Promoted from diaries, with some maniacal laughter mixed in. - Moe Lane.
Yr humble correspondent recently provided a run-down on the Cape Wind Project, a private initiative to construct a 130-tower windfarm in Nantucket Sound.
As it happens, offshore Massachusetts has the combined advantages of being ideally suited to wind power, while being relatively close to population centers. It has the distinct disadvantage of also being relatively close to Nantucket Island, Martha’s Vineyard, and a small but politically-influential compound at Hyannis Port. He-he-he.
One of the last official acts of George W. Bush as President was to give the project the go-ahead; the final Environmental Impact Statement was published last week; it rated the project’s environmental impact as “negligible”, apart from a “moderate” impact on the scenery.
Ted Kennedy sunbathing, the EIS notes, has an “ungodly” impact on the scenery. Just kidding.
Now it’s up to President Obama to either advance his green agenda or piss off New England’s rich & powerful. Without his interference, construction on the project could begin within a year.
Perhaps most shocking of all is the economics of wind energy, as detailed in an article in today’s Wall Street Journal:
Tufts economist Gilbert Metcalf ran the numbers and found that the effective tax rate for wind is minus-163.8%. In other words, every dollar a wind firm spends is subsidized to the tune of 64 cents from the government. The Energy Information Administration estimates that wind receives $23.37 in government benefits per megawatt hour — compared to, say, 44 cents for coal. Despite these taxpayer crutches, wind only provides a little under 1% of U.S. net electric generation.
I don’t know what to hope for here: a messy policy decision for the rookie President, a messy public snit on the part of the Kennedys, et al, or the defeat of uneconomic project whose only promise lies in its guarantee of the disposal of large sums of public money.
Maybe we’ll get a trifecta!
Oh this is too good!
Rapunzel46 Saturday, January 24th at 7:16PM EST (link)I love how people continue(d) to underestimate Bush, right up to the very end. This is going to be interesting to watch.
Here's another story about it.
Moe Lane Saturday, January 24th at 7:42PM EST (link)Apparently, it;s now all up to Salazar. He likes wind power, right?
Right?
Check out my new blog at http://moelane.com/.
http://twitter.com/moelane
My (blogging-related) wish list.
I know.... Somebody ask Algore what to do !....... nt
Kenny Solomon Saturday, January 24th at 7:44PM EST (link)Of course you can have my guns……. Bullets first.
I didn’t say rounds, shells or magazines……
I said bullets first.
Is this already in the Stimulus package?
Praying Saturday, January 24th at 8:35PM EST (link)If not, it should be - it’s just the sort of efficiency and careful use of our taxpayer money that the government is so well known for. All the more reason to JUST SAY NO ON THE STIMULUS - er - PORK BARREL SPENDING BILL!
Join the RedState Strike Force
obamqa economics will pay for this with cheap electric rates.
bobojake Saturday, January 24th at 8:45PM EST (link)Let me see that would be like paying the developer 64% interest, yes obama your ARRP American Rape and Reaping Plan should make the paper route operator a whole lot of money. STOP ARRP NOW
Gone with the Wind
Carol Tarasewicz Saturday, January 24th at 10:01PM EST (link)I am laughing at the thought ot John Forbes Kerry and Ted Kennedy having tantrums at George W. Bush.
I try to read as little abouat John Kerry as possible, but he was on Nantucket last summer when those pictures were taken with the drunk girls and those penis straws. I think he has a home there too.
Pres Obama wouldn’t dare upset Ted Kenendy, Caroline convinced him to endose him. I read in the local paper, Boston Herald that Caroline wanted to endorse Hillary, but her kis changed her mind. It is a very good thing she did not get senate appointment if one of her kids could change her mind on who she would endorse, she might have been pressured by her kids on important senate votes.
I normally abhor the waste
ehosterman Saturday, January 24th at 11:16PM EST (link)of taxpayer’s money that is wind energy. But if it irritates ted Kennedy and John Kerry, maybe it’s ok just this one time.
Ted Kennedy has been invited
kowalski Sunday, January 25th at 12:23AM EST (link)Ted Kennedy has been invited to speak at several very prestigous universities in the past few years and to my knowledge, nobody has ever asked him directly why he opposes Cape Wind.
It’s one of those questions that just doesn’t get asked in polite conversation by his nominal supporters. The answer is really an admixture of the fact that windpower is a boondoggle, he doesn’t want it in his sight lines, and he wants everyone else to have it and pay through the nose for it.
My guess is that it will go nowhere. Despite the fact that the new, new President pledged to harness the sun and the wind and the soil to run our factories and fuel our cars, the EPA will issue an environmental impact analysis that will find that despite the Cape being a NOAA Class 5 wind area, it would harm wildlife, and the Kennedy family will preserve their uninterrupted view of the sea.
90/10 the first tower never gets built, at any price.
Defend Liberty — Join the NRA | Live in Massachusetts? Join GOAL.
Kowalski, I won't argue with your conclusion re: Cape Wind...
