The wind power whiners and bad reporting about them

The funny thing about wind turbines popping up in rural areas is the fact that farmers - those who work the land and feed America - have never raised objections to having wind turbines built around their property and especially never objected to building wind turbines on their own property. It seems to always be the folks who move from nearby cities to enjoy the rural lifestyle who bitch about everything that is rural.

They find a way to piss and moan about the smell of livestock manure, the dust from gravel roads, lound machinery harvesting crops and, of course, the wind turbines being built around them.

"Rudy and I are retired, and we like to sit out on our deck," (via)

That is and isn't the case with this retired couple living near Elkton (east of Austin, MN) who live across the road from a farm where wind turbines were erected. The only problem with their argument about the turbines ruining their retired lifestyle is that when people object to the plans, the companies building the wind farms often times back down. Of course that part of the story, which would add some clarity to the situation, is conveniently missing. That works well for the Star-Tribune because it generates a boatload of loony comments and tens of thousands of pageviews on their website. But it also proves that they don't care about uncovering truths, they'd rather tell a "shocking" story about a supposed injustice. Never mind the fact that this retired couple, the daughter (who I don't even see fitting in to this story) who claims that her 85 year-old father is "shellshocked" due to the noise generated from the turbine - the nearest which is 900 feet away - that's nearly 1/5 mile.

This sounds like a retired person who doesn't want to see the rural landscape changed. While I agree that I'd hate to see the family farm I grew up on converted to a strip mall or landfill, a wind turbine or four is vastly different. I grew up there and while sometimes the dust from the gravel road choked me as I played in the front yard, I got used to it. If the neighbor to the south was cleaning his hog barns, my mom would close the windows. And with the windows closed, you could only faintly hear the 400+ combined horsepower of electric motors running 100 feet away 18 hours/day for up to three weeks at a time as we harvested and dried the corn crop in the fall. Why? Because we were used to it and we adapted. We never threatened legal action or caused such a stir that a newspaper desperate for a story that few people in the Twin Cities 100 miles away could understand contacted and interviewed a few sources and wrote a story missing a few important pieces to drum up web traffic. Nope, that never happened because my family doesn't bitch and moan about progress. The Jechs of rural Elkton need to realize that they still live in the country and remember that if, once upon a time, they farmed there were probably non-farmers who bitched about what they did. The only difference is that a newspaper from 100 miles away gave the Jechs a voice. A voice that a week from now nobody will give a damn about.

MinnPics has a stance on wind turbines, too. They make for awesome photos and Minnesota has plenty of places to photograph them. Check MinnPics for plenty of other photogenic Minnesota sites.

Wind turbines too controversial?

While some southern Minnesota counties have literally hundreds of wind turbines dotting the corn and soybean-filled landscape, another south-central county has basically banned them. Nicollet County, just outside of Mankato, has just made it nearly impossible (h/t) to build the clean energy-generating windmills.

By requiring a one-half mile setback from any dwelling/residence, Nicollet County has effectively stifled any hopes of wind energy spurring a monetary infusion into the county and it's also crushed the hopes of Gustavus Adolphus whose college campus in the city of St. Peter wanted to erect a wind turbine both as a symbolic measure of their commitment to the environment and as a working model that a large business can make strides to be self-sustained.
Oh, sure, cities use the argument that wind turbines can be an eyesore and are unpleasant to see in a city's skyline. Well, in case most cities haven't noticed - especially in the suburbs - their skylines are defined by water towers and cell phone antennas. Those aren't exactly landmarks when every damn city looks like its neighbor. Maybe these head-up-their-ass elected officials need to look to the future instead of their oh-so-pristine skylines and think about the next generation because if every kilowatt continues to come from coal, the skies could be so dirty that you wouldn't be able to see your water towers and cell phone antennas.

MinnPics is also on board with the majestic coolness of wind turbines dotting Minnesota's farmscapes because they look awesome in photos.

St. Cloud afraid of wind turbines

After battling through rules and regulations for four long years, a St. Cloud, Minnesota property owner finally has approval to build his own wind turbine. It benefits not only his own electric bill but the rest of the electric grid as his turbine would produce just shy of 39.5kw of energy.

However, the opposition he faced would be enough to make an interested person wonder whether or not all the hassle is worth it. The biggest hurdle was people complaining about the 120 foot tall turbine obstructing their view. Their view of what? The story did little to elaborate on that aspect but in rural areas of Minnesota the "view" consists mainly of corn fields and trees. And there are ways of not being obstructed by a white metal pole a couple feet in diameter. For instance, moving to one side of the turbine's pole would return you to a supposedly unobstructed view of whatever it is you are attempting to peer at.

