Guest essay by Eric Worrall
h/t Breitbart – “That’s the end of that windmill” – a video clip of President Trump mocking wind power, criticising the ongoing green mass murder of birds, and miming shooting a wind turbine at a New York Fundraiser.
Why Windmills are the Worst — by @realDonaldTrump pic.twitter.com/t5WqMu9hSe
— Charlie Spiering (@charliespiering) August 13, 2018
History will not judge kindly all the greens who stood by while birds were slaughtered in the name of saving the environment.
One of my first lessons while learning to fly was that eagles and other large raptors don’t get out of the way. Millions of years of evolution has taught eagles especially that they are the lords of the sky, that nothing can challenge them when they are in the air. Its not that the eagles can’t see the turbine blades, they simply cannot grasp that the lump of metal or fibreglass whooshing towards them poses any kind of threat.
As a pilot I can evade large birds. But wind turbines are static, they have no capacity to avoid a collision.
As long as wind turbines are being built, the slaughter of endangered large birds of prey will continue.
The first thing the public will have to understand is that the people who want to build wind turbines are not in it for the environment nor for any nutty notion of climate change mitigation.
Once the veil of ignorance from that delusion finally lifts, then the demise of the wind energy business will be swift.
Virtue signalling greenies
No, they’re simply businesses, who’ve seen an opportunity to make money.
It’s based on the same greed and selfishness the greens criticize in oil companies. In fact, many turbine companies ARE oil companies. Yet somehow the fool greens think this means the oil companies “care”. Sure, they care….about tax breaks and free money. Besides, turbines are useless pieces of garbage that kill birds. No threat to any oil company or gas or coal—you know, real energy.
They don’t make money, they embezzle it. Their product is a con which causes harm while feigning to solve a non-existent problem.
Please do not refer to them as ‘ greenies ‘. This word gives the impression they are naughty children ( on reflection ………………. ).
Greenies was always a reference to what a child removed from a nostril with a probing index finger
A more appropriate name is the Khmer Vert.
Remember, all the executives who work for companies that drill for oil are bad, and their monetary support of any initiative, scientific study, or political support is proof of the cancerous effect corporate money has on society.
But all the executives who work for giant corporations that make windmills are doing the work of angels, saving the earth. Any money they funnel to politicians demonstrates the public/private partnership necessary to the fight global climate cycle. It will take all of us!
In summary — shareholders, companies and execs over there — bad.
All the ones over here — good.
Billionaire Warren Buffett would do anything to lower the tax rate of his company Berkshire Hathaway, including building unprofitable wind turbines to get federal government tax credits.
“I will do anything that is basically covered by the law to reduce Berkshire’s tax rate,” Buffett told an audience in Omaha, Nebraska this weekend. “For example, on wind energy, we get a tax credit if we build a lot of wind farms. That’s the only reason to build them. They don’t make sense without the tax credit.”
You can also find several examples of Warren Buffets statements describing how Subsidies will ruin the electric utility industry on the internet One example
“Today, society has decided that federally subsidized wind and solar generation is in our country’s long-term interest. Federal tax credits are used to implement this policy, support that makes renewables price-competitive in certain geographies. Those tax credits, or other government-mandated help for renewables, may eventually erode the economics of the incumbent utility, particularly if it is a high-cost operator.”
It is happening NOW. In the last ten years we have lost as much if not more CO2 Free Nuclear Power as we have added by Wind and Solar. We are NOT yet gaining in the fight to reduce CO2. five more are considering or have announced shutdown. and those five, in total, are larger.
What gives you the idea
‘the veil of ignorance” will lift?
As long as wind turbines are being built, the slaughter of endangered large birds of prey will continue.
If there are an y large birds of prey left by that time. The greens will have overrun with mice and rats.
Overrun with mice and rats … not as long as there are coyotes and cats.
Greens have convenient conciences.
But but but domestic cats are killing other birds… a bird is a bird is a bird… in other news, we must stop all land use because of some obscure amphibian.
That they are eagle and hawk killers are just another reason to reject green prayer wheels. The economics are so bad, plus the effect on grid stability, that one could suspect a deliberate intent to crash the grid.
At the least 1.5 birds (the .5 is a raptor) and 2 bats per year per turbine
A deliberate attempt to crash world-wide human growth. The uber-rich are set, their families provided for. Except for a few 100 million or so of technical class and educators to keep their world fit for them, everyone can die as far as they are concerned.
Their figure is 200 million. There must be enough to produce the classy stuff and build the yachts n houses etc. Then there are the ‘servants’ and field hands, and security to keep them in their place. The many doing menial manual work on infrastructure and production, living in vertical hells. Plus the military to keep them in line.
That’s about all they need really.
And, and the garbage collectors, don’t forget them. And dentists too.
Isn’t there a missing sarc tag?
Clearly you have not investigated the technocratic agenda or the push for A.I.
Do you ever actually attempt to read about what is really happening in the world? Good grief you are something else.
And to think in the depths of the dark ages people would ride on horseback for days just to get access to a book, yet these simpletons have vast resources of knowledge at their fingers and refuse to type.
You embody the worst of humanity Ryan. Lazy, weak, and self deceiving
500 million per the Georgia guide stones
Slowly but surely he is un-picking the international scam.
All comes down to funding.
Really wish the Australian MSM keep posting things like this all the way up to the next federal election. Energy supply and cost is going to be the make or break issue for parties to form the next Govn’t. However, Turnbull is a traitor, Shorten hasn’t a clue…like he really believes a carbon tax will make the climate better and the greens are next to useless. So I reckon it’ll be a donkey vote for most people.
It’s an inconvenient truth… Hopefully, the benefits and deficits of each technology can be evaluated honestly from recovery to reclamation, and a basket of products will be exploited and reconciled for the advancement of humankind, animals, plants, and the environment. First step: unravel political and scientific myths.
Wind turbines and solar mirror power plants are evil energy producers. they both kill birds by the thousands. They are NOT the solution.
The tip of a wind turbine moves faster than a bird can cope with. There are engineering reasons for that. link Although the blades look slow and majestic, at the tips they could be moving 180 mph. It’s hard to get out of the way of something moving that fast.
Bats can actually do it except for one BIG problem. The difference in pressure from one side of the windmill to to the other side bursts their lungs.
The reason the tips are quick is because they are on then end of a long arm doing a few radians a second.
What’re a few broken eggs if you’re making an omelet? 😉
Wind energy needs to be mocked. The electricity supply system is the ultimate in Just In Time supply, it is measured in micro-seconds. If the system has a delay of merely one second it falls over with catastrophic results.
It is not only birds, but bats also are slaughtered by these choppers which mass-murder our feathered friends. And the society which purports to advocate for birds, Audubon, is complicit in this activity by proclaiming that human-caused CO2-fueled catastrophic warming is the real problem with bird survival. My post, Audubon Goes Over the Edge, provides details.
ROBERT W. ENDLICH
Robert, back in my naive idealistic days I was on the board of the richest, largest and oldest Audubon Chapter in the USA. We brought a law suit against a group building a very tall guide wired tower on the corner of a famous wildlife refuge which had been created for migratory and wading birds. Myself and several other board members resigned when the state organization made a deal to allow the tower to be built anyway. The state organization got all kinds of benefits including free television time. The state organization tried to sell the free television time as being a “net gain” for the environment. They claimed that educating people (can you say raising money) was more important to the state organization than all the birds we knew from years of data from similar tower would be killed.
