Thus far, 1/4 million large white towers have been installed on farmland and mountaintops around the world, radically altering the look of those places, and killing birds and bats in large numbers; especially bats, which seem drawn to them. They have also driven a lot of people half-mad with their noise, forcing many to move. The industry denies or downplays most of that, since Big Wind is big business, but it’s somehow trusted by eco-people who would normally be wary of corporations that take over open space. The Dakota Access Pipeline made daily headlines, while windfarm protesters only make random news in America so far.
The typical wind turbine these days is between 400 and 500 feet tall, with a trend to drive bigger generators each year. Visibility can be over 40 miles, or further when they’re on mountains. And their ability to actually replace fossil fuels is weak because they can’t be constructed and maintained without carbon energy. Oil, specifically, isn’t used much for electricity-generation and wind can’t compete with its portable energy density. “100% renewable energy” defies physics.
Yet people keep ignoring those negatives, insisting that obvious eyesores are clean and green and somehow won’t keep killing more birds and bats. Common retorts from wind power fans are: “I think they’re beautiful” (so who needs natural scenery) or “would you rather live near a coal mine?” (old damage vs. new) or “house cats are killing more birds” (maybe, but not the same species). Various biologists think “green” energy may cause more extinctions than climate change as it physically disrupts habitats; see Clive Hambler, et al.
Are these industrial landscapes beautiful to you readers? http://bit.ly/2ugFMZx (link leads to Google image search)
There’s constant talk of “careful siting” but it’s usually not practical and scenery gets dominated by machines in any event. Have you seen how many wind turbines Mark Jacobson would like to build? His 2009 plan called for nearly 4 million around the world. Various politicians are OK with it, even though it fails basic physics, landscape ethics notwithstanding.
Why is it so difficult to get the new breed of environmentalists to acknowledge that industrializing the countryside is an odd way to save the planet, or that wind turbines really aren’t saving the planet at all?
Not exactly a fair and balanced or even entirely factual take on the whole deal.
All energy issues are relative (especially in how much the rest of the environment is damaged), and refusal to look at the larger picture doesn’t constitute a valid argument of any kind.
Not sure that I’d call them beautiful, but I don’t think they’re ugly, either. I think they look a lot better than most of the power plants that they replace (or supplement, if you prefer).
I don’t know that I’ve seen an environmental analysis that I completely trust yet. Yeah, we’ll need something for those times when the wind isn’t blowing, but that doesn’t mean wind power is worthless, either. And I don’t know how serious the bird-strike problem is, or why, or whether there might be a fix.
One to two orders of magnitude less than coal is a “large number”?
People complain about wind power making noise. Okay. What are the tradeoffs? What are you funging against? If we scrap all the wind turbines because they’re too noisy, what will that cost? Well, coal isn’t quite as noisy, but it smells, and causes serious negative health effects for everyone. We’d probably be better off with nuclear, but the correct way to support that is not to go after wind. People, by and large, aren’t ignoring these issues. They’re saying, “Okay, but this is still way better than the alternative.” It’s like having a cat that hisses and drools vs. having a house completely overrun by rat shit.
I’m struggling to pull anything resembling a coherent point out of this paragraph. Maybe try again. Maybe explain how 100% renewable energy fails basic physics?
It’s perhaps worth noting that Clive Hambler’s opinions on climate change are far outside the mainstream. His claims that species will handle climate change because “most of them have been around for multiple ice ages” is ludicrous because it misses just what’s so problematic about the modern warming trend - the incredible speed with which it is progressing and will likely continue to progress. He’s not an expert in climatology in any way, and the paper linked above shows that quite conclusively - it reads less like a scientific examination of the effects of climate change on conservationism, and more like a “Denialism 101” handbook put out by WUWT or the Heartland Institute.
Perhaps because the arguments are as piss-poor as here? You appeal to “experts” (well, okay, just one) who are marginal at best and whose opinions are born at least in part out of a severe lack of understanding of a scientific field they are not experts in (to be clear, they never claim to be experts in it). You consider the costs without examining the benefits, and more importantly without examining the costs and benefits of the alternatives. It’s not a good argument.
On the matter of aesthetics, I don’t like them. And they’re a hazard when near settled areas. If you want to know my standard of beauty, check this out:
Man the builder? No. Since start of Holocene times man has basically been a digger.
WRT environmental impact, I am of the opinion that if it takes longer to develop, and has a longer payback than a fossil fuel engine, it’ll probably cost the environment a lot more. [unproven]
OP, you talk about animals being lost and folks having to move away from wind turbines…do you have any stats that would account for species loss and human relocation via coal or gas extraction?
I find the American right so very strange, the one corner of the political world that has decided to adopt the attitudes like the Bolsheviks about the science, making it subsidiary to their political ideology.
Of course in the rest of the world the investment in the renewable energy accelerates and so does the technology, so with their Trump the americans can lock themselves into the path of inefficiency.
I like wind turbines. I also like solar panels on urban rooftops. I think they are beautiful, both aesthetically and because they represent a greener, safer, renewable environment.
And I very much prefer them over coal plants and quarries.
I’ve spent the last two decades trying to decide if I should laugh, cry or pull my hair over how much of the Spanish left is in love with the same things as the American right. “The ends meet”, all right.
I have a couple of clients who manufacture solar panels and sell home solar kits. The manufacturing process employs some truly horrific chemicals (seriously it sets water on fire :eek:) and the batteries aren’t actually the greenest things ever either. And I agree with the bit about Windfarms being an eyesore.
I am a big fan of alternate energy, and especially for solar home kits I am certain we are on the cusp of a revolution as game changing as the Internet or smart phones.
However, unlike the tightly controlled thermal, hydro and nuclear industries, regulators have to catch up. The otherwise neat hippy captains of these new industries seem unhappy about that prospect.
better wind farms than the smoggy haze over Karachi my friend.
Of course there is that part of the Left in the west that has completely imaginary ideas about an energy generation by purely the wind and the solar, and doing it right now, so opposing any kind of other development.
and once the hard green Left pays attention, they will try to impose uneconomical approaches to the manufacture of the panels, etc.
But the solar panel etc yes they have the environmental cost, but better that than the coal fired plants.
Yes, a certain number of birds and bats get killed by the blades of wind turbines.
Alternatively, we could continue using carbon-based fuels until we warm the world sufficiently for a mass extinction event.
Other than on a couple of trips to Europe (where they looked pretty good, actually), I’ve only seen them in pix. I’d like to see more of them IRL rather than in pix. IOW, we’re a long long way from having too damn many of them, if there is a point where that becomes a thing.
there is not a need for the alarmism of ‘mass extinction event’ - it is only necessary to make the fair comparison between the habitat and the deaths of birds (for example, but not just) arising from the fossil fuel extraction activities, like the poisoning of the coastal wetlands (the Nigeria for example) for the Like to Like comparison.
The comparison is not a flattering one for the fossil fuel mostly.
