Problem with wind power #1. It isn’t that environmentally safe, at least according to environmentalists
This first major problem with wind power is exemplified by recent news.
We posted a story on our web site today on 35 windmills that have been shut down at night in western Pennsylvania because an “endangered species” bat was found dead at the base of one of the wind turbines. The wind farm can’t operate at night now until the bats go into hibernation later this year.
This is madness. If wind farms are one of only two sanctioned sources of energy by eco-freaks – the other is solar – then our nation is going to be in serious trouble in the future. But, even wind farms aren’t popular among the animal rights zealots because the turbines routinely kill birds and bats. In addition, those turbines require those “unsightly” power lines to transmit the electricity to homes, businesses, etc.
Problem with wind power #2. The technology contradicts itself
Brian Sussman, author of Climategate: A Veteran Meteorologist Exposes The Global Warming Scam, points out that wind farms are fragile and must be shut down when there are high winds. Why? Because the turbines will bend inward and snap. When there is no wind, there’s no power generated. So when production could be highest, the technology can’t work.
How’s that going to work in the long run?
Read More at epaabuse.com By Frank York, epaabuse.com
Please share this post with your friends and comment below. If you haven’t already, take a moment to sign up for our free newsletter above and friend us on Twitter and Facebook to get real time updates.
Follow @WestJournalism
Loading ...
I like the Simpson's episode where Homer puts up a windmill and whenever
the TV goes out, he sends Bart out to spin the windmill.
and Barry said this will "Save or Create" millions of Green jobs.
Just saying.
This would be funney if it weren't so pathetic, the tree huggers think they can replace coal and oil with wind, but most of the hot air is from their mouths, wind power and solar will never replace hydrocarbons as a viable source of power, its ludicrus to think it could, then factor in the stupid idiots at the epa running around wringing their hands because of some bat, what has happened to the country I love, the nuts are running the asylum.
The EPA needs to be DISCONTINUED. They have gotten so out of control. They seem to think their job is to run our lives. They truly are Psycho & have done nothing but made the lives of many many many people miserable. After all we need to save the 3" long delta smelt (forget that the farmers need water to grow their crop),then there are the beetles, snakes, shrimp, Salamander, On & On!!!! now the windmills cannot be on at night til the rats go into hibernation. They are also trying to outlaw grocery bags and Mylar Balloons in California…. S T O P !!! leave us the hell alone!! Like I said END the EPA
You said it LANI! The EPA has gotten so out of control that not only are they killing energy production as well as job creation in this country and destroying farming to save some insignificant fish, they are even going so far as to shut down private homes being built if they can make the argument that there is running water somewhere on the property. And levying fines so huge that the owners risk losing their property to the government. This kind of bullying by government has no place in a free society, they need to be shut down for good!!
Why use windmills when we have all of that hot air coming fro our Congress and Senate. If we could harnes all of that gas coming from all of the "old farts", we wouldn't have an enegy problem either.. Thank you for your time. TSgt., USAF Retired.
Bats? BATS?? YOU HAVE GOT TO BE KIDDING! I've known enviro-nazis were two-faced and hypocritical when it came to nature -vs- humanity but this is plain and simple BS designed to further their political goals and NOTHING else.
BATS!
There are probably 50,000 bats within 5 miles of that wind farm and the Enviro-loons want to shut it down because they found ONE dead of unknown causes.
Yeah, such concern for life the Obamunuts demonstrate. One dead bat – the horror!! – but when Field Marshall Obombs'em gets loose with an army to play with people all over the planet are found dead in great big bloody batches.
Bats, huh?
There are so many things wrong with this there simply is no good place to start in taking it apart. Fools, lunatics, buffoons keep voting Lib till they come to get you for duty in a labor battalion. Tell them you're on the side of BATS.
Normally I would want to write about the complete failure of the largest wind energy producer in Europe, but censors at WCJ probably would not understand what was being written.. Guess they are bigger fools than I or have forgotten the fundamentals of the 1st Amendment.. No contribution from me this year fellows.. A quest for honesty and truth with a little humor should be the the basis for commentary not off-the-cuff political sulking..
