This is pretty cool: **The most effective ways to curb climate change might surprise you **— Quiz: Climate change solutions
I got 56% overall. Wish I did better! How’d you do?
A quiz that puts wind turbines ahead of nuclear energy is not a trustworthy quiz IMO. So I am more than slightly skeptical about the “right” answers to the other questions.
Regards,
Shodan
Really? So nuclear energy is better than wind energy?
How do you define “better”? In many cases it’s not possible to meaningfully rank the vague options given, like wind power vs nuclear vs solar for electricity generation, because not enough specific information is provided: what magnitude of “investment” are they talking about, over what timeframe, etc. The answers they would like are based on a whole host of assumptions made in one particular report, which are not necessarily the “right” answers. For example there are real-life instances, like where I live, where nuclear is the dominant clean source of electricity (just under 60% of all power generation) and wind power is only a supplementary source (around 4%).
That was the silliest ‘quiz’ I’ve ever seen.
Well it was Shodan that was saying that nuclear is better than wind, while the article is claiming the opposite. Maybe ‘better’ is not the best word. The different options are equated to the number of millions of cars taken off the road, so that is their definition of better.
Why?
Yes. Wind turbines don’t work unless the wind is blowing about a certain level, so building a million new turbines doesn’t scale up the amount of energy produced proportionately. Nuclear energy works 24/7, everywhere it is built.
The quiz is crap. Sorry.
Regards,
Shodan
The very first question is borked up. All the options were labeled as a thing “you can do”. Their answers said these were the top two choices:
1: Throw away less food.
2: Eat a plant-heavy diet.
But their explanation is:
*"According to Project Drawdown, if all of the world’s cattle formed their own nation, they would be the planet’s third-largest emitter of greenhouse gases, so eating less meat — especially beef — is good for the planet.
But throwing away less of what we eat is an even more impactful way to reduce carbon emissions. A third of all food that we raise or grow never makes it onto our plates, and that waste accounts for around 8% of global emissions, according to Drawdown’s analysis.
But, since there is food wasted all along the supply chain, eating less meat is probably the most effective way individuals can fight climate change."*
So in the last sentence that admit that eating a plant heavy diet is the most effective thing you (as an individual) can do. That was the option I chose you idiots!
I didn’t look at it past the first question.
I took it a while back and I found the concept interesting, but the questions lack specificity on what they mean by “better” in each instance and the scoring method is ridiculous. So I didn’t share it.
Right, but that “number of millions of cars” equivalence is based on a large set of assumptions, and those assumptions (from that one report they cite) aren’t revealed until after you answer. Hence comparisons like wind vs. nuclear are just not possible to rank until you know what the assumptions are, like timeframes and monetary investment levels, as I said before.
A good example of the meaninglessness of the comparisons without further qualification and quantification is the one about “how we move people and goods”. The electric car is supposed to be #1, which is reasonable and probably generally true, but it depends on a lot of factors: are you accounting for the carbon footprint of the total lifecycle? What about the electricity source? Is it still the best choice if most of the electricity is from coal-fired plants? And their choice for the #2 position is downright ridiculous in its vagueness: “Ship goods more efficiently”, without telling you how much more efficiently! Yet somehow you’re supposed to know that shipping goods “more efficiently” is exactly equivalent to taking 55.2 million cars off the road! It’s ridiculous. It’s like a scientific illiterate looked at the report and threw together a “quiz” without actually explaining (or understanding) anything. Which is probably close to just what happened.
The quiz has some serious issues but what you’re complaining about isn’t one of them. The standard solution to the variability of wind power is to have wind farms broadly distributed geographically, and to have auxiliary power sources such as natural gas fired peak generating plants. These are classically needed for nuclear power sources, too, because nuclear is not responsive to rapid increases in demand.
That’s what I felt, as I noted previously. To say that the questions “lack specificity” is putting it mildly!
The quiz is far from perfect, it does have flaws, but it gives some ideas on what we can do to help mother earth, with a rough estimate on their benefits.
You can’t economically build a wind farm in places where the prevailing winds, on average, don’t blow above a certain level.
And wind is no more responsive to rapid increase in demand than nuclear. Less so, in fact, because natural gas is necessary for average demand (where a wind farm is practical) and nuclear only needs it when demand increases rapidly. Natural gas is a source of GHG.
