Monday, March 16, 2009

Windmills

On my homeschool email list today, somebody posted a link to one of my kids' favorite webcomics, and this one just fits my daughter perfectly! She gets so creeped out by wind-farms, and I've never understood it. This comic makes me think it must be because she's read sci-fi that I'm clueless about.

Yesterday, Gary and Maggie and I were driving through the boonies of Wisconsin, having dropped Paul off in Oshkosh for his ride back to college after spring break. As we drove past a wind-farm, Gary thought maybe we should stop and listen. We've heard people complain about the terrible noise from those windmill generators. So we parked right across the road from one of the turbines. We opened the car windows and listened. Okay, you could hear something. But not right at the start. We had to sit in the quiet for several seconds before our ears attuned to the quiet whirring of the windmill. But when a car appeared on the horizon (I mean, like, a good half-mile away or more) the sound of the engine completely drowned out the sound of the windmill. A dishwasher makes way more noise than those windmills do. My stove-vent on LOW makes more noise than that windmill did -- and we purchased one of the quiet vents. After our stop-n-listen yesterday, I am entirely skeptical about the "noise pollution" argument about wind-farms.

1 comment:

  1. As we drove across the country last week we saw so many wind farms. Personally they make me extremely happy, the fact that people are working on using alternative energy is wonderful. The wind is such a natural energy that if we can harness the power then that is great! Funny that Rachel wouldn't like the wind farms... funny comic too.

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