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

washingtonpost.com

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

#271

Post by vacri »

glenstein wrote: post #219
Normal_gaussian wrote: post #56

Earlier 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…

> Windmills really do look bad, objectively.

And yet if you were to make the same argument about a coal or even nuclear plant, you'd be considered a loon. Coal plants don't just look awful, they also stink up the surrounding areas. And while I've heard plenty of people say they like the look of windmills (I'm one myself), I've never heard anyone say they like the smell of coal plants.

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

#272

Post by TheOtherHobbes »

adrianN wrote: post #267
labster wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

But they're vastly easier to source, and then reuse/recycle.

Also, there's that "Not laying waste to huge areas and making them uninhabitable" thing.

Nukes would be fine for a species that was capable of acting intelligently and responsibly over long periods.

Humans are not (yet) that species.

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

#273

Post by vacri »

Jedd wrote: post #266
Pxtl wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> We also don't have a good place to store the waste.

We've got tons of space to store the waste. The country is right in the middle of a tectonic plate, so little worry about earthquakes, and large swathes of the country are uninhabited by anyone, even mythical 'lost tribes'. Even if nowhere else, we could store waste in the giant area cordoned off for nuclear testing in the '50s.

In my opinion, it's hard to find somewhere better suited for storing nuclear waste than 'somewhere in Australia'. Stable, first-world government, a fair few places where we can put it where even leaks wouldn't be a problem, skilled populace, etc etc.

In any case, it looks like they're discussing it: http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-11-08/should-south-australia...

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

#274

Post by TheOtherHobbes »

hueving wrote: post #191
marze wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Compared to ripping the tops of mountains in West Virginia and states nearby and filling in the beautiful valleys to strip mine coal, a huge win.

False dichotomy. That's not how a significant amount of coal is mined. Yet every windmill sticks up into the air as a reminder of human presence.

If you think really coal pollution is invisible, try visiting China - which, perhaps not coincidentally, is currently rushing headlong towards a fully renewable economy.

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

#275

Post by bildung »

thinkloop wrote: post #264
Can_Not wrote: post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Bird deaths from coal are 40 times higher than those from wind: https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/800/0*FlgPzNwGlNYMtFSy.j...

source: https://thinkprogress.org/chart-how-many-birds-are-killed-by...

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

#276

Post by _ph_ »

kumarski wrote: post #245
_ph_ wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What a long row of impressive numbers. But what counts, is only one single number: how long does it take for the wind turbine to produce more power than it took to produce. And as far as I know, it is a rather small amount of its life time. After that it starts to improve our carbon balance. And all of this does not take into respect, that with the raising ratio of our energy being produced by wind or solar, the prod…

He takes into account what you're saying. "Undoubtedly, a well-sited and well-built wind turbine would generate as much energy as it embodies in less than a year. However, all of it will be in the form of intermittent electricity—while its production, installation, and maintenance remain critically dependent on specific fossil energies." As an Indian engineer, I'm waiting for westerners to pony up and let us have Nuc…

Why do you claim the west does not let you have nuclear? According to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_in_India there is nuclear power in India and it is growing?

Whether this is the most economic (not mention safe) way of extending the electricity supply is another question. As far as I am aware, India is quite aggressively investing in solar too. In sunny regions, solar is way cheaper than nuclear already. And the same applies for wind, especially in costal regions.

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

#277

Post by _ph_ »

tgjsrkghruksd wrote: post #242
CydeWeys wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly. This litany of numbers without meaningful comparison is just an attempt at obfuscation. Of course wind turbines require resources to construct; no one ever claimed otherwise. But they create a lot more energy over their lifetime than they cost to create, which is the whole reason they're built at all. And as impressive as those figures sound, they pale in comparison to how much fossil fuels are being burnt s…

Actually, the little point that undermines this litany is buried right in the middle: "Undoubtedly, a well-sited and well-built wind turbine would generate as much energy as it embodies in less than a year." So, do turbines last more than a year? Much more than a year? Ok then!

I missed that in the huge bunch of less relevant numbers. This makes the article an even bigger troll, trying to hide the true number. Also the talk about "intermittent" is quite misleading. Yes wind power depends on the wind. But that is quite well predictable in those places, where you would install a wind generator. With a reasonable electrical grid, this can be quite well managed.

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

#278

Post by oconnore »

jnordwick wrote: post #260
x1798DE wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

He's just being disingenuous with that statement. He isn't hold those cheering the jobs numbers to the same standard.

If you magically increased the wind industry tomorrow by a factor of 31.2 to supply the entire US electricity demand of 4369TWh, you would have to employ 3.1 million people. That's only ~4 times the size of the US employment numbers for gas/coal (and luckily this was only a thought experiment to demonstrate that you are concern trolling, real industries don't grow without massive efficiency improvements along the way).

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

#279

Post by zhte415 »

j3097736 wrote: post #226
hueving wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

False dichotomy. That's not how a significant amount of coal is mined. Yet every windmill sticks up into the air as a reminder of human presence.

>reminder of human presence. Still not as bad as a plastic bottle on the ground.

You don't inhale plastic bottles.

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

#280

Post by hueving »

TheOtherHobbes wrote: post #274
hueving wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

False dichotomy. That's not how a significant amount of coal is mined. Yet every windmill sticks up into the air as a reminder of human presence.

If you think really coal pollution is invisible, try visiting China - which, perhaps not coincidentally, is currently rushing headlong towards a fully renewable economy.

What? I'm talking about a bad generalization made about mining, not coal pollution.
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