Uh, that’s “guy-wired”.
I used to be an avid birdwatcher. I joined the local Audubon chapter, but only lasted one year once I discovered I needed to keep my game bird hunting activity a secret. Seems they couldn’t understand the simple economics of hunting license and tag fees sustaining a host of wildlife enhancement programs. Mindless virtue signalling and emotion thwarted logic. A perfect example: Members asking how to protect the backyard birds they were feeding from those horrid hawks which swooped in and (the horror!) killed and ate “my” poor little tweety birds.
Point out that their backyard feeding encourages the little tweety birds to gather out in the open. Any hawk flying by isn’t going to pass up such an easy lunch.
Cats more likely than hawks.
I send tweets to my representative and Secretary Zinke, a lot, pointing out they can reduce these deaths of birds if the waiver for wind farms was rescinded. I urge all WUWT folks to do the same.
Great 3-part series of articles regarding bird kills by windmills here: https://www.masterresource.org/cuisinarts-of-the-air/harvesting-eagles-1/
I’m afraid that there are too many windmills in the Pacific NW for my members of Congress of either party to oppose them. The subsidy moneys they farm form too much of a vested interest.
Even Zinke’s MT has quite a few.
Apparently the liberal-left-greenies are willing to sacrifice wildlife for the greater good (fighting “man-made climate change”), and they see no problem whatsoever with gigantic bird-chopping machines littering the landscape by the thousands.
That’s the position of the Audobon society. A nebulous, 50 years in the future event is more threat than shredded right now is.
Man is God to them, so whatever humans want is “right,” and animals must suffer.
[??? .mod]
I didn’t understand at first that those wind turbine blades are made of balsa wood like same sort of hobby toy.
That’s a lot of balsa.
I can almost hear the guys from MIT screaming … SIG … SIG … SIG
Try aluminium, glass & carbon fibres.
If a thing needs a subsidy, it’s probably not worth it, economically. This applies to energy sources, electric cars, and other wastes of resources.
Easy there.. I need a subsidy to support my wife.
you may have just supported the previous posters point there about “If a thing needs a subsidy, it’s probably not worth it, economically” 😉
Trump needs to end all government subsidies and grants to: wind, solar and ethanol programs.
These expensive and meaningless subsidies/grants: increase energy costs, increase food commodity prices, hurt the environment, decrease technological advancements of new safe/cheap alternative energy sources (like LFTRs), misallocates scarce land/labor/capital, makes US goods less competitive, reduces living standards, increases living costs, etc.,
Leftist’s alternative “green” energy boondoggles are just massively expensive programs for loony Leftists to virtue signal and for rent seekers to steal $100’s of billions from US taxpayers.
Green energy fascilities are the equivalent 21st-Century pyramids; colossal monuments to the hubris and oppression of feckless tyrants built on the backs of slaves to the state..
Reason and Trump-Thinking are a hit-and-miss proposition….
Trump cannot. Chuckie Grassley would have to go along with CONGRESS doing it and Chuckie is #1 for subsidy generating and consuming. Then there are the fools from Wyoming, Texas, Oklahoma…..Not a prayer. Better chance of a balanced budget.
Oklahoma legislators voted recently to stop paying subsidies for any new windmill projects. They determined that continuing to do so would bankrupt Oklahoma eventually.
Good to know reality does sink in now and then!
Subsidies and mandates.
While I’d love to see an end to all government subsidies and grants (as well as mandates) to the green blob, Trump can’t do it on his own. He needs Congress to pass bills to the effect.
Unfortunately the Corn Belt states get a lot of money from the ethanol subsidy and mandate, and will not give it up easily.
Meanwhile, over on the other side of the Pacific, stupidity continues. As we export record quantities of coal for other sensible countries to burn, we love giving money to them their windmills and solar panels.
http://joannenova.com.au/2018/08/dear-australia-would-you-rather-have-8500-or-a-0-0001c-cooler-climate-for-your-130th-birthday/
Trudeau our PM was planning to bankrupt Canada with his carbon tax as of next January 2019 , on the top 600 -CO2 emitters in Canada. However the big guys of those top 600 called a special meeting 2 weeks ago with Trudeau (if you are a CEO of a big company with lots of employees; PMs do not refuse to meet with you). They told him at the meeting that if he went ahead with his plans that some of them would leave the country. So he watered it down. Now over 4 years it will only be $5 billion of taxes. The stupid thing is if all 600 pay the carbon tax , no CO2 reduction happens. If they all switch to a more expensive non carbon fuel (that is impossible for most of them) the result will be at the end of the year 2100, Canada’s contribution to a lowering of the world’s temperature will be 4/10000 of 1C. I am wondering what kind of thermometer do you need to measure that small a temperature change? Even after that it will still leave Trudeau 183 million tons of CO2 short of his Paris commitment for the year 2030. The only way that could get resolved would be if 67% of those 600 top emitters actually left the country
In Ontario, the former Kathleen Wynne Liberals were recently routed by the Conservatives. Wynne was hated by most voters. The thing that fascinates me is that nobody could put a finger on why.
Wynne was an ideologue who was pushing a hard SJW agenda. Voters couldn’t articulate their unease with that and they wouldn’t share their problem with pollsters for fear of looking like a bigot.
Trudeau is just a tweet away from making himself hated. He was sliding in the polls and it would be really easy for that process to restart. The Conservatives have good reason to think they have a chance in 2019. link
If the Conservatives do unseat Trudeau, there’s a very good chance it will be because of his carbon tax. We now have two provinces, Ontario and Saskatchewan, fighting it and it could end up in court, and in the news, just as the election campaign gets rolling.
you can’t build a wind turbine or a solar panel without fossil fuels.
Trudeau is all but dead and buried politically. He will join Wynne on the political trash heap.
Don’t forget, the world needs 1.5-2% more energy every year. This increase if made up solely by windmills would take up an area the size of Great Britain. The 2nd year you would have to ask the Russians to use their land for more windmills. If they said yes; After 50 years the amount of new windmills needed to keep up with just the increase every year of more energy would take up the whole land area of Russia. By that time you would have killed off any bird of prey in the skies of Russia along with all of the bats. Long before that time Putin would rip them all out and force you to buy his natural gas. Putting the windmills all into the ocean is much more costly and eventually you would need so many that you would conflict with shipping lanes. Solar power doesnt do it either. Solar needs at least 50% of the land use that windmills need. The renewable energy scenario is a farce. If the greens dont want fossil fuels they better start building nuclear.
Fortunately, in space there is a lot of space. In GEO solar panels could power entire planet and and you can’t see them.
But need to lower launch cost and probably make them them on Moon.
So explore Moon, determine if and where minable water. If actually minable- then investment dollars will have a return the money- or what minable means.
If one has lunar commercial water mining, it make the moon and good place to do things [lowers cost significantly to get to moon and to leave]
So explore moon to see if there is minable water, then stop exploring Moon and explore Mars- to determine if and where human settlements could viable.
If null on both, explore elsewhere. Mainly for minable water or some means of cheaply making rocket fuel.
And one might have situation that lunar water is not minable now, but a few decades later it can be minable water.
