Down Sides of Green Energy

[Techno-Druid]

Should just mandate covering new building roofs in cities with solar panels instead of wasting that roofspace.

Solar panels or rooftop gardens to reduce flooding/Co2 emissions and producing oxygen.

Bare rooftops in general are a problem imo.

[Elegiac]

Solar panels or rooftop gardens to reduce flooding/Co2 emissions and producing oxygen.

Bare rooftops in general are a problem imo.

As are lawns. And golf courses.

And home owner associations that prohibit solar panels on streetward roofs.

[Netherblood]

Tell that to the common oilfield worker that has a wife and 3 kids to support. I am sure he and all his buddies will be so excited that green energy takes over oil and shrinks the total job pool.

Well the whole point of technological progress is that eventually majority of population will not have to work since robots will replace them and those people will live off monthly government allowance. However people are often terrified of this notion so there is huge resistance towards anything that reduces amount of jobs currently. So instead of thinking about future and setting up social systems to deal with inevitable replacement of workers we argue about green energy and how its possibly will reduce amount of jobs available.

[Allybeboba]

Millions of birds are killed by wind turbines every year. Although, they do contribute to a small percentage of bird deaths.

Fun fact: Over half of annual bird deaths are due to collisions with windows and buildings.

[Elegiac]

Millions of birds are killed by wind turbines every year. Although, they do contribute to a small percentage of bird deaths.

Fun fact: Over half of annual bird deaths are due to collisions with windows and buildings.

What was the point in posting this garbage.

[Knolan]

Totally not a problem. In modern, high voltage grids it can be transported hundreds, if not thousands of kilometers with a minimal loss, which is why some US states purchase Canadian energy when prices are low (and vice versa) and french A-power is occasinally used in Germany or Spain without any problems. It is competitive to ship energy large distances, granted the grid is built. In the developed world, this won't really be an issue.

The time of direct current is far behind us.. AC is here to stay. We can transport those electrons (almost) all we want..

Hmm, I will take a look into that, I do know that in my country we have an estimated loss of 9% of our production because of the transmission lines.

According to wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electr...ssion#Losses):

"As of 1980, the longest cost-effective distance for direct-current transmission was determined to be 7,000 kilometres (4,300 miles). For alternating current it was 4,000 kilometres (2,500 miles), though all transmission lines in use today are substantially shorter than this.[18]"

[Allybeboba]

Wave power has definite upsides if people are needing a desalination plant. However, the construction could harm the environment.

[Machismo]

Tell that to the common oilfield worker that has a wife and 3 kids to support. I am sure he and all his buddies will be so excited that green energy takes over oil and shrinks the total job pool.

I will. I'll also tell that to the guy making radios, tubes for televisions, and steam engines for trains. I'll tell everyone who is less efficient, or produces an inferior product.

[Masark]

"As of 1980, the longest cost-effective distance for direct-current transmission was determined to be 7,000 kilometres (4,300 miles). For alternating current it was 4,000 kilometres (2,500 miles), though all transmission lines in use today are substantially shorter than this.[18]"

Translation : It was cost-effective using 1980s technology to transfer from the middle of the country to either coast using AC or from coast to coast using DC.

[Elegiac]

Translation : It was cost-effective using 1980s technology to transfer from the middle of the country to either coast using AC or from coast to coast using DC.

I laughed.

[Cosmic Janitor]

if trump builds that wall and puts solar panels along it, like some of the plans, that'd be a shitload of solar energy that's not taking up very much usable land.

can also build the solar shit in uninhabitable places, like death valley and stuff.

Tons of energy at a place where no soul actually lives. On a wall in a terrible angle to minimize efficiency. Not to mention that people will just steal them .. lol

[derpkitteh]

Tons of energy at a place where no soul actually lives. On a wall in a terrible angle to minimize efficiency. Not to mention that people will just steal them .. lol

i'm mostly joking about that. i mean, the energy can be transported to where it's needed though if they did do that.

i don't want a wall because of the effects on the ecosystem it'll have. don't really care about the people trying to come here illegally.

[Aquinan]

The size isnt that much, its less space than you use for coal mining.

[Noradin]

You are wrong on both accounts.

Green energy does take up less lands and creates more jobs than conventional energy sources.
This has be posted on this forum multiple times.

- - - Updated - - -

That is actually a pretty fair reason if you are an American. It messes with your status quo as top nation on earth. Realizing human beings are a greedy power seeking lot, Americans and other top OPEC countries may not take kindly to phasing out of oil.

Sure, but they won't ahve a choice because oil is not limitless, and rather than burn it we should keep it for all the other uses we need it for.
Like medicine.

[Findlyn]

Biggest downside to green energy is that energy rich countries like the US, Russia and Saudi Arabia won't make as much money in the future.

The US being the largest producer of oil atm.

and one of the largest consumers, no?

[Charge me Doctor]

There are a lot of downsides to "green energy", especially considering constant growth in production and humanity needing more and more energy, eventually it will have the same effect on environment as coal plants.

We shouldn't aim to replace everything with "green energy", we should still be using fossil fuel for regions that can't support said "green energy" and when it's more effective to use fossil fuels than "green energy", we need good means to store energy first, then we can talk about going full-scale "green"

When we will start building solar panels, wind turbines and hyrdoplants on a scale to completely replace all fossil energy we will end up in the same environmental crisis

[Cæli]

Or you can stop with personal attacks and actually address the potential problems. I am very sorry to you that people actually need jobs and money to survive in the real world.

the problem is not losing jobs, it's the distribution of wealth, progress must not be slowed
you have to work only because the level of progress is too low. if you lived in a world with almost infinite ressources, thing that progress can allow, you would not need to work unless forced to contribute in order to keep progressing even further

[Charge me Doctor]

the problem is not losing jobs, it's the distribution of wealth, progress must not be slowed
you have to work only because the level of progress is too low. if you lived in a world with almost infinite ressources, thing that progress can allow, you would not need to work unless forced to contribute in order to keep progressing even further

Well we currently move towards "mass production" and not towards "progress" as humanity, which is a problem, because we leech more resources to do more of the same - not to make something new. This leads to extreme pollution (garbage) and extreme power consumption (cars, electricity)

[Cosmic Janitor]

i'm mostly joking about that. i mean, the energy can be transported to where it's needed though if they did do that.

i don't want a wall because of the effects on the ecosystem it'll have. don't really care about the people trying to come here illegally.

The issue is more that generating energy is way more efficient if you do it in one place and only transform it once to feed it into the long distance grid. If you have thousands of individual panels along a wall you'd have many smal transformation points. That's less efficient and costs alot more because you need alot of transformers.

I wouldn't worry too much about the eco system, the thing would be a glorified fence in the end with more holes than swiss cheese.

[Cæli]

Well we currently move towards "mass production" and not towards "progress" as humanity, which is a problem, because we leech more resources to do more of the same - not to make something new. This leads to extreme pollution (garbage) and extreme power consumption (cars, electricity)

are we ? I'm not seeing any numbers, but it looks like to me that green energy and nature gets more and more respect. I expect the situation to improve as the newer generation replace the old under educated generation