The reality of wind turbines in California – video | Watts Up With That?

My best guess from the video and others I saw that I could not film is that about one in four turbines were not operating.

The problem is maintenance. The location, while perfect for wind, is treacherous for work and support equipment. Even on a flat terrain, like in Texas (shown below) where I photographed these turbines, doing maintenance on gearboxes and generators high up on a post isn’t easy.

We need a carbon tax to price pollution | Green Left Weekly

The second point is that politicians such as Liberal senator Nick Minchin show that if we don’t get the government to take some action to deal with climate change, the skeptics are going to bog us down in time-wasting debates on whether climate change is real.

Minchin said on March 11, “If anything we're more likely to see a tendency down in global temperatures, rather than up", even though the United Nations said 2010 was the hottest year on record.

It is only in Australia, Canada and the US that the sceptics have so much influence in government policy. We can’t afford to waste time.

Supporting government action sidesteps that debate.

Editorial – Deniers, pretenders and real climate action | Green Left Weekly

The truth is that a zero-emissions economy would be job-rich. And the “cost” of not cutting carbon pollution fast is a world of climate chaos.