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There’s actually more wind generation than shows up on Gridwatch because farmers etc. use some of their wind-generated electricity locally without it ever getting metered. Wind is a major powerhouse these days.
Wind generation is so effective that sometimes the spot price of electricity goes negative – yep, they actually pay companies to take it off the grid!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boulogne-Billancourt
ArabelleClark as you mentioned the awful Coal turned Wood behemoth in England.
Politics, let’s tick some meaningless boxes, good for our image.
Stop burning bad Coal, start burning North American virgin forest wood.
It would probably have been more sustainable to just keep burning coal, after all the Chinese and the Indians and the Germans and the Polish and The Ukrainians and the Russians and the Vietnamese burn plenty of the black stuff?
What manner of person thought it a wheeze to cut down North American original forests, transport across America, then across the Atlantic Ocean, just to burn in Drax, Yorkshire.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drax_Power_Station
Politics, With Carbon Zero it is again thought a good idea to hoodwink the gullible public to think no Carbon joins the atmosphere by constructing Nuclear Power Stations, of course, this can not be true.
How do governments think the Uranium is gotten?
Do they think the goblins bring it, ready packaged?
Quite a bit of Uranium was supplied to Europe from Russia, now Russia is bad, we get much less Russian stuff, including less Uranium.
Now France has been pushed out of the Niger Uranium market, probably they are being replaced by Russia, where will the Uranium for Europe come from?
Perhaps from Canada or Australia?
This will cost more than from Russia or from Niger.
Politics, there is a virtual war on at present for minerals.
You can not run a Nuclear Power Station without Uranium.
Arabelle, the French make the best steam turbines in the World, this was recently under the control of the American GEC but they had some money troubles, so back in the French orbit.
The French sell their Arabelle steam turbines to Russia. Russia probably construct more Nuclear Power Stations than any other country.
Perhaps the Americans will not let the French to sell Arabelle to Russia? Politics.I am getting the notion that Carbon Zero is about politics more than saving any planets?
AG
About your hypothetical couple, I would still say they own too much. IMHO, no one should own more than one property. Anything else is just greed, ie the thing that’s caused all the problems in the first place.You make good points about cars etc. Over time, I have come to the conclusion that all manufacturing is inherently unsustainable (ie it directly damages the environment). I don’t have any solutions. Meanwhile, the Greens (and others) pretend BAU can continue with EVs, wind turbines etc. Total delusion.
Clark
By “the climate change movement” I simply mean those who are concerned about climate change. How else could I have phrased it?
I do not deny GW is happening, and I haven’t studied the models, but from what you say, I accept their accuracy.
My point is that, compared to all the other stuff climate change is not that important.There is a significant body of people (not pointing fingers at anyone here) who believe BAU can continue, as long as there’s an energy ‘transition’ to ‘renewables’. That idea could kindly be described as ‘hopium’.
Quote
“Too cheap to meter”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Too_cheap_to_meter#:~:text=Too%20cheap%20to%20meter%20refers,a%20profit%20from%20associated%20services.Governments want you to think that electricity supplied from Nuclear power plants is without problems, almost nothing could be further from the truth.
Fact one. First there came bombs.
They needed scientists / technicians to make the fuel.
They invented Nuclear Power as a way of pulling a veil over the eyes of the populace.
It would be very clean and very modern and would be “too cheap to meter”That was of course an illusion. Politics, they needed enriched Uranium for their Nuclear bombs but a bit difficult to con young people into going to University to learn bomb making, hey presto Nuclear Power.
We are currently going through a “Renaissance” an “Epiphany”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epiphany_(feeling)Global Warming comes along to save the Nuclear world.
It is sold as a Green Solution, yet the real reason for the renaissance, is the same as the first time around, they need young people to go to University to study Nuclear Technology but if it was only bombs, they might have a very small uptake. Start talking about Global Warming and saving the planet with new green nuclear and you have solved your recruitment problem. We are currently making a new fleet of nuclear submarines that with deliver our nuclear deterrent.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dreadnought-class_submarine
The lifetime ticket is one third of a trillion pounds.
