
Wind turbines are neither clean nor green and they provide zero global energy - georgecmu
https://www.spectator.co.uk/2017/05/wind-turbines-are-neither-clean-nor-green-and-they-provide-zero-global-energy/#
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markvdb
TLDR: Editorialist in UK conservative political magazine[0] tilting at
windmills as sources of clean energy. His hobby, apparently, or his job[1].

It's too easy to shoot holes in his "facts". I won't even try. He's
deliberately being intelectually dishonest, coating his opinion in statistics
carefully taken out of context.

Now for an interesting look at wind power technology, have a look at a list of
the ten most powerful wind turbines[2].

[0]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Spectator](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Spectator)
[1] [https://www.spectator.co.uk/author/matt-
ridley/](https://www.spectator.co.uk/author/matt-ridley/) [2]
[http://www.windpowermonthly.com/10-biggest-
turbines](http://www.windpowermonthly.com/10-biggest-turbines)

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nindalf
Here's his logic, so you don't have to subject yourself to that "article" ->
solar and wind contribute very little to global energy at the moment. Energy
demand is growing at 2% per year. Therefore, wind and solar won't contribute a
significant chunk of energy ever. Therefore, let's invest in gas.

Dumpster tier reporting. On a side note, does HN blacklist any sites for being
chronically bad?

~~~
JoeAltmaier
There was an estimate of the cost of keeping up with demand using wind - and
the back-of-the-envelope numbers were discouraging. 2TW per year, and wind
power takes a huge investment in the towers to produce relatively tiny amounts
of watts.

~~~
wsc981
They might also kill lots of birds, see: [http://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-
news/how-many-birds-do-w...](http://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/how-
many-birds-do-wind-turbines-really-kill-180948154/)

And they look ugly as well. Personally I hope we can get rid of wind turbines
as soon as possible.

~~~
circlefavshape
FYI they kill a lot of bats too. Many of them are turned off at certain times
so as to kill fewer (source - wife is a bat-ologist)

~~~
sghi
That is true, they do, but in the UK at least all new ones/sites do need full
ecological impact assessments (there are various levels of assessment needed
depending on habitat suitability) and hopefully there will be a lessening on
the problem long-term - off-shore is the way to go, of course!

(I do/help with these assessments)

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et2o
We already generate ~6% of all our power in the US by wind power, which is
incredible considering that modern wind turbines installation really only hit
its stride in 2010 or so. Of course much of the world is behind the US–we lead
the world in a lot of things. This is a silly and unthoughtful hit piece.
Advocating for natural gas as a cleaner source than wind power is borderline
idiotic. Dumpster bin article.

~~~
JoeAltmaier
Isn't that 'power capacity'? And since wind turbines don't often run at
capacity, its a greatly inflated view of the situation.

~~~
et2o
No, according to Wikipedia that was actual generated power / all power used.

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wind_power_in_the_United_Sta...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wind_power_in_the_United_States)

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Cerium
His claim that wind turbines are useless because they take the effort of 150
tons of coal to produce the steel is interesting. He didn't follow it up with
the obvious calculation of how long a wind turbine take a to get that energy
back. I did a quick calculation, and it looks like you can recover that input
coal energy in only a few months of operation.

~~~
ocschwar
I wonder how much coal it takes to produce a steel steam turbine...

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BrandoElFollito
I read the article and read the comments. The article had numbers, the
comments have mostly invectives.

If he is wrong, could someone who is knowledgeable take his numbers and state
why they are wrong?

This is a honest question. I would like to have energy, ideally clean energy,
uber ideally lots of clean energy. He is telling that wind and photovoltaic
are not enough, by large, to replace our energy use of today. Why is he wrong?
If we wanted to completely switch to green energy, would this be technically
possible? (let's put the political agendas aside, I want to take this
opportunity to actually make up my mind)

~~~
mnm1
I don't know, but the article's numbers are pretty convincing and not a single
comment here addresses them. I'd say there is likely some truth somewhere in
the article that the commenters here don't want to acknowledge. I completely
agree with his conclusion about nuclear energy being the obvious way forward
in the future.