These petty obstructionists are the very reason this country will have one hell of a hard time moving forward. We are stuck in neutral because people are afraid of change. It's why the Digital Television (DTV) transition date was postponed. It's why we burn billions of gallons of oil per year. It's why you need a permit to add a damn light switch. Wake up, dolts, we have millions of gawdy cell phone towers that offer up endless convenience so why choose to bitch about a wind turbine?

MinnPics actually finds photos of wind turbines appealing, check it out today.

The power of positivity

With all the news about firings, layroof and shutdowns in the business world, it's hard to crack a smile on some days. Sure, the stock market has been on an upwards trend for a week straight but even a prolonged upward climb will take weeks, even months, to translate to actual improvement.

It's easy to fall into a funk. We know that the bad news never seems to end because it's alla round us. But what if we, as a society, began to focus on the positives and simply think positively. We ourselves are all at least partially to blame for this complete economic clusterfuck. Millions of Americans looked to make a quick buck in real estate because it had been climbing at unheard of paces for many years. What those same people failed to realize is that it was just one huge bubble. We spent wildly for the last decade or more, forgetting lessons learned in the 80s and 90s. Even those who invested did so expecting double digit returns every year. When the market corrected, investors reacted wildly. Many pulled money from companies they had invested in and expected those huge returns from leaving those companies extremely strapped for capital.

I don't pretend to know anything about the economy but an interesting topic was on the news last week. It boiled down to the power of positive thinking. Yeah, nothing gets better without action but thinking positively surely can't hurt anything, can it?



So maybe it's time to look again at your bullet-riddled 401(k) and take a percentage of what's left, move that cash from those ultra safe investments such as bonds and put it back into actual companies that show some positive potential. If enough people start doing this and have some faith (along with the belief that the billions of so-called stimulus/recovery money will be properly used) there could very well be jobs being created by year's end. If we focus on the good while not ignoring the bad, a lasting economic recovery may be here sooner than we expected.

It's all about cautious optimism.

I'm optimistic, too, that with spring just around the corner, MinnPics will experience a true rebirth full of vibrant, colorful photographs from across the great state of Minnesota.

Hey, let's just bury the carbon

Burning coal is dirty business. It's so dirty that our government has decided to invest nearly $100 million in a project to bury carbon.

But carbon is a gas, right?

Yep. But the plan is to pump the sequestered gas far under the surface of the Earth under multiple layers of stone and such. All for the initial price of $84 million for one well about a mile deep.

If it sounds like a rip-off, it's because it is. The cost for one "well" is insane.

It's also rather short-sighted. It's like burying your garbage in your backyard because if it's out of sight, it's out of mind, right?

Well, the problem with carbon, as I understand it, is that it rises. It sounds perfectly fine to bury a few million cubic feet of carbon below where we live but who can guarantee that it will stay in one place? Carbon isn't exactly a roll of quarters. If these short-sighted jackasses weren't aware, gasses have a tendency to move.

Hell, read the article and ask yourself if the plan to bury our waste sounds good. To me it sounds too much like making the planet more of a landfill than it already is.

MinnPics focuses on the good around us. Great photos captured by great photographers in a great state. All Minnesota, all the time! Check it out today!

How to rate gas mileage when no gas is used

Can a car truly break the 150 miles per gallon (MPG) mark? Well, it can if it's this company which heavily modified a Saturn VUE Hybrid. The company, AFS Trinity, also claims that they are being "muzzled" by the dark shadowy figures behind the L.A. Auto Show who are in the pockets of Big Auto.

The problem lies in their 150 mpg claim. No, the vehicle, a plug-in electric hybrid, barely uses gas but instead derives its power from electricity. Of course if your vehicle doesn't use gas as its main source of power, your MPG rating will be off the charts. The sticky part of this math is that the average consumer is still beholden to the almight MPG rating because, well, we really aren't used to having a Plan-B.

Instead, tout how far it can go on a trip per charge. Break that down to a cost per mile driven based on the average price of electricity. Convert that to the average cost for driving 15,000 miles per years and compare that with a few different gas prices such as $2.00, $3.00 and $4.00/gallon and let people draw their own conclusion.

A plea to American voters

At this point in the electoral game, I am sure that most people get nauseous at the mere mention of politics but hear me out and read through to the end.

The U.S.A. has changed drastically during even my short lifetime. That much I am sure of. When I first began elementary school in the mid-1980s, the internet was still only a military technology that for the average civilian would have been meaningless. The first computer I used in 1st grade was an Apple IIe. It was perfect for Oregon Trail and Number Munchers and some very rudimentary word processing (typing).

