Video: Danny MacAskill Rides Across a Wind Turbine & More for the 'Climate Games'
 | How much of the world’s energy comes from sustainable sources? I’m given free reign at a renewable energy factory to show you exactly how much in the best way I can - with some epic tricks! |
You can take a behind the scenes look at Danny's latest project below.
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That's because most of it is on us...not our so called leaders.
i know we can do this!!!
That argument sounds like blaming the biggest 10 airlines for flying the most kilometers in 2021 or something.
I'm cheap AF and even I recognize that's a good price for lowering bills and emissions.
Take responsibility for your own assets. Nothing is preventing you from insulating your damn house.
It is a thermal regulator?
In all honesty though - we're talking about the majority of the general population who live in poorly insulated homes are already on the poverty line, and subsidies to insulate do make sense. The government seem fine to hand out money to other initiatives such as heat pumps, community energy etc, but at the end of the day if your house leaks heat then it's always going to take more energy to warm it.
Obviously I only see what is reported in the news here so maybe I'm seeing it wrong or missing context. How do you see it?
But then we need to get rid of fossile fuels in transports, agriculture, heating, heavy industries such as steel and ciment, etc…
If you think renewables alone will be able to power all these industries/activities, you’re either naive or brainwashed. We need both renewables and nuclear, and stop opposing them.
Scotland will soon be 100% renewable.
The biggest wind turbine in the world is 16MW. That’s a 250m tall puppy. Assuming 100% load, we would need 830 000 of these turbines to power the world. With a more reasonable - but still optimist - 30% load capacity, we would need close to 2.8 millions of these giant 250m-tall wind turbines. That’s assuming energy storage has a 100% efficiency, which is absurd.
In 2016, the world had 341 000 wind turbines. Source: gwec.net/there-are-over-341000-wind-turbines-on-the-planet-heres-how-much-of-a-difference-theyre-actually-making
The only viable renewables are hydro - but there are only so many dams we can build, and wind turbines.
Solar power is not great, it artificializes way too much land, and most - if not all - production of solar panels is in China
Better than 5 years, but it sure doesn’t look good for long term
Source: www.iaea.org/newscenter/pressreleases/worlds-uranium-resources-enough-for-the-foreseeable-future-say-nea-and-iaea-in-new-report
So what's your point?
All people have to do is look up the largest solar farm, the amount of land it requires and the tiny number of households it can power.
Take a look at pictures out in 29 palms of the 1000's of wind turbines for mile and miles and the tiny % of power they provide.
It's not happening without nuclear.
People haven't done any reading about the new reactors and fuels being develop. Main Stream media isn't going to cover it.
How's this, no one cares about Scotland being 100% renewable. Population wise it's a pimple on the ass of the planet.
The main problem with nuclear is that it's extremely expensive, while renewables are getting cheaper every day. There are some startups working on module nuclear that could bring it's price down, but without reducing the costs it doesn't seem feasible.
With 3.5°C increase, IPCC projects that many regions in the world won’t be able to be farmed anymore. More fun: some regions won’t be liveable for longer periods (combinaison of high heat and humidity, making it impossible for the body to cool down). All this means high strain on food supplies, and massive immigration. And as a result, a much greater risk of wars.
I stick to my original post: we need all low carbon energy sources, including nuclear, against fossile fuels.
Waiting for the silver bullet energy source, and/or a magical carbon capture technology is pointless in the little time we have to act.
renewable source. Didn't pull it out of the hat. Kindly suck one
shorturl.at/evD08
AFAIK, if we succeed at building fusion reactors (instead of fission) there could be enough uranium for a while (like centuries or millennia) as I've read that currently we only use like 1/10 of the extracted uranium. Fusion could use all of it, and maybe even re-use wastes. And there's supposedly billions of tons of uranium scattered in the oceans, but no one knows if we could retrieve it.
So until we succeed at fusion (supposedly circa 2060 I've read ?) the answer is frugality. Using bike instead of car as much as possible. Buying less stuff, using planes only if really necessary, etc. We're in some serious shit but nobody cares. Everydbody's in denial.
