Comments ericr has made

Pollan has indeed been -- and continues to be -- an important voice in our thinking about food. But he is often quite idiotic, as in his twisted self-rationalizing argument for the moral superiority of corpse-eating over vegetarianism (in the "omnivore"s dilemma). And so again here, the problem is his making nonsensical arguments to preserve the profits of health insurance companies so that they might do what they don't do now with the same supposed incentives.

It is simply a question of costs vs. benefits. The benefits of wind energy have proven to be quite negligible. And its costs and impacts are far from negligible.

I would worry more about how the money to be made in wind energy promotion colors people's perceptions.

Why would she doubt it? She and other physicians have seen the same complaints arise after wind turbines begin operating, the symptoms are relieved when the people leave the area, and they resume when they return. It couldn't be more obvious. Why would you doubt it?

It is a case series and the most thorough examination of these symptoms claims yet. But it is still an early effort that most importantly provides the basis for further work (as is being planned in Michigan and Ontario). Meanwhile, you'll have to read and judge for yourself.

As I mentioned before, I agree that she should not have called the several favorable reviews and notices "peer reviews", since that term implies a neutral jury (although that is not always the case) rather than self-selected responses. Those responses, however, call them what you will, from several respected experts in relevant fields attest to the solid science of the work.

There will probably be reviews in medical journals when the book is actually in print.

By "denialist" I assume you mean of anthropogenic climate change. What does that have to do with recognizing that industrial wind turbines have adverse impacts? Can one not accept both the fact of anthropogenic climate change and the fact that industrial wind turbines have adverse impacts? One does not preclude the other.

By the way, I completely agree that the claim of "peer review" should not be made when those reviews are self-selected. Nonetheless, they are very positive reviews and notices from apparently highly qualified experts in the fields involved.

“Pierpont’s work has been widely disputed in peer-reviewed publications.“

Really? Please provide references.

Komanoff does like to end his entries with a note of contemptuous finality, doesn't he. But that doesn't change the fact of his avoiding the challenge of showing actual fossil fuel reductions due to wind -- not reduction of electricity from fossil fuel, but reduction of fossil fuel burning, considering that spinning reserve and extra thermal inefficiencies may be introduced by large-scale introduction of intermittent and highly variable sources.

Even experienced grid operators can only guess about something they have no experience with. The ultimate test of their reasoning is the implementation of the scenario. That is why I noted that the Platt's Insight article that the American Spectator was commenting on was about Europe, where there is actual experience. I did not cite it to back up the argument that wind does not substantially reduce fossil fuel use, which we have been talking about only because Komanoff asserted that it does.

He made that assertion without any evidence, however. Despite long experience in Europe, in which that evidence ought therefore to be found, he presents only theoretical studies in the U.S.

If you can't show any actual (not theoretical) effect on fossil fuel burning, then there's nothing to discuss. Wind is a dead end, requiring the building of extra capacity just to balance its production, sucking money away from real solutions, and inflicting its own substantial negative impacts on the landscape, wildlife, and rural residents.

Most states cut out hydro as a renewable. This is done to favor newer, more economically challenged technologies, such as wind and solar. So the door is wide open to use "renewable" to mean anything any industry lobby might want it to.

Actually, the Production Tax Credit has been 2.0 cents per kilowatt-hour for a couple years now. "Federal Financial Interventions and Subsidies in Energy Markets 2007" by the U.S. Energy Information Administration determines that (Table 35 on page 106) wind energy received $23.37 per megawatt-hour of its electricity production in 2007, compared with 44 cents for coal, $1.59 for nuclear, and 25 cents for natural gas (the three main sources of electricity in the U.S.).

The American Spectator article was actually commenting on a much more detailed article in Platt's Insight about large amounts of wind on the European grid. Essentially, since -- even according to the European Wind Energy Assocation -- wind turbines are idle 15-30% of the time and are nondispatchable, reserve capacity has to not only remain in toto as if the wind turbines aren't there, but also be increased to handle the event of a large wind drop-off (as happened in Texas early last year, I think it was). Just yesterday, Reuters wrote that Scottish Power is warning that plans to build 30 gigawatts of wind plant will also require building perhaps 25 gigawatts of new back-up power. On March 24, T. Boone Pickens admitted at a forum in Ohio that without large-scale battery storage, wind isn't going to replace natural gas as his "Plan" claims. In fact, it will drive building more natural gas plants, since those are the ones that can respond most quickly to the fluctuations of the wind.

