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The Answer is Blowing in the Wind
8 years ago
A wind farm of 104 wind turbines in North Carolina just went live supplying 670 megawatt-hours, enough to power 61,000 private homes. One major customer is Amazon who's buying power from the farm to run its data centers. This is in spite of the state's lawmakers asking President Trump to nix the project. Now understand this...this project just went live. Trump took office on Jan 20. That's less than 1 month ago from today. In other words, the state lawmakers demanded Trump scrap a $400 million dollar project that benefits everyone in the state of North Carolina less than a month from its start of production. Is it any surprise the lawmakers are Republican?
What reason did they give to kill this project that helps their state? They claim it's a national security threat! The farm is built near the Navy's long-distance surveillance radar installation in Chesapeake, Va., and these politicians, who know nothing about electricity or radar or anything else other than the wind farm is a "clean energy project" say it will interfere with the radar installation. So what does the Navy say? They say the wind farm and radar station can operate without problems for either installation. In fact, Avangrid Renewables, the wind farm's builder, worked with the Navy throughout its entire design and construction, reducing the size of the project and repositioning some of the turbines if a problem was thought to possibly exist to avoid affecting the radar array.
The truth of the matter, it's a clean energy project and Republicans hate those. Why? Because clean renewable energy was a major success of the Obama administration and they can't stand that. Is it any surprise Trump's energy plan doesn't mention one thing about renewables? It pushes coal, oil, and gas, especially that gas obtained from fracking, which is now confirmed to cause earthquakes. Such thinking is turn-of-the-century thinking -- the 19th century. Even without federal subsidies, the production of electricity from clean renewable sources, particularly wind and solar, is now cheaper than that produced by coal or gas. Do you think Amazon would invest in something that's going to cost them more? I don't think so.
If I were a North Carolina resident, I'd tell these Republican lawmakers to just blow me.
What reason did they give to kill this project that helps their state? They claim it's a national security threat! The farm is built near the Navy's long-distance surveillance radar installation in Chesapeake, Va., and these politicians, who know nothing about electricity or radar or anything else other than the wind farm is a "clean energy project" say it will interfere with the radar installation. So what does the Navy say? They say the wind farm and radar station can operate without problems for either installation. In fact, Avangrid Renewables, the wind farm's builder, worked with the Navy throughout its entire design and construction, reducing the size of the project and repositioning some of the turbines if a problem was thought to possibly exist to avoid affecting the radar array.
The truth of the matter, it's a clean energy project and Republicans hate those. Why? Because clean renewable energy was a major success of the Obama administration and they can't stand that. Is it any surprise Trump's energy plan doesn't mention one thing about renewables? It pushes coal, oil, and gas, especially that gas obtained from fracking, which is now confirmed to cause earthquakes. Such thinking is turn-of-the-century thinking -- the 19th century. Even without federal subsidies, the production of electricity from clean renewable sources, particularly wind and solar, is now cheaper than that produced by coal or gas. Do you think Amazon would invest in something that's going to cost them more? I don't think so.
If I were a North Carolina resident, I'd tell these Republican lawmakers to just blow me.
It sounds like it's live, generating self sustaining revenue, and isn't harming national security. At least this won't go Fukushima on our collective asses, so I say that's a plus.
More wind farms should be put up in the Red States, God knows there's no shortage of hot wind there.
portable wind generators among other things.
if you're in a war, chances are REAL GOOD you're not going to be on grid,
and in future, you might not be able to get oil or coal, neither side might.
its only logical (and logistical) they'd want to have a way to power all that advanced comand and control.
if he had half a brain he'd be reading aviation week and space technology instead of flattering his ego watching fox news.
this stuff isn't even classified. what do those people use for brains?
Don't make me go 'Maxine Waters' on you.
Here's one to make you groan.
During a House Armed Services Committee meeting held on 25 March 2010, Representative Hank Johnson, a Democrat from Lithonia, Georgia, questioned Admiral Robert Willard, commander of the U.S. Pacific Command, about a proposal to move 8,000 Marines from the Japanese island of Okinawa to the U.S. Pacific island territory of Guam. In the course of that questioning, Rep. Johnson expressed concern that adding thousands of Marines and their families to Guam might cause that small island to “tip over and capsize”:
http://www.snopes.com/tipping-point/
“I’ve been around long enough in this district for voters to know that if Hank said Guam is in danger of capsizing, they would know precisely that I have a sense of humor.”
Using humor to drive home a point is nothing new. Jon Stewart uses it all the time. And that's quite different than trying to kill a $400 million project less than a month from completion. That's nothing but stupid.