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I couldnt get my head around wind farms creating waste. Wide open vistas filled with turbines spinning in the wind, reminds me more of an XP desktop background than something dirty. Whats the truth? Did a bit of research and I found out that the "waste" position is wrong. A misnomer. An inaccurate description. What is being described is the mining of 'ALL RARE EARTH ELEMENTS". Thats the news that places wind farms back into the clean zone. The dirty issue comes up when unscrupulous mining operators dump waste where it doesnt belong by not folllowing proper disposal procedures. Thats the real. The bad news is that every item that we use is now on notice if it uses rare earth minerals that come from unscrupulous areas.
Rare earths, for sake of this post, are usually all found together. Mining one gets you all of the others. This means that a portion of the rare earths mined goes into the generators of the wind turbines, the rest goes into.......get ready: Smart phones, red and blue phosphors, computers, pet scanners, led bulbs, vanadium steel, fibre optics, lasers, florescent lamps, fuel cells, x-ray tubes, nuclear control rods, electric motors, camera lenses, spark plugs, aluminium alloys, and of course magnets. Wind turbines are taking the distorted weight for all of these things by folks trying to make it look ungreen.
Its really the morals of the mining operators that cause the waste problem. Its not inherent in getting power from the wind. Now, we can debate if we still want to use our computers to debate these issues now that we know that our machines could possibly be contributing to the waste problem. Or we can realize that its not the minerals causing the problem. Its the people behind placing profits before ecologicial preservation causing the problems. People making clean dirty. Hmmmmm.
I'll comment the ponzi climate change later.
Oh, it's far more than just unscrupulous mining operators - wind farms are TOXIC.
http://instituteforenergyresearch.org/analysis/big-winds-dirty-little-secret-rare-earth-minerals/
Its nothing compared to coal. Unless you are another person that think the coal mined from the ground is a pure substance.
You can even power nuclear plants from coal plants.
http://www.world-nuclear-news.org/newsarticle.aspx?id=14224
And that's just a tiny bit of all the nasties coal contains.
Because all our environmental treaties are lame duck efforts that have been put together by largely neoliberal governments that value donor profits plus the illusion of doing something to look good over everything else. You're completely right that the USA likes to offshore its problems. It's not a coincidence that air pollution in the USA got reduced around the same time we started sending so much of our manufacturing to China, and lo and behold, their pollution has gotten catastrophic.Oh, and for those who claim to care about the environment, why is it that all those environmental treaties don't really stop coal production, but instead just changes who makes it? Like the Paris Climate Accord wasn't going to reduce coal production at all - instead it was going to close up the US coal mines and increase production in INDIA by a factor much greater than the production lost in the US.
I would think that if people were really environmentalists, it wouldn't matter where the coal was mined - they'd just want to stop all of it?
But when you point out things like that, it gets real amusing real fast the cognitive dissonance that occurs as "environmentalists" engage in bizarre pretzel logic or flat out denial in the face of details that expose the fraud.
Wow if you think any real environmentalist wrote any treaty... Just wow... Just one question, what are you smoking and where can I get it?https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clean_coal_technology
Oh, and for those who claim to care about the environment, why is it that all those environmental treaties don't really stop coal production, but instead just changes who makes it? Like the Paris Climate Accord wasn't going to reduce coal production at all - instead it was going to close up the US coal mines and increase production in INDIA by a factor much greater than the production lost in the US.
I would think that if people were really environmentalists, it wouldn't matter where the coal was mined - they'd just want to stop all of it?
But when you point out things like that, it gets real amusing real fast the cognitive dissonance that occurs as "environmentalists" engage in bizarre pretzel logic or flat out denial in the face of details that expose the fraud.
There's an awful lot of moving parts in an economy, and to simplify it thus is a bit naive.Because all our environmental treaties are lame duck efforts that have been put together by largely neoliberal governments that value donor profits plus the illusion of doing something to look good over everything else. You're completely right that the USA likes to offshore its problems. It's not a coincidence that air pollution in the USA got reduced around the same time we started sending so much of our manufacturing to China, and lo and behold, their pollution has gotten catastrophic.
Sometimes yes, sometimes no. In this case, the trends are more clear. You move manufacturing that produces a lot of pollution out of the country to places willing to do it cheaper and with more lax pollution laws, the trends follow. I mean if you're critical of that explanation, what do you think is closer to the truth?There's an awful lot of moving parts in an economy, and to simplify it thus is a bit naive.
