US Wind Power Is Expected To Double In the Next 5 Years 262
merbs writes: The U.S. Department of Energy anticipates that the amount of electricity generated by wind power to more than double over the next five years. Right now, wind provides the nation with about 4.5 percent of its power. But an in-depth DOE report (PDF) released yesterday forecasts that number will rise to 10 percent by 2020—then 20 percent by 2030, and 35 percent by 2050.
Wind is (Score:2)
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Those parentheses are a contained sentence, maggot! Where's your capitalization and period? I see a space there at the end, too. Drop and give me 50 WPM!
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Wind is popular, because it can be implemented using fairly small plot of land, which makes it ideal for municipal power generation. Solar requires more surface area, and means the individuals will need to agree to putting the devices on their property.
So in a democratic settings. 50+% of the voters vote for a wind turbine for their community, means 100% of the population get Wind energy.
While for solar where the individuals choose, that 50+% May have solar while the 50-% will not, so that is less overall
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Could you not place solar panels underneath the windmills?
There are a few small advantages to solar panels though, in that they can be placed on roofs of buildings, hence not taking up any additional space.
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And solar panels are completely silent.
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We should just bolt solar panels to the blades of the windmill.
And then bolt copies of that windmill to the tips of an even bigger windmill that's ALSO covered in solar panels.
On top of a hydro dam!
With an underground fission reactor that uses the reservoir lake as a cooling loop!
With natural gas backup generators!
AND LIT BY COAL FIRED LAMPS DEAR GOD I THINK I JUST SOLVED THE WORLD'S ENERGY CRISIS
I... didn't sleep one minute last night. :(
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You can place them on the wings of the windmill.
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You've got it backwards. Wind is highly cost ineffective unless done very large. Sub-100kW turbines just don't get you the same sort of buy in your power as the >500kW turbines, and the little rooftop turbines are ridiculously expensive per kWh. By contrast, solar - at least photovoltaic - works just fine at the small scale, especially when the land area for it is "free" (aka, someone wants to add cells to their roof).
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Wind and Solar Converge (Score:5, Informative)
For solar, taking 200 MW of capacity in 1995 and 100,000 MW in 2012 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G... [wikipedia.org] we get to 100,000,000 MW in 39 years from 1995 since (log(100 TW)-log(200 MW))/(log(100,000 MW)-log(200 MW))/17 years)=39 years. So 2034 is when we may expect solar PV to cover all energy demand.
For wind, taking 7,600 MW of capacity in 1995 and 369,553 MW in 2014 http://www.gwec.net/wp-content... [gwec.net] we get to 60,000,000 MW in 39 years from 1997 since (log(60 TW)-log(7,600 MW))/(log(369,533 MW)-log(7.500 MW))/17 years = 39 years. So, 2036 is where we may expect wind power to cover all energy demand.
So, within just a couple years of each other, either technology can be projected to grow to cover all current demand.
A driver for ongoing exponential growth for PV is the still falling cost of manufacture. It is expected that panels will cost $0.36/W to produce in 2017. http://www.greentechmedia.com/... [greentechmedia.com]
This seems to be a faster rate than pledges coming in for Paris are anticipating so we might have some confidence that those pledges are going to be met.
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That's OK. Using the same logic, by 2038 the Dow Jones Industrial average should be about 29490859 and the world economy will have increased by a factor of four.
Only idiots, economists and insects use exponential growth over long periods of time.
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Re:Wind is (Score:5, Informative)
> That's quite a statement to make ...because it's completely wrong.
http://www.computerworld.com/article/2895013/new-solar-installs-beat-wind-and-coal-two-years-in-a-row.html
Geez people, this was posted here all of *yesterday*.
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Mod parent up.
That article was mistaken (Score:2)
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Costs: Wind: 6 cents/kw (but 30 c/kw with infrastructure), solar 60 c/kw, natgas 9 c/kw, coal 7 c/kw, nuclear 12 c/kw, hydro 3 c/kw.
Problem with wind and solar is that they are intermittent, but the distribution and storage are extremely lacking. You run into the huge issue of peak need vs lowest production - in just seconds. It'll be a couple decades before either is economical (assuming you ignore government market manipulation).
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[Citation needed]
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> Costs: Wind: 6 cents/kw [snip] , solar 60 c/kw, natgas 9 c/kw, coal 7 c/kw, nuclear 12 c/kw, hydro 3 c/kw.
