Sunday, July 27, 2008

Rockport Missouri Becomes First US City to Generate all its Power from Wind Turbines

I found this very interesting article on Gizmodo, an excellent website for tech freaks (though I am not one myself) about the tiny little town of Rockport, Missouri which has become the first US "city" to power itself entirely using wind power: http://gizmodo.com/5029233/rock-port-missouri-is-first-us-city-to-generate-all-its-electricity-from-wind-turbines The Gizmodo link has some nice links to Popular Science and other sources on this subject and it tells us that wind power could only substitute for 20% of the power needed to run the USA in the future. My belief is that even if this means burning 20% less fossil fuel, it would be well worth it.

On the other hand, I caught some joker on CBS while driving this morning tell the USA that there was a plot to install wind turbines all over the USA to produce power that could be controlled from "red states like Texas" who could turn the switch off to "blue states" if wind power became more widespread. The joker's ire was directed at T Boone Pickems, the oil billionaire, who is now pushing his Pickens Plan http://www.pickensplan.com/ to use more wind energy and natural gas in the USA and reduce the use of imported crude. When we sometimes think that cretins do well in Indian politics, we forget that the worst morons and jokers anywhere in the world work in the US media. CBS cannot be considered a serious news channel if it employs buffons of this kind. Oh well, this is what happens when a channel offers third rate entertainment and "the news" side by side.

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