And the Moon’s polar regions are a pretty good location for solar power- with polar grid [lunar polar region is very small] you get constant solar energy- so, no storage of energy problem. Mars poles are similar, but not as good as lunar poles.
Anyhow if lunar water mining start, it would take about 50 year before costs could lower to get to point of harvesting solar energy from Space for the earth surface- and people living on Mars might have space power satellite [SPS] before Earth does.
Sending something from one gravity well to another isn’t economical. Build on earth send to space once. Or capture an asteroid or two and use resources from them.
With present technology it’s not profitable to retrieve something from space even if there was solid gold orbiting our planet.
It not so much technology as market size and with a large market there is enough demand to support large rockets, such as the size of Saturn V [Apollo], or yet to be made SpaceX’s BFR or large rocket which Blue Origin plans to launch in about 5 years.
So cost to LEO is currently about $1000 per lb of payload and it could with enough launch per year it be about $100 per lb. Gold is about $50 gram or $50,000 per kg, you could currently retrieve gold from LEO, but not from Lunar surface. If you could buy rocket fuel on lunar surface you could retrieve gold from Lunar surface at $1000 per lb to LEO earth launch costs.
One lunar market could send “lunar samples” to Earth and sell them for less than their weight in gold or price of silver. Or less than $50 per gram, and current such lunar material are about $1000 per gram.
So the price to sell and buy lunar water should start at about $500 per kg, which allow lunar rocket to sell for about $1000 per kg at lunar surface which about 10 to 50 times cheaper than current cost.
By the time you would doing something like earth SPS, lunar water would be around $1 per kg which is still more 1000 times of cost of water on Earth and that time in future electrical power on the moon might cost about $1 per Kw hour [less]. And currently a good price for lunar electrical power is about $75 per Kw hour. Eventually lunar electrical power could same cost or cheaper than electrical power on Earth or about $ .001 per Kw hour.
Anyhow, one could see that lunar launch cost could lower to about $1 per kg from lunar surface to GEO which at same time having about $50 to $100 per kg to launch from Earth to LEO and more than this to launch from Earth surface to GEO.
And if there is enough market, one launch from the lunar surface, not using rocket fuel but use mas drivers. Earth SPS would be more than enough market to do this.
And Space is big and you need to travel pretty fast by earth standards, so the Moon could as cheap making from Asteroid material because finished product has get to a location in space within short time period- or not traveling less than 1000 mph.
Or with Earth one has gravity loss, and the gravity loss was 1/10th of Earth’s when Apollo crew left the Moon [and less than 1/100th is quite possible].
We have decades of fossil fuels, so we should use space and the moon instead of those?
Well you can get electrical power from space, and with abundant and cheap electrical power available anywhere on Earth [including middle of Pacific ocean] and electrical cars would not actually be using coal produced electrical power. Or there would be less fossil fuel used to make electrical power on Earth- I wouldn’t outlaw it, but would need to compete in market place which has electrical power shipped from Space.
Hey! Why not put the solar panels on the sun? That should boost the output! Do I have to say it?
It would boost the output, but the cost of the extension cord is a real killer.
Solar Power Satellites will start out powering infrastructure in the Earth/Moon system by using microwave beams to send power to various locations.
SPS could also eventually send power to the Earth’s surface.
Moon-based solar could also use microwave beams to distribute its power in a similar fashion.
What we need is cheap access to Space. Once we get over that hurdle, the rest is fairly easy in comparison.
And who on Earth wants to live anywhere within a hundred miles of the Earth side of where those microwave
Death raysenergy beams are collected?If micowave or lasers are 100 miles off target, you would wasting a lot of energy. A still a lot wasted energy if 1 to 5 miles off target.
The general idea is microwave would not strong enough to hurt birds- and you are probably currently living in world where microwave energy is being beamed within 100 miles of you.
How we got microwave ovens:
“In 1945, the specific heating effect of a high-power microwave beam was accidentally discovered by Percy Spencer, an American self-taught engineer from Howland, Maine. Employed by Raytheon at the time, he noticed that microwaves from an active radar set he was working on started to melt a chocolate bar he had in his pocket. ”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microwave_oven
Umm, chocolate bars melt in pockets anyway.
It only takes a small degrees worth of error in space to be miles off on Earth.
We will probably get cheaper access to space evenually.
Why we currently have fairly cheap access to space is due to having 1/4 trillion dollar global satellite market which growing at about 5% per year- and some have predicted it could 1.4 trillion by 2040.
So when and if it’s 1.4 trillion market, we would have cheaper access to space.
If we explore the moon- instead doing what we have been doing of not exploring the Moon- this could create new markets in space, these market might or probably have much higher yearly growth. Or if mine lunar water to make rocket fuel you need to create more demand for lunar rocket fuel.
And if there lunar rocket fuel on the moon, that would create new markets.
Plus you probably get national government wanting lunar bases on the Moon- which might need more lunar water than lunar rocket fuel- depending what they want to do- and how many people stay on the Moon. But things like lunar tourists who have short stays on moon would probably use more rocket fuel than water. A fair amount of rocket fuel could used to explore from a site on the moon to other regions of the moon, in search resources which could exported to Earth- like PGM metals. Or real estate in terms lava tubes/underground caves. One could also mine iron on the Moon- but need a large market for iron on moon- obviously not export Iron to Earth, but possible export iron or iron/steel products to Earth high orbits.
Mining lunar water and the need of creating a larger demand, almost requires to export Lunar LOX to low lunar orbit, and then LOX and Lunar water to regions space near the Moon which could be used for Mars manned exploration or manned exploration elsewhere in solar system. And also used by people want to settle Mars. And Mars settlements also another market and market which could grow quickly [again almost has to grow quickly- in order for it to economically work].
Things will start popping in space as soon as Bezos or some other billionaire decides he needs to build himself an O’Neill Habitat in space for him and his family in order to insure their safety and future.
Before that, we will get a hotel or two in orbit that will show the way to humans living is space.
Weightlessness will be out, and “artificial gravity” and living in Earth-like conditions will be in.
I think humans will be living in large space habitats in the future. This will serve to insure the survival of the human race.
What Bezos can do well is see the future.
What is needed is space exploration.
Though without exploration, one could develop suborbital travel, and that is what Bezos is doing at the moment- that is knowable market.
And you just have do it: cheap enough, and of course not kill people trying to do it [safety is important].
Anyhow, we will see if NASA can manage it’s task of exploring the lunar poles to determine if and where there is minable lunar water.
You do realize that the Moon is constantly bombarded by meteors, right? Tiny ones, but more than enough to smash a field of solar panels into unusability within a week if not sooner.
The Moon has less than what ISS has experienced over the last 20 years- because in addition ISS has to deal with all the human created micrometeorites
“The renewable energy scenario is a farce. If the greens dont want fossil fuels they better start building nuclear.”
Excellent advice.
Or create more markets in space. Or support exploring the Moon to find minable water as soon as possible, and then explore Mars.
The problem with “renewable energy” is doesn’t provide energy when people want energy- solar energy if one has no clouds gives about 6 hours a sunlight per day, and there are 24 hours in a day. Solar energy is best [gives 6 hours a day] in deserts and below 40 degree latitude. And not a lot people live in deserts- if everyone did, it still only provides about 6 hours of power per day. Wind energy has similar problem- does not give 24 hours per day of energy, and nature is decides when you get the energy. And burning wood is just stupid.
