The Viridian Design movement

[Jason McCullough]

Goddamn, why didn't anyone tell me Bruce Sterling invented this shit? It's like politics 2.0. Take this, for example, where Sterling basically taunts us Texans to go all non-carbon with a sucker punch to their pride:

http://www.viridiandesign.org/notes/176-200/00196_Fredericksburg_speech.html

Pretty cool stuff. Comments?

www.viridiandesign.org

[Houngan]

Goddamn, why didn't anyone tell me Bruce Sterling invented this shit? It's like politics 2.0. Take this, for example, where Sterling basically taunts us Texans to go all non-carbon with a sucker punch to their pride:

http://www.viridiandesign.org/notes/176-200/00196_Fredericksburg_speech.html

Pretty cool stuff. Comments?

www.viridiandesign.org

Comment? It's actually made me like Texans again, at least ones from Austin. Sterling hit all the right notes in that talk, and should be paid government money (maybe some of that cash they are using to buy journalists) to tour America and repeat it, word for word.

H.

[antlers]

Why destroy the environment for wind power? Nuclear is the way to go.

[Jason McCullough]

Wind destroys the environment?

[extarbags]

Sure, over time. Just like flowing water.

[Houngan]

He's got a small point, wind power has a big footprint. However, in the US one thing we have is space, especially flat space. Also, wind power can easily be installed in land that is already in use, such as cornfields and other croplands.

For my money, put windmills in the crops, and bury a flywheel to store energy when the wind is too high. Who cares if a flywheel comes apart in the middle of a cornfield?

H.

[Ryan A]

Who cares if a flywheel comes apart in the middle of a cornfield?


Shoeless Joe and James Earl Jones might complain.

[shift6]

I read somewhere (no links or sources) that for the energy required to build a windmill, it has to run like 1,000 years to generate that much electricity or something. So we burn tons of fossil fuels, etc. to build them because "they make clean energy".

[antlers]

Look at the huge offshore windfield they're trying to put into Nantucket Sound and tell me wind doesn't destroy the environment. It kills migratory birds and bats and destroys vast tracts of landscape for meager amounts of power.

[Tyrion Lannister]

I read somewhere (no links or sources) that for the energy required to build a windmill, it has to run like 1,000 years to generate that much electricity or something. So we burn tons of fossil fuels, etc. to build them because "they make clean energy".

:roll:

[Jason McCullough]

Look at the huge offshore windfield they're trying to put into Nantucket Sound and tell me wind doesn't destroy the environment. It kills migratory birds and bats and destroys vast tracts of landscape for meager amounts of power.

....because they're sticking it in the middle of Nantucket Sound. There's other placement options, you know.

And even if it was the only placement option, the current methods destroy a lot more "environment," just in much less obvious ways.

[shift6]

I read somewhere (no links or sources) that for the energy required to build a windmill, it has to run like 1,000 years to generate that much electricity or something. So we burn tons of fossil fuels, etc. to build them because "they make clean energy".
:roll:
Another valuable, poignant contribution to the forum. :roll: is right.

Anyways, since I'm not doing much here on a Saturday work shift, I tried to find what I was originally talking about. Based on http://www.awea.org/faq/bal.html it turns out that I was thinking of the energy balance for old solar cells, not wind turbines. Got my clean energy sources mixed up. Wind turbines appear to have a total cost in fossil fuels, etc. which is "paid back" (in terms of clean energy produced to make up for the dirty energy used to build) in about two years at the worst case scenario, i.e. fairly slow average windspeed of 4 m/s.

[Jason McCullough]

Hopefully piezoelectric shoes will save us: http://www.viridiandesign.org/notes/151-175/00162_piezo_shoes.html