Trump - Off to Destroy the World

[Mack]

ITs not how much you spend its how you spent it.
There are nations wich now are close to 100% of reneval energy. Windmills and dams.

Windmills are not as environmentally friendly as you think. While they use wind to produce power, they are not cost effective, especially if you include the fact that windmills kill endangered birds and get waivers for doing so because its green energy. Try to build through some endangered species habitat and it will get shutdown, but windmills get an exemption, for not disturbing their habitat, but for actually straight out killing them because its' "green" energy. Environmental Hypocrisy at its best.


Dams are another Environmental Hypocrisy. Dams are actually a great source of "green" energy, but environmentalist frown upon them unless they have costly systems for migrating fish and other water based wildlife, which in turn makes them inefficient and not cost effective.

The downfalls of windmills are not just killing birds, they also have to be built, and oiled up for maintenance which leaks out onto the ground in a lot of cases. The construction alone destroys a lot of environment.. you've also got to mine all the metals that's required which aluminum I don't know if you know how that stuff comes about but it requires a lot, a lot of energy, not only that look at the mines, those are good for our environment for sure.. so im not sure how long they would have to operate to offset the footprint they left, but i imagine it would be a long time before they started paying the environment back..

[Marcellus Falcon]

Windmills are not as environmentally friendly as you think. While they use wind to produce power, they are not cost effective, especially if you include the fact that windmills kill endangered birds and get waivers for doing so because its green energy.

Got interested in how many birds actually die of windmills in the US. Here's what I found after some searching:

"Wind turbines kill between 214,000 and 368,000 birds annually — a small fraction compared with the estimated 6.8 million fatalities from collisions with cell and radio towers and the 1.4 billion to 3.7 billion deaths from cats, according to the peer-reviewed study by two federal scientists and the environmental consulting firm West Inc.

"We estimate that on an annual basis, less than 0.1% ... of songbird and other small passerine species populations in North America perish from collisions with turbines," says lead author Wallace Erickson of Wyoming-based West." - article in USA Today, smithsonian .com has a similar result

Bad kitty!!!

[Marcellus Falcon]

ITs not how much you spend its how you spent it.
There are nations wich now are close to 100% of reneval energy. Windmills and dams.

Windmills are not as environmentally friendly as you think. While they use wind to produce power, they are not cost effective, especially if you include the fact that windmills kill endangered birds and get waivers for doing so because its green energy. Try to build through some endangered species habitat and it will get shutdown, but windmills get an exemption, for not disturbing their habitat, but for actually straight out killing them because its' "green" energy. Environmental Hypocrisy at its best.


Dams are another Environmental Hypocrisy. Dams are actually a great source of "green" energy, but environmentalist frown upon them unless they have costly systems for migrating fish and other water based wildlife, which in turn makes them inefficient and not cost effective.

The downfalls of windmills are not just killing birds, they also have to be built, and oiled up for maintenance which leaks out onto the ground in a lot of cases. The construction alone destroys a lot of environment.. you've also got to mine all the metals that's required which aluminum I don't know if you know how that stuff comes about but it requires a lot, a lot of energy, not only that look at the mines, those are good for our environment for sure.. so im not sure how long they would have to operate to offset the footprint they left, but i imagine it would be a long time before they started paying the environment back..

So all other sources of energy creation don't need any resources, don't need to get oiled and never have any leaks or dump into rivers or have to be buried underground?

[Mack]

Just saying its not that green... its allmost as bad as saying these electric cars are green energy, but no one thinks of the coal-burning power plant that supplies the electricity to fill them batteries

[Marcellus Falcon]

Just saying its not that green... its allmost as bad as saying these electric cars are green energy, but no one thinks of the coal-burning power plant that supplies the electricity to fill them batteries

Oh absolutely! I agree. It's never going to be "100% green". But I'd rather have a solar park or wind park next to my city than a nuclear reactor or coal/oil power station. Those things will never pay off in the long run, considering how much it costs us to clean up pollution caused by environmentally inefficient ways of producing power or products for that matter. The true cost of many things that we do is hidden to the plain sight.

[sXs]

ITs not how much you spend its how you spent it.
There are nations wich now are close to 100% of reneval energy. Windmills and dams.

Don't forget though that the US is one of largest nations in the world, both in land size and population, which makes producing enough energy for everyone harder then in a smaller nation such as Ireland for example. though it can be done, We could cut our military spending in half and focus that on renewable energy until we are using mostly renewable energy. Though some large corporations might not like that and try to stop it from happening.

Renewable energy standards are a joke. I work in the industry. The only reason you see the windmills and solar farms in the US is because of government subsidies. Solar get subsidized at just over 96 cents per kwh. The average consumer price of electricity in the US is 12.6 cents per kwh.

That means the US subsidizes solar power at almost 8 times the retail price. Solar Technology is currently not viable as a self-sustaining industry and the only reason it exists is because of government subsidies.

[Marcellus Falcon]

ITs not how much you spend its how you spent it.
There are nations wich now are close to 100% of reneval energy. Windmills and dams.