Solar energy from space can be constant and can be delivered anywhere on Earth and can balance a grid rather than imbalance a grid- it is a effective way of storing energy is the sense one could give any amount of energy anytime and everywhere.
Or people imagine we can store energy- and if we could store electrical energy cheaply, we would already be doing it. There is huge market for this- about 1/2 or more of entire energy market. Or have twice or more of the energy generating capacity as is needed, because we can’t store electrical power cheaply.
And this factor alone [of being able to effectively store energy because one distribute it global] has large value. Assuming the energy can be delivered as cheap as conventional earth electrical power plants.
Nuclear power plants are best kept running as constantly as possible- and electrical power consumption is not a constant electrical power demand, so Nuclear power plants are not particularly useful to balance a grid- they are best for providing a base load of electrical power. So something like 40% of electrical power need could be practical for nuclear power to provide- though countries like France have had much higher percentage of nuclear power production- it can be managed, but not necessarily in a optimal way- or cost efficient way.
One thing I’ve wondered is what effect do the windmills have on the climate? They slow the air while taking energy out of the wind system. What does slower air do to climate?
They dont really affect it because wind is created by air pressure differentials. If you affect the pressure in one place, new wind will be required to equalize the pressure in another place. Of course all bets are off if you end up with so many windmills everywhere as in my post above.
Because wind turbines are magical and never affect anything.
Cause more moisture to be picked up by arid soils thus changing pressure, maybe. Cause more rain to fall in one area, maybe. No one can really tell it is a chaotic system, I would imagine though 100 ft out of 60000 and in a small area isn’t going to matter much.
I have studied the effect of wind turbines on climate.
The effect is identical to the effect of CO2 on climate.
SFA.
There is a picture, somewhere I can’t find it now, of two Dutch men, service technicians, on top of and on the nose of a wind turbine that is on fire.
Eventually, which we don’t see, one jumps off, the other succumbs to smoke and flames.
Yeah, there is some good video of the aftermath of Chernobyl too, but that’s just emotional point scoring, and irrelevant to the real issues.
Which was actually a steam explosion and no-one has been recorded to have died as a direct result of the radiation. Can you cite examples? BTW, I was in the UK at the time.
31 people died as a direct result of the accident; two died from blast effects and a further 29 firemen died as a result of acute radiation exposure.
(I was working in the Netherlands but on holiday in the UK at the time )
Once the core was exposed, after the steam explosion, sure! They had no proper equipment to deal with a situation as an exposed core. Very brave people indeed! 31 people? And, so far, no-one else.
Err, wrong. Two people died in the explosion, 100 others – mostly firefighters – received doses high enough to cause acute radiation sickness, of those, 29 died over the next few months & 18 more over subsequent years. 7,000 excess thyroid cancers occurred in the general population up to 2005, of whom about a dozen died.
It was a steam explosion, NOT a nuclear explosion which is often touted as happened, so yes, not surprising some people were killed. And yet, one of the workers actually had radioactive water drop on to his head, under the reactor and, as far as I know, is still alive.
Yeah, but what does it have to do with anything? What does the fact that two wind turbine technicians died because of a fire have to do with anything we’re talking about here? People die in accidents. It’s a shame. But what the hell is the point of raising that in this discussion?
Do wind turbines have a significant history of problems with catching fire and killing people?
I’m not taking the piss when I say that bringing up examples of people dying because of unfortunate accidents is an example of emotional point scoring, and has nothing to do with the real issues we are talking about here.
Am I wrong? Well, how about you tell me what the significance of those two technicians dying in a fire actually is for this discussion?
What was your point, or what were you trying to achieve by bringing that up?
You can point to a video of a sad situation where some technicians died. I can too, but with a different form of energy production. So what?
On a per MW basis, wind kills way more people than any other source of power.
Not to mention the holocaust level number of birds that have been chopped.
“7,000 excess thyroid cancers occurred in the general population up to 2005, of whom about a dozen died.” Fun with statistics. Would you like me to prove the opposite of your claim? It’s really, really easy. That’s the beauty of “excess deaths”. I can get any number of “excess” from any source that I want.
Seriously, EMOTIONAL IS THE ONLY WAY TURBINES SELL. What a hypocrite you are.
?? Is that directed at me?
“but that’s just emotional point scoring, and irrelevant to the real issues.”
You figure it out.
Well, whatever you do, don’t explain what you mean clearly.
Woke Progressives objected to the Citizens United court ruling because it recognized the rights of artificial persons, a creation of the State, to have freedom of speech. But when these same progressives want to create an enonomic mirage, they are happy to use the State to jigger all the numbers via subisies, tax credits and regulatory carveouts. These all operate to create the mirage that wind power is economically sustainable.
But economic truth is impossible to hide and suppress forever. Governments eventually get tied of continually allocating the funds, or they find the taxes are better spent elsewhere. The mirage must be allocated during every budget cycle. Like fiat money itself, it all appears to work, up until the moment it doesn’t. Then players in the game who made commitments based on the mirage are left to make do, and often it is impossible.
My only question is to ask who will pay to decommission all the wind turbines as the decay and become eyesores and a hazard?
Germany will have to answer that question some day. The subsidies on wind can’t last forever. It is very telling that when Germany held its’ 1st auction on new renewables and had the solar guys compete against the wind guys; NOT one wind turbine company won any of the contracts. Wind can’t compete with solar.
Can’t compete in coast either—per watt, solar is the most expensive. So I question why fools would go the most expensive route.
That all depends on location – if in the southwestern part of the US, I’d tend to agree. But in a temperate area that has all 4 seasons + a decent amount of clouds and rainfall, wind might end up producing more power per year. Of course, both fall way short of fossil fuels, nuclear and hydro.
A friend of mine who lives off grid in falsely called “windy Wyoming” says her solar panels do better than the wind turbine. It may be the cut-out speed on the turbine is surpassed frequently, I’m not sure. Even with both, she runs out of electricity if there’s a week of clouds and not wind. She would gladly trade for grid electricity.
You twisted Citizens United ruling. What it did is recognize that if me and you decide to buy a billboard to counter one paid for by George Soros (who as an INVIDUAL citizen has unlimited rights to express his political opinions using as much money as he wants) we can do that. Before citizens united our “corporation”, that is the legal definition of me and you pooling resources(I know evil right?), was banned from placing political ads of any nature so deemed by the gov’t during election times. So, effectively Citizens United ruling let the many collectively join together to voice their opinions in a way that can be heard by the masses, which before only Unions(exceptions put into laws for them just like Obamacare), the media and the rich were allowed to do. That is why the democrats opposed it. What it didn’t do was remove all the reporting rules for corporations(me and you together) so to post our billboard we still need to hire an accountant, a treasurer, and a good lawyer to make sure that we don’t get imprisoned/and or sued for posting something that effects the money making stream of gov’t or their buddies. In Oregon they call that getting Bill Sizemored. Although, it is quite similar to what they are trying to do to Trump and anyone who supports draining the swamp. So in short, Citizen’s United was a victory for the little man.
Working for a company doesn’t mean you agree with the politics of the CEO or shareholders. Companies are not people.