Go ahead and reveal their failures…I have read in the US press about wholesale, I believe Scandinavian, stampede away from wind power, it being an economic failure. Unless you describe their failure in terms of obscenities you should 'get away' with it.
We could also learn from first hand reporting.
Well done CactusPete.. Yes it was a Scandinavian country, Denmark to be exact which has the largest number of wind generators per capita in the world.. This investment has been a total failure as none of the power produced ever enters the Danish energy grid.. It is sold instead to Norway at a lost.. In simple terms the costs far exceed the benefits of wind energy..Today Danish energy is imported from neighboring Germany and Danes still have one of the most costly energy grids in Europe.. Source: Christopher Booker, "The Real Global Warming Disaster", Continuum, 2009.. Booker states that" the obsession with climate change (is) turning out to be the most costly scientific blunder in history." Difficult reading but well worth the effort.. Wish BO or his staff had read this before jumping off the green bridge..
They have done it again Cactuspete.. I was writing about Denmark..
at least we are trying to raise the intellectual level of WCJ commentators.. Knowledge is not dangerous but a lack of knowledge is the real danger..
I think wind power would work to some degree if it were used on homes to augment the paid for electric. I am talking about a small unobtrusive design that could in an emergency generate enough power to keep the necessary appliances or heat working. It could, as I stated before, be used on a daily basis to generate a portion of the electricity used. Just a thought folks. Or solar panels could be used also if one lived in the sunnier parts of the country.
You are right Violet. Inividual wind mills for individual homes already exist, and they are very efficient! Oh yeah…..and they have SCREENS around them in many cases to protect the animals for one and to also prevent particles from getting into those parts of the wind mill itself that would be quite expensive to repair if they were damaged. These windmills are small and are less invasive than a window air conditioning unit. Solar panels are great, as well. Where I live, you can sell the surplus power you generate with your own wind mill and/or solar panels back to your power company because energy can be stored and moved (for those who were not aware of it)! If you have your own power system in place, are able to produce surplus energy and also drive an electric car, you have it made and you are also doing something for the environment. After all, pollution IS a major health problem, whether some people want to deny it or not. Facts are facts. I work in health care and know it first hand. Why not work with something that benefits ourselves, the economy and the environment, as well? It would be crazy not to take advantage of those opportunities.
If we had these conditions and all this eco babble, at the beginning of 1900s' we would NOT have an electric grid, The Hoover dam or any other major IMPROVEMENTS to our society. Imaging Edison, and Ford today up against this BS , i cringe at the very thought, IT MUST STOP! But it seems like everything else these days all it takes is a very few whack jobs and the majority suffers, SOME DEMOCRACY!!!!
Because of the Hoover Dam the water level of the Colorado River has declined by up to 10 feet in certain areas, and the water is running much faster than it used to before the dam. The faster running water makes the water temperature colder which is detremental to many fish species and therefore also to those who used to be able to fish and consume those fish. The river delta is also drying out. All this means that because of ONE dam, many other people have to live with much less water for farming and agriculture than they used to have when the river still had normal levels. They are no longer able to irrigate their lands now and produce the harvests they used to produce.
And as far as Mr. Henry Ford is concerned: he had a friend names Custer who was an inventor. This inventor created a car completely made out of recyclable soy plastic that could virtually not be damaged when hitting it with a hammer. The car also ran on renewable fuels! Unfortunately, it could never make it to market because it would have lasted forever and would have drastically reduced the number of cars sold, meaning that it would have stopped the production of cars as we know them. That's why the share holders blocked it right away. A great one-of-a-kind invention was sacrificed in the name of capitalism. So called improvements are only good when they benefit all. But we cannot take away from many to improve the lives of just some. That is not democracy, either. US = 5% of the world population, but using 25% of the world resources and producing 33% harmful pollution. Those are facts that are available to all. You don't have to be a 'tree hugger' to see some sense in these numbers, you just have to have some brains
One of the dumbest things I have ever read.
There are billions of bats in the U.S. alone. They use sonar. They avoid, when healthy (rabies) obstacles.
Was the bat killed by the wind mill or old age?
Natural selection?
Remember the old days when every farm had a windmill to pump water into their stock tank? Do they still? So drill beneath these wind turbines and let them do double duty. Provide energy (snicker) and provide a source of water also.
