I'm sure there is money for him in this effort, but I also think that Pickens is working on his energy plan for more than money.

All we need is a Congress that will put in some hard work on a real energy plan.

Jimmy Carter currently on with Olbermann -- if only we would have listened to Carter...

"It takes two to speak the truth - one to speak and one to hear." - Henry David Thoreau

I'm sure there is money for him in this effort

He's admitted that himself...but someone should expect some return on a $10 billion investment in the wind farm he is starting to build in the Texas Panhandle

Defoliate,

Here are the facts:

http://www.windaction.org/documents/16951

Documents

Pickens' decision to back wind power shows why the Wind Production Tax Credit (PTC) should NOT be extended

May 12, 2008 by Glenn R. Schleede

Summary:

Energy expert, Glenn Schleede, explains how federal subsidies make wind power an easy choice for T. Boone Pickens but a losing proposition for American taxpayers.

Introduction

Right now, wind industry lobbyists are pushing the US Congress to extend the highly lucrative wind "Production Tax Credit" (PTC) - an action that could shift another $3 billion in tax burden from "wind farm" owners to ordinary taxpayers.

A recent decision by Texas oil billionaire, T. Boone Pickens, reported by Reuters on April 18, 2008, shows why the Congress should end the wind Production Tax Credit.

According to the Reuters story, Pickens expects "...to turn at least a 25 per cent return" on his plan to spend $10 billion to build the world's biggest "wind farm," consisting of 2,700 turbines and totaling 4,000 megawatts of generating capacity.

Mr. Pickens probably can make a 25% return by building a costly "wind farm" - but at the expense of millions of ordinary taxpayers and electric customers.

His decision shows dramatically what Congress and other federal and state officials have been slow to recognize; i.e., "wind farms" are being built primarily for their lucrative tax benefits and subsidies - not because of their environmental or energy benefits.

Contrary to wind advocates claims, "wind farms" are not environmentally benign, their environmental advantages are greatly overstated, and their adverse impacts are significant.

A 25% return with little risk.

Mr. Pickens' plan to earn a 25% return on a $10 billion investment in wind may sound risky but with huge federal and state tax breaks and subsidies now available, there is little risk.

[Click the below link to read the full report]

Download File(s):
Pickens wind farm and the PTC.pdf (116.53 kB)

Concerning Glenn Schleede, there is some extensive background on him. For example,

"it seems relevant to note that Mr. Schleede has also been an active campaigner against the Kyoto Agreement on global warming and that he is a former Senior Vice President of the National Coal Association."

This is from a report here:

http://www.eere.energy.gov/windandhydro/windpoweringamerica/pdfs/awea_schleede.pdf

As far as the "tax break" assertion is concerned, the document I've provided a link to above notes:

Mr. Schleede claims that wind energy is too costly, and points out that it is subsidized by the federal government.

The cost of electricity from new wind plants is competitive with the cost of new conventional (coal, gas, nuclear) power plants, with the federal wind energy production tax credit taken into account. It is true that few wind plants would be built without this incentive/subsidy. However, it is also true that the traditional energy industries are generously subsidized in a variety of ways, ranging from the federal government pledging its financial backing to the nuclear industry in case of an accident like Chernobyl to payments of about $350 million annually to coal miners suffering from black lung disease.

More importantly, coal, our largest electricity source, receives an enormous hidden subsidy due to the fact that its environmental costs are not included in its market price. A recent article in the scientific journal "Science" placed the cost of electricity from a new coal plant at 3.5 to 4 cents per kilowatt-hour (kWh), but added that its true cost to the public is 5.5 to 8.3 cents/kWh when environmental costs such as air pollution and acid rain are added in. This amounts to a subsidy ranging from 60% to more than 100%(!). As long as the economic system does not reflect such costs, it is good public

 This brings us to the "Industrial Wind Action Group" which is basically run by Lisa Linowes and her husband. Here is another link to a company they run:

http://www.parkerhill.com/about.html

Basically, they are both computer science types that know how to use google and include whatever anti-wind article they encounter onto their website. In particular, their own expertise in the energy field is zippo.

It seems that the identity of the "Industrial Wind Action Group" membership (if there really is any) is very shadowy. As is the funding source for this "group" (my bet is that the coal and/or nuclear power industry may be throwing a few bucks their way)

By contrast, no attempt is made to conceal the membership and directors  for organizations like http://www.awea.org/

Defoliate,

You can try to attack the messengers, but it doesn't change the facts...industrial-sized wind turbines do more harm than good.

Would you care to provide a fact or two to support that statement?

Barry
Are you safer today than you were seven years ago?^©

http://www.stopillwind.org/lowerlevel.php?content=WindEnergyFacts

Here is just the start of some statements made by Jon Boone

http://www.windaction.org/?module=uploads&func=download&fileId=162

"Belief that more forty-story wind plants here will reduce fossil fuel combustion below current levels is demonstrably false, given our increasing demand for electricity"

What kind of statement is that? Assuming that he accepts "an increasing demand for electricity", new wind turbines wouldn't "reduce fossil fuel consumption" of those existing coal-based plants, but could prevent the increase associated with building more coal plants to satisfy that demand.