Ummm, no. Using actual numbers from an industry source, this one specifically:
http://www.lazard.com/PDF/Levelized%20Cost%20of%20Energy%20-%20Version%208.0.pdf
It's wind at ~5 cents/kWh, PV around 7 cents, natgas around 7, coal around 9, nuclear around 11.
And maybe get your units right?
>(but 30 c/kw with infrastructure)
OMG where did you get that figure? The American Tradition Institute maybe?
The c
Re:Wind is (Score:5, Insightful)
> On the wind side there are substantial additional costs over dispatchable sources
No, there are not. I posted the numbers. Integrating wind is cheap, and the numbers keep going down because the equipment is getting better. The vast majority of "the equipment" is a PC running software you can buy from IBM.
When they invented coal fired power in the 1880s do you know what the interconnect cost was? Infinity. That's because they didn't have a grid, and the plants went up and down all the time. In spite of this, they built it out successfully anyway. They figured out how to interconnect two generators that would otherwise be running out of phase, how to keep voltages under control, how to handle generators going offline out of the blue.
Now after over 100 years, do you think we know more or less about how to hook up generation to the grid? More? Well if infinity was small enough to handle 100+ years ago, how can you possibly believe it's a) more difficult, or b) more expensive?
This isn't theoretical. We're actually adding this capacity as I type this. The grid is not failing. The companies are not going out of business. Everything is working just fine.
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the distribution and storage are extremely lacking.
THIS! West Texas is a wind power gold mine. It is not, however, a large population center. Almost all the power generated from the wind farms in West Texas go to Dallas. The problem was while everybody was building wind farms nobody was increasing the grid capacity to Dallas. These wind farms were actually shunting excess electricity into the ground because electric storage was cost prohibitive. The Texas Public Utility Commission (PUCT) launched an initiative [texascrezprojects.com] in 2008 to expand transmission capacity. That w
Re:Wind is (Score:5, Informative)
You run into the huge issue of peak need vs lowest production - in just seconds.
This is a common myth. Wind turbines have an immense amount of inertia. They don't suddenly accelerate with every gust, or suddenly stop when there is a lull. The UK National Grid uses a time frame of 15 minutes for predicting wind generation output, during which the output never varies by more than a small amount.
Solar is also very predictable. We have excellent cloud cover monitoring from space. Although clouds do move over areas the geographic distribution of domestic solar evens the fluctuations out and makes them predictable. For larger installations cloud cover can be predicted in advance, and utility scale batteries have been available to further smooth output for a while now (sodium sulphur, typical installation is about 50MWh).
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Much of the issue (misconception) is smaller wind turbines. However, by definition a wind turbine is working hard to absorb most of that inertia into the generator, so there is variability on an individual machine level. The overall grid smooths things out. The complaints I have been hearing are that power flow direction and magnitude can change sharply with the wind turbines, creating challenges for the protective relays.
Sodium Sulfur batteries work great on a diurnal basis, but they seem less effective
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All of the wind and weather on planet Earth is a result of temperature inversions caused by solar heating. It seems to me that energy from wind should be less efficient than energy from solar due to thermodynamics. Why then is solar more expensive?
That response was a perfect demonstration as to why engineers really need to study basic economics. And also take a more comprehensive look at issues.
Production is free. Harvesting is expensive. Distribution is expensive. Time shifting is expensive. etc. Add it up.
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There is no lobbying group out there with the $$$$ to get that through, and nothing is happening in any area of law or regulation is happening unless there is a lobbying group that will pay for it.
In Indiana, we have the opposite happening. We have a law that was just barely was killed that would have basically taxed solar to hell and we have a couple of counties that have made wind power ILLEGAL due to bogus health claims, but it's all a fig leaf for other types of energy companies that have more money to
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Photovoltaics are absolutely fantastic for distributed generation at a building level. Solar thermal is great for grid-scale power generation. Photovoltaic is not a great grid-scale solution precisely because it is a good DG solution.
Wind only works at grid scale. The power formula simply favors the largest turbine, mounted with the hub as high as possible. That does not work for distributed solutions.
What does not seem to be resolved today is how to actually connect 2-5MW wind turbines to the grid with
Fusion! (Score:2)
You just wait until my big brother Fusion shows up. He'll kick all of ya'lls asses!