Saudi arabia just announced they would be carbon neutral in 2060, that's not difficult, they'll have ran out of oil by then.
I don’t know which part is irresponsible but I’ve got two nuclear power stations in my city and they built before learning what to do with all the waste so basically they just bury it and hope the future generations know what to do with it, pretty irresponsible not to mention they’re still dumping nuclear waste into the pacific because someone built a power station they didn’t fully understand.
www.freeingenergy.com/how-much-solar-would-it-take-to-power-the-u-s
How much of this can we install using roofs instead of land?
[most of it if we try.]
HA, solar beats utility nuclear even in New England. Today!
So nuclear compared to alternatives is more expensive. Check.
Then's there this from @Uncled which proves that humans may not be 100% reliable with anything. Because that would be impossible, because we are human. And what does less than 100% look like? Well, so far... en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_nuclear_power_accidents_by_country
Huge areas of untouched nature, absolutely ravaged by huge windfarm projects, all wildlife in the areas touched by it, gone.
And with all that destruction, about the same power production as a single dam.
Windpower can lick my hairy balls, get that shit out of here.
It is not the solution.
Carbon footprint isn't everything, and it's extremely overhyped, yes it matters, no it doesn't matter as much as you're told.
Dude, you only have to close the gates to store the enegy, with no loss unlike with batteries.
Also, if you omit the major nuclear power accidents (which are statistical outliers) there are actually a surprisingly low number of fatalities associated with nuclear power accidents.
Geothermal, wind, and solar aren't going to replace coal, oil, or natural gas any time soon. Nuclear is our best chance to mitigating climate change. Sadly, the general public's opinion of nuclear energy has been tainted by sensationalist media and a few isolated incidents that likely occurred due to design flaws and mismanagement.
If anyone thinks climate change is an existential threat that needs solutions yesterday, you're not serious if you don't support nuclear power.
anyone that thinks we can green our way to zero emissions is a so out of touch, it's beyond even attempting to convince. Math doesn't lie.
www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2020-02-05/wind-turbine-blades-can-t-be-recycled-so-they-re-piling-up-in-landfills
Also, Danny is a beast
I think that the title may be a bit misleading… there are lots of energy uses which are not included in that 4 petawatt-hours/year figure (which mearly looks at “electricity usage”.
Total U.S. energy consumption (all end-uses, so this includes transportation that Steve was asking about as well) is about 97.3 quadrillion BTU or 28.519 petta-watt hours. www.eia.gov/state/seds/archive/seds2016.pdf
That works out to needing about 151,500 square miles (not including battery area) which is nearly the area of California.
I think this points to the need to pursue a balanced clean-energy portfoilio including solar, wind, batteries, hydro, and nuclear. (it would take around 3,255 square miles of nuclear plants, for example)
It strikes me that if we're supposed to act yesterday, nuclear, natural gas, and carbon capture, are most feasible ways to rapidly de-carbonize a modern economy.
"Sadly, the general public's opinion of nuclear energy has been tainted by sensationalist media and a few isolated incidents that likely occurred due to design flaws and mismanagement."
As a fan of nuclear, it's important to steel man the concerns over nuclear. Boomers in particular lived through the worst of the cold war. This had an understandable lasting effect, emotionally, for a lot of boomers. I was barely alive for the tail end of the cold war and, increasingly, most people alive today have little to no understanding of what it was like living under cold war conditions. But, I'm sympathetic to why a lot people are hesitant towards nuclear to this day, given the history.
Of course, ideally, emotions shouldn't drive policy. Most "60's" anti-nuclear views are incredibly outdated. The regulatory reforms instituted in the 70's had the effect of artificially stagnating the industry - which had the effect of SLOWING environmental progress in nuclear. 4th-5th gen nuclear power is a great thing but, it's somewhat bitter sweet when you consider that they could have been online decades ago if not for environmentalists.