"More than 2000 wind turbines spread over nearly 300 miles of forested ridgeline like the ones proposed here would not displace one 1600 MW coalplant"

a) of course it wouldn't displace an existing coal plant, but it keeps another one from being built

b) at Horse Hollow Wind Energy Center in Texas (one of several existing wind farms), 735 MW is being generated from 420 turbines (and 2/3 of that number are older turbines with newer 2.3 MW turbines now being installed). So, his 2,000 for 1.6 MW is a bit of a stretch.

Here is a link listing some of the hazards of our current reliance on coal plants:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fossil_fuel_power_plant

At stopillwind.org (Boone's web site), he states that

"My values are green; I believe we should conserve, minimizing our footprint on the earth, not intruding on it with bombast and self-serving incivility"

Perhaps he should read what the Green Party platform states on this issue (re: wind/solar energy). Or perhaps  listen to Carl Pope (Executive Director of the Sierra Club) expressing support for the Pickens Plan. Or perhaps even live his words about minimizing the footprint on the earth and unplug his laptop and website from the Internet in order to conserve energy

As my students know, or soon find out, a web site that doesn't even include an "About" section is a poor reference at best. The site you provided goes beyond that and blocks even the contact information that can normally be found using whois.

It appears that the site is the work of one Jon Boone, a local activist in Maryland.  Generally I like activists so I don't understand why he would want to hide this. All I can discover about his background is that he was once an acting music director at the University of Maryland.

Barry
Are you safer today than you were seven years ago?^©

"industrial-sized wind turbines do more harm than good"

And your solution is nuclear? Drilling? Coal? De-industrialize society? Put everyone in 400 sq ft dwelling units with bicycle transportation?

Not saying that spending about $1 trillion dollars on wind energy is 'easy' (to take something like a 20% bite out of our needs), but the technology is here, now and not some pipedream like nuclear fusion that we might have 200 years from now.

I'm also all for residential wind-turbines (and solar/geothermal) by the way and think tax breaks for that should receive higher priority than tax breaks for cars that are headed to the junk yard  in 8 years.

I respectively say you are deluusional. I think you dragged Eric Massa's name into this. If my quick lookup is correct the issue was foreign companies taking American land by eminent domain to build wind power plants, or something to that effect.

Is he actually a no winder or is he pandering for your votes. Do you have any links?

I can easily show you sucess stories with modern turbines in intallations from Texas to Denmark.

Would you pefer they come into your community and build even more invasive roads and cut down more trees to install a coal burning powr plant and them let remove entire mountain tops and leave reservoirs of contaminated water to leach into your water supply while they mine, strip mine and process the coal?

http://www.savewesternny.org/docs/jacksullivan.html

I didn't see Eric Massa's name in there and what I saw was a lot inchorent statement of fact but no detail on what he plant was actually supposed to acheive.

The last time you popped it you were carping about this issue in Maine. I looked up a recently built wind pwer plant up there and gave you stats on it's first year of operation. The plant though small produced enogh power for around 20,000 northeast homes. It displace 60,000 tons of Co2 and many more tons of other pollutents. It decrease the locals property tax bills by 20% because of the taxes paid by company.

It's actually a draw for tourism.

Just Pickens' operation, when complete in 2014, is expected to generate more than 4,000 megawatts of electricity to feed into the Texas grid, enough to power 1.3 million homes.

Additionally, ERCOT (the agency overseeing the Texas electric grid) is currently overseeing interconnection requests including almost 54,000 megawatts of wind generation. This is why the state just approved $5 billion to build more transmission lines.

My little 1.5kW solar array has generated over 4 megawatts since I first flipped the switch in January, 2007. Imagine if everyone installed a solar array at home (at least in the southwest)...

...and residential wind turbines (assuming that you have the recommendeded size lot) can be purchased and installed for around $15K. Unfortunately, not all localities are set up where you can connect to the general grid and sell any excess generated (which can then be used to purchase power when the wind isn't blowing)

And imagine if people had individual power stations at their house and electric cars they could recharge each night with those power sources.

Solar panels probably not that great in Texas and the Plains since they could easily get bashed up with baseball-size hail in the spring.

Yes, a combination of the two is what's needed.

I ended up getting panels made of thin-film amorphous photovoltaic material deposited on stainless steel (no glass) with the hope that they would better withstand hail. Even so, I doubt they'll survive anything baseball sized. The largest hail we get out in my part of NM is pea sized or slightly larger... but I'm sure that will change along with the global weather.

"...industrial-sized wind turbines do more harm than good."

The Audubon Society does not agree.

Audubon's Position on Wind Power

Summary: Audubon strongly supports properly-sited wind power as a clean alternative energy source that reduces the threat of global warming. Wind power facilities should be planned, sited and operated to minimize negative impacts on bird and wildlife populations.

Rationale: The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has clearly stated that the impacts of climate change are here now and will get worse.[1] Scientists have found that climate change has already affected half of the world's wild species' breeding, distribution, abundance and survival rates.[2] By mid-century, the IPCC predicts that climate change may contribute to the extinction of 20-30 percent of all species on earth.