So not only is wind driving extra build-up of power generation besides its own tremendous land requirements, it is also forcing other sources to run less efficiently as they fill in the highly variable and intermittent wind production -- like city vs. highway driving.

The illusion in Europe is that only a few countries have high wind "penetration": Denmark, Spain, and Germany. And they are connected to larger international grids to better absorb the wind production. Denmark's wind, for example, represents less than 1% of the electricity on the international grids it is part of.

The simple measure is not displacement or share of electricity but how much fossil fuel is burned to get a kilowatt-hour of electricity. Nobody has ever been able to show that figure going down as wind is added. (I throw out that statement as a challenge.)

Big coal leads the development of wind power

The leading developers of wind energy in the U.S. are big coal: Florida Power & Light, TXU, Babcock & Brown, Xcel, etc.

The head of the mid-Atlantic consortium of industrial wind developers is anti-environmentalist Frank Maisano.

Wind hasn't reduced coal or nuclear use, or even its growth, in Europe.

Big coal and nuclear, once they pause and examine the facts, realize that with wind they can have their cake and eat it, too. Leaving us with double the damage.On Is wind worth it? posted 2 years, 1 month ago 72 Responses

NIMBY?

NIMBY means supporting the things elsewhere, and National Wind Watch does not. It can not be called a NIMBY organization.

The attempt to dismiss wind power skeptics as NIMBYs protecting their views doesn't work. The facts of industrial wind's many adverse impacts -- to the environment, to wildlife, and to human health -- are still there and need to be weighed against any potential benefits.On Rising blowback against wind power posted 2 years, 2 months ago 2 Responses

Reason?

Sorry to jump in at this late date ...

Every comment on the Reason site was about wind energy, but Whole Foods, as noted in the original post, is buying wind energy credits. Their actual energy use does not change, nor does anyone else's. Wind companies simply get a second stream of income.On Ha ha, stupid hippies and their, uh, markets! posted 3 years, 5 months ago 8 Responses

Bush; Birds

President Bush isn't just now getting on board the wind power train. As governor of Texas, he helped his pals at Enron establish the modern wind power industry. It was Enron who invented the idea of being able to sell the energy twice using "green tags," making the whole business extremely profitable -- profits further ensured by getting taxpayers to pay for two-thirds of the cost of the facilities. GE got into the "ecomagination" business by scooping up Enron's wind division when their frauds caught up with them.

As to birds and the spinning blades, some misconceptions have been expressed here. The blades are not "braked" to go slower. They are feathered to maintain a more or less constant rpm to keep in phase with the AC grid. The rpm is slower than on small machines because the massive blades (commonly around 150 feet) would be under too much stress if they went around faster. A huge gearbox (which industry journal Windpower Monthly has called the "Achilles' heel" of industrial wind) translates (with a certain loss of the kinetic energy) the 15-20 rpm of the blades to the much (about 40 times, I think) faster shaft speed needed for the generator. The blades may look slow from a distance, but at the tips they are moving well over 150 mph (180 mph on GE's 1.5-MW model).On Wind farm follies posted 3 years, 6 months ago 47 Responses

Amazng

Are you for trashing the seascape, endangering birds, and disrupting marine mammals for at best a fraction of a percent of the region's electricity, that will at best displace an even smaller fraction of emissions?On Climate change is pushing this easygoing enviro over the edge posted 3 years, 8 months ago 57 Responses

"Enormous benefits"

Cape Wind would be connected to the New England grid, so it is misleading to describe its projected average output of 170 MW only in terms of the cape and islands. That output would represent 0.5% of the New England's total capacity or about 0.75% of its peak load. Accepting for the moment the assumption that wind power can make any contribution at all, how many such 24-square-mile power plants does Greenpeace have in mind to make a significant contribution to the RGGI? How many 24-square-mile plants would be needed just to keep up with a projected 2% annual growth in demand? Why so much emphasis on an obviously marginal, but sprawling and intrusive, part of any solution, remembering also that electricity generation is only a fraction of the source of greenhouse gas emissions. The rising cost of gasoline and heating oil is already probably doing more for the air than a dozen Cape Wind project could ever hope to do.On Climate change is pushing this easygoing enviro over the edge posted 3 years, 8 months ago 57 Responses

Averages

It is "Clear Sky" Clarence who does not seem to grasp the implication of the average output. The wind speed varies from minute to minute, and the resulting variable output from the turbines must be continually balanced by other sources under grid management control. Those balancing stations will continue to burn fuel as their output is ramped up and down to accommodate the output from Cape Wind. The more frequent ramping will cause them to burn fuel inefficiently, increasing emissions even as fuel use may be reduced at some plants.