We are being played and they are using global warming, to play us.James, if you don’t mind, I’d like to have a crack at replying.
I know next to nothing about science or mathmatics but I do have a little understanding about manipulation, let’s call it
Psychology.
For a moment let’s drop back in time to the mass psychosis of the thirties in Germany.
this was reflected in “1984” written by Mr. Blair. Most people can be made to believe the unbelievable.
In modern terms – marketing. Some people are talked into vaping, some into getting tattoos. All pretty mindless stuff, that stops you thinking, stops you being yourself.
Another take, would be mindless consumerism.
Allowing yourself to being influenced into buying stuff you did not know you wanted or needed.
All people are susceptible, even if they imagine they are immune.
Global Warming, is being rammed down our gullets at every possible chance.
Let’s go back to Nuclear Electricity, even though it is almost unbelievably expensive.
Lets make renewables, they are the new answer.
We are being played.
Massive companies and interests are playing us.
Global control, global surveilance, global downtreading. Global impovrishment.Michael N
I can’t argue with a word of that.
It’s good to know some people can see through all the ‘narratives’ of the establishment, corporations ‘philanthropists’ etc.
I now think it all went wrong when we stopped being hunter-gatherers. Oh well, maybe in a couple of hundred years the good times will return, and we’ll be stone-agers again…Global warming has been mentioned in the context that we are being played.
However, I have yet to witness anyone who can describe the graphs (linked below) without reference to global warming.
https://crudata.uea.ac.uk/cru/data//temperature/HadCRUT4.pngWould anyone like to try, or will the anti-warming brigade suddenly shrink into the silent backgound, as is usually the case?
Those graphs show that warming has happened / is happening – so what? In the context of all the other issues I mentioned in post #99131, it pales into insighificance.
An analogy could be drawn with passengers of a ship worrying what to do about rust on the hull – while the ship sinking…
Fat John, I am very happy to debate with you about Global Warming, however I think you might have misinterpreted what James was saying. I am happy to agree that the world has warmed by almost one and a half degrees Celsius, since massive Coal Burning, took off. I am happy to believe that Global Ocean height has gone up by nine inches.
Even if the global warming hype is entirely true, the World has so many problems, we should not just try to aim for Carbon Zero. Clear felling rain forests and letting the soil blow away, is very problematic. About three times as much Carbon, is held in top soil, as is in the Atmosphere. We might better spend our pounds on retaining forests, on improving top soil, so that much more Carbon is held in the living plants and in the soil. You have told us you have a battery car and how happy you are with it but you are not concerned about the damage done to the Earth, to excavate those twenty different minerals for your EV battery. How much money will have to be spent to rebuild all the bridges, early, all the multi story car parks because they are not up to the extra weight of battery vehicles. Where will the money come from for all the infrastructure to install millions of on street EV chargers? Will they have to cut the city trees down top achieve this Nivana? City trees are much needed to cool the air in heat Islands, they are needed to add Oxygen to the air, they are needed to soak up pollutants. The trees are also, quite handy to soak up the extra CO2 you get in built up environments. Most of the Carbon dioxide in London comes from the CO2 that comes out of human’s mouths. If you banned every Internal Combustion vehicle in London, I doubt the CO2 levels on the street, would reduce that much? Prove me wrong, please.
You can’t stop people breathing!Michael – I fear your fondness for whataboutary is really detracting from this thread. You did start another – why keep posting off-topic here all the time?
It seems you – and James to some extent (thanks for contributing here, James!) – have fallen victim to the notion that we are incapable of being concerned about, or addressing, more than one thing.
This notion of people breathing CO2 that you claim exceeds that of vehicles is a total nonsense. People consume plants which were grown for them, and which absorbed CO2 in the process.