In order to prevent species extinctions and other catastrophic impacts of climate change, scientists say we must reduce global warming emissions by at least 80 percent by 2050. Reducing pollution from fossil fuels to this degree will require rapidly expanding energy and fuel efficiency, renewable energy and alternative fuels, and changes in land use, agriculture, and transportation. To avoid catastrophe, we need to do all of these.

Wind power is an important part of the strategy to combat global warming. Wind power is currently the most economically competitive form of renewable energy. It provides nearly 15,000 megawatts of power in the United States, enough power for more than 3 million households, and could provide up to 20 percent of the country's electricity needs. Every megawatt-hour produced by wind energy avoids an average of 1,220 pounds of carbon dioxide emissions. If the United States obtains 20 percent of its electricity from wind power by 2020, it will reduce global warming emissions equivalent to taking 71 million cars off the road or planting 104 million acres of trees. Expanding wind power instead of fossil fuels also avoids the wildlife and human health impacts of oil and gas drilling, coal mining and fossil fuel burning.

More at http://www.audubon.org/campaign/windPowerQA.html

Hi Ruth,

Thanks for responding.

http://www.windaction.org/faqs/14735

National Audubon wind power policy critique
(Posted March 17, 2008)

National Audubon’s newly released position statement on wind energy development is short, sweet, and dangerous. Notable deficiencies in the Statement include:

1) Audubon’s use of italics of the word "population" in an apparent effort by Audubon to a) limit concern over wind plant development's impact to wildlife species and b) discourage concern over the numbers killed. The notion that only "population" level impacts should be of concern is an unacceptable flaw in this document since no one can determine what constitutes a "population" for most species of nocturnal migrant songbirds or bats.

2) Audubon asserts that “habitat impacts” can occur and fails to acknowledge the considerable habitat loss that IS OCCURRING. The document omits the term “fragmentation" when describing impacts of wind energy development and appears to only grudgingly concede there may be impacts.

3) Audubon's call for guidelines is weak, and represents thinking that is several years behind the times. Guidelines that do not require mandatory compliance by the wind industry are meaningless. We question whether Audubon understands that the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has had wind/wildlife guidelines available for 5 years and that this voluntary guidance has been largely ignored by the wind industry.

4) Most egregious is Audubon’s failure to recognize the threat of wind energy development on our national forests and state-owned lands. Audubon should be calling for a ban on wind development on public lands as long as suitable privately-owned lands are available. Further, Audubon should be insisting that wind projects on public lands comply with more stringent siting and monitoring requirements than any provided via "guidelines".
(Analysis by D. Daniel Boone)

Also, this is a very good general analaysis about industrial scale wind power:

http://www.windaction.org/documents/15028

Documents

Are the claims about wind power accurate? - a presentation

March 26, 2008 by D. Daniel Boone

Summary:

Dan Boone, consulting conservation biologist, presented these slides at the "Save Ice Mountain" public forum in Tyrone, PA.

Each slide serves as a resource for those seeking answers about the impacts of utility-scale wind development along forested ridgelines in Pennsylvania.

Download File(s):
Boone_Tyrone talk_26Mar08.pdf (3.69 MB)

It's good to know you guys are going to set those neophytes at the Audubon Society straight on this.

 Are you guys going to go after the heavy hitters first and ban windows?

http://www.birdsandbuildings.org/faqs.html

4. How many birds die from hitting windows? Approximately one billion birds are killed every year in the United States, per experts like Muhlenberg College Professor Dan Klem who has done extensive analysis for three decades. Birds killed include healthy and sick, large and small, common and endangered.

 http://www.wind.appstate.edu/windpower/myths.php

• Tall smokestacks- A study at a single Florida coal fired power plant with four smokestacks recorded an estimated 3,000 bird kills in a single night during a fall migration.
• Oil spills at sea - In a single oil shipping accident, - the Exxon Valdez oil spill in Alaska's Prince William Sound - more than 500,000 migratory birds perished, or about 1,000 times the estimated annual total in California's wind power plants.
• Additional threats to birds from other energy sources include: mercury emissions from coal fired power plants; global climate change resulting from the combustion of fossil fuels; acid rain resulting from coal fired power plant emissions of SO2 and NOx and; destruction of habitat as a result of mining activities associated with the coal, gas, oil and uranium industries.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CmBWLm78Ges

Pretty extensive article here at:

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/06/us/06wind.html

Here are a few excerpts:

Like Mr. Kennedy, Mr. Boone says the areas he wants to protect are uniquely vulnerable. His family owns property near the proposed projects, just as Mr. Kennedy's does near the Cape Wind site.

But Mr. Boone says that wind supporters are the ones pursuing their own agenda at the expense of the public interest.

"I'm not sure that wind turbines in this region will significantly reduce the outcome of global climate change or actually have any role," Mr. Boone said. "The very limited benefit doesn't justify the risk of wiping out a lot of interior forest habitat."

National environmental leaders reject this argument.

"There's no free lunch," said Paul Hansen, executive director of the Izaak Walton League of America, a venerable sportsmen's group. " 'Not in my backyard' is not environmentalism."

Boone seems to support the idea that we should continue dependence on coal and nuclear power plants (in fact, coal is used to power about 50% of the nation's electricity).

