{"id":8,"date":"2013-07-03T08:33:28","date_gmt":"2013-07-03T12:33:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/example.org\/14000-abandoned-wind-turbines-in-the-usa-pioneer-"},"modified":"2013-08-27T19:05:13","modified_gmt":"2013-08-27T23:05:13","slug":"14000-abandoned-wind-turbines-in-the-usa-pioneer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/makingripples.com\/?p=8","title":{"rendered":"14,000 Abandoned Wind Turbines in the USA (Pioneer)"},"content":{"rendered":"

We could have had some of these on Wills Ridge in Floyd, if we had just gone with the flow and decided to be green at all cost. Fortunately, wiser heads prevailed and we can observe what others have done. Wind turbines may play a part in our future, but more work has to be done before they can be considered environmentally safe or economically sensible.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"Abandoned<\/a>
\nTo see more images: http:\/\/knoxville.craigslist.org\/pol\/3746100243.html<\/a><\/p>\n

The US has had wind farms since 1981, what the left and the green
\nmovement don’t want to talk about regarding windmills is (as usual) the
\ntruth. The truth is: windmills, like solar panels, break down. And
\nlike solar panels, windmills produce less energy before they break down
\nthan the energy it took to make them. That’s the part liberals forget:
\nmaking windmills and solar panels takes energy, energy from coal, oil,
\nand diesel, energy that extracts and refines raw materials, energy that
\ntransports those materials to where they will be re-shaped into finished
\ngoods, energy to manufacture those goods. More energy than those
\nfinished windmills and solar panels will ever produce.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

There are many hidden truths about the world of wind turbines from the
\npollution and environmental damage caused in China by manufacturing bird
\nchoppers, the blight on people’s lives of noise and the flicker factor
\nand the countless numbers of birds that are killed each year by these
\nblots on the landscape. The symbol of Green renewable energy, our
\nsaviour from the non existent problem of Global Warming, abandoned wind
\nfarms are starting to litter the planet as globally governments cut the
\nsubsidies taxes that consumers pay for the privilege of having a very
\nexpensive power source that does not work every day for various reasons
\nlike it’s too cold or the wind speed is too high.<\/p>\n

The US experience with wind farms has left over 14,000 wind turbines
\nabandoned and slowly decaying, in most instances the turbines are just
\nleft as symbols of a dying Climate Religion, nowhere have the Green
\nEnvironmentalists appeared to clear up their mess or even complain about
\nthe abandoned wind farms.<\/p>\n

“Some say that Ka Le is haunted–and it is. But it’s haunted not by
\nHawaii’s legendary night marchers. The mysterious sounds are “Na leo o
\nKamaoa”– the disembodied voices of 37 skeletal wind turbines abandoned
\nto rust on the hundred-acre site of the former Kamaoa Wind Farm. . .
\nThe ghosts of Kamaoa are not alone in warning us. Five other abandoned
\nwind sites dot the Hawaiian Isles–but it is in California where the
\nimpact of past mandates and subsidies is felt most strongly. Thousands
\nof abandoned wind turbines littered the landscape of wind energy’s
\nCalifornia “big three” locations–Altamont Pass, Tehachapin, and San
\nGorgonio–considered among the world’s best wind sites. . .
\nCalifornia’s wind farms– comprising about 80% of the world’s wind
\ngeneration capacity–ceased to generate much more quickly than Kamaoa.
\nIn the best wind spots on earth, over 14,000 turbines were simply
\nabandoned. Spinning, post-industrial junk which generates nothing but
\nbird kills. . .”<\/p>\n

The problem with wind farms when they are abandoned is getting the
\nturbines removed, as usual there are no Green environmentalists to be
\nseen. The City of Palm Springs was forced to enact an ordinance
\nrequiring their removal from San Gorgonio. But California’s Kern County,
\nencompassing the Tehachapi area, has no such law. Imagine the outraged
\nGreen chorus if those turbines were abandoned oil drilling rigs.<\/p>\n

The truth is: wind energy is just a tax scam. Ben Lieberman, a senior
\npolicy analyst focusing on energy and environmental issues for the
\nHeritage Foundation, is not surprised. He asks:<\/p>\n

“If wind power made sense, why would it need a government subsidy in the
\nfirst place? It’s a bubble which bursts as soon as the government
\nsubsidies end.”<\/p>\n

And therein lies a lesson for those who seek to make fortunes out of tax
\npayer subsidies, and for those who want to live in a dream world of
\n“clean energy”, the whole renewables industry of solar, wind and biomass
\nis just an artificial bubble incapable of surviving without subsides
\nfrom governments and tax payers. The Green evangelists who push so hard
\nfor these wind farms, as usual have not thought the whole idea through.<\/p>\n

Altamont’s turbines have since 2008 been tethered four months of every
\nyear in an effort to protect migrating birds after environmentalists
\nfiled suit. According to the Golden Gate Audubon Society, 75 to 110
\nGolden Eagles, 380 Burrowing Owls, 300 Red-tailed Hawks, and 333
\nAmerican Kestrels (falcons) are killed by Altamont turbines annually. A
\nJuly, 2008 study by the Alameda County Community Development Agency
\npoints to 10,000 annual bird deaths from Altamont Pass wind turbines.
\nAudubon calls Altamont, “probably the worst site ever chosen for a wind
\nenergy project.” The same areas that are good for siting wind farms are
\nalso good for birds of prey and migrating birds to pass through, shame
\nfor the birds that none of the Green mental midgets who care so much
\nabout everything in nature, thought that one through when pushing their
\nanti fossil fuel agenda. After the debacle of the First California Wind
\nRush, the European Union had moved ahead of the US on efforts to
\nsubsidize “renewable” energy–including a “Feed in Tariff” even more
\nlucrative than the ISO4 contracts. The tax payers who paid for the
\nsubsidies to build the wind farms, then paid over the odds for an
\nunreliable source of power generation, will ultimately be left to pick
\nup the bill for clearing up the Green eco mess in the post
\nMan-Made-Global-Warming world.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

We could have had some of these on Wills Ridge in Floyd, if we had just gone with the flow and decided to be green at all cost. Fortunately, wiser heads prevailed and we can observe what others have done. … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1754],"tags":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3R4iK-8","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/makingripples.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/makingripples.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/makingripples.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/makingripples.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/makingripples.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=8"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/makingripples.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1573,"href":"http:\/\/makingripples.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8\/revisions\/1573"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/makingripples.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/makingripples.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/makingripples.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}