MOTION..

 

Wind Turbines Kill Birds!

 

Oh, yes.  7.5 birds a year are killed by each of the outer blades of those big propellers that sometimes spin so fast that tweety can’t see the danger.  Come now.  Why are we even talking about a thousand year old technology?  These turbines are big, noisy, dangerous and require continuous maintenance.  Plus you have to clear hundreds of miles to erect the transmission lines to get the wind into the computer you are looking at now.  That’s bad.  But life on this planet would not exist if air did not move.  The raw energy is there. So why not capture it? 

 

A little side bar here before I get to the answer on that one.  In BJ Gudmundsson’s movie about anti-coal activist Maria Gunnoe, "Look What they’ve Done" one scene shows a CSX train going by, for what seems to be forever, hauling coal.  When a recent wind farm project was introduced in West Virginia the Greenbrier Hotel financed a local ad campaign to fight it.   The Greenbrier is owned by CSX, a major coal profiteer.

 

We living creatures produce our own energy.  Have you ever seen an electron microscope photo of a DNA strand?  I don’t know a darned thing about it, but it must be a pretty efficient model for the building blocks of life.  Helical flumes.  Put a DNA sculpture on your office roof and unplug from the grid today.  Take a look at the photo below.

 

Looks strange, yes?  Only about six feet wide and fourteen feet tall, this little invention can capture wind from any direction.  Vertical, Horizontal.. If air moves this thing catches it quietly and efficiently.  It has been tested since 2003 and no birds have been killed.  The current design is catered to large urban office and residential buildings, but the promise for home use must be close.

 

Is this future tech?  No.  It is in use today in the windy city, Chicago.

 

 

 

The technologies for producing energy without burning things are abundant.  Did you know that the state of Florida, which recently banned any new coal fired power plants, is working on harnessing motion by putting underwater turbines into the Gulf Stream?  Their prediction is that the initial components will power over one third of the entire state.  New York is starting to harness tides.  The movement is on to catch the energy in that which is already moving.

 

For all those wind mill opponents who are worried about view shed take a look at how awful this power system looks on top of this 96 unit apartment building:

 

 

Though I jest, if it sounds like I am picking on some of my friends for having a selectively situated eco-conscience, I am.  I too am against big blades twirling atop sky high towers along the pristine ridges of Greenbrier County West Virginia.  But I honestly believe we should catch the wind.  The professor who invented these dna turbines has my hat and heart.  May he be so successful that someday he can buy the Massey Energy company just to shut it down.  If you have the energy to fight something – fight coal.  Embrace this. 

 

http://www.aerotecture.com/

 

 

 

Not sure.  But that looks like the Daley Center in the background.

 

Bil Becker, the inventor of this beautiful work of technological art, is a person I would love to meet.  He invented this in 2003.  In 2004, not knowing anything about his work, I was on my deck having refreshments with an engineer from Denmark.  I drew a near identical design and asked if he could build it.  Though we thought it was important to try to develop world altering solutions, we both later forgot about the idea.   I am sure many others thought about this concept, but Bil did it.  We should not let Professor Becker’s designs be overlooked.  Contact him, buy one of these things, put it on your roof and then tell the electric company to be ready to send you discount coupons because, while your office is closed, and you are sleeping, you could be sending power to the grid.  Who knows, you could be powering a nearby pumped storage project.