Rich Liberals OPPOSE Cape Cod Windmills-Why?

Great Debates
21

I’d like to point out that we have a windmill in downtown Toronto, visible from my house and visible to the millions who use the highway that goes past it.

It is quiet and unobtrusive. Tree-huggers like me are very enamoured with it. I don’t expect everyone to share my reverence but I can tell you honestly that the “visual pollution” is minimal. I would much rather look at the windmill than at the highway, or at the billboards that line the highway, or at the condos that line the lakeshore beside the windmill.

And I would much, much, much rather look at it than at a coal-burning power plant, or at a portable coal-burning engine that is being purchased to make up for the nuclear power plants that haven’t functioned in years.

22

Five to seven miles? Jeez … that’s way out there. A windmill at thit distance would be far less visible than the hundreds of boats closer to shore.

I was thinking about plans for windmills where the structures would be much closer to the shoreline, like a couple hundred meters or so.

23

Oh no, not windmills! Far rather the beauty of chemical fog, smog, oil slicks, coal mines, oil wells, oil refineries, etc, etc, etc. Build a dam and flood them all.

24

Well yeah cowgirl, but you’re already in the blasted visual wasteland that is TO. :slight_smile:
Imagine owning waterfront property, watching the tern bank and dive while the sunrise gets mangled by windmills. It wouldn’t, not really, but that would be my image if I had never sat down to think about it.
Beside the Lakeshore is lovely in its own weird way.

25

Lakeshore powerplant that is.

26

Cape Cod is “pristine”?

Heh.

Hee hee.

Tee hee hee hee hee hee hee.

BWA-HA-HA-HA-HA-HA-HA-HA-HA-HA!!!

In a pig’s eye it’s “pristine”.

There are industrial waste sites in Indianapolis that are as “pristine” as is Cape Cod. That area has been fished, built up, modified, and generally munched over by Europeans and their descendents for nigh-onto three centuries, now. Only a truly monumental liar or someone well-steeped in ignorance would try to pass it off as “pristine”.

27

elmwood, even if the windmills were close to shore, there would be a fair amount of hipocracy from the left on this. We’re talking about people who (presumably) lambasted Bush over Kyoto suddenly deciding that non polluting energy sources aren’t such a good idea because their precious and expensive view is disturbed.

This sort of proposal should be opposed by the evil, eco-raping, help-the-rich, republicans, not the good, eco-friendly, slam-the-rich, democrats. These Richie Rich’s want these power sources located somewhere else, presumably where the populace isn’t powerful enough to make the NIMBY argument hold.

28

Can we dispense with the name-calling and silliness, for a minute? Yes, there is almost certainly a fair portion of NIMBY at work, here. But, there are some genuinely valid concerns and arguments against locating the wind farm there, as well.

For one thing, while the Cape certainly is NOT pristine, the waters off the Cape are in pretty good shape, and it would be nice to keep them that way. Not that I think oil leaks are a major concern, but because the Cape’s inherent worth is in it’s visual beauty. No offence to anyone in Kansas, or wherever, but, if people aren’t flocking to your area for their vacations, then, yes, that would be a better place to put the windmills. The Cape’s entire economy depends on that tourist income. If they start ruining the ocean views, people will stop coming, and the Cape will suffer greatly.

Five miles is not much distance, when you’re looking across water. They would be easily visible from shore. Even the Cape Wind folks who want to build the wind farm admit that. Here’s a link to their artist’s rendition of what it would look like. The windmills are quite visible in some of the shots. (And, might be in all of them, if I had a better monitor.)

And, let’s not forget, Martha’s Vineyard and Nantucket are islands. Very few people fly there. The proposed site is such that it would be an eyesore to people taking the ferries to and from the islands, as well. It’s smack in the middle of the two ferry routes that run out of Hyannis.

I’m very much a proponent of environmentally sound, renewable energy sources. And, I don’t live on the Cape, or even visit it, very often. But, I don’t think this is such a great idea, either. I don’t see why they can’t put them someplace that won’t suffer economically from it. Sounds like Toronto has the right idea; put them in urban areas, where there is no natural beauty left to destroy. Or, here in Boston, there are a bunch of islands in the harbor aren’t really used for anything. Why not put them there? Hell, why not build a line of them on the median strips of every divided highway in the metro-Boston area?

29

I think the first part quoted is a very valid concern, local economy is important and should not be forgotten. However, I don’t think that someone elses back yard, just because it is crappy already, need be the dumping ground for every potential eyesore coming down the pike.

If you want sacrifices to be made in the interest of the environment (or any cause) you had better damn well be willing to make that sacrifice yourself, and not just foist it off on the inner city. Why can’t it be in Boston? Well, I’m guessing that the Cape has a whole lot more steady and powerful winds to work with than the city does. Even if it could be in Boston, there is something to be said for taking a stand and being willing to sacrifice for a cause you believe in.

30

Apparently, you didn’t notice my location. Boston is my backyard, and I’d welcome them, here. FWIW, I read that Boston is one of the windiest cities in the US. (Chicago was something like 4th or 5th. Link) So, if it doesn’t work, here, it ain’t gonna work.

I just think we should put them in places where their presence is not going to ruin a nice view. Hence, urban locations.

31

Well, all other issues aside, these things are called “wind farms” for a reason. You need an annual average of 18 miles per hour for the things to work. The presence of many tall buildings in the general area tends to blocks the through-winds needed to turn large turbines. According to the link you provided, Boston’s annual average is 12.5 mph. That why wind farms that power cities need to be located outside the cities, with the electricity that they generate being brought in through cables. Saying that just because it won’t work in Boston it won’t work anywhere is a silly argument.l

32

Got a cite for that 18 mph figure? Because, if you noticed, the windiest place listed, aside from Mt Washington, only averaged 15.3 mph. I guess that means that the one that’s currently in Boston harbor, off the shore of Hull, shouldn’t be working. But, somehow, it does. I guess it’s just silly.

