I have an opportunity to become a part of the GE wind turbine division..it will be a cut in pay...but I think I'm going to do it.

I have grown disgusted with the hydrocarbon combustion trade...it has been a good paying trade but I have been having a crisis of conscience over the last few years knowing that as I tweak the controls and clear the smoke all I am doing is delivering co2 to the atmosphere more efficiently...while I don't necessarily adhere to the man made global warming theories I am sensitive to the fact that it's not only co2 going up the stack but a host of other pollutants including heavy metals and sulfurous and nitrous oxides that cause every manner of environmental dysfunction imaginable.

Oddly, the specific division that I will be working is powered by a huge power plant that runs on two monstrous water tube boilers fired by bunker C residual oil otherwise known as number six, the only thing dirtier is coal. I guess it still takes hydrocarbon to power the search for new technology so I will be working my dirty trade for a better purpose and may eventually be a part of destroying the trade altogether...I daresay though that we will be burning hydrocarbon fuels for at least another thirty years.

It seems odd to think that we have come this far with the same primitive energy source that the first nomadic tribes discovered when lightening lit up the ancient forests and yet here we are millenniums later rubbing two sticks together to make the world go round.... it's time for a change.

GE is the leading company doing business with Iran on a regular basis. The CEO Immelt should be in prison. I stopped buying any GE products some time back.

But that's just me.

Jack

Halliburton was the leading company doing business with Iran through a loophole that allowed off-shore subsidiaries to avoid legal sanctions. However, Halliburton had no employees at its Cayman Islands office except a cleaning lady and all the companies mail was routed to their office in Houston and that made me so angry I decided to boycott Texas.

I think it would be fascinating to read about this industry from an insider.

...see if you can figure out how to make the damned things stop killing birds and bats. It's really the only drawback that I know of to wind power.

Well, I'm certainly not going to join your boycott of Texas...so don't bother asking.

Jack

<link>

So you know.

That's something I didn't know...actually I don't know very much about them yet.

I'm taking a wind class next semester, though I imagine it will have more to do with installation than manufacturing. I don't expect I'll work with wind, since I'm not so keen on living in West Texas. But I plan to get a job in solar some time next year.

move in a good wind...unfortunately I will not be in that department..but from what I have already garnered from orientation they do welcome suggestions :)

jo

keep me posted on that too will ya?

jo

I think it is very enlightened that you would add bats to the concern for your feathered friends. Looking around I came upon the NRC (Nat'l Research Council, not the nuke guys) report (PDF) on wind from last year. While I have not had the time to go through it all, I'm grateful for the impetus. I'm a bit embarrassed I had to look up Rails and Coots - could be a Country Western band, no?

The article that led me to the report indicated that fewer birds are killed by wind turbines then by household cats, and that most of the deaths occur with the most common type of birds. Either that or those birds just don't taste good and the scavengers don't haul them away from the site as fast as the the less populous species.

Interesting that they are out there counting dead birds and bats and the report points out that one of the problems is that they may undercount the bats because they may have been removed by other animals or that they might miss them. I think we often forget how small those flying mammals are. I know they seem to be a couple feet across when they come by after sunset. But then the annual first buzz of the season by a hummingbird scares the crap out of me for a second until I remember that where I live there are no bugs that big.

I do find it encouraging that they believe that the bats are actually attracted to the turbines because that means that there is something we can do to make the machines less enticing. It is also encouraging that we are looking at this to minimize our impact as we build out.

I would be willing to bet that on a /MW measurement, wind still has a fairly low overall impact. But at this point the bet would be rather small.

Thanks again for prodding my curiosity - that is one of the things I like about reading here.

glass houses shouldn't throw stones. Of course, some of the argument is for the birds.

It makes sense that more common birds would be taken out by wind turbines, since, you know, there are more of them. ;)

Seemed obvious to me - guess that didn't come across?