News and Politics Forum

We have one of those by the lake.  For as dangerous as they are rumored to be for birds, there is a hell of a lot of goose crap around it.

Iron Sun 254 wrote:

That's because it knocks the shit out of the geese.

I am in favor of these windmills.

+1, AC


Although I'm in favor of the older style construction that resembled a trellis.

Mother bird: "That looks like a lovely place to nest"......*SPLAT!*

axe wrote:

Actually they do produce quite a bit of power. Their main drawback is geography, very few places have the constant high-velocity wind they require.

I've heard the midwestern states are abundant in this resource.

Idaho = the new Saudi Arabia?

Windmills are great alternative energy. The ones you saw on the PA Turnpike were in Somerset county. Unfortunately people get upset b/c they hurt the view (I think they look nice), such as Ted kennedy being against those off of Marthas Vineyard, or because they hurt the birds as mentioned.

That has me thinking.

I would imagine the technology is available where upon the bird hits the turbine,
the remains are directed towards an automated machine of some sort, & by the
time it hits the ground, it looks like this:






Undocumented workers could gather the bundles & deliver them to local food marts.

zuk wrote:

For as dangerous as they are rumored to be for birds, there is a hell of a lot of goose crap around it.

The shit doesn't hit the fan?




Wa Waahhhh.....

Qwinn wrote:

Actually they do produce quite a bit of power. Their main drawback is geography, very few places have the constant high-velocity wind they require.

My reason for stating that is that I believe I read recently (I wasn't exceedingly focused on it, so I may be a bit off, but this is what I remember) that the country with the largest percentage of their power coming from wind is, I think, Denmark, and they get about 2% of their power needs from it.

They probably don't have enough windmills. They're very expensive, and you need a lot of them to produce energy, you couldn't just plant one or two and power a city, you need dozens. So in that sense they aren't all that great, they take up a lot of space and they're very expensive. But once they're set up, they provide free energy with no pollution, no waste, and they aren't dangerous in any way. They aren't a panacea, but out of all our current means of power generation, they're definitely one of the best options.

Texas does have an unfounded negative reputation. Houston is known as a being a Portland-like biking city. I imagine that there is some great Mexican food there as well.

Thundersnow wrote:

Houston is known as a being a Portland-like biking city.

Errrrrr.... That's probably just good marketing more than anything else. We have a number of really good trails, this is true. And if you look at a Houston trail map and didn't know the city, you'd think you could get everywhere by bike. What those maps fail to address is how many of those trails are 3 foot painted lanes on very busy and congested boulevards, along with the drivers who totally and completely fail to recognize the existence of those of us trying to pedal anywhere.

Another thing we lack is Portland's climate. Try biking to and from work May-Oct and you'll very quickly discover yourself working alone out of a broom closet with anonymous packages of deodorant being sent to you via interoffice mail.

Pussy

Yuppie? Dude, that is so 80s.

If these took out seagulls as well it would be win-win.