May 03, 2010 05:00 PM
George Will on Wind Farms & Oil Spills
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Another week, another whopper from George Will.
GEORGE WILL: Right. And -- and, by the way, wind farms kill a lot more birds daily than are probably going to be killed in this oil spill.
What a blithering dunderhead...
Why are they still taking him serious on ANY subject?
Wurlitzer is steaming full speed ahead now trying to downplay, downsize, cheapen, and manipulate the real facts of the magnitude of this disaster.
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CORPORATE CONTRACTS, thats why.
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Starve the WAR Beast...
... Save the World.
Nova had an episode where they dealt with California's attempt to become less dependant on oil. They showed some of these wind farms. The propellers (I guess that's what you call it) were moving so slowly that it a bird can't avoid them, it must be mentally challenged. They're making the propellers bigger and bigger, and the bigger they are, the slower they rotate.
Where does George Will get this stat?
There is the solar technology where bright, intensely hot beams are focused on one spot. I can see birds having problems with that setup. I seriously doubt that windmills are a problem.
He can safely say this, in all probability, because right-wingers do not want to watch a Nova program that deals with global warming and a serious effort to wean us off of our addiction to oil. Right-wingers would say, "Boy, that George Will is right. Those windmills are a menace."
He gets his stats where his brain is... his ass.
Which is precisely the wrong type of solar power generation we should be pursuing. Those types of plants also use enormous quantites of water (used to power steam turbines) that most sunny areas can ill afford to lose.
The answer is for anybody with a roof to have solar panels and the people become the power plant. Distributed generation is the answer, but of course, nobody can dip their hand into your wallet every month if folks are making it for themselves and using the grid as the "battery" backup. We could do it right now, with the grid we have. We just need to do it.
Oh, and Mr. Will, go Cheney yourself.
The water that is used for condensing the steam can be returned to its source. There is no reason that water should be wasted.
because the fed has totally effed up the water apportionment for the central valley (killing off smaller farms) land developers are reaching out to owners to sell or lease in order to build what will become the worlds largest tract of solar energy farms
if everything works, california could be very soon off the grid
about 10-20 years
and the amount of power generated should turn cali into a power giant...selling off cheaper energy to other states
and then....we will fuck the shit out of texas the way they fucked us
CALIFORNIA UBER ALLES
never mind that this was what brown had in mind 30 years ago, and we then wasted 30 years laughing at him
The Center for Biological Diversity (not exactly a right-wing group):
"Wind turbines at Altamont Pass kill an estimated
880 to 1,300 birds of prey each year, including up to 116 golden eagles, 300 red-tailed hawks, 380 burrowing owls, and additional hundreds of other raptors including kestrels, falcons, vultures, and
other owl species. The APWRA is an ecological sink for golden eagles and other raptor species and may be having significant impacts on populations of birds that are rare and reproduce infrequently."
From: www.windaction.org/?module=uploads&func=downl...
Not that bird kills from wind power is worse than an oil spill, but there are environmental costs than can and should be mitigated when wind installations are done. Power companies installing wind are out to make a buck, not necessarily doing things in the most environmentally sound way.
Windmill blades appear to be moving slowly because of their size. It's true that they only rotate 15-20 times per minute, but the tips of those blades are actually moving something like 180mph. That would slice a roc in half, much less anything smaller.
What an ass clown
a loon.
A real birdbrain.
Being a braying jackass pays well.
Vote GOP and move forward to the 18th Century.
looked like he swallowed one of Ronnie Reagan's ass hairs when Bill Maher told him Brazil weaned off oil by using sugar cane to make gasahol.
http://www.awea.org/faq/sagrillo/swbirds.html
Wind turbines? Not so much...
Working on the planning of a 25-square-kilometer windfarm off the western coast of Finland at the moment, I can say that the blades are so large and so far off the water that birds readily avoid them. Current turbine designs are such that a large patio window is far more likely to confuse and kill birds. George Will may not have been fibbing, but then he was speaking to an issue of much smaller wind turbines designed decades ago.
from George Will's backend is polluting the airwaves. FEMA has been notified.