He said he'd be here any decade now.
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Is he waiting for his big sister, Linux On The Desktop?
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So do skyscrapers and many other man-made objects.
Per installation instance, windfarms are actually very ecologically benign compared to other things that modern civilization seems to think is perfectly acceptable.
I'm doing my part. (Score:2)
My bean consumption is up 32% over last year.
4.5 percent? (Score:2)
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Wind energy will go up (Score:2)
With climate change, there is more energy in the atmosphere - higher wind speeds.
We won't be able to harness all of this increase of course, generally wind turbines can't handle tornadoes for example.
I personally think that vertical wind turbines (that look like an egg beater sticking up, rather than a large propeller ) are the way to go.
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I personally think that vertical wind turbines (that look like an egg beater sticking up, rather than a large propeller ) are the way to go.
People who design wind turbines disagree with you. Now what ?
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I personally think that vertical wind turbines (that look like an egg beater sticking up, rather than a large propeller ) are the way to go.
Like most things, there are reasons they're better and reasons they're worse.
You can look up the differences between VAWT and HAWT (google it), but basically, VAWT that you're talking about is likely a good idea for personal turbines, but isn't the best for large wind farms. That said, some have discussed using VAWT close to the ground in large HAWT wind farms so they can harvest both ground level wind and wind aloft.
No brainer (Score:2)
I expect a large increase in Wind Power next year (Score:2)
2016 elections. Need I say more?
Misallocation of resources (Score:2)
Natural gas is so cheap and so abundant in the US that wind power makes zero financial sense as a competitor. If wind actually does double, it will be a huge misallocation of resources.
And it won't really help the environment. The natural gas will just be burnt off or vented to the atmosphere instead of being captured to produce electricity.
Re:Misallocation of resources (Score:4, Insightful)
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Natural gas is so cheap and so abundant in the US
...because fracking. You're in favor of fracking?
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Natural gas from fracking won't last long. It would be nice to start working on alternatives before that.
Well here's a first... (Score:2)
Not ONE post from someone complaining that wind can't possibly work, and the only possible solution is to build [insert nuclear power unicorn faerie dust machine here].
Wow, the worm has indeed turned.
Wind power doubles? (Score:2)
CC wind (Score:2)
Has there been a wind sustainability study for future use with the climate changing? I mean it's been stated that there will be rain in places where there is no rain now. And rainy places will have drought in the future. So where are the wind models at for the future? I'm sure there are graphs and pretty pictures for us simpletons. And with these studies, by harvesting the wind (slowing it down, redirecting, etc) how does will that affect the ecosystem at large?
Now I'm being a bit facetious, but it should b
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Overpopulation is sooo last generation-but-one's issue.
Evidence for this (and by "this", I mean that sustainable population is ~1 billion)? From the looks of things, we're managing to support seven billion-plus with fewer people starving than
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we're managing to support seven billion-plus with fewer people starving than was common when I was growing up half a century ago. And higher standards of living.
But you can't say we're sustaining that while we use up fossil fuels faster than they are being produced.
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Sure, but 7 billion is sustainable if we get our shit together.
Re:Has anyone studied? (Score:4, Informative)
This. Grandparent shouldn't have been modded up.
Earth's sustainable population using current tech is somewhere between 9 and 12 billion. People are only going hungry for political reasons. There's plenty of food, it just doesn't get to those who need it. As to energy, there's not enough resources readily available for everyone to live at U.S. levels, which are frankly a bit wasteful; but, it is possible to pull everyone up to a similar standard of living, in time.
Affects of wind turbines on the atmosphere have been studied. Of course they have a localized effect. Short version is the turbines cause local mixing of higher altitude and ground level air, resulting in minor changes to local weather down-wind. The mixing and turbulence will affect pollen and dust in different ways, depending on particle size and where they were (high/low) to begin with. Overall you're pulling heat out of the atmosphere; so, not a bad thing. Turbine numbers would have to get truly massive in order for them to have any significant global effect.
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Overall you're pulling heat out of the atmosphere; so, not a bad thing.
No, because that energy is put back in the atmosphere somewhere else.
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Nope. It goes somewhere but there are use cases where it's put into the ocean
Yes, there are some cases where it goes into the ocean, but that's a tiny percentage of our overall waste heat. Most of it goes back to the atmosphere.
