Wind power a bad value, kills birds
Casper Star-Tribune Online | February 3, 2014 | trib.com
In response to Ms. Propst’s Jan. 26 letter on the wind industry, “Wind power causes only a tiny fraction of bird deaths,” repeat for the umpteenth time: Turbines kill raptors and bats. Few other human or feline activities do that—and ones that do are fined large amounts. Wind pretends killing birds is no big deal. Yet oil, gas, even landfills get fined for killing migratory birds and raptors. That says “big deal.” So either drop all fines, call it all “no big deal” for everyone or fine wind and stop pretending it’s somehow okay for the wind industry to chop up eagles and explode bats.
As for the “accomplishments” of European wind, Denmark, Ireland and Portugal use less than one half the electricity per capita as the United States. If they matched our per capita usage, then on average their wind would provide 15 percent of their energy (currently it averages under 30 percent –those figures Ms. Propst listed were for very, very short periods and ignored times when no energy was produced). Denmark pays an average costs per kilowatt-hour of 41 cents. The US average is 12 cents, according to 2011 figures. Wind is apparently a very expensive “free energy” source.
Ms Propst said “at times” Portugal has “reliably obtained” such power. That statement is an oxymoron. Her whole sales pitch sum up to: “Mrs. Smith, I have a great car for you. It’s three times as expensive as the others, will at times reliably get you to work and back and at times reliably get 60 miles per gallon (downhill with a tailwind).”
SHERI KIMBROUGH, Evansville
URL to article: https://www.wind-watch.org/news/2014/02/04/wind-power-a-bad-value-kills-birds/