wrote in message
...
On Fri, 27 Jul 2007 13:09:19 -0700, "Rich S."
wrote:


Lately I hear the bird huggers are ****ed at the tree huggers who want
wind
power.

Turns out the wind turbines make efficient bird slicers & dicers.

That's basically an old wives tale.
http://www.awea.org/faq/sagrillo/swbirds.html Cats kill a lot more
birds than turbines. Most of the objections to wind power are the
typical NIMBY stuff, with the bird thing thrown in along with anything
else that sounds remotely plausible.

Wayne (16 turbine-years, no sliced birds)

Thank you so much for giving me a second opening, after I couldn't resist
the opportunity for a bit of amusement...

Wind power, in various forms, has a long and honored history in irrigation,
milling, transportation, and even in recovery of land from the seas in
Holland and Denmark--and probably other places. So obviously, simply on the
basis of parsimony and in the same manner as solar power, it will always
make sense in a lot of places and for a lot of applications.

However, wind power will always be subject to calm days, blanketing, and
less than optimal wind direction--and peak production will only rarely
coincide with peak demand. From all that I have heard and read, as an
addition to a power grid, wind power is no panacea and probably increases
the amplifitude of fluctuations from the baseline power requirement of
electric utilities. The benefit to a modern overall power grid is probably
trivial, even while the wind power providers are very well compensated.

In short, if utilities only purchased backfeeds during periods of peak
demand, then their payments for wind and solar power would be far more
sensible.

Peter