Why are environmentalists so deranged they will waste £100billion on wind turbines?

Question

These eyesores ruin the environment, do not reduce our reliance on gas and oil and will dramatically increase our energy bills.

Answer 1

And you base your statements on what exactly?

You say wind turbines ruin the environment, yet they're a completely emissions free energy source.

You say they don't reduce our reliance on gas and oil, yet they obviously do reduce our reliance on natural gas and coal.

You say they will dramatically reduce our energy bills, yet the energy return on investment (EROI) of wind energy is 25 on average, meaning you get 25 times more energy back over the lifetime of the wind turbine that you spend in building it.  In comparison, the EROI of coal and nucear are around 5.

http://www.eoearth.org/article/Energy_re...

In the USA the state using the most wind energy is Texas.  Do you really think Texas is building more wind turbines than anyone else because they're a bunch of tree-hugging hippies who like high energy prices?

Do some research.

Answer 2

Here in Texas the wind blows very good in the day time, but at night when U need it the wind stops.

Answer 3

Power of any kind costs money, money talks, oil reduces your ROI for any business. Many American businesses will be gone due to owning inefficient equipment in less than a year at current price levels.

If every watt of power comes from non-renewable fuels, those power companies will make a bundle and ruin the world economy in the process. I want to see the world economy thrive, not dive like the American economy which is so dependent on oil it's really stupid from an investment standpoint.

If you want to stay in business, stop using petroleum products, use bio-diesel, wind, and solar. Bio-fuels can be made from sewage water, we have plenty of that around. This is a simple example of how to think out of the oil cartel captive-market mindset.

Solar panels are up to 15-watts/sf now, so, per 1,000sf that's 15Kw-hours per hour of sunlight, do the math, most installations make a profit within three years. And the cost of power is going up so the value is greater the sooner you buy in.

Gas sucks, stop using it, use alternatives and leave the dumbo's giving their money away to the oil cartels in the dust.

And no, we don't need nuclear if enough houses are powered by panels, no 10,000 years of waste, no killed miners from exposure to the dust, oh sorry, that's the human side to nuclear power that no one wants to talk about, just kill them, we need the fuel, eh?

Answer 4

dude you are right ! it makes these dumb bells feel good and accomplishes nothing. face it,oil makes the modern world function. we (the USA) have more oil than the middle east.our morons in congress shut down domestic production 20 years ago. time for the people to have an oil revolution ! http://americansolutions.com/drillnow for all you lib dipshits that are giving me a minus,you must be totally fkng stupid and love high gas prices....enjoy your bicycles.

Answer 5

Maybe you need to look at it another way - why would professional politicians, after years of consultation with the country's best environmental, political and energy experts -  throw away £100billion of tax payers money?

Perhaps it's because they know something?

And there's a flaw in the statement about "not reduce our reliance on gas and oil"- any alternate energy source by definition will reduce our rekliance on oil, it's just a question of by how much?

P.S. To Keith. The USA has more oil than the middle east? lol! Even US sources (e.g. CIA factbook) disagree.

PROVEN oil reserves in Saudi, Iraq and Iran alone are 515 bn barrels.

PROVEN oil reserves in the USA are 22 bn barrels.

The link you provide is so biased/oil industry driven that it's hard to believe that anyone would take their claims seriously!

Even this lobby group doesn't actually make the claim you do - there site is full of "Estimates", "Not all resources in place are recoverable", "potentially recoverable", "roughly derive", "about"... This is definitely not PROVEN reserves...

Your own Senate majority leader, Harry Reid, summed it up (and this applies to the UK as well once the North Sea oil runs out) when he said Bush was being cynical and the US cannot drill itself out of the problem: "The math is simple: America has just 3% of the world's oil reserves, but Americans use a quarter of its oil".

Answer 6

They reduce our reliance on coal and nuclear.

Answer 7

I think they look great!

Answer 8

you are sort of correct, and also wrong...unfortunatly many of the wind turbines build today have high energy costs to build them and maintain them...making them not that effective...however larger offshore windfarms will be far more effective and efficient. but however much we dislike them they are here to stay for the medium term, but chin up, nucular fusion is just around the corner, and is the way forward.(see link)

Answer 9

Whatever you think of the visual impact of them,

the turbines will work long after the gas and oil has finished,

it should be considered a good thing to reduce our dependancy on imports in the meantime,

it could be the start of a new industry for the UK before the Indians and Chinese corner the market.

Answer 10

well first, gasoline is a fossil fuel and its gonna run out eventually. that means that this is possibly a good investment b/c if u start putting stuff out like this now you wont have to spend as much money l8r when gasoline is gone and i wont put as big a dent in our already poor economy. and it depends really on where it is. if its in a place where theres a lot of wind then its actually good and sometimes it works so much that it sends energy back out into the grid which would save some ppl who r close by money. so technically, if u knew what u were talking about, this isnt really a waste of money.

Answer 11

A large wind farm was built not far from my last house, I thought they were really rather lovely to look at certainly no worse than the thousands of electricity pylons which cover the land.

I would not object to living in a house overlooking a wind farm and even if I did not like them visually they are essential and we need many more to reduce our reliance on oil which is at this moment everyday dramatically increasing in price.  

The world will start to run out of oil in the life time of many of us, one oil company puts it at 40 years some scientists put it much sooner.

The alternative is to build many more nuclear power stations which give us the risk of another chenobyl and the problems of what to do with even more waste which is dangerous for hundreds of years.

We environmentalists are not deranged just practical and informed.

Answer 12

The Green/Environmentalist movement is the most cunning marketing tool ever created! Make people feel guilty about what they buy and charge them extra for the privilidge...

Answer 13

Arthur, Arthur, Arthur.

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, I guess.  I'm not a fan of turbines, but I do remember heading out to Palm Springs years ago and seeing the turbines cranking it out for the first time.  They didn't strike me as being eyesores, they struck me as being rather ingeniously located.

My big concern is over their impact on wildlife, and this concern is being addressed, and wildlife impacts have been reduced as a result.

Hey, variety is the spice of life, right?  Another cliche comes to mind, too.  Don't put all of your eggs into one basket.  You're right, as is, the industry isn't doing a lot to decrease our reliance on oil.  But the technology is improving, costs are coming down, and this is going to become a more pronounced component in the energy regime, like it or not.