Alternative energy

The earth is warming, the earth is cooling, whatever it is doing is caused by man, or not…who knows the truth or even what we can do about it?

No matter, alternative energy is here to stay and as we seek to harness the wind, the sun and whatever else is in fashion (and where there is money to be made), we need to keep in mind the aesthetic cost of all this.   Perhaps that means little to many, after all the sky is falling so to speak, but some of us think it may be better to defile smaller portions of environment rather than ruin our views, our skylines and the little beauty we have remaining.   It seems wherever I go I see monster wind generators popping up, the ancient hills of Sicily, all over Southern California, Nantucket Sound (not yet, but in the works) and even on a rapidly disappearing pristine Hawaiian island.  This picture at the right is one of several wind farms to appear on the hills of Maui, gee it fits right in with the palm trees.  On the other hand, our island paradise also needs a K-Mart, Costco and Home Depot, but they no longer grow pineapples commercially, probably to make room for a Wal-Mart, how do you define paradise again?

Of course, after we generate all this clean energy, we have to use it so now we turn to plugging in our cars, be careful not to trip over the cable when you enter your garage. Fill er up, I’ll be back in a few hours.

Everyone wants to be green, it is politically correct and no doubt part of the CHANGE we (somebody) voted for.  I wonder how many windmills it will take to generate all of our energy needs  watch it, better duck.  I think the ideal place for a wind generator is on Capital Hill, surely there is plenty of wind generated there and even if there isn’t, we would likely be better off if the whole place ran out of power from time to time.

As ugly as wind farms are, they don’t don’t hold a candle to hundreds of acres of solar panels, but at least the panels don’t make noise.  

[picapp src=”4/c/d/e/QCells_Opens_New_6847.jpg?adImageId=7465028&imageId=903545″ width=”200″ height=”124″ /]The best of both worlds

I’m just glad I am not a bird these days, first I get blinded by a field of reflecting panels and then I fly into a wind farm, I may have a better chance with a 737 (assuming the 737 doesn’t fly into a wind farm as the pilot is blinded by the reflecting panels).