Burning fossil fuels frees up carbon which had been locked in the ground for millions of years and would have stayed there, had it not been dug up and burned. A big difference.
This is pertinent to the discussion: How to Escape From the Iron Age?
James – you might be interested in this:
https://yaleclimateconnections.org/2021/06/whats-the-carbon-footprint-of-a-wind-turbine/
While not zero, of course – nothing is – the amount of CO2 per Kw/h is absolutely tiny from wind generation compared with traditional methods of generation. The fact that some CO2 is produced doesn’t mean we should throw our hands in the air and decide the entire thing is so hopeless as to not being worth the bother.
There are a huge number of problems we could be addressing simultaneously, and without being mutually contradictory. Reducing our consumption of raw materials and power is the goal.
Private jets should be disallowed, massive 4-wheel drive vehicles banned from cities and suburbs altogether, and a vast investment made into mass transportation so that private cars become virtually unnecessary. A major push for bicycles as the primary form of local transport, swinging taxes on meat instead of subsidising this horror with taxpayer money, and re-greening cities with space freed up by removing cars would have substantial benefits in many areas.
The one big problem with this sort of thing, is it’s not putting money into investors’ pockets fast enough. Not the way gearing our lives around cars and personal consumption has and continues to do.
Glenn, I’m in complete agreement with your last three paragraphs.
But.
Physics does not agree with Ms Peach’s stance. I don’t know whether you read the article I linked from Low-Tech Magazine, but in case you didn’t, here are a couple of relevant points from it:“The most steel-intensive power source – by far – is the modern wind turbine. The steel intensity of a wind turbine depends on its size. […] [A] 3.6 MW wind turbine with a 100-meter tall tower requires 335 tons of steel (83 tons/MW), while a 5 MW wind turbine with a 150-meter tall tower needs 875 tons of steel (175 tons/MW). The trend is towards taller wind turbines and a higher steel intensity.”
“Steel consumption further increases for offshore wind turbines. Onshore wind power plants rely on reinforced concrete for their foundations, but offshore wind turbines need massive steel structures such as monopiles and jackets. The steel intensity for offshore wind turbines is calculated to be around 450 tonnes per MW for a 5 MW turbine – eight times higher than the steel intensity of a thermal power plant. As these wind turbines get taller and move into deeper waters, their steel use further increases.”“The most popular offshore wind turbine nowadays has a capacity of 7 MW, while the largest ones have a capacity of 14 MW. If we make a conservative estimate based on the data above (the steel intensity doubles for every doubling of the power capacity), a 14 MW offshore wind turbine would require 1,300 tons of steel per MW or 18,200 tonnes in total. Such a wind turbine thus consumes 24 times more steel than a coal or gas power plant of the same power capacity.”
(Sorry for such a lengthy quote – it’s quite a long article, but well worth reading.)
That’s not even considering the concrete, fibreglass, cabling, copper etc. (or all the flying animals they kill).
Over 18000 tonnes of steel per machine for the biggest wind turbines? That can’t honestly be described as sustainable.
Also, Mike M’s initial question omits the crucial fact that wind turbines require regular maintenance (using FF, of course) throughout their (not very long) life. And their gigantic blades can’t be recyled…So they fail in terms of the energy and resources used in their manufacture. Their output (like that of solar panels) is intermittent – but the electricity grid must supply a base load that is constant, and that can only come from FF or nuclear.
The more you look into it, the less ‘renewables’ stack up. That is not throwing hands in the air. It’s accepting reality, however unpalatable it might be.
That was an informative article, thanks James. My thinking was that 2 smaller towers used more material than one larger one. Do you have any explanation of the engineering concepts behind it? I am guessing it’s to do with load factoring, stress on a bigger structure but I don’t really know.
JAMES
“I would still say they own too much”
Of course they do!
That´s why I brought it up.btw none of my examples are hypothetical. I know these people.
