Wind power now considered environmentally unfriendly

[Gregoshi]

Birds are overrated.

Unless cooked properly.

[Adrian II]

Unless cooked properly.

I knew you'd get wind of this thread.

[Marshal Murat]

Now we seem to have turned the turbine the wrong way.

[Papewaio]

A good easterly should correctly orientate this thread in the right direction.

[Husar]

Fruit WANTS to be eaten. That's why it tastes so good and has such vivid colours. When you eat fruit you are really having sex with a plant. It procreates through you.

Vegans drive plants to extinction.

I hope you intended to contradict yourself there.

Build them at the border, silly. Like we do with nuclear power plants. That way you have all the benefits and all the drawbacks are shared.

Sheesh, the rest of the world are such girlie wimps.

I've always been wondering what we did to deserve such an energy policy but I guess our green party just hates our country a lot.
Apart from that, if we build them too close to the border your power plants will act as windshields and the damage done if one falls over the border is probably less than if one of those powerplants suffers from severe flatulence.

[Somebody Else]

French (powerplants), flatulent? Never...

Incidentally, Nuclear for the win! That, and giant hamster wheels. Does anyone know if the boys at CERN and JET are getting anywhere yet?

[Vladimir]

Why don't we just use the idea from the Matrix? If evil nasty humans are causing global warming then why can't we use them as batteries. Maybe it could help solve our immigration problem.

[Fragony]

They should look into this http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deuterium

[CBR]

They should look into this http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deuterium

Like this http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ITER ?

But of course the extremists dont like that either.


CBR

[Fragony]

If extremists would stop breathing it would recude CO2 with 20% some estimates say. Guess that is a bit too noble.

[Don Corleone]

I apologize to anyone that's confused by the title of the thread. It should read "Wind power now considered environmentally unfriendly". Perhaps if a mod could correct my error..... much obliged.

[Scurvy]

I apologize to anyone that's confused by the title of the thread. It should read "Wind power now considered environmentally unfriendly". Perhaps if a mod could correct my error..... much obliged.

just a small typo...

[Tribesman]

Tribesy, I didn't find that... it'd be nice if you had a link, but no big deal if you don't.

Well Bloodrast , I shall see if I can find a report on it , the basics are .
Take a big hill that isn't much use but gets persistant high winds and put up wind turbines ...good idea you can even get grant aid for it , make a single straight road to access the height from the valley ...OK minimum disturbance but slight problem with erosion , and oh what about rain water discharge....OK theres a river at the bottom , water goes straight down the road into the river ..errrrrr ...OK .
To reduce the amount of machinery and the associated damage their operation causes on the site plus to shorten the period of noise pollution use blasting instead of breakers.....bloody good idea....now what bloody idiot forgot to think about the rather large bog and associated lake of bog water on the peak that came flooding down the nice straight road into the river when they blew big holes in the side of the hill .
See they did some nice environmental impact studies , but missed out on one really major feature about the location they chose .

[Blodrast]

Heh, that's pretty funny. No need to dig for the article, I'm getting the gist of it from your summary. Thanks :)

[macsen rufus]

Take a big hill that isn't much use but gets persistant high winds and put up wind turbines ...good idea you can even get grant aid for it , make a single straight road to access the height from the valley ...OK minimum disturbance but slight problem with erosion , and oh what about rain water discharge....OK theres a river at the bottom , water goes straight down the road into the river ..errrrrr ...OK .
To reduce the amount of machinery and the associated damage their operation causes on the site plus to shorten the period of noise pollution use blasting instead of breakers.....bloody good idea....now what bloody idiot forgot to think about the rather large bog and associated lake of bog water on the peak that came flooding down the nice straight road into the river when they blew big holes in the side of the hill .
See they did some nice environmental impact studies , but missed out on one really major feature about the location they chose .

Quite the horror story However you can't blame the turbine for it - if this bunch of jokers had been building a coal-fired power station instead it would have been just as poorly engineered, but on a much larger scale. As with all things, there are some people more competent than others, and there are both well and poorly managed projects. Looks like whoever did the EIA was the incompetent one It would have been a different story if they'd thought to follow the contours with the access, made a few swales to control run-off, etc etc.



And why is it such a shock that some "environmentalists" disagree with others? It's a broad-brush label to be sure, but then again so is "the left" - and guess what, social democrats don't agree with Trotskyites, and I'm sure if I knew more I'd be able to name different wings of the Republican Party who don't see eye to eye, too.

