ConservativeHippie, I'm not too sure who has a problem with the truth. Perhaps you have a perception problem when you say, "I don't know what kind of wind turbines you have down there is SA, but every wind turbine I've ever seen has very large slow blades. Way too slow to chop anything up, except maybe fog".

When generating useful power those turbine blades, sweeping an area the size of a couple of football fields, are moving at about 180 MPH at the tips. Yes that's right, about 290 kilometres per hour. Even falcons have trouble flying that fast.

Of course the worst factor of wind farms, if they do actually reduce CO2 at all, which is still doubtful when considering their full life cycle, is that it is not something we should be doing, at any cost.

Any increase in atmospheric CO2 is a good thing. The earth has been tying up it's CO2 for millennia, & our flora is living with a deficit of this essential plant food, & any increase will do nothing but good

My short post explains the relevance and headline outcome of Dr Wheatley's analysis of CO2 emissions avoided by wind in the NEM in 2014, and my analysis of the implications of wind power's CO2 abatement effectiveness being less than most people realise and that it decreases as wind power increases. For those who would like a fuller understanding of the analyses and results of Wheatley's and my submissions, please refer to Submissions No 259 and 348 here: http://www.aph.gov.au/Parliamentary_Business/Committees/Senate/Wind_Turbines/Wind_Turbines/Submissions
The site is a bit slow to load, so be patient. The first page shows only the first 20 submissions. Click on the symbol to go to the last page. then scroll to the bottom of the page and select "show 500 submissions". Then check the boxes for No 250 and 348 to download them. For those genuinely interested, you may learn a lot from these.

I welcome your questions and constructive critiques.

"Depending on wind conditions the blades turn at rates between 10 and 20 revolutions per minute. Considering the length of the blades, at average wind speeds of 13 to 15 mph, the tips are traveling at 120 mph. At maximum wind speeds, the blade tips are spinning at an estimated 180 mph."

I question whether birds are killed from being knocked out of the air or actually being chopped to pieces as ttbn claims? If the birds are getting chopped up then I fully apologise for my ignorance.

As an aside, compared to wind turbines birds are dying in much bigger numbers from other man-made causes (figures from the USA):

Feral and domestic cats - Hundreds of millions [source: AWEA]

Power lines - 130 to 174 million [source: AWEA]

Windows (residential and commercial)- 100 million to 1 billion [source: TreeHugger]

Pesticides - 70 million [source: AWEA]

Automobiles - 60 to 80 million [source: AWEA]

Lighted communication towers- 40 to 50 million [source: AWEA]

Wind turbines - 10,000 to 40,000 [source: ABC

http://science.howstuffworks.com/environmental/green-science/wind-turbine-kill-birds.htm

It appears from reports I have read that wind farms in Spain are a dismal failure.
Now that should be a good source of data on the subject.

Peter, have you calculated the ERoEI of Australian wind turbines ?
Those in the roaring forties should give world best results.
Take everything into account, maintenance, concrete, etc etc and
some even include council rates. Although that is contentious.

CP,

Gee, I thought I was quite nice to you when I answered your question, but here you are, still telling me I don't know what I'm talking about. If other people's opinions upset you enough to make you unpleasant to them, perhaps discussion is beyond you, and you should go somewhere that you can let rip and get rid of aggression properly. Most posters here seem able to agree to dsagree. Perhaps you think that you can convert people. Not with your attitude you won't. It is possible to get along with people you don't agree with. You don't seem to have learned that yet.

Bazz,

There are many different issue regarding wind energy, renewables in general, ERoEI, GHG abatement, carbon pricing, etc. It is not possible to try to address all issues and answer all questions about all these on one blog post. So, on this post it would be most productive to confine the comments and questions to the subject of this post.

If you want info on ERoEI, there are previous posts on On Line Opinion on that subject and also here: http://bravenewclimate.com/2014/08/22/catch-22-of-energy-storage/

If you want an excellent summary explaining the limits of renewables ability to supply much of global energy demand, see this (posted recently): http://euanmearns.com/the-difficulties-of-powering-the-modern-world-with-renewables/

I've also posted many links on previous threads to other aspects of renewables, energy, GHG abatement, carbon pricing etc.

Can I urge commenters to stay on topic.