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New Documentary Blows Away Windmill Lies

Windmills seemed the perfect green energy of the future. It turns out that the wind turbines are 400 feet tall — the height of a good-sized Manhattan skyscraper placed incongruously in the sprawling countryside. A single blade weighs seven tons. The diameter of the cement base of the windmills can be 250 feet. Once erected, they spoil the natural beauty of the nearby mountains, they cast giant shadows, they throw off dangerous quantities of ice. People living under them complain of health problems, difficulty sleeping, and strange pressure in their ears, and the low, intense thudding noises of the turbines are compared to the effect of living next door to a disco that never closes, or being under a plane that never lands. Another citizen says that living near a windmill is like having “your vacuum cleaner running beside your bed all night.”

Moreover, due to the intermittent nature of wind energy, nearby fossil-fuel power plants still have to be kept running in order to cover for the down times. Any overall reduction in carbon emissions is minimal. Windmills often require trees to be cut down and roads to be cut into pristine countryside. Birds and other animals fall prey to the massive blades, and such is the pressure created that bat lungs explode. A bat expert quoted in the documentary speculates that massive deployment of windmills could put bats at risk of extinction. The more you look into windmills, then, the more they seem like the 21st century’s ethanol — a huckster cure that does little about the disease or maybe makes it worse.  So, why the popularity?  Read more.




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