Unintended consequences

Industrialists are seizing the opportunity created by the successful effort of many environmentalists to scare everyone shitless about global warming, as seen in these recent stories, courtesy of the Climate Crisis Coalition (click the title of this post).

Schwarzenegger Argues that Global Warming Justifies Two Big Dam Projects. By Bettina Boxall, The Los Angeles Times, January 12, 2007. In proposing two big, expensive dam projects this week, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger made a novel argument to justify the old-fashioned public works projects. Advocating $4 billion in bonds to build reservoirs in Northern and Central California, the administration emphasized not population growth or the specter of future drought, but global warming. 

Construction Begins on Giant Quebec Hydro Plant. CBC News, January 11, 2007. "Construction has begun on a controversial $5-billion hydroelectric project, the Quebec government announced Thursday, calling it the biggest and most important of its kind in a decade. ... To construct the two power stations, Hydro Quebec will build four dams and 72 dikes, and will flood 188 square kilometres of forest land along the river. Quebec Premier Jean Charest announced the start of the project at a press conference at Hydro Quebec's headquarters on Thursday, a last-minute venue chosen after the government cancelled a northern ceremony in Waskaganish, where it was rumoured that Cree opponents to the project were going to protest… Charest lauded hydroelectricity as a cornerstone of Quebec's heritage that has 'become a tool of economic development for Quebecers,' including the Cree. ... Quebec Environment Minister Claude Béchard said the project will create cleaner, more environmentally friendly energy than other power sources. The power stations are 'long-term solutions to fight greenhouse gas emissions' that will put Quebec at the forefront of the fight against climate change, he said ...

Tighter CO₂ Caps Push Finland to Nuclear. By Sami Torma, Reuters, January 11, 2007. Finland can meet EU limits on carbon dioxide emissions by 2010 through more use of renewable energy and biofuels but further tightening of the limits would push it to build more nuclear plants, its energy minister said. ...

Give Conservation Another Chance

By John H. Herbert, Baltimore Sun, Jan. 1, 2007:

Since 1997, utility demand-side investments such as efficient lighting programs, heat recovery systems and advanced electric motor drives have yielded returns for consumers that far exceed the cost. Since 1997, every 3 cents worth of conservation investment by utilities has reduced demand by 1 kilowatt-hour. Electricity costs about 9 cents per kilowatt-hour. Thus, for every 3 cents worth of conservation investments, consumers avoid paying 9 cents and thus obtain a 6-cent gain. ...

Why is there no federal support? Because Washington understands the impact of programs that involve tax credits, subsidies and government expenditures that increase energy supplies rather than reducing demand. Support for these programs provides paybacks for specific industries. ...

In the 1970s, prices were high and energy security was a pressing issue as Middle East oil supplies were at times curtailed. The national government responded by promoting energy conservation on several fronts such as tax credits for domestic conservation investments, energy-use labeling of appliances and automobiles, and frank talk about the value of saving energy for economic and security reasons. ...

By 1985, U.S. imports from OPEC fell to 1.8 million barrels per day from a peak level of 6.2 million in 1977, a decline of 70 percent. ...

According to the Department of Energy's Annual Energy Review, from 1978 to 1982, energy consumption per household declined by 26 percent, and in the major consuming region in the nation, the Midwest, it declined by 32 percent.

From 1973 to 1982, industrial consumption of natural gas declined by 32 percent. The industrial sector is the major user of this most environmentally benign hydrocarbon. During the same period, fuel consumption per vehicle declined by 19 percent. ...

[W]ill we stay entrenched in the known comforts of energy dependency and legislation written by lobbyists supportive of particular groups? The smart money may be on the latter, but there will be more money and security for everybody if we give conservation another whirl.

wind power, wind energy, wind farms, environment, environmentalism

Rosenbloom's law of wind turbine output

Eric Rosenbloom, currently the president of National Wind Watch, has observed from cumulative output vs. time graphs (see the samples from Germany, Ireland, and Denmark) the following:

Whatever the capacity factor, or average output over a period of time, any turbine or aggregate of turbines generates at or above its average rate only 40% of the time.

A recent illustration of this law is the output from the 240-MW Maple Ridge wind energy facility in Lewis County, N.Y., as compiled by Richard Bolton:


For this period from July through September 2006, the output represented 25% of capacity, or an average rate of 80 MW. As the graph shows, the facility produced at a rate of 90 MW or more only about 520 out of the total 1,883 hours of data collection, i.e., about 28% of the time. Adding the number of hours that it generated at 80-90 MW brings the time figure close to a third.

wind power, wind energy, wind farms, wind turbines

Turbine noise driving Brit mad

"Wiggyjane" has described her distress over the noise of the 8-turbine (16-MW) Deeping St Nicholas wind energy facility on the U.K. site "Yes2Wind." Hers is not a so-called "aesthetic" complaint, as she was and still is supportive of wind energy and finds the turbines a fine addition to the landscape.

In response to a question about how far turbines should be from a residence, she writes:

Visually no problem -- they are quite beautiful at times to watch, menacing at others (with dark clouds behind and a storm approaching) but in the main soothing and rhythmic.

