Oregon's Largest Wind Farm Powers California (Green: schools, earthquake, dangerous)

[NoMoreSnowForMe]

I can say I wouldn't want to live near enough to hear them. There's one on the school grounds of one of the schools here in Crescent City, across the street from Rumiano's Cheese Factory, and that thing is LOUD.

That said, I think they look kind of cool. I enjoy driving through them on Altamont Pass in CA. I do think it's important to put them somewhere that's unobtrusive, though.

I used to live in the White Salmon area. There are some wealthy environmentalists there. I'd be surprised if they ended up being constructed along the gorge, within view of the scenic highways, or anywhere they might affect endangered wildlife, etc.

As far as energy going to CA, I guess you'd have to change laws, etc., if they're publicly funded. But, I bet you don't mind eating California avocados...

[ca_north]

Originally Posted by Larry Caldwell

- The land owners have no responsibility to pass up a good income because you would rather look at dirt.

- I like the comparison of wind turbines to strip mines. The strip mines destroy the land forever.

Those two points in particular are bogus.

You casually describe the land as "dirt" and ignore the visual blight inflicted for miles around. Look at this study: Wind Turbine Visibility and Visual Impact Threshold Distances (up to 36 miles in some cases)

You are lying about strip mines because they are restored in many cases, while wind turbines add permanent (or intended as permanent) large machines to the landscape. Nothing in nature looks like them. Do you walk around with your neck craned down and never look at the skyline? The whole problem with wind turbines is their visibility at great distances, including red lights all night. They spoil the former rural character of places and affect views from many wilderness spots. It matters to people with aesthetic values and an historical sense of place. The more wind turbines are built, the more will be seen as constant reminders of industry from places we go to escape that (which ought to be a right). Writing off those complaints as NIMBYism is just crass commercialism.

Getting back to the strip mine topic: Wind turbines often remove the tops of mountains and leave permanent clearcuts for fire safety (they catch on fire more often than people think). In addition to all that, they force unnatural structures onto the landscape and (honest) people shouldn't be compelled to call them majestic or beautiful. It's not so easy to reclaim coal-ravaged mountaintops but at least they have the potential and aren't burdened with ugly white spikes that add flashing lights to the countryside. Mines on flatter terrain are reclaimed quite often, but with wind turbines you always see the industrial presence. That's why wind advocates are always changing the subject to older forms of damage, aka lying about what's really going on.

This shows a reclaimed strip mine at top, functional wind turbines, and decrepit wind turbines (often difficult and costly to remove). If you claim to respect the environment, which of these landscapes looks the most natural? This is just one small sample of what wind turbines are doing to scenery. It's easy to find thousands of ugly wind power photos, but wind propagandists try to make them look like daisies and smiley faces.


This damage is similar to coal mining mountaintop removal, with the added insult of large machines that are typically seen at much greater distances than mines. Wind power fans refuse to own up to this growing blight. Their usual response is "would you rather live near a coal mine?" (let the irony sink in)

[ca_north]

Originally Posted by NoMoreSnowForMe

I can say I wouldn't want to live near enough to hear them. There's one on the school grounds of one of the schools here in Crescent City, across the street from Rumiano's Cheese Factory, and that thing is LOUD.

That said, I think they look kind of cool. I enjoy driving through them on Altamont Pass in CA. I do think it's important to put them somewhere that's unobtrusive, though.

I used to live in the White Salmon area. There are some wealthy environmentalists there. I'd be surprised if they ended up being constructed along the gorge, within view of the scenic highways, or anywhere they might affect endangered wildlife, etc.

As far as energy going to CA, I guess you'd have to change laws, etc., if they're publicly funded. But, I bet you don't mind eating California avocados...

Sure, they can look "cool" in limited numbers at a limited size, but those days are long gone. The need for very large numbers of very large wind turbines (to make them effective) is the whole problem. As more are installed, there are fewer aesthetically acceptable places for new ones, and no amount of planning can fix that. Wind power is the opposite of microchips that keep getting scaled down. Tech is supposed to be getting more efficient, not more unsightly.

Wind is an ungainly way of making electricity. A relatively tiny generator is surrounded by huge hardware that requires thousands of acres per installation. They're like small-brained giants stomping all over the countryside. Big or small turbines typically generate the same power per acre, due to spacing requirements to reduce wind voids. You'd think an "advanced" species would focus on something much more elegant, like rooftop solar getting most of the subsidies. Maybe Tesla's new solar roof tiles will shift the equation that way.

Yeah, that's got to be good for the environment.

[ca_north]

Originally Posted by gonpostal

Okay.......

http://friendsofgranderondevalley.co...ion%20x600.jpg

In fact, bird deaths were found to be 30 percent higher than previous estimates given by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in 2009.

“I estimated 888,000 bat and 573,000 bird fatalities/year (including 83,000 raptor fatalities) at 51,630 megawatt (MW) of installed wind-energy capacity in the United States in 2012,” writes K. Shawn Smallwood, author of the study that was published in the Wildlife Society Bulletin. As with birds and bats, there is the effect of industrial wind turbine facilities on other animals. The installation of such large structures in wild areas, along with supporting roads and transmission infrastructure and the clearing of trees on mountain ridges, inevitably has a negative effect, if only because of the loss, degradation, and fragmentation of habitat, especially ecologically vital interior forest. The turbines also move (producing noise and vibration) and are lit by strobes day and night, adding to the distressing impact they likely have.

