I was a Panix user for many years. Reliable, competent, flexible, reasonably transparent, and a decent value if you're after the kind of thing they're offering.
My only recommendation would be to stay away from the local panix.* usenet hierarchy. They're frequented by intelligent but remarkably insular folk, and they could easily leave you with a rather poor impression of the service. Just ignore them.
> Chernobyl wasn't a bigger problem because of the personal sacrifice of the thousands of liquidators that cleaned it up.
While slightly clumsy wording on my side, I was trying to say exactly this while trying to encompass the able help of outside experts and agencies that all worked (and still work) to contain this disaster.
>Which is why the danger - even at Chernobyl - is usually severely overstated.
Perhaps by others, but not by me. I was simply saying that the disaster area is still and will likely long remain an unlivable place. I find that an unacceptable risk. You are welcome to disagree.
>Fear tends to suppress rationality, so remember to stick to the facts, and remember that reputable sources can be hard to find for any topic.
This goes both ways. Arguing from the standpoint of reactor designs we're not using and setting arbitrary thresholds for "huge" versus "insane" to decide what's really worthy of our concern and using "modern medicine" as a catchall for improved chances for survival as if it were a solved problem aren't good talking points. The variation in survivorship among the liquidators has as much to do with how much exposure they had working on site. Most of those with larger exposures aren't fighting for healthcare--they're already dead.
Besides, this all stemmed from my original reply about whether there was any evidence for the disaster costing more than one generation. I'll "stick to the facts" by saying it did, it does, and even the very battle against Russian beaucracy for healthcare coverage you mentioned shows that even the care of survivors remain an issue for later generations.
> The point is not how long "temporary" is. It's incredibly hypocritical to complain that nuclear power has some sort of serious "nuclear waste problem" that must have some type of 10,000 year solution while conveniently ignoring the actual problems in other power sources.
Yes, it would be hypocritical if that's what I was doing. Except, instead, I was simply submitting what I felt was an important concern with nuclear energy. Similarly, it's disingenuous to talk of breeder reactor designs and their "tiny" amounts of waste when these remain mostly experimental and undeployed. The original links you posted for some other environmental disasters are very real, otoh.
The folks I know who worked the rigs during the "boom years" came only to earn as much as they could before burn-out finally did them in. Some of them miss the pay, but none of them seem to miss the job.
Your sense of "temporary" is clearly much longer than mine.
No matter, I'm not sure why we're comparing Chernobyl against these and other environmental disasters when they should be lumped together--these are all sins of our species.
170k dead, and millions displaced. And, honestly, I think the outcry would be furious if such a dam disaster occurred today in the USA, rather than China in 1975.
Without sounding like I'm belittling the scale of that disaster, I still think of flood recovery as being relatively "short term" (a decade or two) compared to the aftermath of a nuclear meltdown (decades, possibly hundreds of years). That Chernobyl wasn't(/isn't) a bigger problem is partly due to reasonably effective intervention by an international team. The potential here is frightening enough that I don't think we should need high body counts to weigh the consequences.
If you were born and raised in Chernobyl city or Pripyat, your prospects for having a normal life in those places would be dashed almost beyond comprehension. Maybe these places are not especially significant to you or me, but is this not "evidence" enough?
This is my own objection to nuclear energy. It's arguably very safe. It could be made clean, even the by-products.
But a mistake doesn't cost one generation, it costs many. The odds for an incident are supposed to be ridiculously low, yet I've seen two catastrophic meltdowns just in my lifetime. I don't feel any energy need is worth even risking the rightful inheritance of so many descendants, ...
Except it isn't "15,000X" larger. It's just different. You didn't even acknowledge my second paragraph, and instead decided I'm some shill. If nothing else I say matters to you, let me correct you on this point: I'm actually employed by a wind energy company. Feel free to dismiss what I say, but don't paint my name with baseless suspicion.
Back on topic, ...
Golden Eagles are generally sparse breeders with some of the largest home territories of any bird. A successful pair typically produces one or two chicks. As many as 55-70% of successfully reared offspring don't live through their third year. It takes birds typically six or seven years to reach full maturity, although breeding is possible by their fourth or even third year of life--however, young parents are rarely successful ones.
The point I'm making is that this is not a species with overwhelming numbers, nor the ability to recover readily from steady declines. This is especially true when you speak of Golden Eagle populations typically in terms of hundreds or thousands of pairs (not tens or hundreds of thousands as you might with some more common songbird species). The steady "take" of even just a few percent of the GE population each year should not be conflated as having the same impact to the population as plinking house sparrows with a pellet gun.
