Golf Club Atlas
GolfClubAtlas.com => Golf Course Architecture Discussion Group => Topic started by: Marty Bonnar on January 31, 2012, 03:13:40 PM
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http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-edinburgh-east-fife-16809556
Just check out some of our First Minister's latest wisdom. Apparently, it's alright to allow someone to make 'em here, we just don't want to place 'em near our golf developments.
FBD.
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Martin -
For a while, they were assembling wind turbines in Nigg, north of Inverness, where they still do repair work on the North Sea oil platforms. Up close, those wind turbines are HUGE.
DT
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I quite like them. I think they look kind of elegant. :)
Jon
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There are worse blights on the horizon. However they are not pretty. They do beat the heck out of al the nuclear towers in the midlands or on the horizon at RSG.
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GE is building wind turbines here in Pensacola and shipping them all over the world. A bunch of real manufacturing jobs!
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There are worse blights on the horizon. However they are not pretty. They do beat the heck out of al the nuclear towers in the midlands or on the horizon at RSG.
Tiger, cooling towers have nothing to do with Nuclear power.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cooling_tower
Yes we all want jobs, but then what is a sustainable job. There is a huge question over the 'greenness' of these turbines. Over the next few decades vast areas of offshore windfarms will be created all around GB, and the calculations that support such investment are at best shaky. There's currently a general consensus against our more traditional means of generating power and therefore ANYTHING that uses windpower should be supported by politicians, and thus ‘support’ is always given.. The debate should not be about the aesthetics but whether they actually provide efficient power. NIMBY’s are the only ones objecting and they only see it as a local beauty issue. Who would have thought we’d live so long that some ‘Greens’ are supporting more Nuclear investment? But as Tiger shows above people have strange unsupported ideas about that too.
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Tiger: To be a pedant, that's not a nuclear plant near Sandwich/Deal, it's an old coal and, later, oil plant. Apparently it is being torn down soon.
And add me to the list of those who quite like the look of the windfarms.
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There's already quite a few windfarms all round Scotland and as to Marty's cheeky suggestion that Eck won't allow the proposed offshore wind farm development to spoil Donald's view, well that would go against precedence elsewhere when the Scottish government have called in windfarm proposals. Personally I think Salmond has too much rapped up in green energy and anyway Trump has already built his course so what's he going to do ? Not go ahead with the bit that makes profit ? Not very likely.
Put me down to not having a problem with them visually but in Tony's camp as to not being convinced on their effectiveness.
Niall
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This is kinda cool, but doesn’t even show the existing ones near Deal and Great Yarmouth let alone the planed one near Aberdeen nor the huge areas off Norfolk .
http://www.bwea.com/ukwed/map-in-planning.html
I suspect that site has an agenda. It’s not uncommon.
This is from Wikipedia
“As of January 2012, there were 321 operational wind farms in the UK, with 3,506 turbines and 5,953 MW of installed capacity. A further 3,519 MW worth of schemes are currently under construction, while another 5,804 MW have planning consent and some 9,849 MW are in planning awaiting approval.[10]
The UK will require 7,500 offshore turbines by 2020 to meet EU targets”
Sorry could you repeat that?
“The UK will require 7,500 offshore turbines by 2020 to meet EU targets”
Some of these planned offshore farms cover the area of a good city and all approved based on shaky science.
To date the largest in the world is the one you can see from Deal
Again from Wiki
“The owners will receive a subsidy of £60M per year on top of the £30-40M cost of the electricity due to Renewables Obligation Certificates, and based on the estimated working life of the turbines of 20 years, the total subsidy will come to £1.2 billion. Since there are only 21 permanent green jobs, the subsidy per job comes to around £3M per year”
I believe those old cooling towers are not due to be dismantled because they are linked with Asbestos and it’s just too expensive, better to leave them for another day. Who do you think will pick up the bill of removing the wind turbines once a more efficient and truly renewable way of harnessing natures energies, show them up for what they are? They are follies pure and simple (IMO of course).
