Monday, April 12, 2010

Pernicious

Tam loathes this advert. So do I. It's all over the TellyVisionBox. The reasoning is specious, the politics obnoxious:

Okay, class, what he's telling us is, "Stop wogs by building wind turbines (using money new-taxed from you and me)." It won't work that way an' if he was serious about it, he'd be pointing to maps of Pelosiland and other oil-rich portions of U.S. waters & lands and chanting "Drill baby drill!"

But if hes serious about stoppin' malefactors with turbines, he's missin' a step: ya just toss 'em into the turbines! Easy as pie:

Bad guy, meet turbine. Buh-bye! Buh-bye!

11 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hmm. Ok, yes, a lot of oil money goes to some really bad people.

However if wind energy was a fix, the US would be as covered in wind turbines as is Denmark etc.

Therefore wind isn't economical yet.

So, what to replace it with? Get fusion working sooner rather than later: Usefully clean electricity. Then (and I opine onlt then) are electric cars a solution rather than a band-aid.

Electric cars don't have the energy density to replace internal-combustion engines, but given electricity enough to make hydrogen a viable fuel the dependance on oil could be cut down meaningfully.

Until then, there is oil, and thats a fact. Getting out of three-ton SUVs to move around two kids would be another way, but I reckon you're see equine aerobatics before that happens.

Jim

Frank W. James said...

Ugh, I think the PLAN IS TO COVER the USA with windmills, even more so than Denmark.

Already they are starting to march across the width of Indiana from Benton county going east. On my trip to Oklahoma I heard about the plans for them down there as well.

They will out populate prairie grass eventually.

All The Best,
Frank W. James

phlegmfatale said...

I saw a statistic that only one out of a hundred US households doesn't have a TV these days. Unless you count my 1971 Orbitel Panasonic which I keep around because it's oober-cute, I don't have one. Thank goodness I can watch Firefly on my nice big computer monitor.

That advert was infuriating. The whole T Boone Pickens power-grab attempt with the wind thingies caused a big splash here, and a lot of folks were riled up about it. I still am. The shell game needs to stop, so we can get on with the proper drilling. Best for the wilderness that the drilling be done deliberately and carefully in a time of non-crisis.

Ken said...

Bet it gets to be kinda hard on the turbine after a while, though.

Geodkyt said...

Build fission plants for ecological reasons. Dozens of them.

Nukes for Gaia!

(Seriously, study the REAL consequences of various forms of energy production. . . nukes fare better than hydropower. . . )

NotClauswitz said...

A lot of oil money goes to George Soros. When is somebody going to finally introduce him to the turbine, or maybe the Kraken?

DataViking said...

When pushing someone through a turbine just make sure you've disposed of them properly as it is possible to make that journey and survive it ! This makes that point far better than I ever could. (Just a little something from my Navy training days.)

WV: hydrom - plural of Hydrox :-)

Roberta X said...

Mmmmm, Hydrox....

I think that video may just point out the inefficiency of the turbine as a weapon of war.

Also? I an *never* walking that close to a jet engine unless I am inside a jetway or an airplane.

Roberta X said...

Geodykt: I know fly ash is a bigger problem than fission-plant waste. And I live in a coal-powered city.

Geodkyt said...

Yes, for all the whining and moaning, spent fuel rods just aren't NEARLY as much a problem as people think.

Sure you want to stick them someplace where Ali bin Goatsucker (or Jethro "Adolph" Skinhead) can easily get ahold of them. But this rending of clothes about "4 BILLY-YUN YEARS!!!" overlooks the fact that the really dangerous stuff has -- BY DEFINITION -- much shorter half lives. Suck the really hot crap out, and you get DU -- which is (while mildlyradioactive itself) actually USED as radiation shielding.

Total volume of waste ain't that much, in comparison to other methods by joules produced.

Chunk that DU someplace it can be secured for a 100 years or so (like down in a big assed mountain in a technonically inactive desert region), then seal it so it can't be gotten to by lice picking savages in 10,000 more (like pouring a crapton of rebar and concrete in the hole), and the very nature of the recovery peration will ensure whoever DOES dig it up in the Year of Our Lord 12010 will have the tech level to be well aware that radioactive crap is found in the ground, and to monitor for it.

If you're a reactionary right-winger. . . go nukes, starve the wogs!

If you're a libertarian. . . go nukes, we'll be less reliant on scary foreign adventures.

If you're a pants-wetting Gaia worshipper. . . go nukes, Save the Planet!

See? No losers, here. {chuckle}

Buffboy said...

A story: before they built big dams in the Dakotas, rain patterns were much different. Side effect of those lakes was a persistent downdraft that milks the moisture/energy out of thunderstorms. Unintended consequences, that had some good, some bad effects on weather in the states where they were constructed.

Windmills or solar panels make their energy by taking heat from the atmosphere. TANSTAAFL. I often wonder what the consequences of taking gigawatt's of heat from huge tracks of atmosphere/land has in store for us. Bet I can guess.