mb73,

I thought McClanahan's lame anti wind arguments were pretty much obvious to an energy aware audience. But here are a few if you need them to be pointed at:
...on the scale that Pickens envisions, this is a pipe dream..
Pickens vision is $1 trillion for turbines, $200 billion for new transmission lines, spent over 10 years. The real pipe dream is that the US can continue sending $700 billion per year of US dollars going outside the border for imported oil.
The Department of Energy says wind could be providing up to 20 percent of our electricity needs by 2030. Is that a realistic prediction? No.
Give McClanahan 50% credit for this one, on the basis he may be as aware as the rest of us of the improbablity of the DOE's projections for 100+ billion barrel annual oil production in the future. But I doubt that he has in mind that future electricity production from fossil sources could fall, making the contribution of renewables higher than they are now.
The resistance to wind farms in Kansas' Flint Hills tallgrass prairie region a few years ago was only a foretaste.
Give McClanahan 50% credit on this one too, if the past role of the Kansas State School Board's opposition to Darwin is the model of intellectual debate on wind.
When the power is most needed - in the afternoon - the wind often doesn't blow steadily enough for turbines to reach their peak output.
A systems engineering approach would use this info to work on strategies for reducing peak loads rather then justifying the brute force method of firing up more conventional generation. Actually, no matter what the electrical sources are, the North American Electric Reliability Corporation (NERC) report last year clearly stated that the grid will need to evolve and be upgraded to handle load and source matching in a much more robust and efficient way than it does now.
"The Denmark story is basically a fable. They can do that because the whole Danish system is part of the northern European grid."
McClanahan gets a zero for this one, unless he is going for the gold medal for irony. And unlike Denmark and Europe, the US won't need undersea cables to link the US Great Plains to the coasts.
On a recent trip to Colorado, we drove through one of Kansas' newest wind farms, and I found the appearance of the windmills jarring. Both times we drove through, by the way - coming and going - the turbines were becalmed.
You probably have to be a Kansan to notice that on the 7 hour trip on I-70 between Kansas City and the Colorado border there really isn't much to stay awake for or write about other than the building excitement toward a chance to see a few miles of becalmed turbines for a few minutes in the middle of the trip. Maybe for real diversion, McClanahan should have ducked into a restaurant in Russel, Kansas, which is the boyhood home of senators Bob Dole and Arlen Specter. But likely McClanahan would have written something along the lines of 'Ewww, their food was just so untasty and not at all like Mom used to make. And their portions were soooo small too".

Last Edited By: tinnerman Aug 25 08 9:04 AM. Edited 1 times.