What would you (Slackers, Finbarr, Jasper, TomTom et al) rather see, if not shale gas? Just curious, because all I see is complaints against, without suggestions of anything better.Nuclear. Massive solar parks. Massive tidal barrages. Massive windfarms. Ratcliffe-on-Soar power station burning train-loads of coal imported from Russia. North Sea gas and oil. Hydro. Hydro battery schemes in the Lake District and Snowdonia.Or do you all have mini-hydro and geo-thermal schemes in your back gardens and solar PV on your rooftops and are going to hunker down through the blackout, waiting for cold fusion to arrive?
Google open cast coal mining. Or have a look at pics where the oil sands being mined in Canada at the moment.. luuurvely...
And Wind/Tidal isn't going to fill the gap, so what is going to fill the gap? Nuclear. Except that takes 15-20 years to build. So what are you going to use for the next 15-20 years? Now fracking comes along, of course it makes sense compared to the 'alternatives'.
Windfarms - they aren't on 'the horizon'. They're right in front of my nose everyday I look out to sea from Llandudno. The horizon is 22 miles away, the windfarms are right fucking there.. They piss me off a little bit. And they're covered in lights at night. And they're inefficient and constantly needing repair. In short they're bollocks and I'm convinced there's a French dude pissing himself laughing at our expenses for being such muppets to buy hook line and sinker the bullshit sold to us by energy companies, because we thought it would be all green and cast rainbows.
No I'm not - you're completely missing my point.
Windfarms - they aren't on 'the horizon'. They're right in front of my nose everyday I look out to sea from Llandudno. The horizon is 22 miles away, the windfarms are right fucking there.. They piss me off a little bit. And they're covered in lights at night. And they're inefficient and constantly needing repair. In short they're bollocks and I'm convinced there's a French dude pissing himself laughing at our expenses for being such muppets to buy hook line and sinker the bullshit sold to us by energy companies, because we thought it would be all green and cast rainbows.Quote from: tomtom on January 13, 2014, 10:38:24 pmGoogle open cast coal mining. Or have a look at pics where the oil sands being mined in Canada at the moment.. luuurvely... I actually worked on the oil sands in Northern Alberta for two and a half years, at 3 of the (then 6) refineries and have seen first-hand the damage, pollution and scale of the place and know how many mega tonnes of carbon Suncor and Horizon emit per year, which is why I know trying to save carbon with windmills is a drop in the ocean, literally.
I see. So wind farms are ok, despite the huge loss of efficiency of cabling ashore the electricity. And despite the fact that there is virtually no long-term evidence of how much maintenance and down-time the turbines require. It's already becoming apparent, 5-10 years down the line from the first offshore windfarms going online, that the quoted lifetime for blades and motors are way too optimistic - the rope access technicians who work for me have been repairing blades at a rate of every 2 years - not the figures given by manufacturers (7-10 years). I predict another Trawsfynydd on a large scale (nuclear cocncrete monolith in the middle of Snowdonia, useful life of 20 years, for those unaware). Offshore wind power is a massive ripoff and we're going to wake up in twenty years, look out to sea and wonder what the fuck we were thinking. IMO.Tidal barrages are ok? But the impact on estuary wildlife is quite severe from the studies I've seen/heard about? Kill the fish and birdlife, as long as we don't emit carbon Just saying.Nuclear is ok? - why is nuclear acceptable and fracking isn't? Because it isn't carbon-emitting? What about the inescapable fact that we have to have gas - for heating and to fuel gas-fired power stations - nothing is going to change that in the next 15-20 years so it makes a lot of sense to have our own supply of gas instead of importing it via pipelines and LNG shipments from Russia.
they make me feel happy every time I drive past them at the thought of energy being created from thin air!
Cameron said English local authorities would receive all the business rates collected from shale gas schemes - rather than the usual 50%.
Secondly if that's your stance re: other countries having massive carbon outputs (China 'winning' by miles) why would you be bothered at all about us using gas from Asia and Eastern Europe, we may as well get on with it as we are not the worst right?!
both open stream as in the Pentland Firth 86MW tidal array and barrages - yes, it'll fuck up some habitat, but it'll be the very same habitat that gets fucked by the rising sea levels
yes, it'll fuck up some habitat, but it'll be the very same habitat that gets fucked by the rising sea levels
There's a theory which describes how, in order to invent and put into mainstream use new, non-fossil-fuel, energy technologies, you need current sources of energy or else the whole system collapses in on itself. This is how I see shale gas, oil, coal, gas, wind, tidal, solar etc., as current sources of energy to hopefully enable us to get far enough down the road to better technologies.
Common in debates about energy/climate change are fallacies such as 'building scheme x will directly result in sea level rise' or 'not building scheme y will lead to sea-levels rising'.