Noise -- well that's a different story altogether and will depend on the grid layout, the ground/soil type, your dwelling's position with regard to the predominant wind, the topography, geography and geology ... plus wind shear effects, particularly where there are stable air conditions ...

But we are 903 m (2,963 ft) away from the end of a row of five -- and that isn't far enough -- and we can go another 500 m (1,640 ft) and still have the same issues ... so at least a mile based purely on our experience. [Emphasis added.]

In another discussion, about Deeping St Nicholas, she writes:

I too live in Deeping St Nicholas -- but at the other end ... the northern end of the wind farm, and sadly we do suffer from both aerodynamic modulation and vibration from the low frequency noise. Environmental Health officials have already taken recordings that demonstrate a 20 dB differential between no wind turbine noise and turbine noise when they are running. [20 dB difference is experienced as a quadrupling of the noise level. --ED.]

There is no doubt anymore that some areas in some places near some windfarms DO cause problems. Not enough is really known about why this is the case, but we suspect that it's a combination of geography, topography, air conditions and ground density combined with the actual planting pattern of the turbines. In our case when all five nacelles are pointing at us normal life is impossible as they pick up resonance from each other and create an harmonic that resonates around and within the house, with levels that exceed ETSU [Energy Technology Support Unit of the U.K. Department of Trade and Industry] recommendations. ...

We have always supported the concept -- and indeed the visual look of wind turbines -- and never expected to have our lives totally disrupted and to be advised that it is not worth us building our new extension as our house would currently be unmarketable. ...

To the correspondent that started the thread -- at the southern end of the farm -- in Deeping St Nicholas itself you should have no problem ... and think of us when you sit in your garden enjoying the peace and quiet and go to bed to sleep at night, and stay asleep uninterrupted.

And more on sleep deprivation:

The hum/drone/whine is constant whether the turbines are running or not. [Emphasis added.] 24/7 it does vary a bit in intensity and volume but never goes away. Flicker isn't a real problem. The whoosh and thump noises are only really bad when the wind is in a specific direction (from SSE to SSW) then they top 40 dB(A), which when our ambient noise level is 20-25 dB(A) (pin drop quiet) means that they are very noticeable.

The wind direction also means that when we get all 5 nacelles "firing" at us, we get a harmonic and a quarter octave (???) in the farmyard that can exceed 60 dB(A).

One problem with noise regulations is that they use averages, and any limit is in fact only one that cannot be exceeded typically more than 10% of the time. So even where night-time limits are lower, which is usual, sleep can be still be legally disrupted. As Wiggyjane writes:

The problem is that raw noise measurements do not necessarily equate to ETSU regulations as they are not measured in LQ10's and LQ90's ... but what I can tell you is that our mean ambient is 22-25 dB(A) and last night ... we hit over 60 Db(A) but that was at the peak and would not be valid for ETSU. It made sleep well nigh impossible though -- and was the worst we have had for some months.

See "Wind Turbine Acoustic Noise," by Anthony Rogers et al., for a primer on sound measurement and regulation.

wind power, wind energy, wind farms, wind turbines

Wind industry complains it isn't favored by E.U.

The European Union (E.U.) has announced its ambitious energy plan, which includes a goal of 21% of electricity generated from renewable sources.

The European Wind Energy Association (EWEA), however, is complaining that the goal does not specify which sources. It wouldn't make sense to do so, but that is clearly the worry for the wind industry, since without mandated support wind is a source that is not practical and therefore would not be widely used.

The E.U. supports all renewable energy, but the EWEA wants special support for wind.

wind power, wind energy, environment, environmentalism

Noam Mohr on meat-eating and the environment

The global costs of a meat diet
The Green Times (Penn Environmental Group), Spring 1997

If you care about the environment, you had better be a vegetarian. Why? Because meat consumption is one of the primary causes of environmental devastation, including the misuse of natural resources, the polluting of water and air, and the destruction of rainforests. All this comes in addition to the immense cruelty to animals and the contribution to the world hunger problem caused by the modern meat industry. In short, a carnivorous environmentalist is a hypocrite. Strong words? take a look at meat industry and judge for yourself.

Modern meat production is both wasteful and destructive. Each pound of steak from feedlot-raised steers that you eat comes at the cost of 5 pounds of grain, 2,500 gallons of water, the energy equivalent of a gallon of gasoline, and about twenty-five pounds of eroded topsoil. Indeed, over a third of the North American continent is devoted to grazing, and over a half of this country's cropland is dedicated to growing feed for livestock. What is more, the livestock industry consumes over half of the water used in the US.

In every one of these ways, as discussed below, a vegetarian diet exerts less strain on our resources that does a carnivorous one. ...

Meat production around the globe not only wastes the water it uses, it also pollutes the water it does not use. ...

Perhaps the most devastating environmental impact of America's appetite for meat is deforestation. The primary reason for the destruction of rainforests in countries like Costa Rica, Colombia, Brazil, Malaysia, Thailand, and Indonesia, is to provide grazing land for cattle, virtually all of which goes not to the poor in these third world nations, but rather is exported to wealthy countries like the United States. ...

