Radar Disruption - Public Safety is an issue and the (partial) fix requires even more tax payer dollars

How Green

Wind Farms Disrupting Radar, Scientists Say

By Maxim Lott

Published November 05, 2011

| FoxNews.com

• 
  National Weather Service
  Rainstorm or wind farm? The circled area contains a wind farm, making it unclear whether it is also raining there.

This one's really off the radar.

Wind farms, along with solar power and other alternative energy souces, are supposed to produce the energy of tomorrow. Evidence indicates that their countless whirring fan blades produce something else: "blank spots" that distort radar readings. 

Now government agencies that depend on radar -- such as the Department of Defense and the National Weather Service -- are spending millions in a scramble to preserve their detection capabilities. A four-star Air Force general recently spelled out the problem to Dave Beloite, the director of the Department of Defense’s Energy Siting Clearinghouse. 

 

"Look there’s a radar here -- one of our network of Homeland surveillance radars -- and [if you build this wind farm] you essentially are going to put my eyes out in the Northwestern corner of the United States,” Beloite related during a web conference in April.

Spinning wind turbines make it hard to detect incoming planes. To avoid that problem, military officials have blocked wind farm construction near their radars -- and in some cases later allowed them after politicians protested.

Shepherd’s Flat, a wind farm under construction in Oregon, was initially held up by a government notice that the farm would “seriously impair the ability of the (DoD) to detect, monitor and safely conduct air operations."

Then Oregon’s senators got involved.

The fix MIT scientists came up with tells the radar not to pay attention to signals in a very small area.

“You just tell the radar processor, ‘you're going to have clutter here. Don't display it.’ You create a tiny blank spot [in the radar map] directly above the turbine,” Beloite told FoxNews.com.

In addition to the  cost o the radar development, taxpayers are on the hook for more than $1 billion in subsidies for the construction of the Shepherd’s Flat wind farm, according to a 2010 memo from Larry Summers and two other White House economic advisors.

The fix for military radar doesn't work so well for weather forecasters, however. 

“It's a lot easier to filter out interference for aviation,” Ed Ciardi, a meteorologist at the National Weather Service Radar Operations Center in Norman, Okla., told FoxNews.com. “The real problem is when rain and the wind turbines are mixed together [on the radar map.] And it's all confusing… sometimes [forecasters] throw up their hands and say, ‘who knows?’”

When the situation is unclear, Ciardi said, “they'll play it safe and maybe extend a warning.”

Ciardi said there have been occasional false alarms due to wind farm interference, but the Weather Service hasn't failed to issue any storm warnings yet.

“We're more worried about the future ... we've seen quite a few proposals for wind farms around our radars. And we have been ... trying to convince them to stay a good distance away,” he said.

Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2011/11/05/wind-farms-disrupting-radar-scientists-say/#ixzz1d2VqBwmj

Making the world a noisy place

The side-effects and complaints about commercial wind turbines are being aired world-wide. What ever happened to concerns about "noise pollution"? This from England:

Credit:  Western Morning News, www.thisisnorthdevon.co.uk 29 October 2011 ~~


Imagine never being able to open your windows at night, no matter how hot the weather…

It’s a problem some North Devon residents now claim they face since the blades of 22 giant wind-turbines at Fullabrook began to turn.

Sue Pike’s bungalow is just 600 metres (1,986 feet) from one of the 110-metre (361- foot) turbines at the new wind-farm and she says: “It is dreadful – the main sound is like a huge great cement mixer going around – then you get the loud whoosh and also whistles and hums.

“Altogether we have counted four different noises coming from it,” she told the Western Morning News. “Back in the warmer weather when the turbines were being tested we couldn’t open the bedroom or lounge windows – fortunately we are double-glazed so that helps cut out the noise – but we were stewing indoors.”

Retired farmer Brian Pugsley has lived in the Putsford area close to the centre of the wind-farm all his 67 years and he says his thoughts on the development are “unprintable”.

“It’s affected everybody in a large area, but we’re in the middle of it – you’ve got the drone of the motor and also the blade and its whooshing sound.

“I don’t know how loud it was – but it just went on and on and was definitely worst when all 22 were going round,” said Mr Pugsley referring to the recent turbine tests.

Full article at www.wind-watch.org

Visitors: recent post on lifewithdekalbturbines.blogspot.com

Friday, October 21, 2011

unexpected visitors

we had an unexpected knock on our door last night from a family who was touring this area and collecting information about the turbines. these landowners live in an area where next era is proposing turbines. they wanted to know about how our quality of life has changed and our experience with the company. the landowners heard the turbines and said they sounded like a train getting ready to go. they expressed a different perspective and a change of heart now that they have been in our area for the day researching next era, talking with others, and hearing the turbines. it is refreshing that people are doing this kind of research!

currently the turbines are lightly spinning with limited noise emitted.

