For comparison, coal employs about 77k people. About the same as the bowling and skiing employment numbers.
The U.S. wind industry now employs more than 100K people
231–240 of 331 posts
Re: The U.S. wind industry now employs more than 100K people
#232Earlier quoted context omitted.
I couldn't disagree more. They popped up as I was growing up - littering the coastline and countryside. They can be seen from great distances and serve to make the place seem an awful lot smaller. I for one can't wait until we develop a way to live without them - the only condolence is that they move us away from the coal and gas industries. I do hope that solar leaves them in its wake and we can be done with the mon…
The disagreement between you and the parent commenter illustrates something that I think is fascinating about NIMBYism with respect to windmills. NIMBYism depends on the idea that the aesthetic judgments of windmills are objective, shared across people. Windmills really do look bad, objectively. Normally talking about aesthetic experiences as if they are universal is frowned upon, because the judgment of beauty is ta…
There is some subjectivity to beauty, but there is also some objectivity. For example, things that incorporate golden ratio tend too look good.
If you look at parent's comment: "They are. Like living sculptures. There's just something extremely dignified about them. Like finally growing up after the childishness of strip-mining. The adults are here. "
You can see that the judgement of beauty here is tainted by social implications, energy concerns, and possibly political environment.
This is only my reading of it though so maybe the parent meant something else.
I personally find them attractive but I haven't spent much time around them at all.
Re: The U.S. wind industry now employs more than 100K people
#233I live in a school bus, traveling the country. I think wind turbines are absolutely beautiful; I always marvel at them when we drive by. Does anybody here know how to break into this industry, working on a mobile, on-site basis? Maybe with embedded tech?
This sounds an awful lot like the people from the 1950s who thought that dams looked awesome. The dam in the Yosemite Valley was put there because many thought it would look beautiful and bring more people out into nature. It is almost universally considered a huge mistake.
You're talking about Hetch Hetchy and the O'Shaughnessy Dam? Environmental impact is one thing, but it wasn't built to "look beautiful and bring more people out to nature," which is ridiculous. (Advocates may have claimed this, but it was not the motivation of the project.) The dam generates electricity and the reservoir provides 2 million people with water, including San Francisco, the latter of which is was the main driver of the project.
Re: The U.S. wind industry now employs more than 100K people
#234100k. So we're back where we left off, but now they're on land. Time for a sailship renaissance...
Re: The U.S. wind industry now employs more than 100K people
#235Earlier quoted context omitted.
>I think wind turbines are absolutely beautiful They are. Like living sculptures. There's just something extremely dignified about them. Like finally growing up after the childishness of strip-mining. The adults are here.
I couldn't disagree more. They popped up as I was growing up - littering the coastline and countryside. They can be seen from great distances and serve to make the place seem an awful lot smaller. I for one can't wait until we develop a way to live without them - the only condolence is that they move us away from the coal and gas industries. I do hope that solar leaves them in its wake and we can be done with the mon…
Solar is dirty and hard/impossible to repair. Bio fuels are a much smarter way to create energy from the sun, especially since electric power cannot substitute liquid fuel. Solar panels won't go very far. If someone has a good place for solar panels, and xe still brings in food by fuel transport, that person isn't sharp. #growfoodmotherfuckers
Re: The U.S. wind industry now employs more than 100K people
#236I love this -- and many of those 100K jobs are maintainatory jobs, permanent and not tied to continual production and growth. I always hate how projects are touted as 'bringing X many jobs to the region' when a majority of cited jobs are in the construction or building of whatever the project is, and then evaporate away once it's built.
That's the way construction happens. It's a temporary thing. *Except for the Sagrada Familia building in Spain which started construction in 1982 and is expected to be finished in 2026.
> which started construction in 1982
I think you mean 1882.
Re: The U.S. wind industry now employs more than 100K people
#237I've always wondered why we don't combine wind and solar on the same land. The shadows from the turbines would be negligible and you could reuse the same electrical hookups and wiring. In fact you could raise mushrooms under the solar panels and get triple use of the land.
Uninformed speculation: maybe because the places where it's windy are not necessarily the places where it's sunny (and vice versa).
Sometimes, other times it's just wind farms are put in by companies who do wind farms and buy those rights, often from regular farmers, who continue to farm around the turbines. If you put in solar, then there's nothing left to farm. Though for grain crops solar is likely going to be more profitable on an acreage basis.
Re: The U.S. wind industry now employs more than 100K people
#238Earlier quoted context omitted.
I also find them an eyesore, audibly irritating[1], and the documented bird deaths are awful[2]. But, I'll take them over coal any day. [1] http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.... [2] http://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/how-many-birds-do-w...
How many birds do coal plants poison and kill? I bet you never thought about that simply because those deaths aren't violent and sudden.
This is an important point. Birds die orders of magnitudes faster from respiratory failures caused by coal's pollution.
Re: The U.S. wind industry now employs more than 100K people
#239Earlier quoted context omitted.
How did you reach that conclusion? Those things scream "advanced material tech" to me. Almost as much as space rockets.
The towers are just lots and lots of steel. A lot of them are made in facilities that were built to make railcars (including big tank cars).
Sure, the towers may not be that advanced, though I bet they're optimized extensively for cost. It is the blades that I'm thinking of. They have to be light and strong, which aren't particularly new requirements, but I bet the scale adds challenges of its own relative to aircraft wings. Also, I hear wear on the gearboxes for these things are a major pain, so I bet they are pretty advanced as well.
Re: The U.S. wind industry now employs more than 100K people
#240Earlier quoted context omitted.
Those stats are not for electricity, they're for total energy consumption including transportation.
In fact it wouldn't be surprising if much of the savings is actually due to efficiencies in transportation
This thread got me curious, and while I didn't find a lot of sources talking about it, this one[0] gives some likely possibilities: urbanization means less transport energy costs and less domestic manufacturing means less industrial energy usage.
It doesn't talk much about why residential energy usage has dropped. I'm guessing it's people moving from their giant houses into smaller homes or apartments following the recession (combined with the general trend towards urbanization). I'm assuming it's not just that LED bulbs changed the landscape.
[0] http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-03-10/why-capita-energy-c...