Have you considered underwater turbines using tidal current? Would that not be more efficient and consistent than wind, given the reliability of the tides and the far greater viscosity of water over air?
To a certain extent you are right. But, the technology for underwater turbines are not as far along as the wind turbines and naturally the installation and maitenance costs are far higher underwater.
There is plenty of energy out there though.
Storing that energy is really the trick. In Europe, we might be able to use the cheap energy available at night to run water pumps to fill up Norwegian resevoirs. Then, the run the generators to power the rest of Europe during the day. Problem of course is linking the continent and the transmission losses over such a distance. Turns out that Edison may have been right to promote Direct Current.
In the US in lew of resevoirs, perhaps compressed air storage is a way to take advantage of irregular wind.
Key is to get the base power running on the renewables. Dramatic increaes in marginal cost issues (once the infrastructure is there, the cost is essentially zero) and naturally a vast decrease in emissions is a nice side-effect.