Keith

There's been at least 385 wind turbine fires in just California. One fire started by a wind turbine in California burnt over 11,000 acres.

Keith

There’s a nice sparkler to catch the fields on fire .

Putting a huge metal tower, full of oil, in an area of high winds of course attracts lightning and fuels fire. Friction in wind turbines cause fire too.

Keith

Had one catch fire about a half mile from the house a few years ago. Looked pretty cool burning in the night sky. Local fire department showed up but of course couldn't reach the fire so just watched it burn. It was in the middle of a plowed field so no real danger of catching anything else on fire anyway.
I don't think those fires are very common. Lots of wind farms in Iowa and you don't hear about fires very often.
There is some pretty cool footage floating around of some windmills going down in one of our tornado outbreaks this spring.

Its a Beautiful thing to watch. Hopefully those farmers don't live too close to one.

Baby fireworks compared to an oil field fire or forest fire.

Thats no big deal,there are lots of good ones still producing power all around them.

Yes, and there have never been any problems related to oil drilling, transportation, or refining,..
You are being disingenuous if this is your argument against wind energy.

Wind turbines occasionally catch fire and spew pollution. With coal, we light it on fire on purpose and it spews pollution every single day.

But are wind turbines required to have scrubbers on them to the smoke?

Wind energy is not cost effective. My good friend Don Grieder, who is deceased now, had 106 patents in the green energy field. He strongly believed that wind turbines were a waste of the government's financial resources. He wrote several papers on the inefficacy of wind turbines.

Don believed the most efficient use of solar energy was in heating water. He believed that new technology would make solar panels more efficient and cost effective at producing electricity, but without subsidies, they weren't worth installing yet.

Keith

And everyone in the industry knows that these turbines will never pay for themselves. But at least GE made millions in tax credits off of US tax payers.

Windmills have been doing all kinds of work for centuries.Long before they were used to produce electricity.
Same with watermills.
Green energy is nothing new.

The Gov. overlooks what dosent fit the "Now" narrative.

Remember the huge solar collectors that were incinerating birds, mid flight?
Streamers, trails of smoke, and into.the ground.

They are replacing blades on the windmills near me,

It looks like a huge amount of expense just modifying the corners of the roads (every county road in the area of the towers ) again after they built and removed most of them <10 years ago.

Cost for the cranes and replacement parts and the disposal of the waste parts is a reoccurring expense. I am not sure where they are shipping the blades in from as the blade manufacture that was 60 miles away shut down a few years ago.

Maintenance crews on them several days a month that I notice and I don't go down that way often.

Spendy to keep them going.

A few years ago Simon Conway of WHO radio asked the head of Mid American Energy how much of their wind farm program was taxpayer funded, and he admitted pretty much all of it. I doubt that has changed, so the "spendy" aspect is covered, Mike!