Paul Korn writes-
We are so proud of our city as it moves solidly into the 21st century. Some may complain that it ruins the view. Every morning, I see this glorious structure (the first of three) as I walk on Good Harbor Beach. It is a visible commitment to doing our part to create cleaner energy, not to mention making a statement that we care and will act on our values. (And we will be saving money!)
Paul R. Korn
Loretta Ligor forwards anti Windmill Articles-
Ten years too late, it’s good riddance to wind farms – one of the most dangerous delusions of our age
Energy Minister John Hayes has announced no more wind farms are allowed to be built in the UK
The significance of yesterday’s shock announce-ment by our Energy Minister John Hayes that the Government plans to put a firm limit on the building of any more onshore windfarms is hard to exaggerate.
Good Morning Gloucester 
This is worth reading from GMG post: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-2225544/Good-riddance-wind-farms–dangerous-delusions-age.html#socialLinks Wind farms are no longer allowed in Great Britain.
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Yes, Yes Fred is all over this !
What he had to say on his FB Page is this:
“I kind of know Good Morning Gloucester, and can see trends, like new categories of posts, like Community news or photos, and today saw a new one: Windmill Chatter. As the turbines come online, there may be many comments under this new GMG category.”
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My daughter and son(inlaw) he farms 3800 acres in the top of the thumb of Michigan. For years they have had the hugest windmills made through out their acres and acres of sugar beats and corn and wheat etc.. They grace the landscape of almost tree less farm land,which is how the thumb is. A huge fire in the beginning of the 20th century burned the woods in that area till here and there trees were seeded and now grown to huge sizes once again. Each farm has 2 or 3 box elders or maples or oaks,all offering that small section of shade. Now as to the windmills,these many many many many in number supply electricity for the town of Cadillace which is hours away. Amazing isn’t it? In the other part of the state,smack dab in the middle of the mitt,where another daughtert and son(inlaw) and family live,the same hugest of the huge windmills are gracing all the open areas in the communities of St. Louis,Michigan etc..I am not sure where this power is going. But it has its beauty as the fog of seasons,graces the low lying areas and the blades are shown through the sky lines. If interested,I will send some pictures to show how beautiful they are. Sincerely Gma
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Shades of British poet William Blake’s dire warning, re: “The dark satanic mills…” “Progress” comes to GLO…And in the wake of the destruction of Hurricane Sandy, NYC, New Jersey, & other Atlantic Coastal communities are actively reassessing their “preparedness” for future “weather events”, what’s GLO doing? Why building a “luxury hotel” on its Marine Industrial, Designated Port Area, Working Waterfront…Has anyone seen ANY photos in the “GDTimes” of Sandy’s waves hitting upside Birdseye? How come? Maybe that won’t happen to the hotel on The Fort if the Times, the Mayor and the Planning Board stay in their “Bubble of Denial”. Yah!
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It’s great that Paul Korn and likeminded people want to move toward clean energy, but I would ask Paul Korn, or any supporter of industrial wind, if he understands how the technology actually works. We can’t afford feel-good symbols. We need real, working solutions to our energy problems, not taxpayer boondoggles used to score political points with well-meaning people who simply refuse to understand the realities of wind energy. As to the article from the paper in the UK — wind plants haven’t been banned there (yet) but there is a major battle brewing as the British countryside is being overrun with thousands of turbines with little or no regard for proximity to homes or the destruction of peoples’ health and livelihood in tourist areas. The same thing is happening here in the rural parts of the U.S., where small agricultural regions are fighting off foreign investors willing to install industrial turbines anywhere and everywhere just to make a buck from the tax credits and subsidies for installing these machines. Frankly, if you are allowing your panic over climate change to justify destroying the environment by installing industrial turbines before doing due diligence on this issue, then you need to rethink your perception of yourself as environmentally-friendly. And by the way, even with all the thousands and thousands of wind “farms” that are already in existence, no conventional power plant has ever been taken offline. Big Wind is not the answer, no matter how great you may feel every time you look at a turbine.
