture but also including 33 percent of the global arable land used to producing feed for livestock, the report notes. As forests are cleared to create new pastures, it is a major driver of deforestation, especially in Latin America where, for example, some 70 percent of former forests in the Amazon have been turned over to grazing.

Land and water

At the same time herds cause wide-scale land degradation, with about 20 percent of pastures considered as degraded through overgrazing, compaction and erosion. This figure is even higher in the drylands where inappropriate policies and inadequate livestock management contribute to advancing desertification.

The livestock business is among the most damaging sectors to the earth's increasingly scarce water resources, contributing among other things to water pollution, eutrophication and the degeneration of coral reefs. The major polluting agents are animal wastes, antibiotics and hormones, chemicals from tanneries, fertilizers and the pesticides used to spray feed crops. Widespread overgrazing disturbs water cycles, reducing replenishment of above and below ground water resources. Significant amounts of water are withdrawn for the production of feed.

Livestock are estimated to be the main inland source of phosphorous and nitrogen contamination of the South China Sea, contributing to biodiversity loss in marine ecosystems.

Meat and dairy animals now account for about 20 percent of all terrestrial animal biomass. Livestock's presence in vast tracts of land and its demand for feed crops also contribute to biodiversity loss; 15 out of 24 important ecosystem services are assessed as in decline, with livestock identified as a culprit.

Deforestation causes global warming

4 September 2006, Rome -- Most people assume that global warming is caused by burning oil and gas. But in fact between 25 and 30 percent of the greenhouse gases released into the atmosphere each year -- 1.6 billion tonnes -- is caused by deforestation. ...

Trees are 50 percent carbon. When they are felled or burned, the C02 they store escapes back into the air. According to FAO figures, some 13 million ha [32 million acres, 50,000 square miles] of forests worldwide are lost every year, almost entirely in the tropics. Deforestation remains high in Africa, Latin America and Southeast Asia.

environment, environmentalism,, ecoanarchism, animal rights, vegetarianism

How it ends

Boston Globe, Feb. 18, 2007, end of "Rally targets US base expansion": "I don't want any more Americans here," said Pucci Mori of Vicenza. "Wherever they go in the world, Americans cause trouble."

New York Times, Feb. 18, 2007, end of "Jailed 2 years, Iraqi tells of abuse by Americans": "The United States through its actions made people hate the Americans much more than before."

Bolshevik wind energy: "for your own good"

Marshall Rosenthal writes, in response to the dogmatic love of and defense of industrial wind energy against all reason and sense:

Self-convinced "enlightened," educated, environmentally "liberal" folks have accepted renewables as a matter of faith, just like American "lefties" accepted Joe Stalin and the Soviet "experiment" in the 30's and 40's, notwithstanding his genocides and depredations on his own people. Wind is just one part of the litany that they have embraced. If you approach them with the displacement of property owners and their destroyed property values, they simply don their anti-Republican blinders. If you appeal to their love of threatened wildlife, they toss the birds and bats and your concerns onto the fires of "global warming." If you present them with the abundant evidence that shows wind to be a failed technology, their anti-techno-speak goggles and ear plugs are deployed. If you show them the driving financial boondoggle and scam that wind actually is, they will brand you a conspiracy theorist and seek to silence and exile you from their midst. If you succeed in stopping the intrusion of these monstrous "toys for boys" they will revile you, or worse.

[See Emma Goldman's 2-volume My Disillusionment in Russia (1923) and My Further Disillusionment in Russia (1924) about her experiences in Soviet Russia from 1920 to 1921 and the Bolsheviks' betrayal of the revolution. --Ed.]

wind power, wind energy, environment, environmentalism, anarchism, ecoanarchism

Chavez -- no need to worry yet

"Chavez’s decision not to renew RCTV’s license is not exactly akin to George W. Bush shutting down CBS or NBC because they ran a few stories critical of him. If RCTV were operating in the United States, it’s doubtful that its actions would last more than a few minutes with the FCC.

"RCTV is not exactly your average television station. In April 2002, it promoted and participated in a coup against Chavez in which a democratically elected president was overthrown by military rebels and disappeared for two days until large street protests and a counter-coup returned him to power. For two days before the coup, RCTV suspended all regular programming and commercials and ran blanket coverage of a general strike aimed at ousting Chavez. Then it ran non-stop ads encouraging people to attend a massive anti-Chavez march on April 11, 2002, and provided wall-to-wall coverage of the event itself with nary a pro-Chavez voice in sight.

"When the protest ended in violence and military rebels overthrew the president, RCTV along with other networks imposed a news blackout banning all coverage of pro-Chavez demonstrators in the streets demanding his return. Andres Izarra, a news director at RCTV, was given the order by superiors: no Chavistas on the screen. He quit in disgust and later joined the Chavez government.

"On April 13, 2002, after the coup-installed president Pedro Carmona eliminated the Supreme Court and the National Assembly and nullified the constitution, media barons, including RCTV’s main owner, Marcel Granier, met with Carmona in the presidential palace and, according to reports, pledged their support to his regime. While the streets of Caracas literally burned with rage over Chavez’s ouster, the television networks ran Hollywood movies like Pretty Woman. [One should also note our own New York Times' promotion of the coup. --Ed.]

"Likewise, Chavez is not creating a single-party state as widely reported but is melding together an amorphous array of parties that support him. He is not outlawing opposition parties. He has no need to, as he showed when he glided to a record landslide victory in the Dec. 5 presidential vote by a 63-37 percent margin in a free and fair election. Chavez also is not nationalizing the entire economy without compensation to companies, as Castro did in the early days of the Cuban Revolution, but rather is buying back a few key strategic utilities such as the CANTV telecommunications company or taking a majority government share in four oil projects."

Where are the environmentalists?

[You know things are bad when you have to depend on conservative lobbyists to sound the alarm about threats to the environment.]

Like a tsunami, the politics of global warming has washed over the State House this past month. As the water recedes, the enormity of the problem has begun to sink in. Everybody is pumped up and ready to do something, anything, to solve the problem. The hard fact remains that in the short term there is not much the tiny State of Vermont can substantially accomplish. This is not to say there's not a problem that should be addressed and that all of us should be more responsible for our planet. Caution and thoughtfulness should be the rule that guides the legislature as they move to answer this problem. Let's be sure the solution doesn't lead to a whole new set of problems. Attempting to place huge 400 foot wind turbines on Vermont's mountain tops is a perfect example.

For almost 40 years, Vermont has carefully created a set of land use laws specifically designed to protect the state's beautiful landscape. From the banning of billboards on Vermont's highways in the early 1970's to the development and implementation of Act 250, an entire generation of Vermont politicos, lawmakers, environmentalists and lawyers has made it next to impossible to build any new structures above 2,500 feet. It is so difficult to build in this state that many believe that had the ski areas not been in existence before Act 250, they would never have been developed. ...

Where are all the environmental organizations that helped develop our land use legacy?  In one fell swoop, behind the cloak of global warming, 40 years of Vermont development control policies are being threatened. The placement of huge wind turbines on Vermont's ridgelines flies in the face of Vermont's land use policies. How can this happen? One legislator put it best, "How can we be seen as leaders in the fight against global warming if we don't have industrial wind farms in the state? We would be no different that any other state."

Arguably the cleanest energy user and one of the most beautiful states in the union, Vermont is very different from any other state. Precisely because of things like Act 250 and related policies, Vermont is a national leader on environmental and land use issues. How can this state turn away from its environmental roots by defacing its ridgelines for a marginal generating technology? Wind turbines perform at only 35% of their potential capacity and require a 100% backup generating system for when wind conditions are less than ideal. Is this about feeling good? There is no compelling reason to promote the construction of industrial wind farms in Vermont. Global warming needs to be addressed, but that should not come at the expense of Vermont's land use policies. Simply put, industrial wind farms that destroy Vermont's picturesque ridgelines are not the solution to global warming.

