Costs are higher today, but still competitive with other sources .
(w.awea.org/pubs/documents/Outlook_2007.pdf)
Anyone who still thinks that all government does inherently benign, should read introduced/ original version of Subtitle D on Wind Energy of HR 2337 from Rahall, a Democratic congressman from the coal-producing state of West Virginia. Here is a summary :

• “Bar any new wind power project until new Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) rules are issued – a process likely to take years – and require FWS certification of every turbine
• Require all existing turbines, even small residential units, to cease operating 6 months after issuance of new FWS rules until they are “certified,” an unwieldy bureaucratic process applying to many thousands of turbines that, again, will take years
• Make it a crime, punishable by a $50,000 fine or a year in jail, to construct or generate electricity from an unapproved turbine, even for home use”
(awea.org/newsroom/releases/Anti_Wind_Provision_in_Rahall_Bill_052307)

Fortunately, there were alert citizens and organizations, including the American Wind Energy Association and Union of Concerned Scientists, who raised enough havoc that the Subtitle D got changed to essentially have an Advisory Committee study the issue and issue recommendations. The $50,000 fine, which would have had a chilling effect on homeowners installing wind turbines, was eliminated.

The original/introduced and changed/reported versions of the bill are at thomas/loc/gov. (google: hr 2337)

One lesson here is that the viewpoint that government should be watched like a hawk, or like a raptor in the Altamont pass, is a well- justified one. Neither man nor society nor government is inherently benign nor inherently evil. All that is human has the capacity for good and evil, regardless of intent.

BW- I have had a lot of trouble with regard to putting in links/HTML posting at your site. My first posting of this didn’t go through, so I simplified the HTML. I learned that embedded HTML doesn’t work. I tried just putting in the links. Works sometimes. What are the ground-rules for the way your software processes HTML? I had to cut posting in two to get it through, and take out HTML.

The Altamont Pass wind turbines have killed raptors and other birds. Some have speculated that the newer wind turbines, which are higher, longer, and slower than the old turbines, will kill fewer birds. One blogger compared the difference to the fast-moving low power gear on a bicycle to the slow-moving high power gear on a bicycle: easier for birds to dodge. At the same time, as many birds fly at night, that difference could be irrelevant. We need more research on the height of bird flight paths to correlate with height of wind turbines, among other issues.

The National Research Council, a branch of the National Academies of Sciences, recently published Environmental Impacts of Wind-Energy Projects. Here is a quote from Chapter 3, pages 71-72 of the study. (Google: National Research Council Environmental Impacts of Wind-Energy Projects)

“Collisions with buildings kill 97 to 976 million birds annually; collisions with high-tension lines kill at least 130 million birds, perhaps more than 1 billion; collisions with communications towers kill between 4 and 5 million based on “conservative estimates,” but could be as high as 50 million; cars may kill 80 million birds per year; and collisions with wind turbines killed an estimated 20,000 to 37,000 birds per year in 2003, with all but 9,200 of those deaths occurring in California. Toxic chemicals, including pesticides, kill more than 72 million birds each year, while domestic cats are estimated to kill hundreds of millions of songbirds and other species each year. Erickson et al. (2005) estimate that total cumulative bird mortality in the United States “may easily approach 1 billion birds per year.”
Clearly, bird deaths caused by wind turbines are a minute fraction of the total anthropogenic bird deaths—less than 0.003% in 2003 based on the estimates of Erickson et al. (2005)”

Personally I think g is on a specific diet that modulates his feeding times. It comes and goes, you can say.

That said, there *IS* an enormous issue with wind turbines, and that is the birds. Some wind farms “harvest” a LOT of birds. I suppose that is where government is properly involved — setting limits for the carnage. Let the designers figure out how to cut it down to a legal limit.

At the same time, the harsh reality is that the only motivator for reducing oil consumption, through some combination of conservation and alternative energy sources, is its high price.

There is some light at the end of the wind tunnel. Texas, the southernmost part of the Great Plains wind tunnel, is either the second or first wind energy producer in the country, at 3352 MW installed capacity. Projects under construction are slated to increase capacity by 37 %.

Since 1999, after passage of the Texas Renewable Portfolio Standard, when blood-for-oilman Dubya was governor, wind energy capacity in Texas has increased four times, and this exponential growth should continue.

“Additionally, in July 2007, the Texas Public Utility Commission announced its approval for additional transmission lines that could deliver as much as 25,000 megawatts of wind energy from remote areas in the state to urban centers by 2012, depending on how many wind farms are built. New transmission infrastructure will allow all Texans to access the the state’s vast wind resources.”

We have a long way to go. Wind energy is about 1% of national electrical capacity, but there are indications we are moving in the right direction, at least those of us who are not vassals of the Lord of Hyannisport.

Off topic: Does Greg’s disappearance mean that he has stopped trying to post, or that his gratuitous insults are being shut off?
http://www.seco.cpa.state.tx.us/re_rps-portfolio.htm
http://www.seco.cpa.state.tx.us/re_wind.htm
(I have not had good success with embedded HTML on this blog)