Not worth the view
Caledonian-Record, via: energizevermont.org
Lots of people have been duped by the wind power enthusiasts’ insistence that the benefits of wind power justify their overall inefficiency and heavily subsidized expense. They have successfully argued that wind’s value is a worthy cause for which to rape our ridge lines.
We didn’t agree before the towers went up. We thought that the effort yielded too little power proportional to the monetary and aesthetic costs. We also enjoyed a mostly clean and affordable energy portfolio. To the eco-warriors we argued that our state’s carbon footprint was already minuscule and that wind towers on our mountains would do nothing to impact the amount of coal being burned to power southern markets. To the “we must build to be independent” faction we insisted that wind was simply too unreliable to replace baseload production, and so again, was not worth the trade off.
Now that we actually see the towers, we’re even more steadfast in our opposition. To see for yourselves why, just go down I-91 from Barton to Lyndon and look at the skyline to the southeast. Or go north on Darling Hill and look west. From both places, you can see the three or four towers that are already up (not yet with propeller blades that will add 90 feet to their height). Now, imagine a dozen and a half more, and draw your own conclusion. Then consider the astronomical taxpayer expense of these monsters that can produce electricity only 11 percent of the time at four times the cost of other sources of electric power, i.e. nuclear power from Vermont Yankee that is so abundant it costs only one-fourth of the heavily subsidized, but fashionable wind power.
Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver, in one of his travels, admires a Lilliputian tailor’s ingenious way of measuring his customer for a suit by expanding on intricate measurements of his customer’s thumbnail. The finished suits seldom fit the customer, but everyone admired the ingenuity of the tailor.
That’s where we are in this country. Ideological dreamers project schemes that make little or no sense but promote their ideologies at the expense of common sense. Wind certainly fits into this category and our governor is a huge proponent of it. His political suit is as ill-fitting as Gulliver’s thumbnail suit, but his clown-clothes certainly are fashionable.
URL to article: https://www.wind-watch.org/news/2011/07/13/not-worth-the-view/