Based on that one item, the world has changed drastically. Couple the advances in computer technology with other tech advancements and that one sector alone has changed our world in ways my parents could have never imagined when they were my age.

Technology has changed the way we live in so many ways but it hasn't changed everything.

Cartoons of the 1960s envisioned a world of the not-too-distant future where robots would clean our houses and prepare our food and we would travel in vehicles that never came in contact with the ground we have walked on since the dawn of time. Obviously, those imaginitive creations have yet to come to fruition.

Computer technology has obviously outpaced other forms of technology and it seems to be an ever-increasing reality that technology is the way to move not just our country but all of society ahead in ways we can only dream of. Those dreamers are the future.

The future can surely be a time of change which we could not even imagine. Going back to the computer/technology aspect, computing speeds alone have increased thousands of times over but for much of our daily lives we rely solely on technology born at the turn of the 20th century to keep those computers running.

Isn't it ironic that the paperless technology that many of us work on every day of our lives is tied directly to such an archaic source of power?

That source of power, of course, is derived from the burning of coal. If you've ever seen a large pile of coal at a power plant, you know that it's black and quite a lot like charcoal in its cleanliness factor. Now imagine burning it. Think about just how clean your charcoal grill isn't after you've cooked up some hamburgers. Now multiply that by a few million times and that's what's powering our high-speed, ultra-powerful computers.

Is there a better alternative? Of course there is. Making those alternatives a viable reality seems to boil down to this November's presidential election. Like never before, we are at a crossroads. We've seen what can happen when an economy (and a country) is tethered to old ways.

Resisting change is what gets people left in the proverbial dust.

This year we have the power to decide whether or not to pursue that change head on.

This changing of our entire way of doing things isn't going to come easily. It isn't going to happen overnight. It is going to mean a lot of work. It is also going to mean plenty of opportunities. It will offer up the chance to be great once again. It will present us with the chance to once again be role models for the world. It will require cooperation and unity. It will require a great leader.

Most of all, it will require the voters of America to make a choice. That choice is yours.



That choice is clear. That choice is Barack Obama.

What to do with all that poo

You sit (or stand) and relieve yourself, pull the lever and, bam, it's gone in a swirl of water down some pipes and no longer of any concern to you.

Not quite. The world, it seems, has a looming shit storm. The problem with our modern toilets is that it takes water to flush them, water to treat the waste and a fair amount of energy to move the process along. So, with energy being a high demand and an increasing world population producing exponentially more shit and consuming vast amounts of water to treat it, what do we do?

Is there some sort of 'green' solution to rid us of our brown mess? Will we eventually follow the lead of China (yes, China is ahead of us in this area too) and convert out poop to electricity? Would you want to live next to a crap to energy conversion plant if one existed in your area? Imagine the shit storm if something like this was proposed. How about a waterless system for flushing our toilets like those existing on our world's airlines? Solutions, people, what are they?

Chanhassen hates windmills

In an era when the world as we know it is changing before our eyes and people are actually making good with breaking the shackles of the old ways, some uptight suburbs are making it downright impossible for people to explore alternate forms of energy.

While the southwestern Minneapolis suburb of Chanhassen is about as far from progressive as you could think, KSTP-TV dug deeper on their 10 PM Sunday news and found a story about a resident denied his petition to city hall to erect a small, home-sized electricity-generating windmill on his property.

While I understand that laws are laws and apparently one does exist stating that windmills have no place in the land of cookie-cutter McMansions, this is definitely a time in the grand scheme that things should be allowed to change and the stodgy people that made this suburb a haven for bland sameness should finally allow it to take on a flavor of its own. People have no problem with cell phone towers dotting the horizons, why not something that can free us from coal and oil -- if only one block at a time?

If you'd rather look at pretty photos than read gray blocks of text, check out MinnPics - chock full of fantastic photos from around Minnesota.

Can we conserve enough to make a difference?

Being led by a lame-duck president whose best idea is to drill the miniscule 1,000,000 barrels of oil under the Alaskan National Wildlife Refuge (by the way, 1,000,000 barrels of oil was used in the Twin Cities in the time it took me to write this first sentence), a guy has to wonder what could be done to conserve energy is the mast energy hungry country in the entire world.

Would you willingly commit to a four-day workweek if the tradeoff meant working 10-hour days? If so, it would weed out an entire day of commuting and alot of offices could shut down for an extra day each week saving on electricity to run all of those computers and lights and air conditioners. Sure, it's a nice thought but if anything, we are heading towards a 7 day work week so you can dream about four but it's only a dream. As for that extra day tacked on to the weekend, it would only lead to Americans using more gas to tool around onthe weekends. Scratch this one.

