Cob Pile
The caribou want us to do it.
Ha!
DadGum e-mailed this to me:
"Three semi's to bring in the new props, a truckload of spare parts, a few man hours rebuilding and that baby will be kicking out kwh in no time.
You can see this home wind generator from M's front window, but I missed the open house."
These must be the sort of cats that vote for laws forcing the rest of us to adopt their crackpot schemes.
Based on an article about the experience in Brazil, about two years ago I had gushed over the idea of ethanol being a great idea on your blog. Either you or Dadgum shot me down by dismissing ethanol as a bad idea. I was convinced of that by the time Bush threw huge support payments to promote the idea of corn based ethanol in his last year's budget. I still recall the whoops of joy ring through the assembly from the politicians who were backed by the big corporate pigs at the trough that would benefit.
As for wind power, I never regarded it as anything other than a marginal player for the amount of power it would generate. The bird thing is certainly an issue. I was surprised that the Feedlot would even care as I have you down as a bunch of hummerhumpers. Anyway, all insults aside, it has been claimed that massive wind farms can actually screw up the weather system by sucking energy from the winds. We all know for every action, there has to be a reaction. And whenever man screws around with nature, it often has bad side effects.
I didn't realize how big those blades were. Great photos!
Why don't they just stick with fueling power from the sun?
A few years ago,after doing a little imperfect math work one day,I estimated that the tips of the blades were moving at well over 100 mph.
Excellent post, pt ... just one more example of the same muddy thinking that says we can farm our way out of an energy crisis. Where do these people learn their economics and science?
CG: It should be obvious to you by now that most of us cats that live where our wealth grows out of the earth are ultimately concerned with it's stewardship. Forestry isn't any different from farming in this respect.
As for disturbing the weather patterns, who will be able to test this hypothesis? I like the idea, but I'd rather call it offending the wind spirits. Its so Sumerian.
---
UW: Eco-nuts are generally well educated. Look at the ones I linked in my previous comment. They could paper their walls with degrees, I'd bet. In today's academic world, science and most all forms of scholarship have been co-opted by the movement. Be green or be gone.
What you and I learned about physics, economics and most everything else we learned is no longer operative. A real parchment makes a great chamois-like lens cleaner after you wash it a few times.
DG: M's house is "in the country" isn't it? Or has it become "town"?
PT: I think it's always been within the city limits.
IMHO, we need to go nuclear as quickly as possible as a long-term solution to our electrical needs. If the French can do it, surely we can too.
My own experience with nuclear power has left me less than enthused. Its an anecdotal uneasiness, not really founded upon reason.
When Chernobyl burned, I was too close. Close enough that I wasn't allowed to travel to uncontaminated places to get away for quite a while.
Official advice: stay indoors, close the windows, don't eat fresh foods, give the kids iodine pills, etc. Its a helpless feeling; you can't tell things are radioactive. I didn't like the thought of the locals deciding when it was OK. What the heck did they know?
When you consider the hundreds and hundreds of folks who died from boiler explosions, fires and flywheel breakups when steam power was first adopted, nuclear power seems pretty safe.
We were in W. Germany when Chernobyl happened. Many grocery items became unavailable because of the contamination. If the cloud drifted our way, they didn't tell us.
Still, you must remember that they had the oldest type of nuclear reactor. Modern ones have advanced greatly in safety.
Also, coal-fired power plants aren't exactly pollution-free or health-friendly, though their effects are not as dramatic.
I was in Turkey, in an area where local weather and some badly timed rain had caused a hot spot. Germany was one of the places that I thought about going then, G.
Turkish cigarettes and some of the local tea were suspect for a long time. I don't know why it should bother me. When I was a kid, the US was conducting above-ground atomic and hydrogen bomb tests. Folks worried about Strontium in the milk.
What about the theory that Hanoi Jane's movie, "The China Syndrome" is to blame for America's nuclear jitters? Yet another reason to dislike Jane Fonda.
Coal might be dirty, but we must have lots of it. I live next to the UP tracks and have watched a whole mountain of it getting hauled East. If the pollution gets to you, just change over to compact fluorescent light bulbs and buy some carbon credits from Al Gore. ;)
>I was surprised that the Feedlot would even care..
He doesn't. This is just "friend of my enemy is my enemy" stuff.
He forgot to mention the composite blades are made of rendered human fetuses, the gearboxes are lubricated with seal blubber, and each tower has a secret transmitter for marxist mind-control experiments.
Gee, you're the sort that gives all the other gun-totin', wife-beatin', pickup-drivin', beer-swillin' rednecks a reputation fer bein' all liberal and warm 'n' fuzzy, ain'tcha, boy?
this has got to be the most republican red neck blind eyed peice of shit blog i've ever seen. You've taken everything to the extreme you hill billy famrer fuck. ya sure let's keep burning coal and smogging up the air. ya that's way less harmful to the crops and animals and people then a couple trucks doing repairs. like holy shit man you've gotta be completely retarded to have written this. Clearly you need a re-education on wind power. CHANGE IS A COMING OLD MAN DEAL WITH IT
that wasa very good article got me thinking about my project is this good or very dangerous
hey ass dont talk that way about a article
Drop dead, Jack, you insolent boor. I don't know where you got your education or experience, but it would seem from the public schools and your liberal pals.
I wasn't discussing 'pollution' but rather efficiency. Inefficient energy production always results in more net damage to the environment than more efficient production. (2d law of ThD.)
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