I’m all in when there’s a reasonable investment for utilizing the free wind for free power. As a sailor I’ve collected by far the most savings ever using the wind. Initially your going to spend close to $3000 for a power array that will give you enough power to run a small AC in a 30′-40′ boat. The key is to keep the 2 banks of 5 batteries hot. If your using more power than you can charge it’s not self contained. The refrigerator will always be on and on the 5 battery bank that recovers easily with solar panels although wind generator may kick on at night keeping your batteries between 12-13.6 volts. (good batteries always full of distilled water will last 7 years before servicing) Two Colman wind generators and the 8000-10000 watt inverter lets me have all the power I need aboard for free. It’s quiet green power! It’s like the sailboat quiet, clean and free propulsion. Consider the arrow over the bullet. The arrow does about the same as the bullet without the noise.
No one denies that there are uses for wind energy, and if there’s a legitimate market for it not requiring subsidies, then great. It simply has nothing to do with being “green”, or “saving the planet” though.
Yet one does not use an arrow for a water buffalo.
Sheri, One can. The American Indian used arrows quite effectively on the bison. They are similar in size and construction.
One can, yes. They can also walk from coast to coast in the USA. Just because it can be done does not make it a good idea or the ideal way of doing something.
(Yes, macho crazy guys on YouTube take water buffalo with arrows, though I notice most are using crossbows. I’m sure there are at least one or two crazy people using long bows whose video I did not see. Still, I can’t recommend the practice. It seems insane on all levels.)
Indians rarely bagged bison with bow and arrow before the advent of the European horse. And even then, a thrusting lance was preferred.
Crawling from downwind, covered by a bison hide, you might be able to get close enough to kill a bison with an arrow, but the combo of skill and luck would not have been common.
Hence, pre-horse bison “hunting” usually relied upon stampeding a herd over a bank or cliff, driven by fear or fire.
Once Indians got firearms as well as horses, the bison were doomed. No white market hunters needed. They just sped up the process.
Killing was made easier by the fact that bison have a single pleural cavity containing both lungs and the heart.
“Buffalo chest”:
https://www.medicinenet.com/script/main/art.asp?articlekey=25357
I was looking for a reference to a stock of arrowheads found on a shipwreck to make the point about how long they last. The metals on the ship could also be used for weapons. On other writing of this find it is speculated that the cargo was military aid.
What is more interesting is the other articles on the front page
I think they are food for thought on the subject under discussion
https://www.nytimes.com/1984/12/05/us/treasure-of-artifacts-found-in-3400-year-old-shipwreck.html
michael
It’s not free if you have to buy and maintain all the stuff you list.
For a boat, there is no alternative.
Depending on the round and gun, a bullet has way more killing power than does an arrow.
PS: I’ve never heard of an arrow that was able to kill someone more than a mile away.
Mark,
“I’ve never heard of an arrow that was able to kill someone more than a mile away.”
I am sure you are right, but – although I never followed seriously – I believe the foot-bow Distance record was [about 1990???] over half a mile (800m).
Unfortunate if that hit you I guess.
Auto.
The farthest distance shot with any bow is 2047 yards (1871.84 m) . This was shot by the late Harry Drake in 1988 using a crossbow. The farthest with a hand-held — and pulled — bow is 1336 yds 1′ 3″ (1222.01 m) , shot by Don Brown with an unlimited conventional Flight bow in 1987.
But a Drake Flight Bow is nothing like a Plains Indian hunting bow.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QGknH8-ipaA
That little arrow even at closer range might not make it through to a bison’s pleural cavity.
The problem with solar panels on boats, especially sailboats even if it is automated, is deck space. On RV s it is weight, space also if you want much power. These are great and I have used them, but wonder how even 100% sunlight efficiency would work out.
Weight matters on boats. Lots of weight will slow them down. If the weight is too high above the water line it could impact stability as well.
Tow a solar dinghy attached by power cable?
Watch your language!
Makes me think of the absurd idea that I keep thinking of. Seems like I constantly hear how wind turbines are going to have an order of magnitude in efficiency in less than ten years and that again in another ten. If true then why isn’t the Navy researching the installation of Wind turbines on Aircraft carriers to power them?
Man has been taking advantage of wind energy since they used wind to separate the wheat from the schaff. The energy density is just not their to provide the energy for the highly industrialized world today. Same for Solar. In the temperate climates man could easily warm and cook food to a safe, healthy, temperature with a combination of direct sun and simple reflected sun thousands of years ago. I have witnessed the melting of new Vinyl siding from the direct radiation of sun and the reflected sunlight from two windows on an adjacent house. One of the windows was in a bay window thus at a different angle. The wall received three times the sun. Higher grade of siding solved the problem. Reminded me of the Sun Stove I made in the Boy Scouts many years ago. Similarly there is just not enough energy density in the sun to power the electrical load twenty years from now. Nuclear is the answer.
Sorry, I disagree. I’ve shot archery for 20 years and guns for 15. I’ve won regional and state archery tournaments from traditional archery to fully modern. I made my own arrows and bows. Anyone who thinks arrows are just as effective as bullets does not understand how things work.
If wind turbines are not economic and need too much subsidy then that is a compelling criticism.
But killing too many birds ?
Sounds like a trumped up criticism seized on by confirmed wind power opponents to me.
Fake news seized on by confirmed idealogues.
That post is faked wingnut.
Your opinion is not worth much around here, about the same value as used toilet tissue.
Have a nice day.
As always, Ryan declares anything that he doesn’t want to be true, fake.
And yet the leftists touting wind power will happily protest oil pipelines that are much less of a risk to the environment than the bird choppers.
“DEATH TO THE BALD EAGLES”. The new chant of the people.
Do you propose getting rid of all regulations that protect endangered species?
Or is your outrage selective?
Here is a “fact-check” of Trump and Zinke’s claims about the number of birds killed by windmills:
https://www.axios.com/fact-checking-zinkes-bird-death-claim-1520379825-0dbede05-9934-42f6-988b-58c9e3fbe280.html?utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=organic&utm_content=1100&utm_term=energy
“For the record: An Interior Department spokeswoman said a recent United States Geological Survey published in peer-reviewed scientific journals estimated the number could be as high as 689,000 bird deaths a year caused by wind turbines, not including Alaska and Hawaii. Including all 50 states and taking into account the growth of the industry as well as increased blade size, “the number could very reasonably be about 750,000,” a spokeswoman said. She did not provide an actual copy of that report.”
end excerpt
It looks to me like the “fact-check” pretty much confirms the numbers Trump and Zinke use.
So, that being the case, these “fact-checkers” have changed the subject of the argument from how many birds are killed by windmills, to arguing that other structures also kill birds. They claim this refutes the numbers quoted by Trump and Zinke. Sorry, it does nothing of the kind.
Trump said yesterday it looked like “Killing Fields” down below some of those windmills.
He loves to exaggerate to get a point across.
Yes, he does.
Ah come on! There are hundreds of videos on youtube of wind turbines killing each eagles and raptors. They’ve been posted on WUWT several times. Everyone has seen them. It would take you less than half a second to find them on google. Talk about putting your head in the sand!
After a very enjoyable tour last autumn of some of the western states I found to my surprise and delight some novels from a Wyoming thriller writer in our local library, C J Box . At first I found the rather smug leftist attitude of some of the main characters a bit off-putting , then in one of the books he lashes into the dictatorial policy of the EPA towards innocent homesteaders ( based apparently on a real case) and in the latest “The Disappeared” he takes on promoters of the “largest wind farm in the world” located in Wyoming.