 

Farm Animals and Wildlife

From Wisconsin:

"The symptoms experienced by humans may also be seen more seriously and widespread in animals leading to adverse consequences. Wild animals that have highly developed senses of hearing and vibration (bats, snakes, deer, turkey, and birds) virtually disappear from large wind developments. Domestic farm animals such as chickens, goats, and cattle are all reported to display adverse behaviors, as well as reproduction abnormalities and even death. There are many case reports of decreased dairy production and egg production in farm animals that are reversed when the animals are moved away from wind turbines."

http://www.bccrwe.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=61:letter-on-health-effects-of-industrial-wind-turbines&catid=42:health-and-wellness&Itemid=54

"Industrial wind turbines (IWTs) impact local and migrant wildlife - birds, bats, monarch butterflies, dragonflies, amphibians, reptiles, fish and other creatures - by way of ....displacement from the area around the turbines due to significant disturbance. Initial construction activity may cause local wildlife to abandon the site permanently.....

Habitat loss or detrimental change due to IWTs and associated roads, electrical substations and transmission lines."

- Wayne Wegner     full report posted at Wind Concerns Ontario

Medical Emergency Flights + Wind Turbines = No Go

Source:  http://betterplan.squarespace.com

"Another fire..."

Notice that the newscaster intros the story with the words "another fire at a wind turbine..."
The incident was at a NextEra wind energy development.
http://www.ktxs.com/news/29378976/detail.html

Wind power: questionable benefits, concealed impacts

Not really green after all:

... if a life-cycle study is warranted for hydraulic fracturing, because drilling might pass through subsurface formations containing fresh water, similar studies are certainly called for elsewhere: wind turbine manufacturing, installation and operation, for instance.

Turbines require enormous quantities of concrete, steel, copper, fiberglass and rare earth minerals – all of which involve substantial resource extraction, refining, smelting, manufacturing and shipping. Land and habitat impacts, rock removal and pulverizing, solid waste disposal, burning fossil fuels, air and water pollution, and carbon dioxide emissions occur on large scales during every step of the process.

Over 95% of global rare earth production occurs in China and Mongolia, using their technology, coal-fired electricity generation facilities and environmental rules. Extracting neodymium, praseodymium and other rare earths for wind turbine magnets and rotors involves pumping acid down boreholes, to dissolve and retrieve the minerals. Other acids, chemicals and high heat further process the materials. Millions of tons of toxic waste are generated annually and sent to enormous ponds, rimmed by earthen dams.

Leaks, seepage and noxious air emissions have killed trees, grasses, crops and cattle, polluted lakes and streams, and given thousands of people respiratory and intestinal problems, osteoporosis and cancer.

In 2009, China produced 150,000 tons of rare earth metals – and over 15,000,000 tons of waste. To double current global installed wind capacity, and produce rare earths for photovoltaic solar panels and hybrid and electric cars, China will have to increase those totals significantly – unless Molycorp and other companies can rejuvenate rare earth production in the US and elsewhere, using more modern methods.

Made in China turbines are shipped to the USA, trucked to their final destinations, and installed on huge concrete platforms; new backup gas generating plants are built; and hundreds of miles of new transmission lines are constructed. That means still more steel, copper, concrete, fuel and land. Moreover, the backup power plants generate more pollution and carbon dioxide than if they could simply run at full capacity, because as backups for turbines they must operate constantly but ramp up to full power, and back down, numerous times daily, in response to shifting wind speeds.

Wind farms require roads and 700-1000 ton concrete-and-rebar foundations, which affect water drainage patterns in farm country. The 300-500 foot tall turbines affect scenery, interfere with or prevent crop dusting over hundreds of acres, and kill countless birds and bats. Farmers who lease their land for wind turbines receive substantial royalty payments; neighbors are impacted, but receive no compensation.

Despite these ecological costs, wind farm projects are often fast-tracked through NEPA and other environmental review processes, and are exempted from endangered species and migratory bird laws that can result in multi-million-dollar fines for oil, gas and coal operators, for a fraction of the carnage.

Perhaps worst, all this is supported generously by renewable energy mandates, tax breaks, feed-in tariffs, “prioritized loading orders,” and other subsidies, courtesy of state and federal governments and taxpayers. In fact, wind power gets 90 times more in federal subsidies than do coal and natural gas, per megawatt-hour of electricity actually generated, according to US Energy Information Administration data. And wind-based electricity costs consumers several times more per kilowatt-hour than far more reliable electricity from coal, gas and nuclear power plants.

Simply put, the wind might be free, when it blows. But the rest of the “renewable, green, eco-friendly” wind energy system is anything but.

It might be far better all around to simply build the most efficient, lowest-polluting coal, gas and nuclear generating plants possible, let them run at full capacity 24/7/365 – and just skip the wind power.

Life-cycle studies would be a positive development – for all energy sources. In fact …

“Think globally, act locally” might be a very good motto for EPA and wind energy advocates.

- Paul Driessen  2/28/11 Paul Driessen is a senior fellow with the Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow and Center for the Defense of Free Enterprise, nonprofit public policy institutes that focus on energy, the environment, economic development and international affairs.