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I see a lot of irrational online hate for wind power - even going as far as wanting to dismantle offshore farms. I do wonder who is fermenting this - the obvio

I see a lot of irrational online hate for wind power - even going as far as wanting to dismantle offshore farms. I do wonder who is fermenting this - the obvious place to look here is the fossil fuel industry - they have the means, the motive and a track record of flexible morals. A lot of currently very rich and powerful people lose in a world where most countries and even people can generate most of the power they require.

dan-robertson 2y ago
I’m not sure this is a fossil fuel industry thing. I think there are just people who really dislike the appearance of windmills in the landscape. Onshore, it is often better to put windmills on hills where they will be more prominent and so any one windmill can be ‘local’ to many people. Offshore, wind farms may ‘spoil’ a view out to sea, though they are also harder to oppose. P.s. I think you meant to write fomenting
- alt227 2y ago
  I come from Cornwall in the UK, and whenever I go back there I am struck by how many on shore windfarms and turbines there are there. As you drive through the countryside they are everywhere. I have asked hundreds of local people what they think of them over the years, and not one of them have ever said anything about them spoiling the view. The farmers love them as they get subsidies for putting them on their land, and generally people think they are doing a good thing and are happy to tolerate them. I personally dont think this is an issue with spoiling the view .
  - h4kor 2y ago
    Same in Germany. Farmers (most conservative population group) love renewable energy. Every farmer I know tries to get wind turbines build on their land and have their roofs packed with PV. Yet the conservative parties are the biggest blockers for the energy transition.
    - lnsru 2y ago
      Farmers love subsidies. Guaranteed price paid for every kWh they produce. Yet there is remote shutdown implemented in new large PV installations and the love is slowly disappearing.
  - Lio 2y ago
    I used to goto Cornwall regularly back in the 90s. The site of the wind turbines on the drive down always gave my heart a little flutter. As a tourist I loved the sight of turbines on the far away hills. They're a damn site nicer to look at than concrete cooling towers or gasometers.
- regularfry 2y ago
  It's also a convenient wedge issue, regardless of the merits in either direction.
- VBprogrammer 2y ago
  > Offshore, wind farms may ‘spoil’ a view out to sea, though they are also harder to oppose. In my experience off-shore wind, even off a popular tourist beech has very little impact. Often just about visible in the haze in the distance. The impact of onshore wind is definitely more notable. I personally don't find it that offensive, I find them elegant in the day way as an aircraft might be. Also, the blot on the land could be almost completely eradicated in hours if something better was invented tomorrow. Compared to the decades long process of decommissioning even fossil fueled power plants that seems like a pretty big win.
- DrScientist 2y ago
  It's why I specifically mentioned offshore - there has been huge growth in the UK of these - and most of them are so far out to see you'd be lucky to see them even on a clear day. The logic against them seems to be - can't rely on wind power alone ( true - but nobody is suggesting that ), so we must destroy them all as a symbol of 'netzero'. It makes no sense. >p.s. I think you meant to write fomenting Yep. Thanks.
pjc50 2y ago
The conservative media (Daily Mail, Telegraph etc - e.g. James Delingpole, climate change denier) are quite capable of formenting this kind of thing all on their own, simply for clicks. The average reader is old and afraid of change. Anything new is scary to them and can easily be magnified into a massive, largely fictitious, horror. People might object to the view of wind farms, but they'll also object to any other new building. There are quite a lot of existing power stations in scenic areas! Torness, Longannet, Cockenzie come to mind in the Lothians/Fife area; any one could be seen from miles around, as they were built on the coast for water access. The latter two have been demolished. There is no way you could build them today without a similar huge level of objection. Similarly there is a spot in the plain of Yorkshire where you used to see three coal-fired power stations in relatively close proximity, dominating the countryside. And if you look around London, you'll see the (long closed and repurposed) Battersea and Bankside powerstations. Yes, people built several massive coal fired power stations right in the middle of the city! No wonder there was a smog problem worse than 90s Beijing or LA. Again, completely inconcievable that you could build them today. Once you build it and it exists for a few years, the complaints melt away. Leave it long enough and there will be a society for preserving historic wind farms.
- cjrp 2y ago
  I think the complaints have also been that people close to the wind farms don't see much economic benefit from them, and only get the negative (noise, loss of countryside, etc.). I believe that's changing though https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-scotland-business-67280163 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-scotland-business-672...
  - immibis 2y ago
    So now I wonder if they could be built if you promised (and delivered) those people cheap electricity.
    - happymellon 2y ago
      Take a portion of the profit and send it to the council to reduce everyones taxes?
junto 2y ago
The same narrative is being pushed on Germany for instance. I think it’s quite simple. Renewable energy is a route to energy independence for various nations that were previously highly dependent on foreign nations and corporations and there are very powerful fossil fuel interconnected groups / nations that are terrified of that. Russia wants Germany to buy Russian gas. The U.S. wants Europe to buy their gas’s too. The Saudis want Europe to buy their oil. Wind turbines, solar power and electric vehicles are a direct threat to that hegemony. The other aligned narrative is nuclear and I consider it to be Trojan horse to continued reliance on fossil fuels at least for the next 25-30 years whilst countries like Germany would argue with NIMBY’s and politics to try and even build just one new power station. I believe that to be the primary root cause of the geopolitical instability we see today globally.
- fpoling 2y ago
  It is not any fossil fuel, it is specifically oil and gas. Coal is not a problem for energy independence as it is much more evenly distributed on Earth. What Germany has done with its reliance on Russian gas is truly insane. Not only they closed nuclear stations, but they also have been closing coal power stations. They should be pushing electrical vehicles and modernization of coal plants instead as China is doing. Even from green perspective an electrical car that uses electricity from a modern coal plant generates less CO2 than a car running on oil products.
  - pjc50 2y ago
    > Coal is not a problem for energy independence as it is much more evenly distributed on Earth. Not true - it's just more prevalent in Europe than oil, especially in Germany. And the CO2 emissions are much worse, which is where all this starts from.
  - intended 2y ago
    It’s insane today. Trade was specifically a way to ensure people learn to work together. I guess, this is the era for consequences
- onlyrealcuzzo 2y ago
NoMoreNicksLeft 2y ago
>I do wonder who is fermenting this - the obvious place to look here is the fossil fuel industry Yeh, maybe. But then there is a certain class of people who live lives of wealth and leisure who like to go boating on their $10 million yachts, for whom windmills "spoil the view". And I think their opinions are somewhat consistent regardless of whether they are heavily invested in fossil fuels or not. If it were just about windmills, the gigantic oil companies are flush with cash to invest in them and don't much care where the profits come from as long as they keep rolling in.