Vladimir Sunday, January 25th at 10:41AM EST (link)… but the EIS is complete.
I would encourage anyone with a passing interest in such things to go to the MMS EIS website. Just look at the Table of Contents, and consider the 12-page Executive Summary.
These are the regulatory hurdles that any major project has to pass these days, including drilling in new areas of the Outer Continental Shelf. Even offshore LA and Texas, where there have been 4,000 oil and gas structures installed over the last 50 years, we have to assess the environmental impact of installing a new structure 100 miles offshore, every time one is installed. (Admittedly, the filing is less voluminous than the Cape Wind EIS, but its tons of make-work for bureaucrats & boilerplate-writing consultants that doesn’t do one single positive thing for the environment.)
There is no opinion, however absurd, which men will not readily embrace as soon as they can be brought to the conviction that it is generally adopted. - Arthur Schopenhauer
If I may kowalski, Kowalski...
Vladimir Sunday, January 25th at 10:44AM EST (link)…that’s why I generally agree that any new major supplies of offshore oil & gas could take ten years or more to come on line.
But, as Confucius said, “The best time to plant a tree is twenty years ago. The second best time is now.”
Not to get all Zen on you…
There is no opinion, however absurd, which men will not readily embrace as soon as they can be brought to the conviction that it is generally adopted. - Arthur Schopenhauer
great quote
icbm Sunday, January 25th at 10:57AM EST (link)n/t
I don't want Cape Wind to succeed either
kowalski Sunday, January 25th at 4:06PM EST (link)I know that Moe does, because it would annoy Kennedy. But it should annoy everyone, because really what Massachusetts needs is to reform its electrical distribution network by dumping National Grid (which is British-owned) and building a couple of new nuclear power plants. They need to conclusively reverse the policy of overcharging for inadequate distribution and relying on attrition to force people to pay more for less electricity, which is now the official policy of the Commonwealth, more or less.
Deval Patrick stated sometime last year that he doesn’t want to see a new power plant of any kind built in Massachusetts again, ever. The stated goal of the policymakers here in Massachusetts at the highest levels is to make electricity more expensive to everyone in the state, and to subsidize boondoggles like wind and solar.
So frankly I don’t want Cape Wind either, but really what is needed is a complete housecleaning here in MA. That’s what sane people would do if there were any left in power (no pun intended).
Defend Liberty — Join the NRA | Live in Massachusetts? Join GOAL.
If JFK was still with us
kowalski Sunday, January 25th at 4:14PM EST (link)BTW, I’d like to think that if JFK was still with us, that he’d understand the importance of not bleeding the people in his home state to death by attrition, and he would be aggressively supporting the construction of new nuclear power plants in Massachusetts, not using government money to subsidize windmills or solar power arrays.
The fact is that electricity is so expensive in Massachusetts that thousands of people here are using wood-burning stoves and coal to heat their homes this year, and that’s a direct result of the regressive and blinkered energy policy that has been enacted by the lawmakers here in the People’s Republic.
Defend Liberty — Join the NRA | Live in Massachusetts? Join GOAL.
What's the problem with wind generators?
David123 Sunday, January 25th at 1:10AM EST (link)From wind power you get no pollutants and you need no fuel.
Why would anyone complain about how those big propellers look? There’s a nice symmetry to them - they certainly look better than some modern so-called art that museums waste huge amounts of money on.
David123
A lot
JoeG Sunday, January 25th at 4:39AM EST (link)I take it you’ve never been near them when they are running. They are rather annoying.
It takes a LOT of them to generate a reasonable amount of energy. I believe the only way you could make the statement you did is that you’re ignorant of the scale of different sources of power.
Wind turbines are a waste of money. They will only serve to raise the electric rates.
Wind turbines cause trouble for the grid. The wind does stop over large swaths of the country at the same time. Because of this, they must be backed up by other types of power.
Just put in nukes and be done with it.
Make the powerful uncomfortable!
RedFox84 Sunday, January 25th at 4:13AM EST (link)Make the powerful uncomfortable!
Make the powerful uncomfortable!
Make the powerful uncomfortable!
Make the powerful uncomfortable!
Make the powerful uncomfortable!
YAARGH!
Water Displacement?
spreadthered Sunday, January 25th at 6:21PM EST (link)I haven’t be following the wind farms off the coast but I was just curious about the water displacement the wind farm will create. Has anything been published on that or are the liberal GW freaks keeping that info hidden so after the farm is installed and the water raises 1 millionth of an inch the liberal GW freaks can blame it on more glaciers melting rather than the millions of tons of concrete and steel planted in the ocean.
Vladjmir I am with ya! I’d love to see Kerry and Kennedy try and stop this. I know a liberal’s middle name is hypocrite (ex: Al Hypocrite Gore) but it’s going to be tough for them to nay say this project and it is going to bug the hell out of them! Suddenly the cape won’t be such a nice place to live - at least the scenery won’t be so nice. A million dollar view across the Nantucket sound will be full of windmills. I’m sure all the liberal’s in MA will be kicking themselves.