MacLean, Meehan & Rice, Montpelier, Vt.
Monday Briefing, February 12, 2007

wind power, wind energy, wind farms, environment, environmentalism, Vermont

Wind paving way for nuclear

William Oxenham, in a letter to The Scotsman, notes,

The only long-term benefit of the Lewis wind farm will come at the end of its 20-year lifetime, when, with the Beauly to Denny pylon line in place, the newly industrialised area of Barvas Moor will be the ideal site to place a 1000MW "clean energy" nuclear plant.

The issue of wind energy is now entwined with a call for massive expansion of the grid. One has to wonder why politicians and utilities would so eagerly spend billions of dollars for an at best occasional peak provider such as wind. Mr. Oxenham, I think, has put his finger on it.

Wind is the excuse for new transmission infrastructure to support new nuclear plants in remote areas.

wind power, wind energy, wind farms, environment, environmentalism

Fat cats kill birds on bad site

The critical and none too lucid -- much less informed -- letter originally reproduced here has been removed out of pity.

"Our purpose is to project potential noise into the community,"

UPC Group, backed by almost $1.8 billion in European financing, is nearing completion of a wind energy facility on Mars Hill, Maine. But the noise complaints have already begun, with just a few of the turbines operating. The Public Service Board hearings for UPC's project in Sheffield, Vt., is currently in progress. From the Barton (Vt.) Chronicle, February 1, 2007 (click the title of this post):

Until now the issue of noise, which some believe should be included in an aesthetic assessment [which has been a farce of denial, self-rationalization, andd dismissal of local sensibilities -- Ed.] has been relegated to studies from competing experts, who often challenge one another's methodology.

But last week, as complaints about turbine noise begins to surface from places like Mars Hill, Maine, where a UPC wind farm recently went on line, a debate has started to shape up over how much weight the board should give tests that measure noise.

On the stand testifying as a panel for UPC were sound experts Chris Menge and Chris Bejedke. They testified that tests they conducted in the area indicated that turbine noises would not have an adverse effect on the community.

"Our purpose is to project potential noise into the community," noted Mr. Menge.

Under the revised layout that cut the original project from 26 turbines to 16, Mr. Bejedke testified that although the new Clipper turbines are bigger, they will produce less noise on the order of one to two decibels. Testimony from the panel also indicated that noise levels would come well under existing Environmental Protection Agency standards. And at high wind speed, according to their testimony, the noise of wind through the trees would tend to mask the noise from the turbines.

[Three decibels is generally described as the smallest difference detectable by human ears in normal conditions, so "one to decibels" will hardly make a difference, especially since being taller the Clipper turbines will project their noise farther.]

Yet, under cross examination from Sutton's attorney, Mr. Hershenson, the panel acknowledged that noise complaints have surfaced in other host communities despite test results. Displaying an article written by Mr. Bejedke that appeared in a trade magazine, North American Wind Power, Mr. Hershenson cited passages showing that complaints over noise began airing as soon as the turbines came on line.

In Lincoln, Wisconsin, for example, the attorney noted that complaints surfaced even when the noise levels were in compliance with the permit. As a result, he added, a moratorium had been imposed throughout the county on wind farms.

Vermont has no standards for noise studies, but according to testimony, a Massachusetts public agency uses as a cap ten decibels over the measured background noise. [Emphasis added] No permit is awarded if the noise exceeds the cap.

[An increase of ten decibels is perceived to be a doubling of the noise level. It has been stated that community concerns generally begin around an increase of six decibels.]

Mr. Hershenson argued there are numerous locations in the Sheffield project where turbine noise would exceed the ten-decibel cap. That was an assertion that Mr. Bejedke rejected.

Argument Monday suggested there may be a bias at work when background samples are collected in rural areas that are quiet.

Most of the complaints at the Lincoln wind farm came during the night. According to expert testimony on the Sheffield project, none of the studies was conducted at night. Mr. Bejedke testified that most of the samplings were collected between 8:45 a.m. and 2 p.m.

However, Mr. Menge contended that if there were a bias, it would work against wind farms. Quiet background noises at night in the country, he said, "would require the wind turbines to be practically silent."

[Exactly! Not only is it quieter at night, sound typically carries farther. Wind turbines don't care if you're trying to sleep. In Oregon, the 10-dB limit was modified to use urban noise levels instead of those of the actual (i.e., rural) site -- this was done at the behest of wind developers, who, as Menge concedes, know that giant moving machines in a rural area will be distinctly, intrusively, and disruptively noisy. So, as with the "issue" of aesthetics, change the law when reality is in the way.]

wind power, wind energy, wind farms, wind turbines, Vermont

Cross-Over Politics and the Ideology of Scale

By Sam Smith

[Part of a continuing series on devolution -- the opposite of governmental centralization, commercial monopoly and cultural domination. Devolution is the art of conducting public affairs at a practical level closest to the human spirit and human communities]

In an age of conglomeration and domination, the cross-political nature of devolution -- or the ideology of scale -- attracts little attention. One can go through a whole political campaign and never consider it. But that doesn't mean the issue is not there.

Consider two current examples: the assault on local control of public schools and the smart growth movement. Both are driven by a curious alliance of liberal, conservative and corporate interests. And both attempt to replace the decentralization of decision-making with centralized, bureaucratic choices.

For example, only Vilsack among the Democratic candidate for president has challenged the No Child law despite it being based on absurdly inadequate justifications, proposed by the least qualified president ever to hold office and pushed by a bunch of child profiteers who will probably be the only clear winners under the legislation.

Similarly, the smart growth movement is being increasingly driven by a dubious alliance between "we know what's good for you" liberal planners and developers who initially resisted the idea until they realized how many new high-rises might result.

Liberals and conservatives who favor America's two centuries of local school control, or wish to resist the transformation of successful communities into high-rise factory farms for globalized serfs, find themselves ignored, ridiculed as NIMBYs or considered behind the times. ...

No Child Left Unregimented

The assault on community-controlled public education is not only a result of Bush's No Child law. Bill Kauffman once noted in Chronicles that it was liberal Harvard president President James Conant who produced a series of postwar reports calling for the "elimination of the small high school" in order to compete with the Soviets and deal with the nuclear era. Says Kauffman, "Conant the barbarian triumphed: the number of school districts plummeted from 83,718 in 1950 to 17,995 in 1970."

Writing in Principal Magazine, Kathleen Cushman pointed out that the small school movement was driven by

the steady rise in school size that has seen the average school population increase five-fold since the end of World War II. A push to consolidate schools has reduced the number of districts by 70 percent in the same period. Ironically, this trend toward big schools coincides with research that repeatedly has found small schools -- commonly defined as no more than 400 students for elementary schools -- to be demonstrably better for students of all ability levels, in all kinds of settings. Academic achievement rises, as indicated by grades, test scores, honor roll membership, subject-area achievement, and assessment of higher-order thinking skills. For both elementary and secondary students, researchers also find small schools equal or superior to large ones on most student behavior measures. Rates of truancy, classroom disruption, vandalism, theft, substance abuse, and gang participation all are reduced in small schools, according to a synthesis of 103 studies.

Education is one of those human activities clearly centered on two people (teacher and student). As the system surrounding this experience becomes larger, more complex and more bureaucratic, the key players become pawns in a new and unrelated bureaucratic game. The role of the principal also dramatically shifts -- from being an educational administrator to being a cross between a corporate executive and a warden. It is such a transformation that helps to bring us things like what happened at Columbine.

Consider, for a moment, that not a single private school has merged with five or ten other academies in the name of efficiency and improved learning. No one has suggested an Andover-Exeter-Groton-Milton-Choate-Kent School Administrative District. ...

Yet not only do we find George Bush, with lots of Democratic support, actively destroying local control over public schools, mayors and governors rushing to join the attack.