Good work trying to convince pro-wind-power people to see downsides, but you won't reach them with aesthetic or bird/bat mortality concerns because they lack that value system. Many of them are younger and grew up surrounded by high-tech to the point where nature is just something on a screen. They want to fill the planet with a bunch of technology, even if it's crude and bloated. I suspect you'll find many of them at Star Trek conventions, dreaming about industrializing other planets in their vision of total colonization.

Their idea of nature is a city park where they can run across the street to a coffee house, surrounded by concrete canyons. MidAmerican Energy is making concrete wind turbine towers to make taller ones more pragmatic to transport, or just because of some ego trip. You find a lot of articles and videos bragging about how tall company X or Y has made their wind towers. Anything green is long lost in those agendas. It's obvious that these people thrive on big construction jobs and lie when they claim to respect nature. A truck driver or road-grader laid off at a fracking site would gladly take work on a nearby wind project. Money is their main goal, not helping the environment.

If they'd stop aligning themselves with clean, green environmentalism they'd at least have a forthright case. The wind power industry is still cloaked in political-correctness, which will only be lifted as more turbines cause more complaints. It's already too late to stop much of the blight and it's clear that Man is destined to ruin nature one way or another. In populated nations, nature could end up corralled in discreet parks surrounded by forests of machines at varying distances. They might create special "turbine-free" trails where they're strategically blocked from the view. It is getting that bad already, and all those ugly machines can't stop climate change or replace oil, gas and coal. In the rush to stop climate change, the whole Earth is being sacrificed to industry.

[NoMoreSnowForMe]

Well, anything man-made won't look like nature. Oil pipelines, solar panels, enormous dams that fill in valleys that used to be beautiful with homes and farms - in fact, I remember Bonneville before the Bonneville dam on the Columbia River. And then we all get to look at a huge concrete wall with visions of it collapsing and wreaking havoc. And oh yeah, the salmon...

Clean energy isn't invisible or without impact. But, what's the alternative? The world isn't going to all go off-grid.

[BruceM]

Clean energy isn't invisible or without impact. But, what's the alternative? The world isn't going to all go off-grid.[/quote]

I agree with everything Priscilla and ca_north say about wind power.
The logical alternative to me and many others is advanced nuclear power.
Nuclear has "power density" - that is it produces a lot of power on a small amount of land.
Also the power is available 24/7/365, no down time due to clouds, lack of wind, drought, or night fall.
See the interesting documentary Pandora's Promise for a good overview of current nuclear technology.
There are reactors in the works that run on nuclear waste and small modular reactors, such as the ones being developed by Nu Scale here in Corvallis, can be buried underground and are fail safe.

The critics will cry "What will we do with the waste?" but waste is easily handled given the political will.
Also advanced reactors will have the ability to recycle much of the waste.
There is no perfect solution but of all the options nuclear comes out looking the like the best choice.
Wind & solar will never be able to scale up to meet the demands of a power hungry world.

[NoMoreSnowForMe]

Not in a million years would I get on board with nuclear power. It's the most devastating of any choice and the exact opposite of clean energy.

Google Chernobyl, for starters.

And if you start talking about how things are better/different now - there will always be a chance something could go wrong, and the results are absolutely devastating and very long-lasting.

And they're butt ugly, too.

[V8 Vega]

I saw a nature program about Chernobyl all kinds of wild animals are running around there, no problem

[Larry Caldwell]

Originally Posted by V8 Vega

I saw a nature program about Chernobyl all kinds of wild animals are running around there, no problem

As long as you don't plan on living over 5 years, it's a great place.

[ca_north]

Originally Posted by NoMoreSnowForMe

Well, anything man-made won't look like nature. Oil pipelines, solar panels, enormous dams that fill in valleys that used to be beautiful with homes and farms - in fact, I remember Bonneville before the Bonneville dam on the Columbia River. And then we all get to look at a huge concrete wall with visions of it collapsing and wreaking havoc. And oh yeah, the salmon...

Clean energy isn't invisible or without impact. But, what's the alternative? The world isn't going to all go off-grid.

You're missing the point that nothing is as tall and long-distance-visible as wind turbines. Dams are much more low-profile and create features that exist in nature, even if they aren't pristine. For example, "The Bridge of the Gods" at Cascade locks was named after an ancient landslide that naturally dammed that part of the river. Many lakes were created the same way. I don't condone dams but I do think wind turbines look far less natural and it shouldn't need explanation. They are called "green" based on the psychological construct of (barely) fighting fossil fuels, not their actual appearance.

You don't see anything in nature that resembles wind turbines, except huge versions of dead, white trees, topped with red lights. I don't understand why more people can't just admit that. One could spend all day uploading photos like this. These things look like bleached bones of creatures that should not exist. You can't restore that land until the turbines are removed, which they aren't designed to be. They either leave them to rust or replace them with bigger ones.