"Dan looks at all the impacts of a given wind project," Mr. Rackstraw said, "but doesn't say: 'If we didn't have wind, what would we have?' Coal. Think of the impact of acid rain and mountaintop removal."

And as far as nuclear is concerned, if the people there want to rely on that as a source of energy instead of wind, fine, but quit shipping the waste you produce across our states and instead manage the storage within your own mountains for the next few thousand years.

Altamont: winter, more migratory birds + less wind = shut 'em down

California's largest wind farm cluster at Altamont Pass unintentionally kills golden eagles, burrowing owls and other threatened birds. Now, wind companies, scientists and environmentalists are working to bird-proof these massive wind farms.

video:
http://www.kqed.org/quest/television/view/367

We have to do wind AND protect avians.

We can do both.

(except PUMAs. of course)

Estimates of birds killed in the US by cats range into the hundreds of millions

From Santa Clara Audubon Society:

Half the cat-caught birds brought into Wildlife Rescue in Palo Alto in 1994 were fledglings, emphasizing the particular vulnerability of birds during the nesting season. Combined with habitat loss, predation by cats could be a burden that many bird populations won't be able to withstand.

hawk....and live to tell about it.

More and more domestic cat owners are keeping their pets indoors these days...truly the more responsible thing to do for all concerned species.

As for PUMAs (upper-case variety) they're by far more threatening than those sharks you're always fretting about. I'd sooner keep company with a California mountain lion....but that's just me.

Sometimes it's the trying that's most worthwhile.

That's no mockingbird there!

Parents say Great Horned Owls in Kansas (where they grew up) could do a number on pets also.

""Falling coconuts kill 150 people worldwide each year, 15 times the number of fatalities attributable to sharks," said George Burgess, Director of the University of Florida's International Shark Attack File and a noted shark researcher."

""In the mid eighties, the British government asked scientists to calculate the likelihood people would die from various causes. The study was meant to convince people nuclear power was safe, and there were many ways to die that were statistically more common. Along the way, the scientists came to some interesting conclusions about how people the world over kick the bucket:

An asteroid kills one person every 7,000 years. Imagine being that unlucky.
You have a 1 in 300 million chance of getting killed by a shark, or die in a fairground accident. Go ahead, that roller coaster is super safe!
The odds of getting killed by a falling coconut are slightly bigger: 1 in 250 million. Unless you live in Finland, then it’s 1 in 3,897,546,999,056,000.
Chances of dying in a plane crash: 1 in 11 million, although those odds go way down when you don’t fly.
Getting killed by lightning: 1 in 10 million. Those are the same odds as getting killed by escaped radiation from a nuclear reactor. Except if you live near Chernobyl.
Dying in a terrorist attack: 1 in 9.3 million.
Burnt by hot water: 1 in 5 million.
1 in 4.4 million: chance of a left-handed person dying from using a right-handed product.
1 in 3.5 million: snakebite.
1 in 3 million: food poisoning.
1 in 2 million: falling off a ladder.
1 in 685,000: drowning in the bathtub.
1 in 500,000: dying in a train wreck.
1 in 43,500: getting killed during work. Worse odds if your last name is Pastorelli and you live in Jersey.
1 in 8,000: dying in a car wreck"
http://avandekamp.wordpress.com/2008/06/19/odds-of-dying-from-a-falling-coconut/

Then of course there's a form of highestly patriotismic dissenter:

More so, but be careful with statistics.

A person living in Topeka, KS, isn't really in any danger from a shark. An abalone diver in northern California is. Statistics are often averages. If I work in a coconut plantation, I'm wearing a hard hat. But if I'm a professional surfer or diver, I'm looking out for sharks.

http://www.answerbag.com/q_view/911437

So there you have it. No worries for wind farms.. coconut farms are the real killers!

We do let them in our attached garage. They've never gotten a bird, but they've gotten many mice, several snakes, and a bat once. And our youngest, Penny, never met a centipede she didn't like; most times we just find a ton of tiny legs left.

We learn. We change. That's progress. If we don't do that, well, we're GWB.

http://www.washintonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A39941-2004Dec31?language=printer

washingtonpost.com

Researchers Alarmed by Bat Deaths From Wind Turbines

By Justin Blum
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, January 1, 2005; Page A01

Jessica Kerns thought her survey of new power-generating wind turbines on a mountaintop in West Virginia would yield the standard result: a smattering of dead birds that were whacked by the whirring blades.

But the University of Maryland doctoral student turned up something unexpected amid the trees and rolling ridges of Backbone Mountain: hundreds of bat carcasses, some with battered wings and bloodied faces. "It was really a shock," Kerns said.

Thousands of bats have died at Backbone and on another nearby wind farm in Meyersdale, Pa. -- more per turbine than at any other wind facility in the world, according to researchers' estimates. The deaths are raising concerns about the impact of hundreds more turbines planned in the East, including some in western Maryland, as the wind industry steps up expansion beyond its traditional areas in the West and Great Plains.

The bat deaths, which have baffled researchers, pose a problem for an industry that sells itself as an environmentally friendly alternative to conventional power plants. Wind proponents already have had to battle complaints about bird deaths from the blades and about unsightly turbines marring pristine views.

