Last fall I wrote about how self-anointed environmental mastermind politicians in my homestate of Vermont bulldozed public opposition, lots of trees and finally the top of Lowell Mountain to make way for “climate-saving” 450-foot industrial wind turbines. Read here and here.
Here’s how environmental protection by these political environmental pimps appears so far, hat-tip: energizevermont.org.
Crushed stone pad for just one turbine to be installed. Many such sites are being prepared on Lowell Mountain to accommodate a series of turbines, 21 in all.
How Vermont protects the environment – coming statewide (except Chittenden County, where the fat cats live).
Silent spring for Vermont wildlife.
The source of these photos is mountaintalk.com
This is all “to save the planet” from the junk-science-based climate catastrophe fantasy.
How about a little prison time for the charlatans perpetuating the hoax? In a way it’s really good that I’m all the way across the big pond now.
Yes, we can thank these political whores for ruining a once beautiful area (please excuse my diplomacy). This of course is just one windpark of an entire series planned by the state.
The Green Wave
It’s just stunning how psychologically people just blindly herd behind a fad to the point where they just don’t even see the massive damage being inflicted. It’s like the story “The Wave“. It’s totally out of control. All you need are a few clever manipulators, and lots of dupes.
According to state senator Joe Benning, also a duped climate-science believer, but at least still sober enough to see the damage:
And more wind farms are coming as corporate investors, motivated by tax incentives and artificially inflated electric rates, seduce small towns with infusions of cash. Since wind is intermittent and has no storage capacity, our policy alone will require more wind farms and many miles of transmission lines to achieve our energy goal. Regulatory authorities are failing to insist on decommissioning plans, meaning our ridgelines will end up littered with forty story rusting hulks when this technology becomes obsolete. These new wind farms are encroaching on our wildlife corridors, destroying pristine mountain environments and radically changing the aesthetics of our state. They pit citizens of towns against each other, and towns against towns in a given region.”
Even if CO2 were a problem, the operation of heavy equipment, the massive earthwork and all the deforestation creates a carbon footprint that likely will never be erased – never mind the permanent disfigurement of the landscape.
Vermont’s children and grandchildren someday are going to ask: What the hell was in Vermont’s drinking water back then?
Unbelievable…
By the way, your “View all photos’ here” link returns a 403 error. From the Energise Vermont site I found one that works:
https://plus.google.com/photos/114098560210816181304/albums/5733553541623897729?banner=pwa&authkey=CKbdpKLqu6SsLg
Thanks Dave.
Your link works – at least for me.
Works for me too. No snow in sight – I hope they’ll be able to stop CVW in time! (Catastrophic Vermont Warming)
Next door here in New Hampshire a major political football is the “Northern Pass” project, an attempt at running a second high voltage DC power line from Hydroquebec. Not surprisingly, the folks in the forested areas in the northern part of the state are up in arms, as are all the environmental groups who know a good thing when they see it.
Personally, I don’t have much of a stand on it, though I enjoyed pointing out the original DC line to my young daughter whenever we drove under it, in the many places it crosses roads across the state. (She’s graduating with a Liberal Arts degree next month – where did I go wrong?)
We don’t have many wind turbines here yet, but I hope the people who work themselves into a blather over a power line will have no response to resistance for “environmentally friendly” future attempts to install turbines on mountain ridges. At least the power line doesn’t move, produce infrasonics, and have flashing aircraft warning lights.
The “View all photos here!” link gave me “403. That’s an error. We’re sorry, but you do not have access to this page. That’s all we know.” That was after logging in to Goggle+ and also trying to trim the URL of all the cruft after the ‘?’.
Dave writes the same. I merely copied the link from energizevermont.org. I’ll see if I can fix that. (For me it works).
Do not forget the toxic waste left over in the smeltering of rare earth which makes some of the components.
So lucky in Vermont to have solid ground.
As a rule of thumb, the width of the footings is the same as the height of the tower; radially from the base. For off-shore, again depending on the conditions of the sea-bed, the piles (3 or 4 of them) need to be driven about 3 times deeper than the height of the tower.
There are over 1000 tonnes of concrete in the footings of an on-shore wind generator of “reasonable” size. And almost as much in steel reinforcements. All of which is buried before the “environmentally-friendly” publicity photos are taken.
Don’t forget the trenches for connection to the grid and the access roads which have to be maintained permanently.
It takes over 6000 “megawatt” scars of the landscape to average as much electrical power generation as a small nuclear power plant. And the nuclear power plant will be able to provide electricity on demand, regardless of wind.
