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Air currents have a purpose, and I actually believe large scale wind farming will have negative impacts on climate. Not to mention the impact on birds killed by

by NBJack 3y ago

Air currents have a purpose, and I actually believe large scale wind farming will have negative impacts on climate. Not to mention the impact on birds killed by the things. I would even go as far to say nuclear energy has less of an impact (as long as all goes well). The question few seem to ask is should we be this (literally) power hungry in the first place?

uoaei 3y ago
> The question few seem to ask is should we be this (literally) power hungry in the first place? Absolutely!! Reducing excess consumption will always be easier than making up for it later because the latter inevitably causes losses which become heat from which "useful work" can never be recovered. We can avoid those losses by simply never requiring them in the first place. But too many have the Myth Of Progress burrowed deep into their core ideologies and will fight tooth and nail to keep the trivial conveniences they've built their daily routines around. On your first point, though, I'm not sure it will be a net negative considering the human component in the equation, and anyway, outdoor cats are orders of magnitude worse for birds than wind turbines are, not to mention concrete jungles with no trees and high average noise levels.
hedora 3y ago
Nuclear does have less impact than wind, in terms of human lives lost volume of waste, and land usage. However, bird strikes can be mitigated via careful placement, etc. Also, we are not close to the point where wind farms impact wind currents.
sgu999 3y ago
Your first paragraph really made the second one a pleasant surprise! No we shouldn't be this power hungry, we've effectively never replaced an energy source by another... we keep on stacking the new ones on top of more of the old ones [1]. [1] https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/global-energy-substitution https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/global-energy-substitutio...
hkt 3y ago
> The question few seem to ask is should we be this (literally) power hungry in the first place? Nobody asks because the answer is "no" - huge parts of our lives are absurdly inefficient, wasteful, or just gratuitous when it comes to energy usage. Heating, transport, all of it. Computing, too.

by NBJack 3y ago

uoaei 3y ago

> The question few seem to ask is should we be this (literally) power hungry in the first place? Absolutely!! Reducing excess consumption will always be easier than making up for it later because the latter inevitably causes losses which become heat from which "useful work" can never be recovered. We can avoid those losses by simply never requiring them in the first place. But too many have the Myth Of Progress burrowed deep into their core ideologies and will fight tooth and nail to keep the trivial conveniences they've built their daily routines around. On your first point, though, I'm not sure it will be a net negative considering the human component in the equation, and anyway, outdoor cats are orders of magnitude worse for birds than wind turbines are, not to mention concrete jungles with no trees and high average noise levels.

hedora 3y ago

Nuclear does have less impact than wind, in terms of human lives lost volume of waste, and land usage. However, bird strikes can be mitigated via careful placement, etc. Also, we are not close to the point where wind farms impact wind currents.

sgu999 3y ago

Your first paragraph really made the second one a pleasant surprise! No we shouldn't be this power hungry, we've effectively never replaced an energy source by another... we keep on stacking the new ones on top of more of the old ones [1]. [1] https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/global-energy-substitution https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/global-energy-substitutio...

hkt 3y ago

> The question few seem to ask is should we be this (literally) power hungry in the first place? Nobody asks because the answer is "no" - huge parts of our lives are absurdly inefficient, wasteful, or just gratuitous when it comes to energy usage. Heating, transport, all of it. Computing, too.