APR 03

Dream on. I live in Massachussetts, a state totally controlled by the liberal left. But our off shore whind farm project has been held up in courts.

You would think Ted Kenendy, uber-liberal, would endorse wind power. But not here! The proposed wind farm would be visible from his family manson; we surely can't have that!

I am eagerly awaiting the coming combat; liberal clean energy supporters doing battle with the liberal enviromentalist. These two groups are not one and the same.

Wind power and solar power will requite huge areas of land; the power transmission lines will require huge areas of land also.

Do you really think that the enviromentalist who wish to save every bug, every worm and every snake, are going to allow this amount of land use?

Dream on!

You have to weep for the future of our country. Kennedy's position on this is just another demonstration that our political establishment does not have the best interest of our country at heart.
The responses I have received from my senators and representative make it plain that energy policy is not a high priority. I cannot identify a single major problem that has been resolved over the past 3-4 decades. Energy, Healthcare Reform, Social Security, Education, War on Drugs--all were with us then and are still with us now.
Wind energy--I agree with Heather--Dream on!

One push that might get things moving would be mentioning potential leasing revenues to the politicians. Michigan, Ohio, and (I believe) New York are all perennially cash-strapped, and giving them a cut of any lease revenues would go a long way towards political goodwill... I'm thinking especially Ohio. I live here, I know what the state budget always looks like, and Lake Erie is a very shallow lake where most of the commercial-grade wind is in water shallow enough to plant turbines.

Did anyone else think it was funny that the "rest of the world" is the UK. Man I wonder what the countries in Africa or South America are doing for wind farms near their costal region. Anyways, these look dangerous I could see a boat going off course and running into one of these. I'm glad America is smart enough to really look into something before jumping on it like the "rest of the world". Ha that cracks me up.

If I ever meet someone who is opposed to any form of power plant for aesthetic reasons, I WILL PUNCH THEM IN THE FACE. It's the lamest objection to anything so important imaginable.

I would love to beable to use wind energy here, but something like that would fall in the first few portions of a hurricane. That may be more damage than not

"October 15, 2008 (ENS) - Garden State Offshore Energy has won a $4 million grant from the New Jersey Board of Public Utilities to develop what will be the first offshore wind farm on the East Coast. It will be located southeast of Atlantic City, at least 16 miles off the coast."

The Cape wind farm is being redesigned so that it is further off shore and less visually disruptive. It is meeting less resistance.

We've got hundreds of oil rigs in hurricane country. We deal with it. And we drive our boats around them.

Anyways, these look dangerous I could see a boat going off course and running into one of these.

You are either joking or a complete idiot who I would never wish to be in a boat with - I seriously hope the latter for comic effect.

'Embarrassed'? With the fools we have for politicians you are embarrassed about wind lagging?

The Chappaquiddick gap, the wind turbine gap, The Kennedy & Feinstein gap, (with both being against renewable energy in their backyard), the Chicago political honesty gap, the federal budget gap

The UK isnt doing enough, were the worst off of the more developed european countries for renewable power.
Gordon Brown proved he couldn't care less the other day whilst (saving the world from the economical problem and trying to promote further growth). This was the greatest opportunity the world has had to do something about renewable energy and obama proved himself useless also.
Lots of the big farms in the UK have lost financial backing and the government doesn't care, there happy as long as the rich get richer. Maybe we will need to wait till an Al Gore arrives again or till problems start.

We do have one prominent green figure. Our future king, and the sooner he is king the better. Prince Charles held meetings at the G20 conference trying to persuade countries that global warming was a real problem, seems like they didn't listen.

Cleveland, OH is looking into wind farms and have been looking at the possibilities for the last 3 - 5 years. The rumor is that the biggest claim against the turbines are that it will clutter Erie majestic view like it does with Ted's mansion. *Rolls eyes* However hundreds of tests are being done to look at avian and fish concerns, what happens during winter when the lake freezes etc. Here is hoping in the next 5 years something will get done. http://www.greenenergyohio.org...ageID=2212

it is well know that oil rig create reef habitat for fish. see http://digitalfilmmaker.net/dv/oilrigs/index.html

"Dr. Paul Sammarco was the team leader. He is a biologist and professor with the Louisiana Universities Marine Consortium. The project has been dubbed, “Rigs to reefs”. The point being that many of the rigs have been in the water so long, they have become prolific artificial reefs and have provided habitat to countless fish and marine life. Sammarco swung a finger along the horizon and said “This area at the mouth of the Mississippi is known as the ‘dead zone’. Nutrients from the river flow out here depleting oxygen from the water, coating the sea floor with a noxious mud. The rigs create a structure that can support marine life which would not have been possible without them”

also see http://www.sportfishingmag.com...52231.html

so if oil rigs do this think what an offshore wind farm will do.

can you say win-win with wind.

Ian just you watch, now that you dissed my comment some guy in a sail boat is going to take out an entire wind farm and we will all blame you. :P

The wind in western PA and central TX is much stronger and very available. The above map is not accurate and fails to show the strong wind resources in this 2 areas I personally know well.