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jahnu
Before you waste your precious time one should consider that the author has
quite the history of writing contrarian articles related to climate change and
renewable energy that are poorly researched and/or flat out wrong. The author
also has no real experience in the field.

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crdoconnor
The author (Matt Ridley) has an interesting story actually. He because
chairman of Northern Rock, following in daddy's footsteps and oversaw it as it
went _spectacularly_ bust - the first run on a UK bank in 150 years.

Now he appears to be cheerleading for another industry (fracking/oil) that is
piled high with debt:

[http://www.econmatters.com/2014/07/oil-companys-fracking-
deb...](http://www.econmatters.com/2014/07/oil-companys-fracking-debt-
treadmill.html)

You could probably run a profitable hedge fund that simply bet against his
predictions.

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gcb0
"As for resource consumption and environmental impacts, the direct effects of
wind turbines — killing birds and bats, sinking concrete foundations deep into
wild lands — is bad enough. But out of sight and out of mind is the dirty
pollution generated in Inner Mongolia by the mining of rare-earth metals for
the magnets in the turbines. This generates toxic and radioactive waste on an
epic scale, which is why the phrase ‘clean energy’ is such a sick joke and
ministers should be ashamed every time it passes their lips."

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explorigin
Wow, this got buried fast.

But it is worth considering. Hrm, Seems like Holland is known for its
windmills.

Vast lands in the midwest that are unsuitable for farming are being turned
into wind-farms. This is controversial because it is subsidized so it's
difficult to do a cost-benefit analysis.

Finally, if climate-change is an issue, we should also consider that wind take
energy out of the atmosphere whereas the proposed alternatives put waste
energy into the atmosphere.

~~~
DanBC
It might be worth considering if it wasn't written by someone who regularly
writes inaccurate misleading articles about green energy.

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Theory5
"Wind energy takes a lot of coal to setup, so we shouldn't even try" is this
author's entire statement. He suggests we focus back on fossil fuels, i.e.
natural gas and coal, which he admits he has a commercial interest in.

While I cannot discount his assertion of how much power it takes to build wind
turbines, I can point out that using CURRENT fossil fuel power generation to
bootstrap our renewables, even wind energy, is a good thing. We're not
attempting to go from 0 - 60 by building an entirely separate power grid from
scratch. We, as a species, are attempting to move from a harmful and
eventually scarce set of fuels to clean energy. Not suddenly. Not quickly. And
eventually, slow moving as it is, we will find ways to maximize renewable
output. Look at how long it took to squeeze so much power from coal and oil.
It didn't take 5 years, it took decades.

To decry renewables like wind because we RIGHT NOW need current coal and oil
power to produce it, is worth mentioning but NOT a reason to discount such!

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dsfyu404ed
I'm getting a vibe that many commenters skipped the first sentence of the
final paragraph because they were too preoccupied being angry that someone
dare insult the economic efficiency of green energy sources.

the author states:

>And let’s put some of that burgeoning wealth in nuclear, fission and fusion,
so that it can take over from gas in the second half of this century.

He's advocating for nuclear power. From a pure numbers perspective it makes a
lot of sense.

~~~
crdoconnor
The UK has just building a nuclear plant that has a guaranteed strike price
that is higher than what wind/solar gets. It also gets it for many years -
it's a bad deal now and as the price of solar and wind comes down it will
become _even worse_. The total subsidies for this plant are expected to be
about 37 billion in total.

In return for paying _more_ for Hinckley point the UK cedes sovereignty over
its power generation to the Chinese and, of course, in case of disaster
taxpayers are on the hook for almost all of the clean up costs.

What's not to like?

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ocschwar
Pathetic.

~~~
dsfyu404ed
It's not like he crunched the numbers wrong.

Nuclear has massive bang for your buck (both figuratively and literally) but
we ignore it in the first world because we cater to peoples' mostly irrational
fear of it and there is no money to do it right in the third world.

~~~
ocschwar
No, he just crunched them utterly disingenuosly.

Infrastructure evolves very slowly, and he's using a true figure (wind is a
small part of the grid) as an argument for keeping it a small part of the
grid.

