One of the goals of my university is to go green: we’re working on wind and biomass power, we support local foods, we’re making a major initiative to add environmental studies to our curriculum, and we’re about to build a green dorm on campus. One interesting tack the green dormies are taking is to keep the public informed with a Green Dorm blog. So far, it’s awfully dry reading and its not really taking advantage of the medium well — each post is little more than a link to a pdf document from the planning process — but they are open to comment, at least.
Maybe they should consult someone who knows better ways of putting information on the web, though.
This is a shocking idea. Why would you attempt to derive significant amounts of energy from the natural climate regulating mechanisms, in other than traditional ways? Google Boedelle Depression and contemplate what wind farms in Africa would do to the Amazon Basin.
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Something like the building at Oberlin?
Not sure what’s supposed to be particularly green about local food — I live in Albuquerque, and locally produced food takes more of our scarce water, more artifical fertilizer, and more fuel for tractors and irrigation than food grown someplace more naturally arable. There are certainly cases where low fossil fuel prices (which don’t take into account the harm the fuels are doing to the environment) are causing people to truck food places where it would be economically feasible to grow it locally, in the presence of a prudent carbon tax.
But do remember Bastiat — by trading, even regionally, everyone can partake of the peculiar advantages of climate that are naturally spread around the country. Why should Floridians get all the oranges?
Nothing. They would do nothing at all. So not only is your doomsday scenario a little anticlimactic, but it’s also a big fat straw man since that isn’t really where UMM wants to put the wind farm, is it?
I mean, you could talk about the noise problem, or the threat that wind farms pose to birds and wildlife, but that would be honest argument and honesty simply isn’t fitting for a CA troll.
Fuck off.
we’re working on wind and biomass power, we support local foods, we’re making a major initiative to add environmental studies to our curriculum, and we’re about to build a green dorm on campus.
What an incredible waste of time and energy.
I guess people need to think they are doing something
useful even though the benefits are almost non-existent.
Hey kids, we’ve got an insane war, our country is being disembowled by treacherous neocons and everything we cherish as a people is being laid to waste. Genocide is rampant in the world and nobody seems to care much. And large numbers of college students appear to have nothing much to say, much less the inclination to vote. If you guys came out to vote in 2000 and 2004 we might not be in he dire straits we are in now.
Shame on you. Going “green” may make you feel better but it doesn’t atone for your sins of omission.
Yeah, Kamehameha, it’s rampant. Just last week there was this asshole who was volunteering at a homeless shelter. He really thought he was doing some good by feeding those guys when he really should have caught a flight to Sudan and helped out there.
Heh, I also once caught this sucker recycling some glass bottles. Doesn’t that dipshit know there’s a war on? Why is he recycling his glass bottles when the NSA is conducting illegal wiretaps and congress is extending amnesty to their accomplices? It just doesn’t make any sense.
Well, not everyone is decent enough to whine about people who aren’t carrying out acts of superheroism in the comments of a blog on the internet. Persevere, Kamehameha, and patiently await the day when everyone is as effectual and useful as you are.
Jackass.
Excellent! Glad to hear it PZ.
Did you read, “The World Without Us” by chance?
#5 is totally right. Those damn UMM students don’t really care about the environment… they’re just trying to feel better about not voting in 2004. You know, when they were in high school and legally couldn’t.
It’s exciting that UMM is going forward with the green living and learning community and has a blog to give progress. The site is informative.
I can’t put my finger on what doesn’t grab me about the blog. Maybe it is because it is just green and white. How would you jazz it up if it were your blog?
Local produce uses less fuel to be transported.
And KIm is an ID creationist. Unless she “denies” it.
Considering that we have these minor obstacles to continuing our arrogant ostentation of an excuse for maintaining the current status quo, namely anthropogenic global warming and peak oil. The absolute least I would expect of any university is to be on the forefront of looking for solutions to these little annoyances. What took you guys so freakin long?! Welcome to the real reality based community. Ok, that was my way of saying congratulations.
