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Windmills split upstate NY town and families

August 16th, 2008 . by TexasFred

Windmills split upstate NY town and families

LOWVILLE, N.Y. - “Listen,” John Yancey says, leaning against his truck in a field outside his home. The rhythmic whoosh, whoosh, whoosh of wind turbines echoes through the air. Sleek and white, their long propeller blades rotate in formation, like some otherworldly dance of spindly-armed aliens swaying across the land.

Yancey stares at them, his face contorted in anger and pain.

He knows the futuristic towers are pumping clean electricity into the grid, knows they have been largely embraced by his community.

But Yancey hates them.

Full Story Here:
Windmills split upstate NY town and families

LINGLEVILLE, Texas — Johnny and Tesa Whitley bought 350 acres in rural Erath County to raise horses and enjoy the breathtaking sunsets, but their view is now marred by something they never expected: two dozen wind turbines.

The 400-foot-tall turbines tower over trees atop ridges, some just a mile away. At night the structures’ bright red lights blink intermittently, even reflecting in their lake, Tesa Whitley said.

“We had a beautiful horizon, and now all we see is turbines,” she said.

Full Story Here:
Erath County residents band together to fight wind turbines

I want my readers to see what pure idiots look like. The people featured in these 2 stories have NO idea how much worse it could be if they were subjected to *other* forms of electrical power generation in their immediate neighborhood.

The folks in Lowville, New York sound more like a case of *sour grapes* story, maybe Dad didn’t consult angry little Johnny before he allowed wind towers to be built on *family land*, who knows, but little Johnny has a bur under his saddle, over wind towers.

I have to wonder, would these folks prefer a nuclear power plant in their neighborhood?? How about one of those nasty old coal fired plants?? Would that make these people happy ya suppose??

Wind power is one of the cleanest forms of electrical power generation today, hydroelectric is clean too but there’s no really big rivers in Erath county to dam up. Wind power is safe and clean, you can’t ask for more than that, and the *tree huggers* are always pissing and moaning about saving the environment. Well, this is it, and people complain about that too.

You can make some of the people happy some of the time, apparently this isn’t one of ‘em. Suck it up Johnny and Johnny, wind power is here to stay, and face it, if it wasn’t wind power, you’d likely find something else to be pissed off over.

In California the tree huggers protest the birds being killed, the birds that are so stupid that they fly into the moving blades. In Oregon it was a protest to stop a wind farm from going in because it would disrupt a prairie dog town. A prairie dog town for crying out loud!

I seriously don’t know what it takes to make the envionazis happy. Do you? :?

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18 Responses to “Windmills split upstate NY town and families”

  1. comment number 1 by: GUYK

    “I seriously don’t know what it takes to make the envionazis happy. Do you?”

    I don’t even try..fuck ‘em.

  2. comment number 2 by: Ranando

    I do, LSD.

    I toured two wind farms south you a few weeks ago, Penescal and Gulf Wind down by Corpus Christi. I attended the American Wind Energy Association (AWEA) show in Houston a while back and I’m on my way to Germany for their big wind show next month. I’ve attended meetings with T. Boone Pickens and there’s a ton of money to be made in wind energy and I want some, or at least the tax credits they will bring.

    I’ve invested heavily in the wind energy divisions of Siemens, Clipper, Vestas, Gamesa, Mitsubishi, General Cable, Cooper Power Systems, 3M and GE, so far so good.

    As far as birds flying into turbines, only stupid birds do that. What’s wrong with getting rid of all the stupid birds? Nothing.

    Wind Energy is not the answer to our energy problems; in fact it’s kind of a gimmick. It won’t make year power bill go down, it will probably go up.

    The entire United States is connected by an electrical grid. Wind farms are tied into this grid, no matter where they are located, in the USA. The electricity that is generated by wind farms goes into this grid and utilities draw from that grid when needed, kind of like you taking money from an ATM machine. It’s a giant ATM machine for electricity.

    You can however install a turbine on you property for your own use and in many cases your utility will pay to have it installed, around ten to twenty to one hundred thousand grand. If you don’t use all the electricity your turbine produces, you can sell it back to your utility. Your meter will actually run backwards or a new meter they install, and they will send YOU a check every mouth.

  3. comment number 3 by: BobF

    And, the first time one of the Johnnies turns on their light switch and it doesn’t work, they’re the first ones to call the electric company to complain.

    I grew up less than 1/2 mile from coal fired power plant; parents still live there. Their house is about 25 yards from the main line of the old NY Central Railroad and the trains still run regularly. Living there never bothered any of us. It’s a part of life and being in the best industrialized country in the world. You get used to it. Shoot, people live close to paper mills. Have you ever smelled a paper mill? That’s the most awful disgusting smell but people get used to it and they don’t whine and cry about it either. Those mills put food on the table and a roof over their heads.

  4. comment number 4 by: Mark Krauss

    You can’t make an environut happy, they get up in the morning to whine about SOMEthing, ANYthing! if we all lived in caves, ate weeds, and ran around naked they would still whine about people taking up oxygen the poor chipmunks needed.
    I live withing 20 miles of a nuke plant and don’t mind it a bit, hell, build one in my backyard, fine by me, add a windmill too. I want power to heat and cool my home, cook my grub, light my way, and run my kumputr.
    I’m thinkin there is an untapped source of revenue our representatives need to look over, we need to get rid of the income tax, property taxes, and the like and establish a WHINE tax, (no, not wine tax, whine tax), just think of all the money the government could make off of code pink, peta, and all the other whinebags! use that to finance our war efforts, build energy infrastructure here, and subsidize the beef industry for cheaper hamburgers…

  5. comment number 5 by: jimmyk01

    Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, maybe if they painted flowers or something on the wind turbines or maybe some music coming from the tops of those hills or maybe these folks should move up around Teddy Kennedy he seems to be holding the line against the terrible turbines.

