Why does nobody talk about the real issue with wind and solar? It's ugly. It distracts from the landscape.
Wind turbines are friendlier to birds than oil-and-gas drilling
181–190 of 413 posts
Re: Wind turbines are friendlier to birds than oil-and-gas drilling
#182Earlier quoted context omitted.
My parents rented land on which there was a smaller oil rig. The rig was eventually removed and now the land is used for farming. OTOH I cannot image how they want to do this with the conrete foundations of wind turbines. The newer ones are up to 300 meters high. With that leverage the foundations must be absolutely massive. I don't think they can ever be revmoved.
The wind is probably less likely to run out like the oil rig did.
Exactly. Replace the turbine with another turbine when it reaches EOL.
Re: Wind turbines are friendlier to birds than oil-and-gas drilling
#183Earlier quoted context omitted.
"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.
Fair enough, but my point is that nuclear power generation and nuclear weapons development are two different things and one doesn't necessarily lead to the other. In other words one can be against a particular use of a technology without being against the technology itself.
Re: Wind turbines are friendlier to birds than oil-and-gas drilling
#184Earlier quoted context omitted.
The OP is pointing out that most pearl-clutching about the effects of wind turbines comes from people who don't care about birds in any other context. It's solely a way to continue fossil fuel production, using the language of environmentalism. A serious discussion of the safety of birds would sound very different, but that isn't the goal. The goal is to talk about anything other than reducing fossil fuel production.
Ridiculous argument. Why on earth would people care about the birds in the context of natural processes compared to unnatural processes? This is a monumentally stupid apples and oranges “gotcha”.
Ridiculous arguments are unfortunately common, and end up being part of politics and ultimately planning and decision-making.
Natural vs. unnatural is irrelevant though. "Nature" is normally out to kill you for its own benefit and does not care if the planet or any of its lifeforms survives. What matters is our interests in preserving the world we know or improving it in our eyes, and picking the best option for that.
The option that minimizes worldwide cancer development and doesn't screw up weather systems and various biomes would be the winner in that regard.
Re: Wind turbines are friendlier to birds than oil-and-gas drilling
#185Earlier quoted context omitted.
Elaborate. Haven’t stood next to either. My curiosity is piqued. What should I be expecting when I find myself so lucky?
Here you go: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OQksc1-5Zoc imagine living with that 12 hours a day. like a drop of water hitting your forehead every few seconds. forever.
Looks like it would be an issue for maybe an hour or two a day in either the morning or the evening. Unless that's a location close to the arctic circle where the sun stays that low for significant portions of the day.
Don't get me wrong, that looks extremely annoying, especially if it happens in the evening hours. And I don't whish it on anybody. But the people in that video don't have to endure it the entire day, only while the sun is very close to the horizon.
Re: Wind turbines are friendlier to birds than oil-and-gas drilling
#186[flagged]
Cats and wind turbines present dangers to different types of birds, with the turbines being a danger to larger raptors including condors - so I think your comparison is an oversimplification of the issue, even though I'm a proponent of wind power in general.
Re: Wind turbines are friendlier to birds than oil-and-gas drilling
#187Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's a "yes, and" kind of thing. We can't build nuclear fast enough yet. So we need both. I'd argue that wind and solar is much more important at this point since the growth of those is now faster than nuclear has ever been. And fast growth of non-fossil energy sources is priority #1 right now. We can free up some land later with nuclear. Wind and solar isn't going to push any species to extinction, so any damage i…
If we produced a gigawatt of energy by cleanest way possible, where do you think this gigawatt ends up? Some "energy dumpyard" somewhere outside the solar system?
In the long term .. yes?
The temperature is a balance between energy incoming from the sun and energy being radiated off into space. Wind and solar don't change that balance directly, although the lower reflectivity of solar panels makes a small local difference. Ultimately it's the transmissibility spectrum of the atmosphere that matters. Which is why we care about CO2 in the first place.
Re: Wind turbines are friendlier to birds than oil-and-gas drilling
#188What a weird comparison. Nobody is saying we should drill oil and gas instead of wind turbines.
You are sort of correct, nobody is saying that directly, but that is the result. The people who are concerned about wind turbines killing birds aren't offering any alternatives, that would be widely accepted, so the result is fossil fuel, because that's what we already have in place. The anti-nuclear protests in the 60s and 70s also didn't want fossil fuels, but they also didn't understand that an increase in fossil…
A lot of the anti-nuclear protests during the Cold War were against nuclear reactors because of nuclear weapons, which offered a much more immediate threat against the habitability of the earth.
Re: Wind turbines are friendlier to birds than oil-and-gas drilling
#189Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's mislieading to use "politically acceptable" like "quick to deploy". What's "politically acceptable" is something we shape with every word we say and which differs accross countries. Speaking of countries, I could reduce this answer to one word, which refutes every single point you make: France.
France have done better than most, largely due to building their fleet before Chernobyl, but even they have long term maintenance and cost overrun problems that led to shortages: https://www.lemonde.fr/en/economy/article/2022/08/26/edf-s-n... And the EDF reactor project in the UK is of course overrunning on time and budget. (when is the next French nuclear reactor new build scheduled to come on line?)
For those that do not know: Flamanville 3. Commercial introduction delayed from 2012 to hopefully 2024. Current cost estimate is five times the original budget.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flamanville_Nuclear_Power_Plan...
Re: Wind turbines are friendlier to birds than oil-and-gas drilling
#190Earlier quoted context omitted.
Elaborate. Haven’t stood next to either. My curiosity is piqued. What should I be expecting when I find myself so lucky?
Here you go: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OQksc1-5Zoc imagine living with that 12 hours a day. like a drop of water hitting your forehead every few seconds. forever.
> imagine living with that 12 hours a day
Given the video clearly depicts sunset, that is indeed an imaginary problem.