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Wind turbines are friendlier to birds than oil-and-gas drilling

economist.com

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Re: Wind turbines are friendlier to birds than oil-and-gas drilling

#171

Post by arghwhat »

VoodooJuJu wrote: post #147
rootusrootus wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If we cared about birds we'd be aggressively controlling the cat population.

Cats are a scapegoat to deflect the incalculable damage done to wildlife by humans themselves, their industries and habitat expansion.

No, such argument is whataboutism. Bigger problems do not invalidate smaller ones.

The only case where your point would matter is if we could only fix one or the other - human- or cat-induced damage - but that is not the case. They can be addressed independently and in parallel.

I like cats though...

Re: Wind turbines are friendlier to birds than oil-and-gas drilling

#172

Post by throwawayqqq11 »

shadowgovt wrote: post #116
throwawayqqq11 wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Affordable" could also be taken as "doable". Which broadens the scope largely but misses the main problem: sustainability. This take is not just not helpful but, i would argue, actively harmful to the debate. By definition, sustainability is a waste management, that allows recycling rates of 90% or higher. CO2 is just one of our waste products we totally didnt care about.

The United States spent 6% of its GDP putting human beings on the moon. And this was done during a time that historians don't generally consider to be a time of vast deprivation for the populace; it turns out investing in and inventing rocketry and aerospace technologies the likes of which humanity has never seen before is great for job creation. How much of the GDP should we be willing to spend to actively replace p…

Pollution will be in every path we choose, managing the waste is the quest and i dont think that direct government intervention is the best or most practical way here. IMO regulations and sanctions would be better. Eg. imagine the EU or US enforcing fully repairable or recyclable products in their markets. What would china do?

Re: Wind turbines are friendlier to birds than oil-and-gas drilling

#173

Post by tzs »

rootusrootus wrote: post #111
foxyv wrote: post #105

If we cared about birds we would be talking about reducing car traffic and saving more areas for wildlife. The argument against Solar and Wind with regards to wildlife preservation is almost always a distraction.

If we cared about birds we'd be aggressively controlling the cat population.

Generally we care about a bird species as a whole rather than about individual birds of that species.

If something is killing birds, even a lot of birds, but in a place where those birds are abundant and whatever is killing them will just lower lower their equilibrium population a bit rather than set it on a decline or lower it so far that they might die out in the area then there generally isn't a lot of concern over it.

Hence activities in places with species of birds that have low population or are threatened or endangered tend to draw more concern than activities in places where that isn't the case even if the latter kills way more total birds.

Re: Wind turbines are friendlier to birds than oil-and-gas drilling

#174

Post by exoverito »

kstrauser wrote: post #104
m0llusk wrote: post #78

This is broken logic. Working primarily with averages leads directly to repeating the mistakes of the statistician who drown in a lake that was an average of three feet deep. Currently one of the notably large wind farms being operated is in the Altamont Pass in California which also happens to be the preferred spawning site for golden eagles. Does it make sense to assert that since wind farms are generally beneficia…

> Does it make sense to assert that since wind farms are generally beneficial that we should not worry about drastically reducing or even eliminating golden eagles in California? Yes. Boiling our atmosphere will harm bald eagles in addition to everything else. Bald eagles are cool birds, unless you live somewhere that they’re as common as seagulls and 20x as annoying. If forced to choose, I’d rather have a healthy wo…

CO2 levels were between 1500 and 3000 ppm during the Carboniferous era, a time of vast forests and thriving life. We are never going to end up like Venus, since its atmosphere is 100 times as dense as Earth's and 96.5% CO2. Since Earth is only 0.04% CO2 we would need to increase the amount of CO2 by more than 200,000X.

Re: Wind turbines are friendlier to birds than oil-and-gas drilling

#175

Post by AlbertCory »

shadowgovt wrote: post #116
throwawayqqq11 wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Affordable" could also be taken as "doable". Which broadens the scope largely but misses the main problem: sustainability. This take is not just not helpful but, i would argue, actively harmful to the debate. By definition, sustainability is a waste management, that allows recycling rates of 90% or higher. CO2 is just one of our waste products we totally didnt care about.