Yes, and as long as you keep them greased they work just fine for all of the aforementioned uses!
Also over 100 Bald Eagles, our national emblem, have been killed by the windmills. If a human is caught killing a bald eagle the penalty is 2 years in prison and a $250,000 fine. I think we should
imprison Obama and make him pay the fine for each one since he is the one pushing windmill energy. The cheapest way to generate electricity is with coal!!!
Yeah, and it's the dirtiest way, too! Ever heard of black lung? Yes, it still happens and it is much more common not only among miners but also among those who live in areas where coal is still mined. I hope you children and grandchildren don't have to live in any of those areas…..
It's new technology – the engineers need to work on these problems.
I do believe that he just used " Hate Speech."
in reverence to being a slow Dim witted Black Man? I think he should loose his job, or kiss Cain's Ass in Public platform. How's that sound??
There is a lot of false science that has been foisted on the American people. The idea that "science" is irrefutable has been used to control the people. Few want to argue with science. Thus, this misplaced trust has led to faulty economic and environmental policy. The problem is that a majority of thinking people are not fooled; they have not been dumbed down sufficiently such that they cannot see the truth. The mainstream media has bought into this charade clearly demonstrating that they are complicit and are absolutely shameless. The fact that these people cannot bring themselves to tell the truth in all cases shows their true character which ultimately will bring them down. People's trust in the mainstream media is eroding. Eventually the media will be seen as was the former Soviet News Agency "Pravda" which means "Truth". The people in the former USSR would quip, "There is no pravda in Pravda." That feeling is rapidly becoming the same here!
There are places and circumstances/situations where wind power can be of some limited benefit. Knew a guy in Central Texas who lived beside a lake and at the bottom of a slope that ran up to the top of a 500-ft hill. There was a near-constant wind there flowing from the lake up the mountain, induced by the heat. He built his own windmill and it charged a big bank of pulled-out telephone company substation batteries. The batteries were free. The generator was a large alternator from some kind of vehicle. He got the plans from a Mother Earth News book on Windpower Energy. Gives all the necessary info.
The guy's generator provided somewhere between 5000 and 10,000 KWH of energy, enough that he sold much of it back to the utility company while running his home on wind. He said the rule was that he had to have at least one appliance connected to the utility company power so he had the fridge on it. Refrigerators only draw a small amount of power and it made sense to have it on the most reliable system of power.
While visiting him, I did notice the whump-whump-whump of the propeller blades but within 30 minutes, it was no longer noticeable. Same happens when you live by an airport or with the airmen on an air force base. People can get used to many things if they do not turn them into such a problem of hearing and sight that it then becomes an obsession. Our lives are a trade-off in most ways and once this is learned, most problems soon cease to be a problem.
An endangered Bat is only a drop in the bucket, the real problem with wind power is that the wind doesn't always blow! In addition every wind farm kills thousands of birds! They are especially hard on Migrating birds!
The bird problem is seemingly never talked about!
The real bats are in Washington D.C., dingbats that is! We also have a lot of dingbats in Sacramento, they passed AB32 which is legislation requiring a cap and trade scheme here, this is probably the final nail in the coffin of common sense and prosperity. Indeed California is a place to avoid at all costs! We have had well over 15 consecutive insane years of corrupt incompetent Democratic rule and they have driven us from the top ranking in most categories right down to the very bottom! If you bring your kids here keep in mind that the legislature has recently passed a bill requiring that all schools teach everything about the gay lifestyle in favorable terms! Freedom here in California is indeed a thing of the past!
Turbines bending inward and snapping is only evidence of extremely poor design. Disconnect the generator from the propeller and reconnect it with a gear system that can absorb small misalignment. The tilt-rotor aircraft designers should be consulted or maybe just the ones who designed the twin rotor weight lift champion.
