Corretion: Our local County Goverment doesn’t give a damn about dead birds, destroying forests etc.

A nuclear plant installation destroys up 7 square miles of earth, to get the same labeled output from wind factory 300 square miles of earth. As I mentioned, the nuclear plant will provide you and I consistent reliable power for up to 40 years whereas wind factories provide zilch (zero) reliable power and are all backed up with running coal, gas, or other electrical power in the background causing even greater pollutants because of the inefficiency of not running the backgroud plants at full cycle power. You could cover the entire earth with massive wind machines and still not have reliablity.

Here in Tehachapi, the many new Danish Vesta 3MW turbines are already failing after 2 years and must be replaced at great expense. Vesta although their sales have been high in the US, is soon to be on the for sale block due to huge losses due to antiquated technolgy put into harsh conditions. By the way, each of those turbines use 200 gallons of Mobile Synthetic oil that must be changed per manufacturer every 12 to 18 monthes. How green is that? In addition, it is not rare for bearings to go out or blades to get out of balance, tearing the entire turbine apart and catching fire.

As for oil, I ask you to check out what percentage of electrical generation plants are fueled by oil, about 1%. Wind machines do not reduce our dependence on oil.

Look what is happening with wind support in Spain, Germany, and many other European countries now. They are cutting the subsidies because due to the unreliability of the wind. Wind power will take us back to the dark ages as it will never be competitive. Take the engine out of your car and put a turbine on the roof and plan on doing going anywhere at a pre-scheduled time. You will never get to your destination for any appointments.

You said the early California wind farms were sited in areas without much thought about birt migratory patterns. I call that statement “Bull Sh!t”. I invite you to come to Tehachapi and you will easily see that our local goverment does give a dam about birds, pristine forests, turtles, plant life, indian artifacts. Why? because it is all mitigatable in the EIR (Environmental Impact Reports. Even the Dept. of Fish an Game is allowing take (the legal killing of bald eagles and soon the California Condor) to these wind scam artists.

The rare earth argument is not moot, what we are saying is FU China, destroy your part of the earth for this Fake Wind Boondoggle so we don’t have to destroy our part and in turn can have a much larger skim-off of profits by using your cheap labor.

The problem is not with the utilities for not taking the old turbines out and replacing with new. That is with the politicians and the lobbyist of how they write up the subsidy requirements and as you said, early installations did not consider bird migatory paths, hence take old 80 foot turbines out and replacing with 500 foot units in the same migratory path doesn’t eliminate the bird death problem. Also, let me ask you, after the 5 year warranty and when the subsidies end who would ever remove the concrete base composed of 123 cement trucks. I won’t happen.

I do agree that a more feasible method would be distributed solar on all homes and business structures would be more worthwhile endeavor even though existing solar panels are toxic environmental waste once discarded. This is still much better than antiquated land resource destroying wind machines.

There again, the elephant in the room most will not discuss because our global society is based on increased yearly growth, is over-population of the human species. However, that too will likely be taken care of by famines, war, viruses, or possibly an metiorite. The earth will be here long after mankind no longer inhabits it.

In the meantime, I welcome you to Tehachapi so that you can see first-hand that what you are being told and what is actually happening with the installation of these massive unproductive wasteful variable output wind projects are not at all what you are thinking. It is a pure “Rip Off” of the unknowing public and the wind con-artists love it along with their politician bitches.

David, I live in Tehachapi, California where we have over 3500 wind machines that have been installed and subsidized starting in the early 1980s. The new ones are up to 500 feet tall with fiberglass (hazardous waste) propellers the diameter of a football field. They require 123 cement trucks of concrete(creating huge amounts of CO2) to stabilze the masts with diameter of 14 ft at base shipped from China that hold the Danish Vesta 3MW turbines weighing over 18,000 lbs loaded with rare earths for the magnets. The extraction and production of these rare earths have poisoned huge tracts of land in China. A report from Southern California Edison showed wind productivity was a variable (means you can’t predict wind from one second to the next) 13% to 16%. When you factor in bulldozing 9% of the pristine old growth forested mountains and desert areas with 400 year old Joshua trees for roads, pads, huge 200 foot tall transmission lines that lose 10% for every 100 miles of travel, substations, erosion control, over 450,000 birds (some studies say as high as 13 to 15 million birds yearly earthwide) killed with blood, guts, and feathers on the propellers. I suggest to you their actual productivity ends up being a highly negative number.

From my front yard alone, I can see over one thousand of these tax subsidized, wasteful, unproductive, noisy/vibrating,land resource destroying, metal/fiberglass wind contraptions with red flashing strobes at night visible from up to 40 miles away. We live in what is considered a windy area and I assure you that most of the time the propellers are not even turning. Anyone living within 5 to 10 miles of these monsters will find their reward is a reduced “Quality of Life”, loss of property values, and health problems from the low harmonic noise going through the walls of their homes.

Comparing electrical generation plants powered by natural gas, coal, nuclear, Hydro, or walnut hulls which can supply a constant output 24 hours a day and 365 days a year to wind turbines makes absolutely no sense. Wind turbines are antiquated technology that need to go the way of the dinosaur. Think of having a horse drawn buggy and putting a notebook computer in the back. The horse drawn buggy is still antiquated and the computer is just along for the ride. Instead of having them subsidized for corporate welfare companies and paid 100% by the American Taxpayers along with an additional 2 1/2 cent surcharge per kilowatt on families electrical bills, I suggest to you that all industrial turbine installations be discontinued until it can be proven scientifically that we can truly control the wind. It will never happen no matter how much we wish we could create a perpetual motion machine that runs it self.

This whole wind scam is just a means of taking money from us and putting into wind carpetbaggers bank accounts with them passing a agreed pittance back to the politicians (for filling their campaign donation war chests) that approve these metal/fiberglass wind scrapyards. As an ex Enron CEO stated, “the only thing green about this is the green I take from your wallet and put into mine”.

In a few years presuming we still have access to an open internet, most of us will see this whole wind scam for what it is. The “Boondoggle of Boondoggles”.

Yes, I am suggesting to those that think industrial wind turbines have any worth at all, they don’t have a clue at all. They have been sipping at the wind industries propaganda trough to long. And they will be very disheartened when they learn the facts of this political legal theft that has been perpetrated upon them while these corporate welfare wind companies and the politicians that approved them are laughing all the way to the bank and leaving our grandchildren with an “America the Ugly” of non-functioning massive wind turbines destroying the beautiful landscape that some of us at one time called it “America the Beautiful” before the installation of these ugly tax wasting unproductive monstrocities.