I suspect it is because they had already invested money into blade engineering and couldn't back out of that. Another waste of taxpayers money. So, now they all these probability comparisons of how fewer birds hit trubines that cars, buildings, etc., to justify the large blades. Each individual blade is soo long they have to cut the tip off in order to get it inside a huge hanger to test its endurance with their simulators.
Earl
Paul Barby wrote:
Message Let me venture a comment from observation, not from proven facts:Today's huge wind machines are just that, HUGE! They have a blade span that is much wider than the Dutch Windmill and not nearly as easy to see. More to the point, the velocity of those blades is phenomenal with the outer ends of the blades moving at great speed. They are stationed across a landscape so that they catch all the wind flow, spaced in rows behind each other in alternate spots so that what was clear between the towers in the first row are caught by the towers in the following row staggered in those "clear" slots from the row in front of them. I don't know what height the blades reach but appear to be approximately 200'. Any bird crossing the area below 200' is playing roulette with the blades from multiple towers that span a wide area, quite different from solitary Dutch windmills.Of course, smaller blades would not cut nearly so wicked a path . . . BUT they are not as efficient. Ah, the dilemmas of technology.Paul Barby-----Original Message-----
From: ok-sustainability-admin@lists.essential.org [mailto:ok-sustainability-admin@lists.essential.org] On Behalf Of Cathy Gardner
Sent: Tuesday, June 25, 2002 11:25 AM
To: ok-sustainability@lists.essential.org
Subject: [ok-sus] Wind energy
I'm curious, Terry, in what way you found wind power a horrible thing? The Dutch have used it successfully for centuries. Now I will admit that as you drive over the hill in California and come upon that huge wind farm, it's a startling sight. But it is equally startling to me every time I see the refinery down here burning off their excess junk, with flames shooting skyward and the stench carrying for miles. I think our real challenge is to weigh the benefits and risks of each approach to supplying ourselves with the energy we require - and if you want bad news for birds, check out what the oil industry does to them. The bottom line is that technologies like solar, wind and geothermal simply must be our future - when you dig past all the rhetoric, the bottom line still is that we are running out of fossil fuels, whether it be 10 years or 100 years.
I'm not trying to be argumentative. It's just an unfortunate fact of human existence on this planet that every one of our actions has immeasurable consequences and it's sometimes difficult to clearly determine our best course.
Cat
I'm back to updating the family website. Check it out!:
http://cathy_canfield.tripod.com/wolfcreek2000/
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-- Earl Hatley Director of Tribal Environmental Management Services College of Law - NELPI University of Tulsa 3120 E 4th Place Tulsa, OK 74104 (918)631-3049
--------------000109010300080606040300-- From earl-hatley@utulsa.edu Mon Jul 1 18:48:09 2002 From: earl-hatley@utulsa.edu (Earl Hatley) Date: Mon, 01 Jul 2002 12:48:09 -0500 Subject: [ok-sus] How Hot Is Too Hot References: <01e001c21bef$cf3e5e60$7700a8c0@ok.cox.net> Message-ID: <3D2095D9.8010601@utulsa.edu> --------------070009010006050805090304 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=windows-1252; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit I was in Alaska two weeks ago and camped in the forest where the beetles have killed most of the spruce trees, near Homer. I was also in the King Salmon and Port Heiden areas. Mosquitos from hell everywhere. The native people I work with in Alaska all complain about the changing climate. Elders can't predict the weather anymore. They attribute this to changes in fish and animal migration patterns. Animals are moving into Alaska they never seen before. Earl Susie Shields wrote: > > > ----- Original Message ----- > From:Shauna Struby
Earl
Susie Shields wrote:
How Hot Is Too Hot?
June 24, 2002
How Hot Is Too Hot?
By BOB HERBERT
ne of the more startling stories in The Times recently was Timothy Egan's article on the climate in Alaska, where the average temperature has risen seven degrees in the last 30 years and mosquitoes have shown up in normally frigid Barrow, the northernmost town in North America.
Large portions of Alaska are melting and other strange things are happening. Just a few hours' drive from Anchorage, a four-million-acre spruce forest has been killed by beetles, a development that is both astonishing and depressing. It is believed to be the largest loss of trees to insects ever recorded in North America.
"Government scientists," wrote Mr. Egan, "tied the event to rising temperatures, which allow the beetles to reproduce at twice their normal rate."