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As to energy, there's not enough resources readily available for everyone to live at U.S. levels, which are frankly a bit wasteful;
Western Europe has similar or (certainly on average) better standards of living than the US, but uses a fraction as as much energy. A typical German household uses half as much energy as a US one, yet has the same quality of life.
We should be aiming to pull most of the world up to European standards, and the US down to them.
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A typical german household is not using half of an american but less then a fifth. I only use like 3500kWh per year in a 100 square meter flat (just think square yards or multiply by nine for square feet) + natural gas for heating in winter and hot water.
I arguable save a lot more than the average german. The amount of energy/CO2 americans use is absurd.
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There's plenty of food, it just doesn't get to those who need it.
A lot of that food is effectively made from petroleum, and it's not sustainable. As well, the crops are produced in a way that tends to deplete the soil, which is also not sustainable. And finally, phosphorous depletion, because we cook our poop and then flush it into waterways, guess what that isn't? So now, rewind...
Earth's sustainable population using current tech is somewhere between 9 and 12 billion.
Using current tech is not sustainable. So your estimate is based on total nonsense.
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> Overpopulation is sooo last generation-but-one's issue.
Bullshit. We are only making enough food for the population because of chemical tricks. If we didn't have chemical fertilizers we would be starving right now.
Science played a trick and it bought us a hell of a lot of time, but it is still an issue. And all that ammonia runoff certainly has caused sea dead zones.
Re:Has anyone studied? (Score:5, Informative)
> We're exhausting arable land at an alarming rate,
No we're not, not even close.
Today the planet will generate 6,000 calories for everyone on the planet. You need 2,000, so *using today's agriculture* we could support 21 billion people.
However, a considerable amount of currently used land is used extremely inefficiently. About half the planet's arable land is using stone-age methodologies and crop varietals, which offer about 1/4rd the payload per acre or less.
So if all we do is introduce modern methods to the rest of the existing used land, that will increase production to the point where something like 50 or 60 billion can be fed.
And of course, the techniques are improving all the time. I have a friend in the industry who visits the contests across North America. Over the last 10 years the record for corn production per acre has improved something like 15%. There is no sign of this slowing down.
And of course the system as a whole is unbelievably inefficient because we have a meat-heavy diet. We take thousands and thousands of calories and turn them into tens or hundreds. And even our choice of meat is terrible; beef is far, far less efficient to produce than chicken.
The world is literally awash with food, so much that the vast majority of the calories we make are ultimately thrown away. We could *easily* double the population with zero changes to the existing production methods.
> Organic, chemical-free agriculture cannot support our numbers
Completely incorrect. "organic methods could produce enough food on a global per capita basis to sustain the current human population, and potentially an even larger population, without increasing the agricultural land base"
Organic methods generally produce about 80% per acre of basic foodstuffs compared to non-organic methods. That would mean, say, 5,000 calories per person per day on existing land. Still way more than we need. And if we were to eat a little less meat, especially beef, that would free up a lot more.
The difference is not output, but cost. Organic methods generally use much smaller plots of single crops interspersed with similar sized different crops. This means harvesting is more expensive than, say, driving a reaper around a 5000 acre plot. Weeding and pest control are likewise more expensive and time consuming.
But that's it. And since food costs for the average Canadian have dropped from 40% of their take-home pay to under 9% - in spite of far greater amounts of eating at restaurants and other expensive options - we clearly have significant amounts of money we could use to pay for it, if we wanted. I personally don't care, nitrogen is nitrogen.
Seriously, read a little. Start on the Wiki:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Organic_farming
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However you are leaving out one critical piece of the puzzle when it comes to agriculture: Water.
Where can we start?
How about the Cripps Institue predictions about water in the Western US/Colorado River Basin, that are now playing out. [smithsonianmag.com]
How about Californias Central Valley?
How about overdrilling and polluting the aquifer under Sao Paolo in Brazil? [npr.org]
What about the overdrilling in India due to cheap and illeagal diesel pumps?
Etc;
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Not so in central Europe, over here there is more than enough water. I don't think farmers actually ever water their crops where I live.
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I don't necessarily agree with the OP that there is evidence that 1 Billion is the right number, but there is ample evidence that it cannot support 7 billion in the long term.
I disagree. But let's go through your argument.