For example, inspired by New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg who has yet to produce convincing results for his corporatization of public education, DC's 36-year old new mayor Adrian Fenty is following suit. He wants to abolish the elected school and put the system under his control despite his impressive inexperience in education. But Fenty, like many in politics and business, is absolutely convinced that certainty is an adequate substitute for competence.

How little he really understands was well described by Colbert King in the Washington Post:

If governance and lack of accountability are the main problems, why do students attending Lafayette and Murch elementary schools, which are west of Rock Creek Park, exceed proficiency targets in reading and math by wide margins while students at Ketchum and Stanton elementary schools, east of the Anacostia River, fall far short of the mark? The four schools are in the same governance structure. Their principals report to the same superintendent and are guided by the same school board policies. True, Lafayette and Murch, located in middle-income neighborhoods, have more white students. But before going off on a racial tangent, consider this: Black students attending Lafayette and Murch, in contrast to their counterparts in Southeast, also excel in reading and math.

King asked Fenty why his takeover would help matters: "His bottom line: he has the energy, determination, and sense of urgency that he feels are missing among school leaders to make those things happen." In other words, he thinks what the schools really need most is himself.

Perhaps even more bizarre is what is happening in Maine. The plan itself is familiar: the pursuit of the false god of educational efficiency through the concentration of school districts as ordered by the governor. 290 school districts would be merged into 26 regional administrative units.

What makes it stranger is that Maine is one of a handful of New England states where one can still find the remnants of American democracy functioning at human scale thanks to such institutions as town meetings and lots of small villages that do what they want without excessive interference from above. This tradition has produced in recent years more independent governors (although not the present one) than just about any state and a culture of honest independence in politics and governance that would best be emulated rather than reorganized.

And who suggested the course that the governor is following? None other than representatives of that citadel of Washington anti-democratic elitism, that hospice of prematurely aging MBAs and political science majors: the Brookings Institution. This is like Arianna Huffington coaching the Chicago Bears.

To add to the oddity, it is all being done in the name of "smart growth." ...

This is not a left-right struggle but one that may be far more important for our future: a struggle between communities and bureaucracies and between humans and systems. At present, the communities and humans are not winning.

Smart Growth

The tie-in with smart growth is quite revealing. The smart growth movement started as a largely well intentioned movement led by planners and environmentalists. Many of their proposals made sense but it had some serious problems, beginning with the insulting manner it treated suburban communities in which many Americans lived, had improved their lives and educated their children. As is traditionally the case with planners, these citizens were expected to adapt to a purportedly ideal physical model -- even at the cost of having to move or being evicted -- instead of having the emphasis placed on improving -- for them as well as the environment -- the communities in which they currently lived.

This is not a new problem with planners. In 1910, G.K. Chesterton described two characters, Hudge and Gudge, whose thinking evolved in such a disparate manner that the one came to favor the building of large public tenements for the poor while the other believed that these public projects were so awful that the slums from whence they came were in fact preferable. Wrote Chesterton:

Such is the lamentable history of Hudge and Gudge; which I merely introduced as a type of an endless and exasperating misunderstanding which is always occurring in modern England. To get men out of a rookery, men are put into a tenement; and at the beginning the healthy human soul loathes them both. A man's first desire is to get away as far as possible from the rookery, even should his mad course lead him to a model dwelling. His second desire is, naturally, to get away from the model dwelling, even if it should lead a man back to the rookery.

Neither Hudge nor Gudge had ever thought for an instant what sort of house a man might probably like for himself. In short, they did not begin with the ideal; and, therefore, were not practical politicians.

Much of American politics and planning follows the Hudge-Gudge model, producing failure for both conservatives and liberals -- the former offering us an army of the homeless and the latter presenting us finally with drug-infested housing projects.

In the case of smart growth, the Hudge-Gudge conflict could have been avoided by considering not just a community's ecological liabilities but its assets, and then figuring out how to lessen the former without harming the latter. ...

It is helpful also to bear in mind that next to economists, no profession has been so consistently wrong and harmful to the human spirit as urban planning. ...

The human, the community, the small were repeatedly considered archaic, insignificant and regressive.

From the progressive movement of the early 20th century on, well-meaning but excessively self-assured members of the elite have controlled the debate, the money and the plans, with barely restrained contempt for the reservations, concerns and resistance of the less powerful. And so it is with smart growth.

Listen to Grow Smart Maine:

Many of Maine's smaller cities and towns are experiencing unplanned growth but lack the resources and experience to manage that change in ways that protect the character of their community. ... The Model Town Community Project will work with a selected town during 2006 and 2007 to provide tools and advice that will help the town shape its future. The project will mobilize local, state and regional resources, enable the town to explore new growth strategies and fully engage local residents by combining the best elements of New England town meetings with ground-breaking new technologies.

In other words, we'll come in and show you how to run a town meeting our way, just like we learned at business school.

But if smart growth is meant to be about environmentally sound planning, how come we have to consolidate our school districts and our town offices?

Because once you put your faith in the sort of expertise that a planning-managerial elite offers, once you turn to MBAs like others turn to Jesus, then you don't really need democracy, town meetings or small schools. What you need is efficiency and managerial skill and you have been promised that, so why worry?

Further, even over smart growth's short life, a disturbing alliance has developed between some liberals and developers thanks to the latter discovering that the environmentalists didn't really want to stop them from building, they just want them to build somewhere else and most likely in a place where they could get more per square foot ...

In some neighborhoods, citizens are even being called NIMBYs because they don't want high-rises shoved into their pleasant communities and the name-callers include not just the developers but enabling liberals who think they're saving the planet. Never mind that in their own city, in Greenwich Village or in Europe there are plenty of examples of density without high-rise factory farms. ...

In both the school consolidation and the smart growth debates the issue of human scale -- and not some liberal-conservative conflict -- is at the core. But we have been taught -- by intellectuals, by the media, by politicians -- to revere a promise of efficiency and technological advance over the empirical advantages of living the way humans have traditionally lived, including valuing the small places that host, nurture and define their lives. We have been trained not to even notice when our very humanity is being destroyed in the name of mere physical change.

We should notice, though, because in the end, if we lose the fight for staying human, whether we were liberal or conservative won't have mattered a bit.

Snarky Boy

Be sure to read Vermont Snarky Boy, for fine and fun commentary on Vermont politics and journalism (and beyond).

"... Vermont, a place where the thick coat of denial can run deep, where the hype of all-things-perfect can lead to most-things-being-false."

Of special recent note is his wonderment at how swiftly the demand by voters for universal health care became instead a clamor by governor and legislators for universal cell phone coverage (though not even universal cell phones, i.e., socialism only for the already-haves). That sure is incremental. Anyone who still thinks the Democrats (with their huge majorities in both houses and still refusing to take this issue to a real solution) are any different from the Republicans is, to borrow the term from Snarky Boy, a ninny.

Vermont, anarchism

Community outreach, or another broken soul crying for help

Our friends at National Wind Watch received the following e-mail, reproduced here in its entirety. It reveals the brutal instincts, limited cognitive functioning, and ultimately sad lives of many, perhaps most, industrial wind developers. It betrays an utter lack of concern for the environment and for other people.

Subject:  Drunk
Date:     Mon, 5 Feb 2007 19:50:17 -0500
From:     Jay Wilgar <jwilgar@aimpowergen.com>
To:       <query@wind-watch.org>

You guys are a real treat of an organization.  Get the facts dumb ass.  Give me a call 647-286-4234

The following information is from the web site of AIM Powergen Corp.

Jay Wilgar, Vice President - Field Operations

Jay's career has spanned investor relations and several entrepreneurial ventures. Prior to co-founding AIM he was a partner in Pentagon Capital Partners Inc., an asset based financing company. Jay has often spoken to student groups on small business development and was most recently a judge of the Nestle "Reach for Your Dreams" entrepreneurship challenge. Within AIM, Jay heads up land acquisition and project design team.