Meanwhile, enormous wildfires have been raging in bone-dry regions of the West and Southwest. Fires whipped by high winds in the mountains of eastern Arizona have driven thousands of residents from their homes. One local official, Jim Paxon, said: "The forest is burning like you're pouring gasoline on it. And the wind is like taking a blow torch to it."
In Colorado, which is enduring its worst drought in decades, residents have been trying to cope with at least five major fires, including the so-called Hayman fire, the largest in the state's history. Investigators believe it was deliberately set by a U.S. Forest Service worker. The long drought and continuing hot weather provided the conditions that enabled this apparent act of arson to explode into an unprecedented conflagration.
Big fires are becoming the rule. By late last week authorities reported that in the first six months of this year, nearly two million acres have burned or are currently burning in the United States, which is almost twice the average of the last 10 years.
Strange, indeed. Mosquitoes in northernmost Alaska. Much of the West and Southwest ablaze. Extended droughts. Extreme heat waves.
Can you say global warming?
The year 2001 was, globally, the second hottest on record. The hottest was 1998.
Now imagine that just a few more years go by and the world becomes hotter still, which will almost certainly be the case. What then?
Do you think, maybe, we should be paying more attention to this?
What is missing in most conversations in the U.S. about global warming is a sense of urgency. A Bush administration report earlier this month acknowledged that human activity — the burning of fossil fuels that send heat-trapping gases into the atmosphere — was the primary cause of the recent warming of the planet, and that the warming will result in some extremely serious consequences in the U.S.
President Bush (who has distanced himself from his own administration's report) wants to rely mostly on voluntary — not mandatory — efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Under the president's strategy, it's estimated that emissions will actually increase over the next decade. We're speeding toward a wall and the president is not only refusing to step on the brake, he's accelerating.
Ten years is too long to wait to do something real about this problem. Dr. Michael Oppenheimer, a professor of geosciences and international affairs at Princeton who is an expert on climate change, has studied the imminent threat that planetary warming poses to the world's coral reefs. These are ecosystems so abundant in animal and plant life that they are sometimes called the rain forests of the oceans.
Dr. Oppenheimer noted that one of the essential questions of the global warming debate is, "How warm is too warm?"
When you consider that the increased warming is already threatening to decimate the world's coral reefs, and that we're already seeing the melting of the tundra in Alaska, and that alpine ecosystems are already being squeezed off the tops of mountains, it's not too difficult to reach the conclusion that "too warm," in Dr. Oppenheimer's words, "isn't awfully far from where we already are."
Closing our eyes and pumping another decade's worth of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere at the current very dangerous rate would not seem to be a very bright idea. The gases remain in the atmosphere for centuries, and in some cases millenniums, which means the damage cannot quickly be undone.
What a miserable legacy for this generation to leave to its children and grandchildren.
Copyright 2002 The New York Times Company | Permissions | Privacy Policy 
-- Earl Hatley Director of Tribal Environmental Management Services College of Law - NELPI University of Tulsa 3120 E 4th Place Tulsa, OK 74104 (918)631-3049
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This is the kind of=20
mentality we are up against when trying to promote sustainability . =
.=20
.
(read =
news release and action alert below)
Wes Vernon, NewsMax.com
Wednesday, June 26, 2002=20
WASHINGTON =96 Behind closed doors, far-left lawmakers are = conspiring to ram=20 through legislation aimed at putting Sierra Club, Planned Parenthood and = their=20 allies in charge of your life.
The bill in question purports to deal = with=20 development that some people might deem objectionable. But like so many = other=20 schemes prompted by real or imagined problems, the "remedy" turns out to = be far=20 worse than the disease.
Clinton's Damage Never Ends =
While=20 the nation=92s attention is focused on the war on terrorism, S. 975, the = Community=20 Character Act, seeks to implement a Clinton executive order that the = leftist=20 establishment could use to dictate what you can own, what you can drive, = the=20 kind of home in which you can live =96 a mammoth intrusiveness into your = life.=20
American Policy Center, a think tank headquartered in Warrenton, = Va., says=20 that if the measure and its companion in the House (H.R. 1433) become = law, they=20 could also be used to dictate "the way you get to work, how you dispose = of=20 waste, the number of children you may have, even your education and = employment=20 decisions.=94
On the last point, NewsMax.com has already dealt with = efforts to=20 put the feds in charge of your career choices. S. 975 would facilitate = that all=20 the more.
