Ed. note: This two-part excerpt from the late Tom Bethell’s “inadvertent autobiography,” The Electric Windmill (Regnery Gateway: 1988, pp. 105–06), is a humorous look-back at the Carter-era. Part II is tomorrow.
“This was the Small-is-Beautiful crowd. Slanting solar collectors were dotted about. I kept a wary eye open for Amory Lovins or Barry Commoner….”
Curious about the overnight appearance of wigwams and other quaint structures, I parked my car near the Mall. A whirling windmill was also to be seen on the grassy sward, not too far from the Lincoln Memorial. Were the Indians in town, putting on one of their periodic Media Events?
Worth a look at least. On closer inspection it seemed to be a fair of some kind. Semi-naked youths were strolling about and lounging in the grass.…
“… as we suffer through the hellish summer of 2011 … one lesson from the book is clear: Get used to it.” (Andrew Dessler)
A decade ago, the Texas A&M climate alarmist Andrew Dessler, long followed at MasterResource for his exaggerations and bad temperment, wrote an op-ed for the Houston Chronicle: “Texas is Vulnerable to Warming Climate” (July 10, 2011; updated August 17, 2011).
How does Professor Dessler’s op-ed read today? The short answer: not very well. The mad scientist should chill with some A/C (72o, not 78o) and focus on the real here-and-now problem: the state’s overbuilt wind and solar capacity that has wounded the Texas electrical grid (as in price spikes and greenouts).
Here is Dessler’s opinion-page editorial with my comments.…
“I will grant that [Kevon Martis] gave a polished presentation of some very selected ‘facts’ totally trashing wind turbines and the power companies and wind energy companies associated with them. His one hour presentation had all of 5 seconds where he had something positive to say about wind turbines as ‘giving local entities a little bit of tax money’ (Don Smucker, below).
“If there was a substantive criticism in my talk, Smucker never proffered it and resorted instead to base name calling.” (Martis, below)
Industrial wind turbines: Dilute. Intermittent. Unneeded. Duplicative. Taxpayer/government dependent. Ugly. Noisy. Blade shadows. Flicker light. Bird hazard. Infrastructure heavy (steel, concrete, and land). Energy sprawl (service roads, long transmission to markets with line loss). Landfill issues.
Is wind the perfect imperfect energy for the modern electricity grid?…