Yes, but the oil field is 200 miles off-shore or in Saudi Arabia - the wind farm is is in plain sight on some of the best loved areas of the UK.
Simple Linctus has the main answer - in the UK at least - anti-wind farm feeling is mostly linked to preservation of the countryside. This can be local, “we don’t want those things looming over us/causing us headaches/interfering with the telly, etc” or national “we don’t want all the few remaining unspoiled, beautiful, and rugged parts of our overcrowded island covered with massive metal constructions”. Either way this plays more to the right of British politics - which is less urban and more into “preservation” - than to the left.
Denial of climate change is not really an issue - all the major parties accept it as a real phenomena (I don’t rank UKIP as a major party as they have no seats in parliament and are unlikely to get one) and even people like the Conservative junior energy minister (who had a go at wind farms yesterday) accept the need for reducing the dependance on fossil fuels.
I think there is also a right wing irritation with some of the more “enthusiastic” proponents of wind farms who seem to see it as a magic bullet that will solve our energy problems is only the pricing/sudsidies are right to get enough built. From my point of view they obviously a useful part of the energy mix but the energy density is low - you have to cover an area the size of Wales to make any significant contribution to the UK’s energy needs. See Prof David MacKay’s book Sustainable Energy - without the hot air for a full analysis of the problem with substituting renewables for our whole energy supply.
What’s the feeling in the UK wrt nuclear? I’m assuming the public is not up for putting in a bunch of new nuclear plants, but really don’t know and am curious.
I’m not sure those numbers really mean much. Yes, the 10000-40000 estimate looks small compared to the other numbers, but consider that wind turbines are still pretty uncommon in the US, whereas there are millions of cats and cars and probably millions of miles of power lines.
Nowhere near as anti-nuclear as the States or Germany. The government - including the Lib Dem coalition partners - is committed to a new set of nuclear power plants being built. The sticking point is financial rather than anti-nuclear feeling. The Coalition is committed to “no public subsidies” for the new build but that leaves open an awful lot of other question - primarily the guaranteed price the suppliers will get for their electricity. Of course there are plenty of rabid anti-nuclear people in Friends of the Earth and elsewhere but my feeling the public is not that bothered - more concerned with whether the lights will still be on in 5 years time! Sensibly the new plants are planned for sites with existing nuclear facilities where the local community is used to nuclear and pleased to see the jobs it generates.
Only a couple of days ago Hitachi spend $1.1Bn on buying Horizon Nuclear Power - the consortium planning to build two of the new power stations. (Buying from a German energy company that is pulling out of nuclear since the German government changed its policy post-Fukushima.) As this BBC articlesays there are still lot of hurdles to jump but Hitachi obviously expect to get a return on their investment.
As for bird deaths: Wikipedia has a page on the environmental impact of wind power. The US Fish & Wildlife Service estimated in 2009 that wind turbines kill 440,000 birds a year (10x the high end of Howstuffworks’ estimate). An article in Nature concluded that the average wind turbine kills 4.29 birds/year.
In conclusion, Howstuffworks.com appears to be cherry-picking their data. Don’t trust their numbers.
What do you mean 15 thousand people had to die to make Fukushima happen?
Fukushima happened because Japan’s nuclear power industry is in private hands, just as it is in the US. They cut costs, corners, lied about safety, lied about risk assessments, covered up deficiencies, accidents, safety, etc. That’s why it happened. It should have been able to survive the tsunami & quake. It didn’t because the company building it lied to cut costs and boost profits. Fukushima would have survived just fine if the company, TEPCO, did what it claimed it was doing, but wasn’t.
There is another nuclear power facility up the coast from Fukushima, situated even closer to the epicenter of the quake, and it survived just fine. People took refuge there. Why? Because it was owned by a different company and the CEO refused to cut the same corners that TEPCO did.
That’s what you get from private business.
Now, how would you suggest we prevent private corporations from cutting corners and endangering both society and the environment? Less regulations?
The same problem exists in the USA, but not so much with the rural areas; it’s the suburbs that are in the hills (so usually richer people live there) where people complain, because the wind turbines on lower hill peaks block their scenic views.
Thanks guys! Didn’t know that, but it’s good to hear. I can certainly understand the public being wary of the costs…it is a large capital expenditure, and that is definitely a rational reason for concern. I wish that were the case here in the US, but sadly it’s not.
No thanks…if you have something to corroborate your sort of assertions about 15000 deaths and plants surviving fine hit by the same circumstances then do so. Google glurge doesn’t appeal to me, especially after butting heads with you on this subject in the past.
This is a wind thread. I recently started a thread about similar dangers to US nuclear plants sited below dams. You can take your issues there if you like.
That’s nauseating. And renewables just keep piling on the new capacity, despite this. Imagine how far ahead we’d be if we funded renewables the same as oil, gas & nuke for even just a couple years.