The white turbines in Appalachia rise more than 340 feet above the ground -- well above the tree canopy -- and are lined up close to one another to catch the wind as it blows over the mountains and ridges.

The bat problem could worsen, conservationists fear, as wind developers rush to erect new turbines following the recent renewal of a federal tax break for a year. The wind industry, which had been virtually dormant since the last tax break expired a year ago, projects more wind turbines to be built around the country this year than in any previous year. In the areas near where bats have been killed in Pennsylvania and West Virginia, activists said, roughly 700 new turbines have been proposed or approved.

"Take the most conservative estimates of mortality and multiply them out by the number of turbines planned and you get very large, probably unsustainable kill rates," said Merlin D. Tuttle, president and founder of Bat Conservation International, whose Austin-based group is leading the research effort in Appalachia. "One year from now we could have a gigantic problem."

Bats serve an important role in nature, and their populations are believed to be in decline, scientists said. The bats getting killed in Appalachia devour insects that pose grave threats to crops such as corn and cotton. They also feast on pests that can spread disease, such as mosquitoes.

On Backbone Mountain, at a facility called Mountaineer Wind Energy Center, the first dead bats were found in 2003, soon after the project's 44 turbines came online. Conservationists and the wind industry hoped the deaths were a fluke.

But Kerns and other researchers returned last year and now estimate the 2004 death toll at between 1,500 and 4,000 bats. Nearby, another group of researchers, working at the 20-turbine wind farm in Pennsylvania, which came online a year ago, found a raft of bat carcasses as well.

Researchers do not know why bats are flying into the turbines. Armed with radar and thermal imaging cameras, they are trying to come up with recommendations for wind power developers to avoid the problem. Researchers are uncertain whether bats are attracted to the spinning blades or if their sonar, which allows them to find food and avoid trees and other objects, fails to detect the turbines.

None of the species of bats found on the two mountains is endangered, said Albert M. Manville II, a biologist with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. The carcasses found include those of hoary, red and eastern pipistrelle bats. The deaths appear to violate no federal laws, Manville said, but the threat is serious. Unless a solution is found, he said, the turbines could get a reputation as being "bat Veg-o-matics."

The large number of dead bats caught the wind power industry by surprise, and now its leaders are scrambling to find a solution.

"It was something that when we found out about it we felt we needed to respond to immediately," said Laurie Jodziewicz of the American Wind Energy Association in Washington, which also is participating in the research. "What we wanted to do this year was to get a handle on what's going on. "

The wind industry confronted its biggest environmental challenge when early model turbines in Northern California killed large numbers of birds. The industry says newer turbines and more attention to site selection have dramatically cut the number of bird deaths in subsequent projects around the country, though some environmentalists say too many birds are still dying.

The turbines tend to attract a lot of attention as they pop up around the country, but they are responsible for generating a tiny amount of electricity in the United States.

Last year, the industry said, it provided nearly 17 billion kilowatt hours, enough to serve some 1.6 million households -- less than 1 percent of the country's electricity production. Analysts said future expansion of the industry will be tied largely to whether the tax break remains on the books.

Wind power is generally more costly than generating electricity by more conventional methods -- though analysts said federal and state subsidies make the alternative more attractive. In addition, they said that as natural gas prices rise, wind becomes more competitive.

An increasing number of states require that a certain amount of power come from renewable sources, such as wind. During debate over federal energy legislation in previous years, some interest groups called for a requirement that renewable sources account for a certain percentage of the nation's electricity production.

In the East, wind has only recently caught on, and the most preferable areas are on mountains where wind tends to be most powerful.

In West Virginia and Pennsylvania, the turbines are positioned on wide paths cleared amid maple, oak and other hardwood trees.

And that may have something to do with the bat deaths. Bats appear to be attracted to the open areas cleared by the wind developers because they can more easily find insects there, researchers said. But they are unsure why the bats hit the blades of the turbines -- whether they're attracted or accidentally fly into them.

Some of the bats are migrating south and others live near the wind farms, researchers said. Most of the deaths occurred between July and September, which includes the months of peak migration.

The two sites where researchers have found a large number of bat deaths are operated by FPL Energy of Juno Beach, Fla., the largest U.S. generator of wind power.

"There is something going on . . . that we don't fully have our arms around," said Steve Stengel, a spokesman for FPL, which has helped fund the bat research. "Our hope is that there are some suggestions based on the research of things that can be done to potentially reduce the number of collisions."

Some in the industry argue that there's no evidence that the bat deaths in Appalachia will be repeated on other wooded mountaintops or ridges in the East. Bat conservationists disagree, saying the evidence gathered so far suggests the problem will recur.

Several wind developers working on projects in Appalachia said they were concerned but planned to move ahead. Among them is Clipper Windpower Inc. of Carpinteria, Calif., which is planning a project on a portion of Backbone Mountain in Western Maryland, about 20 miles from the Mountaineer project.

"We're hopeful that they're going to identify some of the major issues there and we'll be able to respond to those," said Kevin Rackstraw, the company's development leader for eastern North America. "I don't think it's an acceptable response . . . to stop everything until we have answers. You can't just bring everything to a screeching halt. You move forward diligently trying to respond to the concerns as best you can."