"Birdies" tend more to the "conservationist" side of things and often have trouble grasping the wider green agenda, and many happily trail the length and breadth of the country in their SUVs to spot a lesser-fimbrilled-thingumy-wotsit. Case in point: a local RSPB branch (sorry - 'Royal Society for the Protection of Birds' for you non-Brits) once asked for input on a development issue by other green groups replied: "Sorry, we're birds - we don't "do" pollution". WTF?

[Soulforged]

Are there any environmentally sources of energy, or should we all just do the planet a favor and commit mass suicide as a species?

Yeah!! Their own ego.

[Seamus Fermanagh]

Don C., Lemur, et. al:

To what extent do you believe that modern "environmentalism" has been hijacked by an anti-capitalism/quasi-luddite fringer mentality?

Basic issues -- clean water and clean air are a common good, try to restore things back more or less the way they were when you're finished -- aren't really a bone of contention in the first place.

Are there really "watermelons" out there? Greenies who, underneath it all, are pursuing an old Red agenda?

I would think that it would be obvious that we, collectively, are not going to chuck out all of the advantages of modern living and return to anarcho-agrarian collectives any time soon....or ever. Yet that seems to be the only level of change that would make some of the most strident Greens happy.

[JR-]

Wind power is about to get more expensive and thus less economic because the insurers have cottoned on to the fact that turbines need loads maintaining and need replacing quicker than they were led to believe, so the premiums could as much as double.

[KukriKhan]

Those wacky Dutchmen are trying out a new wind-capture device


And others are also working on "urban turbine" http://www.pushpullbar.com/forums/showthread.php?t=6019

so rather than some huge, centralized facility, maybe several smaller, local sources can make do. Pro: fewer dead birds. Con: still a bit noisy.

[Tribesman]

Con: still a bit noisy.

Another con is vibraton .

[Gregoshi]

Another con is vibraton .

Could the vibrations be used
for goodness rather than evil?

[Banquo's Ghost]

Basic issues -- clean water and clean air are a common good, try to restore things back more or less the way they were when you're finished -- aren't really a bone of contention in the first place.

Not now, but they were. If you look at the early attempts to bring out clean air acts, industrialists were pretty seriously against any such idea. Much as they despised the idea of legislating against child labour and so forth.

Are there really "watermelons" out there? Greenies who, underneath it all, are pursuing an old Red agenda?

Yes, indeed. Certainly here in Europe, many Green parties started off as more acceptable versions of Communist parties, and though many have moderated, there is still that tradition of the Red-Green Alliance.

I would think that it would be obvious that we, collectively, are not going to chuck out all of the advantages of modern living and return to anarcho-agrarian collectives any time soon....or ever. Yet that seems to be the only level of change that would make some of the most strident Greens happy.

There are still vociferous extremes that think that. I have yet to find one who is willing to be the first to starve to death as an example in reducing the population to Stone Age levels.

The pressure groups such as Greenpeace are there to raise awareness and do so by direct action and challenging tactics. They do this because nice people don't get listened to. It's a time-honoured tactic when outgunned, but moderate voters get turned off by the rhetoric.

There are however, some extremely intelligent voices that get sidelined with/co-opted by the fanatics where in fact they are very well worth understanding. James Lovelock is the most compelling of these. You can tell he is worth listening merely by the fact both hard-line greenies and see-no-evil industrialists hate him with a passion.

Sadly, in our partisan western world, intelligent and complex situations are always reduced to monosyllabic headlines.

[Seamus Fermanagh]

Not now, but they were. If you look at the early attempts to bring out clean air acts, industrialists were pretty seriously against any such idea. Much as they despised the idea of legislating against child labour and so forth.

I don't recall there being that much opposition, but it has been a while. I'll bone up a bit.

There are still vociferous extremes that think that. I have yet to find one who is willing to be the first to starve to death as an example in reducing the population to Stone Age levels.

The pressure groups such as Greenpeace are there to raise awareness and do so by direct action and challenging tactics. They do this because nice people don't get listened to. It's a time-honoured tactic when outgunned, but moderate voters get turned off by the rhetoric.

There are however, some extremely intelligent voices that get sidelined with/co-opted by the fanatics where in fact they are very well worth understanding. James Lovelock is the most compelling of these. You can tell he is worth listening merely by the fact both hard-line greenies and see-no-evil industrialists hate him with a passion.

This makes him worth a Google from me. Thanks.

[Big_John]

James Lovelock is the most compelling of these.

i used to have a signed copy of his original 'gaia' book. but it was apparently lost in one of my moves. :(