When are we gonna tell the extremists and the NIMBY wackos to stuff it.
More and more every day we see any effort to change thing get bitched about as much as the things we are trying to change.
Complain about oil from the middle east, but you can't drill in the US.
Complain about high gas prices, can't drill in the US or build new refineries.
Make Ethanol from corn, prices of corn go up, now we're starving people.
People stop driving as much due to higher gas prices, tax revenue goes down, try and tax other thing to make up losses, people complain.
Wanna build solar farms or put in solar panels, can't because it would change the eco-system of a dessert or they are not the same color as everyone else's or we don't want the transmission lines going through this woodland area.
Build hydroelectric power, but don't make a dam, and don't put turbines in the rivers or tidal zones because it will kill fish.
And for wind mills.
We want wind mills, but not where they can actually generate sufficient amounts of energy because I live near there, or its killing migratory birds, or its causing bats lungs to explode.
It seems the no mater what we do to please these people it's never enough.

To the guys worrying about the skyline over Lake Erie: I lived near the lake for fifteen years. My school overlooked the lake. It's not that attractive a lake. Putting something on it would be an improvement.

The author brings up a good point: what is the total costs of building wind farms on land and building long range transmission lines versus building wind farms offshore and short(er) transmission lines? I've seen numbers that indicate that land-based large (2.75 MW) wind turbines cost approximately $1,500/kW and an equally sized offshore turbine costs about $3,500/kW. However, I've never seen any studies that factor in the cost of building new transmission. Can anyone point me to a study along those lines?

Anyways, these look dangerous I could see a boat going off course and running into one of these.

Really? A wind farm is multiple stories tall and you can see it from far away. If someone crashes into it, it is because they are awful at using a boat.

I think we should get rid of beaches. Boats might run into them.

We've been talking a lot about developing offshore wind here in Maine, but our shores drop off rather quickly, making sea-floor mounted units almost impossible. Until we can successfully get a floating wind platform, and figure out floating transmission lines, you can take the North Atlantic's coastline out of the offshore wind picture.

With technology as it stands today, someone has to be able to combine offshore oil rigs and wind turbines. Or, at least offshore oil rigs and sea-gen type wave generators. If you are going to take the construction crews out to sea at least be efficient about it.

the UK is leading when it comes to offshore wind turbines

Oil prices directly drive other Energy developments, and, it appears, OPEC and the Saudis can over-pump enough oil, at the moment, to satisfy growing markets in Asia, and American demands, and keep the price per bbl reasonable! This cannot last forever! Oil is not forever! As supply diminishes, oil prices rise exponentially, and desperation for energy in any form increases, here and abroad. We will see Solar in the deserts flourish, Wind Turbines on the continent expand, Off-shore Wind Turbines abound, and Geo-Thermal come into play! We will see even filthy Nuclear fission, deadly waste products and all, filling in gaps, and smaller energy economies like Bio-gassing sewage, and especially from Factory Farms, become realities. Coal will be mined as ferociously as ever, and new insulation materials revealed to the public along with realistic, modernized HIVAC equations from NASA to accommodate these miracle materials. We will see Wave Power become a major contributer, Tidal Power exploited wherever possible, and newer Earth Chemistry sources investigated! With the "Cheap Oil Era" mankind has had a hiatus of sorts from the realities of survival on this planet, and as it diminishes, a restoration to the rigors returns. Not that long ago, Sails powered ships, and may return, albeit with GPS, satellite weather knowledge, and computers on-board, and possibly Nuclear Powered safety assist, but Sails, none the less! America is suffering the paradigm shifts of the age very well, the loss of industry to Asia, the death of GM(America) while GM(China) flourishes, the total collapse of the Ponzi schemed Wall Street brokerage Bull Shiite, and loss of face as honest folk world wide in Bond trading, the dollar dropping like a stone, and still in free-fall, with Gold at one thousand U.S. dollars a troy(smaller) ounce today, the foreclosures of streets-full of homes at a time, and their subsequent falling into ruins, the highest unemployment on record, the highest government intervention into the market place, and in Socialist fashion, in history, deficits increased in units of, for the first time, "Trillions" of dollars, the refusal of China to loan Trillions to a floundering U.S., on its knees in Beijing for a handout, the inability of America to man its military without conscription, for the first time in its history, Detroit City, reduced to a Third World class, in less than a decade, the astounding cost of the "Iraq Debacle", Halliburton(Saudi Arabia)'s play for Turkmenistan oil using U.S. troops like mercenaries, to clear Afghanistan for the pipelines, all the while, the oil there being claimed by China anyway. Even Prozac showing up in city water supplies, proof positive of inadequate sewage treatment in the land, and a call for expensive over-haul, including Bio-Gassing plants and top-soil building sludges radiated to safety, have not stopped Mighty America! The paradigm shifts to come just may. We can no longer live the "American Dream" as we know it to be! We have to modify our very behaviors, wish lists, demands, wants desires and list of "necessities for Life" to fit a sustainable, realistic and viable lifestyle, that fits into the new "World Reality". A few Wind Turbines refused by an old fossil, old-school rich man like Kennedy, a senate full of boot-dragger's, a corrupt, slow bureaucracy for government, all will take a back seat, and be ploughed under by the Paradigm shifts about to befall America! These pre-ejaculatory sputters and tremors are to be expected, and are indicative of the monumental size of the tsunami about to hit Western society! We are about to be digested by God! The turmoil falling upon us will change the world! The "Fourth turning" is arriving in black clouds for America! The Age of Aquarius on the horizon, great black clouds, signs of horrendous storm and evil on the skyline! Behold America! A total conversion from oil for you approaches, not pre-orgasmic tremors at all.