Some but greatly exaggerated. There was on set of turbines at the
Altamont Wind pass that killed Golden Eagles. That was due to really
bad location (at a key migration point) bad turbine placement and bad
tower design. They have now got it to the point where your average
wind farm kill fewer birds than your average outdoor cat, and avoids
killing endangered birds entirely. However wind farms do kill a
substantial number of bats (fewer than other things we tolerate like
tall buildings, but still subtantial). In the end though I think you
will find that wind still ranks as the least harmful electricity
source. Even if I'm wrong about that I doubt this factor would move it
anywhere but to the second least harmful. In general I trust Jacobson
much more on what can be done than on this kind of environmental
ranking - which is highly subjective anyway. When you combine
different harms into a single rank the way he does, how much of one
harm equals how much of another is very much a judgement call. I would
still consider this ranking somewhat useful, but very very approximate
in any case.
>
> Second, some time ago you mention another option - high altitude wind
> turbines (suspended by propellers.) Jacobson does not seem to mention
> this option. Any idea why and how would this change his argument
> about the need for a backup hydro system?
1) Jacobson does not mention this because we don't know it will every work. Remember when I mentioned it I did not advocate deployment. Since proof-of-concept have flown successfully for brief periods, I advocated funding first a fully funcitional scale prototype that would stay in the air for months at a time if it worked. Then if it worked a full scale commericial prototype. Only if that worked would suggest trying to build an industry. Everything in Jacobson's list has at least been demonstrated in full scale working commercial prototype.
2) I think you could get by with less hydro backup, but not none.
Wind turbines on the ground average 30% to 45% of capacity. Flying
wind turbines would average 60% to 90% capacity. That still needs
some sort of storage or backup, but not as much. maybe a great deal
less. I don't think anyone will bother to do more than back-of-napkin
calculations on that until they see flying wind turbines working. I
have seen such calculations and they have said one MW of hydro for
every 4 MW of flying wind. You should trust that as much as you trust
any back of the envelope calculation, again remembering that flying
wind turbines are a concept worth testing, not something we know will
work. This is why I mostly don't mention this kind of thing. There are
lots of cool potential tech ideas out there I'd enjoy discussing, but
if I bring them up, they usually comes back to me months or years
later with the "this is a concept, we don't know if works or not" part
forgotten.
>
> Wojtek
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>
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