I hate wind turbines and the entire wind power gestalt with the fusion-powered hatred of a thousand suns. They are eyesores, expensive and unreliable. And I don’t think anyone has studied the impact they will have on bird and insect populations. This is especially important when bees are affected. They pollinate our food. If they get sucked into the vortices created by the wind turbines, this is going to affect our food supply and not in a good way.
I take the plight of the poor bees to heart for an unusual reason. My father loves wilderness paddling — he is certified by the Explorers Club of New York and the Canoe-Kayak Federation of Canada as the first person to lead an expedition the entire length of the Whale River in Quebec. I only got to go on one of his wilderness river trips, which was on the Missinaibi River in Ontario. There’s a rapids about five miles south of Mattice with a little island that divides the river. My father tried to take me through the right side of the island, which was class IV water — above my ability, but he thought he could get us through. However, I wasn’t strong enough to paddle upstream far enough to be able to turn the decked C-2 (two-person canoe) to the chute we had targeted. The Missinaibi grabbed us and we almost broached on a rock. I will never forget what it was like to be powerless against that current. That’s why I identify with the bees getting overwhelmed by the wind vortices from the turbines.
So I am delighted to point my readers to a great article on the objections to wind power at American Thinker here.
And while I was perusing Little Miss Attila, as is my daily habit, her post here attracted me to Blue Crab Boulevard, who might very well live in my neck of the woods — we revere the blue crab in these parts and hold regular feasts in its honor every summer — and now resides in my Blogroll. As it happens, the Crabman is an engineer and he has an excellent post about wind energy here. Also, make sure to read his brief and lucid explanation of power generation here, which gives your understanding of why wind power is unacceptable as an alternative energy source a solid foundation.
For the record, I favor nuclear power. Fission, baby, fission!
P.S.
I can’t leave out Stacy and Smitty.
P.P.S.
Or Michelle Malkin, who blasts Obama’s current climate nitwittedness here and here.
Most excellent view. I can’t recall as to where I read the article, but the British have wind farms that are VERY ineffective, expensive and hard to upkeep.
Keep the faith!
Sean~ aka EagleEye
You may want to also check out Eric S Raymond’s note on Alternative enrgy sources here:
http://esr.ibiblio.org/?p=521
Also denBeste:
http://www.denbeste.nu/cd_log_entries/2002/09/Obscureenergysources.shtml
and here:
http://www.denbeste.nu/cd_log_entries/2002/09/Morepracticalproblems.shtml
and here:
http://chizumatic.mee.nu/ghosts_of_my_past
I’m not sure that bees cruise at blade altitude.
But I’m pretty much in favor of anything Ted Kennedy has opposed in the past (not to hammer a guy with brain cancer, but his political moves are fair game).
Smitty,
Naturally the upper and lower boundaries of the vortices should be researched, but I expect they extend down to the ground and far above the wind turbines, which I call “bird Cuisinarts.” Wind power supporters in Maryland covet the breezes wafting over the state’s extremely modest mountain peaks and want to chop down all those unsightly trees there and replace them with wind turbines. How can that NOT chop up migratory birds?
Regarding Ted Kennedy, do you mean he has opposed nuclear power and therefore you support it? If so, that’s good enough for me; I’m just not clear that’s what you mean.
Cynthia
Ted Kennedy famously opposed the Cape Wind project b/c it would disturb the view from his house. And of his rich neighbors. Nevertheless, the trouble with all the alternative energy sources is that they are intermittent. Electricity cannot be efficiently stored and that’s a problem. Though I would like to see someone run the numbers of a combo of shoreline windmills and pumped storage facilities. Michigan has a lot of potential for this, but don’t count on Jennie Granholm to ever back anything like it.
The real need is for baseline power generation. If you don’t like CO2 emissions, then nuclear is the only way to go. And the very best nuclear engineering program in the entire world is at The University of Michigan. Not that I’m biased or anything. As we speak there are fission reactor designs coming out of UMich that burn rad waste in a conventional light water reactor with just a fuel rod design change.
Go Blue.
Barbara Durkin,
Your blog is empty of content and all the links on it go to blank pages, so I deleted your comment as spam. You are welcome to comment again when your site has content and your links go to real content.
Cynthia