Newsday Tuesday

Delaware Energy Debate Could Turn on the Wind

"Two hundred towering windmills, each so tall that its blades would loom over the U.S. Capitol Dome, could be built in the Atlantic Ocean near one of Washingtonians' favorite beach retreats, under a plan being considered in Delaware."

This article in yesterday's Post discusses the possibility of erecting turbines six miles offshore of Rehoboth Beach, Delaware. With New Jersey being the armpit of the U.S., Delaware is the spot on its back that can't be scratched without major contortions, and which can't even be seen without multiple angled mirrors. People should be actively advocating the placement of these turbines in this location -- it's not like Rehoboth Beach is a real beach anyhow (The definition of an East Coast beach ends at the North Carolina / Virginia border, and Virginia Beach is just barely a beach like Subway's Jarrod is just barely a real celebrity). Having never been, I can expertly say that Rehoboth Beach is just a dirty beach with a nasty case of crabs.

Some people argue that the turbines will mar the pleasant view of the ocean, but at a minimum distance of six miles from the shore, they'll look like "toothpicks, with maybe little pinwheels on the top", according to one advocate, so it will be no different that watching a Nude Gay Pride parade from the forty-first story of the Empire State Building.

Despite all the outcries from completely unbiased industries (the coal industry proclaimed, "[Wind] doesn't blow all the time. We're essentially the Saudi Arabia of coal"), the real issue here is giving the contract to a company that's never built an offshore wind turbine before. Building stuff is a difficult proposition on a good day, and building stuff on the ocean is twice as tough since all your workers will be eaten by sharks. Paige's husband builds stuff on the ocean and it's taking him YEARS.

"Yes, algae farming is very difficult since farming involves land and algae grows in the water. We lost a lot of tractors." - Ryan Stiles, Whose Line is it Anyways?

People seem to forget the many benefits of having wind power as a renewable fuel source. One such advantage would be protection against the PANDEMIC INFLUENZA threat I covered in November of 2005. At that time, President Bush said that the bird flu would be imminent, and though we haven't seen it yet, I have no doubts that those damn ducks are hiding out in Bermuda, just waiting for the perfect chance to strike our unsuspecting nation. Putting up large spinning windmills around our entire coast would provide us with cheap power, while protecting us from an invasion of gonorrhea of the beak. You could probably even put up a series of razor-sharp Windmills of Doom along the Texas border to stem illegal immigration (although the lack of wind down there would require you to hire illegal immigrants to keep them spinning).

The most persuasive argument for wind power is the multiple locations you could place turbines to capture kinetic energy:

• Make the loud guy who derails every meeting in the office wear one on his stupid face.
• Put them on top of the heads of bald people.
• Put them on roller coasters.
• Require aggressive drivers to attach them to their bumpers.
• Make them a mandatory part of the uniform in the Olympic track events.
• Affix them to the asses of everyone in a bean-eating contest.

With such a cornucopia of wind-enabled locations, why the resistence?