Global Warming Fact Finder

T. Boone Pickens Abandons His Plan for the Largest Wind Farm

     You may remember the commercials during the 2008 Presidential Campaign that featured Mr. T. Boone Pickens touting his plan to wean us off our dependency of foreign oil. His plan included developing natural gas resources and building more wind mill farms to generate electrical energy in lieu of more coal burning generation plants. One of the largest parts of his plan included building the worlds’ largest wind farms in the heart of Texas capable of generating as much as 1,000 megawatts of electricity. That is comparable to one nuclear energy generating plant.

     Well right from the beginning, there were snags. Financing was not as easy to come by as originally thought. With the current price on natural gas and electricity plunging, the numbers don’t seem to work as well. Plus, as it turns out, you need transmission lines near the wind mills to connect the electricity to the grid, and neither Pickens nor the State has been willing to step up and build those transmission lines. Transmission lines are expensive. According to Pickens, “It was a little more complicated than we thought.”

     While wind driven generators look like a logical alternative to fossil fuels, there are significant costs and tradeoffs that must be considered. For one thing, wind generators don’t necessarily blend into the landscape. They are actually a visual blight that detracts from the view of the land upon which they sit. How willing are people to have wind farms interrupting their view of the Sierras, Rockies, Great Plains or desserts (oh wait, we already have the latter). There was a time when power poles and lines were considered visual pollution. Where are environmentalists’ cries about the visual pollution? They are very vocal about the view of drilling platforms in the ocean, where they don’t even live.

     Wind farms require a great deal more land to produce the same amount of energy as a conventional generation plant. They pose a deadly risk to birds and bats in the area. The spinning blades can and do knock them out of the air.

     And when it comes to making money from the electricity generated, power companies don’t just automatically write you a check for the power you dump into the system. Prior agreement is required, and if the power is not needed they don’t pay for it. They have their own generation sources that they need to pay for first.

     T. Boone Pickens, an oil made multi-billionaire, is recommending that we wean ourselves off of the use of foreign oil - a lofty ideal for sure. But do not think for a minute that if he didn’t think he could make some serious money off of the alternatives, he would still be singing that song. But at least for now, faced with the realization of the costs involved in building wind farms, he is backing off that idea. His original idea to build the world’s largest wind farm, starting with a 1000 megawatt wind farm and expanding that to 4000 megawatts is being scaled way back. He is instead going to build 4 or 5 smaller projects.

     But you have to give him credit. At least he is doing something. Whereas, your normal environmentalist, global warming alarmist offers little more than lip service to their perceived problem – not that Pickens is necessarily one of these. Most environmental alarmists have never had to work at a serious job that requires their effort to produce a marketable product at any time in their lives. They have no idea of the lives they affect or livelihoods they destroy. Pickens though, has worked all of his life, and knows what it takes to do something productive. In spite of the problems before him, he will most likely find a way to succeed at his plan. We can only hope we will all be a little better off for his efforts.

By: Greg Henss

The Ski Area at Snowmass, Colorado, has decided that it wants to do its part and try to go “Green”, and reduce Global Warming by installing wind turbines on top of the mountain to generate electricity for the Ski area operations. But as it turns out, it may have an ‘unintended consequence’ as they may be a hazard for bats.

Wind generator turbines are required to have identifying lights on them for aircraft to see at night, when the turbines get up above a certain height. Being that the turbines will be on top of the mountain, and are 200 feet tall, these qualify for navigation lighting. That now makes it a problem for the bats in the area since the lights will likely attract insects which will in turn attract bats. With a concentration of insects, there is likely to be a concentration of bats which could then be ‘batted’ out of the sky by the spinning blades of the turbine.

The Aspen Skiing Company and the Forest Service are considering placing three tall wind turbines atop the ski mountain in a effort to generate electricity and reduce the “carbon footprint” of the ski area operation. Aspen Skiing Company figures that by placing three turbines into their system they can reduce their electrical draw by two-thirds. But in so doing, the blades of the three turbines may become deadly for the bats if navigation lights are required on the turbines.

The Forest Service first became aware of the potential problem during a preliminary study of the potential environmental and visual effects that the towers may create. Such impacts will need to be more fully investigated and studied before the project can move forward. Results of the environmental impact reports will also need to be reviewed by the federal government.

Another hurdle that must be overcome is wind speeds will need to be studied to determine the viability of using wind turbines. In an effort to conduct that study, the Forest Service and Ski Company have decided to place a temporary wind turbine tower to test the wind speed, since a temporary tower does not need approvals and studies because of its ‘temporary’ nature. However, during their effort to hoist the tower into place, the tower fell to the ground as it was being winched up, damaging the tower. They hope to have the tower in place in the next week or so.

Officials are also concerned about possible opposition from people who object to the visual impact of the 200 foot tall towers atop their mountain. But the same officials discounted the potential for opposition stating that, “I think that five years ago you wouldn’t have been able to suggest this project. But I think today people understand the scale of climate change”, according to Jim Stark, winter recreation supervisor for the White River National Forest.

This is one of the consequences that I predicted when I warned how liberals will continue to promote propaganda and false science to further their agenda. The more people hear the flawed arguments, the more they begin to accept them, and allow costly attempts at mitigation of the purported problem. It is a slippery slope we are on as liberals begin to get their agendas accepted with incremental advances. It doesn’t matter how outlandish the claim, if they repeat it enough times, they begin to garner favor.

Don’t get me wrong. I am in favor of doing what we can do that is within reason to limit our use of fossil fuels and reduce our impact on the earth. But each and every attempt at that mitigation comes with a cost. In this case, we may have to loose a few hundred bats and we’ll have to put up with the visual of the towers on top of a picturesque mountain in Colorado. Environmentalists used to complain about electrical transmission towers, poles and lines calling them visual polution. How is a spinning wind turbine not visual pollution?

What is more, if three turbines will eliminate two-thirds of their electrical energy use, why stop there? Why not put in five, or ten towers? Once you have a few unsightly towers up there, people will get used to them and won’t mind a bunch more. I mean you should see our desert around the Palm Springs area in Southern California. There are so many wind mills that you can hardly see the desert any more. It’s just incredible.

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