with Trump opening up some Alaskan wilderness...

@SW-User I would love to see all the bird chopping windmills removed. They are an environmental disaster. My friend lived near one. He had to move. If the windmill was moving he suffered vertigo.

@hippyjoe1955 I wouldn’t. Wind turbines result in very few bird deaths.

@SW-User You have no clue. Thousands of birds and bats are killed annually. Statistics show that each windmill will kill at least two birds a year and about 3 bats. The bats sonar doesn't work well with the harmonics coming off the blades.

@hippyjoe1955 Birds are more likely to die from hitting your window than they are from a wind turbine. Bird related deaths from a turbine is 328,000. Related deaths from window collisions is between 365 million to 988 million.

@SW-User No. Windmills kill a lot of birds including large raptors. The kind you don't see running into windows. There was an oil development that had a storm and couldn't service its bird scares (loud noise makers that scare birds away from their trailing ponds). Some ducks landed on the water and died. The company was fined a million dollars. Last year the wind farm close to where I grew up killed more birds and bats than the oil company. The wind farm was not fined.

@hippyjoe1955 Still, it’s a tiny fraction.

@SW-User No. It is a massive bird kill that is completely avoidable. Windmills don't work. The energy companies are getting rich off them because they are subsidized by the government. The same companies that pump oil are building and running wind farms.

@hippyjoe1955 Windmills work quite well. And even unsubsidized, they're remarkably cheap per kwh. You're out of touch.
And this is a bad thing?

@QuixoticSoul I guess your 40 year old text books fooled you again. Wind mills don't work simply because the wind doesn't always blow. Sometimes it blows to hard and the windmills have to be shut down. Then there is the issue of what to do when the blades fail or need to be replaced. Unlike the steel turbines etc in the usual generating station which can and is recycled when it is worn out the blades on a windmill are ground up and buried in a land fill. The material can not be recycled at all. Wind mills are an environmental disaster in the making. Stupid city kids who have no idea what the environment is all about think wind mills are harmless. They are not.

@hippyjoe1955 Actually windmills do work. If they didn’t there would not be many of them.

@hippyjoe1955 Goddamn you're stupid, hippie. Everybody knows that it's an intermittent source of power. And every type of power source requires maintenance and repairs.

And yet, even with all that, wind-power is remarkably cheap - even when you factor out the subsidies. And technology improvements are only driving the price down.

Nobody says it's completely harmless either, stop with the strawmen.

@SW-User They only work because silly people think they are more environmentally friendly and subsidize them with tax payers money. If you took away the subsidy there wouldn't be one commercial windmill in the world. They are just too unreliable (breakdown and wind fluctuations) and have too great an environmental impact. (energy required to make them is greater than the energy they produce, they kill birds and bats and they fill up landfills at a prodigious rate). Wind mills are an energy companies wet dream which is why they are pushed by politicians who seek re election by addressing non existent problems with even worse solutions. Bad idea.

@QuixoticSoul Tell you what sunshine. put a windmill and generator on your front lawn and run your computer. Then get back to me.

@hippyjoe1955 This was true 30 years ago. Not anymore. The free market does wonders for efficiency, when given a nudge in the right direction.

Holy shit you're dumb.

I don't want any sort of power plant on my front lawn. That goes where the poor people live.

@QuixoticSoul I guess you don't have a clue. Too funny!!!! I have looked at the books of the major windmill farms. Government subsidy is the only profit they make.

@hippyjoe1955 Of course you haven't.

@QuixoticSoul Actually I have. They are publicly traded companies. Their profit loss statements are available.

@hippyjoe1955 Of course you haven't.

You’re dealing with an apologist who glibly and ineptly attempts to explain away anything and everything fooling no one. @hippyjoe1955

@hippyjoe1955 Wind turbines are environmentally friendly. They’re better than fossil-fuel plants and nuclear power plants. Both of which have killed far more birds than wind turbines.

@SW-User It takes more fossil fuel to build a windmill than you save by running the windmill for 20 years. Windmills are not reliable so you have to keep the fossil fueled generating station running just in case the wind doesn't blow.

@jackjjackson Don't placate the retards jj, it's not nice. Hippie won't learn if you keep coddling him.

Fact is, wind and solar have gotten very cheap lately, and at this point are often cheaper than any fossil fuel option. This was most definitely not the case when these things got started in the 90s, but costs have kept falling, and still are.

And one of the funnier things about him whining - we subsidize traditional power sources too. Have, for a hundred years.

@QuixoticSoul yes we know you are retarded. You can't even read a balance sheet and think wind is the solution to energy demands. You are really clueless.

@hippyjoe1955 So you’d rather have nuclear power plants then? I guess you don’t care about the birds or the environment after all.

@hippyjoe1955 False.

And newer turbines are rated for 30 years or more these days.