------------------------

In Ontario AIM has identified several project sites that leverage the excellent wind resource of the Great Lakes basin. The most advance project is the Erie Shores Wind Farm located along the northern shoreline of Lake Erie between Copenhagen and Clear Creek. It is anticipated that this project could be commissioned by the first quarter of 2006.

Exploration and development work continues on several other Ontario project sites including the Lowbanks Wind Farm located near Dunnville, and the Simcoe Shores Wind Farm near Beaverton.

AIM has expanded its development activities across Canada with the development and exploration of various sites in the Maritime and Prairie Provinces.

AIM continues to identify and evaluate potential wind power development sites throughout Canada and internationally.

Project Locations in Canada [interactive map]

------------------------

AIM PowerGen Corporation
200 Consumers Road, Suite 604
Toronto, Ontario, Canada
M2J 4R4

Tel: 416-502-0993
Fax: 416-502-1415
Toll Free: 1-877-AIM-POWR (1-877-246-7697)
Email: info@aimpowergen.com

wind power, wind energy, wind farms, environment, environmentalism, anarchism, anarchosyndicalism, ecoanarchism

Wind projected to produce 0.89% of U.S. electricity in 2030

According to the U.S. Energy Information Agency (EIA) of the Dept. of Energy, in their Annual Energy Outlook 2007, wind produced 0.36% (14.6 billion kWh) of the total electricity (4,036 billion kWh) generated in the U.S. in 2005. Wind provided 0.05% of all of the energy consumed (only 99.95% to go!).

According to the American Wind Energy Association (AWEA) the installed wind capacity was 6,725 MW at the beginning of 2005 and 9,149 MW at the end, an average installed capacity for 2005 of 7,937 MW. If we divide the EIA-reported generation by the 8,760 hours in a year, we find that the average rate of production was only 21% of capacity.

The EIA generously projects that wind will produce 0.89% of the total electricity generated in 2030. This is 22% lower than their previous year's projection. Of course even that ignores the fact that other sources have to burn extra fuel in the effort of balancing wind's intermittent and highly variable infeed.

See the comments in this space about AWEA's recent announcement of wind's 27% growth in 2006 (from 0.36% "penetration" to perhaps 0.45%).

((((+))))
AWEA recently noted that the 2,454 MW of wind "capacity" added in 2006 cost "approximately $4 billion." That's $1.63 million per megawatt.

According to budding energy giant AES Corporation, in its annual "Wind Generation Review" (Dec. 11, 2006) from Ned Hall, vice president for renewable generation, capital costs of installing wind have risen to $1.75 million per megawatt.

But AES also points out that "U.S. equity structures" (i.e., the Production Tax Credit, 5-year double-declining balance accelerated depreciation, sale of renewable energy credits, and other federal, state, and local subsidies) "provide return of all capital and development fees within five years." Not, of course, to the taxpayers: rather a hefty and swift transfer of public funds to private accounts.

For no benefit, but only harm to the environment, wildlife, people, and communities.

wind power, wind energy, environment, environmentalism, anarchism, ecoanarchism, animal rights

AWEA: Wind energy capacity passed 1% of U.S. total in 2006

The American Wind Energy Association (AWEA) issued a press release last Tuesday boasting that 2,454 MW of new wind energy capacity was erected in 2006, an increase of 27%, to 11,603 MW. That brings it up to 1.2% of the total generating capacity in the U.S.

More than 35,000 MW of new non-wind capacity is estimated to have been added in 2006 to bring the total to an estimated 980,000 MW.

According to the Energy Information Agency of the U.S. Department of Energy, wind produced 0.36% (14.6 billion kWh) of the total electricity generated in the U.S. in 2005 (4.036 trillion kWh). (That represents an average (some days more, most days a lot less) output of 21% capacity, only two-thirds of the 30% claimed by AWEA. Assuming a 2% increase in the total, the 27% increase in wind would bring its share to 0.45%.

The large space requirements and aggressive visual intrusion of industrial wind are already causing resistance to its continued expansion. Just to stay at its current level of 0.45% "penetration" would require adding over 450 MW (at about 50 acres per MW) in 2007 and progressively more each year thereafter.

A "modest" 5% penetration today would require 130,000 MW of new wind capacity, increasing every year. The total today would require 6.5 million acres, or 10,000 square miles, about the total land and water area of Massachusetts. That's outrageous enough, but imagine the more ambitious goals of two to four times that. These are giant moving machines, strobe-lit day and night, each sweeping an vertical area of 1-2 acres with blades traveling 150-200 mph at their tips.

This does not even consider the massive amounts of new high-capacity transmission infrastructure that would be needed to get all that wind energy from the formerly bucolic rural and wild provinces to power the lobbyists at AWEA.

This is not a green alternative but industrialism running amok. Big wind is clearly irrelevant to our energy plans, a source of more problems than it can claim to solve, an obvious dead end.

wind power, wind energy, wind farms, wind turbines, environment, environmentalism, anarchism, ecoanarchism, animal rights, vegetarianism

Misplaced efforts in global warming

The President Pro Tem of the Vermont Senate, Peter Shumlin, was in St. Johnsbury last night talking about climate change: "Ski areas and even snowmobilers have been hit by the changes in climates," he said, to illustrate how dire the situation is.

What this really illustrates is the twisted thinking around this issue, because ski areas and snowmobilers are major contributors to climate change. The crisis is not that recreational energy use is threatened. And the solution is certainly not in protecting such wasteful and environmentally damaging recreational energy use.

In fact, it is in encouraging their further demise. Alas, politicians would rather pretend to tackle an issue with grand symbolic gestures -- no matter who or what it might harm -- than face it honestly. And so President Bush invaded Afghanistan and Iraq, and Shumlin would invade our forested ridgeline and rural communities to erect giant wind turbines of very doubtful benefit.

And the crises remain. Which may, of course, be the whole point.

wind power, wind energy, environment, environmentalism, Vermont, anarchism, ecoanarchism

Noise, birds, permit madness

The wind energy facility on Mars Hill in Maine is still under construction, but the 16 operating turbines are already causing noise problems:

the best way to describe it is you step outside and look up thinking there's an airplane. It's like a high-range jet, high-low roar, but with the windmills, there's a sort of on and off "phfoop ... phfoop ... phfoop" noise.

One of the turbines has even been shut down. Residents are understandably worried about what it will be like when all 28 turbines start running next month. This is a project of UPC Wind under the name Evergreen Wind Power. They (surprise!) said noise from the towers would not be an issue. But (surprise!) it is. People are already being kept from a good night's sleep and can no longer hear the gentle sounds of the natural environment.

Residents have also noticed a disappearance of wildlife and are dismayed by the how much the mountain has been destroyed. The story from the Bangor Daily News is archived at National Wind Watch. See a photograph of one of the turbine sites under construction at Vermonters With Vision (another UPC project for the Vermont town of Sheffield is currently in the permitting process).

Another story that makes the developers' lines harder to believe is that of another buzzard killed by turbine blades in Forss, Scotland. According to the Aberdeen Press and Journal, "The buzzard was one of a pair, with its local nest also including a nine-month fledgling." The report went on to state, "Work is under way to build a further four turbines at the site."

Finally, are wind energy developments held to unfairly prejudiced standards in the permitting process? Perhaps it's the other way around. (See a relevant piece in The Examiner by Tim Carney about big energy -- particularly wind turbine manufacturer GE (who bought the business from Enron) -- making sure the way is cleared for and taxpayers fund their predations.)