The bats' deaths have caused a painful split among environmentalists. Some continue to support new wind power projects, saying any harm they cause bats would be far less severe than the environmental problems associated with mining for coal and burning it to produce electricity. The industry concurs, saying the public needs to consider the overall harm other forms of energy production cause the environment compared to wind.

But other environmentalists are calling for a moratorium on development of wind projects on wooded mountaintops in the region until researchers figure out how to prevent bat deaths. Some, such as Dan Boone, spokesman of a group called Citizens for Responsible Wind Power and conservation chair for the Maryland chapter of the Sierra Club, said the amount of power generated by the windmills is not worth killing bats and birds.

"We have an industry targeting that area, and it's not doing it sensibly," Boone said. "We're blowing the promise of wind as a good, renewable energy source."

Some other environmentalists who disagree have launched an Internet petition calling on Boone to resign from his Sierra Club position.

Kerns, who studied the problem in 2003 for a contractor for FPL and is now working with the bat conservation group, said she has started to see patterns in the deaths. She has not reached any conclusive findings.

For example, before and after large storms, more bats tend to die. On warmer nights when wind speeds are lower, more have died. But researchers do not know why.

Kerns feels a sense of urgency to complete the research as developers ready their plans for nearby mountains.

"It's likely the same thing will occur," she said. "I look at the areas that are around here and I worry about the mortality that will occur there."

© 2005 The Washington Post Company

Of course it's terrible that these are the effects of wind turbines in their current iteration. I wonder what types of solutions have been suggested that mitigate these risks while allowing for the evolution of wind turbines as a viable form of energy production.

Just like a box fan in a window has a protective casing to keep a 4 year old from sticking his tongue in it, are there been serious modification or design change suggestions that are out there on the internets to consider?

Good question. Please let me know if you find anyone who is trying to find smaller, more effective, and less harmful ways to generate electricity from wind.

Thought you might like to read this article that I just received from a friend:

http://dsc.discovery.com/news/2008/08/25/wind-turbine-bats.html

Wind Turbines Kill Bats Without Impact
Jessica Marshall, Discovery News

Aug. 25, 2008 -- Researchers have found the cause behind mysterious bat deaths near wind turbines, in which many bat carcasses appeared uninjured.

The explanation to this puzzle is that the bats' lungs effectively blow up from the rapid pressure drop that occurs as air flows over the turbine blades.

"The idea had kind of been floating around, because people had noticed these bats with no injuries," said Erin Baerwald of the University of Calgary and lead author of a study about the finding in the journal Current Biology.

Researchers examined a large sample size of hoary and silver-haired bats found under wind turbines, performing necropsies on the bats within hours of their death.

The damage from rapidly expanding air in the lungs caused by the sudden drop in pressure was clear. Ninety percent of the bat deaths at the southern Alberta site involved internal hemorrhaging consistent with such damage, called barotrauma, while only 50 percent showed signs of collision with turbine blades.

For those overlapping cases, it may be that the bats flew through the pressure drop, suffered barotrauma, and then were struck by a blade. It is also possible that they were struck first, causing internal hemorrhaging.

But, Baerwald said, "When people were first starting to talk about the issue, it was 'bats running into the turbine blades.' We always said, 'No, bats don't run into things.' Bat's can detect and avoid all kinds of structures."

In fact, they are even better at detecting moving objects, Baerwald said.

"This kind of answers that mystery," she added. "It was something nobody could have predicted."

The bat fatalities appear to be a more significant problem than bird deaths from wind turbines in most locations. "Here we're picking up ten bats for every bird," Baerwald said.

"I can pick up nine different species of bird. I can pick up two species of bat," she added. "The impact on the populations is very different."

Whether these deaths are having a significant effect on the bat populations in Alberta or elsewhere is difficult to gauge because so little is known about the bats.

All species are susceptible to death by sudden change in air pressure, Baerwald said. "But the larger the animal is, the bigger the air pressure drop has to be. We know that four kilopascals [a unit of pressure] is enough to kill a rat. Bats are much smaller. We found that these wind turbines produce a five to 10 kilopascal drop."

Birds are less vulnerable to the drop, because they have rigid, tubular lungs, compared to the balloon-like structures of bat lungs, which are much like human lungs.

"It's one of those things we have speculated on for a long time," conservation scientist Edward Arnett of Bat Conservation International in Austin, Texas, told Discovery News.

"It's an important finding on the cause of the fatalities. They're not offered much room for error. If they avoid being struck at the last minute, they still may be killed by this rapid change in air pressure."

However, he added, "It may not lead us directly to any solution. Whether they're getting struck or they're dying from the barotrauma may or may not make any difference. We have to find ways to keep them away from the turbines."

"There are a lot of people testing different forms of mitigation," Baerwald said. "Right now the most promising one is to shut turbines down during slow wind speeds during the fall migration at night." These are the conditions when bats are most active.

Tests of this approach at her site in Alberta and elsewhere are promising, she said.

With some kind of noise or scent or something?

We learn. We change. That's progress. If we don't do that, well, we're GWB.