It is notable that Clarence does not provide an example of existing wind plant causing the reduction of fossil fuel burning or emissions on the grid. The record is that they have no effect.

He emphasizes that the project must be economically viable. That is because the financial benefits are based on raw production, not reduction of other sources. In addition to actual energy, they can sell "green tags," that clever scheme invented by Enron to sell the PR benefit as a separate product.

All this at an acre for every 15 people on the cape and islands: not what most people would call environmentally sound.On Climate change is pushing this easygoing enviro over the edge posted 3 years, 8 months ago 57 Responses

Per person

The Cape Wind project will take up 24 square miles to possibly produce energy equivalent to 75% of that used on the cape and islands. That's about 220,000 people. So it requires a square mile to produce the amount of energy used by fewer than 7,000 people, or about an acre to produce the energy used by 10 people.

And that's the rosy picture of the sales brochure. Two-thirds of the time, the turbines will be generating power well below their average rate, so the 24-square-mile power plant would provide the electricity used by 75% of the cape and islands only a third of the time. And even then its output would fluctuate such that continued operation of conventional plants to balance it would be required, seriously diminishing if not cancelling the hoped-for environmental benefit.

The turbines will function only as giant billboards to advertise McKibben et al.'s concern for the planet. If McKibben gets global warming, which I think he does, he should be getting angry about such an obvious boondoggle as industrial wind power that changes nothing.On Climate change is pushing this easygoing enviro over the edge posted 3 years, 8 months ago 57 Responses

Clipper impact

According to the environmental assessment submitted by Clipper, construction of the single 2.5-MW demonstration turbine in Wyoming was expected to disturb and compact 10 acres, causing runoff, erosion, sedimentation in streams, loss of soil productivity, destruction of vegetation, loss of wildlife habitat, and increased poaching and harassment of wildlife (presumably because of the new road).

During construction, the displacement of pronghorn deer, mule deer, and elk was considered to extend a half-mile farther, for a total of 503 acres.

The noise of the operating turbine was given as 105 dBA at 415 feet. (90 dBA is the level at which "constant exposure endangers hearing.") Concern was expressed for disturbance of raptor nests and sage grouse leks (mating areas).

This is just one turbine.On Umbra on wind farms ... again posted 4 years, 3 months ago 56 Responses

more misinformation

Doggerel refers to jingle-like poetry. But perhaps that is what you meant, considering your preference for feel-good advertising claims over hard facts.On Umbra on wind farms ... again posted 4 years, 4 months ago 56 Responses

I give up

Tens of thousands of real wind turbines are connected to the grid today: real numbers with real data, however much you prefer to ignore them in favor of AWEA sales material. Their output is low and variable, providing very little useful power when it is actually needed. They have done nothing to move anyone away from nuclear or fossil fuels. They industrialize large areas of formerly rural and wild land. They cause many problems ecologically and socially. They provide almost no benefit. They are only effective as a means of moving public money into private investors' portfolios, with some trickle-down payoffs to the locals.

Calling these facts "pure nonsense," "usual schtick," "sophistry plain and simple," and "confabulated," is not refutation but denial.On Umbra on wind farms ... again posted 4 years, 4 months ago 56 Responses

That's even more ridiculous

Wind turbines are already inefficient, and every conversion of power (i.e., storage) reduces it further.

And what would it take to replace oil in the U.S.? According the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, we used 39.2 quadrillion btus of oil in 2002, which is equivalent to 11,486 TW-h, which translates to a continuous power production rate of 1,311 GW. At the expected capacity factor of 25% for wind turbines, that means an installed capacity of 5,245 GW, 778 times the amount installed at the end of 2004, according to the AWEA.

At the average 50 acres per installed megawatt, that would be 410,000 square miles of wind plant, typically on previously nonindustrialized land.

Because of the the inefficiencies in our current use of oil (see below), more would probably not be needed to cover the inefficiencies of storage and conversion.

And that's with continuing to use coal, natural gas, and nuclear for electricity. To provide all of our electricity as well (3,660 TW-h in 2002, according to the Energy Information Agency), you would need another 1,671 GW of wind turbines, industrializing another 130,000 square miles. Since that's based on actual end use rather than input, the inefficiencies of storage would require maybe twice as much.

The damage: Land area equivalent to Texas plus California to replace oil, plus Montana to provide electricity, plus New Mexico to cover inefficiencies of storage.