So, if you need a new power plant in a given location -
[ul][li]Does the location have high enough average wind speeds to run a wind turbine economically? If no, then your choice is [list][]some source like natural gas or coal or oil, which emit GHG, or []nuclear, which doesn’t.[/ul][/li][li]If yes, then your choice is either [ul][]wind plus natural gas, which emits GHG and doesn’t respond to rapid increases in demand, or []nuclear, which doesn’t.[/ul][/list][/li][quote=Bullitt]
The quiz is far from perfect, it does have flaws, but it gives some ideas on what we can do to help mother earth, with a rough estimate on their benefits.
[/quote]
Their ideas are based on wrong assumptions and therefore the estimates of the benefits are meaningless.
Regards,
Shodan
We only have to look at this first sentence, because the rest of your post is basically a rant premised on this.
Do you feel that you’re giving us a valuable insight here? Like the rest of your post, this doesn’t tell us anything that isn’t trivially obvious. Guess where wind farms tend to get built? Where the conditions are most appropriate. Guess where wind farms tend NOT to get built? Where the conditions are NOT appropriate.
But the thing is, conditions are favorable in most places. It’s been estimated that there is sufficient wind power to supply the world’s total electricity needs 40 times over. And the wind is always blowing somewhere. There is of course a practical limit to how far electricity can be transmitted, but we already engage in long-distance electricity exchanges across North America and elsewhere. The key to the problem of wind intermittency is partly to have a sufficiently widespread geographical area in the electricity grid so that it doesn’t matter as much. One can also benefit from schemes for electricity storage for which there are many technologies, from peak power plants, and of course from other sources of electricity. Denmark manages to generate more than 40% of its electricity from wind power, so it’s clearly viable. Perhaps Danes can’t watch TV or do their laundry half the time because there is no wind, as Trump claims, but I kinda doubt it. 
I’m all for nuclear power. I keep mentioning that nearly 60% of the power generation in Ontario is nuclear, and it’s one of the reasons that we were able to phase out all coal-fired plants years ago. But nuclear has its issues. Aside from the obvious ones like nuclear waste disposal, one of the biggest ones is cost. The cost issue is not helped by the fact that even here, where nuclear plants are efficient and well-run, some reactors have had to be decommisioned for various technical reasons, and this adds enormously to the overhead cost. And nuclear plants have long lead times and huge start-up costs, and have to have huge capacity in order to be efficient. Whereas with wind, you can have your own turbine in your backyard if you want, just like solar on your roof.
So the real solution to clean electric power generation is a blend of multiple technologies, not a prejudicial rejection of one or another for stupid reasons.
As usual, there are a lot of assumptions based on the technology of a few years back. There is a lot of progress in the wind (and battery) front that is ignored so as to conclude that wind power is not worth it.
https://www.renewablesfirst.co.uk/windpower/windpower-learning-centre/how-windy-does-it-have-to-be/
And based on the 5.5 m/s, there is plenty of space for development in the USA
Well, more points to disregard. 
As wolfpup noticed, and there are more reports that show that nuclear power has now an uphill battle to compete with renewables now.
As usual, this is wrong.
Cite.
Unfortunately, much of the debate around AGW is like the CNN quiz - faith-based rather than science-based.
Regards,
Shodan
Your cite is a website looking to sell solar panels.
This is true. Certainly the entire AGW-denier side of the debate is largely based on faith.
And as usual, disregarding, because it is a cite from 2012.* (the articles cited and commentaries show that) even there one cite actually does report that: “Research demonstrates that wind power could generate all the world’s electricity needs without large atmospheric effects”. What did I told you about ignoring progress? Your cite even noticed that “If we had cost-effective ways of storing wind energy the situation would be different.”
And this is 2019:
- As mentioned for the 1000th time: why is that many conservatives have a blind spot for timelines and the march of time?
12.5%. I suck.
Regarding the quiz, I usually did get the first 2 of each quiz right, but messed the placement of the last 2 usually. So I got:
“score: 56.3%
Not bad — you’re a potential planet protector”
So I will agree with the ones that do point out that while this quiz does point at the main items, some comparisons are strange or the differences for several of the items are so similar that it is silly to ding respondents for having one item put over the other.