High frequency sound High frequency sound in the range of 4,000 to 18,000 cycles per second (cps) has been used successfully to repel bats from gymnasiums, large warehouses, and similar structures. Adjustable high frequency dog training whistles connected to cylinders of compressed air or large aquarium pumps and placed close to the bats’ roost have a repelling effect. High frequency sound is believed to interfere with the bat’s ability to navigate.

http://www.extension.umn.edu/distribution/naturalresources/DD1141.html

Understanding why something happens is the first step in finding a solution, in that sense this is very good news. Aerodynamics is something that is understood and its very possible that blades can be designed that will avoid this problem. 

A small change can sometimes make a major change to the airflow around a surface. There have been cases where the modification didn't even involve changing the shape but just the texture of the surface.  In one case a new plane was being tested and the test pilots discovered that under some conditions one wing would stop flying (which is a really bad thing!). After more testing, and some some very exciting moments for the test pilots, it was discovered that by changing the texture of a very small area of the wing (an area measured in inches) the problem was solved.

Its possible that a very small change to the blades of these windmills will solve this problem as well. 

Barry
Are you safer today than you were seven years ago?©

and yes, some could be mitigated, but it won't change the fact that the technology of today's industrial wind turbines just doesn't work.

Thanks so much for your thoughtful response. I appreciate the fact that you are a teacher.
If you have some free time, you might want to read this article (It's a 34 page document, but well worth the time):

http://www.windaction.org/documents/7013

Less For More: The Rube Goldberg Nature of Industrial Wind Development

December 20, 2006 by Jon Boone, Oakland (MD)

Summary:
Rube Goldberg would admire the utter purity of the pretensions of wind technology in pursuit of a safer modern world, claiming to be saving the environment while wreaking havoc upon it. But even he might be astonished by the spin of wind industry spokesmen. Consider the comments made by the American Wind Industry Association.s Christina Real de Azua in the wake of the virtual nonperformance of California.s more than 13,000 wind turbines in mitigating the electricity crisis precipitated by last July.s .heat storm.. .You really don.t count on wind energy as capacity,. she said. .It is different from other technologies because it can.t be dispatched.. (84) The press reported her comments solemnly without question, without even a risible chortle. Because they perceive time to be running out on fossil fuels, and the lure of non-polluting wind power is so seductive, otherwise sensible people are promoting it at any cost, without investigating potential negative consequences-- and with no apparent knowledge of even recent environmental history or grid operations.

Eventually, the pedal of wishful thinking and political demagoguery will meet the renitent metal of reality in the form of the Second Law of Thermodynamics (85) and public resistance, as it has in Denmark and Germany. Ironically, support for industrial wind energy because of a desire for reductions in fossil-fueled power and their polluting emissions leads ineluctably to nuclear power, particularly under pressure of relentlessly increasing demand for reliable electricity. Environmentalists who demand dependable power generation at minimum environmental risk should take care about what they wish for, more aware that, with Rube Goldberg machines, the desired outcome is unlikely to be achieved. Subsidies given to industrial wind technology divert resources that could otherwise support effective measures, while uninformed rhetoric on its behalf distracts from the discourse.and political action-- necessary for achieving more enlightened policy.

---------------------------------------------

Selected Extracts

PROLOGUE

Reuben Goldberg (1883-1970) was an American cartoonist famous for conceiving very complicated and impractical machines that accomplish little or nothing. The term .Rube Goldberg. has passed into the lexicon as shorthand for describing such machinery and their products and services. Contemporary industrial wind turbines epitomize this concept. Physically, they are taller than many skyscrapers, with 300-foot rotors that move nearly 200 miles per hour at their tips. They are usually placed in a phalanx numbering five to eight per mile, which, if erected on forested ridge tops, also require the clear-cutting of at least four acres per turbine, with another 35-65 acres needed for infrastructure support. Functionally, they produce little energy relative to demand and what little they do produce is incompatible with the standards of reliability and cost characteristic of our electricity system. Moreover, wind plants are unable either to mitigate the need for additional conventional power generation in the face of increased demand or to reliably augment power during times of peak demand. Ironically, as more wind installations are added, almost equal conventional power generation must also be brought on line. Crucially important, however, wind technology, because of the inherently random variations of the wind, will not reduce meaningful levels of greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide produced from fossil-fueled generation, which is its raison d.etre.

To understand the limitations of wind technology, one should know how energy use enables complex modern society and, especially, how energy in the form of electricity is produced and transmitted to hundreds of millions of people on demand. Enormous energies are required to support the way Americans choose to live and work. Industrial modes of transportation and heating/ air conditioning technologies have made it possible for large numbers of people to live in regions historically limited to only the hardiest of souls, such as the swamplands of Florida and the ice of Alaska, while newer communication technologies have encouraged widespread development not only for residential suburbanites but commerce and industry as well. The majority of our energy use involves heating and transportation. Demand for electricity accounts for about 39 percent of this total, even though electricity accounts for 30 percent of the energy used for heating. (1) We increase both our demand for energy and for electricity at a rate of approximately two percent each year, nearly doubling our consumption every 30 years, as we did from 1970 through 2000. (2)

Electricity is the cleanest and most important form of industrial energy; its supply continuity is essential to enable and protect a vast range of services we often take for granted.modern hospitals, traffic controls, information storage and retrieval, entertainment, food storage, to name only a few. As the British engineer, David White, has written, .It is a truism that electrical power supply at a competitive cost underpins the world.s economies... (3)

Download File(s):
Less for More.pdf (227.26 kB)

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A64940-2005Feb4.html

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=376UAQWKbck

http://thefraserdomain.typepad.com/energy/2005/11/new_vertical_ax.html

They're going to install a vertical urban windmill in a park across the street from my house as a test. These seem to be an option to the big bladed buggers, but I don't know how much electricity they can generate. But they're inventing new ones nearly each day.