Half the Sahara’s contribution to mineral fertilizing of the Amazon Basin comes from the tiny percent of the desert which comprises the Boedelle Depression. Dust from the depression, picked up by wind focussed through a mountain gap blows across the Atlantic. Were there wind turbines in the mountain gap, this fertilization would cease, and the Rain Forest would suffer immensely. This is just one example. Everybody is downwind from wind turbines.
My point remains; derive significant amounts of energy from so-called renewable sources, the wind, the water, and the sun, in other than traditional ways, and you will cause unknown effects on the climate regulatory mechanisms of the globe.
Think about it.
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Oh, I agree totally! What they should really be doing with their time is saving the endangered Red Herring.
On a more serious note, Morris has also broken ground by officially declaring its intent to become climate-neutral (eventually). Hopefully the Twin Cities campus will think about that, once they find a way around their coal-burning steam plant.
Um, I’m guessing you can’t spell “Bodélé” correctly. And your knowledge of geography isn’t helping the stereotype of a Yank.
Just to help, look at the map showing where the Bodélé Depression is. It’s in Chad, in the middle of Africa. You know, a long way from the Atlantic and South America (do I have to explain why South America is relevant?). The amount of dust that will get to the Atlantic will be insignificant.
Idiot.
Bob
Thanks for the spelling correction. I didn’t make that up about the dust. Look further.
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It’s true that some of the minerals that sustain the Amazon do come from blowing desert dust. It just amazes me that this “kim” person has taken the statement “We can predict that it would be a bad idea to build an incredibly massive wind farm in this one specific location right here”, and turned it into the claim that we can’t possibly build any wind farms anywhere. That’s weapons-grade stupidity.
Presumably burning non-renewable fossil fuels, boosting CO2 levels and all that sort of thing don’t have any effect on climate, in Kim’s delusional little world. Right.
My good man. Most of the Saharan Dust which reaches the Eastern United States is from the Bodele Depression.
Refusal to look at the evidence, insults.
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Hyperbole does not become you, my other good man. My claim is that if you derive significant amounts of energy from the globe’s climate regulating mechanisms, the wind, the water, and the sun, you will cause unintended, and unpredictable, consequences for the climate.
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STILL not seeing how “We can predict that you shouldn’t build a massive wind farm just here” mutated into “We can’t predict what would happen if you build wind farms.”
STILL not seeing how using renewables, in ways that might affect weather or climate, is worse than burning fossil carbon, which definitely will affect climate.
This argument doesn’t require carbon. Why bring it up?
You are catching on. My Bodele Depression is exemplary. It is the equivalent of the mule’s 2X4. You’d have not predicted the demise of the rain forest if Chadians decided to go renewable, had you. Now, broaden your perspective. Everyone is downwind from the turbine which has just sucked energy out of the globe’s climate regulating mechanism.
I don’t intend to argue this further. You understand my point, whether or not you agree with it.
I originally made this point in the early ’70’s with Ennis. He was incredulous, too.
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Dustin wants me to focus on the cosmetics of wind turbines. If a turbine operator were forced to pay for ‘turbine credits’ to ameliorate the damage to the climate regulating mechanisms, then turbine usage would never be economic. Remember, too, the large class of damaged people downwind. Surely they’d not suffer in silence?
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I should link to another thread where Steve tried to call me a creationist, and I called him a deliberate, but ingenuous, liar. Deliberate because he knows I’ve denied being a creationist; ingenuous because he has no clue what I mean by falsifiable. He thinks I’m a creationist because I claim creationism in unfalsifiable.
Now I know this is an anti-Creationist site. And at least one person, I care who, pointed out Steve’s ignorance. But that was yesterday, and yesterday’s gone.
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I love it when people are wrong at the top of their lungs. Bob O’H, what sterotype should I trash now? Say it ain’t the Irishki, Joe.
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Kim, for the Nth time, you have taken the fact that we CAN PREDICT that ONE LOCATION would be a BAD place for a wind farm, and used it to claim that we CANNOT PREDICT if ANY LOCATION would be a GOOD place for a wind farm. Non sequitur, with heaping helpings of faux-outrage and condescension on top, and a little pretence that carbon isn’t important too.
Troll elsewhere.
No such claim, honey. A wind farm anywhere interferes in unpredictable ways with the regulation of climate. Carbon is a red herring in this argument.
