Wind Power Dust-up In Chittlehampton

[SgtRock]

Dear EEVBees:

--Please see the below link for from the UK Telegraph about the Bishop of Exeter and the Green Party vs Devon villagers over proposed Wind Mills.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/energy/windpower/9368852/An-unholy-gale-brewing-up-in-Devon.html

--Yes, the Yanks and the Ausies have some daft place names in their Gazetteers, but for downright quaint you just cannot beat Jolly Olde England, with places like, Chittlehampton, East Antsey, and Black Torrington. It seems these Villagers have taken exception to plans by the Bishop of Exeter, Church of England to install 75' high Bird Boppers round and about. To aid in the PR wars, the Bishop has called in the Green Party. This unholy alliance must give atheistic AGW advocates the vapors, not being able to, in this case, rail against the forces of un-reason and irrationality. Now the Bishop was planing apparently to have this project done and dusted, before those knuckle dragging rustics could gather their pitchforks and torches, but someone must have squealed, and now discussions are being held.

"The main benefits of the turbines, it was said, was that they would generate much-needed revenue for the diocese (£50,000 per year, through selling the electricity to the National Grid), and help the Church of England meet its target of 80 per cent carbon-footprint reduction by the year 2050."

--They will definitely need the Good Lord's help meeting that 80% target, that's for sure.

"The unanimous verdict at the meetings was that the warm, inner glow which would come from helping to balance the bishop’s books and lessen the C?of?E’s emissions guilt, would not, on the whole, outweigh the burning sense of resentment at watching these whirling giants slash house prices with every turn of their rotor blades."

"Nor were the villagers convinced by the accompanying report from consultants Myriad CEG, saying that “in practice, turbine noise is often masked by background noise, such as wind, and leaves rustling”. Or by the turbine expert who pronounced that a mere 3.5 tons of concrete would be needed for these installations, only to be corrected by a woman in the audience who pointed out he had got his sums wrong, and the true figure was 35 tons."

"...says local Green Party activist Ricky Knight. “If you speak up for wind turbines in this area, you have got to get used to being unpopular...What I do ask, though, is, if we all keep saying no to wind farms, what are we going to do about seven-metre rises [sic] in sea level over the next 20 years?”

--Let, me figure here: 7 meters over 20 years, Hmmmm, that is like about 3 centimeters per month, so if not for tides, one could stand alongside the Thames estuary and watch the water rise. Even Hansen and Gore have the good sense to use further out "sell by" dates on their sliced baloney. Duh.

"Never wrestle with pigs. You both get dirty, and the pig likes it."
George Bernard Shaw 1856 - 1950

Best Regards
Clear Ether

[ampdoctor]

I don't know what the actual numbers are, and even responsible scientists say they're not sure but generally if the world doesn't start to deal with fossil fuel consumption, greenhouse gasses and the like, it's going to end badly for the human race.  They're just don't know exactly when and to what degree.  And that much is a fact!  However, if everybody just sits on their hands and says everything is fine and dandy now is preaching irresponsible behavior.

People need to stop jerkin off, arguing, and complaining about things and start researching alternative energy sources and getting the world converted over to it. Some people say the whole global warming thing is hogwash, but is it worth the risk to find out 50 years from now that you were wrong and they were right?  We've also got a limited supply of fossil fuels. And when it's gone it's gone, and it's not going to be replaced for several million years.  What happens if that runs out in say less than 50 years, which some say is a very real possibility as well.

No matter how anybody slices it, we all need to get on with alternative energies and start making the conversion instead of arguing over whether or not somebody got a number right or wrong by a factor of 2 10 or 100.  From a pragmatic standpoint alone, it's the only reasonable answer.

[IanB]

SgtRock, amongst your interesting place names you didn't mention Bishops Nympton. I wonder what a Bishop's Nympton is?

As for global warming, the human race has a degree of hubris here. In the geological past there have been cataclysmic events that have wiped out 90% of all life on Earth. And in the recent past there have been tropical periods and ice ages that have far eclipsed the temperature changes predicted from global warming. What makes puny humans think we can do a Canute and hold back the inevitable? Money should be spent on adapting, not trying to resist the tide of unstoppable forces.

Alternative energy will have a place, and when other sources of energy start to run low that place will become apparent. Right now there is no shortage of fossil energy and renewables are just experimental toys. Sure, it's worth researching them and planning for when times change, but pretending that building wind farms today will have more impact on global warming than a flea on an elephant's back is just silly.

As with all things, it is a case of follow the money. Wind farms get built because someone, somewhere, will profit from them. What you have to ask is, whose money will be taken to create those profits?

[ampdoctor]

Ian, you make some solid points, and Lord knows the human race has never been short on hubris.  Be it stoppable or not, or whether its our doing or not, we still need to deal with the reality that we can't continue with the status quo.

As far as fossil fuels not running low, I'm not completely certain we aren't. Considering we've got a static supply of fuels and exponential growth of demand, we'll be in trouble fairly quickly.  I seem to remember hearing one time that some statistics indicate that there's about 100 years till the supply is completely exhausted. Now, does that mean I think wind farms are the answer? Hardly!  But at least it's a step in a direction that may lead to a better and more permanent solution.

