The case for renewables, or more appropriately, against.

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adam2
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Post by adam2 »

Pepperman wrote:------I fail to see how renewable energy impacts farming, fishing or air transport. Perhaps large scale solar plants stop the light from hitting the field they're sited on but that kind of solar is, and always will be, a small part of our energy supply and land use so it really isn't anything to worry about. -------

.
Large ground mounted PV arrays DO shade the ground beneath them and render it less usefull, or entirely uselss for agrigculture. This argument does not apply to arrays placed atop buildings, these do not remove any ADDITIONAL land from farming, beyond that ALREADY taken up by the buildings.

Some types of hydroelectric plant do interfere with fishing in that they prevent fish from returning to the upper reaches of rivers to spawn. This largely affects sport fishing, rather than bulk food production.

Large wind turbines would interfere with air transport if too close to airports, this is normally prohibited. There are plenty of sites not near airports.
Rural wind turbines require access roads and this reduces available farmland, but only very slightly.

In general Renewable have fewer adverese effects than fossil fuel plant.
Last edited by adam2 on 12 Feb 2014, 10:26, edited 1 time in total.
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Tarrel
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Post by Tarrel »

Pepperman wrote:
woodburner wrote:I agree with that in general, the problem is, there is one big bogie. Renewables used to sustain the world until, give or take, 200 years ago. For this to happen again, the population demands will need to match the resources. That means a huge reduction in population.

Maybe GM corporates have been commissioned to undertake the task.
Things have moved on a bit! When renewables last powered the world we had access to wood for heat and cooking and wind and run of river power for milling. That was it and all were used highly inefficiently. Now we have a much broader array of technologies that we can call upon and they are vastly more efficient.
So, we probably need to end up somewhere in the middle, between Business-As-Usual 200 years ago (with the population that went with that) and the (probably unreachable) goal of a renewables-fuelled Business-As-Usual now.

If we took steps to live within the limits of our Renewables potential, by scaling back the economy, re-localising, etc, the population issue would probably take care of itself over time. Not in a "body bags in the streets" kind of way, but as a gradual reduction in average life expectancy. There are of course two major problems with this scenario:
1. We're not isolated in the World when it comes to the climatic impacts of fossil fuel use.
2. We haven't got time for the population issue to gradually take care of itself.

So, we're back to the prospect of a slow but disorderly "tumbling down the mountainside" type of collapse in which there is:
- Less capital available, and more of what is available has to be used to mitigate, or recover from, the ever increasing impacts of climate chaos,
- More social disorder as a result of pressures from climate-induced migration and increasing inequality,
- Increasingly impotent and cash-starved government that will either progressively leave us to ourselves or come out fighting with ever more draconian methods of control.

It's why I've gone away to hide in a corner. The good news for me is I can sleep slightly easier at night, knowing that a by-product of our move is that our own carbon footprint has reduced. Not as much as I'd like, but it's a start. Will it make a difference in the big scheme of things? No.
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emordnilap
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Post by emordnilap »

Tarrel wrote:
just out of interest does anybody have any evidence that wind turbines have had an effect on tourism?
Yep..

http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2013/1 ... s-toursim/

:D
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Post by emordnilap »

Interesting thread. Whilst I favour renewables over any other technology, I favour reduction in usage, of everything, over everything. That option is deliberately closed off to all but the most determined and still even then.

TEQs/C&S schemes become more attractive and sensible with each passing species, sorry, each passing minute.
I experience pleasure and pains, and pursue goals in service of them, so I cannot reasonably deny the right of other sentient agents to do the same - Steven Pinker
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Post by Tarrel »

...with each passing species, sorry, each passing minute.
A salutary reminder that the consumption problem is not just about CO2 emissions. Industrial farming, large scale Renewables deployment, urbanisation, retail parks, etc. all take their toll on natural habitats and the space that the rest of the planet's inhabitants have to survive in.