None of the Above; therefore we need, Wes Clark as Secretary of State!.

Air pollution from coal fired power plants kills more birds than wind turbines, not to mention the impacts of climate change on nesting sites, food, rainfall patterns etc.

Wind turbines on average are responcible for 2.9 bird deaths per turbine per year. My house cats are responcible for more bird deaths each year than that.

Really it comes down to proper zoning, turbine design and thoughtful location. The newer industrial turbines spin much more slowly, making the blades much more easily avoidable by birds, bats and other flying wildlife.

In truth the newer industrial turbines aren't the real killers, the smaller older turbines with high RPMs such as those at Altamont Pass in California are the real bird killers.

http://www.treehugger.com/files/2006/04/common_misconce.php

Pickens will no doubt profit from his plan, but I think he is in it for more than money, it's also about a legacy I think.

We do need a Congress that put's the right priorities first, clean renewable affordable energy and soon. If only had listened to Carter we would be no doubt a much different country, but thank goodness it's not too late.

It will be more painful than if we had done this decades ago in terms of spending and sacrafice, but our only other choice is the abyss. I just hope that this time we will have the wisdom to make the hard choices instead of taking the easy way out.

Born in the U.S.A.

quite a bit actually.

As far as I'm concerned, voting for Obama's really going to suck. He thinks national security is an after thought. His "leadership" of the Democratic Party will undo all the work that Wes has been trying to do to make the Dems a full-service party. He will take us back years. But McCain's a lot more likely to blow up the world than Obama. Just like the carrots in my refrigerator, Obama will make a better president than McCain. (OK, I know, there ARE no carrots in my refrigerator...the empty space in my refrigerator would make a better president than McCain.) So I imagine I'll down a couple of beers and walk over to the polls and press the straight party button. I'm not sure I'll be able to do it sober.

We learn. We change. That's progress. If we don't do that, well, we're GWB.

Howard Dean was just on the BBC and said there's "about three people who are upset" about Obama's nomination. You want to come clean and tell us the names of the other two? :)

Barry
Are you safer today than you were seven years ago?^©

Sounds like Howard has been hitting the bong again.

You have a great wit Barry.

I envy your students.

He's a racist.

Mr's O looked like she was sucking on a lemon at one point.

with large prominent teeth tend to do that I lot. Being one in that condition I recognize the mouth positions because I've used them since childhood.

Yes, you smile widely sometimes, but it becomes a habit...a defense mechanism to holds your lips together where someone with small teeth and no overbite would "show their teeth".

Bill is great. Fortunately he can sell a refrigerator to an Eskimo.

What did they play...The Funeral Dirge?

n/t

“In Politics, nothing happens by accident. If it happens, it was planned that way.”

—Franklin D. Roosevelt

What an ugly gesture. I don't think BigDawg would have picked that out. :/

...to see Tammy Duckworth speak. Was getting tired of the networks (CNN/MSNBC) cutting away from people like that in order to spout their punditry.

They are covering their reporting of the convention.

"It takes two to speak the truth - one to speak and one to hear." - Henry David Thoreau

I heard it mentioned in passing on CNN something to the effect of "tomorrow night with the generals and Obama"

Smart move to bring Clark and other military leaders out with Obama on stage; it puts a dagger through the heart of the Republicans favorite line of attack against Obama, and frankly, all Democrats.

"Dissent is the highest form of patriotism"
Clarkie since Summer, 2003

Eeerily reminiscent of 2004.

Um....that "I'm familar with Eric" was something I typed about Eric Massa in some other post. Sometimes computer just fills in text like that when I just type the first word in the subject line. Can't edit it out now.

Anyway, I don't think it's reminiscent, as you say. Just the sensible thing to do for any Democratic Presidential nominee. I certainly think the ticket this year is much more diverse and balanced than in 2004. Obama and Biden complement each other perfectly.

"Dissent is the highest form of patriotism"
Clarkie since Summer, 2003

Kerry had both foreign policy and Miltary experience. Obama has neither. At least Teddy didn't pick SOMW this time.

the foreign policy and military experience didn't help win the election (or at least win it by what should have been a much wider margin)

Lesson learned. There's no simple formula for a winning Presidential candidate. It's a complex calculus, and only works when the candidate and history come together to produce a favorable outcome.

Obama is on the right side of history.

"Dissent is the highest form of patriotism"
Clarkie since Summer, 2003

"It takes two to speak the truth - one to speak and one to hear." - Henry David Thoreau