Vermont Madness: How “Environmentalists” Go About “Saving” The Global Climate

Take a bunch of mad scientists, put them in the same room as idiot policymakers who are gullible enough to believe them, and the results you get are more often then not totally disastrous. History has shown this time and again. Some examples are eugenics, the lipid hypothesis and DDT.

Now such is the case in my home state of Vermont, just a stone throw away from my childhood hometown.

Reader “The Indomitable Snowman, Ph.D.” sent me a couple of aerial shots of what Lowell Mountain looks like today after wind energy proponents got their way and installed 21 wind turbines on it. Each are some 450 feet tall:

Lowell Mountain 1

Photo: “The Indomitable Snowman, Ph.D.”

You’ll find many more far gorier photos in the Internet simply by Googling “Lowell Mountain Wind Project”.

Turned off when power is really needed

So how well is the Lowell Mountain wind project rescuing the climate? Not very well, it turns out.

Vermont Digger site here, for example, reports how in 2013 during a heat wave grid operator ISO New England asked Green Mountain Power (GMP) to take much of the windpark offline, citing “insufficient infrastructure” to transmit power from Lowell.

VtDigger writes:

Instead of using wind power, GMP was required to use more carbon-heavy and expensive fuels because ISO officials say the infrastructure used to transmit power from Lowell is insufficient.”

ISO New England then called on GMP “to fire up its four jet turbines and six diesel engines located elsewhere around the state to match the high demand.” So here we see that it’s not even enough for the wind to blow. You also have to hope that the wind park is also located in the right spot!

Of course Vermont No. 1 eco-knucklehead Governor Peter Shumlin was angered that the wind park’s power had been curtailed and demanded that the power be used. After all people like Shumlin fret that the green power that did not get fed in probably led to 0.0000000000000000000000000000000000000000011°C more theoretical global warming, give or take a few zeros, and so may have stressed a little bit a couple of microbes somewhere in the Arctic.

Lowell Mountain wind power was not the only power that got curtailed, by also another wind park in Vermont and one in Maine got cutailed, VtDigger reports. The reason: “transmission limitations”.

This is precisely the sort problems we are seeing with Germany’s North Sea wind parks, which are set up but have no sufficient infrastructure to transmit the power where it is needed. Green masterminds at work.

The Lowell Mountain wind park has accomplished one thing: It has destroyed an entire mountain area and the delicate biodiversity and ecosystem surrounding it.  That’s a hell of price to pay for the theoretical 0.000000000000001°C or so less global warming the park will lead to.

I’m curious to know just how much power the 64.5 megawatt project actually produced over its first year of operation and percentage of rated capacity that was. I suspect it was probably even lower than the urine-poor results we’ve seen in Baden Wurttemberg.

“The Indomitable Snowman, Ph.D.” comments in his e-mail:

The other silly part is that this kind of stuff is being brought to us by the same people who, for years, fought tooth-and-nail against the construction of little tiny mobile communications towers on the same ridgelines – on the grounds that they amounted to ‘visual pollution’.  With these, they’re even trying to get artists to create agitprop to convince people that these things are beautiful; the infamous totalitarian regimes of the 20th century were always conscripting ‘artists’ into ‘the cause’ in the same way.”

Why do morons like Shumlin and their destruction remind me of this? It took nature hundreds of thousands of years to form Vermont’s mountains.

 

15 responses to “Vermont Madness: How “Environmentalists” Go About “Saving” The Global Climate”

  1. The Indomitable Snowman, Ph.D.

    For what it’s worth, that “construction” was done via blasting; basically, the entire top of that ridge was dynamited away to provide access roads for heavy equipment and to create the spots for the huge concrete anchor-pads that the whirly-gigs require.

    When that “work” was going on three or four years back, there was an aviation restriction zone over and around Lowell Mountain – due to possible hazards to aviation caused by chunks of rock flying up into the air due to the blasting. That restricted area went up to 8,000 feet.

    Readers who have taken at least high school physics can compute the initial vertical velocity that would be required to launch a rock up to an altitude of 8,000 feet.