I won’t spoil it for others but just say that it involves falconers to give you a clue .
It seems that the author may have had physical experience of being close to wind turbines from the following snatches : (I think copyright rules allow this):
“…he noticed how air pressure .. changed the close he got to the working turbines … seemed to push down his head and shoulders … a low steady hum replaced the sound of wind in the sage brush… a kind of subsonic whooshing that made Nate’s stomach clench…”
Don’t look at the author’s photo on his website
http://www.cjbox.net/
you might get a shock.
That is most interesting. Wyoming is a dumping ground for turbines. The moron with the largest wind plant is in COLORADO, miles from his environmental slaughter. They did give him an award for being the most western type guy today. That’s true. Just like the rich cattle barrons, he runs ripshod over anything that gets in his greedy way. A true westerner for sure.
I hate those things—now the road to my cabin will be further littered and hunting areas destroyed out of Warren Buffet’s greed and the stupidity of people in this state.
(Wyoming is leftist, by the way.)
Rubbish – Wyoming is one of the most conservative states in the US. The Senate has 27 Republicans and 3 Democrats, the House has 51 Republicans and 9 Democrats. And of course the Governor is Republican.
Funny how those who know nothing about politics always assume that Republican equals conservative.
The masses are so easily deceived, aren’t they? One of our “conservatives” running for governor reportedly is associated with the Sierra Club and Friends of the Earth. One of our “conservation” big wigs has wind turbines on his ranch and BRAGS immensely about it. No, he doesn’t live there, of course. Conservative is a label slapped on a campaign poster, no more true than “you can keep your doctor”.
Funny how Mark and Sheri ignore the true meaning of conservative in their diatribe against wind turbines. Here’s a quote from the guy who headed Wyoming’s efforts on wind turbines: “I have no problem saying I’m a climate denier, because I am,” says Drain. “But if you give me the choice of buying coal, natural gas, solar, or wind, because of economics, because of my pocketbook, hands down I’m choosing wind.”
https://www.csmonitor.com/Environment/2017/1229/Why-coal-rich-Wyoming-is-investing-big-in-wind-power
But hey, what does he know? Sheri and Mark know better – even though Sheri and Mark provided zero evidence to support their claims.
But “the guy who headed Wyoming’s efforts on wind turbines”
would against idea of stopping governmental imposed subsidies.
“a low steady hum replaced the sound of wind in the sage brush… a kind of subsonic whooshing that made Nate’s stomach clench…”
Trump was doing that “whoosing” sound yesterday in a speech while waving his arm in a circle to mimic the sound of windmills. It was hilarious! 🙂
It makes complete sense that any student of science would be delighted to have the scientific credentials of private bonepsur behind them.
What are the Goracles’ scientific credentials?
Political “Science” degree????
Theology, assuming he actually finished. Does seem appropriate, doesn’t it?
At least he can read more than a page at time.
What they’re doing to people without them knowing is causing vibroaccoustic disease. It causes thickening of tissue. You can’t hear it, so it can’t make you sick, right? Wrong. It can kill you. This noise can’t be measured with a DBA. It needs a DB Linear. Look up the work of Mariana Alves-Pereira “Vibroacoustic disease (VAD) is a whole-body pathology that develops in individuals excessively exposed to ILFN. VAD has been diagnosed within several professional groups employed within the aeronautical industry, and in other heavy industries. However, given the ubiquitous nature of ILFN and the absence of legislation concerning ILFN, VAD is increasingly being diagnosed among members of the general population, including children. VAD is associated with the abnormal growth of extra-cellular matrices (collagen and elastin), in the absence of an inflammatory process.” We should all be horrified that they continue to put these things up – there are going to be a whole lot of sick people – and I don’t think there is a cure for it.
https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/cace/daacfd16481da14ecb493e97bed247a3a7f2.pdf
Remember when the same people demanded we believe in Love Canal, and who still make millions from supposed cancer connections to virtually anything? Remember when transmission lines were deadly? Yet now, when it suits their agenda, they care NOTHING. People can get sick. Who cares? Now, if you could tie wind turbines to cancer and get a sleazy lawyer…..
“Vibroacoustic disease (VAD) is an occupational disease occurring in susceptible workers who have had long-term exposure (> or = 10 yr) to large pressure amplitude (> or =90 dB SPL) and low frequency noise (< or = 500 Hz)."
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10189154
90 dB SPL? That's the sound of a diesel truck 10 meters away, over a long period of time.
What sort of levels do you expect from a wind farm? Frankly, I don't think you actually know anything much about what you are parroting.
If you get 90dB SPL at 10 meters, what would you get at 100 meters?
Lol, downvotes? Well I'm sure you'll be able to demonstrate your ability to do the calculations.
You may want to read 4TimesAYear’s link – if you did you would see that VAD is different from WTS (wind turbine syndrome) but from the symptoms and physical injuries described by sufferers of both maladies I can’t imagine that anyone would want to be exposed to either. Scroll down about a page into the PDF and it recounts a German couple who suffered all kinds of horrible symptoms (WTS is believed to be caused by pressure waves and not high noise volume) when a wind farm was built near their home.
Yeah, and I can give you anecdotal evidence that vaccines cause autism.
I mean, just look at the language used:
“internal unrest with urge to work more and more”
This is the sort of meaningless drivel that homeopaths are so fond of.
I think this sums it up well:
“Wind Turbine Syndrome: Communicated Disease”
file:///C:/Users/drumphil/AppData/Local/Temp/9781743324998_repository.pdf
Funny how it only effects people who can be convinced that it’s real, and doesn’t effect livestock.
We have evidence that the fact that a researcher (who published a study showing no vaccine-autism link) is a felon on the run doesn’t bother the resident vaxxer in Forbes, or really anyone who supports vaccines.
Which is all we need to know about vaxxers.
“Which is all we need to know about vaxxers.”
Yes, good to see you demonstrating your appreciation of the principles of skeptical thinking.
“stood by while birds were slaughtered”
C’mon Eric…
One issue is the types of birds killed. Cats merrily slaughter birds, small birds, like Sparrows, Robins or the odd, slightly larger one, like Thrushes or Blackbirds. Species that have a couple of broods a year, with 3-5 chicks in each brood. The turbines are killing large birds, birds that may have a single brood a year, with maybe 1 or 2 chicks.
That is a non issue compared with the Birdageddon caused by Communications Towers or windows.
No the issue here is the fake news and Eric’s Litebart agitprop and all the gullible muppets lapping it up and repeating it as true.
You have no idea about ornithology. Windmills mainly kill birds of prey which Eric has described do not dodge the rotor blades. This has a serious impact on the population of birds of prey and thus on the prey of these birds of prey. It overrides a whole food chain and the balance of an ecosystem.
Even in the EU, this is a heavily debated issue and it will become even more over the next few years. Windmill propaganda is the wrong approach but fortunately easy to look up to as lobbying.
Apart from the fact that renewable energy is not economical because there are no storage possibilities. It is not the same thing as a medieval miller during the day and when the wind blows grain to grind as energy around the clock to provide reliably.
The problem is your worship of a worthless piece of garbage and the willingness to destroy the planet to get it. As in “gold” fever and the oil booms, blind love of money and foolish belief in that source of mondy destroys the environment on a scale rarely seen in any other area. Better yet, we can destroy OTHER countries now, so China gets the radioactivity, South American the filthy mines, Aftrica the child labor digging cobalt in 100F+ temperatures. So great for all those virtue-signalling, uncaring people out there. You don’t even have to watch the death and destruction in your own backyard.
