permaculture

[FranandDave Nokes <fdnokes@hotmail.com>]

Great points, Doug!
And very timely to this day and age we live in where so much has become 
commercialized.
Thanks kindly for sharing.
Frances

Date: Tue, 19 Oct 2010 16:08:05 -0400
From: Douglas Woodard <dwoodard@becon.org>
To: permaculture <permaculture@lists.ibiblio.org>
Subject: Re: [permaculture] Fw: Wow! Wind Power Without the Blades
Message-ID: <4CBDFAA5.4040109@becon.org>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=windows-1252; format=flowed
 
 From the drawings, these devices would sterilize a lot of land 
apparently much more so than conventional wind turbines.
 
One would expect the wands to hit each other. Even if they didn't, one 
would expect materials fatigue to be a factor.
 
There is nothing about testing and cost analysis. The relative merit 
especially of wind power devices is all about cost of power over time.
 
Jean-Jacques Rousseau said of invention in general:
 
"Inventer, c'est rien.
Construire, c'est peu.
Essayer, c'est tout."
 
"To invent is nothing.
To build is a little.
To try out is everything."
 
I see there is a link to another wind power idea, a shrouded turbine: an 
idea which has been tried many times and always found to cost more than 
building a bigger turbine for the same power. There is nothing about a 
test of the design...
 
I'm sorry to seem like such a downer, but I have seen so much of this 
kind of stuff: wide-eyed enthusiasm for a concept with no knowledge of 
its past, no testing, and no theoretical basis in the absence of 
testing. Conceptual designers who know nothing about a field had better 
have good reasons.      
 
This kind of "news" seems to be about ad hits. I find it as distasteful 
as other kinds of deceptive money-grubbing.
 
Doug Woodard
St. Catharines, Ontario, Canada