Excellent article. Wind Power has been known to be a scandalous waste of Taxpayer money for years.
Just as heavily subsidized Ethanol was found to be more toxic than regular gasoline, Heavily subsidized Wind/Solar continues to pollute the environment with absolutely no benefit to Mankind.
Those who have promoted this "renewable" scam should be brought to justice.
There is nothing 'excellent' about Pr. Pilmers article, it is intentionally slanted to miss the important points. My favorite is his discussion of the embodied energy in a turbine or solar panel.
A solar panel or wind turbine earn back their embodied energy (energy used to manufacture) in 2 - 6 years depending on the installation. A coal, oil or LNG plant never can because once you build them, they have to be fed fossil fuel to operate, which is 'converted' to one time use electricity at an efficiency rate less than 100%. At least a turbine will get even one day.
There were dozens of studies on this by different groups, all had somewhat different results depending on the assumptions, but they all agree on the overall outcome.
Virtually none of the land that all the wind farms in the U.S. sit on was clear cut, the turbines are intentionally built above the foliage if any existed at the site. Many dual purpose as grazing below the turbine for livestock today. The only farm that had significant bird kills was Pleasanton in California, the only source of all the bird kill articles to date, those and future turbines had blade modifications to prevent raptor kills, and the problem has been eliminated. Wind turbines are number 9 in annual bird kills in 2013, the first three are habitat destruction, buildings and feral cats.
The real reason greens are quiet is we don't need to say anything else, wind and solar power are both established and growing at an astronomical rate, it's the brownies that are doing all the screaming today. The more they argue, the more turbines we install seems to be the order, so knock yourself out.
"The EU has deemed that carbon dioxide emitted from wood burning is recycled by plants yet carbon dioxide emitted from fossil fuel burning is dangerous."
Sadly , Plimer really is this ill informed
Even in his supposed special field he makes appallingly ill informed/dishonest comments : such that volcanoes emit more GHG than burning fossil fuels or that chrysotile is not asbestos
He has deteriorated into an angry old crank
free energy pisses off big oil
I think it all adds up. You are just trying to confuse and defuse the issues.
http://stopthesethings.com/2014/10/26/professor-ian-plimer-slams-the-great-wind-power-fraud/