And these calculations are based on 2002 use. Projections for the future are that demand will be steadily greater.

I'm sorry I don't have a solution to our energy needs. You don't, either, I'm afraid.

I would point out, however, that currently more than half of the energy in the oil we use and more than two-thirds of the energy going into our electrical system is lost (again, according to the Lawrence Livermore Lab). We could do quite a lot in improving our use of what we currently have (and will have for the foreseeable future). That would certainly have a more beneficial effect than endless swathes of industrial wind machines could ever have.On Umbra on wind farms ... again posted 4 years, 4 months ago 56 Responses

theory vs. practice, redux

You keep harping on about GE's graph for the performance of their 3.6-MW turbine. But I don't doubt that it is accurate. At 10 m/s wind speed, it produces electricity at the rate of 1.8 MW. Fine. If a site's average wind speed over a year were indeed 10 m/s, and the turbine indeed produced 15 million KWh, that would be real data. Unfortunately, Airtricity (the owner of the Arklow Bank facility) doesn't say what the actual production is. The owner of half of the Danish offshore facility near Nysted says production numbers are a trade secret.

Could it be that the numbers are too embarrassing? Britain's Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) doesn't even count offshore wind in its reporting of load factors for wind, presumably because rather than being more productive the offshore facilities bring down the average too much (1.8% in 2003, 15% in 2002 and 2001, 3% in 2000).  

Finally, remember that Enron was a pioneer in industrial wind power, and under governor Bush Texas became a leader. GE, hardly a "progressive" conglomerate, bought Enron's wind business. Clipper's engineers are from Enron. The energy pirates have no problem with wind power. They know it's no threat to their other interests, and that as long as people think the wind machines are cleaning up the air the coal and nuclear industries get an easier ride; they're laughing all the way to the bank.On Umbra on wind farms ... again posted 4 years, 4 months ago 56 Responses

basic physics

As I pointed out, output is not solely determined by rotor diameter. As I already pointed out, GE has a 2.7-MW turbine with a smaller rotor diameter than their 2.3-MW turbine.

Your stubborn refusal to see such realities and the actual experience of wind turbines -- with their nondispatchable highly variable production -- on the grid makes almost everything you say rather unreliable.

For example, the fact as reported by the Energy Information Agency is that wind power produced about 5 TWh of the electricity used in the US in 2002. That was with an installed capacity of about 4,480 MW (the average between the end-of-2001 and end-of-2002 capacities according to the AWEA). At 80% operating time, a 1,000-MW nuclear plant would produce over 7 TWh in a year. So it would take not 800 MW, as you calculate, of wind machine to equal that output but more likely well over 6,000 MW (requiring almost 500 square miles). And that would be less than 0.24% of the total electricity we used in 2002.

You talk a lot about the future and amazing technologies that will solve all our problems. But giant wind turbines are being built today, and their record is not very good. I ask again -- what is the actual production record of the Arklow Bank turbines? It's a simple question about the real world.On Umbra on wind farms ... again posted 4 years, 4 months ago 56 Responses

fantasy vs. reality

Power output is not a simple equation of rotor diameter. GE has two models of its 1.5-MW turbine with different blade radii. Their new 2.x series has blade radii from 138 to 154 feet -- the larger is for the 2.3-MW model and the smaller for the 2.7-MW model.

Further, there is no "continuously operating power source" of any kind, and wind is the farthest from that. You can cite KWh per year, but the fact is that two-thirds of the time output is less than the average that represents. For more than a third of the time, the wind facility in Searsburg, Vermont, is generating no power at all, so its yearly total is meaningless during those times.

So, as I suggested already, for wind to achieve an average output of 20 MW would require perhaps an installed capacity of 100 MW. And it still wouldn't be continuous.

And have you considered the practical engineering problems of the enormous blades you envision? Current models have to shut down and feather when the wind's blowing over 60 mph. Some have been torn up in slower winds. The strain of ever larger blades on a horizontal generator shaft (and the whole thing on a yet taller tower) would also appear to present some serious problems. This metastasizing vision of the technology suggests not promise but a dead end.On Umbra on wind farms ... again posted 4 years, 4 months ago 56 Responses

Equivalent wind and solar power?

I have not denied that oil and coal and nuclear have serious problems. But it's not an either/or situation. No fossil or nuclear fuelled plant is going to be shut down because of wind power. In fact, they have to be run more inefficiently to accommodate the variability, so large-scale wind may actually exacerbate the problems of our current energy use.

