Free Republic

Today we have yet another example of what was unintended, but probably could have been seen coming had our government know-it-alls not been blinded by their ideological mission. We call these Global Warming Oops Moments. There’s no shortage of them. “While President Barack Obama is touting clean energy such as wind farms, a group of American scientists are raising alarm bells that wind turbines increase the effects of global warming, as well as killing birds that fall prey to the deadly spinning blades,” says an item from Dallasblog.com.

As Jimi Hendrix may have put it: “And the wind cries bankrupt…” Minnesotans for Global Warming report that in the last 30 years, the United States has had 14,000 wind turbines abandoned. Apparently, once the subsidies and the wind run out, these 20-story high Cuisinarts are de-bladed and retired. This means more bats and migratory birds will live. From Minnesotans for Global Warming: “The symbol of Green renewable energy, our savior from the non existent problem of Global Warming, abandoned wind farms are starting to litter the planet as globally governments cut the subsidies taxes that consumers pay for the...

When the Netherlands built its first sea-based wind turbines in 2006, they were seen as symbols of a greener future. ... But five years later the green future looks a long way off. Faced with the need to cut its budget deficit, the Dutch government says offshore wind power is too expensive and that it cannot afford to subsidize the entire cost of 18 cents per kilowatt hour -- some 4.5 billion euros last year. The government now plans to transfer the financial burden to households and industrial consumers

This one's really off the radar. Wind farms, along with solar power and other alternative energy sources, are supposed to produce the energy of tomorrow. Evidence indicates that their countless whirring fan blades produce something else: "blank spots" that distort radar readings. Now government agencies that depend on radar -- such as the Department of Defense and the National Weather Service -- are spending millions in a scramble to preserve their detection capabilities. A four-star Air Force general recently spelled out the problem to Dave Beloite, the director of the Department of Defense’s Energy Siting Clearinghouse. "Look there’s a radar...

German Chancellor Angela Merkel announced on 30 May that Germany, the world's fourth-largest economy and Europe's biggest, would shutter all of its 17 nuclear power plants between 2015 and 2022, an extraordinary commitment, given that they currently produce about 28 percent of the country's electricity. Underlining the government’s seriousness in changing the country’s energy matrix, Germany's Kreditanstalt fur Wiederaufbau (German Development Bank) is to underwrite renewable energy and energy efficiency investments in Germany with $137.3 billion over the next five years, Germany Trade and Invest reported. Overall, the German government's 6th Energy Research Program has made an extraordinary $274.6 billion...

These pointless monstrosities will continue to proliferate until the Government sees sense. Three separate news items on the same day last week reflected three different aspects of what is fast becoming a full-scale disaster bearing down on Britain. The first item was a picture in The Daily Telegraph showing two little children forlornly holding a banner reading “E.On Hands Off Winwick”. This concerned a battle to prevent a tiny Northamptonshire village from being dwarfed by seven 410-foot wind turbines, each higher than Salisbury Cathedral, to be built nearby by a giant German-owned electricity firm. The 40 residents, it was reported,...

"Renewable energy isn't something pie in the sky," Obama said during a speech at Cardinal. "It's not part of a far-off future. It's happening all across America right now. " ... It can create millions of new jobs and entire new industries if we act right now." Jeff Grabner, vice president and head of the company's wind business, told the Plain Dealer earlier in the week that Cardinal had been losing business to European suppliers who had underbid Cardinal, forcing the company to trim its workforce by 15 employees a year ago.

Reality has overtaken green hope. Facts are pesky things. And they're particularly pesky when it comes to the myths about the wind energy business. For years, it's been an article of faith among advocates of renewables that increased use of wind energy can provide a cost-effective method of reducing carbon dioxide emissions. The reality: wind energy's carbon dioxide-cutting benefits are vastly overstated. Furthermore, if wind energy does help reduce carbon emissions, those reductions are too expensive to be used on any kind of scale. Those are the findings of an exhaustive new study, released today, by Bentek Energy, a Colorado-based...