S. 975 passed the Senate Environmental and Public Works = Committee=20 on April 25 over the objections of its more conservative contingent. It = awaits=20 action on the Senate floor, where its primary backers hope to sneak it = through=20 when you=92re not looking.
One of the no votes on the committee came = from Sen.=20 James M. Inhofe, R-Okla., who has expressed his concerns to NewsMax.com. = He=20 charges the measure "threatens the ability of local governments to make = their=20 own decisions on important economic development matters.=94
A former = mayor of=20 Tulsa (1978-1984), Inhofe remembers confronting the same land-use = issues. One of=20 the first people to lobby the new mayor in the early years of his tenure = was a=20 prominent national advocate of land-use planning, housing, = transportation and a=20 host of other issues. This activist was advocating a plan to entice = local=20 governments to accept federal grants, while downplaying the inevitable = federal=20 strings attached.
Inhofe led his community in rejecting such = proposals.=20
'Designed to Blackmail Local Governments'
"They were = largely=20 designed to blackmail local governments into giving up real local=20 decision-making authority,=94 the Oklahoman says.
"By voting this = legislation=20 out of committee,=94 he told his colleagues, "we are saying it=92s OK = for the=20 federal government to get involved in state, local and tribal land-use = planning=20 and that local planning is not important.=94
'Changing the = Concept of=20 Private Property'
American Policy Center traces this development = back to=20 Executive Order 12852, issued by Bill Clinton in 1993 to create the = President=92s=20 Council on Sustainable Development. "Sustainable development,=94 as = envisioned by=20 its proponents, "calls for changing the concept of private property, = protected=20 by the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution, to nothing short of a = national=20 zoning system,=94 says the think tank.
"Under such a system, the = federal=20 government, backed by an army of private, non-governmental organizations = (NGOs)=20 like the Sierra Club, Planned Parenthood, and the National Education = Association=20 will influence, if not dictate, property and other policies to the = states and to=20 local communities,=94 the study adds.
Sen. Inhofe sees this as "a = dangerous=20 precedent.=94 Proponents claim the program would be voluntary. But the = Oklahoma=20 lawmaker says that ignores the fact that "such a program creates a = strong=20 incentive for conducting planning activities solely in accord with = federally=20 imposed guidelines.=94
The senator has "grave concerns with the = notion of the=20 secretary of commerce in Washington evaluating a state=92s need for = federal funds=20 and then prescribing the criteria for the content of a state plan, = usurping the=20 expertise that exists at the local level.=94
Hillary, Jeffords, = Boxer,=20 Lieberman, Specter, Reid ...
Committee Chairman Jim Jeffords = (the GOP=20 turncoat who now claims to be "independent" but caucuses with and even = campaigns=20 for the Democrats) is a driving force behind getting S. 975 approved by = his=20 panel.
Other main backers of the bill, according to APC, are Sens. = Arlen=20 Specter, R-Pa.; Max Baucus, D-Mont.; Harry Reid, D-Nev.; Bob Graham, = D-Fla.;=20 Joseph Lieberman, D-Conn.; Barbara Boxer, D-Calif.; Ron Wyden, D-Ore.; = Thomas=20 Carper, D-Del.; Hillary Clinton, D-N.Y.; Jon Corzine, D-N.J.
Under = the bill,=20 as critics see it, locally elected officials would no longer be the = driving=20 force in making decisions for their communities. Most decisions would be = arrived=20 at behind the scenes by non-elected "sustainability councils=94 armed = with=20 truckloads of federal regulations, guidelines and taxpayer money. =
Yet=20 another think tank, the Chicago-based National Center for Public Policy=20 Research, has done a study showing "the potential damaging effects of=20 =91sustainable development=92 in over 100 metropolitan areas around the = country.=94=20
Back in the 1970s as mayor of Tulsa, Inhofe fought this plan because = he was=20 concerned the power of the citizens=92 votes would be nullified.
As = a U.S.=20 senator in 2002, he worked with his colleagues to try to make = improvements in=20 the legislation. While one change was made before the committee vote, = the=20 senator says the bill still "continues to present serious constitutional = and=20 policy problems.=94
Those who=20 value individual control over their life decisions might want to notify = their=20 congressmen (www.house.gov)=20 and senators (www.senate.gov) that they are well aware of S. = 975 and H.R.=20 1433, and that they will be watching their elected lawmakers to see that = they=20 oppose this government=20 encroachment.