Reply #41: For someone who provides little foundation for his argument

[wtmusic]

'your assertion that it is "a net negative for the environment" is remarkably uninformed' sounds a lot like fightin' words.

If I'm wrong, fine. But I live about a hundred miles away from thousands of rusting windmills in the Palm Springs desert (San Gorgonio) and AFAIC they've turned a beautiful desert landscape into an industrial park:



"Despite their being cited as the shining example of what can be accomplished with wind power, the Danish government has cancelled plans for three more offshore wind farms planned for 2008 and has scheduled the withdrawal of subsidies from existing sites. Spain began withdrawing subsidies in 2002. Germany reduced tax breaks to wind power in 2004. Switzerland is cutting subsidies as too expensive for the lack of any significant benefit. The Netherlands decommissioned 90 turbines in 2004. Many Japanese utilities now severely limit the amount of wind generated power they buy because of the instability they cause. In 2003, Ireland halted all new wind power connections to the grid. In 2006, the Spanish government ended, by emergency decree, its subsidies and price supports for big wind. In 2004, Australia reduced the level of renewable energy that utilities are required to buy. On Aug. 31, 2004, Bloomberg News reported that "the unstable flow of wind power in their networks" has forced German utilities to buy more expensive energy, requiring them to raise prices to the consumer. In the U.K., the Telegraph has reported that rather than providing cheaper energy, wind power costs the electric companies _50 per megawatt-hour, compared to _15 for conventional power.

Christopher Dutton, the CEO of Green Mountain Power, a partner in the Searsburg wind farm in Vermont and an advocate of alternative energy sources, has said that there is no way that wind power can replace more traditional sources; that its value is only as a supplemental source that has no impact on the base load supply. "By its very nature, it's unreliable," says Jay Morrison, senior regulatory counsel for the National Rural Electric Cooperative Association.."

http://www.windaction.org/opinions/9816