We're exhausting arable land at an alarming rate, and have done so to the extent that, without petroleum-based chemical fertilizer, nothing will grow anymore in the scales that are required to feed us. Organic, chemical-free agriculture cannot support our numbers. No way. No how.
There are several problems with these assertions. First, while I agree we are going through arable land at an alarming rate, it doesn't need to be that way. Developed world agriculture is far more sustainable than the worst cases.
Second, fertilizer is not petroleum-based. It is nitrogen-based. Methane from natural gas, which is not petroleum-based, can be used to fix atmospheric nitrogen to yield ammonia, a common fertilizer component. Similarly, there are a
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Little fertilizer is made from petroleum. Phosphates are mined and sometimes acid modified to make more soluble. Ammonia is made from methane, which today comes as natural gas, but can be made in countless different processes. Nitrates are made from ammonia. Potassium fertilizers are made from mined potash and ammonium nitrate. Etc.
The ability of humans to thrive is not petroleum-limited, but energy-in-general limited.
The amount of arable land on earth is increasin
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Re wind power - this will be easy to determine - what is the speed of the wind at different altitudes before and after the wind farm. If there is a major difference AND if wind farms become major fixtures on the landscape (meaning they cover a significant portion of an area's total acreage) then we have a problem.
Care to volunteer? (Score:5, Insightful)
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I volunteer as a tribute!
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Alright Katness...you can go to the Hunger Games if that is what you want.
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Actually I don't believe any of those numbers.
If every of the (far less) 400 million US inhabitants owned a cat, there would be 400 million cats, obviously. To kill close to 4billion birds per year, every cat needs to kill 10 birds per year. For every cat that is kept inside the house, another cat has to kill twice as many birds.
Bottom line that number makes no sense. Same for the birds supposedly killed by wind turbines. (the two numbers you give are already apart by a factor of ten!)
Also, if a bird is so
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I can tell you are not a cat owner. The ones that do go outside, which is the majority, kill far more than 10 birds per year. 10 birds per day perhaps, during the summer months. Seriously, cats are one of nature's most efficient hunters and kill for amusement even if you feed them well and give them toys.
Wikipedia has more details, including multiple sources for the numbers. 4bn is a bit high for just birds, but the lower limit on mammals is 6.9bn with an upper estimate of 20bn/year. Cats really, really lik
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I'm not really a cat owner.
But my ex GF has a cat. That one never has killed a bird, as it is inside all the time.
When I was a boy, we had cats.
They only brought occasionally a bird home. My father tought them nit to do that. No idea if they stopped killing birds or if they stopped bringing them home.
Regarding mammals: who the fuck cares? Wild life that kills rats, mice, rabbits around civilized areas no longer exists. I have no trouble if my cat kills rabbits and brings them home, as my mothers cats did wh
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I support a bounty on cats.
Especially my ex-wife's cat that pissed everywhere.
Re:Has anyone studied? (Score:5, Insightful)
Has anyone studied the effect on the environment of taking all of that energy out of the wind? What if seeds and dust aren't carried as far? How does that affect terraforming? What about migratory birds? Has anyone bothered to solve the problem of mass kills during migration season?
These questions will never be answered, I don't think, because the politics that drive wind power are the same as those that drive anthro climate change - "We're right, shut up if you disagree?"
The Earth is going to be destroyed by people (on both sides of the political aisle) who refuse to take a reasoned approach to our energy crisis. The root causes of our energy shortage, climate change, starvation, hunger, crime, and disease, are all one in the same: OVERPOPULATION.
We're 7 times as numerous as the Earth can sustain. Unless and until we fix that problem, our habitable climate WILL be destroyed.
"Informative"? WTF mods, just wtf. Let's see: YES, they have studied it: wind speeds beyond the wind farm in question are not changed any measurable amount by the operation of the farm. Don't worry, pollen and dust will still get all over every fucking thing. Terraforming? Wtf, no. Bird issues are being addressed by implementing various repellent techniques, and the number of birds killed is actually already extremely low (far less than the number killed by household cats but you aren't here on /. to whine about getting rid of cats, are you).
As for your overpopulation assertion, Thomas Malthus died 150 years ago, and still isn't close to being right.
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The politics of anthro climate change are "It doesn't exist, shut up, stop telling me the 'science'". You are stupid not because you disagree, but because your arguments SUCK.
You are correct that overpopulation used to be a problem, but the developed world has basically solved that issue.
