Much as I am green, wind farms are indeed no pretty sight, and while that may be no strong argument, it seems equally bizarre to argue that because the planet has been already littered with electricity pylons, we might just as well litter it some more.
The truth is, wind farms are ridiculously inefficient, and the only viable solution currently still is nuclear energy. You're going to stone me right here, but instead of just not hearing, read on. Nuclear has waste (little, but extremely contaminated), but in terms of greengases its outlet is nil. Even if we'd build wind farms all along the coast, this would make up for a futile amount of nuclear energy daily consumed. I mean, here in Belgium they want to step out of nuclear energy. What to replace it with? Beer gas? They'll probably do like Italy: refuse nuclear plants on their own territory, but get most of their energy from France, a country that does get the bulk of its energy from nuclear power. True, it dumps its waste far away from its unspoilt countryside, but in the end the real consequences are minimal compared to other non-renewable sources - if you look at Britain (or elsewhere), there's still a lower life expectancy in once-, and still-industrialised areas, nOt due to nuclear energy.
Now nuclear energy sucks MAjor ass, obviously, as it's non-renewable, produces waste, and hence is devoid of any long-term thinking. But in the meanwhile the truth is that, as wind farms are inefficient, dams are ecological disasters, solar energy wildly expensive and no-no for northern countries, the only obvious solution is use of tidal currents, but the development of that is still far off. In the meanwhile, it is testimony to an equal amount of short-term thinking to already go ahead and litter the planet with inefficient windfarms you *know* will *never* make up for any significant part of non-renewable energy. And we need to reduce these greenhouse gases NOW. Biodiversity is about to implode. And windfarms will do NOthing to stop that from happening. They only keep your conscience clean: "ah look at that, we're willing to spoil our coast and countryside to save the planet, aren't we righteous dudes!"
Well, talking about conscience, the core of the problem is, we're consuming way too much energy. Too much for there to be a viable (ecological and economical) alternative to nuclear power, and should we want to abandon that, as a result people will turn to on energy sources that are even less clean. Although, with peak oil selling now, this would just mean the financial end of the line for most families. Now there will be a lot of people saying that they could do with less energy, but in the end they're just underestimating what they consume. I mean, Sunn0))) would be no more...
The thing is that, due to unpopularity of nuclear energy, aided by minor an major disasters, the research on it - how to reduce waste, how to improve safety, etc. - has been put way back. Currently, as a result, the top technology on nuclear energy is located in China (where they're currently working on some hydrogen-based form, called pebble-bed reactors http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/12.09/china.html), while here in the west we're struggling with peak oil, fighting wars over oil... sad, really.
Now, I am highly suspicious of these ecolo.org dudes. In fact, I'm suspicious of anyone being so unequivocally pro, minimizing risks and waste, and trying to make us forget entirely about the core idea: renewable energy. But still it's not entirely a bad read: http://www.ecolo.org/lovelock/Nuclear_lifeline_en.pdf
If anyone can correct me on this view on windfarms, pleas do so immediately. The idea is to keep my info updated :-)
-arf
|