Nonetheless, the human condition is what it is. People are emotional. The public's introduction to nuclear power, unfortunately, was as a weapon of potentially planet killing destruction. That potential is still with us. The hypothetical destructive potential of nuclear power is so great that it is unavoidably going to garner resistance.
All that said, I do feel the tide is turning. The truth has a way of being stubborn and I personally think the need for nuclear power is inevitable and desirable really. The more we focus on decarbonizing the developed world, the more likely we'll be heading towards nuclear.
If anyone is looking to get into a good industry for the future, I'd say nuclear is a good bet.
Your thing about "toxic" this and that regarding batteries and PV, come on, give it a rest. Batteries are virtually 100% recyclable and there's huge money on the table for that. Redwood Technologies is just one company ready to make a mint off this. And you say that while also touting natural gas??? Really? Dude, I'm getting troll vibes now.
This of course, doesn't account for the mining that's involved which, in and of itself, presents a serious environmental hazard. But, once again, reliance on heavy metal mining makes the US that much more reliant on a supply chain which, as we see today, is very vulnerable and frequently outsources to actors that are NOT environmental conscious (namely China).
It's not to say it's impossible. We could gear up massive recycling plants. But on what time frame, and what cost? Again, we're in a "crisis".
Just a few easy ones for you to start with...coal ash, air pollution, water pollution, oil spills, coal mining impacts, oil drilling/extraction equipment, oil refining sites, (and disposing of them when they are no longer used), transporting of oil/gas across nations and the world (and disposal of the equipment used for transport...i.e. tanker ships, trucks, pipelines, trains, drilling rigs).
Umn, what? I didn't say anything of the sort. Please re-read my comment for comprehension.
And yes, mining is factored into any LCA for LIBs. You know what an LCA is, right? And again, you failed to read my comment for comprehension. Seems to be a trend. The private sector is the one leading the LIB recycling charge. Why? Because big big monies!
But virtually everything you're saying is contradictory and inaccurate nonsense. Again, a big trend with you. What I'd love to know, and you'll never cop to, is: to what end?
Over their lifetime, the total emissions (including construction and decommissioning) of renewables are at least 10 times lower (in some cases nearer 100 times lower) than those of fossil power plants per unit of electricity produced. The same is true of nuclear. Renewables are getting lower impact all the time as production efficiency, recyclability and longevity improve.
Sources:
www.parliament.uk/globalassets/documents/post/postpn_383-carbon-footprint-electricity-generation.pdf
twitter.com/hausfath/status/1253173001069068290/photo/1
www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1364032114005395
www.youtube.com/watch?v=caNVMCeCoJM
Basically, kites at high altitude catch more wind and drive a dynamo on the ground with a tether. Of course you're creating a bit of a no-fly zone but it shouldn't be too hard to enforce that. I trust fewer people are interested to see what happens when you fly your helicopter into a tether than there are who want to see what happens at Area 51. I thought it was a cool project. After his death in 2014, I went to his memorial and learned how challenging the project actually is and how much spin-off it has generated. Apparently the knowledge of the aerodynamics of kites was limited at the time and the control theory to control several kites on the same tether was a big challenge too. Not sure what stage the project is at now but I do hope it works out eventually.
A middle ground is what Ampyx Power (ampyxpower.com) is doing. I thought it was a crowdfunding campaign I chipped into but apparently I'm an investor now
So my point is, there are different ways to generate electricity from wind and just because the conventional mills don't deliver doesn't that the concept of wind energy as a whole is flawed.
I did a quick search and indeed couldn't find any actual real life tests with a full laddermill. But as said, there has been a lot of spin-off. One I found is Kitepower (thekitepower.com) who do more or less the same as Ampyx does, just with a kite. But indeed with a single kite and just like Ampyx, below 400m altitude.
