On 6 Aug 2006 17:45:04 -0700, "dpb" wrote:


mm wrote:
... will a windmill in my backyard cut down on the pleasant breeze?

A 6-8' diameter imperfectly efficient fan is going to noticeably affect
the amount of wind except for a very short distance directly downwind
how???

I'm asking you guys. All I know is one doesn't get something for
nothing. Assume there is more than one windmill, that the maximum
number for maximum electric generation are there. I don't know if
that means everyone has one in his back yard or not.
...

After all, you don't get something for nothing.
P.S. They're 40 feet high instead of 80.

You don't say what the purpose is...micro-generation, perhaps?

Electricity. The owner they interviewed, who might be tempted to
think he's getting more out of this than he is, says he gets 25 or 30
percent of his electric needs from his windmill (and we also don't
know how much he uses) and that he is in a moderate-wind area. Of
course he sells back to the grid whatever extra he makes when he's out
of town, not home, etc.

Frankly even if they were 80, I don't think they would be as ugly as
on farms where I want to see a beautiful vista. ...

You don't want to see a working farm,

I'm more talking about from a distance, and not especially talking
about where the work is done, but the fields of wheat and corn, etc.

you're asking somebody else to
make a scenic idyll for your benefit.

No, I'm not asking anything. What I said was that something ELSE
would not be as ugly, as windmills ruing a beautiful vista.

Aren't you saying that a working farm is ugly? Does that mean that
you are asking them to stop working it?

What I was referring to, and you will find this to be true, that some
people who can see farms from where they live (and I can't), object to
windmills because they are ugly ITO, in their opinion. It remains to
be seen if they can influnence legislatures to regulate windmills
based on their affect on the view. Rememeber, we already have iirc
easements for light (and one other thing that escapes me). It's not
entirely out of the question that some statute already supports, or a
new statute could be passed to give foks, a right to a view without
windmills.


There are probably more
photographs and paintings of a windmill on the horizon w/ the setting
sun than any other iconic representation of the west/midwest.

Those designs are considered charming, at least by those who make
pictures of them and who hang them on the wall. Do you really think
the industrial Star-trek windmills sold now are pretty in the way that
old ones are thought to be?

Just about everyone here says that new refrigerators and furnaces are
much more efficient than old ones, even only 25 years or less older,
so it seems likely to me that new windmills are more efficient and
better in other ways than old ones also. The TV news story did say
that only 38 have been installed so far.


Do you think the news is bribed to put these stories on the air?
There is no doubt in my mind that Jeopardy is paid for some of the
questions they have, often whole categories, but Jeopardy doesn't
pretend to be investigative. There was a story on a tabloid show
(are they more bribable?) that did nothing but tout how good the
management of Costco was, especially the founder and CEO. Though it
was interesting, I can't help wondering if it wasn't paid for and
meant to be one sided, and shouldn't be on any show that pretends to
be neutral. (Worth noting that 100, 200 years ago, newspapers didn't
pretend to be neutral (even I think it means in the news section).
Not sure when the news shift occurred.