I'm sorry it was not convincing, but I'm not sure why you're saying my rebuttal is FUD when the PR page is crafted exactly to muddy the very waters of this topic. You driving by "five or six hundred wind generators" tells me you went by one larger park, or perhaps a handful of small or medium sized parks. If you're in the USA, you've also pinpointed a few locations on the map where you probably live, because there are only a few places presently in the country with that much installed capacity. Yes, I'm saying that even "five or six hundred" is miniscule.
But, seriously, I see too many bad faith owners/operators who really don't give a shit about their effects on wildlife. And I see regulators setting a low bar and showing no teeth when it actually matters. Altamont Pass is a prime example--despite knowing about the "bird problem" there for many years, there has never been a requirement by state or federal regulators for any sort of mitigation at all. I find that honestly a bit disgusting.
Even the Eagle Take Permit's primary tool of "compensatory mitigation" (usually in the form of utility pole retrofitting) does not address where the problem actually occurs. You don't balance wildlife populations like you would an algebra equation--instead, the side subtracted from is simply subtracted, even if you conceivably enable gains elsewhere.
TL;DR. AWEA is a pro-wind lobbying group for wind companies by wind companies, and the “facts” in this link have many problems. Some of my responses below:
> Turbines almost never kill bald eagles.
Better to attribute the ramping of Bald Eagle populations across North America to the ban of DDT and other organochlorines, as well as successful restorative nest hacking in areas where they were extirpated. Windfarms are simply not common enough to be a mitigating factor (yet).
> Golden eagle fatalities are relatively uncommon at wind projects.
This is a clever turn of phrase. One could also say wind projects are also relatively uncommon, which is probably the biggest reason there haven’t been more eagle fatalities. One need to look no further than Altamont Pass, California, to see what happens when you install a windfarm adjacent to the largest known population of nesting Golden Eagle in the world. That's a worst case scenario, of course. But the point is that good siting is pretty much the key to making bird killing a non-problem. As more windfarms are installed, the problem will likely become more common.
With that said, state and federal regulators in the USA have either by omission or intent set very low bars for “voluntary reporting” and mortality monitoring. The lion’s share of the mortality data that exists is strictly “proprietary”, and has never been shared. And most windfarms do practically no monitoring at all apart from the laughingly inadequate pre-construction and post-construction surveys mandated by the USFWS. And why should they? The hostile legal environment surrounding permitting, for example, would make it foolhardy for any company to go out of their way to collect data that could only become a giant liability down the line. Simply put, the absence of data for eagle mortality should not be taken as a sign that there is no eagle mortality occurring.
> The majority of golden eagle deaths occur at older wind farms build in the 1980s, when the relationship between turbines and eagles was not understood. Better-sited, modern turbines are replacing outdated ones and lowering deaths by 80 percent.
They are referring to Altamont Pass, again. Modern turbines are definitely better. Rather than the picket-line or gauntlet of high-speed blenders installed atop hills where birds slope-soar and hunt, modern turbines tend to be spaced much farther apart, greatly reducing the likelihood of a collision. However, reducing incidence of collision does not mean “lowering deaths”--it just means that that each “pass” an eagle makes through a windfarm becomes less dangerous. This distinction is important. In windfarms where choice prey is abundant, hunting eagles will typically make several extended passes through a windfarm each day, making their likelihood of an “encounter” with a turbine quite high over a period of several days or weeks.
They say “lowering deaths by 80 percent”, then backpedal a bit farther down:
> It is estimated that eagle fatalities will be reduced by as much as 80% as those long-standing wind sites replace their shorter, more numerous, faster-rotating old turbines with taller, less numerous, slower-rotating modern turbines that are sited based on more experience.
I was about to say: the only windfarm in the country that’s employed any serious “repowering” effort is Altamont Pass. And the speculated improvement that new turbines are better than the old turbines for “lowering deaths” there has, so far, been inconclusive. It’s not that modern turbines aren’t an improvement, it’s just that this webpage doesn’t yet have any justification to be making this claim!
> Modern turbines have slower-rotating blades, and fewer are needed to generate the same amount of electricity.
Modern turbines’ rate of rotation is indeed slower, but the speeds of the actual blades (especially on the distal half) is actually appreciably faster than smaller bird blenders. In practice, it just means the risk is harder to model, since birds can at times ably pass through the relatively slow rotating part of the blade path near the nacelle but be likely to be literally sliced in two if attempting the same manoeuvrer more toward the end of the blade.