RyanS
“That is a non issue compared with the Birdageddon caused by Communications Towers or windows.”
No doubt you’ll have a chart to demonstrate that. Perhaps you could include a credible reference this time.
And what is your credible reference for bird deaths from wind turbines?
There are no credible sources. Wind locks everyone out to hide the truth.
Chris
I didn’t make a claim that required a reference, credible or otherwise. Nor did I post a chart without reference.
And your contribution to this discussion is? Other than trolling.
No, HotScot, you just attacked the source of another poster without providing anything yourself. That’s called a drive by debater, that’s what you are. Big on sweeping claims, incredibly lacking in supporting links.
Chris
Read my post dimbo.
I may have been sarcastic but I merely asked for a chart and a reference. Stick your own drive by comments where the sun don’t shine.
Effing amateur.
It is true, your whataboutery doesn’t make the bird toll any less.
Gary Ashe
What is also overlooked is that onshore bird and bat deaths can be counted by the number of carcasses under any particular turbine (counted by whom I wonder).
Offshore turbine bird deaths can’t be counted as the carcasses either sink or are swept away.
Correction: “stood by while birds were slaughtered for an environmentally horrible device that is useless except for making money for billionaires”. There, fixed it for you.
Using Ryan’s “logic”, since millions have been killed in wars, nobody has a right to complain if I kill a couple more.
That’s essentially what a very well known French feminist actually wrote about rapes in Germany: immigrants may have harassed, attacked, raped many German women, but that’s small compared to the number of rapes after the defeat of the Reich III, so that is not a big story.
And the feminist leftist who wrote that she was allegedly raped when she was young – the criminal was never found. Now I doubt that.
That’s a story she told several times to illustrate how women are often victims…
Would anyone please tell HER how much her story of being a rape victim is insignificant compared to rapes of many more women somewhere else?
I’m going to guess by hunting they mean legal hunting and not poaching or shooting endangered species. If that’s the case then hunting shouldn’t even be on the graph. Under proper wildlife management the number of birds killed is restricted in order to not have a negative impact on the species. And also note that of all the bird species (in the US, at least, not sure what area your graph is supposed to pertain to), very few can be legally hunted.
Marine animals (*) in general kill many more fishes than barrages possibly hurt, right?
(*) let’s avoid the semantic dissertation of “fish” and what isn’t one
Would this be considered ‘speaking truth to power’ (pun intended)?
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2018/06/pope-francis-seeks-green-energy-miracle-from-oil-companies/#comment-2368395
[excerpted and edited]
I tire of terms such as “clean energy” and “green energy”, emotional words used by scoundrels to enlist and motivate imbeciles.
Most renewable energies are not “clean” or “green” and produce little useful energy, because they are too intermittent, too diffuse and above all are NOT dispatchable.
I provided a rough calculation on wattsup that (grid-connected) wind energy is worth about 5% of dispatchable energy, because wind requires almost 100% conventional back-up and is often not available when you need it most.
Years ago I tried to “dumb down” this message so even politicians could understand it:
“Wind power – it doesn’t just blow – it sucks!”
“Solar power – stick it where the Sun don’t shine!”
Regards, Allan 🙂
Trump is getting energy right – just as every pro-green-energy scoundrel/imbecile got it wrong.
My expertise is energy, and I have an outstanding track record of successful achievement. I was recently nominated for an award by two of the top people in Canada for initiating three of the four major factors that revitalized the Alberta energy industry, driving 250 billion dollars in investment and creating 500,000 new jobs.
I have been frustrated for decades with our corrupt/idiot politicians, who have been driving up energy costs and destabilizing vital energy systems with intermittent “green energy” schemes, which are not green and produce little useful (dispatchable) energy.
Most politicians are so ignorant about energy that they should not even opine on energy, let alone set energy policy.
Cheap, abundant, reliable energy is the lifeblood of society – it IS that simple.
When green scoundrels/imbeciles drive up energy costs, they increase Winter Deaths, especially among the elderly and the poor, and they drive away investments and jobs.
Green energy is not only bad for humanity, it is harmful to the environment. From slicing up birds and bats to clear-cutting the rainforest in SE Asia and the Amazon for biofuels to draining the vital Ogalalla aquifer to grow corn for fuel ethanol in the USA, almost every green energy scheme is a really terrible idea, both economically and environmentally.
It is difficult to believe how terribly wrong our corrupt/idiot politicians have been on green energy, until you realize they all made money promoting it.
I posted the following BEFORE the last USA election.
America won – the nation AND the people.
Attaboys all around.
Best, Allan 🙂
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2016/10/24/the-clintons-renewables-plan-would-create-green-jobs-but-would-also-destroy-real-jobs/#comment-1885571
Hi John MacDonald,
My serious comments in the above post were these, and they were very serious:
“A USA election is imminent. For most countries, I suggest that the question of a Hillary vs a Donald would come down to “who gets energy right (Donald), and who gets it utterly wrong (Hillary).”
Cheap, reliable abundant energy is the lifeblood of society, and our very cheap fossil fuel energy should provide our two countries with an overwhelming economic advantage, IF the greens would stop sabotaging our economies to advance their far-left political objectives.
Since the USA is a global power, there are more issues than just the domestic economy.”
I tend to agree with your comments John, regarding the risks to “liberty and freedom, the rule of law and the survival of the Constitution”. However, as a Canadian I do not think I should comment on these matters. The American people have a critically important choice to make, and you should understand these issues far better than I do.
I hope your voters do not get dragged down by the mud-slinging that is going on, and focus on the facts that matter. For the Clintons to focus on Trump’s alleged sexual misconduct, given Bill’s sordid history, is a remarkably bold attempt to influence the stupidest voters in America.
I have never liked campaigns to “get out the vote”. I would be much happier if there was a campaign to urge really stupid voters to stay home – something like a skill-testing question on a billboard, with the caption:
“If you are too stupid to answer this question, STAY HOME – you’re way too stupid to vote!” 🙂
Regards, Allan
Chop the birds!
Don’t vote ever for any politician who in any way supports any kind of subsidy for any kind of wind power. Cut off the funding, cut off the killing.
Don’t vote for a politician who supports subsidies of any kind.
It can not be emphasized enough: “free” wind and solar cause electricity prices to rise.
“Who would have thought? Nations with more renewables have more expensive electricity”
http://joannenova.com.au/2018/01/who-would-have-thought-nations-with-more-renewables-have-more-expensive-electricity/
Birds are mashed to bits… while the crickets chirp…
Worse than crickets chirping, wind actively defends and endorses the killing of the birds.
For 50 years wind turbines for electricity have been an infant technology that demands massive taxpayer dollars to build, a tax free existence and mandatory purchase at several times the cost of readily available and, in comparison to natural gas, having an impact on carbon emissions and pollution that is miniscule. They survive only with huge propaganda campaigns by those who make money off their existence (which would be those that build and operate these enormously expensive and inefficient monuments) and politicians getting kickbacks in the form of campaign donations and by being given the ‘Wizard of Oz’ illusion that they are saving the planet.
