Wind Power = environment threat???

[ChasingBlueSky 0]

According to what I read in the Wall Street Journal today, that is a fact stated by Sen Alexander (R) from Tennessee. What exactly is that threat? Apparently "A gigantic public nuisance" and "a disaster for the SE" because "the sound of these machines is like a brick wrapped in a towel tumbling in a clothes drier on a perpetual basis."

He wants tax credits denied for these. He wants subsidies cut off.

I wonder if he has any other reasons for this?? As it turns out he has strong allies/friends in the utility industry, particularly Southern CO of Atlanta, which runs the largest fleet of coal-fired power plants. He also owns an undeveloped lot in Nantucket near the site of a proposed 130-windmill complex in the Nantucket Sound area (Sen Kennedy (D) has campaigned against this project).

Yet, he claims this is to "protect taxpayers to preserve the beauty of America's outdoors."

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you can burn the land and boil the sea, but you can't take the sky from me....
I WILL fly again.....

[lawrocket 3]

It's NIMBYism, plain and simple.

I, on the other hand, wonder about the environmental costs of the windmills. Clearly, the windmills strip the energy off of natural winds. There must be some effect on the environment by controlling the winds.

Up near Byron are a lot of windmills. Do the windmills prevent the natural migration of air and the contents of the air further inland? Do the windmills contribute to the heating effect inland by slowing down the cooling coastal air as it replaces the rising warm air?

It seems to me that on a grand scale, windmills can tamper with the environment on more than an appearance and sounds scale.

My wife is hotter than your wife.

[Lindsey 0]

I heard something not too long ago about a wind power plant somewhere in the mid-west (I think) next to a body of water used by water fowl during migration. Was that a post in SC? Or did I read it somewhere else....

linz

--
A conservative is just a liberal who's been mugged. A liberal is just a conservative who's been to jail

[ChasingBlueSky 0]

Do you feel a 300 foot tower with 95 foot long blades will do any more damage than a condo building, skyscraper or billboard?

I recently saw something on the Science channel where they found the town on the Canadian side of Niagra Falls has changed the wind patterns after the tall building boom. Now the fog from the falls doesn't clear out as much, and often it invades the town. They now have a plan to put new buildings around town to redirect the wind back to the falls.

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you can burn the land and boil the sea, but you can't take the sky from me....
I WILL fly again.....

[IanHarrop 43]

When, oh, when will people finally realize that the only answer is nuclear power

Clean power and the waste is useful too! It has very high resale value in some parts of the world that want to use for manufacturing stuff

"Where troubles melt like lemon drops, away above the chimney tops, that's where you'll find me" Dorothy

[lawrocket 3]

I figure it would. The purpose of the windmills is to converted the wind energy. How clean is wind energy?

My wife is hotter than your wife.

[billvon 3,120]

>Clearly, the windmills strip the energy off of natural winds. There
>must be some effect on the environment by controlling the winds.

Not much, on a macro scale. There's just such an incredible amount of energy there that you're not going to dent it with some three hundred foot tall, two hundred foot wide windmills. There will be some local effects - a few thousand feet downwind of the machine you will see lessened winds and more turbulence. But when you consider that we're only using ~1% of the area of a given wind mass even if we go coast-to-coast with windmills, and we're sticking the windmills in the slowest (and thus least energetic) part of the wind - the overall effect is going to be pretty small.

[kelpdiver 2]

the wind power stolen is insignificant. OTOH there is a real concern at Byron wrt the number of birds killed. This is causing a shift to fewer larger blades.

Wind and tidal energy are the cleanest available sources, but the scale required is a bit daunting. Offshore seems like the way to do it, but where you have the most potential energy you also have the rough ocean to contend with.

[ChasingBlueSky 0]

I forgot to mention he wasted time in the Senate with this - and it went to a vote. 42 members voted for it!! Luckily not enough to pass. He has made some changes to it and will bring it to the floor again.

Funny, we have more important things that need to get passed and looked over and this Sen is more worried about the view from his backyard.

Have I mentioned how frustrated I am with politics in general?

_________________________________________
you can burn the land and boil the sea, but you can't take the sky from me....
I WILL fly again.....

[skydyvr 0]

The problem is simple. As we place more and more units into production, the earth's rotation will gradually slow due to excessive wind resistance, in turn causing the earth to plummet into the sun within a few years.

. . =(_8^(1)

[mr2mk1g 10]

Ony environmental issue I've heard was the number of birds they kill. I'd hazzard a guess though that they kill far fewer than the average coal or oil power station... it's just they end up in little piles at the bottom of the windmill.

[shropshire 0]

I think that some people are maybe missing the point here...
It has nothing to do with the Cleanliness of Windpower per se. and much more to do with how much it costs (in energy terms) to manufacture, ship and install the windmills. They are not FREE and contribute to the polution equation far more than it would first appear.

They are not very efficient and so I'd be interested to see a fully audited cost/benefit analysis and the engery equations.

