Lewis Wind Farm

[Nemesis]

As in the Highland Clearances?

http://www.guardian.co.uk/renewable/Story/0,,1824720,00.html

http://www.rspb.org.uk/news/details.asp?id=tcm:9-181808



http://www.hexham-courant.co.uk/news/viewarticle.aspx?id=590311

http://www.persona.uk.com/tynedale/index.htm

http://www.persona.uk.com/tynedale/written_objections.htm

 

[biffvernon]

A problem that remarkably few people seem to appreciate is that unless we build a lot of generating capacity quickly the lights will go out.

It will have to be done on a 'mind-blowingly vast scale'. The 'many smaller, local renewable energy generation' will have to happen as well. (20 x 800kw turbines are being built right now at the end of my lane) and we also need 'off-shore turbines' (54 x 2Mw turbines are being built off my bit of seaside) though off shore is about 50% more expensive than onshore.

We also need to build the Severn Barrage and develop wave, tidal stream, solar and geothermal technologies and first and foremost energy savings. Nuclear, we know is expensive and will be too late to fill the approaching gap and uranium supplies will not be available in the long term.

 

[Moo]

if everyone lived as they do, we might not have a problem.

I know very little about the island, and even less about the people who live there, hence my question :

How do they cook, light, and heat their homes?

 

[biffvernon]

I've been there. They seem quite normal and do the same things as the rest of us but use umbrellas less even though, in my experience, it rains every day. It's usually too windy for umbrellas.

 

[piper]

It will have to be done on a 'mind-blowingly vast scale'. The 'many smaller, local renewable energy generation' will have to happen as well. (20 x 800kw turbines are being built right now at the end of my lane) and we also need 'off-shore turbines' (54 x 2Mw turbines are being built off my bit of seaside) though off shore is about 50% more expensive than onshore.

We also need to build the Severn Barrage and develop wave, tidal stream, solar and geothermal technologies and first and foremost energy savings. Nuclear, we know is expensive and will be too late to fill the approaching gap and uranium supplies will not be available in the long term.

http://www.mwtlewis.org.uk/

Yes, I agree it's difficult, and I don't pretend to know all the answers, but whatever the emergency I don't think all wind turbine schemes should be greeted with equal un-questioning enthusiasm. I live close to Morecambe Bay, love the views and the countyside around its shore, but I still think the tidal barrage across it should go ahead. Apart from the power generation, it would greatly benefit Barrow and West Cumbria - probably make the area less dependent on Sellafield and building Trident submarines for one thing. But should all the Lake District valleys be flooded for hydro-generation? I'm not quite so sure about that, and I even question whether you would be, Biff - yet the Lewis scheme would almost be comparable if you consider the proportional impact on its local environment. OK perhaps I exaggerate - the Lewis scheme would not involve the wholesale re-location of the population.
I agree I am probably just sentimental about Lewis; I love the place, the people, the language, the music, the culture - and yes, that even includes the "Sabbath observance" with its totally silent and peaceful Sundays. Would I like to live there? No, probably not, especially in the winter - which probably explains the alcoholism and other darker aspects of "the culture". And no, I don't want them to stay in romantic poverty and live in turf-thatched hovels - they are normal modern people who need economic development like the rest of us.
Moo asked how they cook, light and heat their homes. They live in normal homes just like us, Moo, and use electricity (which I guess was the point of your rhetorical question), oil and LPG. They also burn peat, and the mobile-phone signal and broad-band internet access is a lot better than in many mainland places, and no, Biff, it doesn't rain every day so quite a lot of people are now getting solar panels, and yes it is very windy, so you also see a fair number of SMALL wind turbines (but nothing like enough yet) In Na Gearrannan (Garenin) restored blackhouse village on the west coast, heat in the holiday cottages and the Gatliffe Trust hostel where we prefer to stay http://www.gatliff.co.uk/gareninabout.php is provided by a deep borehole geothermal system. Of course, some people there also tend to use their cars more, because for example quite a lot of those who live on the West coast commute to work in Stornoway.
When we were last there in August, the opinion seemed to be that the RSPB and other powerful Nature Conservation forces might succeed in getting the wind turbines moved away from the empty moorland of the island's interior, only to have them relocated much closer to the populated west coast, where the development would be totally disruptive of people's lives. Never mind the local people, as long as the birds are protected. Typical of the way, in all the Scottish islands, outside conservationists are seen to ride rough-shod over the locals, whose traditional methods of agriculture and land management are often better for wildlife conservation anyway. For a polemic on that and many other issues, as well as a sailing travelogue, read "Isles of the West" and "Isles of the North" by Ian Mitchell.

