San Diego's backcountry fights wind turbines

zwills, That's a good question. we want even cleaner green energy. like what? can anybody answer? so again (nobody answered this yet). what my antagonists propose? Just name one alternative, other than candles and go naked, and we can reach a hint of an agreement. Agree with you also in the lights. I live in Morrisville, PA. Every Friday some neighbors have fireworks. This is annoying to me and scare the hell out of my three dogs. Should they be banned to have a useless tradition that just have noise for me? Audrey, With all due respect, what is really silly is your comparison. Just because the bird is killed in half, this is worse than the million animals killed by cars? And before you answer, check this out. Am I the only one who sees pieces of animals in the road everywhere I go? http://www.sandiegoreader.com/users/photos/2013/a… No more wasting time for me in this thread. I started saying that it was meaningless. And nobody has given me an answer to my question yet, people just get around it.
— August 28, 2013 7:48 p.m.

San Diego's backcountry fights wind turbines

Sorry for sending another one right away, but there were a few things that I would like to add and I exceeded the limit: Significantly enough, somebody up here said "as a nonparticipating landowner, I literally could not find one benefit". This is key. I have also seen that the maximum resistance where wind farms are located come from two groups: landowners that did not have the financial opportunity of having one turbine in their property, or people who lost their jobs in coal mines and blaim the wind turbines for that, not realizing that the cause for losing the jobs are many others (market profit for that industry being the main one). Visual impact? Maybe. We can also ask our children, they may have a different opinion. In Bear Creek windfarm, in PA, I have seen local families camping at the base of one of them, they didn't seem bother for that. Noise? Some, sure, but these windfarms have to pass strict protocols for noise level, and they develop software that lowers these levels even more, or software that takes in account bat migration and stops the turbines in the season. In Big Horn project (WA), there is one turbine that does not run on the day because there is an eagle who lives close to it. I wish that other industries were so respectful. There is not energy who have side effects. I am just saying that all of us should ask ourselves what are we able to give up to have air conditioning or heating for us and our children. That's all.
— August 27, 2013 7:09 p.m.

San Diego's backcountry fights wind turbines

I will like to put my two cents here, although I am afraid that this discussion will never cease and one of the sides will never convince the other... Let's be logic: yes, wind turbines kill birds. What about cars? Don't cars (or people driving them) kill them also? Some facts: in USA, EVERY DAY, ONE MILLION ANIMALS are killed by cars; that includes not only birds, but also mammals, reptiles, and amphibians (somehow, insects and bugs are not counted on this number). For deers accidents only, besides the poor deers, we have 200 people killed and 1.1 billion or property loss every year. I cannot give an exact number for the deers, although it is estimated that 26 % of the daily million above correspond to "large animals" (and that does not count humans). To not mention that cars have killed half of the Florida panthers, a rare species; kill black bears, miniature Florida key deers or cougars in an alarming number. Are we willing to give up cars? Next question: are we willing to give up the use of electricity (all of us, including people opposed to them)? No? Then, do we prefer use coal plants or nuclear? Sometimes a wind turbine gets in fire: and, out of fairness, I have to say that it seems that wind turbine accidents have killed 35 americans. Don't be scared, they were killed not by turbines falling on them, but in accidents related to their construction or servicing, like any other industry. No, let me rectify: nuclear plants have not killed anyone since we start using them. At least not directly. We still have the issue with the nuclear residues that we don't know where to lleave and we end damping them in the sea or buried them. Some of the aftermath products are radioactive for thousands of years. Do we remember Chernobyl or Fukushima? Do we remember the scary moments of the Three Mile Island, or the incident with BP in the Gulf of Mexico? In the other hand, my job allows me to see a lot of windfarms all over USA. I have seen one hundred cows follow the shadow of a wind turbine in Texas, just to get cover from the heat. They got used to the turbines, and certainly, if we could ask the cows, they may have a different opinion than some of our friends here. .
— August 27, 2013 7:07 p.m.