Incorrect and deceiving information on Windmills from Facebook

 There is a post going around now on Facebook that is both deceptive and wrong. Here it is in three parts and the story behind all three.

Okay we start with the first sentence. The one that includes the information that 12,000 gallons of fuel per wind farm with 150 turbines.

An average American car is driven about 15,000 miles per year. The mileage average  (including cars, SUVs and consumer trucks) is 20mpg. So "ALL THAT OIL for 150 Turbines" is the same as 16 cars a year use. Fair trade on gas.

If you are using that 12,000 gallons that is less than 10 percent of that 3 day pipeline spill in California this year.

So that whole "so much gas" is crap, even using their numbers.

As for using New York for your example, It is a crap example of a "typical city". New York's population (for example) is larger than San Antonio, Houston and Dallas combined.

New York is twice the size of LA and 4 times the size of Houston (population ranked #2 and #4 cities).

Even if you use their "average" for New York, 304,000 gallons is the same as used by 406 cars in a year. That is amazing!

Each turbine requires a footprint of 1.5 acres. Okay, I don't see where it is documented, but let's assume he is right. Today wind farms are in the deserts (CA, TX, NW and AZ).  Or they are on farmland (Iowa, Midwest) where that 1.5 acres is still used to production. So the idea that you need some astronomical "cleared" forest is bullshit.

Let's even use their numbers and to power NYC you would need 57,000 acres. Which is an area 6 by 6 miles. Doesn't sound so bad now. If you want to do the whole USA's power generation (which we are not! -green includes solar, nuclear and natural gas) AND not use offshore, the land area is about 90% of Wisconsin. Or about the size of the desert in California or Arizona

Add to this, Biden wants to use offshore wind farms, which mean even less land is used.

Now to page 2

Okay, so now we know that wind power for all New York is the equivalent of 406 cars for New York city. Since New York city is 2.4% of the country's population that means powering the entire country with wind power would use the equivalent of 17,000 cars. Which is less than 15% of the cars that cross the George Washington Bridge DAILY!

Again, with the clear cutting - get a grip. You could put all the turbines necessary in the desert in California OR Arizona. Or the fields of Nebraska. Or the desert part of Texas. And, remember, we are talking if we don't use solar, nuclear power or natural gas.

 First "running out of landfill for 200 foot long turbines. Bullshit. The average landfill is 600 acres or approximately 1 square mile. 200 foot long turbines mean you could put 26 to a length. And there are 3000 landfills in the US, so no, we are not running out of landfill.

And, these are a high tech carbon fiber that are massively expensive, so we will soon figure out how to recycle the material in them. As for the 20 years, that's a guess because we haven't had these longer than 20 years. Right now, Texas authorities project  they could last 25 - 35years.  So, golly gee, that is pretty fucking green.

As for the number of birds killed, we can use their estimates. I'm okay with that. But the split of birds they quote is wrong. The high end estimates (Erikson study) found 62% are small birds, not hawks, eagles and owls. 

That sound like a lot, but cats kill 2.4 Billion birds a year or 4,800 TIMES the number killed by windmills. HOUSE CATS. And no, wildlife conservations are not ecstatic, but just getting rid of that amount of pollution will save billions of birds, so it is a trade off they are more than willing to make.

So if you could power the entire country with the oil from 17,000 cars (or 1/26th of the cars in Delaware) and 1/4800th of the birds killed by cats, yeah that is pretty damn good.

I also want to point out that these hundreds of windmills in the Cajon Pass in California are NOT each on 1.5 acres each.

So if you crunch the numbers  AND you present in a manner to make them scary, you can make it look bad. But it isn't. It is just built to present real answers in dumb terms.