 

[Nemesis]

http://news.scotsman.com/latestnews/-March-of-the-wind.3714087.jp

 

[biffvernon]

That's an interesting article. This bit:

At the moment, Scotland produces 2.5 gigawatts (GW) of electricity through renewables. That must rise to 6 GW within the next 12 years. The Lewis wind farm has the capacity to produce 0.651 GW, 11 per cent of the country's total renewables requirement.

points at the scale of the problem.

Burning coal and gas do sooooo much more damage to our environment (and particularly to coal miners) and one day there won't be any. If we want to use electricity we are just going to have to accept the consequences. We've got used to the ideas that it is other people who dig coal and you can't see CO2 so maybe it doesn't do anything. We now need to get used to reality.

 

[Nemesis]

Well -

These towers will be 487 feet high, and the proposal was for 187 of them spread out over an area the size of greater London. They will be a blight on the landscape, and will not even be able to be utilised for a high percentage of the time because the winds will be too strong for them to operate.

Some of the commentators are quite good too!

 

[Moo]

They live in normal homes just like us, Moo, and use electricity (which I guess was the point of your rhetorical question), oil and LPG. They also burn peat, and the mobile-phone signal

Of course I wasn't implying that they lived in primitive hovels, but was just wondering what fuel(s) they use, and how it reaches them. Presumably the oil and LPG is brought in by boat, but what about the electricity? Would a smaller wind-farm be able to make them self-sufficient?

 

[piper]

Would a smaller wind-farm be able to make them self-sufficient?

Yes, it almost certainly would, along with wave energy. There's some very interesting comment along those lines at the bottom of the Scotsman article linked to by Nemesis. The real issue, as always, is money and the politics surrounding investment in the schemes by large companies.

 

[biffvernon]

But it's not about making a small island community self-sufficient. It's about keeping the lights on in Glasgow, Birmingham and London. Oh, and keeping planet Earth fit for human life. It's a big ask.

 

[Schoolmarm]

Is climate change a threat to the planet or not? Er, well, yes, .

How will the planet be damaged? I thought it was just we trivial humans that would be damaged.

 

[Flyfisher]

Yes, fair point. I'm sure the planet will survive, and life as well - it's been through bigger changes in the past. I suspect humans will survive as well but maybe not as we live our lives today. There could easily be a catastrophic breakdown of our current energy-rich and energy-dependent civilisation, all of which has been built on the borrowed time of fossil fuels.

But try to propose anything on a big enough scale to possibly make a useful contribution to solving the problem and suddenly there's a big 'save the view' opposition.

Next up, how the Severn tidal barrage is going to upset a bunch of wading birds :roll:

 

[Nemesis]

But aren't birds important too?

 

[piper]

But try to propose anything on a big enough scale to possibly make a useful contribution to solving the problem and suddenly there's a big 'save the view' opposition.

Next up, how the Severn tidal barrage is going to upset a bunch of wading birds :roll:

Read my posts carefully, and you'll see I'm not overly bothered about the birds, and it's not really about the "view" either. Read the comments at the bottom of the Scotsman article, and also the page "Lewis windfarms overview" on the site I gave a link to http://www.mwtlewis.org.uk/ to see why the Lewis windfarms should not just be embraced without question because they're "green". There's a regrettable tendency to assume that anybody who protests about such schemes has their head in the sand, or cares more about the birds or a pretty view than the future of the human race.