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Gentlemen,
Why is it that whenever I read or hear about wind farms Don Quixote springs to mind. I think that this technology is a folly of no mean proportions and the infrastructure a blight on the landscape. I believe that nuclear power will prevail notwithstanding recent disasters.
Just my tuppenceworth!
Cheers Colin
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Don't talk to me about windmills. I bought one once at great expense from a company call Arbutus. Apart from the tax incentives from the State of California it was a monumental disaster. The money I was supposed to receive sounded quite good at the presentation but it turned out that the contract we had with So.Cal Edison produced less than half of what I expected. I will not go into the ramifications of the deal but I surrendered the windmill to So.Ca.Ed. to avoid coughing up payments that were made in excess of the assumed return.
All in all a very valuable lesson and they will never produce the amounts of power needed for a modern economy and they are as ugly as sin to boot.
Bob
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Gentlemen,
Why is it that whenever I read or hear about wind farms Don Quixote springs to mind. I think that this technology is a folly of no mean proportions and the infrastructure a blight on the landscape. I believe that nuclear power will prevail notwithstanding recent disasters.
Just my tuppenceworth!
Cheers Colin
Funny, when we took our kids to visit our ancestral land (Galicia, Spain) prior to the Buda in 2010, I half expected El Quijote to come around the hill into sight, all dishelved and bloodied after a heroic fight against one of those monstrosities. The benevolent government of Spain thought fit to take pieces of land I owned for which they paid me a pittance, leaving for posterity these things that seem to turn, or not, on their own accord, and that will surely weather poorly in the wet environment. Betting the redistribution gains in the peseta to Euro exchange on green energy, this beautiful country has achieved 23%+ unemployment and huge debt, forcing it to abandon the heavy subsidies which made these things marginally viable to begin with. I wonder who is going to be left holding the bag when the turbines become not just an eye-sore, but a danger to people and animals. Thank God that the trial bar is not as "advanced" there.
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The biggest problem with the anti-wind folks is that all research into renewable energy is good. We are going to eventually have to face up to the fact that oil is not the fuel of the future so all the more research and trial and error attempts is good stuff - thats how we learn.
Ciao
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Count me with those that will take ugly over dangerous. This golfer may live near a windmill in this lifetime but never will live near a nuclear power plant. There is still a long way to go for them to have any significant impact on energy needs. Sean you might be surprised how much Oil and Natural Gas is left on this earth. Nothwithstanding, thinking and learning is always a good thing.
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The biggest problem with the anti-wind folks is that all research into renewable energy is good. We are going to eventually have to face up to the fact that oil is not the fuel of the future so all the more research and trial and error attempts is good stuff - thats how we learn.
Ciao
Disagree completely with your second statement. There's oil to burn for centuries. e.g. the U.S. alone has trillions of barrels of shale oil reserves. Add natural gas to the equation, and we have plenty of energy.
And I disagree with your first statement too. Wind energy is an incredible boondoggle. Like the electric car, it sounds great. But in reality it cannot supply even a small fraction of the energy needed. The vagaries of the wind are the reason. So it needs a backup, that always must be turned on, 100% of the time.
Besides, we've gone way beyond so-called research into wind. Nations are investing billions and billions into it. I bet it has the same future as the Chevy Volt: total failure. Environmentalism (again) run mad.
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Jim & Tiger
It doesn't matter how much oil and gas there is - its an archaic form energy which when burned isn't clever for the environment.
It also doesn't matter if wind power will solve the energy problem, its a start - the start is what matters most.
Ciao
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Sean is right! Fossile fuels are an archaic form of energy. The answer lies in diversity of sources and those being close to the point of consumtion. Wind is certainly one of the new energy types.
Jon
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Actually Jon, wind is an old energy type, before we figured out other ways to generate power. :)
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I would have to agree with Sean here.
Even though some energy forms are less "efficient" than others...given some types are far cleaner than others, its worth it for a cleaner future to pursue these technologies very aggressively, even at a loss.