Finally, as to big business making big money off of them.  So what!  The energy demands of this country and the world in general are great enough that for the most part only large corporations are the ones that have the capital resources to implement them.  And what's so wrong with somebody making money?  Individuals and/or business should be rewarded for taking risks in a market place.  If there was no reward, there would be no incentive for innovation or any form of progress.

Along with companies making large profits, we've also got to develop new industries to support it.  This requires employing large numbers of engineers, along with various blue and white collar workers directly.  And considering that any major endeavor such as this, the growth of support industries will also develop leading to an increase in employment and general economic growth. However, the down side to all of this is that certain jobs and industries will necessarily become obsolete. Now we're moving into a discussion of the merits or downfalls of supply side, Keynesian, and Austrian economics.

[SgtRock]

Dear Ampdoctor:

--You stated:

''No matter how anybody slices it, we all need to get on with alternative energies and start making the conversion instead of arguing over whether or not somebody got a number right or wrong by a factor of 2 10 or 100.  From a pragmatic standpoint alone, it's the only reasonable answer."

--Brilliant. You seem to have summed up in very few words the entire intellectual and scientific basis of the Alternative Energy movement. Certainly with arithmetic like that, it would be very hard indeed, to ever prove them wrong about anything. Is it not peculiar that people who accuse their opponents of "j**king off", rather than meeting the argument straight on, and pound the table so heatedly about "Responsible Scientists" (I.E. only the ones who agree), can be so indifferent to Scientific Accuracy and Orders of Magnitude?

--You also stated:

"And considering that any major endeavor such as this, the growth of support industries will also develop leading to an increase in employment and general economic growth."

--"And he shall hoist himself by the nape." From the Analects of Lao Fu 1410 - 1620 (Honorable Ancestor of Wun Hung Lo). I see, so if the Government confiscated every penny above a subsistence exemption, and invested it in Alternative Energy projects that that were only 1/2, 1/10 or 1/100 as efficient as promised, then everyone would have a high paying job. Seems like I have heard this sort of thing before. As Steven Dedalus said; "History is a nightmare, from which I am trying to awaken." from "Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man" by James Joyce.

"Math is hard."
Barbie Doll 1959 -

Best Regards
Clear Ether

[G7PSK]

Bishops Nympton  means Bishops wife town.It is based on Anglo Saxon any place name with ton on the end means it is or was at that time a town. The Nymp is a corruption of nymph which is itself a corruption of ancient Greek  numphe which means bride, a lot of early Greeks settled in that part of England at one time which is why the ancient Cornish language resembles ancient Greek more than Anglo Saxon or Pict.

[SgtRock]

Dear G7PSK:

--Your Etymology seems more likely than mine. I shall take mine down.

"You should never bet against anything in science at odds of more than about 1012 to 1."
Ernest Rutherford 1871 1937

Best Regards
Clear Ether

[icon]

--You also stated:

"And considering that any major endeavor such as this, the growth of support industries will also develop leading to an increase in employment and general economic growth."

--"And he shall hoist himself by the nape." From the Analects of Lao Fu 1410 - 1620 (Honorable Ancestor of Wun Hung Lo). I see, so if the Government confiscated every penny above a subsistence exemption, and invested it in Alternative Energy projects that that were only 1/2, 1/10 or 1/100 as efficient as promised, then everyone would have a high paying job. Seems like I have heard this sort of thing before.

There's a quote about the inhabitants of the Scilly Isles, who purportedly "eked out a precarious living, taking in each others washing".

John

[_Sin]

Yeah, place names over here are awesome. My favourite one near here is "Shingay cum Wendy".

Anyway - there may be no complete agreement on the exact amount to which fossil power affects the environment, but there are plenty of other reasons to want to phase it out, such as it being a limited resource, and the process of extracting power being both dirty and innefficient. Plus the environment is kind of an important thing to be gambling with if we're not sure.

Wind, wave, solar all seems like perfectly reasonable ways of extracting a modest amount of power, don't require much infrastructure, and are fairly low-tech, thus deployable almost anywhere. If I wanted to live in the absolute middle of nowhere, then provided I had an abundance of a particular type of weather, that would be fine.

However I just don't see them as being even vaguely scalable to the amount of power a 1st world nation needs today, let alone in the future. It's a nice scam for those companies involved, but it's not a solution.

So IMHO we should stop dicking about with windmills and build new nuclear plants, as well as invest much more heavily in cracking the issue of making fusion work.

[SgtRock]

Dear _Sin:

--At my old office we once considered running a contest. The object was to make up three peculiar sounding British place names, and if none of them turned out to be the name of an actual place, you would win. But we had to abandon the contest, because after many tries, nobody could figure out how to beat it.