Here’s an alternative link to the pictures of the desecration:
https://picasaweb.google.com/114098560210816181304/April19202012LowellMountains?authkey=Gv1sRgCKbdpKLqu6SsLg&noredirect=1
Dear Mr. Gosselin: Greetings from a skeptic of Rutland, VT! For some time I’ve checked your blog for updates on the German solar energy disaster but first learned via your “Green Wave” post that you’re an ex pat of our People’s Republic of Vermont. For the benefit of your readers, Vermont was historically populated and its Legislature run by independent, conservative free-thinkers; eg. farmers, loggers, self-employed entrepreneurs, etc. Some 40 odd years ago word of Vermont beauty got out and there commenced a systemic invasion of Liberal/Progressive ideologs who couldn’t get elected Dog Catcher from where they came. Now the whole State is up-side-down. The inmates run the asylum. Keep up the good work. Regards, Tom Layden
Thanks for dropping by. Actually I prefer to view myself as an ex-pat of Ethan Allen’s Green Mountain state. All the troubles began in earnest when Madelaine Kunin became governor back in the 70s. I left in 82 to go to Arizona to study. Out-of-state-tuition in AZ was cheaper than in-state tuition at UVM!
[…] Vermont means green mountain in French, but obviously not in Eco-tard. Here is what the Green Totalitarians are doing to the mountains in Vermont–leveling them for 400-foot birdshredders: […]
Destroy it in order to save it.
Give it time. 10 years, 20 years, maybe a bit longer and all those wind turbines will be rusting, burnt out hulks of scrap.
There is no problem for them to solve. They are technically useless and economically unsustainable. In time they will just go away.
We will look back on this era and marvel at our stupidity.
German green socialist farmers miffed by German green national socialist farmers.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/apr/28/germany-far-right-green-movement
That is eco vandalism on a stupefying scale – why are these nutters allowed to get away with this lunacy?
[…] The Green Wave – How Vermont Protects the Environment (Warning: Graphic Photos!) […]
This is TRAGIC!! Everything that is WRONG with these criminal politicians and wind developers and NGO’s that back them can be summed up in these sad pictures!
We can only hope that once criminal charges begin to reign down on these crooks that they won’t stop until every single “foul green parasite” is in jail!
Check out their planning permits on the subject of fire.
No equipment capable of tackling a fire at this height ? Check.
No feasible plan to extinguish an ensuing forest fire from burning debris scattered by high winds into the nearby forest whilst the turbine takes time to burn itself out. Check.
No plan to deal with clearing up the carcinogenic and mutagenic chemicals dispersed downwind from burning composite materials. Check.
No plan to equip firefighters with full respiratory equipment because of the hazards from chemically toxic microscopic fibres. Check.
No plan to ensure clean-up workers wear full respiratory gear when clearing up post-fire debris. Check.
No plan to deal with potentially deadly dioxins (released from burning PNV insulation and other materials ?) scattered downwind and thus able to enter water courses and the human food chain. Check.
PNV is a typo for PVC ! Sorry.
The problems in Vermont started even before Kunin, a watershed event was the banning of billboards. This may actually seem like a good idea to many people, even today, but it marked a turning point. Tourism is now the most important industry in Vermont, and appearing “green” attracts city people i.e. tourists. If it can be said that Vermont has more wind power per capita than any where else than the stupid tourists will just lap it up. Since this kind of thinking seems to be what can justify ruining a few small mountains, too bad for the locals.
I agree that this is needless, pointless and wasteful but if it were for something useful like a road or minding project it would not concern me. All projects involving altering the wild landscape look awful at first but as the disturbed area start to provide habitats for transitional species which require disturbances to briefly thrive. Roadsides often sustain many rare species because they provide a niche that does not exist in a healthy expanse of mature wilderness. They could speed the renewal of these sites if they spray some grass seed and wood pulp (to retain water, hold the seed in place and provide biomass) on the exposed slopes.
There are enough reasons to oppose wind power projects without lending credibility to the kind of anti-industry speculations that the left uses to claim that poor mother nature is being raped. Bats and birds get killed running into everything, not just wind turbines and long after these things are abandoned they will be covered with moss, vines and bird nests–or scraped and the sites reclaimed by the wild.
Vermont — The Green Chernobyl Of America. Wait a minute I hear California has taken up the challenge. Who will ulitmately destroy both their economy and environment to the nth degree, stay tuned, the insanity has just started.