Because the start is indeed the key. If every project was either continued or chopped based on its first few prototypes, we would have never have modern automobiles or planes or computers for that matter, because the first several versions of them really sucked. The same lee-way/forgiveness has to be put in place in for any new technology...especially when it has such a worthwhile goal.
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Actually Jon, wind is an old energy type, before we figured out other ways to generate power. :)
Got me there Craig :-X
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As much as I believe the alternative energy movement is as much in love with subsidies as green power, I do have hope that tidal power could work.
See;
http://www.oceanenergycouncil.com/index.php/Tidal-Energy/Tidal-Energy.html
Bob
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I would have to agree with Sean here.
Even though some energy forms are less "efficient" than others...given some types are far cleaner than others, its worth it for a cleaner future to pursue these technologies very aggressively, even at a loss.
Because the start is indeed the key. If every project was either continued or chopped based on its first few prototypes, we would have never have modern automobiles or planes or computers for that matter, because the first several versions of them really sucked. The same lee-way/forgiveness has to be put in place in for any new technology...especially when it has such a worthwhile goal.
So reintroducing the horse will be seen as new technology someday?
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Wind turbines are a blot on the landscape likes cart tracks. Real visual pollution
They serve very little purpose except for those not committed to the real world that has to accommodate so many humans. Add to that the fact we are paying 20% more on our fuel bills for the so called green measures - so that the Greens can feel smugly satisfied with themselves. >:(
As for wind power, it went out with the ark, yet I must say give me a windmill farm any day in place of those awful wind turbines. Nuke the Greens and use their bodies as fuel rods for nuclear power stations – that’s should make them happy and please the rest of us too. ;D
Go on take a vote either ’A’ or ‘B’ which looks better on the eyes?
A. Wind Turbines
(http://i346.photobucket.com/albums/p421/Melvyn_Hunter/WindTurbines.jpg)
B. Windmills
(http://i346.photobucket.com/albums/p421/Melvyn_Hunter/Windmills.jpg)
Green, Greens, the only Greens I know you play golf upon them.
Melvyn
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As much as I believe the alternative energy movement is as much in love with subsidies as green power, I do have hope that tidal power could work.
See;
http://www.oceanenergycouncil.com/index.php/Tidal-Energy/Tidal-Energy.html
Bob
Bob
I think I'm right in saying that a significant proportion of Scotlands power comes from hydroelectric schemes built decades ago. I also think I'm right in saying that one of the islands also has the same technology but instead of turbines powered by water channeled from lochs they use tides to power shoreline turbines. Given the length of Scotlands shoreline I would have thought that would be abetter way to go than wind power that works when it wants to.
Niall
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Sean, As a man told me once, it does not matter what the facts are if I perceive something to be A, then it is A to me. Please save those facts and additional hard information for someone who will listen to them. On the proper way to behave on here. Please accept my apology. I should not expect you to know my business no more than I should yours.
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I would have to agree with Sean here. Even though some energy forms are less "efficient" than others...given some types are far cleaner than others, its worth it for a cleaner future to pursue these technologies very aggressively, even at a loss. Because the start is indeed the key. If every project was either continued or chopped based on its first few prototypes, we would have never have modern automobiles or planes or computers for that matter, because the first several versions of them really sucked. The same lee-way/forgiveness has to be put in place in for any new technology...especially when it has such a worthwhile goal.
No one is talking about curtailing research into wind or other green technologies, let alone chopping prototypes. What sane people are doing is questioning the logic behind putting prototypes into production, when they are so inefficient they need massive subsidies in order to get made at all.
On the BBC’s excellent Coast programme there was a report of a potential new form of energy creation. As the tides move sea water into and out of estuaries the salinity of the water changes markedly, depending on the state of the tide. Using osmosis incredible pressure can be trapped and released and turned into energy. New ideas are out there and I wish that more of these subsidies were going to pure research rather than shoring up a technology that doesn’t work yet.
