The magic of the marketplace.
Texas is the world leader in wind power, and (outside of some notorious festering pockets of climate BSE in College Station and Austin) is also one of the world’s leaders in climate realism. From the BBC.
Big bucks
The numbers are staggering. This one county, Nolan County, hosts no fewer than 1,400 turbines. Texas has as many as 6,000 overall. Combined output: something like 9,000MW, roughly the output of nine power stations.
At first sight, you might think this couldn’t be a clearer example of the United States tackling climate change.
Wind farms are popular, but talk of climate change may not be
But the Mayor of Sweetwater, Greg Wortham, puts me right on that. Support for wind energy, he explains, is based on the jobs and wealth generated.
A single wind turbine can earn a landowner $10,000 a year. A field of cotton can more than double its revenue if turbines are planted.
It’s popular – but whatever you do, don’t mention the climate
If something makes money and you keep government out of it, it will probably happen.
On the other hand, presenting fraudulent information about temperatures, sea level, floods, hurricanes, tornadoes, droughts, bad tasting turkey, Grizzlies eating Polar Bears etc. – is a non-starter. It is all nonsense and it needs to stop.
If you want to see green energy, get rid of the people running this scam. The IPCC made it abundantly clear this week that whatever they are doing has nothing to do with science.
If they are 2mW turbines running at 20% efficiency at around $2 million each, then the actual output of these 1400 turbines is (if the back of my envelope is right) 560mW at a total cost of $2800 million. I don’t think consumers are not getting value for money for what is esentailly the same output as one small coal fired turbine.
The province of Ontario in Canada has about 1200 wind turbines. Here are some results that may be of interest.
http://ontariowindperformance.wordpress.com/2010/09/24/chapter-3-1-powering-ontario/
“I did a study on Ontario Wind Production in the spring of 2010 because I could not find any production data for Ontario, and the provincial politicians seemed determined to do the landscape with towering Industrial Wind Turbines. My first thought was “What’s not to like?” They are clean, green and efficient – or so it seemed. I thought they were not as good as Solar Power – but probably effective and efficient. The truth was far from that first opinion. There is a link at the end of this article to where that study can be obtained.”
Cheers
Texas obviously listened to Greenpeace.
Greenpeace’s 12th century technology
http://nofrakkingconsensus.wordpress.com/2010/11/24/greenpeaces-12th-century-technology/
David Robinson…
Good work!
I am finding myself increasingly frustrated these days trying to understand why nobody is willing to pick up a pencil and do some basic math? Instead, the masses blindly swallow whatever they are being sold, and regurgitate it as gospel, until everyone is inhaling each others exhalations demanding that politicians save us from ourselves.
Wind Turbines and Solar panels work great when their sole function is to charge batteries. Trying to run cities and factories with them is a fools errand.
David Robinson,
Thanks for that fine work on Ontario’s wind results – it is disappointing that the tremendous resource and effort devoted to wind energy yields such a tiny benefit. So what happens 20-30 years from now with all these wind-farms? Will they all just be abandoned, ugly, industrial wastelands – a testimony to our generation’s foolishness? Think of the grandchildren!
A drive through Tehachapi or Alamount pass in California should give you a view of the future of wind farms.
Worse long term environmental destruction than Mountain Top Removal for coal mining.