> Man, sometimes I feel like the Kennedys are America's most hypocritical family.
I don't know what this means. Are you referring to actions taken by other Kennedy family members? If so, why should the actions of one's relatives fall exactly in line with one's own legacy, lest their family be deemed hypocritical? That seems like an awfully high bar that presupposes the family is a single moral and ethical unit.
I have a place not too far from Cle Elum, and while I don’t recall the city that well, the windmills are built on fairly bland farm land are they not? i.e. it’s not like they built on the mountain range itself.
I visited the Wild Horse wind farm, and the turbines were on fairly nondescript terrain, if anything enhancing it. I think this is unlike, say, the Palouse area (a few hours east) or the Lake District in the UK, where farms are being erected on particularly beautiful countryside.
Of course it quickly becomes very subjective.
You wouldn't happen to be involved in the MSFT data center business?
The Kittitas Valley Wind Farm is East of Cle Elum and has a very picturesque backdrop. The ones you may be thinking of are East of Ellensburg and while it's not mountain views there are pretty rolling hills of badlands and canyons.
Of course it's in the eye of the beholder.
I do work for Microsoft but I'm in an enterprise Hololens business based in Issaquah.
The difference between American energy talk and practice runs deep. I don't see these families as more hypocritical, just more powerful.
I dislike these families blocking this initiative, but talk to almost any American about how much more they pollute, contribute to global warming, deplete resources, and so on more than nearly anyone in the world (without being any happier) and you'll generally hear agreement.
Ask them to consider flying less or some similar change to their lifestyle and you'll hear similar opposition.
I used the term hypocritical in regard to the Kennedys because many of them have run for and won public office on a strong progressive platform. They get downright preachy.
But as another user pointed out, they are a large family and assuming one speaks for all is unfair.
Tillerson, former Republican heavyweight Dick Armey and other residents of a ranch-filled suburb of Bartonville north of Dallas filed suit in 2012 seeking to block construction of the 160-foot-tall (49-meter-tall) water tower, arguing it would be an eyesore.
The suit, filed in Denton County District Court, also noted that the tower could encourage the town of Bartonville to sell “water to oil and gas explorers for fracking shale formations leading to traffic with heavy trucks... creating a noise nuisance and traffic hazards.”
A bit of a bummer to hear, especially when Massachusetts is shutting down its only nuclear power plan in 2019. The plant produces the vast majority of the State's renewable energy and about 15% of its total power. It doesn't sound like there are real replacements lined up.
Probably not the intention of parent, but if you could mine the uranium that is released on the oceans by the earth's crust each year you would have an effectively renewable energy source that is nuclear.
It’s a heckuva improvement on “clean” coal which produces the most greanhouse gases per BTU of any fuel. Nuclear still suffers from the distributed waste issue without a permanent storage facility or closed-loop reprocessing. Solar and wind are the ways to go long term. Solar especially, considering insolation gives a median daily recovery potential of about 1 kWh / m^2.
Wind farms are a blight on the landscape, but suburban sprawl, massive parking lots, 6-lane highways still backed up with traffic, giant gas guzzling cars, coal power plants, and air pollution are beautiful.
Some friends and I visited an wind farm just as a place to fly a kite. The area was rolling green hills, a few cows and these massive, clean, white towers up into the sky. It honestly struct me as a scene from an idyllic future sci-fi movie. It was like walking around in someone’s CG desktop background.
In my hometown we built a wind turbine on the top of a mountain that overlooks the city. On clear days you can see the turbine poking out on top of the mountain and it looks absolutely gorgeous, like we're an advanced species intelligently harvesting energy from the planet. It's breathtaking in a way that's hard to describe.
My comment just mentioned the aesthetics of wind turbines and I still maintain they are no more ugly than a smokestack, city tower, bridge, radio antenna or even regular old suburban development that seldom get cancelled because of aesthetical concerns. What's so special about wind turbines that we hate how they look more than any other kind of development?
This argument holds for noise too: all the references I could find suggest wind turbines are far quieter than other forms of development. In my experience wind turbines aren't obtrusively loud at all. In my city we've installed a wind turbine at the top of a popular mountain and I can't remember ever distinctly hearing it, even within a couple of km[0]. The same cannot be said about highways or other development.
0. Grouse Mountain, overlooking Vancouver. I even think the wind turbine looks incredibly beautiful when you see it peaking up from the top of the mountain.
That wind farm could have eventually provided enough power for a million people. As much as the specific loss of renewable energy is detrimental in this case, the loss of another powerful demonstration in the US of offshore wind farm potential is probably just as great.
Are there areas off the coast of Massachusetts where this style of offshore wind farm can be implemented that aren't proximal to the most popular and picturesque vacation destinations in the area? I'm sure most people can get behind the idea of offshore wind but this wasn't the best thought out location for this project.
This has nothing to do with the landscape. I've driven by the pilot windmills. You can barely see them. This is about filthy rich white hypocrites throwing a tantrum over nothing. Most people in Massachusetts (or America for that matter) would probably have a hard time affording to vacation anywhere near these things.
Readit News
Edit: BTW, I go by wind farms all the time on my way through beautiful Cle Elum Washington and they do not spoil the view in the slightest.
They are not nearly as jarring as the ugly houses people are building in the upper Madison County in Montana where my family lives.
I don't know what this means. Are you referring to actions taken by other Kennedy family members? If so, why should the actions of one's relatives fall exactly in line with one's own legacy, lest their family be deemed hypocritical? That seems like an awfully high bar that presupposes the family is a single moral and ethical unit.
Not when that is how they amass their power. They pretend to be squeaky clean but JFK used to rape women in the oval office.
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.bostonglobe.com/opinion/201...
I visited the Wild Horse wind farm, and the turbines were on fairly nondescript terrain, if anything enhancing it. I think this is unlike, say, the Palouse area (a few hours east) or the Lake District in the UK, where farms are being erected on particularly beautiful countryside.
Of course it quickly becomes very subjective.
You wouldn't happen to be involved in the MSFT data center business?
Of course it's in the eye of the beholder.
I do work for Microsoft but I'm in an enterprise Hololens business based in Issaquah.
Deleted Comment
I dislike these families blocking this initiative, but talk to almost any American about how much more they pollute, contribute to global warming, deplete resources, and so on more than nearly anyone in the world (without being any happier) and you'll generally hear agreement.
Ask them to consider flying less or some similar change to their lifestyle and you'll hear similar opposition.
But as another user pointed out, they are a large family and assuming one speaks for all is unfair.
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-fracking-tillerson/ex...
Tillerson, former Republican heavyweight Dick Armey and other residents of a ranch-filled suburb of Bartonville north of Dallas filed suit in 2012 seeking to block construction of the 160-foot-tall (49-meter-tall) water tower, arguing it would be an eyesore.
The suit, filed in Denton County District Court, also noted that the tower could encourage the town of Bartonville to sell “water to oil and gas explorers for fracking shale formations leading to traffic with heavy trucks... creating a noise nuisance and traffic hazards.”
Deleted Comment
I'm not sure how you don't understand this. /s
This argument holds for noise too: all the references I could find suggest wind turbines are far quieter than other forms of development. In my experience wind turbines aren't obtrusively loud at all. In my city we've installed a wind turbine at the top of a popular mountain and I can't remember ever distinctly hearing it, even within a couple of km[0]. The same cannot be said about highways or other development.
0. Grouse Mountain, overlooking Vancouver. I even think the wind turbine looks incredibly beautiful when you see it peaking up from the top of the mountain.
https://www.grousemountain.com/media/W1siZiIsIjIwMTcvMDEvMzA...