BS: People moaning about windmills

Subject: BS: People moaning about windmills
From: Rt Revd Sir jOhn from Hull
Date: 17 Mar 06 - 08:25 AM

Hello,
I mean them electric windmills waht they invented.
they was going to put some near here, but all the moany people started moaning and writing to local paper etc=
"blar, blar, blar, we dont want no windmills, they are rubbish etc".

they not rubbish, they get free electricity from the wind, them people just like to moan about stuff, and electric is running out and gettingf really expensive.
anyway = i am going to build one in my garden, if anyone moans, i will tell them to get lost.

gas is getting expensive as well, so i will make my own
i'm not sure waht its made of, but i will do some research.

Subject: RE: BS: People moaning about windmills
From: jacqui.c
Date: 17 Mar 06 - 08:32 AM

You should get plenty of gas if you eat from the Curry Ship.

Subject: RE: BS: People moaning about windmills
From: Rt Revd Sir jOhn from Hull
Date: 17 Mar 06 - 08:34 AM

oh

Subject: RE: BS: People moaning about windmills
From: Rapparee
Date: 17 Mar 06 - 08:52 AM

Many windmills are going up in the US, at least in the West.

Subject: RE: BS: People moaning about windmills
From: MaineDog
Date: 17 Mar 06 - 08:52 AM

Don't worry, whatever you do someone will complain about it.
And if you choose to do nothing, somebody will complain about that, too.
MD

Subject: RE: BS: People moaning about windmills
From: Georgiansilver
Date: 17 Mar 06 - 10:36 AM

Those giant turbines have proved a failure in Germany and Holland inasmuch as they have not reached the output expected and are costly to maintain. O.K so we are aware of this...why are we buying them from Holland and Germany?............

Subject: RE: BS: People moaning about windmills
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 17 Mar 06 - 10:50 AM

GS, whats the matter with you. does the class system which makes our country what it is, mean nothing?

sir nOrman is a world authority and we are lucky to have him here. behave yourself, and only speak when he says anything to you, like yes your Lordship, how very true! and cor blimey your honour you really told that Tony Blair and other stuff of an obsequious nature.

three cheers his lOrdship and the windmills and the dutch and the little boy with his finger in the dyke, and all that.

Subject: RE: BS: People moaning about windmills
From: Strollin' Johnny
Date: 17 Mar 06 - 10:53 AM

'the little boy with his finger in the dyke' - what a picture that conjures up! LOL!

Subject: RE: BS: People moaning about windmills
From: Rasener
Date: 17 Mar 06 - 10:56 AM

oye carful what you say about the Dutch, or I will set my wife upon you. Just one Dutch look from her and your dead :-)

Subject: RE: BS: People moaning about windmills
From: Georgiansilver
Date: 17 Mar 06 - 11:32 AM

So why are you still alive Les?

Subject: RE: BS: People moaning about windmills
From: Rapparee
Date: 17 Mar 06 - 11:47 AM

My grandma always said we were Dutch, not German. You wanna take on my grandma??

Subject: RE: BS: People moaning about windmills
From: Joe Offer
Date: 17 Mar 06 - 12:29 PM

We have lots of windmill farms here in California. especially along the ridges of the coastal mountains. I understand they're dangerous for birds, though.
Most of the time, the windmills are stopped. Don't know why.
-Joe-

Subject: RE: BS: People moaning about windmills
From: Bert
Date: 17 Mar 06 - 12:36 PM

If we generated all our power from windmills would the extra drag slow down the rotation of the earth?

Subject: RE: BS: People moaning about windmills
From: Les in Chorlton
Date: 17 Mar 06 - 12:41 PM

Yes but not much. The very existance of us makes the planet different it's just a matter of how different you think is ok.

Tilting at windmills? It is always easier to be against something than for something else isn't it?

Anyway, I am off to see the Hollies where the earth will stand still somewhere in the 1960's for a bit.

Subject: RE: BS: People moaning about windmills
From: Bert
Date: 17 Mar 06 - 12:55 PM

Wouldn't it have to turn backwards to get to the Sixties?

Oh! perhaps not - The Hollies were ahead of their time.