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I would have to agree with Sean here. Even though some energy forms are less "efficient" than others...given some types are far cleaner than others, its worth it for a cleaner future to pursue these technologies very aggressively, even at a loss. Because the start is indeed the key. If every project was either continued or chopped based on its first few prototypes, we would have never have modern automobiles or planes or computers for that matter, because the first several versions of them really sucked. The same lee-way/forgiveness has to be put in place in for any new technology...especially when it has such a worthwhile goal.
No one is talking about curtailing research into wind or other green technologies, let alone chopping prototypes. What sane people are doing is questioning the logic behind putting prototypes into production, when they are so inefficient they need massive subsidies in order to get made at all.
On the BBC’s excellent Coast programme there was a report of a potential new form of energy creation. As the tides move sea water into and out of estuaries the salinity of the water changes markedly, depending on the state of the tide. Using osmosis incredible pressure can be trapped and released and turned into energy. New ideas are out there and I wish that more of these subsidies were going to pure research rather than shoring up a technology that doesn’t work yet.
If I remember correctly, the Spanish experiment in subsidy was a disaster, with the actual cost of a KWH, after cost of production and subsidy, was 3X what the utility sold it for!
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Got this in e-mail the other day...
The Green Thing
Checking out at the store, the young cashier suggested to the older woman that she should bring her own grocery bags because plastic bags weren't good for the environment.
The woman apologized and explained, "We didn't have this green thing back in my earlier days."
The clerk responded, "That's our problem today. Your generation did not care enough to save our environment for future generations."
She was right -- our generation didn't have the green thing in its day. Back then, we returned milk bottles, soda bottles and beer bottles to the store. The store sent them back to the plant to be washed and sterilized and refilled, so it could use the same bottles over and over. So they really were recycled. But we didn't have the green thing back in our day.
We walked up stairs, because we didn't have an escalator in every store and office building. We walked to the grocery store and didn't climb into a 300-horsepower machine every time we had to go two blocks. But she was right. We didn't have the green thing in our day.
Back then, we washed the baby's diapers because we didn't have the throw-away kind. We dried clothes on a line, not in an energy gobbling machine burning up 220 volts -- wind and solar power really did dry our clothes back in our early days. Kids got hand-me-down clothes from their brothers or sisters, not always brand-new clothing. But that young lady is right. We didn't have the green thing back in our day.
Back then, we had one TV, or radio, in the house -- not a TV in every room. And the TV had a small screen the size of a handkerchief (remember them?), not a screen the size of the state of Montana . In the kitchen, we blended and stirred by hand because we didn't have electric machines to do everything for us. When we packaged a fragile item to send in the mail, we used wadded up old newspapers to cushion it, not Styrofoam or plastic bubble wrap. Back then, we didn't fire up an engine and burn gasoline just to cut the lawn. We used a push mower that ran on human power. We exercised by working so we didn't need to go to a health club to run on treadmills that operate on electricity. But she's right. We didn't have the green thing back then.
We drank from a fountain when we were thirsty instead of using a cup or a plastic bottle every time we had a drink of water. We refilled writing pens with ink instead of buying a new pen, and we replaced the razor blades in a razor instead of throwing away the whole razor just because the blade got dull. But we didn't have the green thing back then.
Back then, people took the streetcar or a bus, and kids rode their bikes to school or walked instead of turning their moms into a 24-hour taxi service. We had one electrical outlet in a room, not an entire bank of sockets to power a dozen appliances. And we didn't need a computerized gadget to receive a signal beamed from satellites 2,000 miles out in space in order to find the nearest pizza joint.
But isn't it sad the current generation laments how wasteful we old folks were just because we didn't have the green thing back then?
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This subsidy talk is a bit amusing. You can look at almost any product in the economy and it likely has one subsidy or another.
Oil is subsidized, electricity is heavily regulated to keep rates reasonable, natural gas...ditto, even many "energy" crops....there are lots of example in the energy biz that get plenty of help from Joe blow taxpayer.
Everything we have around us is based on dozens of years of research...someone had to pay for that! The problem is corporations and governments are all focused on the now, and what are we doing this quarter, instead of having the long term vision that our fore-fathers had for a better tommorrow by planning for decades in advance. This is slowly eroding away in our current political environment and the repercussions are going to be massive.
