A few minutes ago, a self-proclaimed "environmental activist" approached me and asked me to sign a petition calling for Connecticut to replace all nuclear power plants with wind powered facilities. I asked this fellow five questions:
1) What happens if it is a calm day and the windmills are not turning?
2) What happens to the windmills during one of the periodic storms that hit Connecticut with 60 MPH winds about once per year?
3) Can anything be done so that the windmills will not kill birds flying in the area?
4) Where would the windmills be put? In other words, what areas of Connecticut have agreed that windmill farms would be nice additional to the landscape?
5) How much higher would the cost of electricity get once the switch to wind power was made?
The environmental activist told me that these were "good questions". I did not bother to thank him for his approval of my questions, but instead I said, "so what are the good answers?"
At that point, I learned that there really are no answers to these questions. The environmentalists want to switch to wind power without knowing where the wind facilities will be built, how power output can be kept constant in a calm day, how the facilities can survive high winds, how we can avoid killing thousands of birds, and, most important, what the whole plan would mean for the economy.
It gives a whole new meaning to the word "idiocy".
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