A Patriots Manifest Oct. 01 08
William White
T. Boone Pickens is a very smart man who knows the energy industry very well indeed and the antics of PETA and ALF no better than any other intelligent layman and he certainly knows less about politics than the presidential candidates who endorsed his plan. Wind power comes in four broad flavors:
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Windmills: a modern windmill slices and dices birds that get sucked into the propellers. PETA will protest and ALF (Animal Liberation Front) will attempt to bomb wind farms the second a member of an endangered avian species goes to birdbrain heaven by way of windmill blades. So lawsuits and restrictions will blossom like the weeds that creep into your lawn from your neighbor’s lawn. There are also problems with RF interference from windmills but that is mostly an urban and suburban problem and has little to do with endangered bird species. The advisors to McCain and Obama should have spotted this problem immediately and a caveat about the endangered species act should have been prominently included in their endorsements particularly Obama’s since he is hoping to pick up votes from people who would otherwise vote Green.
Horizontal wind turbines: a food processor that also generates electricity. Living bird in one piece goes in and slowly dying bird in multiple pieces comes out the other end. Pickens’ was smart enough to omit this possibility but neither the campaign was smart enough to pick up on this fact while endorsing the plan and jokingly complement a potential contributor on his astute selection of a product to push.
Tethered windmill kites. This was written up in Popular Science recently. Don’t know how it would work as a power generation system but as an Air Raid Protection system it’s a great idea. Flying a plane into a metallic kite cable will hurt the plane. As a way of enforcing a no-fly zone barely visible cables are hard to beat. The way the system is supposed to work is a kite with counter rotating windmill blades is placed way up there and tethered to the ground so power can be extracted. It might work for its intended purpose but I am not an aerospace engineer so I won’t go there.
Vertical wind turbines. An ancient/early medieval Persian idea that was abandoned when the Persians found out about windmills. A real strange looking device, sort of like the attic cooling turbines found on some roofs here in FL. A roof turbine creates suction to pull super heated air out of the attic to reduce AC bills. A vertical wind turbine has slanted vertical blades all the way around so that no matter which way the wind blows the turbine rotates in the same direction. It occupies much less horizontal space than any other form of wind power so more power can be extracted per acre so it sounds ideal. Two problems: why did the Persians abandon this plan and why did Pickens not use this design in his plan?
I do not have an answer to that question but here’s a prediction. Whoever is elected will go with vertical turbines secure in the knowledge that they know more about this design than its inventors and more about energy than some hick who became a billionaire in the energy business. I will further predict that the then president will first hear of this column when questioned about the disaster created by his backing of vertical wind turbines. Just thought I would throw this in there.
The views expressed by William White are his and his alone and may not be the views expressed by A Patriots Manifest. Thank you .... Michael Roller...