What a scam!

Source: Walt Kittelberger | Essays, Texas

Translate: FROM English | TO English

Land Commissioner Jerry Patterson is currently helping foreign interests in their efforts to locate wind factories along the most precious parts of our Texas Coast. If citizens like you don’t wake up and contact your elected officials soon the coast will be lost to wind factories. Construction of the first 84 Mitsubishi turbines is scheduled to begin early in ’08 on the Kenedy Ranch north of Port Mansfield. Each turbine will rise 413 feet high and have a blade diameter of about 200 feet (That’s 400% taller than an average water tower!). Anyone who thinks these monsters will not kill birds, bats, and destroy wildlife habitat as well as the beauty and serenity of the Laguna Madre are sadly mistaken. The Kenedy Ranch site is smack in the middle of the busiest flyway in America. This is not some Chicken Little, pie-in-the-sky deal. This will be the ugly truth by this time next year if we fail to act.

Perhaps the most alarming difference between wind factories and other types of power plants is the acreage consumed. A nuclear power plant requires a modest 500 acres while a wind factory needs 150,000 acres or more to generate the same amount of power. In the United States, the hottest days are the least windy and when the wind doesn’t blow no power is generated. As a result, wind turns out to be a good way to save fuel, but because wind energy cannot be saved it is not a good way to avoid building plants that burn fossil fuels. A wind machine is a bit like a bicycle that a commuter keeps in the garage for sunny days. It saves gasoline, but the commuter has to own a car anyway. [And it doesn’t save gasoline if the commuter has someone drive along behind him in case he gets winded on his bike, which is what the grid has to do with wind turbines. –Ed.]

Wind power does not in fact live up to the claims made by its advocates. Its impact on the environment and people’s lives is far from benign. Research also reveals that there is a very cozy relationship between fossil fuel plant owners and wind factory owners. The reason is simple: the more you build wind factories the more you must build fossil fuel plants. Wind factories cannot operate without standby fossil fuel plants. What a scam! They lead people to believe they replace fossil fuel plants but the truth is they perpetuate them! How soon people forget Enron’s smoke and mirrors business plan.

Walt Kittelberger, Chairman
Lower Laguna Madre Foundation
PO Box 153
Port Mansfield, Texas 78598
956-944-2387
llmf@granderiver.net