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Kalen your facts are wrong. There are tax policies on how one deducts costs to drill and produce oil and gas. There is a depletion allowance of 15% for those whose resource is being depleted by production, rather than pay straight ordinary income. Part of that leaves this year when the new passive income tax in the health care package kicks in. There are no/zero subsidies of any kind on Oil or Natural Gas in the USA.
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I'm actually taking an Energy Economics course right now and enjoying it immensely.
Bob mentions tidal (and wave) energies as being a promising alternative. I happen to agree and while it's not THE answer, there's been plenty of movement forward in efficiency and cost effectiveness of these technologies. They also happen to have as little environmental impact as windmills on land and are much easier on the eyes.
To take the important info from a recent DOE snippet "it could generate about 15% of U.S. Energy consumption," which is not an insignificant amount of power, especially since we are always looking for more efficient uses of energy as well, so that percentage could theoretically rise.
http://www.energyboom.com/emerging/doe-reports-united-states-immense-wave-and-tidal-energy-resources (http://www.energyboom.com/emerging/doe-reports-united-states-immense-wave-and-tidal-energy-resources)
The fact is the more of an investment that is made into renewable energies now, the smoother the transition in the future. While many would expect energy costs to rise dramatically if we aren't able to make the transition to nuclear, wind, solar, tide, etc... costs will not be the issue. At least in the short term coal's role as a Backstop Technology to oil will allow energy provider to continue to keep costs down at the expense of polluting the environment.
(http://www.hypothetical-bias.net/.a/6a00d83451bd4869e20147e0af624c970b-800wi)
Like the graph shows, if we can decrease the cost of renewables now, the long term effects are huge.
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Kalen your facts are wrong. There are tax policies on how one deducts costs to drill and produce oil and gas. There is a depletion allowance of 15% for those whose resource is being depleted by production, rather than pay straight ordinary income. Part of that leaves this year when the new passive income tax in the health care package kicks in. There are no/zero subsidies of any kind on Oil or Natural Gas in the USA.
TIger,
We're talking semantics here. Any kind of cost reduction or transfer of money from gov't to private industry is a "subsidy" because it has the effect of lowering the costs to produce energy X resulting in (hopefully) lower prices to the user. So even if it comes in the forms of taxes or accelerated depreciation on oil rigging, its still for all effective purposes a "subsidy".
But I don't doubt that the powers that be try to "label" it differently for PR reasons.
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Got this in e-mail the other day...
The Green Thing
Checking out at the store, the young cashier suggested to the older woman that she should bring her own grocery bags because plastic bags weren't good for the environment.
The woman apologized and explained, "We didn't have this green thing back in my earlier days."
The clerk responded, "That's our problem today. Your generation did not care enough to save our environment for future generations."
She was right -- our generation didn't have the green thing in its day. Back then, we returned milk bottles, soda bottles and beer bottles to the store. The store sent them back to the plant to be washed and sterilized and refilled, so it could use the same bottles over and over. So they really were recycled. But we didn't have the green thing back in our day.
We walked up stairs, because we didn't have an escalator in every store and office building. We walked to the grocery store and didn't climb into a 300-horsepower machine every time we had to go two blocks. But she was right. We didn't have the green thing in our day.
Back then, we washed the baby's diapers because we didn't have the throw-away kind. We dried clothes on a line, not in an energy gobbling machine burning up 220 volts -- wind and solar power really did dry our clothes back in our early days. Kids got hand-me-down clothes from their brothers or sisters, not always brand-new clothing. But that young lady is right. We didn't have the green thing back in our day.
Back then, we had one TV, or radio, in the house -- not a TV in every room. And the TV had a small screen the size of a handkerchief (remember them?), not a screen the size of the state of Montana . In the kitchen, we blended and stirred by hand because we didn't have electric machines to do everything for us. When we packaged a fragile item to send in the mail, we used wadded up old newspapers to cushion it, not Styrofoam or plastic bubble wrap. Back then, we didn't fire up an engine and burn gasoline just to cut the lawn. We used a push mower that ran on human power. We exercised by working so we didn't need to go to a health club to run on treadmills that operate on electricity. But she's right. We didn't have the green thing back then.
