Lets get discussin'!  Please be respectful, though.  :-)  Thanx!

Oh, and if you can provide links, websites, journals, books, etc, that would be great.  I like to investigate further myself.  

Thanks for being so open Tanya.  

I guess it comes down to the mathematics of the whole thing.

E= f * m * v^3

where E is the energy available in the wind

f is the calculating factor which includes length of the rotor, etc

m is the specific mass if the air

and v is the velocity of the wind in m/s, notice it is cubed

the cube is of significance because it shows that the highest outputs are only attainable when the wind is blowing quite hard.  In fact, as far as I can tell, turbines produce nothing at speeds of B-3 or less, but any information you may have on this would be appreciated.

Anyway that equation says quite a bit about the availability of what can be obtained.  Another point of interest is that for the most part, the greatest factor of the equation is the velocity of the wind.  This limits the effectiveness of future advancements in the technology because the greatest factor is something that is way beyond our control: the weather and more specifically, the wind speed.

Here is something else of note.

I took this from the website
http://www.windenergy-the-truth.com/wind-power-capacity-factor.html

There is a table there that shows average capacity factors for all installed wind turbines in a number of countries and world wide.  It also gives information about where they got the statistics.  Well it turns out that the average capacity factor for worldwide installations is 19.6%  Meaning that worldwide, wind turbines produced 19.6% of what was promised by the politicians and  manufacturers. So of an installed capacity of 59,051 Mw, only 11,559Mw were delivered.  Not only that but it was delivered sporadically and unreliably.

This is why you cannot compare wind power to conventional sources.  A coal plant operates with a near 100% capacity factor, meaning it can generate, say 600Mw, reliably and with very little fluctuation in its output.  Comparing wind power to conventional source is like comparing a case of half rotten apples to a case of fresh ripe ones.  

There are a nuber of graphs available to support this argument.  
http://www.windenergy-the-truth.com/power-variations-national-grids.html

This shows a graph of the output of all installed German wind turbines over a 4 day period.  At one point there was a sharp 12,000Mw drop.  Amazingly there were no blackouts which means that there must have been 12,000Mw of conventional sources online to pad the fall of wind output.  They literally had to burn 12000 Mw of coal and get no output from it just so that it was ready to switch on when the inevitable drop in output occurred.

Here is some more math to illustrate the point.

The Netherlands requires 13,000,000 Kw of power to cover its usage.  Lets talk about a single wind turbine as it relates to that important number.  Lets say it is a 3Mw wind turbine, which based on current prices is about 3 million dollars.  Average output world wide is 19.6%, but we will be generous and say it is 25%.  So this turbine produces an average output of

3,000Kw * .25 = 750Kw

that is 750/ 13,000,000 = .00005762 or 5.8 one-hundred -thousandths of total requirements.

Now average yearly increase in electrical consumption in europe is projected to be 2.5% per year.  Let's be conservative and say that in the Netherlands, it would be 1.5%.

so 13,000,000 * .015 = 195,000 Kw

If they produce a generous 25%, per 3Mw turbine:

195,000/ 750 = 260 turbines and increasing each year to make up for the increase in consumption.

At $3mil a piece that's 780 million dollars per year, just to break even. Not to mention, you still need to back 90% of that power up with reliable sources.

On top of all of that is the fact that for most countries with well established wind generation, most, if not all, of the really optimal sites for wind are developed first.  This means that every subsequent wind farm will have an even lower capacity factor, thus further reducing overall effectiveness with each new installation.

oh, and I just want to say I am not pro-coal or anything, and ultimately money is of little consequence to me, but thats the world in which we live, so I must pay it heed.

Coal sucks frankly, but why burn more than is necessary?

I think there are much more effective ways of generating power in a clean way.

Geothermal is about as effective as coal, and the resource will last way longer too. Yeah its clean too.

Solar is way more of a viable option. There are solar cells that are 40% efficient. Compare that to photosynthesis which is about 8% efficient, and you can see that if nature can do it, we can do it better.

Solar convection towers are totally bomb too.

Wave power, hydroelectric dams, and tidal power are viable as far as I can see.

Why not retry the space tether?
I mean the positively charged particles ejected from the sun are stopped at the magnetosphere.  The earth is negative.  Where there is a difference in potential and a path, you have flow.  I think that would be a near limitless potential for power generation.

Why not make exercise equipment where the resistance is set by a dynamo instead of lifting weights and burning human energy that serves no purpose?  Sure there is not a huge potential here, but you could look good and power the lights at the same time...

Ultimately the cheapest and easiest way to sole energy problems is efficiency.  It alone can be seen as a resource.  When the power grid is 33% efficient and cars on the road are less than 20%, we could more than double our activity and not install a single power plant of any kind.  Thats where the focus needs to be right now.  Do the same thing better!  This will give emerging techs more time to get where we need them to be.  Although, really why not do that and geothermal at the same time?

Oh MIT has done some very compelling research into exploitable geothermal, so take a look at that too.