Wind turbines

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

The bigness is one redeeming value. Also having a field of generators just powering civilization in a way that's more like a handshake with the environment than a violent conquest of it. Which, now that I think about it, is probably why so many people oppose them so angrily.

That, and it spoils their view.

Not kidding, that's a huge point of contention.

They should learn to appreciate manmade structures as belonging in the natural world, then. My father in law hates them to pieces because the land owners are allowed to shoot down eagles, but him and his hunting buddies aren't.

WTF

That doesn't even make sense, why would wind turbine landowners be allowed to shoot down eagles? That sounds like bullshit to me.

[Reginald Ret]

In my country there are 1.888 windturbines of which 578 in my province.


That doesn't sound like much but NL is tiny.

[tyrannosaurus vex]

The bigness is one redeeming value. Also having a field of generators just powering civilization in a way that's more like a handshake with the environment than a violent conquest of it. Which, now that I think about it, is probably why so many people oppose them so angrily.

That, and it spoils their view.

Not kidding, that's a huge point of contention.

They should learn to appreciate manmade structures as belonging in the natural world, then. My father in law hates them to pieces because the land owners are allowed to shoot down eagles, but him and his hunting buddies aren't.

WTF

That doesn't even make sense, why would wind turbine landowners be allowed to shoot down eagles? That sounds like bullshit to me.

Oh it is bullshit. They can't shoot them down, but they can get a permit that releases them from liability under the Endangered Species Act if an eagle crashes into a turbine and offs itself.

My father in law is having none of that actual fact though, because libruls and Obama.

[Faust]

The birds crashing into them thing was solved several years back. It was the frequency of the blades rotating made them invisible to birds or appear as stopped, they fixed that and since then there have been fuck all dead birds barring the ones who get blown into them.

[Reginald Ret]

The birds crashing into them thing was solved several years back. It was the frequency of the blades rotating made them invisible to birds or appear as stopped, they fixed that and since then there have been fuck all dead birds barring the ones who get blown into them.

Really? I heard the argument that birds can't look straight ahead because of the position of their eyes.... Now that i think about that was a really stupid argument. Nevermind, i swallowed bullshit whole.

[Cain]

The birds crashing into them thing was solved several years back. It was the frequency of the blades rotating made them invisible to birds or appear as stopped, they fixed that and since then there have been fuck all dead birds barring the ones who get blown into them.

Really? I heard the argument that birds can't look straight ahead because of the position of their eyes.... Now that i think about that was a really stupid argument. Nevermind, i swallowed bullshit whole.

Yeah, birds of prey in particular have excellent binocular vision.

[tyrannosaurus vex]

Whatever the science, the permit deal is fairly new.

Link: http://m.trib.com/business/energy/interior-department-with-permit-wind-farms-can-kill-eagles-for/article_652c4049-95f7-573d-a053-08b85eb40497.html?mobile_touch=true

[Faust]

The birds crashing into them thing was solved several years back. It was the frequency of the blades rotating made them invisible to birds or appear as stopped, they fixed that and since then there have been fuck all dead birds barring the ones who get blown into them.

Really? I heard the argument that birds can't look straight ahead because of the position of their eyes.... Now that i think about that was a really stupid argument. Nevermind, i swallowed bullshit whole.

Yeah birds are smarter than that. The problem was fixed by varying the frequency of the blades so that the motion is clearer to them. I'll try find a link and see if all manufacturers do this now because there are other reasons too;

A small group of people were experiencing issues with their terrestrial television where they were seeing magnetic interference in the form of waves across the screen.
The engineers came out and couldn't see anything wrong with any of the turbines each one was outputting minimal interference. This went on for weeks, back and forward with people complaining.

In the end it turned out to be simple enough. There was resonance between all the blades spinning at the exact same speed in the same direction. They varied the rotation speed from turbine to turbine and the problem disappeared.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

The bigness is one redeeming value. Also having a field of generators just powering civilization in a way that's more like a handshake with the environment than a violent conquest of it. Which, now that I think about it, is probably why so many people oppose them so angrily.

That, and it spoils their view.

Not kidding, that's a huge point of contention.

They should learn to appreciate manmade structures as belonging in the natural world, then. My father in law hates them to pieces because the land owners are allowed to shoot down eagles, but him and his hunting buddies aren't.

WTF

That doesn't even make sense, why would wind turbine landowners be allowed to shoot down eagles? That sounds like bullshit to me.

Oh it is bullshit. They can't shoot them down, but they can get a permit that releases them from liability under the Endangered Species Act if an eagle crashes into a turbine and offs itself.

My father in law is having none of that actual fact though, because libruls and Obama.

Ohhhh, I see. Yeah, some of that good old-fashioned American critical thinking. 

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

In my country there are 1.888 windturbines of which 578 in my province.


That doesn't sound like much but NL is tiny.

You people are like, the motherland of wind turbines.

[Suu]

Suu, you guys seem to have them quite close to human habitation... or is that an optical illusion? We don't put ours near anything, but then again most of the state is uninhabited.

We do. They're right along the highways or in residential areas. We don't really have anything uninhabited out here in the Megalopolis, and the unpopulated lands of RI are typically park and preserve areas. They want to put one right next to the Pell Bridge, and that is getting some opposition by the snooty Newporters who say it's ruining their view of the aircraft carriers at the Navy base, or something.

In upstate NY, there's a big field of them on the hills near where my boyfriend grew up in Herkimer County.



Complete with Mennonites.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

This article was fairly interesting: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/12/17/science/earth/a-struggle-to-balance-wind-energy-with-wildlife.html?_r=0

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

Suu, you guys seem to have them quite close to human habitation... or is that an optical illusion? We don't put ours near anything, but then again most of the state is uninhabited.

We do. They're right along the highways or in residential areas. We don't really have anything uninhabited out here in the Megalopolis, and the unpopulated lands of RI are typically park and preserve areas. They want to put one right next to the Pell Bridge, and that is getting some opposition by the snooty Newporters who say it's ruining their view of the aircraft carriers at the Navy base, or something.

In upstate NY, there's a big field of them on the hills near where my boyfriend grew up in Herkimer County.



Complete with Mennonites.

What do your people do when one crashes from high winds?

[Suu]

Fortunately, we haven't had that issue yet. The really big ones are off-shore, which the exception of Wicket, he's massive. The ones near buildings are typically smaller. We also haven't had anything above a category 2 come through in ages, and considering these guys have already survived quite a few nasty Nor'Easters and hurricanes Irene and Sandy, I think they're pretty solid. But anything can happen.

[Cramulus]

I think they're cool. That may be because I don't have any wind turbines near me, so I only see them when I'm on vacation.

Wind Turbines are surreal - they always make me think of Salvador Dali paintings... you have this thing up in the air which is so big it's hard to tell how big it actually is. There's nothing at that altitude to compare it to, so at a distance you can't tell if it's 100 feet tall or 1000 feet tall.