The infrastructure issue doesn't just go for kites obviously. Whether it is a conventional windturbine, a coal plant or a nuclear plant, you don't want to have these too close to a residential area. Heck, even oil and gas usually aren't mined close to where it is being consumed. So if this (the logistics challenge) is considered acceptable for one means of power generation then it goes for all of them. What we're seeing is that conventional windturbines in particular are installed offshore. Seems like a big deal to build a construction like that in the sea, but clearly it is doable. However, Ampyx works with a floating base station (arrester, launcer, generator etc) so it faster to deploy and also to move. As for the actual logistics you mention, what I'm hearing is that more installations these days aren't built to pump electricity through a cable, but to generate hydrogen (and oxigen) right away through hydrolysis and transport that. I suppose more than a few realize that fuel cells may be a better solution than lithium batteries for everything. Doesn't necessarily mean that it is less of a bitch to pump energy through a hose than through a cable (though at least you can pump using wave energy/motion), but at least there is less urgency. You can pump it away as it is being generated, you can maybe offload it onto incoming ships (don't know much about that scene, sorry) or if the offshore Ampyx system is temporary anyway, just store the hydrogen locally and bring everything home together.
Oh boy, TL;DR? Yes there are challenges but for many there are more than a few potential solutions that can be thought of that don't necessarily seem more difficult than what we already got ourselves into with our conventional sources of energy. Except for indeed the complete laddermill. That might actually be quite a challenge.
Each wind turbine has 3 giant carbon blades. Those blades cost more CO2 emissions than the bike industry in a year. Wind energy is clean, but the equipment to harvest it isn't.
Just thought I'd drop this here in case you hadn't see it. Fusion is coming.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=-KEwkWjADEA
You’re the one making claims about something, it’s your responsibility to back them up, not someone else’s to prove your claims false.
Funny how you don't hold him to the same standard of proving his claim.
Wtf you talking about birds for!
He said "I'd argue that power lines kill more birds than Wind Turbines, so the whole bird/bat killing thing is likely an overblown farce. "
See the I'd argue part. Pretty obvious when I say you can argue it but link stats it's ties directly back to that comment.
There are a lot of good comments above, there are a fair few silly ones. As some one who leads on the construction of large scale wind farms offshore i can confirm that an 8.0MW WTG will indeed power an average home for a day easily, in fact it will do a bit more than a days worth of energy, but most people can only deal with round numbers. Considering that these rotors do 13rpm, there is a significant amount of ziggys going in to the grid especially when you have large parks offshore. Balancing the grid is also getting easier and new models of WTG can offer frequency response to help prop the grid up where required, so the comment about additional impact on the grid is also being mitigated.
There is always the comment about carbon payback, truth be told, even after extracting the ore, making the steel, shipping 2/3rds of the way round the planet, believe it or not, the latest wind turbines will pay back all their cabin footprint, plus all the construction vessel impacts in around 4 years, you then get a further 21 years of carbon neutral energy. Note: most wind farms will get lift time extensions also so that number increases.
But...... as an engineer, i can tell you that wind, solar alone is not enough, there will always need to be the ability to instantaneously put base load in to the system at the turn of a dial, and nuclear is one way, some countries are lucky and can have hydro they can turn on and off a peak times, not every countries Power make up will be the same and people need to recognise that.
what i also see is the benefits that key board warriors/ media don't, its the increase in marine life within the wind farms as a result of reduced trailing / fishing. its the fact that children accept them as normal and ask lots of questions about them and how they work..........
biggest question we get though, "what can i do"............ Simple, "Don't just consume"............ turn the lights off, don't leave them on for that 1hr longer than needed. walk, ride don't drive, reuse or buy second hand. sure the new santacruze is nice, but if you buy it, use it every day till there is no more useful life in it before buying a new one........ power is one element of our consumption, our general consumption is also key, don't line Bezios's pockets, line some ones pockets local to you instead.
Danny you’re just awesome. And the more attention this gives to renewables, the better
Slash wood gets burned because it would be a transportation nightmare and you would have to process to wash all of it. It's just not worth it
there is almost always a way to do things smartly as well as economically viable.
Shape up and promote biking for the activity and the joy it gives.
Stop promoting senseless consumerism and political issues.
Funny that Danny's old back pack sponsor did not have a parachute, because would have been better base jumpin off
However that has its own risks!