.

(.)Y(.)
Chivalry is not dead; it only sleeps for want of work to do. - Jerome K Jerome

[kallend 2,150]

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The problem is simple. As we place more and more units into production, the earth's rotation will gradually slow due to excessive wind resistance, in turn causing the earth to plummet into the sun within a few years.

Umm - where did you learn your physics?

...

The only sure way to survive a canopy collision is not to have one.

[wmw999 2,589]

Quote

The problem is simple. As we place more and more units into production, the earth's rotation will gradually slow due to excessive wind resistance, in turn causing the earth to plummet into the sun within a few years.

Umm - where did you learn your physics?***
Probably in SC -- isn't that where we all go for up-to-date information?
I thought it was kind of funny, myself

Wendy W.

There is nothing more dangerous than breaking a basic safety rule and getting away with it. It removes fear of the consequences and builds false confidence. (tbrown)

[ChasingBlueSky 0]

Quote

The problem is simple. As we place more and more units into production, the earth's rotation will gradually slow due to excessive wind resistance, in turn causing the earth to plummet into the sun within a few years.

Why do you have to be so difficult? Everyone knows that the world will slow down and eventually start to turn the other way - this way we will go back in time and Lois Lane will never die!!

_________________________________________
you can burn the land and boil the sea, but you can't take the sky from me....
I WILL fly again.....

[mdrejhon 8]

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They are not very efficient and so I'd be interested to see a fully audited cost/benefit analysis and the engery equations.

I saw a Discovery TV show channel special that covered this, and it said something about this penalty being compesated in less than 12 months by the relative cleanliness (compared to other energy sources) versus the manufacture pollution for manufacturing the windmills. So, that's not too bad, if the numbers were true...

(I'm going by memory here, bear with me. But I do remember a timeline being estimated before the manufacture pollution "debt" is paid off. I might be wrong with the 12 months figure, but a figure was quoted)

[rehmwa 2]

Quote

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The problem is simple. As we place more and more units into production, the earth's rotation will gradually slow due to excessive wind resistance, in turn causing the earth to plummet into the sun within a few years.

Why do you have to be so difficult? Everyone knows that the world will slow down and eventually start to turn the other way - this way we will go back in time and Lois Lane will never die!!

The world is already slowing down due to tidal effects. In another 22 billion years you'll all be sorry - hahahahahaha

...
Driving is a one dimensional activity - a monkey can do it - being proud of your driving abilities is like being proud of being able to put on pants

[shropshire 0]

Thanks, if that's the case then it's not as bad as I assumed/guessed.
Cheers.

(.)Y(.)
Chivalry is not dead; it only sleeps for want of work to do. - Jerome K Jerome

[billvon 3,120]

>It has nothing to do with the Cleanliness of Windpower per se. and
> much more to do with how much it costs (in energy terms) to
> manufacture, ship and install the windmills. They are not FREE and
>contribute to the polution equation far more than it would first appear.

Their manufacture does indeed create some pollution, but the energy it creates far outweighs it. Compare that to a coal fired power plant, which takes energy to manufacture, then spends its entire lifecycle putting more and more pollution in the air.

Solar - same thing. It takes between a year and 2.5 years to 'pay back' the power used to create a solar panel.

The name of the game isn't to make something perfectly clean, it's to make something clean enough. The environment can handle some pollution, especially if it's things that it is designed to handle (carbon dioxide, water, carbon, nitrogen.) It just can't handle billions of tons of it.

[shropshire 0]

Thanks Bill,

I just found the following, which may also help..
<
The energy payback time is the time taken to repay all the energy used to manufacture, install, operate and decommission the plant. The payback time for wind is in the order of a couple of months, typically anywhere from 3 to 8 months depending upon the wind speed at the location.

In comparison solar cells have a payback time of around 1 to 4 years depending upon the technology. It’s typically around 4 years for today’s multicrystalline-silicon cells and 3 years for thin-film modules.

It can be expected both will continue to decrease as technologies get better. Only two years ago it was common to use 1.3MW wind turbines, today they are using 1.75MW turbines economically. >>

(.)Y(.)
Chivalry is not dead; it only sleeps for want of work to do. - Jerome K Jerome

[kelpdiver 2]

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The problem is simple. As we place more and more units into production, the earth's rotation will gradually slow due to excessive wind resistance, in turn causing the earth to plummet into the sun within a few years.

We just need to have an equal number of them facing east and west.

[skydyvr 0]

Quote

Quote

The problem is simple. As we place more and more units into production, the earth's rotation will gradually slow due to excessive wind resistance, in turn causing the earth to plummet into the sun within a few years.

Umm - where did you learn your physics?

From a southern US University -- where else?

. . =(_8^(1)

[skydyvr 0]

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this way we will go back in time and Lois Lane will never die!!

LOL. While we're heading backwards -- remind me to buy a bunch of Enron stock in mid-2000, then sell it a few months earlier at a huge profit.

. . =(_8^(1)