The futility of squandering money on wind farms has been laid bare by the United Kingdom's new budget for windmill construction. Christopher Booker of the U.K. Telegraph in his column yesterday highlighted the folly that is ongoing in the United Kingdom and Europe; he writes: In the week when it was reported that 20 per cent of the EU's fast-soaring, trillion-euro [US$ 1.4 Trillion] budget may soon be spent on "fighting climate change", it was timely that Britain's energy companies should have met with the Department of Energy and Climate Change to raise one of the best-hidden secrets of our...

NEW YORK – Recalling Dan Brown's bestselling novel "The Da Vinci Code," computer experts have discovered strange anomalies in the Obama birth record released by the White House. They include a different birth registration number that shows up in "hidden text," remnants of the short-form certificate apparently bleeding through the long-form and a "smiley face" in the registrar's stamp that does not show up on other recently issued Hawaii birth records. Curiously, in a simple process run by Optical Character Recognition software that reveals hidden text, the registration number 10611 turns up, instead of 10641, the number displayed on the...

WIND farms are much less efficient than the industry claims, according to new research. A report produced for the conservation charity the John Muir Trust (JMT) says turbines are producing below 10 per cent of capacity for more than a third of the time. It claims that for extended periods, all the wind turbines in Scotland linked to the National Grid produce less than 20MW of energy - just enough power for 6,667 households to boil their kettles. Helen McDade, JMT's head of policy, said: "This report is a real eye-opener for anyone who's been wondering how much power Scotland...

Wind turbines wring energy out of a free-flowing fuel ­supply that may be losing some of its punch. Surface winds appear to be weakening across the Northern Hemisphere, including in the United States, Western Europe, and China—the world's top three markets for wind power. And climate change threatens to weaken them further during this century as faster warming over northern ­latitudes trims the temperature gradients that energize airflows.

Oil tycoon T. Boone Pickens' TV commercials blasted the airwaves in 2008 with his big idea to get America off foreign oil imports: natural gas and wind energy. Two years later, let’s just make that natural gas. Since the billionaire’s plans for the world’s largest wind farm fell apart in the Texas Panhandle, Pickens has edited his much-hyped “Pickens Plan” to focus primarily on his other big business interest: natural gas. Touting 1.7 million Pickens Plan supporters, he’s now pushing Congress to pass legislation that would offer incentives to convert 18-wheelers and fleet vehicles to run on compressed natural gas,...

A research company in New Hampshire recently announced the patent of their bladeless wind turbine, which is based on a patent issued to Nikola Tesla in 1913. The Fuller Wind Turbine developed by Solar Aero has only one rotating part, the turbine-driveshaft. The entire assembly is contained inside a housing, so that this turbine offers several advantages versus blade-style (primarily horizontal-axis type) turbines. With a screened inlet and outlet, this turbine does not present a danger to wildlife such as bats and birds. To an outside observer, the only movement visible is the entire turbine housing as it adjusts to...

Public and private partnerships could be the wind that pushes the company forward in the race for high-speed rail and alternative energy in the United States.German industrial conglomerate Siemens AG is betting that the United States will become a prime market for high-speed rail and renewable energy as the nation tries to lessen its dependence on fossil fuels. Part of the company's success in these areas will depend on what happens in Washington. But government support alone won't fuel future growth in high-speed rail, says Daryl Dulaney, CEO of Siemens Industry Inc. "To make high-speed rail happen, it needs a...

The Gulf Oil Spill has at least allowed Obama to make good on one of his campaign promises: he has managed to unite the country, the country is now more united than it has been in years; of course, we are united against the foolish Progressive Agenda of the Clown in Chief.  Even the most dedicated Socialists and the most fervent Obama ideologues are realizing that Obama has neither the ability nor the experience to guide a country through this disaster or any other emergency.  Rather than seeking solutions to our immediate problems, he is advancing the energy agenda...

Study: Wind Farms = Bird Killers Tiffany Kaiser - June 7, 2010 11:51 AM A recent study in Klickitat County, Washington shows that active wind farms in Washington and Oregon kill more than 6,500 birds and 3,000 bats annually. Biologist Orah Zamora works for West, Inc., an ecological field study company, monitors the Windy Flats project, one of the largest wind farms in the United States. Zamora looks for dead birds and bats that have been severed by the spinning blades of the surrounding wind turbines in order to conduct survey's to observe how wind-power development is affecting birds. "It's...