And, let’s not forget, the people who want to build the wind farm don’t want to do it out of altruistic concerns. They expect to make huge profits from it. This is not a non-profit group. And, they don’t own the land they want to build on (yes, it’s underwater, but it’s still land); it belongs to the public. Plus, there’s another company that is currently looking into 25 other sites in the area, so this isn’t the only feasible site. Just the most profitable.

33

Moving this to Great Debates.

34

This is something I know a little about:

Here is the product home page for a Vestas V47-660 kW wind turbine (a typical example):
http://www.vestas.com/produkter/V47/v47_UK.html
What they likey object to is having to look at a row of a dozen wind turbine towers. They are REALLY BIG. Imagine a white 200 foot tall tower with a bus-sized housing (it’s called a nacelle…like in Star Trek) connected to spinning blades the size of jumbo-jet wings.

I wouldn’t want them in my back yard and I work with them for a living (well…I work with the money they generate…not the actual plants).

35

He probably means 18 m/s. About 35 mph.

36

Here’s a previous thread on wind farms Wind power. Note that the regions listed below 7 m/s (~16 mp) are considered uneconomical to develop. That’s not say that small scale additions to the primary electrical grid are useless, just that if you’re going to build a power plant you’d like it to be effective source of power.

As for the profit motive, so what? Do you actually believe this issue would not garner the same amount of outrage if it had been built/proposed by the Sierra Club?

The irony of a primarily affluent, democrat enclave fighting an environmental power source is amusing. No not all the people are democrats, not every one is rich, but that is the general impression of the region.

37

Actually, now that i look again, it’s not quite clear whether the 18mph figure is the minimum required for a wind farm, or the average wind speed in Nantucket Sound. From the NYT Magazine article:

As you can see, the implication of the second sentence is that 18mph is the required amount of wind, but i admit the sentence is not very clear about that. It could just be that this is the Sound’s average figure, and that the required figure is actually lower.

I checked a bunch of wind energy sites, and none gave a definitive answer to the question. It turns out that the size of the rotor blades is an important factor. According to this site:

Emphasis in original.

This page shows how to calculate the amount of power at a given wind speed, for a given rotor size. It doesn’t, however, provide any information about whether there is a minimum wind speed required, or whether there is a minimum or maximum rotor size that can be used.

OK, i’ve finally found something. According to this page:

Emphasis added by me. This webpage also has a table at the bottom showing Classes of Wind Power Density. A glance at this table shows that if the 18mph cited in the article is indeed the Sound’s average annual wind speed, then this site falls into the top category (Wind Power Class 7) at 10 metre elevation, and the second-top category (Wind Power Class 6) at 50 metre elevation. The page concludes:

It seems that the reason that the figures given by this site are lower than those provided by Grey in his/her post is explained in the last sentece of that quote–new research and technology is allowing lower wind speeds to be used.

38

The Vestas[sup]TM[/sup] turbine is designed to operate between 5-25 m/s (about 10-50 mph) with an optimal speed of 15 m/s (~30 mph). Other models have a smaller secondary generator for operating at low speeds.

What is more important than a high average wind speed (which is important) is consistant wind direction (prevailing wind). Even though the towers rotate, you don’t want to have winds that change direction and speed on an hourly basis.

Bear in mind that many facilities do not operate all year round.

39

Davebear: Apparently, you didn’t notice my location. Boston is my backyard, and I’d welcome them, here. FWIW, I read that Boston is one of the windiest cities in the US. (Chicago was something like 4th or 5th. Link) So, if it doesn’t work, here, it ain’t gonna work.

It does work there: as you noted, you’ve already got New England Wind’s operational wind turbine right on the South Shore, in Hull MA. The 50-ft., 660-kilowatt turbine sits at the edge of Boston Harbor on the tip of a peninsula behind the Hull high school. It produces annually about enough electricity to power 250 homes, and has been so successful so far (even though it’s not yet entirely cost-competitive with non-renewable energy sources) that NE Wind is looking into building more turbines on the mainland. Nobody seems to find it a nuisance, and so far from driving away tourists it’s actually a modest tourist attraction in its own right.

I think that part of the discomfort with wind farms is just that they’re new and we’re not used to them as part of the visual landscape. When people have a chance to consider the alternatives, they generally are more accepting of the turbines. (There are also concerns about environmental impact in the form of bird kills, etc., which won’t be thoroughly resolved without more study and experience. “Pole-mounted Cuisinarts” is pretty exaggerated, though; modern turbines don’t turn all that fast.)

I agree that the NIMBYism of Cape Cod property owners about the Cape Wind proposal is rather off-putting, but let’s not blame liberals in general for it. Remember, after all, that most of the people pushing hardest for renewable energy development and other environmental issues have been liberals. And most of us—even those of us on the New England shore who yield to nobody in our appreciation of the beauty of Cape Cod and the Islands—are quite willing to put up with some “industrial development” if it makes a significant contribution to environmental safety and energy independence. Yeah, it would be nicer if we could put all the turbines in places that are already industrially developed, but the wind blows where it lists, y’know?

40

Certainly Cronkite and the Kennedys don’t speak for liberals in general. They certainly don’t speak for me.

Perhaps the way to get wind farms in place is to handle this kinda like Alaska and its oil. Just like Alaskans get dividends from their oil, perhaps those who live in sight of the wind farms ought to get a dividend on the revenues from the power generation.

The Cape Cod types might not bite, but I betcha the windy plains would quickly be covered with windmills, from Kansas up to North Dakota.