We drank from a fountain when we were thirsty instead of using a cup or a plastic bottle every time we had a drink of water. We refilled writing pens with ink instead of buying a new pen, and we replaced the razor blades in a razor instead of throwing away the whole razor just because the blade got dull. But we didn't have the green thing back then.
Back then, people took the streetcar or a bus, and kids rode their bikes to school or walked instead of turning their moms into a 24-hour taxi service. We had one electrical outlet in a room, not an entire bank of sockets to power a dozen appliances. And we didn't need a computerized gadget to receive a signal beamed from satellites 2,000 miles out in space in order to find the nearest pizza joint.
But isn't it sad the current generation laments how wasteful we old folks were just because we didn't have the green thing back then?
Bravo! I'm about to turn 70 :o and can verify everything your source is saying, Craig. Everything grows at geometric rates.
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The fact is the more of an investment that is made into renewable energies now, the smoother the transition in the future.
You’re graph is very pretty but at least have the sense to realise the reason why the world is in a mess right now is because of poor investment decisions. It wouldn’t have happened if we’d had LESS investment in bad choices and more investment in sound ones.
What is needed is not just MORE but smarter investments in Green energy, infrastructure, etc, etc etc.
Wind around the extensive coast of GB&I has the potential to provide more than 15% of our energy needs. There is such a rush by politicians to jump on the green bandwagon that no one is questioning whether the large sums of money currently being spent are giving us a decent return. Our government has signed us upto a target that commits the consumer and taxpayer to pay for inefficient technology. It is amazing the numbers of wind turbines that are in the pipeline and the visual blight will just get worse. They will sit there for a long, long time unused and unrepaired due to this fools rush to wrap ourselves in a feel good thing.
I would much rather the government committed MORE funds to research to bring efficient technology along faster.
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The fact is the more of an investment that is made into renewable energies now, the smoother the transition in the future.
I would much rather the government committed MORE funds to research to bring efficient technology along faster.
I should've been clearer, but this was in fact what I was trying to say. Implementation of current technologies does nothing to make them a better alternative from an economic standpoint, but better technology is what would shift the cost of renewables curve down and allow for a transition sooner rather than later. :)
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Alex,
Out of interest, don't natural gas, shale gas and nuclear get factored into the equation?
Wind power simply does not work to provide energy as needed by the population. They require permanent conventional power back up due to their intermittent nature, the environmental cost of them is huge (piling concrete in fields, bird deaths, noise pollution) and they quite simply are a testament to the folly of agenda / policy led decisions.
Tidal power, hydro electric, geo thermal are all far better than wind power but renewables can not replace conventional power, no matter how much the ideology might want them to.
The Spanish obsession with wind power cost money and jobs. We should take heed.
The whole climate change act is one of the biggest disasters in history. Making people pay more taxes for no discernible difference.
I have every faith in human intelligence and development that any changes that happen in the climate - which are beyond our control - we will be able to adapt to and mitigate. That is if we haven't wasted all our money on wind farms before that!
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It's laughable if people think Electric Cars or Wind Power are new technologies.
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Alex,
Out of interest, don't natural gas, shale gas and nuclear get factored into the equation?
Wind power simply does not work to provide energy as needed by the population. They require permanent conventional power back up due to their intermittent nature, the environmental cost of them is huge (piling concrete in fields, bird deaths, noise pollution) and they quite simply are a testament to the folly of agenda / policy led decisions.
Tidal power, hydro electric, geo thermal are all far better than wind power but renewables can not replace conventional power, no matter how much the ideology might want them to.
The Spanish obsession with wind power cost money and jobs. We should take heed.
The whole climate change act is one of the biggest disasters in history. Making people pay more taxes for no discernible difference.