--The problems with Nuclear are two: 1) The cost, though there area a number of new technologies out there that may succeed. 2) The Greens. I had one tell me the other day that there is no such thing a a safe dose of radiation. I said; "You mean the Sun, the Earth, crockery, bananas and our teeth are giving us unsafe doses as we speak." He then started yammering about Chernobyl. I mentioned that these days the do not use horse teams to pull the rods anymore. He said, is that true. I said, well, no, not quite, but close. Give a Ukrainian a choice between one Stalin and 100 Chernobyls, and he will pick the Chernobyls every time.

"Does not squirrel crack nuts on bough of oak tree."
Lao Fu 1410 1620

Best Regards
Clear Ether

[vk6zgo]

--You also stated:

"And considering that any major endeavor such as this, the growth of support industries will also develop leading to an increase in employment and general economic growth."

--"And he shall hoist himself by the nape." From the Analects of Lao Fu 1410 - 1620 (Honorable Ancestor of Wun Hung Lo). I see, so if the Government confiscated every penny above a subsistence exemption, and invested it in Alternative Energy projects that that were only 1/2, 1/10 or 1/100 as efficient as promised, then everyone would have a high paying job. Seems like I have heard this sort of thing before.

There's a quote about the inhabitants of the Scilly Isles, who purportedly "eked out a precarious living, taking in each others washing".*

John

*In the final analysis,isn't that what we are all doing on this planet?
All that the whole untidy mess is about,is to feed,house,(& hopefully keep reasonably content) all the humans on the Earth.
How we do it is just housekeeping!

[ampdoctor]

I see, so if the Government confiscated every penny above a subsistence exemption, and invested it in Alternative Energy projects that that were only 1/2, 1/10 or 1/100 as efficient as promised, then everyone would have a high paying job. Seems like I have heard this sort of thing before.

I didn't say that.  If anything I would advocate just the opposite.  Should a govt agency order society to pursue course A, then it becomes a barrier to entry for course B which may be a far better solution.  The govt needs to keep their nose out of everybody's business and let the market determine the allocation of resources.  Some people will get filthy rich, others will get rich, and some may be in the same or possibly worse position than before.

The point I'm trying to make is that there's an 800 pound gorilla sitting in the living room and arguing over whether said gorilla may only weigh 700 pounds or as much as 900 pounds doesn't change the fact that we've got a problem that needs to be addressed.

The fact is that fossil fuels have become problematic on any number of different levels and we, as a society, need to find solutions and alternatives.  Will they lie in wind power, solar, algae farms, cracked hydrogen, fusion reactors, or some absurd use of butterfly farts, I have no idea.  We can't sit on our hands and say that there's no problem, or that the problem is far down the road.  At some point, down the road will be around the corner and then where will we be?

While wind farms may not, and most likely will not be the preferred answer to global energy needs, at least it's better than doing nothing.  And in the interim may provide enough of a social paradigm shift away from fossil fuels to allow for the development of more efficient and effective means of energy production.

[G7PSK]

Here are two photographs of English place names. Both are in Cumbria. I used to live not far from a place called Ten Mile Bottom, Used to live at Barton Bendish and now live in Helhoughton.

[m12lrpv]

SgtRock, amongst your interesting place names you didn't mention Bishops Nympton. I wonder what a Bishop's Nympton is?

As for global warming, the human race has a degree of hubris here. In the geological past there have been cataclysmic events that have wiped out 90% of all life on Earth. And in the recent past there have been tropical periods and ice ages that have far eclipsed the temperature changes predicted from global warming. What makes puny humans think we can do a Canute and hold back the inevitable? Money should be spent on adapting, not trying to resist the tide of unstoppable forces.

Alternative energy will have a place, and when other sources of energy start to run low that place will become apparent. Right now there is no shortage of fossil energy and renewables are just experimental toys. Sure, it's worth researching them and planning for when times change, but pretending that building wind farms today will have more impact on global warming than a flea on an elephant's back is just silly.

As with all things, it is a case of follow the money. Wind farms get built because someone, somewhere, will profit from them. What you have to ask is, whose money will be taken to create those profits?

Well said.

also

Something people fail to recognise is that electricity is an essential service (try living without it for a week if you want to argue that) and it is not sustainable to run essential services on a profit model.

In Australia any honest engineer working in energy production will tell you that our electricity infrastructure is running close to collapse due to the push to privatise it. Where turbines were well maintained with a view to them lasting 50+ years. Due to profit driven maintenance cuts they're now lucky if they will still be running in 10 or 15 years and quite a few have failed already in some plants due to profit driven negligence.

Not to mention price speculation on the wholesale electricity market locking some areas into higher contract prices while the general cost of production has dropped.

Climate change religion is just intended to control the masses in a way that has not been possible since the general decline of state based religion.

[tom66]

A good wind turbine provides 500kW - 1.5MW of power. Not as much as a power station, but FAR more than solar. We need to move away from fossil fuels. We have maybe 100 years of oil left at our current rate (which is increasing exponentially), which may seem like a lot, but as can be clearly seen it is getting harder and harder to find. It is also often found in politically unstable countries, creating the possibility of price cartels and shortened supply.

[notsob]

The jury is not out yet on wind turbines, there will probably be many discussions re low frequency emanations from the blades affecting the health of people living near them.