Would you agree to have a windturbine in your neighborhood

[pdf]

Not necessarily for or against, but want to clear up some misconceptions. First, birds and bats both are killed by wind turbines and in significant numbers. There is not that much data on how many and it is highly dependent on site-specific factors. One published study is:
http://www.wvhighlands.org/Birds/Mounta ... 04PKJK.pdf

Two things appear to be clear: 1) migration patterns of both birds and bats should be taken into account when siting turbines and 2) don't put lights near them.

Second, while the rotation rate is small the blade diameter is very large on the largest turbines. Tip speeds can get close to 100 mph. That will kill a bird or even you.

Like anything, you have to compare the risk of building wind turbines to the risk of not building them. Mercury in coal is a big problem, as well as sulfur and nitrogen oxides created in combustion. I'm pretty sure as long as you don't put them in the wrong places, they are much less of a problem than the alternative. I would not mind one in my neighborhood, dependent on the noise created. However, most of the wind power in the US is in the mid-west and off-shore, not in anyone's neighborhood.

[TylerDurden]

IIRC, turbine bird kills are vastly outnumbered by nighttime lit windows and radio-tower wirestrikes.

Noise is barely audible outside of the typical setback.

[Xanda2260]

The three 1MW+ turbines in our town generate very little noise. You can only hear it if stood directly underneath. However, the 5kw turbine at work turns way faster, makes a constant scraping sound, and has claimed the life of a seagul! The students threw an apple at the turbine to see if the blades would slice it. They couldnt throw for shit and missed, but a gull swooped in to catch it, and got decapitated by the blades! Only fatality of bird life I've heard of...
I'll get pics if I get chance

[StudEbiker]

The students threw an apple at the turbine to see if the blades would slice it. They couldnt throw for shit and missed, but a gul swooped in to catch it, and got decapitated by the blades! Only fatality of bird life I've heard of...
I'll get pics if I get chance

And that's exactly why I'm anti-children.

I have to ask, what are you going to get pics of?? The decapitated sea gull?? I don't think we really need to see those.

[Pure]

*hangs head in shame and mutters something about spell check*

LOL

[liveforphysics]

IIRC, turbine bird kills are vastly outnumbered by nighttime lit windows and radio-tower wirestrikes.

Noise is barely audible outside of the typical setback.

No Tyler, you need to think of the hot air ballooners who would need to fly higher than before through that area. It's not about what actually kills birds, it's not about coal and sulfur and acid rain destroying entire forests of birds and rivers etc. It's not about hundreds of millions of tons of coal being burned and the associated resource destruction and energy wasted in transportation etc.

Think of the hot air ballooners and try to be more thoughtful.


*end sarcasm*

[TylerDurden]

Y'all are just commie treehuggers.

[liveforphysics]

That's the spirit Tyler!

[liveforphysics]

This is a pro-coal site, designed to show you how important it is that we maintain using coal. (I'm not kidding)

They forgot to add the hot-air ballooners concern.

http://www.poweringanation.org/coal/

[Joseph C.]

Ah socialist realism. The Nazi's love that style of art too.

[MitchJi]

Hi,

This is a pro-coal site, designed to show you how important it is that we maintain using coal. (I'm not kidding)

http://www.poweringanation.org/coal/

:gag:

Powering a Nation Presents an Interactive Film

Coal
A Love story

It’s more than a rock.
It’s power. It’s people. It’s a relationship.

[sico]

I voted no, since I live within a kilometre of an international airport, and the "no" vote looked really sparse and I love an underdog.

I also recently learned that wind turbines increase the temperature near the ground so that's great news for Canadians and Alaskans alike:

http://www.studentnewsdaily.com/daily-news-article/large-wind-farms-increase-temperatures-near-ground/

[TylerDurden]

Ah socialist realism. The Nazi's love that style of art too.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constructivism_(art)

[Joseph C.]

Ah socialist realism. The Nazi's love that style of art too.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constructivism_(art)

It is the propaganda image of the 'working man' I was referring to not the constructivist decorations.

http://www.theblogmocracy.com/wp-conten ... ds/111.jpg

[Joseph C.]

I voted no, since I live within a kilometre of an international airport, and the "no" vote looked really sparse and I love an underdog.

I also recently learned that wind turbines increase the temperature near the ground so that's great news for Canadians and Alaskans alike:

http://www.studentnewsdaily.com/daily-news-article/large-wind-farms-increase-temperatures-near-ground/

I wonder how much do coal power stations increase the local temperatures by. Methinks a lot more than some wind turbines. There is probably another explanation for the increase in temperature. Someone on this forum has suggested curing concrete.

http://forum.planet-rugby.com/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=11310

[boppinbob]

Save the fish vote no.