I ride my bike to work. It seems so pure. We're constantly urged to "go green" -- use less energy, shrink our carbon footprint, save the Earth. How? We should drive less, use ethanol, recycle plastic and buy things with the government's Energy Star label. But what if much of going green is just bunk? Al Gore's group, Repower America, claims we can replace all our dirty energy with clean, carbon-free renewables. Gore says we can do it within 10 years. "It's simply not possible," says Robert Bryce, author of "Power Hungry: The Myths of 'Green' Energy." "Nine out of...

CLEVELAND (AP) -- General Electric and a regional development group say they plan to create the world's first freshwater wind farm, in Lake Erie offshore from Cleveland. GE and the Cleveland-based nonprofit Lake Erie Energy Development Corporation, or LEEDCo, today announced a partnership that will begin with the construction of five wind turbines in the lake that will generate 20 megawatts of power by 2012. Cuyahoga County prosecutor Bill Mason led a task force that created LEEDCo. He says the electricity produced by the turbines will be enough to power as many as 7,000 homes. Mason says the wind farm...

What's 410 feet tall, makes a humming sound and could be at a lake near you soon? Answer: Wind turbines — an alternative source of power that is creating a stir on both sides of the state. Lake St. Clair is the latest target for 160 wind turbines, according to State Rep. Timothy Bledsoe, D-Grosse Pointe Farms. Bledsoe has scheduled a community forum on May 3 to discuss the impact the wind turbines will have on the lake. Bledsoe said the turbines are as tall as a 40-story building and 50-plus turbines will be clustered together in each field. He...

Future Fuels: Our secretary of energy pushes bio-refineries and windmills to oil executives at an energy conference as the administration announces a three-year offshore drilling ban. This is a policy for economic suicide. They don't qualify as an official group of victims, but carbon-Americans, as they have been called, did not have much to cheer about last week, when Energy Secretary Steven Chu addressed CERAWeek 2010, a premier industry conference hosted by IHS Cambridge Energy Research Associates. With an economy struggling to regain sound footing, Chu advocated a starvation diet devoid of additional fossil fuels that are to remain under...

Alliant Energy’s Iowa customers will be seeing higher bills this month to pay for the utility’s investments in green energy. The utility plans to ask state regulators for a 13.8 percent, $163 million annual rate increase today to pay for a new $468 million wind farm, and to improve its ability to transmit energy from renewable sources. The 200-megawatt Whispering Willow Wind Farm in Franklin County is the first owned by Alliant’s Interstate Power & Light utility. It began operating in December, and has enough capacity to serve about 150,000 homes at full output. Improving the transmission grid to enable...

Energy: When even Chuck Schumer is upset with the White House, you know something's amiss. In this case, it's news that efforts to boost wind power with taxpayer stimulus dollars are filling foreign coffers and creating foreign jobs. According to the Investigative Reporting Workshop at American University, nearly $2 billion in money from the American Recovery and Investment Act has been spent on wind power. The goal was to further energy independence while creating American jobs. It has done neither. Of the money spent, according to the report, nearly 80% has gone to foreign manufacturers of wind turbines. "In all...

The cold weather is creating a number of unintended consequences for new energy designs. First, snow accumulating on LED traffic light bulbs wouldn’t melt because the lights failed to heat up resulting in car accidents, and in some instances, death. In Minnesota, the weather resulted in wind turbines freezing and thus not turning even if it is windy. This local news story has the details: But that’s not the only problem with wind power. It’s not the economic savior the government thought it would be. The stimulus money is failing to create the clean energy jobs the White House said...

For those who suspect residents in places like Minnesota of embellishment when it comes to their tales of bitterly cold winter weather, consider this: even some wind turbines, it seems, cannot bear it. Turbines, more than 100 feet tall, were installed last year in 11 Minnesota cities to provide power, and also to serve as educational symbols in a state that has mandated that a quarter of its electricity come from renewable resources by 2025. One problem, though: The windmills, supposed to go online this winter, mostly just sat still, people in cities like North St. Paul and Chaska said,...

