Blowing in the Wind

Here is a legacy of our modern ingenuity, a monument for all future ages that we are no smarter than we were hundreds of years ago. We take the idea of using wind use state of the art technology to mimic what our ancestors have known for centuries. If we put an air foil on an axel, the wind will turn it. How clever are we to do nothing more than make variable pitched blades on the axel and make our windmills so much bigger.

But unlike the windmills the Dutch have been using for centuries, you cannot fix these monstrosities with the use of some spare canvas and a ladder. Or use a spare sheet of tin, like farmers have done, for again, centuries. You need a crane and extraordinary amount of manpower and time to replace a single blade worth millions and unit remains off line for a substantial period.

What’s next? Do we use a modified paddlewheel in a river to do the same things that the Chinese have done for thousands of years? Do we make the cost so extraordinary and make contraptions hard to maintain and cost a fortune?

I am all for alternative energy but to mimic our ancestors and make a mess of the whole thing is another thing all together. Somewhere, no thought has gone into maintenance and initial cost. I took this photo at a “Wind Farm” outside Blaney. It has a viewing area so that you can see how intelligent and advanced we have become.

All I can say is what a travesty.