Run for your lives! We have a ruptured gasbag!
Wind farms kill a lot more birds daily than are probably going to be killed in this oil spill.
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But not the fish, there.. banana brains!
This guy needs to offer something worthwhile but he just can't do it despite himself. Even as a clown his time has come.
"Government by organized money is just as dangerous as Government by organized mob"
-= Franklin Delano Roosevelt =-
He's getting wind farms mixed up with chicken farms. Chicken farms kill a shitload of birds.
It's an easy mistake for an old chickenhawk like Will to make.
I guess.
No kidding. He is out of excuses. Out of cover ups. out of crazy stories. Out of boogie-man myths. And hopefully soon to be replaced, and out of a job.
Ooooh Yuck - crazy stories, cover ups, and boogie-man myths. ..shudder!..
"Government by organized money is just as dangerous as Government by organized mob"
-= Franklin Delano Roosevelt =-
It is something to be concerned about.
In big winds, even those larger blades can move pretty fast.
Coupled with migrating birds in mass, yes, there will be some loss of bird life.
To the same extent of an oil spill. No.
Some of the inland wind farms have been reported to be killing an occasional Golden Eagle. Not good.
It's about where they put them. Don't put them in a migratory path.
Where Eagles are concerned. Don't use wind turbines. Use solar panels.
It's just gonna take some thought and research.
What is your conceptual, continuity?
Then it'll always smell like Thanksgiving...
Diabolus est Deus Inversus
"Trees cause more pollution than automobiles do." -- Ronald Reagan, 1981
Actually, I think turbines are built with little spinning razors all over the edges of the blades to chop the crap out of any bird that flies by.
This guy is a typical uneducated loudmouth conservative. They exist on the left too, but usually left-wing loudmouths go around accusing environmental genocide, not denying it. What possible evidence does Will have about turbine related bird deaths when compared to an oil spill, one of the the most environmentally devastating occurrences on the planet? All I know is he can't possibly know what he's talking about. Talk about a fact check...
Check out my blog ( Edited.You were asked. SiteMonitor) for more on conservative and liberal stupidity. But mostly conservative.
( You've been asked before to keep the link to your blog on topic to the thread you post on. This one is not about this topic. SiteMonitor)
This guy is full of wind:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wbDiujuv6rQ&fe...
Diabolus est Deus Inversus
there's energy in that wind...
"Government by organized money is just as dangerous as Government by organized mob"
-= Franklin Delano Roosevelt =-
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_pm6OVvu3yQ
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kCgLNuXSaSc
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R6dm9rN6oTs
Diabolus est Deus Inversus
"wind farms kill a lot more birds daily.."
And whales are insects that subsist on a diet of bananas.
"To me, truth is not some vague, foggy notion. Truth is real. And,
at the same time, unreal. Fiction and fact and everything in between,
plus some things I can't remember, all rolled into one big "thing."
This is truth, to me. "
-Jack Handy
"tarred and feathered"
audit-prosecute-incarcerate
But if you kill the seas....?
Diabolus est Deus Inversus
...then Will is vindicated because all the birds will go elsewhere...(to die) and thusly would have no chance of being killed by a windfarm.
audit-prosecute-incarcerate
just what do these talkers on these 'news' shows have to do to get fired?
of what they do.
in George Will's world a huge sucking vortex is created by the cuisinart blades of the wind mills sucking in birds from thousands of miles away just to make mash out of them. Much more deadly than several million gallons of oil. Birds don't swim, don't you know.
/disgusted snark
is out...
Yes George, wind turbines do kill birds but, so do cats.
http://www.awea.org/faq/sagrillo/swbirds.html
The Exxon Valdez killed 270,000 birds with 30,000 being sea birds.
BP's current oil spill disaster in the Gulf will destroy sea life... shrimp, crabs, fish, flora by the millions.
George Will continues to explain away our nations greatest foibles with such cherry picked, child like rationale that flows from his pie hole with such certitude as to make him a respectable source.
This guy is a fountain of misinformation.
Frank Zappa - Make A Jazz Noise Here
My parents friggin house has killed a fair number of birds. Not because they used to have a couple cats, but because it was in the way of their flight path.