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It should, perhaps, be noted that population was higher after every war than it was before the war (world population grew about 100 million during WW2, in spite of the millions killed during that war). No, war is not a solution to overpopulation.
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You are correct that overpopulation used to be a problem, but the developed world has basically solved that issue. See Japan, where the population growth is basically negative.
How's that working in a place like Saudi Arabia? Since the oil money started to come in, population has grown from 4 million in 1960 to almost 30 million now.
How exactly is that solved ?
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I doubt there is a gene for family size. .(*facepalm*)
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I doubt there is a gene for family size. .(*facepalm*)
You've never heard of people wanting to have children for no rational reason ? You never wonder why people are so interested in having sex ? You are sure those urges have nothing to do with our genes ?
Re:Has anyone studied? (Score:5, Insightful)
Has anyone studied the effect on the environment of taking all of that energy out of the wind? What if seeds and dust aren't carried as far?
This is such an unfounded concern, I'm not even sure where to start. I grew up in the prairie of Minnesota and I could only hope that the wind is reduced there. It is absolutely brutal at times and causes erosion and top soil loss. Why do you want dust carried far? What seeds are you concerned about falling too close to the parent plant? I just, this hasn't been studied because there's nothing to argue about. Like solar there's a lot of energy to be harvested. There's no way to harvest all of it, a lot of it is dissipated as friction against water and earth and I can't think of one positive purpose of that friction.
How does that affect terraforming?
How does that affect our ability to transform the planet into a more livable human environment? I can't even parse this or apply it to the topic at hand. "How does that affect X?" when X has nothing to do with the discussion just sounds like fear mongering.
What about migratory birds? Has anyone bothered to solve the problem of mass kills during migration season?
This is well documented and researched [ucsusa.org] but I am constantly confused as to why "migratory birds" are the stipulated losses. It's any birds. Migratory or not. And the numbers have been scientifically estimated to be 140,000 to 328,000 [smithsonianmag.com] per year. But we're getting smarter about designing these windmills to prevent avian death [nationalgeographic.com].
These questions will never be answered
Well, the first two are just too fucking vapid and inane to be answered. The latter, I've answered for you.
, I don't think, because the politics that drive wind power are the same as those that drive anthro climate change - "We're right, shut up if you disagree?"
You know, that could be said about any politics anywhere because modern politics are about inaction and hot air. Companies and scientists are trying hard to expand our energy portfolio away from fossil fuels. And that's smart whether it's biofuel algae, solar, wind or even failed corrupt initiatives like corn ethanol. In the end there are going to be regionally localized energy productions that will account for a large amount of that local populace's consumption. This will likely still be augmented by fossil fuels -- maybe as emergency or backup but I don't think we'll ever see them completely removed from the equation.
The Earth is going to be destroyed by people (on both sides of the political aisle) who refuse to take a reasoned approach to our energy crisis. The root causes of our energy shortage, climate change, starvation, hunger, crime, and disease, are all one in the same: OVERPOPULATION.
We're 7 times as numerous as the Earth can sustain. Unless and until we fix that problem, our habitable climate WILL be destroyed.
Scientifically, can you explain how you came to calculate the multiplier of "7 times as numerous as Earth can sustain?" Because the idea that the Earth can only sustain a nice round even number like a billion people raises suspicions. But it's pretty evident that nothing is going to talk sense into you, Malthus. Science and human ingenuity has gotten us past radical adj
Yes they have studied all that stuff (Score:5, Insightful)
Has anyone studied the effect on the environment of taking all of that energy out of the wind?
Yes [npr.org]. It's basically a nonissue.
What if seeds and dust aren't carried as far?
Then they settle someplace else. No actual evidence exists however to indicate wind turbines are actually causing such an effect however on any sort of substantial scale.
How does that affect terraforming?
We're on Terra [wikipedia.org] so terraforming [wikipedia.org] on terra is meaningless.
What about migratory birds? Has anyone bothered to solve the problem of mass kills during migration season?
The number of birds killed by wind turbines is a rounding error compared to the number killed by domestic cats [usatoday.com].
The Earth is going to be destroyed by people (on both sides of the political aisle) who refuse to take a reasoned approach to our energy crisis.
