Naturalnews.com<\/a>, a Taiwan-based non-profit collection of public education websites, in November of 2011.<\/p>\n\u201cBut high maintenance costs, high rates of failure, and fluctuating weather conditions that affect energy production render wind turbines expensive and inefficient, which is why more than 14,000 of them have since been abandoned,\u201d Mr. Benson continued.<\/p>\n
Well, that and the environmental lawsuits, attempting to reduce the slaughter of hawks, eagles, owls, and bats.<\/p>\n
\u201cBefore government subsidies … were cut or eliminated in many areas, wind farms were an energy boom business,\u201d Mr. Benson offers. \u201cBut in the post-tax subsidy era, the costs of maintaining and operating wind turbines far outweighs the minimal power they generate in many areas, which has left a patchwork of wind turbine graveyards in many of the most popular wind farming areas of the U.S.\u201d<\/p>\n
Andrew Walden, writing for the American Thinker, picks up the account:<\/p>\n
\u201cThousands of abandoned wind turbines littered the landscape of wind energy\u2019s California \u2018big three\u2019 locations which include Altamont Pass, Tehachapin and San Gorgonio, considered among the world\u2019s best wind sites,\u201d Mr. Walden writes. \u201cIn the best wind spots on earth, over 14,000 turbines were simply abandoned. Spinning, post-industrial junk which generates nothing but bird kills.\u201d<\/p>\n
In England, Britain\u2019s wind farms are wearing out far more rapidly than previously thought, making them more expensive as a result, reported Robert Mendick for the London Telegraph on Dec. 30, 2012.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe analysis of almost 3,000 onshore wind turbines — the biggest study of its kind –warns that they will continue to generate electricity effectively for just 12 to 15 years.\u201d<\/p>\n
The wind energy industry and the British government had been basing all their calculations on turbines enjoying a life span of 20 to 25 years. That means routine wear and tear will more than double the cost of electricity being produced by wind farms in the next decade. \u201cMany more will need to be built onshore if the Government is to meet renewable energy targets by 2020, with the extra cost likely to be passed on to households, which already pay about 1billion pounds a year in a consumer subsidy added to their electric bills.\u201d<\/p>\n
And this follows the same paper\u2019s December, 2008 report that \u201cThe wind farm industry has been forced to admit that the environmental benefit of wind power in reducing carbon emissions is only half as big as it had previously claimed.\u201d<\/p>\n
(Newspeak alert: “Carbon emissions,” in this context, means not gritty back soot, which can indeed be nasty, but rather clean, clear carbon dioxide, a naturally occurring gas necessary to life on earth.)<\/p>\n
But it\u2019s OK. It\u2019ll all be subsidized by Uncle Sam, who gets all the money he needs simply by printing it, with no inflationary impact on the economy, at all. Gasoline and groceries don\u2019t cost any more today than they did in 2008 … or 1968 . . . or 1928 . . . right?<\/p>\n
By the time they\u2019re done building these windmills, maybe the Burning Man kids can even be brought in to burn them down. When you\u2019ve got lemons, make lemonade.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A 200-megawatt wind energy project near Searchlight, Nevada (home town of Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid) has been approved by the federal government. Interior Secretary Ken Salazar announced Wednesday the project will be built on almost 19,000 acres of Bureau of Land Management land about 60 miles southeast of Las Vegas. The project will occasionally […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[35,24,27,3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1693","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-earth-stewardship","category-energy","category-extreme-green","category-public-land"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pWqFl-rj","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1693","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1693"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1693\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2460,"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1693\/revisions\/2460"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1693"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1693"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1693"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}