<p>For those who suspect residents in places like Minnesota of embellishment when it comes to their tales of bitterly cold winter weather, consider this: even some wind turbines, it seems, cannot bear it.</p> <p>Turbines, more than 100 feet tall, were installed last year in 11 Minnesota cities to provide power, and also to serve as educational symbols in a state that has mandated that a quarter of its electricity come from renewable resources by 2025.</p>

Climate: As alternate-energy champ Spain's green economy slides into recession, a German professor says if American "climate illiterates" don't follow, the Copenhagen climate conference will fail. And the bad news is? King Canute, the Viking king of England, Norway and Denmark, was the legendary king whose sycophantic followers praised his power and wisdom. As the story goes, he once stood on the shore and commanded the waves to halt. Rather than exercising his ego, he in fact was giving his followers a lesson in reality — the power of man over nature is finite and inconsequential. In December, the world's...

What is happening with alternative "green" energy, involving such environmentally-unsound measures as erecting windmill generators along Appalachian ridgelines which are migration routes for songbirds, raptors, and Monarch butterflies, is a boondoggle, a fiasco, a travesty -- but it is all very politically correct, so none of that matters.

Gone With The Wind By: Tait Trussell FrontPageMagazine.com | Thursday, July 30, 2009   The statuesque and towering windmill represents one of Barack Obama’s grandiose hopes for renewable energy in our future. But windmills also have a troubling feature: They can be bad for your health. Dr. Nina Pierpont has conducted substantial research on what she calls “wind turbine syndrome,” the clinical name she has given to the “constellation of symptoms experienced by many (though not all) who live near industrial wind turbines.” These include sleep problems like insomnia; headaches; dizziness; unsteadiness and nausea; exhaustion; anxiety; anger and irritability; depression;...

Al Gore’s campaign against global warming is shifting into high gear. Reporters and commentators follow his every move and bombard the public with notice of his activities and opinions. But while the mainstream media promote his ideas about the state of planet Earth, they are mostly silent about the dramatic impact his economic proposals would have on America. And journalists routinely ignore evidence that he may personally benefit from his programs. Would the romance fizzle if Gore’s followers realized how much their man stands to gain? Earlier this year Gore experienced a notable public relations debacle. The Tennessee Center for...

The idea of wind generated electric energy is being sold by environmentalists as an overlooked opportunity to reduce greenhouse gasses. Global warming advocates claim that this discounted treasure could be a major part of an effort to reduce the burning of fossil fuels and eliminate the need for some of our nuclear power plants. Is it true that we are passing up on a gold mine of renewable energy in favor of unnecessary and harmful fossil and nuclear fuels? Let's start by looking at what we use to generate the power we use today. Renewables, such as wind, solar, biomass,...

The Spanish professor is puzzled. Why, Gabriel Calzada wonders, is the U.S. president recommending that America emulate the Spanish model for creating "green jobs" in "alternative energy" even though Spain's unemployment rate is 18.1 percent — more than double the European Union average — partly because of spending on such jobs? Calzada, 36, an economics professor at Universidad Rey Juan Carlos, has produced a report that, if true, is inconvenient for the Obama administration's green agenda, and for some budget assumptions that are dependent upon it. Calzada says Spain's torrential spending — no other nation has so aggressively supported production...

LAKE HUGHES [california] - Plans for the installation of 70 wind turbines on a ridge northwest of Lake Hughes and construction of power lines to connect them with an already-controversial proposed power line in Leona Valley have been submitted to Los Angeles County regional planners. But residents of the Lakes communities aren't too happy about it. "We as a community are not getting a lot of oversight protection on these projects," said Jim Walker, president of the Lakes Town Council. Speaking at a town council meeting Saturday, Walker said he is also concerned about the aesthetic and ecological impacts the...

tuna writes "A real-world test by the Dutch province of Zeeland (a very windy place) demonstrates that small windmills are a fundamentally flawed technology (PDF of tests results in Dutch, English summary). Twelve much-hyped micro wind turbines were placed in a row on an open plain. Their energy yield was measured over a period of one year (April 1, 2008 [][]March 31, 2009), the average wind velocity during these 12 months was 3.8 meters per second, slightly higher than average. Three windmills broke. The others recorded ridiculously low yields, in spite of the optimal conditions. It would take up to...