Subject: RE: BS: People moaning about windmills
From: Kaleea
Date: 17 Mar 06 - 01:02 PM

Next time you drive through rural USA, spend some time on the backroads, & drive past a couple of abandoned farm houses. (They are numerous as the family farms have been driven out of busines--but that's a different thread.) If you stop & look around, you may see a tumbling down barn & out buildings, & an old frame house abandoned many years ago, but if you listen, you may notice an eerie creaking sound. Look upward, & you may see the motion of a decades old open back geared steel pumping windmill on a steel tower near the old house. The windmill is still turning.

Subject: RE: BS: People moaning about windmills
From: GUEST,mg
Date: 17 Mar 06 - 02:23 PM

You go for it and everyone else who can do this please do it. It is a good idea that sooner or later every household will automatically do. mg

Subject: RE: BS: People moaning about windmills
From: Don Firth
Date: 17 Mar 06 - 02:44 PM

Other that "unsightly" (which is a matter of opinion—beauty is a beauty does) and noisy (soft swooshing sounds, perhaps?), I keep hearing those who are opposed to wind farms saying that windmills are dangerous to birds. Well, now. . . .

If you do a little math and calculate the amount of air-space swept by the windmill vanes compared to the volume of the sky in general that is available to be used by flying birds, that, in itself, is pretty revealing. Then, calculating the amount of time that a flying bird would be occupying the disk of space swept out by the vanes and its chance of getting through that disk without actually getting whopped by a vane, that cuts the probabilities down even further. Not to mention that even in a high wind (which may keep birds grounded) the vanes don't turn so fast the that birds can't see them. Damned small chance of wind farms being dangerous to birds.

And an additional thought. If some children insist on playing in traffic, over a period of time, those children will be weeded out before they have a chance to breed, and what you have left are children who are smart enough to know that it's not a good idea to play in traffic. In addition to providing electrical power, wind farms may result in weeding out the more stupid birds.

But, in the light of Hitchcock's movie, The Birds, do we really want smarter birds?

Random thoughts on a slow day.

Don Firth

P. S.   I recall someone once saying, "We'll have solar power when, and only when, someone figures out a way to run a sunbeam through a meter."

Subject: RE: BS: People moaning about windmills
From: SunnySister
Date: 17 Mar 06 - 02:45 PM

It's amazing to me that with such abundance of intelligent, creative and entrepreneurial people in the world that we can't build better windmills, solar panels and all manner of energy-creating environmental friendly (or at least not destructive) sources.

We have so much information from the past and a real mandate from the future to really get in there and create and produce viable alternative power sources. Even the weather is trying to "inspire" us to do more...

-- SunnySister- who is hoping we listen and try to reach our creative potential in all areas of energy and conservation

Subject: RE: BS: People moaning about windmills
From: Dave the Gnome
Date: 17 Mar 06 - 03:07 PM

Have you people no idea what these windmills are really for?

It is a known fact that the wind is created by trees waving their arms - Just look out on a windy day and you will see the trees waving their arms about like mad. Due to de-forestation there is now less trees than their ever was and therefore less wind.

The wind farms are an absolute MUST if we want to keep our level of wind at an optimum. And we have to do that - How else would these signals sail across the Atlantic? Answer me that, eh?

What worries me more is that due to us having to generate so much wind we are now running out of electricity to generate it with. I think a good start would be wave generators. Ban them all. Why on earth do we need more waves? Apart from Aussies and Californians who benefits? Cut the wave farms down and we would have electricity to spare.

Sheeesh. You lot who call yourselves scientists haven't a clue have you.

Cheers

Dave the Gnome.

Subject: RE: BS: People moaning about windmills
From: Little Robyn
Date: 17 Mar 06 - 03:09 PM

The authorities are trying to put up wind farms in NZ. We have some already but the moaners are saying they're too ugly and 'Not in my backyard!'
I think they're fascinating and it's a much better option than going nuclear. NZ is still nuclear free but there are people who want to change that.
Robyn

Subject: RE: BS: People moaning about windmills
From: Geoff the Duck
Date: 17 Mar 06 - 05:28 PM

Stick 'em in my back yard with pleasure.
I think they are one of the most graceful things around.
Used to go with my old mate Jacko up to Ogden Water above Bradford. They've got a farm of them there, we used to take bread to throw to feed them......

