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Gas Wants To Kill the Wind
RABarnes writes "Scientific American has posted an article about the political efforts of natural gas and electric utilities to limit the growth of wind-generated electricity. Although several of the points raised by the utilities and carbon-based generators are valid, the basic driver behind their efforts is that wind-generation has now successfully penetrated the wholesale electricity market. Wind was okay until it became a meaningful competitor to the carbon dioxide-producing entities. Among the valid points raised by the carbon-based generators are concerns about how the cost of electricity transmission are allocated and how power quality can be improved (wind generation — from individual sites — is hopelessly variable). But there are fixes for all of the concerns raised by the carbon-based entities and in almost all cases they have been on the other side of the question in the past."
If enough wind farms are set up to actually contribute significant energy volume, I wonder what would be its impact on the climate.
I mean, it is sucking the kinetic energy directly out of the movement of air.
Fuck systemd. Fuck Redhat. Fuck Soylent, too. Wait, scratch the last one.
I say we bombard atoms with radiation, causing them to fissure and release tons of energy.
We can use the energy to heat up a bunch of water to boiling. The resulting steam can then power a generator.
When our radiation source is depleted, it'll be completely inert and safe.
When our radiation source is depleted past the point of being useful in a large facility, but not at the point where it's inert, we can simply use it in a smaller, lower-yield facility.
Once the radiation source is depleted past the point of any usefulness, it's pretty much safe. If we want to please the plebes, we can simply wrap it in iron and bury it.
Drive past a coal burning plant. It's a crime they are allowed to use the air we breath as a landfill for dumping their waste and I don't just mean CO2. The sulphur and mercury and other toxins released are frightening.
Almost as frightening as the image of another dumbshit hippie fuck bitching about the pollution of an industrial facility as he drives past in his fucking automobile made of petroleum-based products, made by petroleum-based machines, that runs on petroleum-based fuel, coal-generated electricity, heavy-metal-based and old-growth-destroying batteries, water-sucking fuel cells, etc.
Yet another reason that corporate lobbying (legalised bribery) should not be allowed in a supposed democratic government. *sigh*
Apple and oranges. They don't use rinky-dink off-the-shelf turbines so it wouldn't cost $7B to replace a nuclear plant.
Trolling is a art,
Wind is free. If what you want is to have your hair ruffled, you pay nothing.
If, on the other hand, you want to build an energy grid based on wind power, it costs far more than you might imagine.
[han-solo] I dunno, I can imagine quite a bit [/han-solo]
Obviously switching to a wind-based infrastructure from the current dead-end fossil-based infraastructure is expensive, yes. But that's a one-time expense, like a fiber buildout, and yields functioning hardware (capital) at the end of it; so it's an investment.
Once the wind system is built, then you're talking marginal gains, rising as the price of oil and gas rises due to their increasing rarity. So there's an initial steep cost for wind, followed by a gradually increasing upside with no upper limit (or rather, a flat operating expense curve while oil/gas soars sky-high.
This is why we have national-level and global-level coordinating groups, whether you call them 'standards bodies', 'industry consortia', central banks', 'governments', or the likes. So that someone has the ability and foresight to say 'look, we need to do this very expensive thing now which will save our butts hugely later'.
You simply can't do everything on the margin with only the next quarter's profits in sight. Sooner or later, someone with some long-term vision needs to front up with a plan. Ideally, this would be a democratic government which, after reasoned debate and input from all the people, achieves consensus and does the rational thing and everyone's happy.
I don't understand what part of of 'one day oil/gas will run out and we'll all die horribly, while wind'll still be there and we get to live' is so terribly difficult for world-class business executives to grasp. Aren't they paid millions of dollars a year and go to forums like Davos to think strategically just like this? If an ordinary guy like me can see this, why can't our unelected lords and masters?
You are not a brain: http://books.google.com/books?id=2oV61CeDx-YC