From: kurt@eskimo.celestial.com (Kurt Cockrum)
Subject: Re: environmental costs of windpower
Organization: >>> Eskimo North (206)-FOR-EVER <<<
Date: Wed, 7 Oct 1992 18:39:14 GMT

In article <5601@ssc-bee.ssc-vax.boeing.com> prang@ssc-vax.boeing.com (Ron Wanttaja) writes:
>In article <MS-C.718176375.1103527590.mrc@Ikkoku-Kan.Panda.COM>, mrc@Ikkoku-Kan.Panda.COM (Mark Crispin) writes:
>> If you think that windmills are environmentally neutral, go to one of the
>> California windmill farms and see for yourself.  Better yet, *think* of what a
>> windmill farm entails....
>
>Mr. Crispin crystallized something I've been wondering about.  Has anyone
>looked at the long-term environmental ramifications of wind generators?
>
>I mean, you're taking energy out of the wind... energy which is part of the
>normal environment.  Aren't there some problems with the fact that that
>energy *won't* be where it normally is used?

Well, one of the laws of thermodynamics (physics weenies, tell us which one! :)
says that you can't get something for nothing.  Any self-organizing system
takes in energy and uses it for self-maintenance and reproduction; such energy
usage is felt in that it is thereby made unavailable, except in degraded form.
So, anything you do will by way of energy extraction will be bound to result in 
*some* effect on the environment.  The amount and quality of degradation is
significant.  When the degraded energy is available in the form of heat,
or compost (say), it might be useful to some other self-organizing, perhaps
even thermophilic system.  If it's radioactive, well, the self-organizing
systems that can exploit that haven't evolved yet, and who can say that they
ever will?  An self-organizing system (critter) can produce shit, which other
critters can use (forming a *web* of critters, or ecology), or it can produce
something that is of *no* *further* *use* *to* *any critter*, like radioactive
glass.  The question is not necessarily how much energy is used, either, but
how much does it perturb an otherwise homeostatic system?

>Here's a theoretical example:  Say the downwind side of the wind farm is
>steeply sloped (a natural assumption for the typical installation
>location) and subject to occasional heavy rain.  Say also that the soil 
>can support two kinds of grasses... one which grows slowly but drives deep
>roots, and another which grows quickly and has a shallow root system.
>
>Now, without the windmill system, the prevailing winds are strong enough to
>inhibit the fast-growing shallow-rooted system.  The occasional
>gully-washer doesn't have much effect due to the more deeply-rooted
>grasses.  But once the windmill array is installed... the wind speed behind 
>the windmill farm drops.  The fast-growing grasses aren't as inhibited, and
>drive out the deep-rooted system.  And the next heavy rain....

Numbers are needed here, I think.
Please, no straw arguments about how the deep-rooted system is an endangered
species... :)  We just get a bunch of experts together, they all agree that
the pesky plants can be eliminated and erosion stemmed (killing 2 birds with
one high-velocity "smart pebble") with a 50-50 mix of Roundup and asphalt
deposited over everything to a depth of 6 inches, and we *do* *it*!.
Then, noting how hard to get rid of milfoil is, we launch a crash genetic
engineering program to develop a Roundup-resistant strain of milfoil that
can persist in a desert climate, subsistent on asphalt.  We get windpower with
no erosion, ground cover for that ugly asphalt, employment for all those
genetic engineers, a win-win for everybody! No pussyfootin' around with the
bunnyhuggers, no strain, no pain. :) :) [ a little taste of creative,
entreprenurial Perot-style leadership, there :) :) ]

>Far-fetched?  I think not.  Fifty years ago, no one would have considered a
>few-degree rise in stream temperature due to a conventional power plant to
>have any effect at all.

50 years ago we didn't know *shit* about anything, and we thought we had the
secrets of the universe in our hands!  Not that we do now --
we are only starting to get an inkling of how complex and subtle the
universe is.

>*Have* there been serious studies into Wind-energy environmental
>ramifications?  Or is this issue a "blind spot" among "wind good, everything
>else bad" proponents?

Check the GPO (Gov't Printing Office) outlet in downtown Seattle.  Last
time I was there, I saw a number of engineering studies of various wind-power
schemes for sale.  Libraries could also point the direction here.
The Seattle Public Library is also a GPO depository and has lots of
goodies on the subject.
There are probably a lot of NTIS reports from ERDA & other agencies, left
over from the Carter era, back when the authoritarians still had the quaint
notion of doing something useful, if they haven't all been pulped to "save
money".

>OK, the obligatory seattle/pnw story.  A friend of mine at Boeing was a
>test engineer called in to trouble-shoot a problem at the Boeing
>wind-generator site at Goldendale.  Remember, these were huge units, with
>blades something like 100 feet long.
>
>Anyway, they were getting a weird noise twice per propeller 
>revolution.... rattle rattle RATTLE RATTLE RATTLERATTLE BANG!  Rattle rattle
>RATTLE RATTLE RATTLERATTLE BANG!  The on-site people thought it was some sort 
>of weird harmonic.
>
>Turned out to be a left-over welding clamp loose inside the blade....

When I was a kid, we got lots of laughs by tossing a rock in between the
dual wheels of the school bus when it would bring us home in the afternoon.
The bus would drive off with a loud clash of rock banging on metal, and
go about 100 feet before it stopped and the driver got out.  We would all
be hiding behind a tree, splitting our guts as the driver looked under the
bus, and not seeing anything overtly wrong and with a schedule to keep,
scratched his head, got back in the bus, and drove off clanking.
-- 
kurt@grogatch.celestial.com (Kurt Cockrum)
 Nostalgic conservatives will soon be referring to the Bush Era as
 "those Halcion days of yesteryear".
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