[pdf]

It is pretty obvious that wind turbines will cause ground warming at night. The extent to which this will be a problem is not known, but I would predict it is small. As soon as the researcher gets his 15 min, I expect it will disappear as a topic of public interest. And contrary to reports I've seen, it is unrelated to "global warming"; it is simply warmer air mixing with colder air. The average temperature does not change, at least due to first order effects.

[www.recumbents.com]

There are a lot of wind farms here in Illinois. I was making a cross state trek on a very windy day and decided to stop and see how noisy the wind farm was. It looks like there are about 100 turbines per wind farm, all built over the past 5 years or so. Even though I was practically right underneath one of the behemoths, all I could hear was a whooshing noise, which was not very loud. I heard that in Illinois, 20% of the power is now wind generated. I'm impressed.

So yes, I would have one in my neighborhood, but here you have to have 2 acres before you can put up a wind turbine.

-Warren.

[liveforphysics]

There are a lot of wind farms here in Illinois. I was making a cross state trek on a very windy day and decided to stop and see how noisy the wind farm was. It looks like there are about 100 turbines per wind farm, all built over the past 5 years or so. Even though I was practically right underneath one of the behemoths, all I could hear was a whooshing noise, which was not very loud. I heard that in Illinois, 20% of the power is now wind generated. I'm impressed.

So yes, I would have one in my neighborhood, but here you have to have 2 acres before you can put up a wind turbine.

-Warren.

Looks like they have about ~2500MW wind gen ability right now in Illinois. That's great!

So... in coal, to generate 2500MW, you need to burn .8lbs of kWh so to generate 2,500,000,000watts for an hour, which works out to be ~2,000,000lbs of coal PER HOUR. A tractor-trailer can carry something like 80,000lbs of coal per trip. That's 25 tractor-trailer trips per hour. Then you BURN the coal into gnarly things, sulfides and mercury and all sorts of crazy things that contaminate coal and then rain-down as acid rain and poison rivers and forests etc.

So, if you're going to vote "no", but you're not proposing something that stops humans using electricity, you're saying you'd rather have more ships and barges and trucks loaded with millions of pounds of coal go get burned instead of a whoosh-whoosh noise, or a potential bird or hot-air-ballooner strike.

[Pure]

Evolution will take care of the birds. Only the ones smart enough to avoid those mean ol nasty blades will reproduce.

Survival of the strongest/smartest.

[Joseph C.]

Evolution will take care of the birds. Only the ones smart enough to avoid those mean ol nasty blades will reproduce.

Survival of the strongest/smartest.

The dinosaurs will rule the world again.

[www.recumbents.com]

We had a university owner coal fired power / heat plant near us when I was a kid in the 1960s. On snowy mornings the snow would be grey with ash from the power plant. Coal is about the cheapest and dirtiest power that is available. Just look at those pictures of Bejing.

-Warren.

[Xanda2260]

Never understood the whole 'wind turbines are ugly' thing. I think they look cool, defo nicer than a power station. While I can see how the sound could be annoying if you live next to it, these big turbines are generally sited away from homes (at least here). There's a petition in my town to have 2 of the big turbines removed (usual complaints, largely invalid), and the funny thing is, most of the complaints come from a housing estate that was built AFTER the turbines. Why the hell would you buy a house near a turbine, and then moan about it!!?! It's like the people who moan that the road they live on has too high a speed limit and needs to be reduced to reduce noise / increase safety for their pets or kids. Why did they buy a house on a high speed road? (understandable if road was upgraded later, obviously).

I live opposite a school and often get asked how I can live with the school-run mums parking all down the street. My answer is usually that I bought the house knowing full well there was a school there, and what the traffic is like. It doesn't bother me as I'm a teacher myself and am usually at work when the traffic issues arise.

[scriewy]

noise ? bhaaa stop being spoiled, i fall asleep while workers play in the street with jackhammers, or TV in the background or 30 meters from a railroad.

lets say those that don't care about environment, at least think about you electric bill, with turbines you'll pay 10 times less if not more, the maintenance is dirt cheap, and that's all to it.
you don't even need a private company, you build the turbines from gov budget, cos that's something the gov was suppose to do decades ago, but people are unknowledgeable and give a rats ass about things, easily distracted by societies smoke blown up their hinies.
only thing we should do is solar, wind, and sea turbines working from waves bidirectional blades that were invented in 70s by some european dude, until we get some alien tech.

any 1 knows what is called the affect when pressure changes near high structures like skyscrapers and that leads to NON STOP wind, i don't get how dumb people are, go and install a gazillion of turbines between high buildings, or just build tall structures without interior to create those pressure changes and stock piles of turbines all around'm, WTF no 1 does that.

my PC cooling fans make more noise than turbines.

[bowlofsalad]

Thorium!!!

L.F.T.R

Bingo.