  6. comment number 6 by: ablur

    you are never going to satify them.
    Wind energy doesn’t really pencil out. It is green and all that but the cost of siting and installing these giants would be unaffordable if it wasn’t for all the government subsidies.

    MagLev is probably the future of wind generation. It needs less wind to produce more power. We will be seeing these units spinging up soon. I have a picture on my blog of one a month or so ago.

    Oil from anything is where I want to see the money go. Why reinvent everything when you could use what we have.

    As far as looks and sounds, they are pretty neat and an amazing invention. We have a lot of them here in the Pacific Northwest.

  7. comment number 7 by: Kate

    I reckon I’m weird! I actually like the dadburn things. Every time I drove through Illinois, I’d see this whole big field full of ‘em and think “how majestic’. Am I all that odd? Guess so.

    They’ve never proven they kill birds. The big stink up in Brownsville, WI was the stupid Canadian geese. Noisy, pooping birds. As far as I know, not one single bird has died, although they do get run over a lot around the Horicon Marsh. Ever cleaned goose poop off your car? Hate those damn birds! Whack ‘em with the windmills! Heh.

  8. comment number 8 by: Kurt P

    I’d rather have one of those new pocket sized nukes in my back paddock than see twenty miles of those ugly @ssed windmills (shut down) ruining my view of the Texas landscpe.

    The ONLY reason those windmills that T. Boon Pickins is shilling are making money is because my tax dollars are paying for them- just like I’m paying for that ethanol of ADM four times in taxes and increased food costs.

  9. comment number 9 by: TexasFred

    Kurt P, damn Kurt, I can’t argue with that…

  10. comment number 10 by: TexasFred

    Folks, I know that wind power is NOT the solution, but it’s a part of the solution…

    T. Boon Pickens is in it for the $$$, on that you can rely, and nuclear power is something I personally have NO problem with, but when we have a moron in the White House that can’t pronounce nuclear, well, that might be part of the problem too…

    We have wind, nuke and oil power, we have enough oil for the next 100 years and then some, all we gotta do is get the oil companies to drill it… And that’s partly Congress too, there’s way too many fingers in the pot and free trade is damned nearly a thing of the past…

    Socialism, or strains of socialism, run all thru the government of this nation, and until some folks actually grow a set and stand together to take this nation back, we’re never gonna see ANY difference…

  11. comment number 11 by: Katie

    It’s damn if you do and damn if you don’t with these kids. This is the result of people bending over backwards to please their kids at every turn.

    There was a time in this nation that every farm had a windmill. It powered the water pump. Does anyone remember those?

  12. comment number 12 by: Robert

    I would rather see those damn eyesores all over the landscape than give another damn dime to a damn Muslim autocrat… If the enviro’s don’t like looking at them, then quit bitching and help find another solution..

    All I want is OUR country off of Middle Eastern Oil ASAP!

  13. comment number 13 by: Bloviating Zeppelin

    KurtP: Archer Daniels Midland makes money on the ethanol AND the corn syrup you see in all the black ADM tank cars on any railroad. But Jesu Christi, let’s just BUILD for sh*#!s sake, let’s BUILD nukes, coal, solar, turbine, desalinization plants, LNG, gas plants, AND let’s DRILL in ANWR, on our coasts, Wyoming, Dakotas, tar sands, oil shale. Robert is spot on: Let’s just DO it.

    BZ

  14. comment number 14 by: Kate

    What BZ said!

    Sitting on our thumbs is NOT going to make our world go ’round. As Congress has proven over and over. :?

  15. comment number 15 by: Patrick Sperry

    The pinwheels out along highway 93 are only proving how unreliable they are.

  16. comment number 16 by: BobF

    Ethanol has become a nightmare for automobile owners in states that have mandated its use. The ethanol (alcohol) is causing improper lubrication of fuel pumps, especially as gas tank levels get lower…alcohol level increases. Mechanics are reporting having to replace fuel pumps on vehicles as new as 2005. The alcohol is also drying rubber seals on marine engines and in carborated vehicles.

    We used to have this huge microwave dish and when it was radiating, occasionally a bird would fly threw the microwaves. The bird would drop like a rock. Hate to say it but it was pretty neat to watch. A bird hitting a windmill would be similarly amusing too. Hey, when you’re a GI in the middle of nowhere, simple things amuse you.

  17. comment number 17 by: cary - Botan Ichihara

    Action. Just do SOMEthing to start easing the load off of the back of imported oil.

    Little things are what add up to big solutions.

    As far the greenweenies, they can go live in a country that does not affect the environment in any way, shape, or form.

    (that should keep them out of our hair for a few years, while they realize that there is no such place…)

  18. comment number 18 by: Autorotate

    Fred,
    You’re damn right, you can’t make these people happy. It’s the whole point, the break the back of America. Damned if you do and damned if you don’t, but their whole goal is to get us to spend money frivioulously and cause a failure…

    Then they can sit back and point, and say, see I told you capitalism, democracy et al didn’t work. Let’s try that oldie but goodie socialism, and the lemmings will follow.