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I love the fact that we are moving in a direction of clean energy. Maybe because I am a positive person and hope for the best first. This country needs to do something and this is a great start. When I lived in Burlington, many years ago, we had four solar panels on our roof and they worked. Many people thought they would not work and would ruin the shape of the house. These panels laid flat and we faced solar south. Oil spills or wind turbines.
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what an awesome picture…Go varian
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Natural gas is the answer, It will take decades for solar, or wind technology to get even close to what natural gas can do right now. The resources and technology for gas is here, politics is the the problem.
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Every single breeze seems to whisper Louise.
Can’t wait to hear what the wind turbine sounds like.
It looks big enough to take down a helicopter.
I vote to nickname it ‘Howard’s Sail’.
After Howard Blackburn’s boat Great Republic, which he sailed across the Atlantic.
It’s on Great Republic Road in the Blackburn Industrial Park.
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Keep in mind that all major energy sources have have been heavily subsidized by the little guy for the big guy, throughout american history. I urge all to keep a critical eye on energy policy in this country but don’t think that “green energy” is some new boogie man.
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To Bill – I might agree with you there, but I’d say only when we have safe ways of extracting it. I just moved out of central PA, the hub of the natural gas exploration in the North East. There are too many risks involved with it right now. It is getting safer, this is true. But there are many companies who literally do not give a *@^$ about safety and have been caught dumping toxic frack water into our streams and creeks, on the ground, on the road, pretty much anywhere. Many of them just don’t bother to report or clean up spills either. So yes, natural gas is a great source of energy, but it’s getting it out of the ground responsibly that’s the issue.
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Wind turbines for energy production, as the article says, are a delusion. No one would build one if it weren’t for the economic subsidies paid for by us, the taxpayers. Not even close. They are inefficient, ugly, kill birds, and do physical and psychic damage to nearby residents. And “green jobs”? The Gloucester turbines were manufactured in Germany. Solar is similar. Most of the solar panels come from China. Look at all of the U.S. solar panel and other green energy companies that have gone bankrupt. The Brits have suddently realized that the hundreds of billions in green energy subsidies are a waste. I hope the U.S. wakes up before we waste any more money on these boondoggles.
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Let me respectfully ask then – what would you suggest for when we reach the end point of fossil fuel supplies? Sure it won’t happen for a century or two, but it’s a finite resource. We’ve got to come up with something to make the lights turn on.
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Think HYRDRO! We live on an ISLAND surrounded by MOVING WATER. The ANNISQUAM RIVER moves both ways, always…Hydro power is supplying electricity all along the coast up to the Bay of Fundy. Isn’t it worth a “look see”?
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Oh I think so! Have you seen those wave turbine things? They seem like a neat idea.
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I agree with you Brer Fox about them being just hideous ugly.. and I didn’t think of the innocent wildlife AUGH… I do not like them AT ALL boooo 😦
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I just got back from England/Scotland. In England, I was in the Cumbria area in the north where there are some wind farms – but only along the tops of the mountains above the treeline where only sheep hang out. The wind companies are trying to bring them into the valleys and that’s where the protest comes in – way up on the mountaintops, the noise doesnt bother anyone.
In Scotland, again, they are all along the top of the mountains and look like small pinwheels from below. From what I understand, Scotland gleans quite a bit of energy from their wind turbines, in fact, so much that the power companies ask various quadrants to turn them off from time to time because they are overloaded. Our terrain is not as conducive to this type of wind farm and the turbines are more intrusive because of their size and proximity. But if you travel down to the industrial tank areas of Chelsea, etc., who cares if some wind turbines are there? They are in areas where any noise goes unnoticed. Ask people in Hull if they are happy with their’s – they had one and then went for another as it subsidized so much energy in their town. If placed in the right areas, they can be a great asset. As for solar, Boston has put solar collectors on all evacuation route intersections throughout the City, the solar will kick in if there is a major outage and keep the street lights and intersections working – otherwise, they are selling the energy back to the grid – you hardly notice that the panels are even there!
