– bi

I’m with you!

Its like Matrix Reloaded on this site. There’s two realities. The respondents to this blog and the blogger himself have been programmed to see reality as Fat Al describes it. They’re hooked into some sort of self justifying system. They can’t see the reality of the AGW scam because they are not actually part of reality.

Keep up the responses to the AGW bed wetters [to borrow a very apt phrase from Monckton].

Regards

James from Melbourne

Coal mining vs. wind.

You had to only read the first couple of lines of this post.

“windpower now generates more jobs in this country than coal mining.”

Isn’t that really amazing in that coal is a huge mature industry and wind still in its infancy? Don’t you find that incredibly encouraging since it suggests that we can provide good quality jobs for thousands and thousands of Americans as we build out the industry?

What right-thinking true American can’t get behind that?

–

And please back up your “such a high cost” statement with some actual, verifiable numbers. I doesn’t smell right….

Just call me a fiscally-responsible, regulated-free market supporting, common sense-attempting, non-religious fanatic fundamental communist I suppose.

Or I could be a fascist rather than communist. Those labels seem to be interchangeable these days in winger insult-land.

I seem to no longer qualify to be an American.

You see a nuclear plant, and what do you think of? Yes, the Haliaeetus leucocephalus — the national eagle of America! Wind turbines remind you of, what, some no-name village in the Netherlands?

It’s clear. Nuclear energy wins hands down. It’s Patriotic™. If America switches to any energy source that doesn’t go KA-BOOM!!! then the terrorists will have won.

– bi

Bird kills in wind farms just isn’t a problem. It was with the first big farm at Altamont, but we learned a lot of lessons there. Now the annual kill per turbine is less than one. Less than your house windows, most likely. I know kills per turbine are way lower than bird kills by my house windows.

Clean coal, burning coal without releasing carbon into the atmosphere is not developing rapidly. It’s a very much unsolved problem.

How many people died because of nuclear energy disasters? We could start with Chernobyl….

India and China are installing both wind and solar at a very high rate. To think that they are lagging behind the rest of the world is to be very uninformed.

China is becoming a very major player in the world of renewables with both manufacturing and installation. India has some big wind farms up and running. Both countries (and a lot of other Asian countries) are doing a lot more with solar water heating than we are here in the West.

Wind farms take up very, very little land. While the overall farm area can be significant, the towers themselves have very small footprints and the area around them is still usable for crops or grazing.

Additionally there is little to no altering of the environment by wind farms. There can be some drying of the soil underneath the turbines due to increased turbulence, but that’s about it.

Europe gets a fair amount of its electricity from nuclear. But that power is only cheap because the plants were built before the price of building nuclear skyrocketed. If you look at what Europe is doing now for new power you will find solar and wind being installed.

Europe is working on a plan for a unified “super grid” which will tie the continent together with North Africa. Look for a lot of solar from North Africa, wind from the upper coastal areas, and hydro storage in the north to be the big future players, not new nuclear.

One thing you did get right – it’s that big ball of fire in the sky. The Sun gives us many more times the power we need to power our stuff. And it powers the wind which is also available at many times more than we need.

We’re just starting to understand how to power our needs with combinations of wind, solar, geothermal, biomass, biogas, tidal, and wave power with a bit of storage to back it up. More and more it looks like these are going to be the cleanest, safest and least expensive ways to power our future.

Maybe, the answers lie in that giant ball of fire in the sky ??

And, it is certainly safer and cleaner than coal — although clean coal technology is developing rapidly.

How many people have died in the last 50 years because of nuclear energy disasters?

Wind farms also take up hundreds of square miles, which can seriously alter the environment in the area.

I’m all for wind energy as a part of the solution — in places where it is practical, but it is certainly not going to make a big difference. The disadvantages outweigh the advantages…in my humble opinion.

Nuclear energy is better than burning fossil fuels for electricity/transportation. But it has to be weighed against other ways to solve our problems.

At this point in time nuclear falls second to wind and solar. Nuclear is expensive, takes a long time to bring to the grid, and brings with it dangers not created by other potential solutions.

We have limited funds and a need to reduce our fossil fuel use as rapidly as possible. Spending our money on new nuclear will get us less power in the long run and mean a delay of decades before we see significant CO2 decreases.

(Your “by far the cleanest and safest” assertion is factually incorrect.)

Funny coming from a guy who frequents this site…