Probably more bird kills than any 100 wind turbines combined.
I once owned a home with a glass sun porch that after I cleaned the windows I would find one or two dead birds. I stopped cleaning the windows and never found another. Never even noticed the dirt on the windows after that and didn't care.
Frank Zappa - Make A Jazz Noise Here
It's like he's not even trying. Oil is viewed as a right-wing issue. So when there's a massive oil spill, there needs to be some ridiculous moral equivalence. In other words, solar power or wind power MUST just as awful as oil power.
Tea Party protesters bringing guns to rallies near where the President is speaking isn't any worse than Code Pink trying to make a citizens arrest on Karl Rove.
That guy who shot up a church in Tennessee because it was 'too liberal' isn't any worse than Charles Manson, who listened to the Beatles.
And nobody can shut these people up because the media loves them.
..forgot to mention the holocaust of FLYING FISH! OMG!
I really wish somebody, anybody, on one of these endless circle-jerk gasfests would stand up and ask, "George, do you know how utterly imbecilic and creepy you sound, every time you open that ever babbling mouth to read your masters' script?"
This would make my day. But then, I've been forced to lower my standards of entertainment on an hourly basis.
Or is this merely conjecture (or wishful thinking) on Will's part which he's oh-so-conveniently chosen to dress up as fact?
Oh, wait...of course! Silly me...how could I possibly have forgotten? This is a neoconservative Republican we're talking about. If their words and behavior are anything to go on, every last one of them is a raging narcissist firmly entrenched in the fallacy that the world is required to conform to their expectations and that their personal beliefs or opinions are therefore equivalent to facts or knowledge. "Supporting evidence? We ain't got no supporting evidence! We don't need no supporting evidence! I don't have to show you any supporting evidence! We want to believe that wind farms present a greater threat to birds than oil slicks do, because that's more convenient for us -- so it has to be true. The facts don't back that up, but we don't care -- we've decided that it should be that way, so it must be true. That's good enough for us, so it damn well ought to be good enough for the rest of the world."
If this doesn't prove that the media is heavily influenced (if not completely controlled) by corporations such as oil companies, I don't know what does. Why is Will even being allowed to appear on a reputed news program and make an unsubstantiated (not to mention highly dubious) claim without being asked to corroborate it -- or indeed, without being challenged in any way? I mean, come on...Will quite literally claimed that thousands of birds are being killed per day by wind farms alone!
Never trust anyone who insists that patriotism requires you to blindfold yourself with the flag.
When has this "intellectual" poseur ever been concerned with birds?
Diabolus est Deus Inversus
He's concerned about his oil stocks... I don't see him crying a river over Tyson Chickens, they kill thousands daily...
Will doesn't realize the damage caused during the migratory season. Adding to that, this spill was caused by an accident that was made worse by errors and negligence. Can he say the same for wind farms
Jeanne
GEORGE WILL: "Right. And -- and, by the way, wind farms kill a lot more birds daily than are probably going to be killed in this oil spill"
It would centuries to kill enough birds to equal the number of human beings have died for your psychotic Neocon fantasies of American exceptionalism and supremacy.
"We will find fulfillment not in the goods that we have, but in the good we can do for each other."
Robert F. Kennedy
he talks like wind turbines turn like oscillating fans... what an idjit
...is that he's most likely trying to capitalize on the fact that the average American in the viewing audience probably hasn't visited a wind farm either, and therefore won't realize that the impression of wind farms which he's deliberately trying to cultivate isn't accurate.
Never trust anyone who insists that patriotism requires you to blindfold yourself with the flag.
he stuck his head in his fan and it mutilated his brain... so if fans can do that to him, then the huge blades on a wind generator MUST chop birds to bits with the speed and force of a jet engine.
We've had wind farms over here for a couple of decades now. There have been several studies and the conclusion is that the prop blades pose a very small hazard to birds. The vast majority are swift and savvy enough to avoid them. However, there is one type of flying creature that suffers badly and that is the bat. They don't get hit by them directly, but they are very susceptible to air pressure changes and they die as a consequence of flying too close to the moving blades. Having said this, if you site a wind farm on the coast or in the sea, the risk to bats is minimal.
