Tilting at Windmills

Just 24 hours ago, Mayor Mike Bloomberg was touting his latest grandiose plan to install windmills on skyscrapers and bridges. Well, he must have gotten a dose of reality today, because he acknowledged just a few of the hurdles to ever seeing any windmills built. Actually, he essentially admitted he didn't know what he was talking about, for if he did, he would never have proposed it in the first place:

Turbines were originally proposed in the plans for the new World Trade Center but later disappeared from the design, and now even Mayor Michael Bloomberg acknowledges that his own suggestion this week to put turbines atop skyscrapers and bridges may not work.

"There are aesthetic considerations ... No. 2, I have absolutely no idea whether that makes any sense from a scientific, from a practical point of view," Bloomberg said.

Experts seemed to agree. David Carr, of the Alternative Energy Institute, in Canyon, Texas, said mounting turbines high above the city is "not very feasible."

"I don't think this was very well thought out," he said.

Among the complications are turbulence and vibrations the buildings would have to endure plus the relatively small amount of wind the turbines would be able to harness in a city where other buildings and trees stand in the way, Carr said. Also, skyscrapers typically are not built to withstand the load of turbines.

"If you want it for art and decoration, that's fine, but for achieving any kind of power that's useful, it's not a very good idea, and I don't know of anywhere that's done it very successfully," Carr said.

In other words, it looks like Bloomberg was simply trying to look like he's green and eco-conscious, but he doesn't have a clue what he's talking about.