9 Responses so far

1. 1. Steve Buchheit on Apr 19th, 2007 at 7:52 am

   Supposedly the large wind turbines are noisy, and any large electrical installation will supress property values (although 80% feels like some of the BS I get told while being a councilman). See, I’m in favor of local generation, even down to the single house level. In Europe they’re marketing wind turbines for houses. I’ve thought of how and where I could install one on my property, but it’s still far too expensive for me.

   At a local park, the Lake Farm Park, they have a small wind turbine and solar installation (10 years old now). The wind turbine far outpaces the passive solar cells. It’s about the size of a farm windmill, and doesn’t make much noise. If I won the lottery and was able to chase my dream home, it would include such a device.

2. 2. Chris on Apr 19th, 2007 at 8:06 am

   I think wind farms are beautiful but I’m not sure I’d like to live underneath one.
   As someone who lives on a windy island I’m all for wind & tidal power.
   I’m fine with nuclear power from a technical point of view, but even decommisioning the existing British plants will cost £72 billion. Building a bunch of new ones would be very expensive. You could fund a lot of alternative energy research and build a lot of offshore wind farms for that money.

3. 3. Mark Terry on Apr 19th, 2007 at 8:18 am

   There was a plan a few years back to create an off-shore windfarm on the east coast, approximately 5 miles out and the furor–pretty much led by Walter Cronkite–pretty much killed the project. There were issues about them ruining the view, although I was hard-pressed to see much more than a smudge at the 5 mile location. Cronkite got going on how it might disturb the whales.

   These sorts of NIMBY things can be pretty frustrating. I guess people just prefer wars in the middle east.

4. 4. Catherine Shaffer on Apr 19th, 2007 at 8:26 am

   People will NIMBY anything. I’m sure if they woke up one morning and found the cornfield behind their house had been replaced by an actual staircase to heaven, they would be on the horn to their representative complaining about the noise and foot traffic. I myself like wind turbines. I’m pretty sure “underneath” in this context actually refers to a respectable distance, rather than literally beneath the blades. The ones I have seen are not noisy at all, and they do produce a respectable amount of power. I think we should pursue ALL avenues of alternative energy, including nuclear. (And with some of the new technology-based safety monitoring systems, they are nowhere near as dangerous as people fear, although there’s no accounting for terrorism, unfortunately.)

5. 5. Simon Haynes on Apr 19th, 2007 at 10:15 am

   If this guy thinks wind turbines suck he’s got things backwards.

6. 6. Merrie Haskell on Apr 19th, 2007 at 10:24 am

   Ah, but wind power is constantly improving. When I was a kid, it cost something like $.30 a kilowatt hour, and now it costs more like $.04.

   Up near Mackinac Island, there are two huge wind turbines to catch the breezes at the strait, and honestly, while we were parasailing, I thought that they added to the view rather than detracted. The big bridge on one side, the heavily forested islands all around, the perfect, nearly Caribbean blue of the water… and then pow, almost randomly, these giant, white machines looming above the seemingly endless coniferous forest. The juxtaposition kills me; it’s not like my usual picture of Michigan.

7. 7. James Aach on Apr 19th, 2007 at 11:28 am

   My biggest concern with any discussion of electric energy that few understand how electricity is actually made now. If we don’t understand our energy present, how can we hope to pick the best energy future? As the article above points out, even “clean” energy has a downside, both in the aesthetic sense if you’re trying to live nearby, and in how much power is actually produced. (Nature’s checkbook is hard to balance.)

   I work in the U.S. nuclear industry, but am not sold on any particular kind of energy for the future (really). Unfortunately, the real world of atomic energy is far different that what either its proponents or detractors in the media portray. (I suspect this is true of other energy sources as well.) To help with the public discussion, I’ve written a thriller novel providing an insider’s view of nuclear power - its people, its politics, its technology. “Rad Decision” is free online at http://RadDecision.blogspot.com - and readers seem to like it, judging from their comments on the homepage. It’s also now in paperback at online retailers.

   “I’d like to see Rad Decision widely read.” - Stewart Brand, internet pioneer and founder of The Whole Earth Catalog.

   RadDecision.blogspot.com

8. 8. philip proefrock on Apr 19th, 2007 at 1:35 pm

   I’m also someone who thinks that wind turbines are beautiful, rather than a blight on the landscape. The lighthouse analogy is a good one.

   The objection that anti-wind activists are using now (which I’ve seen on EcoGeek and GreenOptions) is that wind is intermittent, so it can’t be counted on as a power supply.

   The turbines I’m most familiar with are along the Lake Huron coast in Ontario, where they sit in the middle of farm fields with very few homes nearby. Maybe the cows don’t like the noise, but they don’t seem to mind. But they don’t need to be in heavily populated areas.

   I’m increasingly troubled by old-style (Davis Besse, for a local example) nuclear reactors, but I’m more interested in pebble bed reactors or thorium reactors. (I can’t find a ready link on thorium, but it’s intriguing to me, too.) I wouldn’t go so far as to call myself a nuclear power loving environmentalist, but I’m willing to consider some forms of it in an energy mix.

9. 9. Chris Gerrib on Apr 19th, 2007 at 4:04 pm

   Tobias - more then a little off-topic, but you’ve stated that you grew up on boats, and didn’t become land-based until 1995. I’m curious as to how one pays for such a lifestyle. Could you discuss the logistics of being a “boat person?” If you have, sorry for asking.

   (Slinking out, trying to avoid the topic police)