Malibuflyer wrote:
To a large extend, a major part of the green movement is extremely populistic – and esp. first generation greens were not particularly blessed with intellectual capabilities. They therefore did not care about actually solving a problem.
I don’t think the majority of the protest movements do. They are unified in a common belief and will stop at nowhere to make that belief known.
Malibuflyer wrote:
Now as the movement matures, they do not get away with ignoring the fact that there is no silver bullet and therefore everything they promote also has downsides.
Does it mature really? Maybe the so called “green” parties do to some extent, where “realos” outweigh the “fundamentalists”. The populist movements have shifted onto people like Extinction Rebellion and similar groups, who have now largely taken the place of the “old” green movement, which many of them regard as establishment and therefore are as disgusted with them than with everyone else.
Populistic movements very often have one major problem: Once in power they fail miserably as they know nothing about responsibility but all about criticizing and inciting unrest and dissatisfaction. Once the “enemy” is gone, they start infighting until the movement is destroyed or, as you say, cooler heads prevail and it matures. By that time however, new fundamentalists will provide new populistic movements and the matured group will be regarded as traitors to the cause.
not particularly blessed with intellectual capabilities
That is a prerequisite to join Extinction Rebellion 
They get demolished at every interview done by someone with an IQ over 10.
I personally try to mitigate my own prejudice to any cause, and judge it more by its own merits rather than by labelling or categorising left, right, green or otherwise, although I admit it is tempting…
I have a problem with the association of “green” with actual pro-environmentalist. I am definitely more in the latter category if anything.
The situation in Spain is no different.
There is a big social movement right now because of the significant increase in the price of electricity (still below euro-average anyway)
This is the result of the long-term policy of fostering so-called “green energy”: hydro (good) , wind (bad), solar (medium) and gas (bad)
50YO nuclear plants are life-extended because nobody is brave enough to say Nuclear is necessary to maintain a reasonable cost and reliability balance in a way that allows new construction of fission plants (which has not happened in the last 40 years)
Gas prices have increased which have in turn caused the spike (to be expected). The high salaries of energy companies C-suit members are advertised by the “greens” as the reason for the spike, threatening to increase taxes on them and limit salaries by blame as a way to end the problem…as if they had not been forced to accept government energy policies as indicated above…
Some of my dearest family members are very pro-green. One of them works in the high-scale conservation of flying wildlife and she reports that their biggest killer in Spain nowadays are wind turbines (which the same person used to favor strongly as an energy source)
Fission is the only sensible short-mid-term solution to stability in both cost and availability of actual green energy .
Fusion is still too far into the future
Antonio wrote:
and she reports that their biggest killer in Spain nowadays are wind turbines
In that case Spain is extremely different from the rest of the world.
Data is hard to get, but in Germany even pessimistic estimations say that the number of birds killed by wind turbines every year is “only” about 100k. This number is in line with US estimations from the USFWS that estimates 170k-500k such kills in the US.
To compare these 100k in Germany: Estimates say that there are 150-200 Mio. birds breeding in Germany in total. Add migrating birds and at any given point in time there are more than 200 Mio. Birds in Germany. With an average life expectancy of most birds of about 5 years, 40 Mio. Birds die in Germany every year. Therefore wind turbines are only responsible for at max .25% of the yearly bird deaths in Germany.
Windows, Cars, Pesticides, etc. are by orders of magnitude bigger killers in Germany. I wonder why these factors don’t kill that many birds in Spain ?!?
Malibuflyer wrote:
In that case Spain is extremely different from the rest of the world.
Highly dependent of your point of view.
In 1975 there were 500 couples of sea eagles in the entire Europe. 400 of these were in Norway. From 2006 they started counting dead sea eagles at Smøla. A smallish island covered with about 70 wind turbines. From 2006 to 2019 they counted 100 dead eagles. This were only those they found, the real number is probably much higher. In addition there were lots of swans, geese, falcons, king eagles and a multitude of more common birds like seagulls etc. All from one single wind turbine farm on one single island.
