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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

#281

Post by astrodust »

Sanddancer wrote: post #254
mikestew wrote: post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They popped up as I was growing up - littering the coastline and countryside. I guess you've never seen them blow the top off a West Virginia mountain to get the coal out. Windmills can be replaced by solar, but that mountain isn't coming back. (Caveat: don't know if that's still done or not, but it was done plenty in the past.) If feel ya on the aesthetics (though I personally like them), but if you're complaining a…

Mountaintop removal is still done pretty often because it's the economically cheapest way to do it, damn the economic, social, and environmental consequences of that action.

West Virginia might end up flatter than Kansas at the rate we're going.

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

#282

Post by astrodust »

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.

Oh, give me a goddamn break. You've got how much desert that's sparsely inhabited?

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

#283

Post by Broken_Hippo »

vacri wrote: post #271
glenstein wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Most folks don't know what a coal plant looks like.

For example, I can put a few wind turbines or the classic towers from a nuclear plant into artwork and folks get the reference. I paint in a coal plant, and folks just think factory.

Nuclear plants, the Simpson-esque version I picture, are beautiful in their own right, btw, as are nearly all factories. It just depends on framing.

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

#284

Post by Broken_Hippo »

stevenwoo wrote: post #246
jMyles wrote: post #6

I 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?

Unrelated to wind turbines, but related to living on the road - do you have no permanent address? What were the most difficult adaptions to make from living in a static location to living a vehicle like that?

This is something I've often wondered myself - and it seems to be getting more difficult. The two most obvious (to me) would be a driver's license and voting, but I'm guessing vehicle insurance and banks want such a thing as well.

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

#285

Post by BinaryIdiot »

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?

Don't forget uranium can be extracted from seawater! Granted I don't think it's near the efficiency yet of simply digging and extracting from a pit but still it's something to watch out for in the near future.

https://engineering.stanford.edu/news/how-extract-uranium-se...

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

#286

Post by whyever »

coin wrote: post #105
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.

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

How is nuclear waste clean? How is a possible reactor meltdown safe or cheap?

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

#287

Post by novalis78 »

afterburner wrote: post #112
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

Lower cost? Utterly laughable. Nuclear costs are notoriously high, always crazy multiples over budget, and then the operating and decommissioning costs are hidden with budget and accounting tricks. But you won't notice because it's a 50 to 80 year process.

Check out Thorconpower.com - obviously not the current deplorable state of affairs.

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

#289

Post by mavhc »

bildung wrote: post #275
thinkloop wrote: post #264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

Would be best to give birds killed per MWh, for each country

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

#290

Post by mavhc »

hsjhgktfdy wrote: post #215
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…

Solar has a much larger physical footprint than wind and there's no getting around that even at 100% efficiency (which will never be obtained). Footprint that unlike wind, cannot be used for agriculture or accessed by much wildlife; it's fenced in and covered with panels. Here in upstate New York there are planned wind and solar farms in the region and every one of both brings out a certain crowd of torches and pitch…

Are the torches burning sustainable wood? What are they doing about the wood particle pollution? Were the pitchforks forged in coal powered furnaces? Did they drive to protest?

We need nuclear, solar and wind, or 90% of people to die and the rest live in caves.

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