Quack!
GtD.

Subject: RE: BS: People moaning about windmills
From: Don(Wyziwyg)T
Date: 17 Mar 06 - 05:56 PM

I'm with Geoff on this one. I could see myself in a deckchair, siting watching them and soaking up the sun.

They are very soothing to me and I can't imagine being stressed around them.

Answer to the Nimbys? Paint the tower brown, and the vanes green and say, with conviction, "What windfarm? All I see is some oddly shaped trees".

Don T.

Subject: RE: BS: People moaning about windmills
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 17 Mar 06 - 05:58 PM

I saw an interesting suggestion on site called half-bakery. The idea was that they could start combining wind-turbines with the pylons that carry power wround. That way instead of extra windmill towers and people getting uppity about what they look like, there'd just be more interesting looking towers in places where there already are pylons.

Personally I rather like the look of wind turbines. I'm sure a lot of the people who object to them would have objected to traditional windmills if they had been around when they were going up. The stuff about danger to birds sounds a bit phony to me - those turbines don't look as if they are going round all that fast, and birds used to manage to cope with the old windmills pretty well.

Subject: RE: BS: People moaning about windmills
From: SINSULL
Date: 17 Mar 06 - 06:43 PM

Welcome back, jOhn. I saw "People moaning" and I knew it was you.
SINS

Subject: RE: BS: People moaning about windmills
From: gnomad
Date: 17 Mar 06 - 08:06 PM

Yup, I saw "People moaning" and came to the same conclusion, only it seemed too pleasing a prospect to be true.

I like the turbines too. OK, they may be less efficient than they might be, but that simply means they need a bit of tuning/development.

I wonder about the numerous disused windmills which dot the country. In many cases I am sure that with new sails and something (presumably a generator) for them to drive they could again provide a useful contribution to the country's needs, and I have yet to meet someone who actively dislikes windmills.

There's a hostage to fortune, "Come out, Come out, Wherever you are!"

Subject: RE: BS: People moaning about windmills
From: Keith A of Hertford
Date: 18 Mar 06 - 06:21 AM

I think that the hills look more lovely without concrete turbines.
Britain is small and heavily urbanised.
Our remaining unspoilt landscape is too precious for industrial power generation.
There are alternatives.

Subject: RE: BS: People moaning about windmills
From: Liz the Squeak
Date: 18 Mar 06 - 06:26 AM

If you want cheap gas or wind power, just hook Manitas up to a machine and feed him guinness... it was like bloody hurricane season last night!

LTS

Subject: RE: BS: People moaning about windmills
From: Skipjack K8
Date: 18 Mar 06 - 07:37 AM

I like your thinking, Bert. If we can slow the rotation of the globe by windmill resistance, we can probably get another three hours into the day, and then we'll all be able to complete the list of jobs for the day, and live 12.5% longer. Utterly brilliant thinking, man!

Subject: RE: BS: People moaning about windmills
From: The Fooles Troupe
Date: 18 Mar 06 - 08:01 AM

AS the earth has been slowing down, the moon has been getting closer.

Chicken Little was Right!

Subject: RE: BS: People moaning about windmills
From: GUEST,DB
Date: 18 Mar 06 - 12:42 PM

My theory is that politicians don't give a shit about global warming etc. but people keep moaning about it (sometimes the same people who moan about windmills). In order to placate the moaners the politicians give the go-ahead to build sodding great, HIGHLY VISIBLE, windmills. These are completely useless but they provide big profits for windmill builders, who are the sort of people that the politicians are really working for. The windmills spoil the view but the politicians don't give a sod about that as there are no profits in views (well there are, in terms of tourism, but realising that involves joined-up-thinking which the politicians can't do).

Subject: RE: BS: People moaning about windmills
From: Geoff the Duck
Date: 18 Mar 06 - 03:59 PM

The big problem with windmills on hills is they only stick about 5 or 6 there. Not enough to produce the quantity of power needed. Ther ought to be forests of them.
We have the M1 running 200 miles up the country M4 running a similar distance across. They are already eyesores. Build the wind turbines along the central reservations.
As long as they produce more energy in total than it costs to make them, they would be worth having.
Quack!
GtD.