As to all the discussion about living sustainably, clearly all you Internet enduro Bros haven’t got out of your basement lately, that phone/computer you’re using, the car you drive to the trailhead, the machines you use to keep your life tidy, it’s all part of the problem.
This discussion has been going on for a long time, I’m nearing sixty, it was already a recognized problem when I was a young lad, but sadly it only seems to have gotten worse.
So yeah, how’s this gonna play out for us?
All I can say is I am so glad I don’t live in a pllace where resources are limited and climate change is already problematic.
We just got an interesting book, The Ministry for the Future, a not so fictional depiction of where we’re going. Honestly, I couldn’t finish it, just too much reality, too close to the truth.
Instead of casting blame, look to yourself first. No one is free of blame.
Ah, to be a cockroach in the year 2300 AD
insights.globalspec.com/images/assets/389/13389/Energy_2018_United-States.png
www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/09/03/climate/bitcoin-carbon-footprint-electricity.html
It is all relative, like crossing the road without paying attention to traffic can be more life threatening that what they do?
Lack of fear is not a natural experience, just stupid but overcoming fear is!
That is also very additive & have to keep pushing to get same satisfaction or die trying
But never really felt the need to push thing that far
Added benefit is that never have to adjust anything & if your chain gets slack, you know it is time to change your chain!
So maybe you could ask him?
Danny has added quite a lot of Velcro tape around the chain, combined with an I9 Hydra hub with over 600 eg points the slack in the chain isn’t as noticeable
The way we're all wired, the unstoppable machine just keeps on churning out more junk for us to consume and we make ourselves feel better by justifying it with things like solar and wind power.
Wow dude, you’re gonna be sad when you throw out that phone
The point I was trying to make is that long term, renewables won’t solve the problem. We’ll still keep polluting and consuming while we all satisfy ourselves that recycling and using wind power makes it ok.
For some reason (lower fertility rates), the population growth is supposed to slow from this point and tapper off in 2100 at 11 billion. But that makes no logical sense… why would people stop making babies, reproduction is the primary purpose of life on this planet?
It's happening for a multitude of reasons. "Infertility" can be misleading b/c it includes women who are infertile due to age. When thinking of the word "infertile", for many the image of a man or women of child bearing age being unable to have kids b/c of some sort of reproductive problem. This, of course happens (and may be increasing) but, what's happening rapidly is the average age of child birth is getting older and older. But, many people would be surprised by how short the unaided avg. female fertility window is. Starting around 30, the avg. woman experiences a serious drop off in fertility.
Put simply, the more developed nations become, the less kids they appear to have. That's b/c the more developed, the more individual autonomy to pursue your own thing (through birth control, education, jobs, etc.). This then pushes off things like child birth. But, nature doesn't care.
Most global population growth is concentrated in the developing world. The issue there is that they simply do not have the means of widespread reproductive control like we do in the developed world.
Stop hunger & poverty by 2030
The future looks bleak for next couple generations and beyond. They lack appreciation for what has been gifted to them.
www.irena.org/publications/2016/Jun/End-of-life-management-Solar-Photovoltaic-Panels
Yes, there is a place for solar and wind, but current by current world energy use, they don't even break 4%. ourworldindata.org/electricity-mix
Nuclear is the only long-term and real answer to this.
Cost of building vs ougput, plus impact to the surrounding
What did you think about the 2+2=5 movement?
For commercial none disassemble old turbines, just build new ones and take shit ton of land , also require a lot of personal for maintenance which is typically not account in to kw cost
Oh, as for your hand wringing about permitting for offshore US wind installations, this literally, and I do mean literally, hit my news feed just before I typed this. Seems like a good omen, no? electrek.co/2021/10/25/siemens-gamesa-us-first-offshore-wind-blade-factory
#sillytroll
Look, my point about off-shore wind was that's its regulatory approval history in the US is god awful. And it, undeniably, is. I also acknowledged the recent excitement in the industry about recent approvals. So, you pointing out a bunch of articles about big wind getting all excited about this recent approval is redundant. Of course big wind is excited about this and signing up contracts left and right. Victory, right? You got me.