As far as I'm concerned there can be a Severn barrage, a Clyde barrage, a Morecambe Bay barrage, a Wash barrage, and perhaps best of all, a Thames barrage - the birds will find somewhere else.

 

[Nemesis]

Right - so the human race is more important than the birds.

 

[piper]

As a member of the human race, I do usually think that - sometimes have my doubts though. I suppose it's selfish. Ultimately, of course, it's the insects who will have the last laugh on us all. Actually, it's the bacteria who are are the majority life-form, so in a democratic world THEY should decide.

 

[Nemesis]

I spend more time with birds than I do with people. I like birds.

 

[biffvernon]

Is climate change a threat to the planet or not? Er, well, yes, .

How will the planet be damaged? I thought it was just we trivial humans that would be damaged.

Look here, there's nothing certain in this prediction game and there is a great deal that we don't yet know about Earth's geophysical and atmospheric systems but the worst case scenario involves moving past the so-called 'tipping points'. That's when the present equilibrium reaches it's limit and we move, perhaps quite rapidly, through positive feedback mechanisms, to a very different world.

As the temperature rises, polar ice melts, decreasing albedo as there's less ice to reflect sunshine, and the temperature goes up faster. In the tropics, forest destruction, both through felling and drying out. This releases trapped carbon by burning and oxidation of soil carbon increasing atmospheric CO2 by far more than all the worlds aircraft. Temperature rises. In the Tundra, melting of the permafrost also releases vast quantities of CO2 and also the much more potent greenhouse gas, methane. Temperature rises. Eventually the oceans warm up to the point at which methane clathrates are released from the sea bed. This as a vast reservoir of gas that is not only a greenhouse gas but also inflammable. Boom.

Can it happen? Yes, it absolutely is possible. We just don't know the odds. It has happened before - at the end of Permian period. The fossil record shows that about 95% of fossil forming animals went extinct. Of course that time it wasn't man-made. Most likely the out-pourings of vast lava flows triggered the event.

We currently have had about 0.8 degrees of average global warming with another degree in the pipeline as it takes a long time for the oceans to respond, even if we stop all fossil fuel burning tomorrow. The good news is that there is a limit to the amount of oil, gas and coal left. Perhaps we won't actually be able to push the system beyond the tipping points. Perhaps. But if fossil fuels are really in such short supply then we have a big problem in terms of powering our economies.

In the shorter term we in the UK have an electricity generating shortage. We have not invested much in the last 20 years. The nuclear stations are fast approaching the end of their lives and it takes many years to build new ones. And not everyone can have them because there just isn't that much uranium.

So, we have a problem over the next few years with an electricity shortage, we have a problem over a few more years with an oil shortage, followed closely by a gas shortage and then a coal shortage. We then face the problem of rising sea level. As more is learnt about the way the Greenland and West Antarctic Ice Sheets are now behaving the news gets worse. It is possible that sea level rises of several metres could occur within the lifetimes of many alive today. There's a raft of problems associated with growing enough food for the world's expanding population as climate belts shift. And, finally, and as far as homo not-so-sapiens and a great number of other species are concerned it really will be finally, there is the possibility of a passing the tipping points and runaway greenhouse greenhouse effect that makes the planet almost uninhabitable.

Oh yes, some lowly bugs will survive and the whole evolutionary caper will start over. It's happened before. May be next time an intelligent life-form will emerge that gets it before it's too late.

And some folk say that wind turbines spoil the view. :roll:

 

[Flyfisher]

Right - so the human race is more important than the birds.

It's not a question of importance; that's an entirely human construct. It's called natural selection and it's responsible for the diversity of life on Earth*. If birds, or other species, can't compete and survive then they'll become extinct. It's been happening for millions of years and life on earth hasn't suffered as a result, indeed it has thrived.

*other beliefs, such as creationism, are available