Subject: RE: BS: People moaning about windmills
From: Joe Offer
Date: 18 Mar 06 - 04:50 PM

Here in California, the wind farms have lots of windmills - there must be more than a hundred at Altamont Pass (near Livermore, site of the infamous Dec 1969 rock concert). Altamont is apparently a serious hazard for raptors (see here -click). The other wind farms I know are at Pacheco Pass (between Fresno and Monterey) and Tehachapi Pass (between Bakersfield and Barstow). I'm sure there are others.

It might seem that windmills would be a negligible hazard to birds, but a concentration of windmills can do a lot of harm to a migrating flock of birds - many of the passes where we have wind farms, are on major flyways. The passes concentrate the wind currents, which would seem to make them good for both wind farms and for bird migration - a dangerous combination.

-Joe Offer-

---

This article explains how Altamont is an exception, and that the usual loss of bird life may be negligible.

Also see this article.

Subject: RE: BS: People moaning about windmills
From: akenaton
Date: 18 Mar 06 - 04:57 PM

I'm amazed to find myself in agreement with Keith!!

What he said was bang on , but the alternatives which he mentions will almost certainly be different from the alternatives which I visualise.

I should think that Keith will be a supporter of nuclear power, whereas I would like to see a start made on cutting energy production and use...Ake

Subject: RE: BS: People moaning about windmills
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 18 Mar 06 - 06:50 PM

I think one problem is the people designing wind turbines are too hooked on the idea that things have to be shiny and modern looking. I've no doubt that it'd be possible without much trouble, and without losing efficiency, to vary the way they looked, in ways that would make them much more appealing to people who don't much like shiny and modern looking.

Of course the people who do like shiny and modern would probably object to that. But there's no reason they all have to look the same. After all, the old windmills came in all kinds of different shapes and sizes and design.

Subject: RE: BS: People moaning about windmills
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 18 Mar 06 - 06:53 PM

Pictures of windmills and windturbines. All the variation you could wish for.

Subject: RE: BS: People moaning about windmills
From: Joe Offer
Date: 18 Mar 06 - 09:32 PM

The typical American Aeromotor windmill looks like this (click). Aeromotor still makes windmills in San Angelo, Texas. Gee, I wonder if they were there when I lived in San Angelo....

I live in an old farm house on a ridge (2,300 feet elevation) in the California Sierra Nevada foothills. I've often thought about buying an old Aeromotor and restoring it, and putting it here on our ridge.
-Joe Offer-

Subject: RE: BS: People moaning about windmills
From: NH Dave
Date: 18 Mar 06 - 09:52 PM

Here in the east, there was a plan to erect a whole forest of the pylon wind mills, with the long three bladed airfoil "props" or 'sails", in the shallow water off the SE Mass. coast.   Currently the program is on hold as some interested citizens have filed legal actions claiming the windmills will cause harm to the sea birds and an inconvenience to local shipping/sailing.

Right now it appears that the "anti"s will prevail, and another cheap source of electricity will be sacrificed on the altar of PC or environmentalist's fears.

Dave

Subject: RE: BS: People moaning about windmills
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 19 Mar 06 - 02:11 AM

how brutal...... I prefer the lofty wooden structures with little dutch boys in dutch caps doing clog dances, in their time off from sticking a finger in the dyke.

no wonder people moan about windmills, I've seen sewage farms with more scenic splendour.

Subject: RE: BS: People moaning about windmills
From: Bert
Date: 19 Mar 06 - 02:34 AM

When I was studying engineering our books had a windmill design like a shuttlecock. It always rotated downwind so it didn't need a vane to bring it into the wind. Never did see one built though.

Thanks Skipjack K8. I hadn't though of the longer day aspect though. I could make good use of a couple of extra hours.

Subject: RE: BS: People moaning about windmills
From: Keith A of Hertford
Date: 19 Mar 06 - 04:03 AM

I am with you on this one Akeneaton.
I am a member of Greenpeace and FOtE, but I think that they are wrong to promote land based big wind generators.
Local microgeneration and energy saving are my alternatives, along with wave power, solar roofs and off shore wind farms.

