The Penguin
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just a few points from someone who has worked on windfarms. first, the house-mounted ones are a waste of time because wind speeds on nearly all houses are too low: the turbines need to be in windy places. second, the only people who have objected strongly in the planning process (part from rspb usually) are those with fancy houses within line of sight and only a very few miles away. everyone else appreciates the benefits over their own pockets. third, they are much less of a blot on the landscape than pylons, huge hydro schemes, large upland conifer plantations, to mention just a few. fourth, they have a lifespan of 25 years, after which they are dismantled (unless of course, the operator applies for planning to renew them, which seems unlikely at this stage. my opinion is that cities should be ringed with windfarms, and smaller communities should have medium-sized turbines closer by. the current trend for more large upland developments only encourages more pylons.
Yes, but wind turbines are still ugly, inefficient, (a 200 ft high wind turbine of 500 kW capacity will on average produce 125 kW - enough to boil 50 electric kettles,)
expensive to build and expensive to maintain, and all of these except ugly gets far worse when relocated out to sea.
Even on land, they make no sense as primary power generators and worst of all take far too much in land area to be at all commercial. In comparison with other generating types the land take is hopeless.
Carno wind "farm", said to be the largest in Europe, sprawls over 1500 acres and produces an average output of 10 MW.
The Baglan Combined Cycle Gas Turbine generator will cover 15 acres and produce 500 MW of reliable power.
The Hunterston B Nuclear Power Station covers roughly 30 acres and produces an average of 8300 MW of reliable power.
And the concept of ringing cities with wind farms is ludicrous. By my rough reckoning the calculation would be something like:-
It takes one third of the Hunterston B capacity to power Glasgow. For this to be accomplished with wind farms an area close to 500 sq. km. or 125,000 acres would be required, which is nearly three times the area of the city.
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Synoptics - (in meteorology) relating to data obtained simultaneously over a large area of the atmosphere.
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It would appear that climate modelling, at least at the IPCC, is now twice as ‘good’ as it was five years ago. Is this an accurate reflection of the situation do you think, and if so what kind of improvement is expected over the next five years?
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Wilson, what you say regarding lay science is self-evidently true, but it misses the point that with academic science (as applied to climate change) at its current level of development, any predictive analysis will also be a matter of opinion. Slightly more valid no doubt but still based on opinion.
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SF, In global terms I think you’re probably right. However to the recipients, and to me though not directly, the issue of charity / aid is highly significant. Again though, as this is supposed to be a technical rather than speculative thread, I’ll leave my extended version to another time and place.
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Yes, but the end user would look at a house carrying a whooping risk margin as a poor investment so, unless the market was so tight that those were the only properties available they simply wouldn't purchase them. I suspect that we may not be a long way away from starting to thik about the equivalent of "red lining" used in French mountain resorts to indicate avalnche risks zones within which building cannot take place (save for a backhander).
That’s a slightly different point from the one P3 made, although the answer isn’t all that different.
A developer works out his financial appraisals on a calculation called residual value. Any development has a potential total income, a guess of sales value if you like, tested against experience and current trends. From that he takes off a profit margin, a percentage usually, and an amount which is absolutely fixed. From what’s left he takes off all his development costs like construction, overheads, finance etc. The amount left is the residual land value, the money he can offer for the land on which the development is built (both physically and financially).
So in the case where the income value is depressed by market resistance, (and I personally would never invest in property on a flood plain – the clue is in the name – but an amazing number of people don’t seem to register the risk,) all that happens is income, and therefore profit, are slightly reduced, costs stay largely the same, so the land value goes down. But remember when judged against agricultural land values, development land values are stratospheric, so quite a degree of market depression can take place before the farmer won’t sell and a project becomes unviable.
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I accept you have a point, but I am conscious that this is possibly not the correct place to pursue it. Now doubt there will be another opportunity elsewhere soon.
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What this tells me is that the 'sideways' implications of climate change are kicking in fairly seriously in business already, which in turn suggests that the days when large development can ignore the issues are numbered. If a developer has to lose a chunk of profit as a consequence of building on marginal land, it is more likely that he will choose not to.
of anticipated change. Hope springs eternal.
PThat’s not how it works though. The developer never concedes profit, he simply passes on costs to the end user.
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For the sake of clarification, do you mean casualties in the sense of people not receiving charity/support, or casualties in the sense of people drowning because they live in marginal habitats threatened by sea level rise and extreme weather? P
I think you know what I mean.
