Especially when you make most of the messy parts happen to other people.
Here's something I've pointed out as problems with the bird cuisinarts to greenies; they scoffed at the amount of materials and just what they mean:
Each of the turbines at Dunmaglass will require servicing, which means a network of new and improved roads 20 miles long being built across the hills. They also need 1,500 tons of concrete foundations to keep them upright in a strong wind, which will scar the area.
Don't forget all the rebar in those foundations, either.
But don't worry, it's all worth it. Say the asshats who hate nuclear, which has fewer downsides:
Many environmental pressure groups share
Salmond’s view. Friends of the Earth opposes the Arctic being ruined by
oil extraction, but when it comes to damaging Scotland’s wilderness
with concrete and hundreds of miles of roads, they say wind energy is
worth it as the impact of climate change has to be faced.
"We must act now OR WE'LL ALL DIE!!" Sound familiar?
And let's not forget what this 'green' energy COSTS, and how people are screwed for it:
There’s a simple beauty about RO for the government. Even though it’s defined as a tax, it doesn’t come out of pay packets but is stuck on our electricity bills. That has made funding wind farms a lot easier for the government than more cost-effective energy-efficiency measures.
"Try to hide the costs from the people who pay them. When they find out, tell them it'll all be fine."
By 2020, environmental regulation will
be adding 31 per cent to our bills. That’s £160 green tax out of an
average annual bill of £512. As costs rise, more people will be driven
into fuel poverty. When he was secretary of state at the Department of
Energy and Climate Change, Ed Miliband decreed that these increases
should be offset by improvements in energy efficiencies.
Right...
Study a graph of electricity consumption and it appears amazingly predictable, even down to reduced demand on public holidays. The graph for wind energy output, however, is far less predictable.
Take the figures for December, when we all shivered through sub-zero temperatures and wholesale electricity prices surged. Peak demand for the UK on 20 December was just over 60,000 megawatts. Maximum capacity for wind turbines throughout the UK is 5,891 megawatts, almost ten per cent of that peak demand figure.
Yet on December 20, because winds were light or non-existent, wind energy contributed a paltry 140 megawatts. Despite billions of pounds in investment and subsidies, Britain’s wind-turbine fleet was producing a feeble 2.43 per cent of its own capacity – and little more than 0.2 per cent of the nation’s electricity in the coldest month since records began.
There's more; oh, lots more. And it all boils down to "We know what's best for you, peasants, so pay up and shut up."
Which has something to do with those disturbances in France, if I'm not mistaken...
3 comments:
Gas or coal or nuclear powered electrical generation plants can be turned up as needed as demand increases. Wind, not so much.
Also, the masses and loads on the bearings in a wind power turbine are unsustainable--they require constant maintenance, which is physically nearly impossible as the bearings under load are hundreds of feet in the air. This results in one and only one failure mode: the spectacular catastrophic kind, complete with lots of flames, smoke, and fireworks.
Here's a compilation of them:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wfzgIxMEo8g
The same newsmedia that trips over their enormous clown shoes to tell us every time George Zimmerman gets a parking ticket imposes a news blackout.
Nothing "green" works worth a damn. Or can work. "Never invest in something that violates the laws of thermodynamics," a bright fellow once said. It's not supposed to work. It's supposed to be expensive, shoddy, and deadly--this is a feature, not a bug.
“Giving society cheap, abundant energy would be the equivalent of giving an idiot child a machine gun.” – Paul Ehrlich, Stanford Woods Institute
These people, most of whom are Red Diaper Babies from the Tribe that Shall Not be Named (funny how they're only one percent of the population, but whether it's SJWs or "environmentalists" or "community activists" or "judicial activists," whenever you follow the money, whenever you pull away the curtain and look at the busy little beavers gnawing away at our nation's foundations, subverting and undermining civilization, guess who are always 90% or more of the names? Guess who! It's the You-Know-Whos, again, which is surely just a coincidence since they're only 1% of the population) don't give a good goddamn about the environment, or "sustainability," or people--at least people outside their very insular little tribe. They're Reds, every last one of them, and they are trying to tear down civilization.
They believe themselves to be the Party Vanguard, and they believe that when everything comes crashing down the hoi polloi will turn to them for leadership, and they'll be able to bring about "Scientific Marxist-Leninism." Liberty, prosperity and peace are obstacles to these people, obstacles to be destroyed.
Tell a Prius owner their car runs on coal burned in power plants.
Hilarity begins VERY shortly! :)
One of the things I ran across a while ago is that on still or low-wind days, if the turbine doesn't turn at all, the weight can cause flat spots on the bearings, which means a rebuild. So on days like that they have to draw power from the grid to slowly rotate the thing.
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