This comes from The Journal of Newcastle (again, via National Wind Watch):

Last July Tynedale Council refused permission for Ali Johnson's [paralysed from the neck down in a rugby accident in September 2004] father, Ken, to build a three-bed [specially-equipped] bungalow on the grounds of his own home at Wolf Hills Farm, Coanwood, near Haltwhistle in Northumberland, saying that regulations didn't allow for any new developments in open countryside because they wouldn't fit in with the surroundings. ...

But the same council has now decided those rules and regulations don't apply to a 165ft wind speed recording mast despite admitting in its own documents that it "would represent an intrusive feature" and be "alien and incongruous" -- because it would only be in place for three years.

Yet that same mast, according to Doncaster-based Harworth Power which applied for planning permission, could eventually be used to try to get the go ahead for up to 24 permanent giant wind turbines above rural Northumberland.

wind power, wind energy, wind turbines, environment, environmentalism, Vermont, anarchism, animal rights

Illusions of progress and victory

As the landscape turned increasingly chaotic and murderous, the streams of refugees swelled. Another headlong, fearful escape of the kind that in collective dreams, in legends, would be misremembered and reimagined into pilgrimage or crusade . . . the dark terror behind transmuted to a bright hope ahead, the bright hope becoming a popular, perhaps someday a national, delusion. Embedded invisibly in it would remain the ancient darkness, too awful to face, thriving, emerging in disguise, vigorous, evil, destructive, inextricable.

--Thomas Pynchon, Against the Day

anarchism, anarchosyndicalism

Vermont legislators want to dump renewable energy

Newly introduced Vermont House bill 104 revises last year's renewable energy bill (which requires new in-state electricity generation to be renewable). H.104 essentially scratches out "renewable" to require specifically "wind."

Dick Cheney couldn't have written a more blatant example of crony favoritism. When it was brought to your editor's attention, he first thought it was a spoof. But there it is on the state legislative web site: AN ACT RELATING TO INCREASING THE USE OF WIND POWER TO MEET PART OF THE STATE’S ELECTRICITY DEMAND.

With a major push currently underway for real alternatives like methane from landfills and cow manure and run-of-river hydro, along with growing awareness of the low benefit yet substantial negative impacts of industrial wind, the industry must be feeling unloved. (And they'd be right.)

That so many legislators -- including 2 Progressives -- have jumped on to sponsor this wind industry protection bill is pathetic indeed. Not one of them, needless to say, represents a town targeted by wind developers. Not one of them lives in the northeast counties which are particularly targeted.

This bill is unlikely to go anywhere, and perhaps we can hope that such a desperate act is a sign that big wind is at last finished in Vermont.

wind power, wind energy, environment, environmentalism, Vermont, anarchism

UPC's continuing misinformation

Your editor contributed to a report on Wednesday by Pat Bradley of New York Public Radio station WAMC. She was covering the third version of UPC's plan to erect 16 420-ft 2.5-MW wind turbines on mountain ridges overlooking historic and peaceful rural communities in remote northeast Vermont. Their moving of 2 turbines across a town line seemed to have been timed to overshadow a more dramatic development in one of those affected communities. The town of Barton voted 120-0 (yes: zero) Tuesday night to oppose the project.

In the demand for sacrifice from these communities, for utterly changing their character for very much the worse, one asks "what are we weighing here? It's very clear that wind energy is just not going to make any significant contribution to replacing fossil fuels or reducing greenhouse gas emissions."

Matt Kearns, hired flack for UPC (backed by private equity firms Madison Dearborn Partners of Chicago and D.E. Shaw of New York), calls that statement "one of the disingenuous arguments regarding wind power. One of the issues that we hear is that wind power will not provide an offset to other forms of energy generation or that somehow this won't produce a benefit in terms of the use of some other fuels. Y'know, any green electrons that you add to the grid it means that there's less need to bring on other units that are fossil fuel based."

Then where are the numbers showing a reduction of fossil fuel use due to wind power on the grid? The disingenuous argument is Kearns's, because it claims a result for which it has no data. The evidence (see, e.g., the graph from the International Energy Association of Denmark's fuel use for electricity generation from 1971 to 2003 at National Wind Watch) is clear that large-scale wind has negligible, if any, effect on other sources. This is probably because, although their electricity generation may be displaced, they either must continue burning fuel (less efficiently, i.e., less cleanly) on standby or burn more fuel (again, less efficiently) in more frequent ramping up and down or switching on and off.

Besides, in Vermont almost no electricity comes from fossil fuels.

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

Against the day

It went on for a month. Those who had taken it for a cosmic sign cringed beneath the sky each nightfall, imagining ever more extravagant disasters. Others, for whom orange did not seem an appropriately apocalyptic shade, sat outdoors on public benches, reading calmly, growing used to the curious pallor. As nights went on and nothing happened and the phenomenon slowly faded to the accustomed deeper violets again, most had difficulty remembering the earlier rise of heart, the sense of overture and possibility, and went back once again to seeking only orgasm, hallucination, stupor, sleep, to fetch them through the night and prepare them against the day.

--Thomas Pynchon, Against the Day

tags: anarchism, anarchosyndicalism, Finnegans Wake

"Wind power not such a good idea"

Richie Davis of the Greenfield (Mass.) Recorder wrote a fair article (click the title of this post) about opposition to industrial wind energy, featuring a couple of the founders of National Wind Watch.

I want to call attention to the final quote from William Labich, resource planner for Franklin County: "The technology isn’t the issue; it’s the siting of the technology, and how you apply it."

Notice how that attempts to evade the fundamental problem industrial wind energy on the grid has had, namely, showing that the technology actually reduces other sources, especially carbon-emitting fossil fuels.

Saying, as Sally Wright -- of the University of Massachusetts in Amherst -- does elsewhere in the article, that "for every kilowatt hour that you make with a wind turbine, that’s a kilowatt hour not made with a fossil plant" ignores the real-world effect of adding large amounts of a highly variable, intermittent, and significantly unpredictable source such as wind to the grid. The extra work to balance the wind-generated power and the lower efficiency of extra ramping appear to cancel out much, if not all, of the benefits hoped for from wind.

In other words, every kWh from wind may indeed replace a kWh from other sources (and not necessarily fossil-fuel plants), but that is very different from actually reducing the fuel use of other sources, what with standby, spinning reserve, or extra fuel burned in ramping up and down.

wind power, wind energy, environment, environmentalism

"Bush Must Go"

Paul Craig Roberts writes at Counterpunch (click the title of this post):

When are the American people and their representatives in Congress and the military going to wake up and realize that the US has an insane war criminal in the White House who is destroying all chances for peace in the world and establishing a police state in the US?

Americans don’t have much time to realize this and to act before it is too late. Bush’s “surge” speech last Wednesday night makes it completely clear that his real purpose is to start wars with Iran and Syria before failure in Iraq brings an end to the neoconservative/Israeli plan to establish hegemony over the Middle East.

The “surge” gives Congress, the media, and the foreign policy establishment something to debate and oppose, while Bush sets his plans in motion to orchestrate a war with Iran. ...

Bush’s entire “war on terror” is based on lies. The Bush Regime, desperate to keep its lies covered up, is now trying to prevent American law firms from defending the Guantanamo detainees. The Bush Regime is fearful that Americans will learn that the detainees are not terrorists but props in the regime’s orchestrated “terror war.” ...

The only reason for the Bush Regime’s policy of indefinite detention without charges is that it has no charges to bring. ...

Nothing can stop the criminal Bush from instituting wider war in the Middle East that could become a catastrophic world war except an unequivocal statement from Congress that he will be impeached.