dan-robertson 2y ago

I’m not sure this is a fossil fuel industry thing. I think there are just people who really dislike the appearance of windmills in the landscape. Onshore, it is often better to put windmills on hills where they will be more prominent and so any one windmill can be ‘local’ to many people. Offshore, wind farms may ‘spoil’ a view out to sea, though they are also harder to oppose. P.s. I think you meant to write fomenting

alt227 2y ago
I come from Cornwall in the UK, and whenever I go back there I am struck by how many on shore windfarms and turbines there are there. As you drive through the countryside they are everywhere. I have asked hundreds of local people what they think of them over the years, and not one of them have ever said anything about them spoiling the view. The farmers love them as they get subsidies for putting them on their land, and generally people think they are doing a good thing and are happy to tolerate them. I personally dont think this is an issue with spoiling the view .
- h4kor 2y ago
  Same in Germany. Farmers (most conservative population group) love renewable energy. Every farmer I know tries to get wind turbines build on their land and have their roofs packed with PV. Yet the conservative parties are the biggest blockers for the energy transition.
  - lnsru 2y ago
    Farmers love subsidies. Guaranteed price paid for every kWh they produce. Yet there is remote shutdown implemented in new large PV installations and the love is slowly disappearing.
- Lio 2y ago
  I used to goto Cornwall regularly back in the 90s. The site of the wind turbines on the drive down always gave my heart a little flutter. As a tourist I loved the sight of turbines on the far away hills. They're a damn site nicer to look at than concrete cooling towers or gasometers.
regularfry 2y ago
It's also a convenient wedge issue, regardless of the merits in either direction.
VBprogrammer 2y ago
> Offshore, wind farms may ‘spoil’ a view out to sea, though they are also harder to oppose. In my experience off-shore wind, even off a popular tourist beech has very little impact. Often just about visible in the haze in the distance. The impact of onshore wind is definitely more notable. I personally don't find it that offensive, I find them elegant in the day way as an aircraft might be. Also, the blot on the land could be almost completely eradicated in hours if something better was invented tomorrow. Compared to the decades long process of decommissioning even fossil fueled power plants that seems like a pretty big win.
DrScientist 2y ago
It's why I specifically mentioned offshore - there has been huge growth in the UK of these - and most of them are so far out to see you'd be lucky to see them even on a clear day. The logic against them seems to be - can't rely on wind power alone ( true - but nobody is suggesting that ), so we must destroy them all as a symbol of 'netzero'. It makes no sense. >p.s. I think you meant to write fomenting Yep. Thanks.