The difference between taking the global redirection curve on two wheels, and the potential long-term outcomes of GW, is obviously time. I suggest there would be plenty of opportunity to plan for climate change while immediate action on environmental policies would leave little time to react in support of marginal populations.
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. . . . Surely the only sensible position to take at this stage is to accept that GW may be exacerbated by human activity, and this may have catastrophic effects on human existence in a very short space of time, (in terms of geological time spans), so therefore we all have a responsibility to try and reduce any activities which could contribute to this given our current knowledge of what may or may not affect global climates. If in the fullness of time it turn's out that human activity wasn't either to blame or an exarcebating factor I'll take my hat off to those that argued for this position. But nevertheless by making the efforts anyway nothing will have been lost, (unless perhaps you have shares in an oil company of course !), and I'll be able to look all those peoples who sufferred squarely in the eye knowing we did what we could given our levels of understanding at the current time.
Rigorous argument is of course a good thing, but sometimes I fear it is used as shield by those who don't want to face possibly painful changes, or who have vested interests in doing nothing.
I fully understand your sentiments and don’t completely discount the supporting logic, but do you really believe that cutting out CO2 emissions, for instance, will be accomplished at no cost?
Just assuming that bit by bit the nations of the world could be persuaded to join in, there would still be a huge investment to be made to switch to other sources of energy. This would involve individuals as well as countries diverting a substantial part of their resources into alternative technologies. I would think that far beyond eating into any extra we have, this would involve reallocating a good part of our core resources, which are already directed at essentials.
The problem with that is there are people in the world that rely to a high degree for their existence on what the ‘Haves’ can afford to send their way, There is an argument to be had about whether that should be necessary, and even if it is necessary, whether it is expedient, but aid packages or charity is a fact of many peoples life today. So when you say there are no (important) losers, I would contest that you are wrong. There will, in all likelihood, be a great number of undeserving casualties if sensible environmental planning is not sensible enough.
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Wow! Think of all the butterflies. Think of next year's hurricane season.
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If one accepts the Ruddiman Hypothesis the next ice age started 8,000 years ago ....... :unsure: Human activity has not only cancelled it out, but meant the planet is warming instead of cooling as it should be.
Unless one entirely disputes all GW predictions, then any future cooling trend would need to be severe indeed if it's to do more than maintain temps at current levels. After all, what good is a THC shutdown leading to a 3c avergae drop in UK temps if they're already 3c higher because of AGW? All it would mean would be the sort climate we had during the first part of the 20th century. Which I seem to recall was rather warm and sunny ....
Exactly!Not quite exactly. If I read Ruddiman correctly he ascribes 0.8C to the combined warming influence. If the cooling effect of a THC shutdown is 3.0C then that is not a balanced outcome.
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Daniel - nobody, but nobody, knows what kind of weather we’ll have in fifty years. Maybe climate change will have evolved and we’ll have colder weather than today. Then again maybe it will fizzle out and we will have very similar conditions to now, or global warming will prove to be true and we will have a warmer climate. A minimal variation either way is entirely possible, but the massive global deep freeze you are looking for is far less so. But just supposing for a moment that we could find ourselves in the middle of a sudden fifty year ice age. The cause of such an event within your timescale is most likely to be associated with a large meteor impact, or a major volcanic eruption, and nothing whatsoever to do with any convoluted train of events you’ll find in IAN
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Pray tell then.
I don't claim to have that knowledge. My point since starting on here has been fairly consistent - I don't believe anybody has.
Edit: snowsure, I ve just read your last; you mention agreeable twice in relation to Stratos Ferric - the man must be slipping!
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Well you won’t have to wait. There are those in here who can, and will, tell you exactly what’s around the corner.
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Of course we can get freezing cold again. As I keep on pointing out time and time again. we are just going through a warm phase which will come to an end. The sun is set to go in a quite mode before mid century and more and more ice is pouring from Greenland into the sea which if it slows down the gulf that would change weather patterns favoring freezing cold. Now the favored weather pattern for great winter cold is a cool August followed by a cool Autumn. Now in recent years our summers have been warm which as lead to warmer Autumns and then warm winters. But this pattern could well be comming to an end. After a warm June and hot July this August has been much cooler and possibly it would turn out to be one of the coldest of recent times. if this follows through into Autumn and we get a cool Atutumn there a real chance of a major freeze this comming winter. Now that weather pattern has occured many time in the past but not in recent times. But this year could be very differnt.
Daniel, I have an advantage over you in that I am getting uncomfortably close to seeing my fiftieth August, autumn and winter, and I therefore have slightly more experience of weather than I suspect you do, but I have to tell you that your premise is simply wrong.