  2. DirkH

    At least we can now have cell phone towers everywhere.

    Currently I’m driving weekly along the A2. Near Bad Oeynhausen, there are isolated wind turbines here and there on some of the hills. Always a single one. Looks like they spread them out, to maximize the area unsuitable for human residence (and maximize the bat kills).

  3. Boyfromtottenham

    Hi from Oz. Good point, Dirk, maybe the real point of wind farms is population control – the more wind farms, the fewer places that people can inhabit! How cunning are these people behind these AGW proponents.

    1. DirkH

      Depopulating the countryside is explicit goal of Agenda 21 and ICLEI.
      Also, the countryside is owned by aristocrats and the Vatican, at least in most of Europe, so they don’t want peons there.
      REDD (promoted by Bono of U2) tries to achieve control over the territories of indigenous people.
      I think the Rothschilds had this thing called the World Conservation Bank with the purpose of acquiring wildland as well… renamed to the Global Enfironment Facility… in cahoots with the UNFCCC (surprise)… Kofi Annan is married to a Rothschild…
      and on and on…

      (no this wasn’t all from memory.)

  4. Dave in the states

    There’s a bunch of them not far from where I live. They do indeed pollute the view and kill birds. They require more roads and infrastructure than drilling does. They have created 4 local jobs but some of the biggest land owners are collecting Gov subs and royalties in the millions. The irony is that these dozens and dozens of wind mills are not even connected to the grid. The BLM, another Gov agency, won’t give them permits to install the transmission lines! Buried lines are just a big a deal in terms of impacts as pipelines.

  5. Streetcred

    Reminds me of a story: I was involved in the construction of a new school complex in a growing suburb, real urgent, except that when the school was completed and ready for occupation, there was no road to link the school to the existing road infrastructure. School had to be withdrawn from use until a new road was constructed. What a shemozzle !!

  6. E.A.

    I hope sanity prevails before grandiose plans for several million wind turbines, worldwide, are approved. The idea that saving the environment means destroying the landscape subset of said environment is very depressing. But people tend to plunge into things and cast blame when it’s too late.

    http://s10.postimg.org/rm016h1a1/wind_turbines_landscrape_03.jpg

    1. E.A.

      I posted before realizing that this is a global warming denial site; a mindless excuse for opposing wind turbines. Don’t you people realize that Man is capable of causing more than one problem at a time? It’s called cumulative impact.

  7. sod

    The problem in this case is not the wind, but a weak grid (grids were left to rot by the companies that were supposed to keep them in good shape in many places all over the world).

    On the other hand, even in the US places are moving towards 100% renewable power.

    http://www.fool.com/investing/general/2014/09/27/hawaii-could-be-100-renewable-before-you-know-it.aspx

    1. AndyG55

      http://www.fool.com

      Well at least you chose the correct reference.!

      1. AndyG55

        And just how is the night lie in Hawaii going to cope when there is no wind??

        This is the utter stupidity of your ramblings.

        You STILL refuse to even trial a situations where you turn off all power to your abode whenever there is little or no wind, or a strong wind.

        You are totally gutless in support of what you would wish on others.

        1. AndyG55

          typo correction……

          night life….

      2. sod

        Hawaii is currently running on Diesel. So the light wil not go out, when there is no wind at night.

        Hawaii also has geothermal potential, which would produce “base load” and actually can do so at prices below current electricity prices.

        http://energy.hawaii.gov/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/EnergyFactsFigures_Jan2013.pdf

        Hawaii has been ripped of by the fossil fuel mafia and is on the way to a cleaner and cheaper power solution.

        http://www.hnei.hawaii.edu/sites/dev.hnei.hawaii.edu/files/news/Full%20Slide%20Deck.pdf

  8. sod

    Interesting newsto look at:

    “Utility Company To Buy Coal Plant Just To Shut It Down”

    http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2015/03/12/3632518/florida-coal-plant-shutdown/

    Coal is not only dirty, but also expensive.

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