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(3) Lovelock mocks the idea modern economies can be powered by wind turbines.

As he puts it, “so-called ‘sustainable development’ … is meaningless drivel … We rushed into renewable energy without any thought. The schemes are largely hopelessly inefficient and unpleasant. I personally can’t stand windmills at any price.”



Funny, I mock people who think wind turbines are a waste of energy. What's wasteful is NOT taking advantage of a free powersource, like sun, waves, or wind action, that is a continuous powersource existing on our planet whether we take advantage of it or not. Can it become the base load, perhaps not, but if it is there for the taking, exactly why shouldn't we. Seems the East Coast just shut down this past week because of an overload on the grid. Seems to me that a few hundred extra MW of power might have been appreciated to power all of those A/C units. Whether you build a coal fired power plant or a wind turbine, or a solar panel, you have to consume industrial resources to get that piece of equipment. After you put in the gas or coal-fired plants, you still have to mine those resources, and haul them in via pipeline, or BNSF coal cars. Yes, the scale of generation is much higher, and of course the system is much more stable so long as the fuel is continuous. Put a turbine out in a field, or a few panels, and that's it rather than routine maintenance (you have to do routine maintenance to coal and gas powered plants, and nukes too) for the next 20 or so years. So, maybe you offset the load on a coal plant, or supplement it during heavy demand. I can sure tell you I'd rather see a wind turbine across the street from my house than the tan 350 bbl oil and gas tanks to the east and west of my house with the big HazMat signs on them. I have no problem with building nuke plants either, although I'd be a little more at ease if they were under the jurisdiction and inspected by the Office of Naval Reactors and Dept. of the Navy, since they have a far better record of safety than the civilian utility companies and are driven by safety, not by bottom line profits.