Weaning the U.S. off imported oil by drilling for known reserves off our coasts and under federal lands is a no-cost economic stimulus that would create 160,000 high-paying jobs and generate $1.7 trillion in new tax revenue and royalties. Tapping this resource would stop the flow of U.S. dollars to Middle Eastern sheikdoms, Hugo Chavez’s Venezuelan madhouse and other OPEC outposts of petroleum-fueled global lunacy. But even though a large majority of Americans favor expanding domestic oil and gas production, the Obama administration is literally tilting at windmills instead. The Minerals Management Service estimates that there are 115 billion barrels...

ATLANTIC CITY, N.J. – Windmills off the East Coast could generate enough electricity to replace most, if not all, the coal-fired power plants in the United States, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar said Monday. (snip) Salazar could not estimate how many windmills might be needed to generate 1 million megawatts of power, saying it would depend on their size and how far from the coast they were located. (snip)

Officials are investigating a fatal accident along Highway 15 and 2nd Street South in St. Cloud Wednesday morning. Police have rerouted traffic while the Minnesota State Patrol is reconstructing the accident that occurred shortly after 11 a.m. According to witnesses, a series of semi trucks carrying wind turbines hit a minivan. Investigators have been mum on details, and the number of vehicles and victims involved has not been released.

If the chOIce is between oil rigs off Virginia Beach or windmills, it's no choice at all:- Petroleum is the fuel of the past; wind is energy for the future.- Petroleum contributes to global warming; wind doesn't.- Burning petroleum pollutes; wind won't.- Drilling for oil and gas leaves toxic chemicals in the water; wind can't.- Oil and gas spill; spilled wind is called "air."- Petroleum requires intrusive on-shore facilities; wind requires a connection to the electric grid.- There isn't enough petroleum off Virginia to make a difference in prices; the state is considered the best location for a wind...

MAYOR Michael Bloomberg has proposed a renewable energy program for New York City that would include placing windmills on city bridges, solar panels on skyscrapers, and the use of tidal, geothermal and nuclear energy. Mr Bloomberg unveiled the outlines of his plan late yesterday at a major clean energy summit in Las Vegas organised by the University of Nevada. "Just five years ago last week - on August 14th, 2003 - this country got an object lesson in how big a gamble we're taking with our future if we don't change course," said Mr Bloomberg, referring to the giant blackout...

Strong Energy Measures Wanted Poll Shows Most Favor New Drilling, Taxes on Oil Profits By Jon Cohen and Paul KaneWashington Post Staff Writers Sunday, August 10, 2008; Page A08 A new national poll shows broad public support for government action in the face of $4-a-gallon gas and other energy concerns, giving Republicans a rare opening to go on the offensive against congressional Democrats and Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.). Nearly two-thirds of Americans now put a priority on "finding new sources of energy" over improving conservation -- a significant shift since 2001 -- and majorities support all of the five potential...

As North Texans sweltered through another 100-degree-plus day, the windmills around Sweetwater turned lazily in the West Texas breeze, generating enough electricity to power about 250,000 homes. It’s not much — barely 1 percent of the peak electricity demand Monday for the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, operator of the transmission grid for about 75 percent of the state. But it’s about what is expected from the state’s wind-power industry, by far the nation’s largest, during the dog days of summer, when temperatures climb but wind speeds dip on the West Texas plains. "In general, wind’s peak energy does not...

Major Michael Blankenship, from Jonesborough, Tenn., 489th CA Bn., samples purified water from the windmill in al-Zatir, Iraq, May 5. U.S. Army photo by Spc. Justin Snyder. FORWARD OPERATING BASE HAMMER — U.S. troops visited windmills in al-Zatir and Hollandia, Iraq, on a quality analysis and control trip May 5. The Soldiers with 3rd Heavy Brigade Combat Team, 3rd Infantry Division, the 489th Civil Affairs Battalion, and 2nd Brigade Combat Team, 1st Armored Division, made the trip to check on progress made on windmills over the past eight months. Major Michael Blankenship, from Jonesborough, Tenn., 489th CA Bn., oversees the...