The United States spent 6% of its GDP putting human beings on the moon. And this was done during a time that historians don't generally consider to be a time of vast deprivation for the populace; it turns out investing in and inventing rocketry and aerospace technologies the likes of which humanity has never seen before is great for job creation. How much of the GDP should we be willing to spend to actively replace p…

> The United States spent 6% of its GDP putting human beings on the moon.

Sorry, wrong. The Apollo program cost about $25B in 1960's dollars. That's over the entire period, not just one year.

https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20190712-apollo-in-50-num...

"In 1965, Nasa funding peaked at some 5% of government spending,"

But government spending != GDP.

According to this,

https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/USA/united-states/gdp-...

GDP in 1965 was $743B

Re: Wind turbines are friendlier to birds than oil-and-gas drilling

#176

Post by ceejayoz »

exoverito wrote: post #170
ceejayoz wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Security? Maintenance? 24/7 ops? It's not a crazy claim; here's a NASA article on fracking wells being very visible from space at night. https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/images/87725/shale-revolut...

Pretty sure that's because of flaring excess gas.

[flagged]

Re: Wind turbines are friendlier to birds than oil-and-gas drilling

#178

Post by uoaei »

tzs wrote: post #173
rootusrootus wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If we cared about birds we'd be aggressively controlling the cat population.

Generally we care about a bird species as a whole rather than about individual birds of that species. If something is killing birds, even a lot of birds, but in a place where those birds are abundant and whatever is killing them will just lower lower their equilibrium population a bit rather than set it on a decline or lower it so far that they might die out in the area then there generally isn't a lot of concern ove…

This is a thoughtful response, put in words I've been missing for a while, to some reasons why the EA crowd seem to be hyperoptimizing on the wrong cost functions (not to mention the ethical dangers that come about when insisting all questions of ethics can be quantified).

Re: Wind turbines are friendlier to birds than oil-and-gas drilling

#179

Post by pjc50 »

gcheong wrote: post #158
pjc50 wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's weird, isn't it? There's a lot of nuclear cheerleaders, and it makes me suspicious when they're also anti-renewables rather than "yes, and". Essentially everyone has forgotten the arguments of the nineties: nuclear weapons proliferation, waste dumping, and covering the entirety of western Europe in a thin layer of airborne radioactive particles. As well as the more practical cost overruns. Personally I think it…

"nuclear weapons proliferation,..." Seems like we got that anyway thanks to the military industrial complex without getting much in the way of nuclear energy generation.

Lots of places built dual-purpose reactors? The initial UK nuclear program (Windscale) was weapons-first. The famous French reactor programme and their independent nuclear deterrent are also linked.

Also, this is why people are reluctant to let some of the world's larger carbon emitters, the oil states in the middle east, build nuclear reactors. Iran has a small, heavily monitored fleet.

Re: Wind turbines are friendlier to birds than oil-and-gas drilling

#180

Post by pjc50 »

throwawayqqq11 wrote: post #172
shadowgovt wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The United States spent 6% of its GDP putting human beings on the moon. And this was done during a time that historians don't generally consider to be a time of vast deprivation for the populace; it turns out investing in and inventing rocketry and aerospace technologies the likes of which humanity has never seen before is great for job creation. How much of the GDP should we be willing to spend to actively replace p…

Pollution will be in every path we choose, managing the waste is the quest and i dont think that direct government intervention is the best or most practical way here. IMO regulations and sanctions would be better. Eg. imagine the EU or US enforcing fully repairable or recyclable products in their markets. What would china do?

> imagine the EU or US enforcing fully repairable or recyclable products in their markets. What would china do?

What, you mean like the existing WEEE directive which requires all electronics to be lead-free and recyclable? China would, obviously, start selling repairable and recyclable products into those markets.

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