Wind Power: not just stupid, but a "Boone-doggle"

Crop duster dodges windmills and power lines

Michelle Malkin's syndicated column today, Pelosi and the Big Wind Boone-doggle explains why you have been hearing so much these days from T. Boone Pickens, the leveraged takeover artist, hedge-fund scammer and 117th richest man in America. For more links and comments, see Michelle's blog post on the same topic.

I guess Pickens has found Gaia in wind energy, or at least a mammon-worhipper's equivalent: tax breaks and subsidies for the true believers. Hang on to your wallets, folks. This big enviro-racket is going to cost the taxpayers a bundle and, in the long run, benefit nobody but cats like Pickens.

The old feeder is no fan of wind energy. I think they are inefficient, ugly and potentially dangerous. Now, opportunists like Mr. Pickens see a chance to clean up by tricking gullible "save the world at any cost" suckers. If the free market dictated if and where wind farms were built, there wouldn't be any. Now, thanks to unfettered democracy, these economic disasters could be ruining vistas near you, paid for with your hard-earned dollars.

Tower on road M-27 near Peterson, Iowa - last winter

I've blogged a couple of times about this particular tower in a NW Iowa wind farm that I drive through regularly. It was damaged sometime last year and still hasn't been repaired. Not even after I saw a huge crane working on it this spring:

Gigantic crane working on the same tower in late May

This work was commenced not long after the Plains Feeder post featuring the exploded windmill. I figured the operators might have it fixed by now, but all they seem to have done is take the generator box down off the tower. I wonder what it costs to move that big crane from cornfield to cornfield?

The same 'wind generator' as it appeared this month

Not only hasn't this wind turbine been repaired or replaced, but I estimate that one out of six of the windmills in this particular wind farm are non-functional. I have to estimate because the physical plant covers many square miles. The ones that aren't shattered are 'feathered' so that the wind can't turn them. The only efficiency these monstrosities exhibit is in separating taxpayers from their money.
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Excellent description of a wind farm: "they look like a Calcutta slum skyline viewed from ground level." From Uncle W at the Heartland Notebook.
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I saw the crop-duster while taking the last picture in this series. I have always admired the nerve these on-the-deck pilots display as they apply pesticides on the fields. As I watched this cat deftly avoiding the wind generators and their associated power poles, I wondered what his opinion of The Pickens Plan would be.