> It also seeks scientifically credible ways to lower and mitigate wind energy’s impacts.
Translation, wind companies are trying to dig up some legit-sounding research on the cheap that backs up what they say. With very few exceptions, the business of wind energy is incompatible with properly funding the research on its impacts. This slack is left to underfunded academics and conservationists, not companies built for the purpose of profit.
> Developers thoroughly evaluate risk to eagles before projects are sited and built. Developers make adjustment to wind farm design, turbine locations and project operations to reduce potential impacts. They abandon the riskiest sites in order to avoid significant impacts.
This is basically BS. It wasn’t until the Duke Energy settlement over its WY wind projects that wind companies starting taking this much more seriously. Ten years ago, it was more normal to find an environmental consulting group who’d be willing to game the EIA and pre- and post-contructions surveys to help you through the federal site permitting process.
> If the risk for eagle collision is high, operators are often required to continuously monitor for any impacts on eagles and mitigate for them should they occur.
This is BS. Under “voluntary reporting” guidelines, who’s to even know? It’s only very recently that regulators have imposed any sorts of requirements like this.
> These permits are similar to take permits available under the Endangered Species Act (ESA), which is the gold standard for wildlife protection.
They are not so similar at all, with the sole exception that permit issuance smacks more of capriciousness by regulators than helping mankind find a sound(er) balance between wildlife and the needs of man.
I could go on, but why bother? This is just a dumb PR page ...
The "intermittency" is an early adoption problem. When you have enough windfarms more uniformly supplying The Grid across the country, this issue will become less of a concern.
What I do see as a big problem is cost. Government subsidies aside, the cost of buying and installing turbines presently is no laughing matter. At scale, solar is rapidly becoming much cheaper to install than wind, which is increasingly becoming reliant on giant 3-5 MW capacity monoliths costing roughly 4-5 million USD a pop--not accounting for installation and maintenance over the long term, and supporting infrastructure and transmission lines to tie the windfarm into The Grid.
Only rarely. Golden Eagles don't tend to breed all that close to human populations centers, where domesticated and feral cats are usually found. Where they do, they tend not to do well--a steady succession of failed nesting attempts is the norm.
This is actually an apples and oranges argument. All birds are not the same. What's also problematic with this argument is that even if "house cats" were the #1 problem, you still need to address both problems when we're talking at this scale--you shouldn't use one to excuse the other.
What's actually true is that "house cats" and wind turbines can be fairly effective killers in their respective niche. Cats predate primarily songbird species. Wind turbines whack relatively low-abundance birds of prey and--in offshore installations--seabirds. With the right circumstances, both can do very substantial harm to bird populations.
Off the cuff, some public examples of his more recent code are contained in ArrayForth, the development environment for the GreenArrays GA144 chip and itself a direct descendant of the original standalone colorForth for PCs: http://www.greenarraychips.com/
But for me, the upside to this story is knowing that it is still fully possible to disappear in these places, which makes me all the more convinced these lands are worth protecting. For many, the subconscious draw of truly wild places is often that how they stand in sure counterpoint to the modality our society has adopted (i.e., so many people go the wilderness to "get away" or keep their mind off things.) Not every square inch of this world needs to be made friendly to humans, though, but I don't think everyone wants to fully accept that even if they normally pay lip service to conservation principles and the important of our national parks and wildlife refuges. So excuse me if I come across as callous, but if people don't bring their phones or come in the least prepared for their "walk in the woods," I'm not sure I quite see a problem that society needs to bend over backwards to solve.
Not Ruby--but pretty all of the code I've seen from Charles H. Moore, the "inventor" of Forth. His code tows that fragile line between self-documentation and brevity. It inspires me, giving me firm reminder that computer code can be Art as much as Science.
Avian taxonomists covering the "tropics" of Central/South America have it bad, as do those in southeast Asia. These are areas where the quantity and diversity of species is awesomely mind-numbing, helped not one wit by subtleties in variety that thoroughly push the biological species concept to its limits. I don't envy these poor souls, ... but as a clarification, the American Ornithological Society didn't technically exist until the end of 2016--when the American Ornithologists' Union and the Cooper Ornithological Society formalized their merger--so the author would have been more correct to name the American Ornithologists' Union, the organization that existed during the cited timeframe.
My only recommendation would be to stay away from the local panix.* usenet hierarchy. They're frequented by intelligent but remarkably insular folk, and they could easily leave you with a rather poor impression of the service. Just ignore them.