Project number two for the day on Monday provided this view to the west northwest. Five towers can be seen.
I took a series of 12 photos rotating clockwise a full circle.?ÿ A total of 88 such industrial power turbines were visible from a single spot.?ÿ The tree row along a property line running east from that spot blocked six to ten others I am sure.?ÿ So, close to 100 of the 139 recently constructed.?ÿ The next photo is from a spot four miles east of the first one and shows two more that were not visible before.?ÿ This was the site of project number three for the day which is owned by a distant cousin of our buddy squirltech
I hate these things, they're such eye sores.?ÿ You've got that glorious prairie view and the wide open sky and then... bland metal scrap in the way.?ÿ I remember first seeing these things when driving through Wyoming and Colorado and they seemed kind of neat at the time, but as years went by I noticed more and more how they stick out and ruin the landscape.?ÿ Eventually they made their way to my home state of ND and I was disappointed to see them ruining the view there also.?ÿ Anyway, the sky in those photos is incredible-- it's amazing how small it makes you feel when you're standing out there and can see miles in every direction.
If they would lock one down with one blade straight up the tip would be over 700 feet above the base.?ÿ Imagine the view if you could put a seat there (ala flag pole sitting back in yesteryear)?ÿ I topped a hill today and could see the farthest ones at 26 miles to the east.?ÿ Last week I topped a hill and could see them from a spot 22 miles to the east.?ÿ Haven't checked any other spots to the east where they might still be visible.?ÿ Easiest to pick out at night when their warning lights all flash at the exact same instant.
Signs of the times I suppose. Sure beats smokestacks.
Anyone from New York City area remember what happened in the summer of 1977 when a helicopter atop a building in the heart of Manhattan tilted too much and the rotors hit the concrete, shearing them off?
Bad things happen.
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On May 16th, 1977, a?ÿNew York Airways?ÿhelicopter killed five people in Manhattan. While it did not crash, it did tip over as it sat idling on the heliport atop the Pan Am Building (now the MetLife Building, at 200 Park Ave) in Midtown. This caused the aircraft to come apart??as it tipped over a large rotor blade snapped off and, as?ÿthe NY Times?ÿdescribed it the next day, "slashed people to death before coming to rest 59 stories below and a block away on Madison Avenue." The first four victims were on the roof, the fifth was on the street below. Others suffered non-fatal injuries.
My memory fails me now, but I seem to remember someone saying these machines were major bird killers.
Holy, are there piles of dead birds at or near the base of each of these? Wait. I guess a bird could be flung quite a distance, given the proper speed and angle of incidence. The piles would probably not really be piles, but more of a carpet over the land.
We have many wind generators in SoCal but they are generally shorter than those in your photos. If the tip reaches 700', the equipment room would have to be 500', I'm guessing.
Is there a scissors lift that goes that high? Thats a day just getting up there for an old guy like me.?ÿ
JA, PLS SoCal?ÿ
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This is not meant to be a political post.?ÿ The figure comes from an article that might be interpreted that way as it mentions political figures.
So, let's say that we have a 3 megawatt turbine working at 40% efficiency. Doesn't that mean that it's taking 3/0.4 = 7.5 megawatts out of the planet's wind budget? Next time you see a wind farm, note how the rows are staggered. That's because wind velocity on the back side of the blades is significantly reduced. That velocity reduction is the energy that is converted to electricity.
I don't know much climate science, but won't that reduction in wind velocity at a grand scale affect climate in some way?
There's no free lunch in energy conversion. I'm just not smart enough to find the environmental cost, if any, with these contraptions.
Raptors are the typical victims to wind turbine blades from what I understand. The land cleared at the base of the towers tends to attract ground squirrels which in turn attracts raptors which are focused on the ground for lunch as they're soaring and they aren't looking up for a descending wind turbine blade.?ÿ
I remember reading or talking to someone about this at some point.?ÿ The claim was birds don't dodge these things because they are struck from above.?ÿ Birds have evolved in such a way that they've never had to fear anything above them and thus are susceptible to the downstroke of the blades.
I have no idea if it's true.?ÿ The tips of these things are traveling a couple hundred miles an hour I think so it wouldn't surprise me if a bird had trouble dodging that.
Time to invest in kitty leg irons and drop my glass investment.?ÿ
@bill93 Seems a bit odd they estimate to the nearest 100k for everything except wind turbines which are estimated to the nearest single bird.
Probably means they're pulling figures out of their rear end for all the other categories.
I knew it was the cats. Even when everyone was saying windmills, I knew it was cats.
If you photoshop out the windmills in the first picture it looks just like a subdivision in FL named "Oak Forest Preserve" except there isn't a guard gate at the entrance. ?????ÿ
Cats kill 2.4 BILLION? birds /year? That seems a little high to me. Most of the cats I know are too fat and lazy to even bother chasing a bird. ?????ÿ
@flga-2-2
Actually closer to 3.7 billion by some estimates. Feral cats are a huge problem. Hawai'i is chock full of them. They're everywhere.?ÿ In Australia they're trying to eradicate them because they're driving a bunch of their endemic species extinct. They're a scourge.
I believe it.?ÿ I had an uncle buy a farmstead that had been sitting unoccupied for about a year.?ÿ My cousin said first week there his dad killed 20-30 feral cats.
They're so sneaky you don't see them but apparently they really are out there.
...They're so sneaky you don't see them but apparently they really are out there.
Set up a "cat stand" in a tree and a bowl of milk in a clearing as their feeder.
Seriously though cats are almost single handed responsible for an almost constant decline in OK's quail population.?ÿ Any bird that nests on the ground is prey for them.?ÿ
