It's a new industry, so why would Duluth want to take part in it. Have faith my friends, mining will save us.

This story may be sad, but it's hardly ironic.
Now, Frank's last sentence?
There's some good irony, folks.

Did you look at the harbor last summer? Its hard to argue that Duluth isn't a player in the wind energy industry.

Drifter. I realize that they do come through here. Blades made in Denmark come in and blades made in Grand forks go out. By the way the company in Grand Forks just increased their workforce to 700.
Maybe you can answer a question for me. Was it the city of Duluth that got these blades to come this way or are we just a place on the way. How many new jobs were established where they load, unload the blades. I think it's great to see them coming through town, There's a revolution in wind energy that's going to be huge.
Outside of the fact that I've been beating this topic to death since the late 60's, what would be the reasons I keep harping on this? I'm going to keep this current.
I hear all this talk about sustainability for Duluth, talk about job's for Duluth, talk about keeping our young people in Duluth, talk about how expensive it is to stay warm this winter, talk about clean air, talk about getting off oil. Chavez said a couple of weeks ago he was going too sell his oil to someone else. How high does the price have to get before maybe cheaper electric heat powered by windturbines in The Dakotas becomes attractive. Clipper windpower is going to start building a 6000mw wind farm this fall.That enough to power up over a million homes and will require 3-4000 windturbines that have to be made somewhere. I want to be apart of that change and I don't want my heating bill tied up with some overseas player who can dictate whether I'm going to be warm or not.
Just a little sidebar I haven't ran my furnace this winter. I haven't bought one drop of oil. I tightened the ship and so far my heat bill this winter is around 70 dollars. I don't know this month's.

More again. I have this thing about business before party although you that know me, know I like a good party as much as the next person.
Here's some facts. In the last two years seven windturbine manufacturing plants came on line in MN., Iowa,and North Dakota costing 214,000,000 dollars and creating 2100 jobs.This works out to around 78,600,000 of saleries per year. The majority of the 214 million dollars to build these plants came from the companies themselves. What are we going to do in Duluth?
We're going to spend 45,000,000 dollars for the convention center and another 400,000,000 dollars so people can ride a train to a football game. So 450,000,000 for that and then add a couple hundred more million for biomass so we can cut down more of our forests. That's not what I would do.
I'd take a hundred million dollars, contact each one of these windturbine companies, and tell them we will put up half the money for your new factory here.I could find all kinds of other things to spend the other 500,000,000 dollars on. maybe something to make our town sustainable. You know maybe something like a parabolic solar electric farm which would work better here then windturbines.

This sounds like the talk of that crazy guy. Whats his Name? Ringssomething

I would have fixed up the Nor Shore long time ago

Though I like the idea of wind energy, it would wreak havok on migrating birds. :(

Maybe the guy with the Hummer can drive down to Iowa and check out the plant?

bad Cat , Check out Audobon Bird watchers for the truth about what really kills birds. Lucie check out the U.S.Army's new hybrid electric Humvee

Kidding aside, isn't there a way to propose a study for aggressively going after wind power as an industry?

Of course there is. It will happen when enough people think it is serious enough to put their time into it. I believe it has to come from leadership from the Mayor and the city council and our local state represenatives. Up to now I only know of one State Rep. who has shown any interest at all in wanting to look at this and I have sent him a list of all the companies that are big right now. I don't believe any of the others have even mentioned wind manufacturing jobs that I know of. This goes right to the presidential canidates. The only one who is starting to talk about it is Hillary and she only doing it because she's grasping for an issue. She wants ethenol and Obama wants coal gasification and Mccain wants nuclear. If the leadership doesn't like it ,it won't happen and you are now in Duluth where things change slowly.
I've been a lone wolf on this for a while now , not that I'm the only one that knows about this but I,m putting it out there. I figure if I keep squealing loud enough someone will grease me just to shut me up. I do have an idea on how to do this, but it is so out of the box that to put it out in public would be putting myself up for all the folks out there who only have time for cynicism . This is going to sound really self promoting but you get the mayor to let me chair a windpower job search committee of my choosing and we'll give it a heck of a try.

serious enough? I'm wondering if our elected officials even bother to take a look at the SHIPPING DOCKS or are up at three a.m. when the SEMIS WITH NACELLES AND BLADES are escorted down Highway 53 on their way to said shipping docks. Fuck, i'd even be happy if they read the shipping news bulletins. Wake the fuck up, DEDA...(or whoever it is that's responsible for pursuing this type of bidniss)...IMHO, the business planners of this city really dropped the ball on this one. Instead of B.S. development projects that only give us 15 months of economic viability, bring in work that's going to give us a lifetime of tax base and economic viability.

zra, you get a gold star. Someone who knows what a Nacelle is. I totally agree with you,we're dropping the ball on this one.
When you take a look at what Duluth has to offer it's hard to believe we wouldn't have some sort of chance. We have a seaport and railroads and a couple of brownfields waiting to be used. It's unfortunate that we don't have political leaders with the will and forsight to at least take a look at this . Myself, I would start on this right now. We need to be aggresively chasing this right now so when Obama wins and dumps the 200 billion dollars he claims to want to spend on alternative sources that we're ready.

Wow many fantastic ideas. I would think that with the shipping in our own backyard this would give Duluth a competitive edge

it's because we're too busy building heritage centers and chasing pipedreams like Kroc centers...to worry about 700 jobs...