Well, let's calm down a bit. It's certainly a positive step, this regulatory approval, but way too premature to declare victory. The big challenge, once again, is how diffuse this stuff is. Your own series of articles spells it out - 176 massive wind turbines generating, hopefully (which is a big hope, considering the inherent intermittence of renewables), 2.6 gw of power (yawn). Even if off-shore, that's a lot of real estate, materials, etc. to generate 2.6 gw of power compared to other, much more efficient, higher producing, and with less land/water use, methods. That alone is a problem. But, the bigger issue, for approval purposes, is that the more spread out your project, the more opportunity for all those pesky and varying interests to start objecting. Sure, 176 wind turbines sounds great on paper, but wait until that, along with a bunch of other massive off-shore wind farms start popping up all along the coast line. This is, as its sits, an inherent disadvantage....the more space you obstruct, the more likely you invite problems down the road. Everyone from coastal property owners, to fishing lobbies, to maritime groups, environmental groups, marine life groups, and on and on and on, have more opportunities to oppose and object given the gargantuan presence of wind turbines being envisioned off our coasts.
Energy production is a burden, no matter what we do. The goal, once again, is density. Confine the impact to the smallest space possible. The bigger the space, the more problems. It's inevitable.
Hey look over here, I can burn green forest pulp and its RENEWABLE. Facade and false. And just in time the Chinese leader while importing record Russian Gas and building massive Nuclear and Going HARD ON COAL calls the western world and says its imperative that we (you) destroy your economy and self sufficiency on unproven and un-scalable and land destroying dissipated energy sourcing.
The West is a dead, a conga line of suck holes all fighting over the new energy "gold rush" for financiers and bankers and the elite to further control society, and the institutions have been permeated with this BS for decades.
www.ncdc.noaa.gov/cag/global/time-series/globe/land_ocean/ytd/7/1880-2021
Why does this keep needing to be said?
Why do climate change supporters always deny that C02 levels have been much higher and climate much hotter in history?
Not saying to not to protect the environment. Protecting the environment is important, but they are focusing on the wrong things. They should be focusing on pollution which has been proven to cause disease, health problems, and death, but that would put the focus more on poorer countries to change. Climate change puts the focus on first world countries to change.
Also, alarmist scientists have not been right on their predictions of mass destruction since the 60s. They are 0 for 50. Nowadays, these doomsayers have more power and voice due to social media and media. They can influence more people and why it has gotten so big. Before people were not inundated 24/7 by their propaganda and would ignore it more.
www.aei.org/carpe-diem/50-years-of-failed-doomsday-eco-pocalyptic-predictions-the-so-called-experts-are-0-50
What I am not ok with, and it sounds like you and I agree on this point as well, is those in power leveraging climate change fear to line their pockets with money. And that isn't a scientific problem that scientists can solve. Its a political problem...and you know how that's going here in the US.....
Also, look at the financial collapse of 2008. When things started to hit the fan, big banks were paying rating companies (Standard & Poors, Moody's, etc) to rate their investment products with top ratings (AAA+) that they were aggressively selling to their customers while at the same time shorting them.
This message brought to you by Brawndo. Brawndo! Mutilate your thirst!
But how good are these big wind turbines at creating energy when need to use electricity to get them moving & have to be scraped every 10 years?
People want to know real figures, not the extorted ones!
“On December 8, GE Renewable Energy signed an agreement with Veolia to recycle its onshore wind turbine blades in the United States. This recycling contract, the first of its kind in the U.S. wind turbine industry, will turn the blades into a raw material for use in cement manufacturing. The result: a 27% reduction in CO2 emissions. This solution, which can be rapidly deployed at scale, increases the environmental benefits of the wind industry.”
jk. But for real....fissionable Nuclear energy is about as close as we can come to "clean energy." Fusion would be great but its stalled out for now. And Nuclear reactors take around 25-30 years to start turning a profit, but for the last 10 or 20 years of their life cycle, they make 100-1000x the profit of gas or coal.
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