Posted on 09/11/2009 8:27:29 AM PDT by Saije
A weird and irrational cult has us in its grip. If the Mormons or the Moonies started taking over the BBC and the Government, which then harangued and persecuted us into wearing funny underwear or getting married in mass ceremonies, we would – I hope – rise in revolt.
But the ‘Man-made Climate Change’ fanatics are applauded and praised, even as they force us to abandon perfectly sensible electric lights, and instead subject ourselves to strange, flickering substitutes, simultaneously worse and more costly than the ones they replace.
There is worse to come. The same people wish to compel us to rely for our power on windmills, million upon million of them, as if we had never discovered more efficient and reliable ways of generating electricity.
And they are succeeding. Few areas in Britain are now unthreatened by deranged projects to install intrusive, gigantic wind-farms on prominent sites.
This must be one of the first instances of a civilisation voluntarily and consciously going backwards. We might as well rely for our economic and industrial future on tens of millions of hamsters pattering frantically round treadmills. Hamsters only do this by night. Windmills only make electricity when it is windy. See the problem?
For most of us, the truth has yet to sink in. Our old lightbulbs still function, or we have stockpiled a few. And the nuclear and coal-fired power stations which keep our country going have some years yet to run before they wear out or a Brussels decree shuts them down for ever.
But the time is not far away when we will find the irrational opinions of these maniacs being forced upon us unpleasantly in our daily lives. The lights will be too dim to read by.
(Excerpt) Read more at dailymail.co.uk ...
Maybe the Kia Soul Car commercial hamsters are available?
The UK has to get out of the EU to save itself.
never be allowed to happen. the new regulatory chief would nix this in fear of offending the hamster union.
As I have mentioned before. There is only so much wind on any given day. If we take that wind and convert it to electricity, what impact could it have on the environment? Even more global warming? Wouldn’t wind help cool the planet?
While driving through Indiana on I-65 on Monday, we drove by the enormous field of numerous dormant wind turbines. WTH is going on with that project?
All the wit of his brother, without the marxism. I enjoy reading this Hitchens.
Yes, mostly by carrying surface heat away through water evaporation which results in more clouds that reflect incoming sunlight back out to space. Extracting energy from the wind causes desertification and global warming. Fighting global warming with wind farms is one of the more stupid ideas.
That's because the tax credits ran out. Once a wind turbine is fully depreciated, it costs more to operate than the electric company is forced to overpay for the fickle electricity.
I would not be a big fan of a windmill in my backyard, but this is a bit silly.
Yeah, they make it when it’s windy, but it doesn’t take much wind. Hardly ever is it truly calm. Even then, it stores what was made.
I just think this is silly. Why not make some use out of the wind for our purposes...doesn’t seem backwards to me at all!
You do realize they don’t actually take the wind itself....it still blows. All that is done is the movement is converted to electricity through the turbine’s motion.
Except in San Francisco, where they would use gerbils.
The wind is a key player in the climate. If a wind turbine slows the surface wind speed down 25%, evaporation will be reduced 25%. The desertification caused by wind turbines is more than the CO2 emissions it replaces.
I hadn’t thought about that, but I took an intro met class and do recall the wind played an integral role. You may be onto something there, a pretty shocking fact if true!
It takes quite a bit of wind, usually at least 12 mph steady which is quite rare in the summer most places. As for storage, there is no storage. That's why Texas had a huge blackout when the wind went down unexpectedly over a large part of the grid.
I thought I had read it did store, but if not, wow.
That is a SERIOUS problem with wind energy!
I understand the people pushing this have an agenda that goes far beyond "saving the planet," I just can't believe anyone listens to their stupidity.
A windmill stores nothing. Battery or capacity technology to do that at the scale needed and at a convenient price point doesn't exist yet.
It does take some wind, and it is truly calm enough. Maybe parts of Kansas are never calm, but in MN/IA there are calm hot sweaty summer days which are also the peak electricity demand days.
And then, wind can be too strong forcing the windmills to stop.
Living our lives by the rhythms of nature, being hot and sweaty in the summer and dark in the windy winter is going backwards.
He looks like he is saying “what, me work”!
They do take energy out of the wind, which slows the wind, so yes they do take the wind itself.
You have implied this in your own argument. If you convert movement to something else, that movement doesn't exist anymore, i.e. the wind slows.
I don't know the efficiency of energy extraction or how much the wind slows, but it's probably enough (>0) to cause some fanatic to get upset about it sometime in the future.
Nationwide, capacity factor for wind generation is in the range of 25-30%. Who in their right mind would invest in an income-generating asset that effectively sits idle about 3/4s of the time? It is a nightmare for grid stability as well. Having a source online that becomes variably and unpredictable depending on the whims of Mother Nature is precisely what you don't want when your job is to serve the load and keep the frequency as constant as possible.
Not storing the energy is a fatal flaw, needless to say. I thought they did.
Even in KS, there can be some calm scorching hot summer days with virtually no wind.
The lights will be too dim to read by.
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There is always whale oil...
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