Would you give up your SUVs? Think about it, at one time in our past, we survived with only sedans and station wagons, why have SUVs (which rarely get used for either the 'S' or the 'U') become both so dominant and hated yet deemed as a necessity? Do we need to pack for a two week trip for a day at the beach? DO you ever actually use all that shit you pack in the cargo area of the Trailblazer? Wouldn't the same stuff all fit in the trunk of a Mazda6? Alright, SUVs can actually carry plenty of stuff but modern station wagons have fold flat seats which equal the same amount of cargo space. Justify your SUV and I'll admit defeat on this one.

How about a government-funded incentive to encourage the installation of solar panels on the roofs of our McMansions? Why not? Hell, our government borrowed a few billion dollars from China to stimulate our economy tot he tune of $600 per taxpayer; what's another $1,000 per household if this money actually solved something? Sure, it's not a 100% fix but at this point, realistically, I don't think there is and there won't be until our nation's elected officials realize that they are paid and elected to represent the citizens and not the businesses/persons who give them gifts.

We had our first wake-up call about an impending energy crunch 30 years ago and what has happened in those 30 years? More sprawl as too many want to live on five acres in a 4,000 sq. ft. home while still working in a thriving metropolitan downtown whcih pays for that extravagant home 40-50 miles away. I've accepted the fact that it won't change because, as a country, our drive to innovate and solve problems died 40-plus years ago.

Thus ends my one slightly political statement for the month. Am I way off base or am I eerily dead on?

Energy, ethanol and the depressing truth (opinion?)

I don't actually enjoy being a total killjoy but sometimes the truth is a bit depressing. That is true with something that happened late last week. And if you haven't figured out my vague references, I am talking about the ever escalating gas prices.

It's not just gas, though. The escalating fuel prices have a bit of a ripple effect. Fuel prices effect the price of everything we consume. All that shit from China (a.k.a. everything sold in your local Wal-Mart or Target) doesn't just magically appear here with the wave of a magic wand. The food sold in those stores and others has a similar but shorter journey. Most everything takes a portion of its journey down our nation's highways via a semi-truck. Those men (and some women) are feeling the crunch. Their paychecks directly reflect the skyrocketing fuel prices. A friend of mine described to me last weekend that the company he drives semi for as an over-the-road trucker slowed their speeds 10 miles per hour to save fuel. They realize that this will only raise prices as it will take longer to deliver products but they have their bottom line to watch out for as well.

Then there are the farmers. Believe it or not, the farm economy feels this too because despite the record high prices their grains are fetching on the markets, they are facing even higher input costs in the form of fuel, seed, chemicals and fertilizer. While my parents are selling their crops from 2007 for record high prices and have contracted a large portion of the speculative 2008 crop for those same prices, they are feeling the pinch with fertilizer costs (particularly the cost of nitrogen whcih makes corn grow) that have practically tripled since 2000 if they can even acquire the very nitrogen (anhydrous amonia) they paid for due to supposedly short supplies. Couple that with diesel fuel prices that have quadrupled since 2000 and seed prices which have nearly tripled int hat same time and they are no further ahead now than in 2000.

Of course plenty of people will want to say something about ethanol when the subject of farmers comes up. The truth is that while ethanol does divert corn from the food supply, the overall supply of corn in our country has increased due to increased yields and will continue to increase but eventually will be severely outpaced by the demands (for food and ethanol) if current trends continue.

That means that ethanol as we currently know it is far from the solution. The current high corn prices are seen as one obstacle.

The supply of corn in relation to our gasoline consumption is another hitch.

Amazingly, the best ethanol solution may be prairie grass (or switchgrass as Geroge Bush stated a few years back). Of course our future doesn't have to be bleak as oil prices begin to put a very noticeable crunch on the middle class. If money from, I don't know -- war spending, was diverted to financing research and development of viable fuel sources in the private or public sector and not by petroleum companies who only profit more with higher oil prices, our country could again become a superpower, this time by supplying a technological solution to fuel prices.

Of course, with the alternatives come more ideas to simply reduce our own energy consumption. Plasma and LCD televisions use far less energy than traditional CRT (tube) televisions and computer monitors. Compact fluorescent lightbulbs (when recycled properly) pay for themselves and then some in reduced energy consumption. Recycling your glass and plastic makes sense. But I am sure there are plenty of other ideas. What are some ways you are conserving energy? Or do you not believe we need to do anything?