Wind Power

[DrPatrickBarry]

I actually think solar panels are worse than wind turbines. At least between turbines you have natual landscape, While with panels you just have hectares of land completly covered.

[Stagger]

On an island one may assume that waves would play a part.🙄

[DrPatrickBarry]

Another thing that pisses me off, I think the Goverement is only half-hearted in funding research into these other renewable options.
Pulled the pug on the tidal project then ploughing money into nuclear.

[Wheeze]

Both wind and solar have their immediate environmental issues. I'm with llani on the dreadful rape of Welsh wilderness by wind farms.
Oh, and covering deserts with solar panels has unintended consequences too. A large desert farm in California was overrun by vermin....because the panels scorched the Raptors trying to get to them. Yet another food chain ruined.

[noel]

Good point Wheeze. I wouldn’t have thought of that. I guess it’s a case of minimising our impact. Is the impact on desert ecosystems more or less bad than building an oil-powered power station, or a nuclear plant, or 10,000 turbines? And this also needs to address diversity of supply and the relative outputs - nuclear power stations make lots and lots of energy so would be equivalent to hundreds of wind turbines.

There’s no easy answer, but it’s a debate we need to have.

[Daletownrunner]

Good point Wheeze. I wouldn’t have thought of that. I guess it’s a case of minimising our impact. Is the impact on desert ecosystems more or less bad than building an oil-powered power station, or a nuclear plant, or 10,000 turbines? And this also needs to address diversity of supply and the relative outputs - nuclear power stations make lots and lots of energy so would be equivalent to hundreds of wind turbines.

There’s no easy answer, but it’s a debate we need to have.

Heysham 1 output is the equivalent of around 100 modern wind turbines, give it 5 years and it’ll be 50 turbines, as the technology moves on, the footprint will be much smaller

[Wheeze]

The Agricultural Revolution allowed us to Survive on the land. Took thousands of years.
The Industrial Revolution allowed us to Shape the land. Took hundreds of years.
The Technological Revolution allows us to Save the land. Arrived in tens of years...

... and now gives us important choices to make. We need to take care that organisations like Extinction Rebellion do not become a vehicle for anarchistic agendas. We need this energy to redesign, rethink and progress.

[Witton Park]

Heysham 1 output is the equivalent of around 100 modern wind turbines, give it 5 years and it’ll be 50 turbines, as the technology moves on, the footprint will be much smaller

Are you comparing when they both run at capacity? The problem with wind is they often don't.

Are you sure it's 100 as well? It would seem you should have added a 0 for most of the installed turbines.

Heysham 1150 MW and a turbine up to 1.5MW.

Yes I know they have some recently installed turbines at a declared 8MW but when they only run at 30% capacity (typical) you're still looking at close to 500 of these to match Heysham 1.

[JohnK]

Wind turbines like most so called green alternatives are a waste of space and always have been, because all of the revolutions that Wheeze spells out have been detrimental to nature and the planet.

In fact from the minute Homo sapiens walked the earth changing and making things they have been screwing nature up, but they have a misguided sense that humans are smart enough to correct the damage they have done to the planet over millions of years but it seems that we like to ignore the fact that we are just a tiny part of nature and the planets Eco system and as such we are probably the weakest and maybe the most disruptive, which in turn makes us the most vulnerable to nature whhen it comes to the long term survival of the planet i.e. Nature will wipe out mankind in favour of protecting the planet and all we are doing is adding to our own destruction.

Take wind turbines as an example do they ever re-pay there carbon footprint for manufacture and placement,has any body ever taken the trouble to investigate the collective effects of every Wind Turbine in the world of the deflected wind flows that is created by each Turbine and what effect that has on the Jet Stream and hence climate change.

In short Nature will look after itself and humans as we know them now are unlikely to be a part of Natures long term format.

[DrPatrickBarry]

In short Nature will look after itself and humans as we know them now are unlikely to be a part of Natures long term format.

At what cost? To drive us humans back to some sort of sustainable level (hunter/gather or whatever) would take what percentage of the animinal kingdom with us? What gives us the right to do that.