Posted on 11/19/2011 12:59:33 PM PST by afraidfortherepublic
First rule one learns to ask as a reporter is; "Who says so."
In this case, it's a bunch of environmentalist wackos.
Story is BS
Holland once almost collapsed the world economy of the day with those tulips.
There were small, old machines and no one did a proper job of planning.
New wind farm agreements include provisions for decommissioning and return of the site to previous condition.
A non issue designed to create uproar amongst luddites.
First rule one learns to ask as a reporter is; "Who says so."
In this case, it's a bunch of environmentalist wackos. Where is the proof or even source that there are 14,000 abandoned turbines?
I have always thought these things were just butt-ugly. However, the hypocrisy of the "greens" is what really galls me.
How many loggers lost good paying jobs because some enviro found some critter to put on the endangered species list. Or, simply because they didn't want the trees cut down. But now, they are willing to mow down acres of trees simply to put up these monstrosities. I have nothing but utter disdain for these people and their sham movement.
Actually, the US government wasted billions on corporate subsidies throughout the 1800s (in 2011 dollars). In the 1840s and 1850s, it was steamship lines and telegraphs. In the 1860s to 1880s, it was steel and railroads. A bit later, it was petroleum. Government subsidies led to sloppy and inefficient businesses that would not adopt new technologies, charged high prices, and provided expensive products only affordable by the very rich. In each of these cases, brilliant entrepreneurs who refused to take government subsidies beat the pants off the sluggards who lived off the government teat. But these entrepreneurs have been traditionally excoriated and reviled as "Robber Barons."
For the full story, I highly recommend Burton Folsom's excellent book The Myth of the Robber Barons: A New Look at the Rise of Big Business in America. It strongly bolsters the argument that the government should get out of the way of the private sector and end its wasteful market-distortions.
The tale is told that the dam, originally called Boulder Dam was renamed for Hoover at the cost of several thousands of dollars, for signs, buildings etc. while for about $10 Hoover could have gone to the courthouse and just changed his name to Boulder. Government...in action.
Just a little 'Rest of the Story'.
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I would assume they have outlived their life and sit rusting away
Leaving in their wake people with acoustic fibrosis.
Yup, I want pictures.
These behemoth windmills would be worth a pretty penny to them, and the probability that many of them would fall and break their necks while harvesting turbine parts would be an added bonus.
I'm very familiar with this line of windmills. There are
two such ridges running the length of Il. that are covered
with them. The other is to the west. I wish I had had a
camera with a very long lens to compress the scene south
of Rockford one morning on Rt 39. It was cold and windless
and the mills were completely becalmed. In the distance you
could see the steam rising straight up from the nuclear
plant that was providing all the energy! By the way, the
reason that the mills were running slowly even with the
strong wind is that they have variable pitch blades that
keep the speed uniform to produce the proper frequency of
AC current.
Clean up is sometimes a problem in the real world. A strip mining company, for example. has to clean up after it has removed the minerals it has mined. This involves filling in the hole, disposing of the slag (these two are usually connected) and re-contouring the land.
Green projects shouldn’t have their own set of rules. They need to cover all their costs, including clean up.
In addition to removing these cylinders, the batteries that many of them have need to be carefully disposed or possibly re-cycled.
Oh, the “school solution” when there are clean up costs is to have the company post a bond, equal to the present value of the expected clean up cost.
Don’t get off track here. I think the moral of this story is if wind power is so great why were these wind mills not replaced so they could produce more cheap energy?
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