I know someone living in what I call the back country in Montana, that lives completely off the grid (Thirty miles from the nearest power line). they have a three bed room house completely powered by a small wind mill and two small solar pnnels. Costing aprox ten thousand for start-up. They have a electric range, water heater, and electric lights, and water well pump all powered by these small panels and wind mill. All the power is stored in batteries, run through a DC to AC converter. In over twelve years they have never lost power. (More than I can say about the power company where I live). When the wind gets to a certain speed, the blades FEATHER and stop rotating so they DON'T BEND as someone said. Pretty good since in the past twelve years I have paid over fifty thousand dollars for gas and electric and quite a bit of that time the power was off for some reason or other. I guess the EPA's argument is that wind power is bad because it saves you money.
We are a solar home off grid in Wyoming….thanks for your post supporting alternative enegy.
In the world of the environmental whacko, who seems to have some kind of input, there is no manmade energy production that would satisfy their thinking, every concievable criticism under the sun will be concocted to make sure their warped ideas are heard.
My suggestion to them is to band togeather and pretend they don't have access to any manmade sources and see how long they can survive….
Gee, wasn't it Thomas Edison that electrocuted a full size bull elephant to prove how dangerous alternating current (AC) was to use. Didn't work for him then as we still have AC power. I believe the bat was just an excuse to cause more greif to an already failing industry. Not that wind power won't work feasibly, just not the way industrialists want it to. Edison was right, DC is the answer -at least for family dwellings.
The problem is very simple. Noumber 1, We have too much government envolved in everything, including our lives, and number 2 is, Government is filled to the brim with ignoramus individuals having little or no common sense. (Simply look at what we have in the Senate and Congress) I recall my years working at the construction of the Amistad Dam located near Del Rio, Texas, and 90 percent of all government envolvement at the damn proved itself wrong. The simple truth was, the government experts simply didn't have common sense, and their calculations constantly proved 90 percent wrong. Not a single one of the government personel had never before worked at or on the construction of a huge damn the size of Amistad.. We would simply listen to the so called government experts, then forget all they had to say, then went ahead using common sense and completed the project in less than six years. Had we done less and listened to all the government experts, we would still be constructing the Amistad Dam. Less government and having people that function using common sense is the answer, as well, these wind-mills have yet to prove being the answer to our electrical power necessities.
Cost alone is reason enough to be against wind: 18-30 cents per kWh when when one includes transmission. The wind will displace 3 cents per kWh worth of natural gas. So you're spending 6-10 times the cost of natural gas. The difference comes from subsidies paid by ratepayers and your children via the federal debt for the 30% investment tax credit.
Obsolete windfarms! I remember when farmers used windmills years ago before they had access to power from the electric grid. If wind power is so great, why did they eliminate it and go to commercial power?
Simple. Wind power is troublesome, inefficient, and unreliable!
Does it make sense to sabotage conventional power generation in favor of some pie in the sky technology that is not proven viable yet? The libs and Obama are ideological idiots with NO technical common sense!
Technical fact: it is not practical to attempt to transmit DC current over long distances. Power losses are too great due to line resistance.
We use Alternating Current because it can be transmitted over long distances with negligable losses in power. A higher than needed voltage is generated with lower current . It is then stepped down at distribution points. Stepping down the voltage also increases the available current. Solar power uses dc current. In order to use it for householdsit must be coverted to ac current using an expensive inverter, or household motors must run on dc.
You are correct, but as I said – DC is the answer, at least for (single) family dwellings. Wind turbines, solar panels, and battery storage will provide more than enough power for a single family unit to operate within means. Add annual passive heat storage where needed and off the grid we go! Nearly everything used in a household is available in DC, NG, or LPG, what isn't, most could live without.
Not many appliances that would be able to operate off the DC directly.
Sure, it is good for charging cell phones, etc. but as far as most other devices
an ac source with stepdown transformers will remain in common use.
DC can run everything in a house if you can learn how to conserve, reserve, and limit, your high energy usage items that may need a power inverter. Above all you gotta learn to think out of the box! There are a lot of conveinences that are just that, conveinences, you just don't need them.
HAHAHAHAHAHAHA! I love it when one environmentalist ideology clashes with another environmentalist ideology. Just wait until the water control Nazis in California cut off water to solar farms so they can't wash their solar arrays. HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!
You may be right about the local and federal nazis, they're everywhere, but I really don't think it's anything to laugh about. It's more like something to plan and prepare for.
And one of the biggest solar projects in CA got shut down because it used too much water.