Caesar Rodney Insta-toot Jumps the Shark
Delaware’s wingnut talking point mill, the CRI, has been on a grueling quest to come up with ever more outlandish stories to get someone… anyone to pay attention. (tap, tap, tap….is this thing on?)
I’ll take the bait and link to them, because today’s outlandish newsletter headline brings them to a clear tipping point: Wind Power Bad for the Environment?
Alternative energy sources ARE bad for the economic environment. Supplies are finite and emissions are detrimental to earth and her inhabitants. Politicians and corporations are plain evil in their greed. What about finite don’t they understand?
And what has CRI ever done to help the community?
Interesting the report sites the environmental impact of wind farms.
Since when did CRI care about scientific data and the environment?
After I read the CRI email about this, I hoped someone at DL would mention this bit of ridiculousness. Wind power is dirty? Are they shilling for the big utility comapnies or what?
CRI must answer to their masters, their job is to enslave the willfully ignorant. Continuous feed of “job creators” and “constitutional rights” sends the misinformed amok.
Why worry about the debt of your grandchildren while ignoring the toxic world you’ve left them? Drill, baby, drill. At a point in progression, neither China nor India will be able to produce the “re-breathers” we’ll need let alone ship it here on credit.
Whenever someone starts describing the opponent with terms like “wing nut,” it suggests they’re afraid they’re losing the argument on the merits. Either win on the merits or don’t, but childish insults? I think it makes the insulter look bad and scared.
Interesting how folks here seem more intent on insults and don’t discuss the merits at all.
Except there really are wingnuts and just because something is insulting doesn’t mean it’s not descriptive.
When people attack the words, it is because they can’t attack the argument. In this case, my point about CRI is unassailable. So the nit picking is predicable.
@ Publius Are you frightened to look outside your FOX, I mean box?
The description fits. Wing Nut. Argue the CRI point rather than expose your faults.
Stop hitting yourself!
Research?
“There are health complaints about a windmill at the University of Delaware Lewes campus located less than 0.5 miles from
homes.”
BULL.SHIT! It’s simply a case of NIMBY. My wife and I sat directly under the windmill for about an hour while getting some photographs last week. It was windy, the blades were cranking, and there was very little discernible noise. It was actually soothing.
Fuck’em.
Wind is irregular? Well, no shit. Over the hundreds of years wind power has been in use, from powering grist mills to pumping water, it has always been irregular. That’s no excuse to not make use of it when it’s blowing.
That being said, I favor putting more thought and resources into the development of residential systems, rather than the wind farms. Ever been to Slab City? I have, and much of it is powered by small wind generators and solar panels on individual sites.
http://gathering.digihitch.com/slabs.php
We just got back from there after visiting an artist friend of ours. He lives there most of the year using wind and solar to power everything from his small pirate radio station, heaters, television, internet, to a 12 volt freezer.
I’m waiting for Sussex County to follow state law, and allow land owners to put wind generators on property less than 5 acres, which they are about to do.
Holy Sheepshit, I’m sounding like a fucking liberal.
Since when did CRI care about scientific data and the environment?
They still don’t. What their euphemistically called “Center for Energy Competitiveness” has cherry-picked and strung together a bunch of information that is supposed to pretend to be a considered view of the current science of issues with windpower.
The paper that they cite (but don’t link to. In short, this is a paper that argues that there may be as much as a 1°C warming over the area of a surface installation or 1°C cooling over the area of an ocean installation. They are also REALLY clear that this study is nowhere near definitive and they call for more study. This paper does note some of the usual anti-wind shibboleths, but at bottom this is a study with serious problems.
What the CRI wingnuts won’t tell you, though, is that there is another paper out there that has a very different methodology: “‘Investigating the Effect of Large Wind Farms on Energy in the Atmosphere’, in Energies 2009, 2, 816-838 by Magdalena R.V. Sta. Maria and Mark Z. Jacobson from Stanford. This study finds much lower environmental impact to the regional atmosphere from wind turbine installations and certainly the effects that are there are more than offset by the pollution, CO2 and heat displaced by using wind energy vs. its dirtier counterpart.
You can judge these two studies by assessing whether or not using a standard climate change model (the MIT study) makes more sense than the Blade Element Momentum model. Let’s just save ourselves some time and note that there is no one at CRI who can do this.