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Re #12,
“My point remains; derive significant amounts of energy from so-called renewable sources, the wind, the water, and the sun, in other than traditional ways, and you will cause unknown effects on the climate regulatory mechanisms of the globe.
Think about it.” LOL!
And the status quo of using oil and coal will just produce a lot of CO2 which as we all know is good for plants and therefore life in general and has the added benefit of causing known effects (like AGW). BTW Oil and coal have barely been around long enough to be considered very traditional either.
I’ll expand that. A wind farm anywhere interferes unpredictably with the regulation of climate everywhere.
Your argument is supposed to be that it is de minimis. Why do you think I said ‘significant’ amounts of energy?
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And Fernango Magyar charges off on the wrong track pursuing the monster, Carbon.
Carbon is irrelevant to this argument. Must I repeat myself?
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F, I used ‘traditional’ for lack of a better word. Truly, we have derived some energy traditionally from the climate regulating mechanisms. Surely, the sun supplies the energy we metabolize within and wind-powered craft and mills have been with us for a long time. But even if you take these traditional sources, and try to derive the amount of energy necessary to run a modern society, you will derange the climate regulatory mechanisms by taking the energy out of them.
Didn’t your Daddy ever tell you that there is no such thing as a free lunch? Much of this fantasizing about renewable energy is salivation over the prospect of a free lunch.
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Does Kim imagine that multiple repetitions of “carbon is irrelevant to climate” will somehow make it true?
Kim: “Renewables might affect climate!”
Everyone else: “What we’re doing RIGHT NOT is already affecting climate.”
Kim: “So?”
Ho hum…
As I recall from my college days, many dorm refrigerators were green inside.
Putting words in my mouth does not support your argument, Stephen. I said I did not intend to continue this argument and I haven’t. The argument ended once you understood my point, way back in your post #16. Since then, we’ve merely traded insults.
My usual blogdom dwelling is a general interest blog with a variety of non-scientists. They understand concepts of logic and scientific reasoning far better than I’ve noted among the denizens of this site. Furthermore, there, the reasoning self-corrects, with others pointing out errors. Here, only Who Cares ever corrected anyone else.
What is the matter with you people? There is that phrase.
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The argument never even began.
How annoyingly true.
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Kamehameha the Great is a concern troll of the Misdirectionist(or ‘Red Herring’) subspecies. Go away, cobag.
And PZ, can you throw Kim in the dungeon for being a spammer?
Her Spams, let us show you them.
Yep, they are easy to find.
::grin::
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Yes, they are easy to find: just look for the short, content-free noise and the knee-jerk right-wing inanity, and there you are. 175 stupid comments in less than three days…are we supposed to be impressed?
Why not go somewhere where you’ll actually be appreciated, rather than being regarded as a particularly prolific kind of vermin? I am about to give you the good old heave-ho, just to silence the incessant stupidity.
“Thinking about it” doesn’t stop with a sloppy qualitative guess about the meaning of the word “significant”, no matter what your own facile credulity tells you. Energy that is considered significant in terms of human power consumption is literally insignificant when it comes to the amount of energy pent up in a weather system. Those order of magnitude calculations that you’ve conveniently neglected can quickly show that the power of the wind moving through a cross section of a small weather system will dwarf, by something like five orders of magnitude, the power taken out of the system by a wind farm. Even if it weren’t insignificant, it ain’t like Africa is huffing and puffing and blowing really hard and hoping that gust of air makes it all the way over here. Weather doesn’t work like that. It’s always being supplied with additional energy from the rotation of the earth, ocean temperatures, etc.
If you really are concerned about the winds slowing down, well you might just go ahead and pull your head out of your ass and do something about global warming.
Thank you, PZ, for the bandwidth, and thanks to the crew for the forum. You’ve been a relatively pleasant bunch, and you do science here. Here’s to a cooling earth.
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Here’s to the end of the Reign of Kim.
Doubtless the next troll to pop up will tell us not to build windfarms, because running a windfarm increases the total entropy of the universe. We will point out that everything we do increases the total entropy of the universe. They will say that this is irrelevant.