To get the birds to go around them.
I dunno, some kind of noise? Do tests and see what kind of sound/noise that they react to. Maybe, something only they can hear.
I dunno, seems like it would be worth while to look into.
What is your conceptual, continuity?
What is it about hairpieces and TV commentators? Maybe the combination of the insulating rug and the hot TV lights fry their brains
I suppose this is just Big Oils "Encore Performance" after 8 years of gouging the American people from Kenny Boy Lay right up to the day George W and gang rode out of Washington.
and biceps flexing about Historic Record Energy Profits during the Bush Regime of destruction.
George Will'sl and Tucker Carlson's propeller bow ties have probably killed more birds than those wind farms.
one can have a big vocabulary and still be a blooming idiot.
coming out of his ass.
This pompous pretend "intellectual " has been giving Glenn Beck and Limbaugh a run for their money , just another right wing fountain of bullshit .I expect to see him with a tea bag on his lapel next show .
Insanity , it is what it is , there is no understanding it .
Wind farms kill about 2 birds per year per tower. I'd guess that's less than 100,000 a year, which is most likely to be much less in a day than this oil spill will kill.
But that's being incredibly disingenuous,as wind towers kill almost no birds compared to other things that kill them. Less than 100,000 versus:
Glass windows/tall buildings: 100 million to 1 billion a year
House cats: 100 million a year
Cars/trucks: 50 to 100 million a year
Electric transmission line collisions: 174 million a year
Agriculture (pesticides): 67 million a year
Communication towers: 4 to 10 million a year
Hunting: 100 million a year
Once we get rid of glass windows, get rid of tall buildings, get rid of all cats, stop driving, get rid of the electric grid and above ground powerlines, get rid of pesticides, get rid of communication towers, stop all hunting, THEN we can start looking at removing wind farms to save birds.
is the most obvious refutation of the "liberal media" myth.
the point is, oil spills kill the birds' habitat which, in turn, kills the birds -- all of them, stupid!
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And windmills kill shrimp? Fish? Kelp? Coral? Algie? a way of life?
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Starve the WAR Beast...
... Save the World.
Mr Will,
Do you happen to have the number and studies to back up such a statement?
Maybe George Will might try praying for those birds. Like Sarah Palin prays fthe oil spill away form the Gulf waters after her Drill Baby Droll and her not needing NO Stupid scientific studies. Drill now!
THERE HAS BEEN A MAJOR WIND SPILL THAT IS IN PROGRESS AT THIS TIME.
STAY TUNE TO MORE MAJOR BREAKING NEWS OF THIS DISASTER..........lol
let me think
a windmill falls over
i don't think that releases 1 million gallons of oil
is george even relevant anymore?
Does this guy take "stupid" pills?
Maybe he should volunteer to help clean up all the wildlife that's affected or will be affected by this oil spill. Maybe then he wouldn't make such a ridiculous statement..........Nah, he still would.
"You gonna believe me or your lyin' eyes?"
A 1986 study found that 69 million birds flew though the San Gorgonio Pass during the Spring and Fall migrations. During both migrating seasons, only 38 dead birds were found during that typical year, representing only 0.00006% of the migrating population. The NWCC reports that: "Based on current estimates, windplant related avian collision fatalities probably represent from 0.01% to 0.02% (i.e., 1 out of every 5,000 to 10,000) of the annual avian collision fatalities in the United States."15 That is, commercial wind turbines cause the direct deaths of only 0.01% to 0.02% of all of the birds killed by collisions with man-made structures and activities in the U.S. Exxon Valdez Oil Spill Trustee Council Responders found carcasses of more than 35,000 birds and 1,000 sea otters. That was considered to be a fraction of the bird and animal death toll because carcasses usually sink to the seabed. The council estimated 250,000 seabirds, 2,800 sea otters, 300 harbor seals, 250 bald eagles, up to 22 killer whales died along with billions of salmon and herring eggs.
Why must all Reslugs prove their absolutely stupidity all the time.
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