Subject: RE: BS: People moaning about windmills
From: Cats
Date: 19 Mar 06 - 04:41 AM

We have a fair few wind farms here in Cornwall. Personally I think they are beautiful and can be very elegant as they move. They turn at nature's rate. We are also looking at wave power and have wind and wave turbines out to sea, where, perhaps they should be..I'm open on that one. It's a pity that the government withdrew tthe funding for the hot rocks research as that really did look to be a very good alternative. My answer to anyone who complains about wind turbines is, 'so you'd rather have a nuclear power station built there instead'. Soon shuts them up! Anything to clean up our planet.

Subject: RE: BS: People moaning about windmills
From: Bunnahabhain
Date: 19 Mar 06 - 06:40 AM

The things don't work!

To get a reasonably reliable power supply from them, you either need to install several times more than you need to generate the power, so that the ones in the area the wind is blowing in can power the whole country, or you need back up power stations of some other kind.

It's not that renewables don't work, it's just they need careful though.

There is a significant amount of solar power generation being installed in the deserts of the American South-West. These work, as one of the biggest power uses is air conditioning. If it's cloudly, or dark, the A/C is not in demand. That's reliablility.

Subject: RE: BS: People moaning about windmills
From: Keith A of Hertford
Date: 19 Mar 06 - 06:48 AM

My family are in Cornwall, mostly in and around St.Agnes.
From the Beacon you can see 4 or five farms, each of around 50 turbines.
One tower may have an elegant shape, but row upon row on a pristine hillside visible for miles is vandalism.
Nuclear is NOT the only alternative.
Yes hot rock should be revisited in Cornwall.
There are no commercial wave power projects anywhere in Britain yet.

Subject: RE: BS: People moaning about windmills
From: GUEST
Date: 19 Mar 06 - 08:47 AM

The folks who are opposed to the windmills are usually opposed to them for aesthetic reasons, which seem pretty damn superficial when compared to the cost paid by the planet and consumers for fossil fuels and nuclear. That, and in the rural areas of Ireland and Britain especially, where opposition seems strongest, people just plain don't like change.

I think difficulties and expense of long term maintenance at sea will ultimately defeat those sorts of projects.

But I do favor the electricity being generated by wind farms being used locally, and not shipped via high voltage power lines to the cities, suburbs, and industrial parks.

Subject: RE: BS: People moaning about windmills
From: Keith A of Hertford
Date: 19 Mar 06 - 09:06 AM

Yes, rural England is under threat from these things and yes, aesthetically the natural landscape is not changed for the better by industrial plant in seried ranks on the hillsides.

And as we keep saying, there ARE viable alternatives to the desecration.

Subject: RE: BS: People moaning about windmills
From: Liz the Squeak
Date: 19 Mar 06 - 09:22 AM

There are two that stick up from the Ford car works along the A13 in Dagenham... they aren't quite so obvious as the whole area is built up, but they do cause a bit of a stir when you round a corner in the housing areas and a turbine suddenly appears.... I don't know the amount of energy it saves Ford, but they do show at least a passing nod towards conservationists and such like, and let's face it... Fords Works are such an eyesore that any amount of turbines aren't going to make it any uglier.

LTS

Subject: RE: BS: People moaning about windmills
From: GUEST
Date: 19 Mar 06 - 10:04 AM

So what are the "viable alternatives" then?

Subject: RE: BS: People moaning about windmills
From: GUEST
Date: 19 Mar 06 - 12:21 PM

Still waiting to hear the viable alternatives...tick, tick, tick, tick....

Subject: RE: BS: People moaning about windmills
From: open mike
Date: 19 Mar 06 - 03:34 PM

here are some to tilt at:
mostly these are used for pumping water
http://www.vintagewindmills.com/
http://www.windmill.com/
Joe--these people are not so far from you..
Placerville area....
http://www.windmills.net/

one distinct memory from me early childhood
was the taste of well water drawn up by a
windmill on the family homestead -- cold
water in the heat of summer--yum...and
tasted like a bucket of nails...

oooh--that reminds me i know someone who is
going thru Ashland oregon I am gonna call
them up and ask them if they can bring me
a bottle of lithium water form the Lithia
springs there..

sorry stream of consciousness drift
from wind (power turbines) to water...