Slashdot Mirror
Canada, US and Kyoto
ambisinistral writes "The Commission for Environmental Cooperation, established under NAFTA to monitor North American environmental trends, has released their annual report. This article reports that Canadian polluters are doing worse than their U.S. counterparts. From the article, "Air pollutants released by Canadian industries rose 7 per cent from 1998 to 2000, while they fell by 8 per cent in the United States." This is of particular interest since Canada is a signatory member of the Kyoto accord. However, as this article reports, there are pressures inside Canada to withdraw from the Treaty."
My understanding is that wind works great in certain places, but that it is loud, ugly, and kills birds.
How do you account for changing weather paterns, is the Earth becoming more or less windy?
Meeting rising demand is also an issue, with fossil fuels you pour more oil/coal/gas into the engines, a nuke plant removes a couple of control rods, or a hydro plant diverts more water through the turbines, how does a wind plant increase production on a day when its 105F in Chicago and 20 elderly are dead by 10 AM from heat stroke.
Transmission loss has got to be killer, wind turbines are mostly out in uninhabitable areas right? Long transmission distance equals more losses for an already overtaxed system.
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