[Sioux-san]

Solar and Wind turbines are anything but GREEN - huge environmental footprint plus the toxic materials that go into their construction. Efficiency is the least of the Enviro/Marxists' concern. They just want way fewer people on earth and the remnants as miserable as they are. The Eagles be damned.

[Hojczyk]

Try putting a oil well where some of these wind mills are?? Columbia River area???

[umgud]

Make everybody on public assistance walk a treadmill (5 miles worth?) to collect their benefits.

[B.O. Plenty]

Better than training dogs would be turnstile generators powered by welfare recipients. They would have to put in 8 hours a week walking the turnstile to generate electricity. The turnstiles would operate 24-7-365.

The 47% would suddenly become productive and important to society instead of a dead-weighted drag...

[DWC]

Hope they are the people that are fewer.

[Uncle Chip]

There are a whole lot of welfare recipients in this country and they are not just those living on food stamps and using Obama phones.

[T-Bird45]

Love that first paragraph — excellent use of logical absurdity to make the point.

[boomop1]

Congress critters don’t give a rats ass, the only thing that will change congress is term limits, and that will never happen unless the states do the bidding. No tax changes no nothing they are comfortable being ass holes.

[Scrambler Bob]

I live near the Mojave Desert, which is becoming full of these windmills. Ruins the view, among the other ills. Where’s the view police? And they blink their red lights on top all night (interestingly they are all synchronized to blink at the same time). Doesn’t this waste some of the precious electricity?

About the hydroelectric dams. Talking with a long time controller for one of the dams on the Columbia; about 20 years ago he managed the water to get the most electricity from it. Now he has to waste it then the wind power is at a surplus. Makes me sick. Hard to puke when I’m already puked out from everything else.

Solution — Use the surplus wind power to run the dams’ turbines backwards to pump the water back upstream to store it behind the dams. Simple and straight forward.

Oops, don’t let a ‘greenie’ read this — they will try to do it.

[DTogo]

Windmills don't work when the wind isn't blowing. The wind power lobbyists don't emphasize that point.

The wind lobbyists don't have too because the Production Tax Credit helps to ensure projects that produce the most energy, where the wind blows the most often, are the ones that get built. Additionally the Production Tax Credit has incentivized the wind industry design much more efficient turbines that have average net capacity factors in the 40-50% range, and sometimes over 50%.

There are very few places where the wind always blows, and, not surprisingly, hardly anybody lives near those mostly unpleasant places.

Then it shouldn't matter to this author if those unpopulated "unpleasant places" are covered with wind farms, right?