But will we all get free wooden shoes? Barack Obama didn't say. But he does have a plan to give people jobs. Put them to work . . . building windmills. His idea came in response to a question at last night's Compassion Forum on CNN from Jim Wallis, a leading member of the religious left whose focus is "social justice." Wallis wanted Obama to commit to a new War on Poverty. JIM WALLIS: As you reminded us a week or two ago, when Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was killed 40 years ago, he wasn't just speaking about civil...

MOJAVE - After years of negotiating and planning, the biggest transmission project for renewable energy in the nation is finally set for its first leg of construction. Officials from Southern California Edison, the state Public Utilities Commission, the state Independent System Operator, government representatives and private energy business leaders met Friday morning beside Oak Creek Road west of Mojave for a groundbreaking ceremony to kick off the first phase of the Tehachapi Renewable Transmission Project. By the time the entire project is complete, the lines will be able to carry up to 4,500 megawatts to light Southern California homes and...

HOUSTON (Reuters) - A drop in wind generation late on Tuesday, coupled with colder weather, triggered an electric emergency that caused the Texas grid operator to cut service to some large customers, the grid agency said on Wednesday. Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) said a decline in wind energy production in west Texas occurred at the same time evening electric demand was building as colder temperatures moved into the state. The grid operator went directly to the second stage of an emergency plan at 6:41 PM CST (0041 GMT), ERCOT said in a statement. System operators curtailed power to...

There’s a foul wind blowing off Cape Cod. The clean-energy project known as Cape Wind makes more sense than ever, what with the mess in the Middle East and the earth getting warmer by the minute. But resistance to the proposed wind-farm — which would place 130 windmills in Nantucket Sound and provide up to 75 percent of the Cape’s energy at any given time — proves that it really isn’t easy being green. Since Cape Wind was first proposed in 2001, the project has made plenty of powerful enemies (see the sidebar “Enemies in High Places”), including Ted Kennedy,...

Danish Island Is Energy Self-Sufficient (March 9) - It's a two-hour ferry ride to the Danish island of Samso — and it can seem like a trip back through time... Samso is an area about 40 square miles long with a permanent population of about 4,000 — all of them living a green dream. Take farmer Erik Andersen. His tractor runs on oil from rape seed, which he grows. His hot water and power come from his solar panels or wind turbines. There's not a fossil fuel in site. --snip-- To harness the wind, of which they have plenty, they...

Will DHS become the town Marion Ashley and Southern California Edison Killed? "Dillion Wind Project," County application number WECS 116 and 117 text asks for approval of 45 wind turbines 327 feet tall (not including elevated base) with 100 foot long rotating blades. But figure 32 in the same application shows 55 proposed wind turbines and figure 3-4 in the same application shows 52 wind turbines and 3 additional meteorological towers 227 feet tall (taller than the current wind towers. This proposed "Wind Project" is to be built on land owned by Southern California Edison. This information is per recent...

No politician in America has a darker history with the waters off Martha's Vineyard than Senator Ted Kennedy. The Chappaquiddick Kid has been leading a three-year old battle to stop a windmill energy farm. A Boston company proposed building 130 wind turbines over a 24 square mile area off the Massachusetts coast. The wind turbines would provide three-quarters of Cape Cod's energy needs and nearly two percent for all of New England instead of relying on coal burning power plants. Greenpeace supported the idea. Yet big-time environmental liberals, the Chappaquiddick Kid, Robert Kennedy, Jr. and the befuddled Walter Cronkite oppose...

Self-proclaimed alternative energy proponent Sen. Ted Kennedy has strongly opposed an environmentally friendly "wind farm” off the coast of Massachusetts – and now it appears Kennedy will have his way. A proposal before Congress would limit the construction of wind turbines and most likely doom plans for the Cape Wind Project, the nation’s first offshore wind farm. [Editor’s Note: Read the book that first exposed Sen. Kennedy’s hypocrisy -- Go Here Now.] "This is a dire moment for us,” declared Mark Rodgers, a Cape Wind Associates spokesman, who said the proposal "would be totally fatal” for the project. The Cape...