Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The U.S. wind industry now employs more than 100K people

washingtonpost.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

261–270 of 331 posts

Re: The U.S. wind industry now employs more than 100K people

#261

Post by [deleted] »

x1798DE wrote: post #212
ryanwaggoner wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Since you're complaining about downvotes (which I also downvoted), I'll explain why I downvoted: Your complaint doesn't make any sense by itself. You're assuming that they're doing the same or less with more people. I have no idea where you got that idea. Wind is growing rapidly, so the fact that they're employing more people is expected and a good thing. You can't complain about efficiency with only the numerator.

This is true, but it is annoying to tout the number of jobs as if it's a benefit, not a cost. It should be kilowatt-hours / human hour, or some measure of labor productivity if you want to show serviced, or some measure of actual output if you want to show the magnitude of the sector, or both. Giving raw number of "jobs" requires a lot of assumptions about the sector to make it into useful information. Not to mention…

[deleted]

Re: The U.S. wind industry now employs more than 100K people

#262

Post by Sanddancer »

Normal_gaussian wrote: post #56
noonespecial wrote: post #42

Earlier 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…

I grew up as the last oil wells in the South Bay part of LA were being brought down. I've been by the Tehachapi wind farm, the Mojave wind farm, driven past the Solar One/Two demonstration plant [1]. They all have an environmental and observation impact, all the technology does is change where that impact is felt.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Solar_Project#Solar_One

Re: The U.S. wind industry now employs more than 100K people

#263

Post by jnordwick »

hsjhgktfdy wrote: post #233
jnordwick wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 mai…

If you read the old literature on how controversial it was at the time, those supporting the dam said it would increase the leisure use of the site, giving it a great lake to camp and fish at. They literally believed it would improve the natural surroundings.

Even modern say SF offices still use that line: "They were eager to show us how, they say, the reservoir actually enhanced the beauty of the valley,"

http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/environment-july-dec05-dam_8-...

I didn't say it was the motivation of the project, just that it has been claimed and used to buttress other arguments.

Re: The U.S. wind industry now employs more than 100K people

#264

Post by thinkloop »

Can_Not wrote: post #238
enraged_camel wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I doubt that's true. Birds probably live away from coal plants like humans.

Re: The U.S. wind industry now employs more than 100K people

#265

Post by nitwit005 »

tuna-piano wrote: post #102

When something is cheap, people buy more of it. If you are someone who wants more wind power to be produced, you want it to be cheap. You should be rooting for cheaper wind prices, which come with increased efficiency (including less employees per unit of energy produced). Of course, less employees per unit of energy could equate to more total employees if the increase in energy produced is greater than the increases…

Thanks for the different perspective.

Having seen several headlines about high employment in renewable energy industries, I must admit that I'm sort of prepped for headlines about it declining. Companies will always start looking for some sort of efficiency when they keep having to add more and more employees.

Re: The U.S. wind industry now employs more than 100K people

#266

Post by Jedd »

Pxtl wrote: post #200
labster wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd normally agree with you, but the top Uranium producers are Canada, Kazakhstan, and Australia. Uranium mining is a first (and second) world problem.

It's such a shame the Aussies don't build nuke plants. They have the uranium and they have a good place to store the waste. But they're so stuck on being Commonwealth Texas that they'll stick to fossil fuels forever.

As an actual Australian I'm really happy that we don't build 'nuke plants' here. (I am assuming you mean nuclear fission power plants.)

We have uranium, yes, but if happenstance is our only criteria we should also be building nuclear weapons and burning lots of coal. Sadly we're doing the latter with great alacrity.

We also don't have a good place to store the waste. I don't think there's (m)any places on the planet that could be good places to store waste of this nature. It's probably telling that people often refer to nuclear waste needing to be stored or managed, rather than recycled, rendered safe, disposed of, etc.

Re: The U.S. wind industry now employs more than 100K people

#267

Post by adrianN »

labster wrote: post #107
coin wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Compared to ripping the tops of mountains Or consider nuclear, which is much cleaner, safer and lower coast than all other energy sources

So open pit uranium mines are that much better than ripping the tops off of mountains for coal?

Uranium has a much higher energy density, so you need fewer mines. The raw materials for renewable energy tech don't materialize from the ether either.

Re: The U.S. wind industry now employs more than 100K people

#268

Post by adrianN »

hsjhgktfdy wrote: post #216
popey456963 wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be fair, you need _significantly_ less[0] uranium compared with the amount of coal you mine. For every million mountains destroyed by coal mining, you'd only have to destroy a couple of mountains. Not to mention I don't think uranium is usually mined from mountains but rather pit-mined, makes it far better than the alternatives. Personally however, still support solar. Especially solar house tiles, they look good,…

Not every house has solar resource. If your house is in the middle of the woods it's not going to work unless you clear-cut the surrounding woods and then you're not in the middle of the woods anymore. Same if you are in the shadow of a couple of mid-rises. etc. etc. Even if there is solar resource it may not replace more than a fraction of usage. Roof-top solar is great where the resource exists, but it's a partial…

You realize that most houses are not in the middle of the woods? If I look around here in Berlin, almost all houses would qualify for rooftop solar. There is of course still the storage problem.

Re: The U.S. wind industry now employs more than 100K people

#269

Post by barking »

Normal_gaussian wrote: post #56
noonespecial wrote: post #42

Earlier 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…

I totally agree with your point about how they make the country seem smaller, it's my main gripe about them. I also feel like mountains were were about the last place we hadn't domesticated apart from the odd telecoms mast but now we've found a use for them. There is nowhere wild left.

Re: The U.S. wind industry now employs more than 100K people

#270

Post by adrianN »

sedachv wrote: post #195
_ph_ wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you explain why? Over the year they would release the same water as the river without the dam would do - just not in a peak flood but reduced to a constant flood rate.

Dammed rivers release less water because of increased evaporation. Another problem is riverbed deepening which lowers the groundwater table. Where the water pools up is also important - having a bunch behind a dam when former wetlands and floodplains are dry is obviously not conducive to the ecosystems in those wetlands and floodplains.

Why do dams increase evaporation? Having the water all in one place as opposed to distributed over the length of a river should reduce surface area.
Post reply on HN