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You're worried about birds? Better raze all buildings and kill all the cats. Wind turbine bird deaths are negligible. https://www.evwind.es/2020/10/01/the-real
by afterburner 6y ago
You're worried about birds? Better raze all buildings and kill all the cats. Wind turbine bird deaths are negligible.
https://www.evwind.es/2020/10/01/the-realities-of-bird-and-bat-deaths-by-wind-turbines/77477 https://www.evwind.es/2020/10/01/the-realities-of-bird-and-b...
You know you can set up solar panels on roofs, and in the desert, right?
- vlovich123 6y agoDeserts are not ecosystems devoid of all life. Here’s a life long anti-nuclear activist talking about how his direct experience in this space evolved as he started looking into the data more: https://www.ted.com/talks/michael_shellenberger_why_i_changed_my_mind_about_nuclear_power?language=en https://www.ted.com/talks/michael_shellenberger_why_i_change...
- afterburner 6y agoYou know deserts are BIG, right?
- throwaway894345 6y agoCan you please contribute something other than snark?
- afterburner 6y agoProve to me that these pro nuclear activists actually truly care about the land use from solar and wind power.
- vlovich123 6y agoWhy do you think I’m saying it’s an either or? Wind and solar are an important part of the energy mix. But if you truly care about minimizing the impact our energy use has on the world around us, you have to take a mix of all of it. Wind and solar alone will never rid us of fossil fuels on their own. Nuclear has lots of important properties that make it a much better overall true replacement for our fossil fuel dependence. The data clearly shows that wind and solar paradoxically increase fossil fuel usage. The reason is they lower the cost of energy, which attracts more industry, which requires more fossil fuels in the situations where/when it doesn’t work. Batteries and stored hydro power help but don’t fully solve the problem due to scale/cost. You don’t have to buy the causation argument. We have pretty compelling and consistent A/B environments here to observe the correlation that when you add renewables + nuclear you reduce fossil fuel usage. You add renewables alone, they do not displace fossil fuels. “Deserts are big” isn’t a compelling argument to me. Oceans are even bigger yet I’m still unhappy with how much pollution goes into them. The only thing deserts have for them is that it’s easy for humans to ignore them and it’s politically easier than “omg scary nucular” (ignoring the fact that coal plants, even so-called “clean coal” emit more radiation in one year than a nuclear plant does over its entire lifetime). Think of it this way. We still have no data that indicates wind and/or solar can displace coal/gas as energy sources. They primarily displace about 10-20% of our energy mix that usually is other sources anyway (geothermal, hydro, natural gas, etc).
- jscipione 6y agoAccording to the EPA: "Generally, [coal] wastes are only slightly more radioactive than the average soil in the United States. The amount of natural radiation in wastes from coal-fired power plants is so small that no precautions need to be taken." https://www.epa.gov/radtown/radioactive-wastes-coal-fired-power-plants https://www.epa.gov/radtown/radioactive-wastes-coal-fired-po...
- nitrogen 6y agoThat page doesn't actually give any numbers.
- cygx 6y agoWe still have no data that indicates wind and/or solar can displace coal/gas as energy sources. Germany, 2010: Coal+Oil+Gas 55% Nuclear 25% Wind+Solar+Hydro 13% Germany, 2020: Coal+Oil+Gas 36% Nuclear 12% Wind+Solar+Hydro 41% Source: https://energy-charts.info/charts/energy/chart.htm?l=en&c=DE&interval=year&year=-1&source=all https://energy-charts.info/charts/energy/chart.htm?l=en&c=DE...
- runsWphotons 6y agoThese numbers can be looked at two ways. Germany actually failed in its efforts to get off the coal so far, I think. Just from these numbers you could as easily be making his point as yours.
- cygx 6y agoGermany actually failed in its efforts to get off the coal so far There was no way to 'fail' such efforts, because until last year, there was no actual roadmap for getting rid of coal. Instead, there were CO2 reduction goals. We were going to miss the mark for 2020 (40% reduction compared to 1990), but thanks to Covid, we've actually met the target...
- 6y ago
- hannob 6y agoYou know that by now he's a climate denialist? (Technically he would probably deny that, but he's published a lot of "stop these climate alarmists" messaging lately.) (Update: Can't reply to the reply, but here's some actual scientists on Shellenbergers latest output https://climatefeedback.org/evaluation/article-by-michael-shellenberger-mixes-accurate-and-inaccurate-claims-in-support-of-a-misleading-and-overly-simplistic-argumentation-about-climate-change/ https://climatefeedback.org/evaluation/article-by-michael-sh... )
- Stupulous 6y agoCharacterizing people who take a nuanced stance as denying science, and then disregarding the things they say is a bad path to take. If he's said things that are untrue, call them out. If he's said true things that you think imply he believes untrue things, you should make an effort to change your model to one that incorporates all truth. This is directed more at your approach than it is in defense of Shellenburger, but I'll happily read rebuttals of his points in replies to this comment if you or others are so inclined.
- durandal1 6y agoI have not seen him in any way deny climate change, what he does is trying to reason trough the probabilities of outcomes and figure out where it makes sense to focus our efforts. We must understand the threats to efficiently counter them, and fear mongering around edge case outcomes does not help.
- EricE 6y agoClimate denialist? What, does he claim weather doesn't exist - period? You probably think science can be settled too?
- throwaway894345 6y agoDesert solar is certainly going to be part of the story, but I can’t imagine that we can feasibly power the whole country with desert solar alone, and I don’t think residential solar will be a significant contributor because you lose the efficiencies of scale afforded by acres and acres of collocated, homogeneous, ground-level panels for construction, maintenance, and operation. Consider even the overhead of dealing with thousands of individual property owners rather than a single land owner (if that—the utility may own the land for a solar farm outright).