I acknowledge that the weather I experience may be different from you or the CET area, for instance, but from memory the summers of 1976, 1985, and 1995 were either pleasantly or outstandingly warm while the following winters were notably cold. Other years have had coolish wet summers followed by warmer than usual conditions throughout the winter.
In any case, your argument regarding cold winters following cool summers by necessity, seems over generalised. You might equally say that cool summers would automatically follow cold winters. And then you would get into a never-ending monorail pattern of weather that could not break out of it’s own laws of progression. This plainly is not the case. You admit yourself that June and July were warm and August is cooler. If the pattern of weather can change over the space of a month, it can obviously change over the space of a season or two.
We are still some way away from accurate weather, never mind climate, prediction. Certainly too far away to be able to link August synoptics to those in December, January and February. Even the SACRA fundamentalists would have to admit that all their best planning for a freezing winter can be completely shot to pieces if some butterfly in the Amazon takes off and goes the in the wrong direction.
Having said all that, you have as much right to your opinion as anyone else. Please just don’t get too carried away with unproven or simplistic methods of analysis.
Edit – apologies; I see that other similar comments have been added while I was composing: this now looks like ganging up and it was certainly not meant as such.
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P3,
If there was a Clap Hands Smilie, I'd line them up right across the screen. Excellent work.
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The problem is that Britain, as an example, operates in a world economy and relies on success in that arena for the comfort to which we have all become accustomed. Also, the British people and the British Government believe, or would like to believe, that Britain is a major power in global affairs. I think it’s pretty well understood that getting serious about restrictive legislation to reduce our contribution to anthropogenic global warming (if it really is responsible) would, if done in isolation, lead to a recessive economy and a drop down the world economic league. In that context it is not so hard to understand why taking our foot off the power pedal is not currently a vote winner, or even a manifesto objective.
Last year, led by SF, there was a fairly lengthy and detailed discussion about the individual’s responsibility to the common good. Similarly, until there is no other way out, this applies to national politics too. Having said that, nobody can have missed the fervour with which the media is focusing on climate change issues at the moment. Maybe with that, or an increased level of attention this issue could become people driven rather than government driven.
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P3, TWS, TM,
I don’t think you’ll have to wait (and wait, and wait,) for a North Atlantic shut down to achieve the effect you desire.
As the USA is currently one of the biggest blockers in relation to climate sensitive planning, all you would need would be four or five years of Gulf Coast flattening or flooding, or two or three years of Washington DC being covered in ten feet of snow, and I bet you would see a step-change in world environmental activity.
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I completely agree, TM, with your thoughts regarding government leadership, or lack of. Politics in democratic countries is a five-year game, played to disturb the lives of the people as little as possible. I think most of the population in the informed countries of the world acknowledge Climate Change as a phenomenon, but not one that seriously disadvantages them, at least at the moment, while the concept of Global Warming (anthropological or otherwise) is mostly seen as either another from of media hype or a confusing mish-mash of scientific blow-off. Worse still, in totalitarian countries there is no need what so ever for the government to listen to peoples’ concerns.
However, I’m not sure that anyone has to be overly pessimistic as yet. After all nobody knows for sure where in the cycle we are right now and there is no sign of immediate catastrophe. This gives us time to monitor and learn more over the next couple of decades, whilst further confirming climate trends at the same time. In the meantime, who knows, maybe environmental nurturing will become fashionable. Then the politicians will jump on the windmill.
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Parmenides3, I couldn’t get your posted site to open, however I did trawl about a bit and was interested to see that consensus in terms of location, severity, criticality, and timescale is still some way off. This kind of reinforced my original thought, which was as we are still in a monitoring and learning phase how can we be certain of outcomes.
Going back to the original question though, I subscribe to the view that Climate Change is a given fact, because we know that historically the planet’s climate has changed, whereas Global Warming is only the current phase of Climate Change as acknowledged by most people in most countries of the world,
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Okay, but who’s estimates (guesses) and based on what, currently?
I only ask because even though a certain argument can certainly lose credence from over repetition or, possibly, poorly structured language (not to be confused with poorly constructed analysis,) it doesn’t mean that the core hypothesis might not contain a strand or two of truth. Although I freely admit whether this falls into the categories of probable or possible is obviously a valid topic of debate.
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Yes I will. Again.
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Sorry, the above is wrong. The graph only relates to December - February CET’s and therefore the scale is actual temperature in deg.C.
P
Wind Farms
in Space, Science & nature
Posted
Stupid as in a total waste of space, in every possible definition of the phrase. Just stupid.