We tend to think about the need to reduce consumption in order to reduce energy-use, but maybe we should think about it the other way round; reducing energy-use in order to reduce consumption. i.e. Tax it, ration it, whatever, and the reduction in consumption will follow.
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Post by emordnilap »

The UN's widely-used '200 species a day being lost' quote may or may not be true. It's possibly smoke hiding the real fire.

TEQs/C&S are such great, logical and sensible ideas, they can't possibly, ever be introduced, let alone talked about by Mr & Mrs J Soap.
I experience pleasure and pains, and pursue goals in service of them, so I cannot reasonably deny the right of other sentient agents to do the same - Steven Pinker
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Post by PS_RalphW »

Earn Mearns late of The Oil Drum has his own blog now.

It has good technical content and is UK focused, and realistic about things like fracking and energy security. He is picking up quite a lot of Ex TOD traffic. He is a retired petroleum geologist.

Unfortunately he is pro nuclear and very down on wind power. He sees the world as BAU , in the sense of BAU or nothing, he does not seriously consider power down, other than as a nightmare scenario.

http://euanmearns.com

Well worth a look and maybe stepping into the dragon's den of the anti-wind comments. (One of the more rabidly anti-wind commenters is my wife's ex partner, so I don't want it to become personal :shock: )

Another good ex TOD blog , US centred concentrating on fracking is

http://peakoilbarrel.com/
Pepperman
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Post by Pepperman »

Yes I've been following his blog for the last month or two. I was very disappointed with his 'Parasitic wind killing its host' post (what an absurd title).
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Post by Tarrel »

Pepperman wrote:Yes I've been following his blog for the last month or two. I was very disappointed with his 'Parasitic wind killing its host' post (what an absurd title).
More like "Parasitic human race killing its host" at the moment. :roll:
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Post by woodburner »

You may like wind turbines, but they come with overheads. From Euan Mearns, is this acceptable?
Is it fair for the chancellor to cut pensions for the poor while offering a million pounds a year to the Duke of Roxburghe for letting the wind blow? Is it fair to offer half a million to the Earl of Moray, a third of a million to the Earl of Glasgow, and a quarter of a million to the Duke of Beaufort, Sir Alastair Gordon Cumming and Sir Reginald Sheffield, the prime minister’s father-in-law? Is it fair to promise a reported £1bn to Charles Connell over the next 25 years?

Never in the history of public subsidy can so much have been paid by so many to so few…Simon Jenkins writing in The Guardian
To become an extremist, hang around with people you agree with. Cass Sunstein
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Post by emordnilap »

Hmmm. My immediate reaction says that the land those turbines are on - and the turbines, come to think of it - should be publicly owned.
I experience pleasure and pains, and pursue goals in service of them, so I cannot reasonably deny the right of other sentient agents to do the same - Steven Pinker
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Post by woodburner »

That wouldn't fit with the Arslickan set.
To become an extremist, hang around with people you agree with. Cass Sunstein
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Post by RenewableCandy »

woodburner wrote:You may like wind turbines, but they come with overheads. From Euan Mearns, is this acceptable?
Is it fair for the chancellor to cut pensions for the poor while offering a million pounds a year to the Duke of Roxburghe for letting the wind blow? Is it fair to offer half a million to the Earl of Moray, a third of a million to the Earl of Glasgow, and a quarter of a million to the Duke of Beaufort, Sir Alastair Gordon Cumming and Sir Reginald Sheffield, the prime minister’s father-in-law? Is it fair to promise a reported £1bn to Charles Connell over the next 25 years?

Never in the history of public subsidy can so much have been paid by so many to so few…Simon Jenkins writing in The Guardian
Hah! Wait til you see how much CAP money the b***ers get for being "farmers"...does that mean we should abolish farming?
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Post by woodburner »

Yeah, let's abolish everything, we could start with Christmas.That would save loads of money.
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Post by Tarrel »

woodburner wrote:Yeah, let's abolish everything, we could start with Christmas.That would save loads of money.
Bah, humbug!
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