Author: Daft Old Duffer
Daft Old Duffer: Turbine Talk
Tuesday, 1st December, 2009 at 7:11 am, Isle of Wight
Green Issues, News, Opinion Piece, Writers
More chat from our dear friend Daft Old Duffer. Ed
I’ve just been reading through the comments about the wind turbines proposed for Cheverton Down.
Seems to me the one that hits the button is by Meursault, who reminds us of the endless alterations the landscape has been subjected to over the years.
Few, if any of them, permanent.
Railways were new-fangled intrusions
When the railway system was being constructed, for example, the uproar over that new-fangled intrusion into our beautiful British countryside was just as intense as anything we experience today.
The only difference being that instead of us ordinary Jills and Joes having a say, it was down to the landowners.
And now we mourn the passing of those very same smoke and carbon emitting monsters that once polluted the hills and valleys of our fair land – and flock to ride the resurrected examples for fun.
Wind turbines future?
So it will be with the wind turbines. Ugly or attractive, they will arise, flourish and disappear in their turn, leaving a handful of remotely placed survivors for us to take our kids to see and marvel at.
We may not like it, but common sense indicates the future belongs to nuclear powered stations operating at base load with the peak loads being filled in by gas and, increasingly, coal powered plants.
For unfortunately, until fusion power arrives, nuclear power will be far and away the most cost-efficient method (which is all that counts in the end) while there more than enough coalfields yet unexploited to keep the planet glowing like a Christmas tree for centuries to come.
And that won’t be wasted.
Image: Bullish under CC BY-SA 2.0
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Anyone watch BBC1 last night? Panorama’s Tom Heap investigated the financial rewards for going green and the money that could be made by investing in a wind turbines!
One village had a wind turbine added on a patch for them and they make money from it each year. This money then goes back into the community making homes more carbon friendly.
Wish I could afford a domestic turbine in my garden, I would go for it. Maybe then I could have a 100Watt light bulb back in my life so I can read in the evenings without glasses.
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Spot on duffer!
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Daft Old Duffer you certainly are. Do you have a solution to nuclear waste then? Just how old are you? Why are you so intent on leaving such a disasterous legacy to my children and grandchildren?
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Dear Jackie,
No,I don’t have a solution to the nuclear waste problem In fact I believe the storage of such waste in ever increasing amounts over thousands of years -and the wars that will devastate our future as a result- may well herald the end of the human race as we know it.
Nowhere in my article do I advocate nuclear powered plants,but I do try to view the situation as one living in the real world and not the art-fairy one were dreams come true
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ps I will be 125 and 3/4 years old next michaelmas muck spreading.
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What a beautifully elegant world you inhabit DOD. But of course, as Jackie points out (albeit a little sharply) there is that niggling problem of hazardous waste. The issue is not really about wind turbines, but our willingness to deal with this potential cataclysm. Many have got into the habit of hiding fear of change behind cynicism. But the word ‘change’ in the phrase ‘climate change’ hints at it’s inevitability.
Worse may come when fusion arrives. With unlimited abundant energy will likely come unlimited abundant lunacy. They will pave over the world and light it up like a second sun – unless we have fought our demons and taken at least a modicum of control over our destiny. It starts with windmills. Get those three fingered signposts to the future built.
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Forgive me if I’ve read you wrong DOD, but when you say that common sense indicates that the future lies with nuclear power stations and that nuclear power is cost effective and that is all that matters, that to me sounds like you are advorcating nuclear power. As for coal, the burning of fossil fuels has helped to create the crisis that we now face. Wind turbines might not be the be all and end all but they will help.
(Sorry I sound so sharp – bad day!!)
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Thanks Jackie.Obviously I didn’t make myself altogether clear.What I meant was that in the end economic considerations would be all that mattered to those high and mighty ones who will be making the decisions – not to me!
As for coal- the way it was burned in the past bears little relationship to its future use.It is already perfectly possible to use it in an acceptably clean fashion. Only the abundance and cheapness of oil has kept it in the ground.
The various fuel supplying companies already hold ‘first go’ licenses on huge coal deposits throughout the world and have done so ever since the oil producing countries threatened to ration supplies back in the seventies of last century
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Is it me or is Jackie always ‘having a bad day’ when writing on this subject, as do many ecomentalists when you fail to agree with them?
Nukes are the answer to most of the world’s energy needs. Hydrogen is the solution for our motoring needs. (Honda have already started selling the hyrogen car.) We aint got no energy crisis.
In any case, solving our energy problems does not and should not mean ruining the best landscapes, nor should it mean spending bilions of pounds subsidising inefficient rusting windmills the size of Nelson’s column. The world has more pressing problems surely?
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are you 12
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Its most definitely you Shooba………
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DOD – thanks for the reference.
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DOD, I’m not sure why you insist that nuclear power is “far and away the most cost-efficient method”.
In the US, for example, the nuclear industry is a hugely subsidised industry, having benefitted from $150 billion dollars of public money. In addition, the industry has benefitted from $100 billion worth of ‘write offs’ paid for by the taxpayer. All this and the US government still subsidises each Kwh produced by nuclear power stations to the tune of 30%.
And let’s not forget that, from the planning stage a nuclear power station takes about 15 years before it produces a single kilowatt of electricity.
Value for money? Don’t make me smile!
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Shooba – thanks for the reference.
But the rest of my family live in England, so I am the only ecomentalist in Ventnor.
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Daft Old Duffer is right about the changes to the landscape. Sadly though I haven’t seen the evidence that it is ‘already perfectly possible to use it in an acceptably clean fashion.’
Sorry, Shobba, I’ve got to disagree (as un-sharply as I can) when you say ‘Nukes are the answer to most of the world’s energy needs.’ Maybe if we can get fusion to work (though I agree with BigEars on that one) but we can’t do it with fission. Uranium is not a renewable resource, but just as finite as coal, oil, and gas.
As for ‘Hydrogen is the solution for our motoring needs’, this is just plain wrong. To get hydrogen you have to split it off from the oxygen it’s joined to in H2O. That takes a lot of energy, and that energy has to come from somewhere. Hydrogen isn’t a source of energy, just one way (and a very dodgy one) of transmitting it.
Sorry folks for adding in one of my favourite links yet again – but for useful facts on all of this, check out David MacKay’s book ‘Sustainable Energy – without the hot air’. This Ventnor ‘ecomentalist’ (sorry, Ecomentalist, you are not alone…) requested it from Ventnor Library, so now anybody can borrow it from their library. And it’s all online at http://www.withouthotair.com/.
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