Don't forget though that the US is one of largest nations in the world, both in land size and population, which makes producing enough energy for everyone harder then in a smaller nation such as Ireland for example. though it can be done, We could cut our military spending in half and focus that on renewable energy until we are using mostly renewable energy. Though some large corporations might not like that and try to stop it from happening.

Renewable energy standards are a joke. I work in the industry. The only reason you see the windmills and solar farms in the US is because of government subsidies. Solar get subsidized at just over 96 cents per kwh. The average consumer price of electricity in the US is 12.6 cents per kwh.

That means the US subsidizes solar power at almost 8 times the retail price. Solar Technology is currently not viable as a self-sustaining industry and the only reason it exists is because of government subsidies.

I agree that a LOT has to be done to make this more efficient in every way. But demonising it because it gets subsidies? Fossil fuel corporations that make billions every year get government subsidies as does the Agro industry and a lot more sectors than that. This is not a viable argument against renewable energy. We should focus on streamlining the process and making it more efficient, without miles of red tape. That costs money.

And everything was more expensive in the beginning. It takes time to make it more a "mass market" product, which it is not. Cars, trains, planes, phones, etc. were really expensive in the beginning. This can become quite viable. It can work if we want it to.

But like I said, I do agree that energy standards are a joke. We have to fix that.

[Meliva]

I agree with Marcellus. Just because its not viable now does not mean it will never be viable. Hell the first airplane by the Wright brothers didn't even fly for more then a minute if I recall correctly. Now we have planes that can fly for hours. If we just invest the time, money and effort onto renewable energy I'm sure we can start making great improvements to it. like I said before, if the US just cut their military budget in half, we would still have the largest budget in the world, but we would also have a huge amount of money invested into renewable energy.

[Mack]

Throw money at it that will solve any issue

[DezNutz]

Spoiler: show

Windmills are not as environmentally friendly as you think. While they use wind to produce power, they are not cost effective, especially if you include the fact that windmills kill endangered birds and get waivers for doing so because its green energy.

Got interested in how many birds actually die of windmills in the US. Here's what I found after some searching:

"Wind turbines kill between 214,000 and 368,000 birds annually — a small fraction compared with the estimated 6.8 million fatalities from collisions with cell and radio towers and the 1.4 billion to 3.7 billion deaths from cats, according to the peer-reviewed study by two federal scientists and the environmental consulting firm West Inc.

"We estimate that on an annual basis, less than 0.1% ... of songbird and other small passerine species populations in North America perish from collisions with turbines," says lead author Wallace Erickson of Wyoming-based West." - article in USA Today, smithsonian .com has a similar result

Bad kitty!!!

Yes they kill non-endangered birds as well, but those on the endangered species list, a list supported by environmentalists, are also killed. But they look the other way, because it's green energy. If you killed an animal on the endangered species list, the environmentalists would be up in arms. Green energy kills them and environmentalists want to look the other way.

Oh absolutely! I agree. It's never going to be "100% green". But I'd rather have a solar park or wind park next to my city than a nuclear reactor or coal/oil power station. Those things will never pay off in the long run, considering how much it costs us to clean up pollution caused by environmentally inefficient ways of producing power or products for that matter. The true cost of many things that we do is hidden to the plain sight.

Well, nuclear plants aren't likely to be located directly next to a city in the USA, as well nuclear energy is considerably more safe than it was even 20 years ago. Nuclear energy is also rather young compared to the others. Windmills and Dams (WaterWheels) have been around for hundreds if not thousands of years. They may not have made electricity but the tech is not new.

In actuality all power generation is done the same with exception to solar which doesn't use a generator. Water, Wind, Geothermal, Oil, Coal, Gas, and Nuclear all create electricity in the same exact way via generators. Wind and Water turn their generators directly, while the others are turned via steam. The only difference between steam driven power generation is the resource used to create the steam.

Currently in the USA, natural gas is the cheapest means to create electricity, with Nuclear directly behind it. Nuclear is however the most effective and environmentally friendly (uranium is a naturally occurring element and can be recycled and reused to reduce waste). One metric ton of uranium (nuclear fuel) produces 44 million kilowatts of electricity. It takes 20,000 metric tons of Coal and 8.5 Million cubic meters of gas to create the same amount of electrivity.

I agree with Marcellus. Just because its not viable now does not mean it will never be viable. Hell the first airplane by the Wright brothers didn't even fly for more then a minute if I recall correctly. Now we have planes that can fly for hours. If we just invest the time, money and effort onto renewable energy I'm sure we can start making great improvements to it. like I said before, if the US just cut their military budget in half, we would still have the largest budget in the world, but we would also have a huge amount of money invested into renewable energy.

Sorry but that would require you to defy the laws of physics. Solar and Wind power generation can only generate so much power. Solar converts energy, it will never be as efficient as other energy sources. Wind power requires the wind to turn generators/motors, to create more electricity you need larger generators. The large the generator, the more force is required to drive it. The wind isn't a constant force and there is this thing called friction. Also take note that wind and water power generation have location limitations. Wind farms can't just be placed anywhere and water power (dams) requires a large amount of well moving water.