[This essay also describes the treasonous cover-up of Israel's attack on the U.S.S. Liberty in 1967.]

the spineless ledger

It might have been comforting to think of himself as one of Yashmeen's holy wanderers, but he knew the closest he'd ever got to a religion was Vectors, and that too was already receding down a widening interval of space-time, and he didn't know how to get back to it any more than Colorado. Vectorism, in which Kit once thought he had glimpsed transcendence, a coexisting world of imaginaries, the "spirit realm" that Yale legend Lee De Forest once imagined he was journeying through, had not shown Kit, after all, a way to escape the world governed by real numbers. His father had been murdered by men whose allegiance, loudly and often as they might invoke Jesus Christ and his kingdom, was to that real axis and nothing beyond it. Kit had sold himself a bill of goods, come to believe that Göttingen would be another step onward in some journey into a purer condition, conveniently forgetting that it was still all on the Vibe ticket, paid for out of the very account whose ledger he most wished to close and void, the spineless ledger of a life once unmarked but over such a short time broken, so broken up into debits and credits and too many details left unwritten. And Göttingen, open to trespass by all manner of enemies, was no longer a refuge, nor would Vectors ever have been Kit's salvation.

Someplace out ahead in the fog of futurity, between here and Venice, was Scarsdale Vibe. The convergence Kit had avoided even defining still waited its hour. The man had been allowed to go on with his dishonorable work too long without a payback. All Kit had anymore. All there was to hold on to. All he had.

--Thomas Pynchon, Against the Day

anarchism, anarchosyndicalism

More about extreme wind turbine noise

Farmers Weekly, 12 January 2007, p. 10, has an article about the Davies, a farming couple in Lincolnshire who have had to sleep away from their home 60 nights since September, because of the Deeping St Nicholas wind energy facility 3,000 feet from their home (see the excerpts from forum posts by "wiggyjane" posted yesterday). The article is accompanied by a sidebar:

The Wind Turbine Noise Working Group has been asked by the DTI [U.K. Department of Trade and Industry] to provide expert advice and guidance on issues surrounding what has become known as Amplitude Modulation of Aerodynamic Noise.

This is a low-frequency whooshing sound caused by the passage of air over turbine blades under certain atmospheric conditions. So far, little is known about the phenomenon or how it might be controlled.

Because amplitude modulation is difficult to predict, it is often not until a turbine is erected and fully working that the noise becomes evident. An acoustics expert, who asked not to be named, said that, although rare, it was becoming more common.

"The concern is that bigger, more modern turbines may be more prone to this problem," he told Farmers Weekly. ...

Because of the nature of sites required for wind farms, turbines are often in areas of low background noise which makes the noise of the blades all the more noticeable -- especially for rural residents used to peace and quiet.

Last month, noise worries contributed to the withdrawal of an application to build three turbines at Weston, Herfordshire. Noise has also been an issue for residents living near wind farms at Bears Down, North Cornwall and Askham, Cumbria.

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

Unintended consequences

Industrialists are seizing the opportunity created by the successful effort of many environmentalists to scare everyone shitless about global warming, as seen in these recent stories, courtesy of the Climate Crisis Coalition (click the title of this post).

Schwarzenegger Argues that Global Warming Justifies Two Big Dam Projects. By Bettina Boxall, The Los Angeles Times, January 12, 2007. In proposing two big, expensive dam projects this week, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger made a novel argument to justify the old-fashioned public works projects. Advocating $4 billion in bonds to build reservoirs in Northern and Central California, the administration emphasized not population growth or the specter of future drought, but global warming. 

Construction Begins on Giant Quebec Hydro Plant. CBC News, January 11, 2007. "Construction has begun on a controversial $5-billion hydroelectric project, the Quebec government announced Thursday, calling it the biggest and most important of its kind in a decade. ... To construct the two power stations, Hydro Quebec will build four dams and 72 dikes, and will flood 188 square kilometres of forest land along the river. Quebec Premier Jean Charest announced the start of the project at a press conference at Hydro Quebec's headquarters on Thursday, a last-minute venue chosen after the government cancelled a northern ceremony in Waskaganish, where it was rumoured that Cree opponents to the project were going to protest… Charest lauded hydroelectricity as a cornerstone of Quebec's heritage that has 'become a tool of economic development for Quebecers,' including the Cree. ... Quebec Environment Minister Claude Béchard said the project will create cleaner, more environmentally friendly energy than other power sources. The power stations are 'long-term solutions to fight greenhouse gas emissions' that will put Quebec at the forefront of the fight against climate change, he said ...

Tighter CO₂ Caps Push Finland to Nuclear. By Sami Torma, Reuters, January 11, 2007. Finland can meet EU limits on carbon dioxide emissions by 2010 through more use of renewable energy and biofuels but further tightening of the limits would push it to build more nuclear plants, its energy minister said. ...

Give Conservation Another Chance

By John H. Herbert, Baltimore Sun, Jan. 1, 2007:

Since 1997, utility demand-side investments such as efficient lighting programs, heat recovery systems and advanced electric motor drives have yielded returns for consumers that far exceed the cost. Since 1997, every 3 cents worth of conservation investment by utilities has reduced demand by 1 kilowatt-hour. Electricity costs about 9 cents per kilowatt-hour. Thus, for every 3 cents worth of conservation investments, consumers avoid paying 9 cents and thus obtain a 6-cent gain. ...

Why is there no federal support? Because Washington understands the impact of programs that involve tax credits, subsidies and government expenditures that increase energy supplies rather than reducing demand. Support for these programs provides paybacks for specific industries. ...

In the 1970s, prices were high and energy security was a pressing issue as Middle East oil supplies were at times curtailed. The national government responded by promoting energy conservation on several fronts such as tax credits for domestic conservation investments, energy-use labeling of appliances and automobiles, and frank talk about the value of saving energy for economic and security reasons. ...

By 1985, U.S. imports from OPEC fell to 1.8 million barrels per day from a peak level of 6.2 million in 1977, a decline of 70 percent. ...

According to the Department of Energy's Annual Energy Review, from 1978 to 1982, energy consumption per household declined by 26 percent, and in the major consuming region in the nation, the Midwest, it declined by 32 percent.

From 1973 to 1982, industrial consumption of natural gas declined by 32 percent. The industrial sector is the major user of this most environmentally benign hydrocarbon. During the same period, fuel consumption per vehicle declined by 19 percent. ...

[W]ill we stay entrenched in the known comforts of energy dependency and legislation written by lobbyists supportive of particular groups? The smart money may be on the latter, but there will be more money and security for everybody if we give conservation another whirl.

wind power, wind energy, wind farms, environment, environmentalism

Rosenbloom's law of wind turbine output

Eric Rosenbloom, currently the president of National Wind Watch, has observed from cumulative output vs. time graphs (see the samples from Germany, Ireland, and Denmark) the following:

Whatever the capacity factor, or average output over a period of time, any turbine or aggregate of turbines generates at or above its average rate only 40% of the time.

A recent illustration of this law is the output from the 240-MW Maple Ridge wind energy facility in Lewis County, N.Y., as compiled by Richard Bolton:


For this period from July through September 2006, the output represented 25% of capacity, or an average rate of 80 MW. As the graph shows, the facility produced at a rate of 90 MW or more only about 520 out of the total 1,883 hours of data collection, i.e., about 28% of the time. Adding the number of hours that it generated at 80-90 MW brings the time figure close to a third.

wind power, wind energy, wind farms, wind turbines

Turbine noise driving Brit mad

"Wiggyjane" has described her distress over the noise of the 8-turbine (16-MW) Deeping St Nicholas wind energy facility on the U.K. site "Yes2Wind." Hers is not a so-called "aesthetic" complaint, as she was and still is supportive of wind energy and finds the turbines a fine addition to the landscape.

In response to a question about how far turbines should be from a residence, she writes:

Visually no problem -- they are quite beautiful at times to watch, menacing at others (with dark clouds behind and a storm approaching) but in the main soothing and rhythmic.

Noise -- well that's a different story altogether and will depend on the grid layout, the ground/soil type, your dwelling's position with regard to the predominant wind, the topography, geography and geology ... plus wind shear effects, particularly where there are stable air conditions ...

