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Politics : The Environmentalist Thread -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Tom Clarke who wrote (24674)	5/23/2009 7:42:47 AM
From: FJB	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 36917

The article I link to below seems to indicate they wouldn't be that noisy from a reasonable distance. How noisy are wind turbines? ucsustainability.blogspot.com

To: Tom Clarke who wrote (24674)	5/23/2009 7:44:05 AM
From: average joe	Respond to of 36917

The Costs and Benefits of Waxman-Markey Today the House Energy and Commerce Committee will begin a multi-day markup on the Waxman-Markey energy tax bill. Committee Chairman Henry Waxman (D-CA) has been busy lobbying his own caucus for the necessary 30 votes to get the bill out of committee for weeks, but the bill’s fate is still in doubt. Considering that global warming legislation is a cornerstone of President Barack Obama’s agenda (he needs the tax revenues to fund his other big spending priorities), why can’t the Obama administration convince their own party that their energy tax is a good deal for the American people? First let’s look at the economic costs of Waxman-Markey. Waxman-Markey attempts to limit greenhouse gas emissions by making it more expensive for greenhouse gas emitters to operate. Instead of a direct tax on greenhouse emissions, Waxman-Markey issues permits (mostly for free but some at a price paid to the federal government) that allow businesses to emit greenhouse gasses. Businesses that fail to lobby the federal government for enough permits to cover their current emission levels will then have to buy them from either the federal government or other businesses that have better lobbyists in Washington, DC. The net effect of these permits is higher costs for businesses and consumers that emit greenhouse gasses, the most prevalent being CO2. As then-candidate Barack Obama explained to the San Francisco Chronicle, this policy will cause electricity prices to “skyrocket.” Since everything you consume requires energy, the higher energy costs caused by Waxman-Markey will spread throughout the entire economy. The Heritage Foundation’s Center for Data Analysis has crunched the numbers and found that by 2035, last week’s version of Waxman-Markey would: 1) reduce aggregate gross domestic product (GDP) by $7.4 trillion; 2) destroy 844,000 jobs on average; and 3) raise an average family’s annual energy bill by $1,500. And this week’s version of the bill appears to have an even greater catastrophic effect on the economy. That’s a pretty steep cost. So what do Americans get for being $7.4 trillion poorer in 2035? Other environmental legislation has helped reduce acid rain and slow the growth of asthma, so Waxman-Markey must offer some tangible benefits to the American people right? Wrong. Waxman-Markey is a truly unique piece of environmental legislation in that it does not offer a single tangible benefit to the American people. Global warming is just that: global. The United States still has the largest economy in the world, but China is now the world’s largest emitter of greenhouse gasses. India also has a rapidly growing economy and neither they, nor China, have any plans to reduce their carbon emissions. So, using the left’s own global warming theory, how much would Waxman-Markey actually cool the earth? Climatologist Chip Knappenberger crunched the numbers and found that even the strictest version of Waxman-Markey would reduce projected global temperatures by just 0.044ºC by 2050. That is less than one-tenth of one degree. So as this week progresses, and you hear scary story after scary story of all the hurricanes, wildfires, and flooding that will occur because of global warming, remember this: according to the left’s own computer models Waxman-Markey would not prevent any of it. blog.heritage.org

To: Tom Clarke who wrote (24674)	5/23/2009 12:23:30 PM
From: Wharf Rat	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 36917

Good thing he doesn't raise flying pigs, or we would have swine flu blood all over Asia. The Goat-Killing Wind Farm Mystery "I'd bet two goats that this turns out not to be turbine noise." Me too -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- By Martin - Posted on 21 May 2009, 18:22 (GMT) [bpsdb] I haven't picked on the BBC for a while, but today their department of "and finally..." stories came up with this little gem: "Wind farm 'kills Taiwanese goats'." Now, I've not no axe to grind regarding wind farms, but the story is more tenuous than a fart in a hurricane, and smells about as bad. The story comes from a small island near Taiwan, on which the imaginatively-named Taiwanese power company TaiPower (who curiously fail to mention collateral goat damage on their website) decided to plant a number of fancy new wind turbines. At the time the eight turbines were installed, nearby farmer Kuo Jing-shan claims to have had 700 goats. Four years later, his herd had been reduced to just 250, as one-by-one they died. The farmer told a local BBC reporter: "The goats looked skinny and they weren't eating. One night I went out to the farmhouse and the goats were all standing up; they weren't sleeping. "I didn't know why. If I had known, I would've done something to stop the dying." Now, I've got no reason to assume that Kuo Jing-shan is telling fibs, although it's worth noting that if his claim is accepted he does stand to gain rather a lot of compensation. Let's leave that aside for now. The farmer claims that the noise from the wind turbines deprived the goats of sleep, thus driving them to an early, er, plate. That's not an outrageous hypothesis, and spokesman Lu Ming-tseng for the Ministry of Agriculture - who have not yet completed their own inquiry to determine cause of death - said that is was at least plausible: "Abnormal noises could affect the normal growth and feeding intake of animals and cause them to suffer sleep deprivation." But the BBC have rather over-egged this statements as far as I can tell. Lu Ming-tseng's quote above is the only quote from any MoA representative to appear in the article, and yet the BBC confidently assert that: "The Ministry of Agriculture says it suspects that noise may have caused the goats' demise through lack of sleep." This certainly isn't supported by the quotes in the piece, and if an MoA official has suggested this, it would be nice to see the quote. The other, bigger problem is that wind farms just don't kill livestock. Millions of animals around the world live, eat, sleep, and breed in their shadow without the slightest problem. I've lived near them myself, and had no issue with the noise. Anecdotally, in Wales you could regularly see Goats and sheep happily grazing underneath them, enjoying the shade they provide. In my experience it's reasonable to assume that to a goat, a wind turbine is like a slightly boring tree. As far as I can make out, there are no reports of livestock anywhere else in the world having problems with noise from wind farms. If I'm wrong on this, feel free to post links in the comments section and I'll happily eat my words. If I'm right though, it suggests one of two things: the wind farm isn't the problem, or if it is it's due to some freak occurance. Another thing that bugs me is the time line. If the turbine noise caused that much stress to the flock, you'd expect the deaths to be reasonable clustered, with the bulk of the herd dying around a certain period. In this case though, death apparently trickled on for four years. It doesn't really seem to fit with the idea of a constant external agent. Hopefully, the MoA will release more details in the near future. In the meantime, I'd bet two goats that this turns out not to be turbine noise. layscience.net