I have every faith in human intelligence and development that any changes that happen in the climate - which are beyond our control - we will be able to adapt to and mitigate. That is if we haven't wasted all our money on wind farms before that!
So I try to stay current on these issues, and am currently taking a course regarding this very subject. I'm open and up for debate, but I'm happy to express my views since it's all so fresh on my mind. :D
Wind and solar are towards the bottom of my personal list of viable alternatives. Nuclear, while not renewable technically, is certainly clean and viable and while the destructive power of the material is already evident, that doesn't mean it's not the way to go. France is an excellent example of what nuclear power can provide. An interesting side to nuclear is the molten salt reactor (there is a new TED talk about it and an even better hour long video on youtube), but I do not have the scientific background to say whether it's viable or not, and it's currently still under debate.
I believe tidal and wave power hold great promise too, and after all hydroelectric is an old power source. While solar is still not cost-effective, there is still opportunity for improvement, but the fact remains that like all of the electric cars on the road, a great deal of energy and resources are put into making solar panels or batteries. So much so that investing in current solar technology does very little to move us forward. Wind, while totally renewable is far less predictable and therefore less affordable. Currents and waves however (we're talking water not electricity) are far easier to predict and because of the density of water compared to air, can generate a lot of power.
Natural gas and shale get factored into the equation of course, but coal is fairly unique because the cost/BTU, aka the cost per amount of power output, is substantially lower than natural gas, wind, solar, et all. The next 10-20 years are the most important (aren't they always ;)) since the cost-effective clean options, nuclear, tidal, and wave take at least a decade of planning and building while in the meantime the expensive alternatives, wind and solar can be built quickly but for a price. I don't know what the answer is because there are so many forces at play and so many different bets to be placed. Whatever the route, the goal is to bring the cost of clean energy down enough to compete with oil before coal becomes the best option.
Another quick note to consider (and boy I get to use my population demographics and analysis class here now!), is that the global population is beginning to stabilize and should begin to top out in the next 50 years. The International Energy Agency predicts energy consumption will continue to increase by 2% per year. That rate would lead to a doubling of energy consumption in 35 years, but this is a foolish prediction. The rate of population growth in the last 2 centuries will probably never be seen again in human history (who knows though? Bottlenecks, amirite?) but while we are at a global population of 7 billion today, even robust projections do not predict the world population rising above 9 billion mostly thanks to decreasing birth rates and to a very small extent poor diets (my generation is supposed to live shorter than that of most on this board :-\). Efficiency has been able to curb the rate of growth of energy consumption relative to the rate of growth of the human population. If the human population does not grow at the same rate, we can also hope for some stability, and eventually a decrease of energy consumption in the future (though not for a while, and not a decrease from current consumption). I still think social security will be a bigger problem than affordable energy in 15 years though, if that makes anyone feel any better. (Note: It probably shouldn't)
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Bill M. ,
Great post! The idea that we're so much more advanced today is misguided. If you want to know the greenest human beings to ever walk the planet...it was our American Indians and other tribal folks that lived like they did. Totally light footprint approach to EVERYTHING they did. Didn't pollute to any significant degree, respected the natural reasources and only utilized what they needed, very little waste. How does today's world society square with those attributes?
We do need to explore new energy technologies, and inefficient models, even failures, are to be expected; this is the price of invention. I do agree that the new technology should be refined and perfected on a smaller scale FIRST, before we embark on costly government endorsed programs that are of questionable merit and return on investment.
Cheers,
Kris 8)
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It's laughable if people think Electric Cars or Wind Power are new technologies.
My my, brother Clayman; getting so dismissive in old age. :D Who was it that said "He who laughs last laughs best."?