But we are 903 m (2,963 ft) away from the end of a row of five -- and that isn't far enough -- and we can go another 500 m (1,640 ft) and still have the same issues ... so at least a mile based purely on our experience. [Emphasis added.]

In another discussion, about Deeping St Nicholas, she writes:

I too live in Deeping St Nicholas -- but at the other end ... the northern end of the wind farm, and sadly we do suffer from both aerodynamic modulation and vibration from the low frequency noise. Environmental Health officials have already taken recordings that demonstrate a 20 dB differential between no wind turbine noise and turbine noise when they are running. [20 dB difference is experienced as a quadrupling of the noise level. --ED.]

There is no doubt anymore that some areas in some places near some windfarms DO cause problems. Not enough is really known about why this is the case, but we suspect that it's a combination of geography, topography, air conditions and ground density combined with the actual planting pattern of the turbines. In our case when all five nacelles are pointing at us normal life is impossible as they pick up resonance from each other and create an harmonic that resonates around and within the house, with levels that exceed ETSU [Energy Technology Support Unit of the U.K. Department of Trade and Industry] recommendations. ...

We have always supported the concept -- and indeed the visual look of wind turbines -- and never expected to have our lives totally disrupted and to be advised that it is not worth us building our new extension as our house would currently be unmarketable. ...

To the correspondent that started the thread -- at the southern end of the farm -- in Deeping St Nicholas itself you should have no problem ... and think of us when you sit in your garden enjoying the peace and quiet and go to bed to sleep at night, and stay asleep uninterrupted.

And more on sleep deprivation:

The hum/drone/whine is constant whether the turbines are running or not. [Emphasis added.] 24/7 it does vary a bit in intensity and volume but never goes away. Flicker isn't a real problem. The whoosh and thump noises are only really bad when the wind is in a specific direction (from SSE to SSW) then they top 40 dB(A), which when our ambient noise level is 20-25 dB(A) (pin drop quiet) means that they are very noticeable.

The wind direction also means that when we get all 5 nacelles "firing" at us, we get a harmonic and a quarter octave (???) in the farmyard that can exceed 60 dB(A).

One problem with noise regulations is that they use averages, and any limit is in fact only one that cannot be exceeded typically more than 10% of the time. So even where night-time limits are lower, which is usual, sleep can be still be legally disrupted. As Wiggyjane writes:

The problem is that raw noise measurements do not necessarily equate to ETSU regulations as they are not measured in LQ10's and LQ90's ... but what I can tell you is that our mean ambient is 22-25 dB(A) and last night ... we hit over 60 Db(A) but that was at the peak and would not be valid for ETSU. It made sleep well nigh impossible though -- and was the worst we have had for some months.

See "Wind Turbine Acoustic Noise," by Anthony Rogers et al., for a primer on sound measurement and regulation.

wind power, wind energy, wind farms, wind turbines

Wind industry complains it isn't favored by E.U.

The European Union (E.U.) has announced its ambitious energy plan, which includes a goal of 21% of electricity generated from renewable sources.

The European Wind Energy Association (EWEA), however, is complaining that the goal does not specify which sources. It wouldn't make sense to do so, but that is clearly the worry for the wind industry, since without mandated support wind is a source that is not practical and therefore would not be widely used.

The E.U. supports all renewable energy, but the EWEA wants special support for wind.

wind power, wind energy, environment, environmentalism

Noam Mohr on meat-eating and the environment

The global costs of a meat diet
The Green Times (Penn Environmental Group), Spring 1997

If you care about the environment, you had better be a vegetarian. Why? Because meat consumption is one of the primary causes of environmental devastation, including the misuse of natural resources, the polluting of water and air, and the destruction of rainforests. All this comes in addition to the immense cruelty to animals and the contribution to the world hunger problem caused by the modern meat industry. In short, a carnivorous environmentalist is a hypocrite. Strong words? take a look at meat industry and judge for yourself.

Modern meat production is both wasteful and destructive. Each pound of steak from feedlot-raised steers that you eat comes at the cost of 5 pounds of grain, 2,500 gallons of water, the energy equivalent of a gallon of gasoline, and about twenty-five pounds of eroded topsoil. Indeed, over a third of the North American continent is devoted to grazing, and over a half of this country's cropland is dedicated to growing feed for livestock. What is more, the livestock industry consumes over half of the water used in the US.

In every one of these ways, as discussed below, a vegetarian diet exerts less strain on our resources that does a carnivorous one. ...

Meat production around the globe not only wastes the water it uses, it also pollutes the water it does not use. ...

Perhaps the most devastating environmental impact of America's appetite for meat is deforestation. The primary reason for the destruction of rainforests in countries like Costa Rica, Colombia, Brazil, Malaysia, Thailand, and Indonesia, is to provide grazing land for cattle, virtually all of which goes not to the poor in these third world nations, but rather is exported to wealthy countries like the United States. ...

Meat production is not only damaging to the environment, but in more immediate ways to the global human population as well. Land that could be used to grow food to feed hungry people is instead used to grow food for the animals we eat.

How environmentalists are overlooking vegetarianism as the most effective tool against climate change in our lifetimes
The McDougall Newsletter, December 2006

Summary: Global warming poses one of the most serious threats to the global environment ever faced in human history. Yet by focusing entirely on carbon dioxide emissions, major environmental organizations have failed to account for published data showing that other gases are the main culprits behind the global warming we see today. As a result, they are neglecting what might be the most effective strategy for reducing global warming in our lifetimes: advocating a vegetarian diet. ...

By far the most important non-CO₂ greenhouse gas is methane, and the number one source of methane worldwide is animal agriculture ["Global Warming Potentials," National Emissions, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency].

Methane is responsible for nearly as much global warming as all other non-CO₂ greenhouse gases put together [Hansen, James E. and Makiko Sato, "Trends of measured climate forcing agents," Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, vol. 98, no. 26, 18 Dec. 2001, p. 14778-14783]. Methane is 23 times more powerful a greenhouse gas than CO₂ ["Global Warming Potentials"]. While atmospheric concentrations of CO₂ have risen by about 31% since pre-industrial times, methane concentrations have more than doubled ["Emissions of Greenhouse Gases in the United States 2002," Chapter 1, Energy Information Administration, U.S. Department of Energy, October 2003]. Whereas human sources of CO₂ amount to just 3% of natural emissions, human sources produce one and a half times as much methane as all natural sources ["Emissions of Greenhouse Gases in the United States 2002"]. In fact, the effect of our methane emissions may be compounded as methane-induced warming in turn stimulates microbial decay of organic matter in wetlands—the primary natural source of methane [Hansen, James E. et al., "Global warming in the twenty-first century: An alternative scenario," Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, vol. 97, no. 18, 29 Aug. 2000, p. 9876].

... [U]nlike carbon dioxide which can remain in the air for more than a century, methane cycles out of the atmosphere in just eight years, so that lower methane emissions quickly translate to cooling of the earth. ...

Moreover, the same factory farms responsible for these methane emissions also use up most of the country's water supply, and denude most of its wilderness for rangeland and growing feed. Creating rangeland to feed western nations' growing appetite for meat has been a major source of deforestation and desertification in third world countries. Factory farm waste lagoons are a leading source of water pollution in the U.S. Indeed, because of animal agriculture's high demand for fossil fuels, the average American diet is far more CO₂-polluting than a plant-based one [Pimentel, David and Marcia Pimentel, "Sustainability of Meat-Based and Plant-Based Diets and the Environment", American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, col. 78, no. 3, September 2003, p. 660S-663S; Tidwell, Mike, "Food and the Climate Crisis: What You Eat Affects the Sky," Sierra Club Redwood Chapter Newsletter, Dec./Jan. 2005].