Good thing the amount of water on Earth hasn't changed since the dinosaurs were around so we can rule that out as a new variable huh?the #1 greenhouse gas is?.......wait...............waaaaaaait...............wait for it!............................WATER VAPOR , we need to start TAXING water vapor NOW...anyone who thinks that water vapor shouldn't be addressed in the "climate change" argument is a ignorant fool....haha
(see how I disrespected a whole group instead of one person ...if you insult a whole group then you don't get reported for a "personal attack"...nice)
Oh, it's far more than just unscrupulous mining operators - wind farms are TOXIC.
http://instituteforenergyresearch.org/analysis/big-winds-dirty-little-secret-rare-earth-minerals/
the #1 greenhouse gas is?.......wait...............waaaaaaait...............wait for it!............................WATER VAPOR , we need to start TAXING water vapor NOW...anyone who thinks that water vapor shouldn't be addressed in the "climate change" argument is a ignorant fool....haha
(see how I disrespected a whole group instead of one person ...if you insult a whole group then you don't get reported for a "personal attack"...nice)
You lost me at "Bloomberg."
"Solar already rivals the cost of new coal power plants" No. Not even close.
Megalith, give up on trying to sell the kumbaya green articles. If I didn't know any better, I feel like Jason Mick found a new home here.
When it finally makes sense, solar will sell itself. I'm all for it when the time is right.
You lost me at "Bloomberg."
"Solar already rivals the cost of new coal power plants" No. Not even close.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clean_coal_technology
The logic is that wealthier countries develop and implement cleaner energy production tech now while poorer countries build their economies up with dirty tech which will allow them to buy the more expensive cleaner stuff once it gets more affordable and practical to buy.Oh, and for those who claim to care about the environment, why is it that all those environmental treaties don't really stop coal production, but instead just changes who makes it? Like the Paris Climate Accord wasn't going to reduce coal production at all - instead it was going to close up the US coal mines and increase production in INDIA by a factor much greater than the production lost in the US.
In addition to what Tetris said I'd point out too water vapor is a greenhouse gas that doesn't stick around for very long, it can come and go over a matter of days or even hours over a given volume of atmosphere, while CO2 sticks around for about 100yr or so before getting sequestered naturally.the #1 greenhouse gas is?.......wait...............waaaaaaait...............wait for it!............................WATER VAPOR ,
Still nope.Actually, it is. Utility scale solar is cheaper than coal in some parts of the country, specifically the southern arid states that have actually been building large PV installations.
He compared solar to coal in that post, not nuclear.Still nope.
That is a good point about most other energy sources needing a large supply of water but I'd point out too that desert land is usually pretty cheap too, being effectively "useless" for most things people care about, and solar is land hungry.The only reason solar is used at all in the desert? Every major power technology requires a large body of water to make the energy or cool the plant.
AFAICT coal is actually cheaper than nuclear, since its capital costs are so much lower.He compared solar to coal in that post, not nuclear.
And if you look at Shintai's chart you'll see PV solar has even less capital costs then coal.AFAICT coal is actually cheaper than nuclear, since its capital costs are so much lower.
Not if you're talking about Clean Coal. AFAIK, the only possible place that may have a clean coal plant working is near houston, where they haul the carbon off to fracking sites and pump it in to the ground. As the link above says (as do many other sites), Mississippi turned their plant into a Natural Gas plant on a temporary basis and as of a few days ago decided to make that permanent.....so that's almost 8 Billion dollars for a clean coal plant that just burns natural gas.AFAICT coal is actually cheaper than nuclear, since its capital costs are so much lower.
Still nope.
Largest solar power plant in Southwest: Ivanpah Solar Power Facility
Cost: $2.2B dollars
Nameplate capacity: 377 MW
Capacity factor: 19.7%
Actual capacity: 74.269 MW
Life expectancy of plant: 25 years
Actual cost over 100 years: $0.16526 $ / kWh
Compare that to Vogtle nuclear power plant with an estimated cost of...
...drum roll...
$0.03299 $ / kWh
Solar still sucks. Wind would have made more sense.
The only reason solar is used at all in the desert? Every major power technology requires a large body of water to make the energy or cool the plant.
How much of nuclear's cost is regulatory or due to civil lawsuits trying to block it?
How much of nuclear's cost should be regulatory or due to civil lawsuits trying to block it?
Nuclear certainly needs to have some oversight, but Nuclear does face a bit of an unfair burden due to civil suits from NIMBY's, and ECO nuts, as well as what some would call over regulation.
Clean coal is a joke.
W Bush gave the coal industry billions to try and develop it and even they gave up on it since it doesn't make any financial sense at all to run it. The major test plants got converted to run natural gas years ago and Clean Coal development has been essentially abandonded by the industry even after a attempt by Obama to revive it in 2014/2015, though as more of a stimulus/jobs program and political sop, since everyone knew there was no way it was going to work.
http://ieefa.org/regulators-acknowledge-failure-7-5-billion-kemper-clean-coal-experiment/
The logic is that wealthier countries develop and implement cleaner energy production tech now while poorer countries build their economies up with dirty tech which will allow them to buy the more expensive cleaner stuff once it gets more affordable and practical to buy.
You might dislike that reasoning for various political reasons but at least its a somewhat reasonable plan to get the world off of dirty energy production means over time vs pre-Paris Accord where there really wasn't any sort of plan at all. There is no cognitive dissonance at all there.