In my younger years (when I really "knew" that I had most everything but my golf swing figured out), I was fortunate to befriend a much older man who was once "the fixer" for one of the two companies which joined to form Frito-Lay. By this time the company had become quite large, sophisticated, successful, and full of hotshot MBAs from all the best schools. Modern, perhaps a bit full of itself, the company relegated the "old farts" like my friend which it couldn't run off to relatively low-level staff positions. This man, effectively the operational voice (and hammer) of the most senior level executives including the founding CEO for many years and who possessed an immense wealth of institutional wisdom, was cast to bleachers populated by young, new backbenchers like me. Over the three years of our association we probably reviewed 20 or more "new" initiatives, several of which changed major operations costing tens of Millions of $. Ray would say, yeah, we tried that one in region x back in 19yyy, found it to be a waste of time for reasons xyz, in z months. I would present the downsides to senior management (over time earning the reputation of not being much of a "team" player, as well as their respect for my technical abilities and forecasting skills) without citing that the "New" was really "old", and not very good at all. Like in golf, it really comes down in many cases to those damned fundamentals. We are still talking about Hogan; we will be converting carbon to usable energy for at least until the cows come home, good intentions, lofty dreams, and the exhuberance of youth notwithstanding.
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Kris,
I know very little about the Indian tribes of North America but something about some of the tribes of sub-Saharan Africa. Not having a wheel, some of their practices of dragging and burning were not very green at all.
Bob
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If you want to know the greenest human beings to ever walk the planet...it was our American Indians and other tribal folks that lived like they did. Totally light footprint approach to EVERYTHING they did. Didn't pollute to any significant degree, respected the natural reasources and only utilized what they needed, very little waste. How does today's world society square with those attributes?
Everyone's dream...for everyone else.
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Lou, Thanx for the story.
I remember the day GM announced they were going to make an electric car (circa '1995?) It smacked of treating people the way politicians do, as idiots.
Shorting their stock from that point on was a real desire.
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Kris,
That's an apples and oranges argument.
You're trying to compare at most a few hundred thousand people, organized into mostly small groups in tribal fashion that had tens of thousands of square miles at their use, (with no limitations), and who could spread out with minimal interaction with others...
...vs tens of millions of people in the same area with an almost infinite amount more rules in terms of regulation of what they can and cannot do, with tens of thousands of square miles being off limits, to a population that can readily travel where a flight can get you anywhere in that area in 2-3 hours, and a water supply that is now being used to feed hundreds of millions.
Huge difference in the methods/idealogies to manage those two completely different groups!!
P.S. And i'm just talking about the Western US. Throw in the entire US and multiply those population numbers by 10.
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New documentary in wind farms:
http://urbanacitizen.com/Main.asp?SectionID=3&SubSectionID=5&ArticleID=159113
Review of "Windfall" in the NY Times:
http://movies.nytimes.com/2012/02/03/movies/windfall-a-documentary-on-wind-turbines-by-laura-israel.html
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Bill M. ,
Great post! The idea that we're so much more advanced today is misguided. If you want to know the greenest human beings to ever walk the planet...it was our American Indians and other tribal folks that lived like they did. Totally light footprint approach to EVERYTHING they did. Didn't pollute to any significant degree, respected the natural reasources and only utilized what they needed, very little waste. How does today's world society square with those attributes?
Cheers,
Kris 8)
If I may ask, how did you develop your beliefs regarding the American Indian? From what I've read, they typically would exploit the land they occupied and just moved-on when it was exhausted. "Light footprint approach"? I bet the weaker tribes which were annihilated and displaced didn't think so. If you're interested in the subject, try reading "Empire of the Summer Moon: Quanah Parker and the Rise and Fall of the Comanches, the Most Powerful Indian Tribe in American History" by S. C. Gwynne.
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Gents good to see a debate with no name calling on here, Alex apologies for getting you wrong and thanks for your subsequent entries..
Chris romantic ideas like yours are not new.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noble_savage
I’m scared now I’ve reached a stage in life where I’m quoting Hobbes but describing their life as “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short" sums it up.
Do you believe their motivations as peoples were any different than our own? I don’t and I also believe that the desire for progress has brought us more benefits than downsides and we are lucky to live now. I am confident that we can produce cleaner, cheaper, energy going forward. It does bring into question how effective our democracies are about choosing which way to go on these issues.
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http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-16893018
The debate is slowly becoming public.