pjc50 2y ago

The conservative media (Daily Mail, Telegraph etc - e.g. James Delingpole, climate change denier) are quite capable of formenting this kind of thing all on their own, simply for clicks. The average reader is old and afraid of change. Anything new is scary to them and can easily be magnified into a massive, largely fictitious, horror. People might object to the view of wind farms, but they'll also object to any other new building. There are quite a lot of existing power stations in scenic areas! Torness, Longannet, Cockenzie come to mind in the Lothians/Fife area; any one could be seen from miles around, as they were built on the coast for water access. The latter two have been demolished. There is no way you could build them today without a similar huge level of objection. Similarly there is a spot in the plain of Yorkshire where you used to see three coal-fired power stations in relatively close proximity, dominating the countryside. And if you look around London, you'll see the (long closed and repurposed) Battersea and Bankside powerstations. Yes, people built several massive coal fired power stations right in the middle of the city! No wonder there was a smog problem worse than 90s Beijing or LA. Again, completely inconcievable that you could build them today. Once you build it and it exists for a few years, the complaints melt away. Leave it long enough and there will be a society for preserving historic wind farms.

cjrp 2y ago
I think the complaints have also been that people close to the wind farms don't see much economic benefit from them, and only get the negative (noise, loss of countryside, etc.). I believe that's changing though https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-scotland-business-67280163 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-scotland-business-672...
- immibis 2y ago
  So now I wonder if they could be built if you promised (and delivered) those people cheap electricity.
  - happymellon 2y ago
    Take a portion of the profit and send it to the council to reduce everyones taxes?

junto 2y ago

The same narrative is being pushed on Germany for instance. I think it’s quite simple. Renewable energy is a route to energy independence for various nations that were previously highly dependent on foreign nations and corporations and there are very powerful fossil fuel interconnected groups / nations that are terrified of that. Russia wants Germany to buy Russian gas. The U.S. wants Europe to buy their gas’s too. The Saudis want Europe to buy their oil. Wind turbines, solar power and electric vehicles are a direct threat to that hegemony. The other aligned narrative is nuclear and I consider it to be Trojan horse to continued reliance on fossil fuels at least for the next 25-30 years whilst countries like Germany would argue with NIMBY’s and politics to try and even build just one new power station. I believe that to be the primary root cause of the geopolitical instability we see today globally.

fpoling 2y ago
It is not any fossil fuel, it is specifically oil and gas. Coal is not a problem for energy independence as it is much more evenly distributed on Earth. What Germany has done with its reliance on Russian gas is truly insane. Not only they closed nuclear stations, but they also have been closing coal power stations. They should be pushing electrical vehicles and modernization of coal plants instead as China is doing. Even from green perspective an electrical car that uses electricity from a modern coal plant generates less CO2 than a car running on oil products.
- pjc50 2y ago
  > Coal is not a problem for energy independence as it is much more evenly distributed on Earth. Not true - it's just more prevalent in Europe than oil, especially in Germany. And the CO2 emissions are much worse, which is where all this starts from.
- intended 2y ago
  It’s insane today. Trade was specifically a way to ensure people learn to work together. I guess, this is the era for consequences
onlyrealcuzzo 2y ago

NoMoreNicksLeft 2y ago

>I do wonder who is fermenting this - the obvious place to look here is the fossil fuel industry Yeh, maybe. But then there is a certain class of people who live lives of wealth and leisure who like to go boating on their $10 million yachts, for whom windmills "spoil the view". And I think their opinions are somewhat consistent regardless of whether they are heavily invested in fossil fuels or not. If it were just about windmills, the gigantic oil companies are flush with cash to invest in them and don't much care where the profits come from as long as they keep rolling in.