Greens don’t even know the difference between a deduction and a credit on tax returns and the social consequences of paying no taxes because of credits.
Windmills don’t even look like they generate that much wind.
And the power consumption must be enormous.
Steve O
The money consumption when they don’t turn and the operators are still paid is even more eye watering.
Silent Spring but with a whoosh of the giant blade.
Trump is right, and also does a great job of mocking/triggering the loonies. Exactly what is needed.
Don’t you just love it when he calls a black woman a “dog?” Tell me that is exactly what we need.
Seems like somebody was triggered…..
I care less about what he says than what he DOES — like unmasking the rampant, deep corruption developed by and still present in the government from the Obama junta. And gradually undoing all the damage done by the same. THOSE are the important things.
Sure, that explains why several of his Cabinet appointees including Pruitt and Price were forced to resign over ethics violations. Trump has had a higher % of senior appointees leave (forced out, resigned or fired) than any President in history.
Chis! Triggered you too! As a snow-fake, you’re melting, melting….
Trump is fine-tuning his organization. None of this reorganization has distracted Trump from his goal of Making America Great Again.
I think Trump said he still had about 400 appointees that had not been given a vote because the Senate Democrats are obstructing the process at every available opportunity.
I guess the Senate Democrats want to keep The Swamp entrenched in the various bureaucracies for as long as possible.
The Senate Democrats aren’t having as much success holding up Trump’s judicial appointees because former Senator Harry Reid decided to change the Senate rules and allow a simple majority vote for confirmation (51 votes instead of 60).
Trump is going to end up appointing a record number of Federal Judges.
So what you are saying is the thieves, cheats, and liars were always kept by previous presidents.
Chris
Here we go again. You on your “ethics” violations.
You wouldn’t know an ethic if it bit you on the arse.
Interesting. According to you, insulting a black person is proof of racism.
Calling your wife/girlfriend a “dog” is an insult, but who said the insult was racist?
If the poster (i.e. you) wasn’t implying racism, why bring up the “dog’s” race?
David Dirkse, You did, by adding the adjective “black” to “woman”.
“Dog” can also just mean a low-life.
Even if they desperately deserve it.
He called a backstabbing, arrogant, nasty person a dog. Yes, we need more of that.
You really think Donald will call himself a dog? (although anyone that brags about “getting away” with grabbing a woman’s kitty is in essence a DOG).
I really think that people like yourself are so far distant from reality that you can never, ever know anything but fantasy and lies.
Only a “dog” would pay a woman $150,000 for a one night stand.
Betty,
It wasn’t a one night stand.
Trump, author of “Art of the Deal”, got a hell of a deal for his consenting relationship with a gorgeous porn star.
Clinton paid over 800 grand to the attractive, but not world class porn star beauteous Paula Jones for only exposing himself to her, against her wishes. I’ve tried to forget the details, but IIRC, she got off easy and he didn’t rape her, as he did so many other victims.
Clinton has so lowered the standard, that now even forcible rape, with lip biting, doesn’t disqualify a president, as long as he’s a Democrat. Nor his accomplice “wife”.
You think Stormy Daniels is gorgeous?
Everyone is gorgeous to someone. There’s no accounting for taste.
“Betty” is a sockpuppet
“Don’t you just love it when he calls a black woman a “dog?”
Trump calls lots of people “dog”. He called all these people dogs at one time or another:
Mitt Romney
David Gregory
Chuck Todd
Ted Cruz
Brent Bozell
Erick Erickson
Glenn Beck
Steve Bannon
Bill Maher
David Axelrod
Arianna Huffington
and now Amorosa
Hawaii is asking to “take” more endangered Hawaiian hoary bats.
“We want green energy, but are we willing to do that at the extinction of our only native land mammal?”
Wind Farms Want Permission To Kill More Bats — A Lot More.
https://www.civilbeat.org/2018/08/wind-farms-want-permission-to-kill-more-bats-a-lot-more/
Considering the ESA was always a tool for political control, yes. Birds that get in the way of the CAGW meme must go. They are dying for a good cause, though.
/s (sort of)
Yea verily, the birdchoppers are an environmental, as well as economic disaster. They are in fact, worse than useless monstrosities.
“They are in fact, worse than useless monstrosities.”
Absolutely! Windmills are a big, expensive, damaging distration from where the world ought to be going with regard to energy production.
When Trump announced his run, I was ecstatic knowing he was anti wind. The liberal politicians along the eastern seaboard have been pushing throwing this junk into our ocean, displacing traditional fishermen from their sacred fishing grounds. We had hope. Now, the administration is pushing wind farms like Obama did. I am thoroughly disappointed.
I am the Donald
I speak for the birds.
Not only the birds will love you for that, Mr. President.
If the problem is eagles and other large raptors having evolved to believe that nothing else in the air can hurt them, then why have I heard so much in past WUWT articles about wind turbines also killing smaller birds?
Donald L. Klipstein
Perhaps because the large raptors are endangered?
And perhaps the smaller birds are just more numerous and routinely operate at the height of the turbines.
Then there’s bats. In the UK bats are protected, so much so that if they occupy a space in a building they can’t be removed, and by that I mean your house.
But no one objects to them being killed by turbines, no matter how small the numbers may be.
are there any figures for the numbers of birds killed by wind turbines?
Not accurate ones. Many numbers come from “self-reporting”. We all know how accurate that is. Plus, there are various criteria for counting the birds—a certain radius out from the turbine and nothing outside of it. Thus, if the bird is thrown outside that radius, it does not count.
More telling is bird counts by birding groups that show declines in raptor numbers.
Warmunistas dispute the facts, but it’s at least millions of birds and bats per year just in Spain just from wind farms, without factoring solar arrays. Globally, it’s probably hundreds of millions.
http://savetheeaglesinternational.org/new/us-windfarms-kill-10-20-times-more-than-previously-thought.html
http://savetheeaglesinternational.org/releases/spanish-wind-farms-kill-6-to-18-million-birds-bats-a-year.html
I can confirm from the vast wind farms in my AO that bird and bat choppers kill flying animals every night and day. The power companies hire people to gather up and dispose of any bodies not already taken by coyotes or other scavengers.
Subsidies need to END. Divide the total annual subsidies given out by county, state and federal governments by the number of electrical utility customers. That subsidy is not in your electric bill but is being paid for by those households that pay county, state and federal taxes. It is actually regressive in that while the cost of electricity goes up, mine has increased 5% a year for the last 10 years, the taxes are added on top of what they pay. The poor pay more as they pay both for the electricity and then the Taxes are added to their rent or mortgage. Look at the Multi Billions that Buffets Electric Utilities have been given and had deducted from Buffett’s taxes as a CREDIT, not a deduction but, in essence a check given by the government to pay his taxes. That is CASH not going into the treasury. Cash that YOU have to make up in your taxes. Same with the lack of property taxes on these egg beaters in your county. Your county taxes go UP. And then your electric bill goes up because of the way electricity is sold on the wholesale level.
Here’s an idea. Allow the current subsidies for the Windmills but also add in a fine for each bird chopped. Let’s see how eager they’ll be to build them when they realize the fines would surpass the subsidies.
Reminds me of a post Jo shared from Matt a while back….
Read the comments and pay particular attention to TonyfromOz who is spot on!
http://joannenova.com.au/2017/05/matt-ridley-wind-power-makes-0-of-world-energy/