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I think they are an “eye sore” for our little quaint gorgeous picturesque Gloucester in my opinion.. they belong in the desert that’s it.. but oh well.. I just do NOT care for the ugly almost space ship looking things at all LOL… and I agree with “Cape Anner” (haha have to laugh )… about it looks big enough to”take down a helicopter” gee man. I was just kind of shocked when I first saw it and first thoughts were “Oh my gosh what the” and “the thing” overpowers our sweet lil Cape Ann Malls.. “Market Basket”, “PetCO”, “Ace” up that way oh well I’m not happy with it but will have to live with it
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p.s. sooo very glad they are not suddenly an ugly hideous thing within my view of my lovely Annisquam River view! Thank goodness!! so I was lucky in that way amen
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Like Joey and many others, I’m on the fence about the wind turbines (soon to be three of them). The negative news articles seem to get more press, and the positive ones don’t really tell us how these huge monstrosities benefit us. When these things are cranked up, it will be interesting. Eyesore concerns are nothing compared to what could happen with noise for the closest homes. I drive on the Nugent stretch (Route 127) every day to go to work, and although I’ve see the Windmill many times, it still makes my stomach queasy, despite my passing that location every day.
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For me its going to come down to that dollar savings for the City. I f we get that $450K per year I’ll be psyched. If we get a fraction of that I’m going to be supremely pissed and feel incredibly duped.
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Even though the potential $450K is from a tax credit that National Grid gets (and gives to Mayor Kirk) just for having the turbine online? That number isn’t actually derived from money saved by generating wind energy — the $450K is just a robbing-Peter-to-pay-Paul way of ripping off taxpayers so politicians can score points.
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Is that true? It isn’t directly money from energy savings that is generated by providing power and selling it back to the grid?
Wouldn’t it have been a fixed number per year if it was a tax credit?
Mayor Kirk wrote that it is a conservative $450K which leads me to believe it is based on power generated not a fixed predetermined number, but hey maybe I’m just misunderstanding it (I’ve been wrong plenty of times before)
The Mayor’s Desk: Giant steps for a progressive city
The Mayor’s Desk Carolyn KirkGloucester Daily Times
Check out the entire story by clicking the link above. the part that made me do a double take is this quote from the Mayor-
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Joey, As far as I understand, Gloucester will receive a credit for each kilowatt hour generated by the turbine from National Grid which will offset the city’s electric bill, but National Grid is offering these credits with government, i.e. taxpayers’ money, as the tax credits and subsidies are what makes the prospect of plugging inefficient, variable wind energy into the grid viable. Here’s an excerpt from the article in the Times:
“Klieman said that public-private partnerships like the Gloucester-Equity Turbines agreement are what make it possible to build wind projects like this. Without incentives for doing so, he said, the Equity project probably wouldn’t have gotten off the ground.
That’s due in part to the fact that municipalities receive better net metering rates than private projects.
“I don’t know if the numbers even work if you don’t have a municipal partner,” Klieman said, “you need that extra incentive to make the numbers work.”
The whole article is here:
http://www.gloucestertimes.com/local/x1684127279/Gloucesters-power-play
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I didn’t even think of the noise issue for the unlucky people near the space ship (lol) “things”… those poor people on that one… maybe if bad enough they will have the things petitioned out out out then…
Hope that 3rd one will not be anywhere in my view or hearing “it” either.
Hope you’re right Joey if anything the city benefits but big enough to make a big dent in the budget then hope so…. if we’re stuck with them now.
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Hi all,
I am a Mainer who often travels to Gloucester/Cape Ann to bike ride and enjoy the natural beauty of your town. I was ABSOLUTELY SHOCKED to see what was being erected so close to your neighborhoods. Those windmills are a travesty. You should immediately fire those responsible and tear those things down,
There is a place for windmills in our society if done PROPERLY with ALL factors considered ( including such things as physical esthetics, noise, etc.). In northern Maine, entire mountaintops have been “intruded” by them ( the neighbors complain endlessly ).
Ask yourselves ( then ask your elected officials ) this question. Does the cost ( and I don’t mean financial cost ) of those ugly intrusive windmills really justify the benefit ?
Act before it’s too late. IT IS YOUR TOWN !!!!
Sincerely,
Dok
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