What’s wrong with wind power? Belief in the efficacy of wind power is a measure of credulity. Only the most credulous would risk, say, scheduling a medical operation on their heart with the risk that, in the middle of it, the wind might stop blowing.
So, a back-up generating system has to be available to maintain electron flow through the power grid. Wind power forces us to have two power systems, both running all the time.
Wind generators are, obviously, high in the air. They are exposed to far more damage from the elements. Breakdowns are frequent.
Birds are slaughtered by the millions by windmill blades. Most raptors have their eyeballs placed in their skulls so they can look downward. The whirling blades are invisible to them. Moving at two hundred miles an hour, the blades literally chop up the helpless birds.
There is a bigger problem.
Windmills, singly or in wind farms, are vulnerable to the cheapest sorts of sabotage. Imagine a small boat or car whose occupant has a tank of helium and a thousand balloons. He fills the balloons with helium, ties a long, strong string or wire around them, and attaches it to a short, thick bolt.
He goes downwind from the windmills, inflates the balloons, and releases them. He can calibrate the necessary height to which they must rise by varying the size of the weight or the amount of helium. The contraption, separated by a very long string or wire, drifts into the windmill.
When the windmill blade hits the tough string or wire connecting the balloon to the bolt, the bolt is immediately flung around and around, wrapping itself around the blade before the heavy bolt smacks into it. Both the balance and the structural integrity of the blades can be destroyed.
A saboteur too lazy to go through all the work of balloon destruction could, with a bow and arrows, cobble up a similar way to have weight-carrying strings destroy windmills
In one night, an entire wind farm could be destroyed effectively by an angry teenager, a bird lover, or an aggrieved property owner as easily as by a team of trained terrorists.
Even a few kites, with long, tough tails carrying a ten-pound piece of iron at night could put an entire country’s power grid out of commission. For a few dollars in materials, hundreds of millions of dollars of wind generators could be destroyed.
The professional saboteur with the proper weapon could readily put the most vulnerable parts of any number of windfarms out of commission with a few dozen well places shots through a silenced firearm.
Only the most naive think that terrorists don’t already know these things. Only the most foolish people would want their power supply to be so vulnerable, especially when safe, easily-secured nuclear reactors can produce power for a tiny fraction of the cost.
