Angus King urges business owners to conserve, think alternative energy

"Yes, engineers can make-work by adding wind flux to the system. They can lead a horse to water; but they can't make it change its spots.... By its nature, wind will require lots of whips and whistles, even at small levels of penetration, in ways that will negate the very reason for its being. This is why people quickly switched to steam 200 years ago. Retrofitting modern technology to meet the needs of ancient wind flutter is monumentally backasswards, a sure sign that pundits and politicians, not scientists, are now in charge. It would take more than a smart grid to incorporate such a dumb idea successfully.

Because of wind's unpredictable variability, it can never replace the capacity of conventional generation. Twenty-five hundred 450-foot wind turbines, spread over five hundred miles, can mathematically offset a large coal or nuclear plant; but they cannot do so functionally--for what must happen when 5000MW of volatile wind is only producing 100MW at peak demand times, a common occurrence?

This business is absurd. The whole point of modern power systems has been to move beyond the flickering flutter of variable energy sources. Prostituting modern power performance to enable subprime energy schemes on behalf of half-baked technology is immoral. As is implementing highly regressive tax avoidance “incentives" to make it appear that pigs can fly. No coal plants will be shuttered and little, if any, carbon emissions will be reduced as a result of this project—or thousands of them.

Indeed, wind technology mirrors the subprime mortgage scams that wreaked havoc with the economy. Both are enabled by wishful thinking; bogus projections; no accounting restraints, accountability, or transparency; no meaningful securitization; and regulatory agencies that looked the other way, allowing a few to make a great deal of money at everyone else's expense while providing no meaningful service. "J Boone

"There is little that is cognitively more dissonant than supporting the concept of minimizing the human footprint on the earth while cheerleading for the rude intrusiveness of physically massive/energy feckless wind projects. The slap and tickle of wind propaganda flatters the gullible, exploits the well intentioned, and nurtures the craven. It is made possible because there's no penalty for lying in the energy marketplace. The country has evidently arrived at a point in its legal culture where no negative consequences seem to exist for making false or misleading claims to sell wind energy—the stuff dreams are made of. But industrial wind is a bunco scheme of enormous consequence. And people who value intellectual honesty should not quietly be fleeced by such mendacity, even from their government."
Jon Boone
And now , we have this ex-governor , and his son Angus S. King III of Firstwind(merger and acquisition's), keeping it "All in the Family", to the backs of all of us in Maine!
It is not about Green (you silly dillies ), ITS aBOUT GREED, for the few.

If wind (and other alternative source) power were that great, subsidies with taxpayer (our) money would not be needed. If King and his ilk feel so greatly about wind power let them build it with their own dollars. People like him are what has ruined the economy of this area. Look at all the subsidised housing built with taxpayer dollars to make untold riches for their providers while private landlords are left holding empty apartments. These parasites of taxpayer money should be banished from the State rather than invited as public speakers.

We conserve because it is stupid to stand there and rip up dollar bills. Energy is expensive and shouldn't be wasted.

I don't believe that global warming is caused by man. I believe that the science is bogus and politically motivated. I do believe that humans have a responsibility to keep the air we breathe clean and water pure.

I would advise everyone to be very aware of "cap and trade" that Obama and most congressional Democrats are pushing. It has everything to do with driving our economy into socialism and the dark ages.

What I don't understand is all those who have the need to criticize someone and NOT hear what the actually article is about.

Its CRUCIAL at this day and age to do someTHING for our environment. Starting with businesses is a great idea. Recycling paper, to using LED lights, or CFL bulbs. To conserve energy. It takes everyone to do a lil' something to make a great impact. We need to start now instead of complaining. Businesses in Maine use a lot of the energy and its even more predominant for other cities and states to use more (i.e.: new york city).

To get the light bulb to work when you flick a switch comes from a source. Ultimately that source is a GRID. What is being fed into that grid is coal, oil, (in maine use to be nuclear power). The use of coal and oil has so many pollutants. We are using our nasty, polluting resources up-so eventually if we don't get on the ball-we're running it dry. Just think a flick of a switch from all across America probably causes more emissions than driving cars... Unfortunately, what SHOULD be fed into the grid is cleaner, renewable resources. Wind turbines, solar panels, geothermal energy, biomass, landfill gas can even be used. Unfortunately-they are not being fed into the grid. Its up to us to make a difference.

So maybe many can see just how IMPORTANT it is to conserve and do someTHING about it rather than complaining about energy costs, or having to get political. There is a more important discussion and concern here.

King uses his lingering popularity to push his own selfish goals. That is, to enrich himself and buddy Rob Gardner by being pigs at the wind subsidy trough. How ironic that two men who made a mark in Maine by working to preserve special places are now involved in pushing projects that enrich them at taxpayer and ratepayer expense and entail blasting away the tops of mountains, erecting huge inefficient wind turbines, clearcutting hundreds of acres of land, and stringing hundreds of miles of new powerlines across rural Maine. They ought to be ashamed of this, yet King's accolytes still come out to listen to his self-serving diatribe.
Wake up people! Before you know it, King and his ilk are going to surround Maine's rural beauty with thousands of wind turbines. There won't be a viewshed without them, from Katahdin to Bigelow to Tumbledown and the Mahoosucs. It is an unfettered rape of rural Maine and we have to stop it.

He is right in his statement, major taxes have doubled in Maine and we do get nothing for it! The taxes are going up to pay the 30% subsidies his company recieves up front when they put the wind farms up.... So I ask you this, if the energy going by us every day is free why is there so much goverment subsidies involved and why does it push up electric rates???

he's already a millionaire.Did he get paid to speak at Bates,or was this topic important enough to him to speak about it for free?