As always, follow the money…
Several blue states have deprived rural counties of the ability to reject the massive green energy projects that corporations want to site in their communities, while green industrial interests and environmentalist groups have poured money into state capitals.
Michigan, California, New York and Illinois have all passed legislation that consolidates authority over land use issues and rules with state-level bureaucrats at the expense of local governments that could have altered their own zoning codes to stem the tide of industrial green projects like solar and wind farms. These policies deprive rural residents in these states of their freedom and local autonomy, while also benefiting the corporate interests that line the pockets of the states’ Democratic governors, state policy experts and lawmakers told the Daily Caller News Foundation.
Full article, HERE.
Can’t have those pesky locals getting in the way of those in ‘control’ making the big bucks one way or the other…
We’ve been having issues with pushes for more wind farms out here, even with the military protesting due to the fact that we have a major pilot training base here. The ‘proponents’ ignore (conveniently, IMHO) the fact that wind turbines, with their large rotating blades, can create radar interference and can reflect radar signals, leading to false radar returns, or even complete radar shadows in the regions behind the turbines.
For training bases, that is a MAJOR issue and could lead to base closure in another round of BRAC, which is probably coming in the next four years if the dems retain control… sigh…
And the last big winter storm we had, ALL of the turbines were shut down due to icing, so they contributed ZERO to the power generation…
I wonder if that same radar interference affects the aerostats that search for illegal air traffic across the border ? ERCOT erected some wind farms to the west of our ranch, as well as twice as far east of us. The Aerostat at El Sauz TX is about 15 miles away to the south east – west of these wind farms. The air traffic is from the south side away from the farms.
Should. The interference problem is fundamental to radars, except sometimes at much higher frequencies than usual. (Has to do with finite dimension antennas, frequency choice, and directional gain of antennas.)
Normally, the essential challenge means that you get a huge reflection from the entire earth that you need to deal with. But the earth moves at pretty much the same speed, so a radar designer can make the thing so that the earth reflection gets filtered out.
This has maybe been a standard practice for decades in radar design.
Wind turbine has a least two blades, moving in opposite directions, so the presence of the signature in doppler/velocity ‘spaces’ is pretty large, or can be.
The wind turbines are new, so a radar design that predates them was not designed to include filtering to get rid of the wind turbine signatures.
Whenever you filter radar signals, there is an expense and uncertainty. Maybe the people doing military radars in government and private industry have everything all figured out now. I would suspect that there are a bunch of radar systems in use that needed to be simple, and whose design trades do not allow an easy way to get the filtering done.
Hopefully the aerostat radars are sufficiently well designed.
Once again the fallacy of centralized planning rears its ugly head.
This is why the Warren Court (ptui!) banned the US Constitutional model for States, depriving the rural communities of their voices. Once upon a time, not really that long ago, each State’s upper house represented the people by geographic region, just like the US Senate. Then the Democrats, who controlled the cities, decided that wasn’t fair.
So now the cities have effective control of both houses in every State.
Connecticut has a state override for wind farms — or even single turbines — and large solar farms as well. Want to put up a chicken coop? Permits and restrictions and I don’t know what. Want to put up a wind farm? Contribute to Uncle Joe and you’re good to go. I’ve watched it in action.
Washington state is headed that way but slower. The state just banned single family zoning but only in communities larger than x people (can’t remember what value is assigned to x). The Growth Management Act requires cities to plan for certain population density levels which means defacto denser zoning. Citizens aren’t happy and take it out on Planning Commission and City Council members (me being one of the former) without acknowledging (or perhaps understanding) that we are being driven by state policy. Maybe time to start making more noise about state policy so that they’ll go dump on their representatives rather than us.
Given that the wind-turbine proponents are more interested in pocketing the subsidy money than in actually protecting the environment, it doesn’t surprise me. Wind power works – on a very small scale, for specific uses. Macro-scale, inefficient, non-recyclable, groundwater-disrupting turbine arrays do NOT work as energy sources.
I smile grimly when I see the decorative wind turbine at the big ranch’s owner’s house. Perhaps 5% of the time, it’s actually turning. There is a small generator attached, but Lord only knows what’s supposed to benefit.
OTOH, our county is not known for reliable wind, so the econazis decided to replace the hydroelectric dams with solar farms. (Replacing 100 MWe with 36 MWe. Math isn’t their strong suit.) At least the eagles and hawks aren’t afflicted.
But it is for our own good!!! Just ask the a**holes pushing these agendas.
jrg- ‘Supposedly’ not…
Ag- It’s even beyond that now.
McC- Sadly, true.
Ian- Exactly! And none of the ‘people’ actually benefit.
Hereso- THAT is scary.
TXRed- On point…as we well know.
RC- Yeah, that’s going to work well…in somebody’s dream…
WSF- Yeah, right…
So, there are a lot of joke analyses that can be done, now that the law schools have effed over the credibility and plausibility of the judiciary.
These are of the form ‘formal legal system cannot resolve this dispute, formal legal system needs to be reevaluated as part of addressing this dispute, LOL vigilantism’.
5G, solar, and wind.
5G and wind power have potential issues WRT to radars, aviation, and the military.
Normally, those concerns are discussed with litigation and bureaucratic wrangling.
But, if a PRC sponsored conspiracy can push things illegally, what recourse is left?
One answer is directly demoing the turbines and 5G transmission towers, with a side order of hanging the people responsible for their construction.
You can apply similar reasoning to such green things as making the electrical power supply less trustworthy(solar and wind), destroying domestic energy industry to transfer money totalitarian governments like Russia and the PRC, etc.
More seriously, my flavor of conservatism favors a certain amount of deliberation when I come up with proposals for a behavior shift.
When the argument runs on novelties, it may be wise to keep deliberating the idea forever, and to /never/ implement.
If the surface temperature is mainly solar forcing, and if dual dynamo model is correct, then there is a decent chance of continual issues with wind turbines in Texas not being weatherized properly.
My answer to such state rules would be: Fine, you want to take it over? Then take over everything – roads, water, law enforcement, EMS, etc.
If it’s out of our hands, it’s ALL out of our hands.
Like in Klamath Falls several years ago when “somebody” opened irrigation valves the feds kept closed and the sheriff refused to get involved.
Bob- I believe you are correct.
Jon- Snort…they don’t WANT the actual responsibility, you know that.
Atlantic Test Range at Patuxent River NAS had a major hang-up with a planned wind farm in the Chesapeake Bay/Eastern Shore area. In addition to tracking aircraft and missiles during flight test, they can do Radar Cross Section measurement. Bird slicers (windmills) create major problems for radar measurements. Signal processing can only reduce but not eliminate the problem. MIT was called in for mitigation techniques, but the Pentagon finally greased the right palms and had the project cancelled.