Someone sold farmers in Minnesota some swell, if slightly used wind turbines from California, but they froze up solid once the deep North winter set in. If you not one of the farmers, it's a funny story. (Hat tip to IT dystopian Matt Scholz.)
On a drive recently through the usually peaceful, verdant countryside of Northwestern Illinois my eyeballs were stretched uncomfortably to a vast horizon of giant wind turbines--with the tiny-seeming houses and barns of the old countryside below them mocked and trivialized.
Unfortunately, such scenes are not unusual. Wind turbines are "green energy," right up there with ethanol and other trendy causes that derive their profitability from huge public subsidies and the sad gullibility of the local gentry upon whom they are imposed.
Taxpayers who think they are creating jobs are stunned to find that many of the turbines are manufactured overseas. Communities that see them as an easy source of tax revenue and local jobs find that the turbines downgrade the community for other purposes, such as tourism.
The wind turbines are erratic, generating power only when the winds are high, and therefore are not as reliable as other energy production units. They also are probably the ugliest form of energy production, though I admit that there is a kind of industrial beauty in any one of them operating alone. Massed together, they create a scene that is disorienting and vaguely totalitarian, reminiscent of Paul Klee's anti-fascist 1937 painting, "Revolt of the Viaducts."
They kill birds and bats and are so unsafe for humans that workers are warned to stay at least 1300 feet away from them. Wind farms are literally no-man-lands.
The turbines are also disturbingly noisy, with their intermittent whoosh-whoosh sound, that people living nearby complain that they can't get the incessant rhythm out of their minds, even when the things are not operating.
Fortunately, even propelled by federal "stimulus" money and political hot air, wind turbines are probably not destined to last as environmental toys. They are the energy equivalent of the fallout shelter craze of the 1950s and 60s.
