Why is it taking everyone so long to notice the bleedin' obvious? We need to concentrate fully on REDUCING CONSUMPTION not generating more power! Its a bit like road building schemes innit - as soon as theyre open - theyre full!
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R
That article keeps talking about 'landscape', but to me landscape is a completely manmade thing anyway, it depends on how you manage the land. Even landscapes that seem very wild aren't really at all, like the upland moors.
What's more important surely is the biodiversity. And windfarms don't have to affect that, they are just little towers. Stuff can go on around them pretty much as usual. Which is completely different to how biofuels and dams and suchlike work.
so I like windfarms me. And you can stick them out at sea. And if you get fed up of them you can take them down.
And they're a darn sight less damaging than burning fossil fuels. And you don't have to wonder what to do with any waste for the next 10.000 years.
E
I think that's a crap article, part of the ongoing campaign to rehabilitate nuclear energy in public consciousness.
As it happens I agree with you that reducing consumption is the best way to tackle climate change. But not many of us can live without electricity altogether. And we have to replace our ageing fleet of conventional power stations. Emissions aside, coal, oil & gas are finite resources - moreso than land - so that leaves you with nuclear, which contaminates the land for thousands of years & is f'king dangerous. Maybe you place such faith in science, safety procedures & national security that you disagree...
We live in a post-industrial landscape - there's very little that's actually "natural". Windfarms are temporary structures (easily removed on the day they invent cold fusion) and quiet & safe. The real problem with them is intermittancy - which is why they can only be part of the fuel mx, never all of it. But they are a valuable part.
P
I accept that these may not be the most land-to-energy efficient of energy sources ... and it's something I know very little about ... so I was wondering if anyone more enlightened could wise me up.
I'm under the impression that presently we're paying all kinds of subsidies to a considerable number of farmers to either grow nothing or over-produce oil-seed rape and other surplus crops ... I could well be wrong, but this is the impression I get, maybe this is no longer the case ... maybe it never was?
Could biofuel crops not be grown on exisiting farmland which is, in one or other of the above stated manners effectively not efficiently productive? I have no idea if there's enough farmland in such a situation to make any kind of practical contribution to potential biofuel demands or whether these crops yield enough of a viable return to a farmer ... or even whether such crops cause any environmental damage themselves.
Is this a totally stupid and ignorant idea? If so why? I honestly know very little about all this but would be interested to learn more.
L
Energy from windturbines has been much debated here in Norway the last years. The changing of landscapes seems to have been the main topic, but there are other and far worse dangers.
On the island Karmøy we have one of the few remaining patches of the northern European heath moors, a landscape that has excisted for 5000 years. Some think it's a good idea to convert this very sensitive eco system into a windturbine park; broad construction roads will be built, bogs will be drained, and the habitat of several species will be destroyed: The Eurasian Eagle Owl (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eurasian_Eagle-owl), and The White-tailed Sea Eagle (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White-tailed_Eagle) among others.
There are also plans to put up windturbines all along the Norwegian coast; the main north/south trekking corridor of billions of birds from the polar aereas, Greenland, Svalbard and northwestern Russia/Siberia. Clogging up the birds main highway with giant meat grinders is not a good idea!
It's a very high price to pay, and for what? A planned windpark on the coast of Møre is estimated to cost 16 milliard Nkr. to build. For this amount 1,5 million heat pumps for private housing can be bought.
1,5 million heat pumps will save 11 TWh a year; over twice (2,5) as much as the windpark is estimated to produce.
If windturbines is such great idea, why not put them up where they can't threaten any sensitive eco-system or other "systems" worth protecting: in the cities & suburbs!
G
Pretty crap article in my view. Biofuels / agrofuels are certainly far less "green" than they are being made out and will almost certainly lead to both environmental and social catastophe if adopted on a large scale.
Wind farms, however, are about as "green" as it gets. The idea that they "destroy the landscape" is bollocks. Certainly they can be badly planned and located (draining peat-bogs to build a windfarm, for instance, is clearly madness), but that says everything about the people we have planning these things and nothing about wind farms themselves.
For example, how exactly do offshore windfarms destroy the landscape? Also, even when located on land, it's a completely aesthetic thing rather than an ecological one. If you think they look ugly then clearly you'll feel they degrade the environment they're in. On the other hand, if you think they look nice (as do I) then they don't.
I mean, clearly we don't want every single square inch of countryside filled with windmills, but nobody is suggesting that should happen. Indeed there's nothing to prevent wind farms being erected on existing farmland with a fairly small loss of physical space for crops or grazing. So theoretically they needn't have any impact whatsoever on what's left of the "natural landscape" (anyone who suggests that levelling the land, dividing it into boxes, ploughing it up and growing crops on it has less of an impact on "the environment" than building windmills is simply talking nonsense).
Of course I agree that we need to consume far far less, but the extreme urgency with which fossil fuel consumption needs to be reduced means that at the same time we're trying to power down society, we also need to be bringing genuinely green alternatives on stream with all haste. Keeping our massive population warm and well fed takes a lot of energy (far less than we're currently consuming, of course, but still lots), and it has to come from somewhere.