Click here to see a graph showing the greenhouse effects of various diets.

tags: environment, environmentalism, ecoanarchism, animal rights, vegetarianism

UK coal use up 23% in past year

The U.K. Department of Trade and Industry has released its Energy Trends and Quarterly Energy Prices for the 3rd quarter of 2006:

* Energy consumption in the third quarter of 2006 was 1.9 per cent lower than in the third quarter of 2005

When examining seasonally adjusted and temperature corrected annualised rates:

* Total inland consumption on a primary fuel input basis was 220.0 million tonnes of oil equivalent in the third quarter of 2006, 0.4 per cent higher than the same quarter in 2005.

* Between the third quarters of 2005 and 2006 coal and other solid fuel consumption rose by 21.2 per cent.

* Oil consumption decreased by 1.8 per cent.

* Gas consumption fell by 5.2 per cent.

* Primary electricity consumption decreased by 7.1 per cent.

ELECTRICITY: QUARTER 3 2006

* Fuel used by generators in the third quarter of 2006 was, in total, 1.1 per cent lower than in Q3 2005.

* Coal use during the quarter was 22.9 per cent higher than a year earlier, while gas use was 11.6 per cent down and nuclear sources were down 8.1 per cent due to maintenance and outages in the third quarter of 2006. Hydro sources fell back 6.1 per cent on the level of the third quarter of 2005.

* Total electricity supplied by all generators in third quarter of 2006 was 0.5 per cent lower than a year earlier.

* Overall final consumption of electricity was unchanged from the level in the third quarter of 2005 at 77.4 TWh. Domestic use fell 0.5 per cent, industrial consumption rose by 0.2 per cent and consumption by other final users increased by 0.4 per cent.

                                2006Q3 TWh      Percentage change
                                                 on a year earlier
Electricity supplied from
  Coal                            26.77                +25.3
  Nuclear                         17.24                 -8.1
  Gas                             35.74                -11.0
to
  Industry                        28.18                 +0.2
  Domestic                        23.76                 -0.5
  Other final consumers           23.36                 +0.4

No sign of the "banner year for wind energy."

wind power, wind energy, environment, environmentalism

What's missing from wind promotion

fuel consumption per demand after wind energy installation
vs.
fuel consumption per demand before
The "penetration" figure (percentage of total generation provided by wind) usually provided is meaningless, because there are so many other factors operating in the power balance of the grid.

What is needed is proof that wind energy actually reduces the use of other fuels to a degree that justifies its own undeniable negative impacts. Yet that is precisely what is missing from wind promoters' material.

wind power, wind energy

Sierra Club flacks for big energy

The January/February edition of the Sierra Club magazine explores the energy issue, starting off with an essay by the tireless Bill McKibben.

He sets the tone of mockery (of logic, mostly) right away, causing one to wonder just how seriously the Sierra Club wants to be taken in these articles:

Much of what passes for discussion about our energy woes is spent imagining some magic fuel that will save us. Solar power! Fusion power! Hydrogen power!

But not wInd power, Bill?! No -- much of the rest of his article is a paean to wind industry insider Jerome Guillet, a developer of wind energy who boldly envisions more government subsidies to protect his investors.

McKibben is equally courageous, gratuitously attacking most defenders of New England's (and mid-Atlantic) ridgelines as "semi-ridiculous NIVMVDs, or not in view of my deck." He also threatens them, asserting wind "will continue to grow."

This fine nature writing serves only to ignore the many other reasons for opposition, most notably preservation of much needed forest habitat. It is pathetic indeed to see the Sierra Club -- along with many other now mainstream environmental groups -- shutting out environmental concerns and instead acting as peons of big energy.

Another article, by Frances Cerra Whittelsey, looks at the impact of wind turbines on birds and continues the mockery of not only reason but also passion.

Whittelsey first establishes that the decimation of raptors and other birds in Altamont Pass, California, is an exception. (In fact, what is exceptional is that bird deaths have routinely been counted there.) She admits that "at least 22,000 birds, including some 400 golden eagles, have collided with wind turbines (or been electrocuted by power lines) there." Per turbine, however, that's 4.1 birds -- total since the 1980s! That's a lot less than her later-cited study of turbines outside California showing "only" 2.3 birds killed each year per turbine. So if Altamont is a recognized problem, other turbines appear to be even more dangerous to birds ...

Never mind, though, because she then allows the industry trade group American Wind Energy Association assure us that new turbines are safer. Laurie Jodziewicz sez, "today's turbines are taller and more efficient." Yep, they are now "above the flight paths of many birds" -- and now in the flight paths of more birds. And the giant new models are not "more efficient." They are just bigger. More energy per turbine, yes, but not more energy per wind resource, acreage, or area swept by the blades (which are moving 150-200 mph at the tips).

Not reassured? "Some residents remain opposed on aesthetic grounds," writes Whittelsey in an effort to corral anyone left standing after Jodziewicz's not quite incisive analysis. No, Frances. A lot of people remain opposed for other environmental and wildlife concerns as well. You have convinced only a straw doll of your own imagining.

Most people are also not reassured that the industry is now working "to find a means to warn bats away from the spinning blades."

But ultimately, Whittelsey writes, why should we care? Millions of birds are already killed by domestic cats, radio towers, windows, and cars.

With friends like these, wildness ("the preservation of the world," in the words of Henry David Thoreau) clearly doesn't stand a chance.

wind power, wind energy, wind turbines, environment, environmentalism, animal rights

Energy choice: drive cars or eat meat

Excerpts from "Ethics of Biofuels," Sharon Astyk, 28 Dec 2006 (click the title of this post):

[I]f ethanol means that poor countries are taking grain (good food for humans) and converting it to ethanol (gas for people wealthy enough to have cars -- i.e., us) and food for livestock (i.e., meat, which many poor grain producers worldwide are also too poor to have), what we will achieve is total net transfer of food from the poor of the world to the rich of the world, to put in their gas tanks and eat as beef.

Ethical Principle #5 -- Either we must address the more basic injustices that lead to hunger, or we must acknowledge that large-scale use of biofuels will increase hunger and inequity.

[T]he present emphasis on "selling" biofuels as dual purpose, because they can feed animals, ignores the fact that in many poor nations, most meat goes for export, and most poor people can afford to eat little meat.

Ethical Principle #6 - We must make the relationship between biofuels, meat eating and hunger explicit, because we can’t have it all.

Ethanol is booming, despite the fact that it may be a net energy loser. There are enough plants either in existence or being built in Iowa to use every grain of corn grown in the state, and if the ethanol industry gets its way, there will be enough plants to use up fully one half of the US corn crop. Now as might be expected, this makes people from the meat, dairy and poultry lobbies quite nervous. Because right now, more than 70% of all our corn production goes to feed livestock. Take half of the corn away, and we’ll be faced with a problem – do we reduce our meat consumption by 1/3 - 2/3 (the proportion of feed value removed from the grain in ethanol production) in order to fuel our cars, or do we keep eating and pay $6 per gallon for gas? But you will note that no one in the ethanol or biodiesel debate has suggested that if we want cheap, sustainably produced fuel, we ought to go vegetarian as a nation.

The danger, then, is that Americans, being rich, will continue to do both. They will eat meat and they will drive ethanol cars, and because our own grain is going to produce ethanol, we will import more grain, grown in poorer nations, to feed our livestock. We are doing this right now, and it is already raising the price of grain. Poor nations will be unable to compete, and unjust trade policies will continue to have them export food to us while they go hungry.

[T]he energy intensive quality of meat production may necessitate reducing our consumption of animal products ...

Any plan for large scale biofuel production must recognize that the first priority is the restoration of the world's grain reserves back to at least a six month reserve supply, and that expanding those reserves further ought to be a high priority. This would be easy to do, if most of us abjured grain fed meat, but we haven't. And as always, the cost is greatest for the weakest and poorest people in the world.

peak oil, biofuels, vegetarianism