And while wind is not changing anything about our energy use, it is industrializing huge amounts of wild and rural land -- hardly a green direction. As I pointed out in my first comment, the Lamar, Colorado, wind plant takes up 12,000 acres for an average output of perhaps 40 MW (25% of its capacity), only half of which might actually be used.

Extrapolating the figures I also cited before, it would require about 132,000 MW of installed wind capacity just to provide 5% of U.S. electricity use in 2002, turning well over 10,000 square miles of previously undeveloped land into industrial "parks." But by the time all that would be built, demand would have risen to make that small contribution almost meaningless.

And wind has its network of infrastructural support, too, including materials production, manufacturing, transport, road building, cement (a major source of carbon emissions), and transmission. I already mentioned some of the damage to the land and the negative impact on wildlife. The turbines also require a fair amount of power from the grid to start working, and each one contains hundreds of gallons of oil which must be periodically replaced.On Umbra on wind farms ... again posted 4 years, 4 months ago 56 Responses

Did a gnat try to bite me?

I don't really care how much wind power costs -- that's why I didn't respond to your figures. If production credits, accelerated depreciation, tax exemptions, RPSs, ROCs, and consumers willfully paying more bring the operating cost down, so be it.

And you are correct that large-scale storage would solve the problem of variability. Your examples of the latter, however, don't really change the current situation. For example, electric cars will simply add to demand, so unless they are all to be connected to a completely separate wind-only grid -- a possibility, but unlikely, and one in which people would have to be resigned to frequently not having enough charge to drive -- they have to be fed power when they are plugged in, whether the wind's blowing at ideal speed or not.

Anyway, giant wind facilities are being developed right now. They aren't waiting for networks of pumped hydro or electric filling stations. And the record so far is surprisingly pathetic (except financially).

The big problem I have with wind power is the huge footprint for such a lousy and small product. And the turbines are rarely being installed where there is already industrial build-up, but rather in many of the last unspoiled lands we have left in the world (e.g., New England's Berkshires and Green Mountains, the Flint Hills of Kansas, the Allegheny Ridge in the Appalachians, near Horicon Marsh in Wisconsin, Maui, the Scottish islands of Lewis and Skye, the Norwegian island of Andoya,  New Zealand's Makara Hills, and so on, without ever having shown any actual benefit).

It does not pass environmental muster. It damages wild habitat and rural peace, and it doesn't change a thing about our energy use.On Umbra on wind farms ... again posted 4 years, 4 months ago 56 Responses

flaky babysitters

The metaphor about unreliable babysitters is not quite accurate. Wind is indeed a "flaky" power source, in that only the wind determines when it contributes power. But as a "nondispatchable" source, it does not wait to be asked. This babysitter shows up at your door whether you need her or not. There are reports from western Denmark that 84% of the wind-generated power was in fact not able to be used and had to be dumped.

The metaphor also makes a wrong turn about reliability with age. The wind turbine cannot become more reliable, because it still generates power only when the wind blows. (And below the ideal speed of 25-30 mph the amount of power generated falls off exponentially -- so that about two-thirds of the time wind turbines produce much less than their already low average of around 25% capacity.) Like an abused mate, it is the grid operators who must go to great lengths to better predict the whims of the wind so they have some idea when and how much the turbines will be adding power.

It is also problematic that Umbra turns to the industry lobby group AWEA for her answers about wind's real contribution. For example, she says that the U.S.'s 6,740 MW of installed wind power capacity "is expected" to generate almost 18 billion kilowatt-hours in 2005. The basis for that estimate is only the theoretical 30% capacity factor that the AWEA insists on despite the actual record being significantly lower.

According to the Energy Information Agency, in 2002, wind and solar together generated only 0.17% of the electricity used in the U.S., less than 5 TW-h. Almost all of that is wind, so from the average installed capacity between the end of 2001 and the end of 2002 (according to the AWEA) of 4,480 MW that represents an output of only 12.7% of capacity.

The people of Lamar, Colorado, insist that the winds are not puny. Nobody has suggested otherwise. Nor are the turbines. It is the usable power produced by them that is puny. The apt metaphor is Aesop's trembling mountain that gives birth to a mouse. At the AWEA's imagined 30% capacity factor, the 12,000-acre 162-MW Lamar facility would produce the equivalent of 3% of Colorado's electricity use. Realistically, however, it may provide less than half of that. And it would produce at that low average rate or better only a third of the time, times that would only rarely correspond to actual need.On Umbra on wind farms ... again posted 4 years, 4 months ago 56 Responses