I have to respond to this statement first. Do you really think that the country does not have enough land mass to hold enough windmills to satisfy the country's electricity requirements? You can produce about 40,000 mwh per square mile with windpower in northwest Iowa. Each farmer that gets to lease land to a windmill gets $4000/year and loses 1-2 percent productivity. Again, given iowa's 48,000,000 mwh consumption we can produce the equivalent +/- demand mwh with the land mass of 2 counties out of 99 counties in Iowa.
Sure.
Let’s cover every square inch of the planet with windmills.
They’re inefficient compared on almost any other energy source, but what the hell.
You keep using Iowa.
What about New York City? You couldn’t get nearly enough windmills throughout the entire state just to supply that one city.
More of a bad idea doesn’t mean that it becomes a good idea at some point. Sacraficing farm land for windmills is almost as bad as turning those crops into ethanol.
Not in places that have consistent enough wind to be useful. Down here in the southwest we’re boom or bust on wind, the air is either dead still or gusting high enough that it wouldn’t be safe to operate the windmill. Wind power is simply inefficient, takes too much money an land. It’s a cute novelty but it will never become a viable primary energy source.