Say Anything Blog

Well, see, we can put up big fences around the wind turbines so the birds can’t fly into them.

I actually couldn’t care less about dead birds from these wind towers.  What ticks me off is that wind energy isn’t really viable at all right now.  It might be at some point in the future if we develop the technology to store the power these turbines generate, but right now hooking them to the grid is stupid because no matter what you’ve still got to have a baseline source of energy ready to supply all the power demanded during peak times of consumption.

See, if its really hot out and the wind isn’t blowing we’ve still got to get the power for all the air conditioners from somewhere, and that means traditional sources like coal plants.

And you can’t expect to have a coal plant sitting around ready to start pumping out power whenever the wind doesn’t blow.

Really, I’d be a lot more interested in seeing this country forget about wind for now and look at nuclear power.  With the advancement in technology there’s no reason why we couldn’t have clean, affordable electricity from nuke plants all over the country.

When the people fear their government, there is tyranny; when the government fears the people, there is liberty.

-- Thomas Jefferson

Rob’s recently listened-to songs:

Certainly the lack of economic viability ought to make us reject this, but those that claim not to care about the monetary cost might actually care about eliminating endangered species.  No?

Probably the big issue isn’t storing the energy, but rather that it simply costs far more to generate using wind than you get for using it.  I’m all for having a little bit of extra capacity in an age when a squirrel getting itself killed at a substation can put all the states around Lake Erie into darkness.  I’d guess you might be the same.