- afterburner 6y agoAll those individuals will respond to the incentive of cheaper energy bills by installing roof solar voluntarily. Provided their government doesn't pass pro-fossil fuel legislation that actively punishes that decision, as some have.
- throwaway894345 6y agoI’m not talking about persuading people to install solar, I’m talking about the sheer bureaucratic work (on the part of the utility) to manage contracts with thousands of property owners instead of just one. Similarly, the overhead of servicing thousands of roof-top installations (scheduling appointments, driving to sites, climbing onto the roof, etc) versus a single contiguous site at ground level. I don’t think residential solar is a major feature of any serious green energy plan, and for good reason.
- FooHentai 6y agoI don’t follow. You could make the same argument about communal water heating versus having a heater in each home, yet of course such a position would be absurd. Millions of individual homes running their own solar, even with everybody hooked up for exporting, is quite feasible. It’s happening today. Having it be an arrangement where a power provider owns and maintains the panels isn’t necessary or desirable. Lease-to-own or outright purchase by homeowners works fine.
- ktaylora 6y agoThe direct impact of turbines on wildlife (e.g., from direct strikes) may be negligible. But the secondary effects of carving-up large blocks of intact grasslands in the Great Plains with infrastructure like service roads, wallpapering desert soils with panels, or placing high-capacity transmission lines, are not. This clearly contributes to habitat fragmentation and scientists have not thoroughly studied how recent infrastructure change is influencing habitat for wildlife. I'm not arguing that increasing green energy production like wind and solar should stop. Because climate change is arguably a larger existential threat to the planet. But we do need to do a better job planning where infrastructure lands so we can mitigate habitat fragmentation. Habitat fragmentation doesn't really factor into the planning calculus at all.
- blacksmith_tb 6y agoI grew up on the Great Plains, sadly there aren't many "intact" grasslands[1] at this point. Wind turbines are integrated into grain agriculture commonly these days[2], which seems mostly harmless (given that the farm roads and electrical infrastructure are already in place). 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tallgrass_prairie#Remnants https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tallgrass_prairie#Remnants 2: https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/article/111219-wind-turbines-help-crops-on-farms https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/article/111219-wi...
- ktaylora 6y agoYes. We've lost the tall grass prairie to corn. But there are still vast portions of short and mixed-grass prairie in the southern great plains on land that was never suitable for crop production. The Texas and Oklahoma panhandle region, for instance. The only thing you can grow there is cows. These places are critical migratory habitat for grassland bird populations moving from Canada to the tropics. And even some endemic shorebirds like long-billed curlew. These same landscapes are also where most of the new wind energy development is landing. And new development is happening very quickly. Too quickly to monitor what it means for wildlife populations that are used to flat, open plains with only cattle to contend with. If we arent careful, we'll lose the shortgrass prairie to energy development just like we lost the tallgrass prairie to corn.
- mannerheim 6y agoHow many eagles are killed by housecats?
- jessaustin 6y agoBald eagles, if that's what you mean, are a "least concern" species. That makes sense, because while in my neighborhood we never saw them several decades ago, now I see them multiple times a month. The other day I saw a family of four perched in a dead tree. Somehow they've overcome the dual menace of housecats and wind generation. Now that we've scaled back on DDT, the bald eagle is fine.
- mannerheim 6y agoBald eagles and golden eagles are still protected species - unless, of course, you're running a wind farm, in which case you're exempt from these sorts of regulations.[0] 0: https://apnews.com/article/b8dd6050c702467e8be4b1272a3adc87 https://apnews.com/article/b8dd6050c702467e8be4b1272a3adc87
- jessaustin 6y agoAt that link, we learn that the industry is prohibited from killing 4200 a year, which number would have a negligible effect on the population and of which number the industry has only ever killed a tiny fraction. Far more eagles die from automobile impact than from wind generation. Eagles are flying coyotes. So long as we aren't actively poisoning them, we can coexist just fine.
- mannerheim 6y agoThere are fewer than 10,000 breeding pairs of golden eagle in the U.S. But perhaps killing 20% of the population annually would have a negligible effect.
- jessaustin 6y agoThis is silly. Your own link, above, has wind generation deaths for both golden and the vastly more common bald eagles as a small portion of the 500/yr figure that also includes more common causes such as automobile strikes. You're not really worried about this fanciful issue. You would have more fun if you trolled using one of your established HN accounts instead of a greenbean.
- ip26 6y agoHah, that’s a great point- for all the hand wringing about bird strikes, none of the concern trolls are saying a thing about outdoor housecats.
- opo 6y agoThe issue isn't so much the number of birds, but the type: >...Although fatality rates for raptors may be lower compared to passerines, raptors are especially vulnerable to collisions due to their flight behaviors. Given the life history traits of raptors (i.e., long-lived and low reproductive rates) their populations are more at risk of decline from the number of different sources of impacts that affect these species on a daily basis. https://www.fws.gov/birds/bird-enthusiasts/threats-to-birds/collisions/wind-turbines.php https://www.fws.gov/birds/bird-enthusiasts/threats-to-birds/... This isn't to say that means we should drop wind, but we shouldn't hand wave away the issue and pretend it is not an issue. >...You know you can set up solar panels on roofs, The levelized cost for residential rooftop solar is at least as high as nuclear, but that cost doesn't seem to matter to some advocates. >...and in the desert, right? Advocates also describe how we will rebuild the electrical grid to move vast amounts of solar or wind power across the USA. This will not be cheap or easy or particularly easy to protect from terrorism. Even the relatively small proposed Tres Amos SuperStation hasn’t been completed yet. This cost doesn't seem to matter to some advocates.