What energy crisis? We have no lack of energy. We have a pollution crisis due to a lack of clean energy sources. Wind is demonstrably cleaner than some of the alternatives. There is no ideal energy source with no problems so it's a minimization problem. What is the least worst way to supply energy without resulting in catastrophic climate effects.
The root causes of our energy shortage, climate change, starvation, hunger, crime, and disease, are all one in the same: OVERPOPULATION.
There is no energy shortage. Climate change is due to pollution, not overpopulation. Starvation and hunger are distribution problems, not production problems. Crime has existed since the dawn of mankind and has nothing inherently to do with overpopulation. Same for disease. At most some of these problems can be exacerbated by population but population is not the root cause of any of them.
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Starvation and hunger are distribution problems, not production problems
We have excellent distribution systems, so that's not a problem. The real problem is that many people can't afford it.
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We have excellent distribution systems, so that's not a problem.
The mere fact that we cannot get food to everyone who needs it despite the fact that more than enough is produced to feed everyone on the plant is clear evidence that we do not have "excellent" distribution systems. The mere fact that we have the technical ability does not mean the system is adequate to the needs of those who are hungry.
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The mere fact that we have the technical ability does not mean the system is adequate to the needs of those who are hungry.
That's not a fault of the distribution. It just means that the people who have the food aren't willing to give it away, and have it transported on their dime. And why should they ? It's not the fault of the food producers or food distributors that somebody decides to have children in an area that doesn't support sufficient means to feed them.
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As soon as you get rid of one warlord, another one will take his place. It's not a problem you can fix.
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> Has anyone studied the effect on the environment of taking all of that energy out of the wind
Yes. There's this thing called Google, you should try it some time. I did, and it took me directly to this:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environmental_impact_of_wind_power
Re: (Score:3)
So I guess punk band FEAR has what you want:
There's so many of us
There's so many of us
There's so many
Let's have a war
So you can go and die!
Let's have a war!
We could all use the money!
Let's have a war!
We need the space!
Let's have a war!
Clean out this place!
Let's have a war!
Jack up the Dow Jones!
Let's have a war!
It can start in New Jersey!
Let's have a war!
Blame it on the middle-class!
Let's have a war!
We're like rats in a cage!
Let's have a war!
Sell the rights to the networks!
Let's have
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More than 40% of all food harvested/hunted/bred is wasted and thrown away.
So the planet is far away from the maximum population it could hold.
How much the planet can sustain, no one knows. It is more likely ten times the amount we have right now than just 1/7ths as you suggest.
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Has anyone studied the effect on the environment of taking all of that energy out of the wind?
Trees also block the wind. So a simple solution is to require anyone erecting a windmill to cut down a tree to compensate. Then there will be no net change. Of course we will also need to ban the planting of new trees, unless there is an environmental impact statement explaining how the tree will affect the climate.
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You are looking for a perfect solution. Sorry everything you choose has a tradeoff.
The issue is to get the right balance. Right now our current energy is dirty. So... Migratory birds flying threw smoke isn't that good for them. The effects of global climate change means the seeds and dust flying patterns are altered.
So Wind isn't perfect, however the tradeoffs compared to what we have now, seems much more manageable.
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Actually, most of those questions have already been answered.... the answers are simply always conveniently ignored by people who seem to want nothing more than to believe that there should be something to argue about here.
The effect on the surrounding environment of taking all of that energy out of the wind is a
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"The root causes of our energy shortage, climate change, starvation, hunger, crime, and disease, are all one in the same: OVERPOPULA
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Oh, you too? In Quebec we're swimming in surplus hydroelectricity, yet they're building turbines everywhere and increasing our rates as much as they can.
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And they're installing "smart" meters that will allow them to charge more during peak hours.
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Really, so you're dumping water out rather than letting it run through the turbines?
No, you're selling it to outside Quebec and making vast amounts of money off of it. And you'll be exporting even more power once you get the turbines.
Power transmission doesn't stop at regional borders.
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Well, that's not quite true. Somebody is making vast amounts of money, but it isn't Quebec.
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That "someone" is Hydro-Québec, which is owned by the government of Quebec. They bring the government over 2 billion dollars per year and pump about 10 billion a year into the local economy.
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You know 200 years ago London looked like Beijing does today because of all the coal smoke, right?
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200? Try 60:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Smog
~4000 dead.
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False. Bird deaths due to wind turbines are a rounding error.
http://www.stateofthebirds.org... [stateofthebirds.org]