The Hot Air Of Wind Farms

     Currently, in Cleveland, Ohio, near where the Small Craft Advisory headquarters are located, they are discussing whether to build a wind farm seven miles off the shore of Lake Erie. The Lake Erie Energy Development Corporation, a "non-profit" created to suck up 46 million dollars in hard-earned taxpayer dollars to fund the project, has already made plans for a meeting with residents of Cleveland where they will ask them to sign a pledge to pay higher energy bills to help fund the remainder of the project. I just wonder how much money the president of Lake Erie Energy bundled for President Obama in his two presidential bids?
     The wind turbines that populate wind farms have many negatives that their supporters refuse to acknowledge and few benefits which they insist on exaggerating. The amount of energy produced by one wind turbine is calculated assuming continuous operation, which no wind turbine even comes close to achieving. Even if the windys' estimates were accepted as accurate, it would require turning the entire state of Connecticut into a wind farm just to provide the energy needs of New Jersey. Factor in the number of endangered birds that wind turbines have senselessly slaughtered, and I am surprised that animal rights groups are not more outraged by the proliferation of these horribly inefficient monstrosities. Of course, I am not surprised because most Leftists, whether they are animal rights people or so-called environmentalists, are all anti-capitalists first and foremost.
     I remember Mike Rowe, host of the show Dirty Jobs, once did an episode where he became a wind turbine maintenance worker. Two things were glaring about wind turbines from this episode. One was how much maintenance these purveyors of higher energy bills require and secondly was how much filth they generate. Not to mention the enormous contribution to noise pollution that is made by this 15th century technology to which the Left seems insistent on returning us.
     I am all for finding better ways to produce energy, but given the negatives of wind turbines, it is obvious to anyone with even a modicum of sense that these inefficient, bird killing, filthy, noisy and expensive throwbacks are not the answer. Hydraulic fracturing can produce cheap and abundant energy with far less obtrusiveness to the environment than wind farms. The Left is against hydraulic fracturing because it is self-supporting and needs no taxpayer dollars to exist, and therefore is not controlled by Leftist politicians. If the Lake Erie Energy Development Corporation, as well as others, believe in wind farms as a viable alternative to fossil fuels, then let them risk their own money and convince other investors of the virtues of wind power and keep their greedy little fingers off taxpayer money. But alas, the object of the wind farm exercise is not to efficiently and inexpensively provide the energy for a growing and prosperous free economy, but to mitigate capitalism with a limited supply of energy for the purpose of creating a Utopian society that replaces prosperity with poverty and individual liberty with collective misery.