But it´s important to look into these realities to see the contradictions which our government policies are unwilling to address.
This considering that 1% in Germany own 30% of the country´s wealth. May be more. The top 10% own 60%. The poorest 20% have zero.ET, you’re right that a bigger structure has relatively more stress on it.
One way to think of it (crudely) is if you had 1 million tonnes of building material, you could easily make 4 million, 250 kg structures which would be stable, but making a single, one million tonne structure (of similar shape), would be very difficult, if not impossible.AG, as civilizations age, wealth seems to accrue to an ever smaller minority. That’s happened throughout history, and it may always happen, despite (or because of?) all the taxes, laws, rules etc.
As long as there is a ‘system’, there will be rich and poor, no matter what.
I sincerely believe humans were happier as hunter-gatherers. IOW, ‘better off’ without (the system of) money. Maybe, when all the easy energy has finally gone, the survivors of the far future will be happy again…“An analogy could be drawn with passengers of a ship worrying what to do about rust on the hull – while the ship sinking…”
Yes, that analogy could be drawn, but it would be the wrong one.
And as for Michael Norton’s drivel about warming rising 1.5C since massive coal burning took place; the graph commences in 1850, when coal burning was the main supplier of energy to the western world, and for about 130 years the graph remains relatively steady. Only after about 1980 does the upturn of 45 degrees take place. Are we blaming all this on China and India burning coal while many other countries were cutting coal consumption?
And please refrain from inserting lies into your version of what I have stated about my car. Yes it is an EV and I am very happy with it, but I have never said I was happy that rare elements have been used in the creation of the battery, or any other batteries I have used. I am no more or less happy with mineral mining for batteries than I am with oil exploration and its associated environmental destruction and pollution.
Coral Bleaching as an Adaptive Mechanism
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KN9eGdI5OoI
Dr. Ridd explains this so well, it is informative.
Please don’t mix being a climate change denier, with somebody who thinks things through.James, I did not know such colossal mass of steel are needed for a new wind turbines,
it makes you think, is it all thought through?
They are only made to last for twenty years.Fat John, I don’t think I was far out.
When did the Industrial Revolution begin?
That is not such an easy question to answer, however it mostly began in the United Kingdom.
First, the British Agrarian Revolution, this freed up people , some of these people would move into industry.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Agricultural_Revolution#:~:text=The%20British%20Agricultural%20Revolution%2C%20or,17th%20and%20late%2019th%20centuries.
Early industry was mostly water powered.
Yes, some people were already burning coal on their fires, but iron was made, fueled by Charcoal, in such places as Surrey and Sussex and Gloucestershire.
By the eighteen century some canals were constructed to move coal.
Only after those canals had been built, could mass coal burning take off.
Steam power really took off with improvements made by James Watt in 1778.
Although by 1800 The U.K. had moved into the “modern world”, that “modern world” mostly only happened in a few European countries.“that analogy could be drawn, but it would be the wrong one.”
How is it wrong?“Fat John, I don’t think I was far out.
When did the Industrial Revolution begin?”You see, you have moved the goalposts almost immediately. You didn’t mention the start of the Industrial Revolution in your post #99179. You mentioned massive Coal Burning. So your entire reply is a non-sequitur.
My point was that massive coal burning continued for the fist 130 years of that graph and yet there was nothing like the dramatic rise there has been since 1980, so it is highly unlikely coal burning is responsible. Must be something else then; I wonder what it could be?
I am beginning to think that this anti lithium battery stance is being pushed by the USA because although they do have a little lithium, the majority of the reserves are in South American companies which have no love of the US. It is well known that the US economy would be on its knees if it were not for oil being sold in dollars across most of the world, and the money being made from the currency exchange. Any invention which pulls the rug from under the petrodollar safety net, is not going to be flavour of the month with the USA.
“that analogy could be drawn, but it would be the wrong one.”
How is it wrong?It trivialises the problem.