Meat production is not only damaging to the environment, but in more immediate ways to the global human population as well. Land that could be used to grow food to feed hungry people is instead used to grow food for the animals we eat.

How environmentalists are overlooking vegetarianism as the most effective tool against climate change in our lifetimes
The McDougall Newsletter, December 2006

Summary: Global warming poses one of the most serious threats to the global environment ever faced in human history. Yet by focusing entirely on carbon dioxide emissions, major environmental organizations have failed to account for published data showing that other gases are the main culprits behind the global warming we see today. As a result, they are neglecting what might be the most effective strategy for reducing global warming in our lifetimes: advocating a vegetarian diet. ...

By far the most important non-CO₂ greenhouse gas is methane, and the number one source of methane worldwide is animal agriculture ["Global Warming Potentials," National Emissions, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency].

Methane is responsible for nearly as much global warming as all other non-CO₂ greenhouse gases put together [Hansen, James E. and Makiko Sato, "Trends of measured climate forcing agents," Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, vol. 98, no. 26, 18 Dec. 2001, p. 14778-14783]. Methane is 23 times more powerful a greenhouse gas than CO₂ ["Global Warming Potentials"]. While atmospheric concentrations of CO₂ have risen by about 31% since pre-industrial times, methane concentrations have more than doubled ["Emissions of Greenhouse Gases in the United States 2002," Chapter 1, Energy Information Administration, U.S. Department of Energy, October 2003]. Whereas human sources of CO₂ amount to just 3% of natural emissions, human sources produce one and a half times as much methane as all natural sources ["Emissions of Greenhouse Gases in the United States 2002"]. In fact, the effect of our methane emissions may be compounded as methane-induced warming in turn stimulates microbial decay of organic matter in wetlands—the primary natural source of methane [Hansen, James E. et al., "Global warming in the twenty-first century: An alternative scenario," Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, vol. 97, no. 18, 29 Aug. 2000, p. 9876].

... [U]nlike carbon dioxide which can remain in the air for more than a century, methane cycles out of the atmosphere in just eight years, so that lower methane emissions quickly translate to cooling of the earth. ...

Moreover, the same factory farms responsible for these methane emissions also use up most of the country's water supply, and denude most of its wilderness for rangeland and growing feed. Creating rangeland to feed western nations' growing appetite for meat has been a major source of deforestation and desertification in third world countries. Factory farm waste lagoons are a leading source of water pollution in the U.S. Indeed, because of animal agriculture's high demand for fossil fuels, the average American diet is far more CO₂-polluting than a plant-based one [Pimentel, David and Marcia Pimentel, "Sustainability of Meat-Based and Plant-Based Diets and the Environment", American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, col. 78, no. 3, September 2003, p. 660S-663S; Tidwell, Mike, "Food and the Climate Crisis: What You Eat Affects the Sky," Sierra Club Redwood Chapter Newsletter, Dec./Jan. 2005].

Click here to see a graph showing the greenhouse effects of various diets.

tags: environment, environmentalism, ecoanarchism, animal rights, vegetarianism

UK coal use up 23% in past year

The U.K. Department of Trade and Industry has released its Energy Trends and Quarterly Energy Prices for the 3rd quarter of 2006:

* Energy consumption in the third quarter of 2006 was 1.9 per cent lower than in the third quarter of 2005

When examining seasonally adjusted and temperature corrected annualised rates:

* Total inland consumption on a primary fuel input basis was 220.0 million tonnes of oil equivalent in the third quarter of 2006, 0.4 per cent higher than the same quarter in 2005.

* Between the third quarters of 2005 and 2006 coal and other solid fuel consumption rose by 21.2 per cent.

* Oil consumption decreased by 1.8 per cent.

* Gas consumption fell by 5.2 per cent.

* Primary electricity consumption decreased by 7.1 per cent.

ELECTRICITY: QUARTER 3 2006

* Fuel used by generators in the third quarter of 2006 was, in total, 1.1 per cent lower than in Q3 2005.

* Coal use during the quarter was 22.9 per cent higher than a year earlier, while gas use was 11.6 per cent down and nuclear sources were down 8.1 per cent due to maintenance and outages in the third quarter of 2006. Hydro sources fell back 6.1 per cent on the level of the third quarter of 2005.

* Total electricity supplied by all generators in third quarter of 2006 was 0.5 per cent lower than a year earlier.

* Overall final consumption of electricity was unchanged from the level in the third quarter of 2005 at 77.4 TWh. Domestic use fell 0.5 per cent, industrial consumption rose by 0.2 per cent and consumption by other final users increased by 0.4 per cent.

                                2006Q3 TWh      Percentage change
                                                 on a year earlier
Electricity supplied from
  Coal                            26.77                +25.3
  Nuclear                         17.24                 -8.1
  Gas                             35.74                -11.0
to
  Industry                        28.18                 +0.2
  Domestic                        23.76                 -0.5
  Other final consumers           23.36                 +0.4

No sign of the "banner year for wind energy."

wind power, wind energy, environment, environmentalism