Domestic cats is the number one killer of small birds In Norway there are about 750k cats. Each year they kill 7 million birds. Rather insane
Anyway, wind turbines for sure kills a whole lot of eagles. So what? you may say. The thing is there aren’t that many of them. Since they were completely protected in the 70s, we now have about 3000 couples. Today wind turbines is the number one killer. They don’t have any natural killers, and humans have stopped hunting them half a century ago.
LeSving wrote:
Today wind turbines is the number one killer.
Assuming all your numbers are correct, just ignoring
LeSving wrote:
This were only those they found, the real number is probably much higher.
Because the same is true for living animals.
100 dead eagles in 2006 to 2019 that is on average 7.1 dead eagles per year (starts to sound less impressive, doesn’t it. If you add up numbers over a long enough timeframe everything looks big). So let’s say 8 dead eagles per year due to wind turbines.
LeSving wrote:
we now have about 3000 couples
So about 6000 individuals (I know, it’s not true because juvenile sea eagles under the age of 2 do not breed so the actual population would be 20% higher. But let’s keep it at these pessimistic 6000 individuals.
As the average life expectancy is about 10 years (taking data from white tailed eagle that should be the predominant sea eagle species in Norway), about 600 of such eagle die in Norway every year.
7.1 of 600 deaths is about 1.2% ! Or to turn that around: More than 98% of sea eagle deaths in Norway are not due to wind turbines. So …
LeSving wrote:
Today wind turbines is the number one killer.
Most probably not!
Malibuflyer wrote:
7.1 of 600 deaths is about 1.2% ! Or to turn that around: More than 98% of sea eagle deaths in Norway are not due to wind turbines
This is one one single island, Smøla. This is how big it is on the map
Zoomed in:
The area of Smøla is 272.0 km2. The area of Norway is 385,207.0 km2. Smøla is 0.07 % of Norway. 0.07% of 6000 eagles is 4 eagles. Smøla kills 8 of them each year, or 200% each year Seriously though, this is the only way to look at at, because sea eagles are everywhere, except larger cities.
Besides, what is coolest of an eagle or a wind turbine? No contest IMO
The UK is talking seriously about banning the sale of normal boilers from 2025, although the detail is that this is only for new-build houses. And of course the 2050 date is so far away it means nothing.
Has anyone here actually implemented anything like this, and how exactly did they do it?
One can pretend that electric heating is “green” but of course that’s the same old debate. The only thing which is “greener” in your home is a heat pump. Their chief challenge is you get “low grade heat” (the water is not as hot) so you need much more radiator area to get the same result. Underfloor heating is an excellent solution (heating the floor to +20C does almost heat the room to +20C) but difficult or impossible in flexible floor situations (wooden floors, etc).
Then where does the heat come from. Air to water pumps suffer from evaporator icing. I know; I have a 5kW one here. The result is that the COP is nowhere near the data sheet value. Perhaps 2/3 of it… And they are mostly of junk quality, with a junk life, because there is so much damp and dirty air going through them, so everything corrodes. Life is 5-10 years. Ground to water pumps are much better COP and the appliances tend to be of better quality, but need either a decent size field to bury a length of pipe (a few acres) – @stolman knows about this – or a borehole. And you still have most of the “radiator problem” on the output.
Quite what the UK will do about heating new build houses I have no idea. Builders will always go for the cheapest compliance – they have zero interest in the quality of life of the occupants – so they will stick electric heaters in, which are extremely cheap, but shaft the buyers with huge electricity bills The photo at the above link shows the deception
That heat pump is perhaps a 2kW net output. That house will probably need 20kW (at -8C OAT). Also that heat pump will do nothing much below 0C, despite the data sheet saying “-15C”.
How is this approached in other countries?
Peter wrote:
Underfloor heating is an excellent solution (heating the floor to +20C does almost heat the room to +20C) but difficult or impossible in flexible floor situations (wooden floors, etc)
My house has water-based underfloor heating in some rooms with wooden floors. The builder who installed the floors and the heating during a renovation did not appear to think it was difficult at all. He did advise against electric underfloor heating on wooden floors.
What was the product used for underfloor heating, on a flexible floor?
