Slashdot Mirror
Wind Could Provide 100% of World Energy Needs
Damien1972 sends in a report on a study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science, which finds that wind power could provide for the entire world's current and future energy needs. "To estimate the earth's capacity for wind power, the researchers first sectioned the globe into areas of approximately 3,300 square kilometers (2,050 square miles) and surveyed local wind speeds every six hours. They imagined 2.5 megawatt turbines crisscrossing the terrestrial globe, excluding 'areas classified as forested, areas occupied by permanent snow or ice, areas covered by water, and areas identified as either developed or urban,' according to the paper. They also included the possibility of 3.6 megawatt offshore wind turbines, but restricted them to 50 nautical miles off the coast and to oceans depths less than 200 meters. Using [these] criteria the researchers found that wind energy could not only supply all of the world's energy requirements, but it could provide over forty times the world's current electrical consumption and over five times the global use of total energy needs."
Please state your source of knowledge on nuclear power and the dangers of same.
ScienceDirect - many scientific peer-reviewed papers.
Plus the fact I did a TV show backed by research on all the energy sources in the 1980s.
Please state why you think we should become French.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
Compared to what's being proposed? You better fucking believe it.
This isn't a few coal mines somewhere. What's being proposed is covering the entire globe in massive obelisks. If you can't comprehend how insanely destuctive this undertaking would be, it's because it would basically constitue an engineering project larger than the sum of human endeavor's to this point.
It's been a long time.
Imprefect does not mean useless, just ask the boffins at Lockheed, Airbus, or anyone else in the bussiness of civil, mechanical, hydrostatic or electrical engineering.
It does when we're talking about global climate and ecosystem. If one of those places with severely reduced wind suddenly provides the perfect breeding ground for a new strain of bacteria that eventually wipes out humanity, you don't get to say "Whoops. We'll do it better next time."
Of course this is an absurd example, but it illustrates my point perfectly.