But there is lots more that is wrong here and the real problem with diving into their usual bullshit is that you (well, I) can just find a great deal of amusement in just pointing out the bullshit. For instance — they make a big deal over the fact that birds can be killed at windfarms. This is true. This can be a real problem for windfarms in a migratory pathway. Which is why there is genuine effort to not site these turbines in known migratory pathways. No one can guarantee that no birds will be killed, but Bluewater Wind has actually put some thought into this by siting this farm so far off shore and at one time linked to a few studies that they used to make their decision.
And did you notice the claims from the DOE re: turbine operating capacity? Or even that the “good wind sites” are taken up already? (:roll:) No citation for that, either. And the only data I’ve ever seen from the DOE (really big pdf) notes that turbine capacity factor goes up because the technology gets better. And some of the best wind sites *are* offshore, where there are currently no plants.
It is the usual massive bit of dishonesty, packaged up to get the media’s attention. The media fall for this BS because they think that the so-called controversy is actually a story. Which it may be, but it sure ain’t science — and pretending that what the CRI does is anything but performance art does us all a disservice.
And this fool trying to lecture people about “wingnuts” needs to be here under one name and stick to it.
There won’t be a second warning.
Uh, Miscreant is a better man than I.
@ Publius Are we, the opponents of extremism, intentionally sliding back into the dark ages? ‘Your facts don’t fit my opinion, so…’
I used to call it the American taliban but its actually the corporate taliban. “Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain!”
Pay no attention to tax loopholes. Pay no attention to cancer clusters. Pay no attention as society degrades around you as long as your masters find you useful.
Now I’m pissed. I had to apologize to Miscreant (a superior human being) and deal with b.s. from CRI. I had a dream this morning around 3:30am that involved an argument with John Stapleford. Nothing was resolved in dreamscape but I lose because these bastards are in my head.Race cars, rocketships, Dewey Beach, Victoria’s Secret;not in my slumber, fucking CRI. I want to step on a norquist.
Nobody is more bored with me than me but I had to do this. Well, I didn’t have to but windmill windmill for the land.Right?
Wind powered electrical generation is a proven way to generate electricity, but to give them an unfair advantage in the energy market is a selfish way the elites use to feel good about themselves at the expense of the average working stiff .
@FBH Who are these elites? How far will you go on subsidies being “unfair”? Get that dick out of your mouth, you embarrass yourself.
FBH, sometimes your stupidity is stupefying.
http://pre.cloudfront.goodinc.com/posts/post_full_1279221255fossilfuels.jpg
As one of the earliest and staunchest proponents of wind power generation and as an individual who has always been open-minded enough to consider any and all points of view to verify and examine my own collection of knowledge I must confess that I invariably hit the delete key when I receive any emails on the subject matter of renewables and alternative generation from the Caesar Rodney Institute. There inability to make either a cogent or semi-lucid argument has left me no other alternative but to hoard my available time for consideration of realistic perspectives. The same goes for most of their Economic Policy statements from the inimitable John Stapleford. I suggest all of you consider cyber-space as the appropriate arena for their thoughts to meander through.
John Kowalko
I apologize (again) to DL and their readers for my homophobic and derogatory depiction of FBH. Mr. Kowalko comes from the same place I do, the Getto. Today its known as PBF. If you want to get good you have to hurt. Demand clean air/clean water. Pay more, drive less. Public transportation. Live where you work. Carpool. Sacrifice and fight those ugly s.o.b.s every chance you get. And know that whenever John Stapleford’s lips are moving, he’s lying. The bitch is bought body and soul. Yeah, sorry again.
Wait a second — didn’t Charlie Copeland during the Bluewater Wind debate keep bringing up how he used 100% wind power at his home and when he was running for Lt. Gov. touted his support for Wind power.
I hate to tell you guys this but this is not new information. CRI is about five years behind. I have blogged this information on my own site and DP many times. Learn to read and read to learn. The turbines themselves are not dirty, but the required back up plants are due to the nature of the start ups on short notice, that or you have to leave them idling, Both create more output than just running fossil fueled plants as primary sources. It may not play into you world view, but it doesn’t change the facts. Okay go ahead and start with the insults.
I hate to tell you, Frank, that there isn’t a power plant in the US without some backup. When fossil fuel or nuclear plants go down (in whole or in part) for maintenance or upgrades, you never know when that happens. Why is that? Because the system is designed to make sure that power gets to the grid even when parts of its generating capacity is off line. It isn’t as though windpower will displace much of the fossil fuel generated power — it will add to it. And even if you did just rely on windpower — you still wouldn’t need a 100% backup system for it.
The insult here, Frank, is you coming here and pretending that wingnut talking points count as facts. They don’t. At least not here, they don’t.