“In what sense does that change the fact that a wind turbine will produce 18x the energy that went into its production?”
The Scottish offshore wind farms have bases made in China, brought 5 or 6 per ship, unloaded, loaded 3 on a barge, towed up and down, often for days, until needed.
Any maintenance needed offshore during their lifetime will be energy-expensive.
The energy that went into its production is likely to be a small part of the energy debt it has to pay-off in its lifetime.
I can understand LeSving’s concerns about intermittency and Peter’s point about the cost and reliability of some of the associated hardware. However, given that the installation ship can carry enough turbines to power it several times over (when the wind is blowing; if it were electrically powered) I doubt if the installation and maintenance ships burn enough fuel to worry about, in the grand scale of things.
Believe in them or not, flying along the North Wales coast, the windfarms are a stupendous sight and to my mind seeing them from the air is one of the perks of flying. They’re only just visible from sea level.
… and all of this completely ignores that conventional power plants need turbines and generators, too, and are housed in buildings. And while the turbine blades there are a bit smaller, they need a massive kettle, a lot of pipes, cooling etc.
Energy pay-back ratios for conventional power plants are a lot lower, in the single digits!
We really need better education
[ climate protesters chuck paint over a 1975 Aztec in Germany ]
Clipperstorch wrote:
[ climate protesters chuck paint over a 1975 Aztec in Germany ]
And what exactly does the “Luftaufsicht” guy do???? Take pictures of the perpetrators, instead of pointing a gun into their faces and stop a criminal act?
We need to “educate” those morons by taking them out of circulation and locking them up and by putting the FULL cost of their actions right back at them. After a short while, most climate protestors would be bancrupt and never ever capable of paying back their debt. Maybe that idea would get some of them to reason.
Locking up children might not be the answer 
Going after their future wages seems reasonable, assuming they ever do anything useful enough to have any.
The Danish partner in his plane was quite effective in the interview.
Poor Aztec.
Orange is a nice color 
Well, it appears that this kind of activism has now reached even the Green party’s scrutiny in some places. They have realized that people obstructing roads (Klimakleber) and who by now show responsible for a few deaths due to ambulances being unable to get through, are damaging their cause.
In that way, that kind of activism should show what kind of people are involved in the climate change religion. While it’s handled as it is, they will do more damage than good.
I don’t think anyone in his right mind will oppose technology which makes life better and which gives people something back for their investment. Solar power has huge potential, if people could finally get to it without being sabotaged by all sorts of interest groups. Wind may well be viable in some places too. There are other ideas, such as tidal plants e.t.c which may in the future be helpful. At the momemt, we can do what is feasible.
Recently, I had a very good discussion with some friends who are quite adamant about climate change. This comes with my job I suppose. We started to draw up lists, just how much each of us have actually changed their consumption of electricity and other stuff in recent years. Some results were interesting.
For myself, our house went from a 6 kw house to a 400-600W home, thanks to LED lighting and replacing some power hungry appliances. Most of our garden lights today are solar. We also have an emergency indoor lighting system which is solar. It can be deployed within a few minutes and is being kept charged up all the time, used outside from time to time. Looking into full solar, we should be able to go fully self contained with solar energy, either by getting batteries and get off grid or by feeding excess into the grid. Important to me would be the capability to go totally off grid if the need arises.
Obviously, a lot of that electricity saving has gone to waste with the upcoming of electric cars, but we could argue that those would not be possible without the saving the introduction of LED lighting alone has caused.
But of course, these advances are not in the agenda of the Green parties, mainily as they would not support their austerity ideology. Unless they change away from that and start looking into what could be done, rather than keeping their theories of depopulation and lack economy, which hurts everyone and prevents proper advance.
Mooney_Driver wrote:
who by now show responsible for a few deaths due to ambulances being unable to get through,
Interesting. Do you have sources?
their theories of depopulation and lack economy,
Really!?
Mooney_Driver wrote:
theories of depopulation and lack economy, which hurts everyone and prevents proper advance
The only constant expansion I believe in, is that found in the universe itself.
Economy and population expansion is impossible in the medium to long run. It is just mathematically impossible.
The limits of our capitalist system are slowly taking grips thru the difficulties in financing state pensions, poorer getting poorer, etc.
To come back to the subject, Climate Change, 18th of June 2023 will see the Swiss electorate vote on the Federal Act on Climate Protection Targets, Innovation and Strengthening Energy Security… looking forward to the results.
