6 ms·

Denmark's population is smaller than New York City by a couple million. The US would need a massive, massive number of windmills.

tiredofcareer 13y ago
He didn't write that wind power doesn't make sense for the United States. He wrote that it doesn't make sense, period. You just put words in his comment, then used the words you invented to dispute me instead. I loathe when people do that. You might argue that contextually, given the comment he was responding to, I should have inferred some kind of Americentric context but he goes on to write "nuclear power is better," so there you have it. You might see that as pedantry, but since I'm an American I'm acutely aware of how Americans like to say "that would never work" when what they actually mean "that would never work for Americans." The United States is enormous and the #1 consumer of electric energy, yes, and we need to plan accordingly. That doesn't mean ideas are bad in the general, it just means things won't work for us due to our size, as you astutely observe. Google could never scale PostgreSQL to handle their index; does that make PostgreSQL silly? You're automatically writing off all future development that you could never possibly know when you dismiss a technology because it doesn't work in one case. I like to use every opportunity I get to point that out, so my fellow Americans will stop doing it and making us look like self-absorbed, spoiled people internationally, an assumption reinforced by our general diplomatic and military behavior on the world stage.
- penny500 13y ago
  Calm down. No one put words into his mouth. You, however, did put words into my mouth, which I find quite astonishing. Those windmills currently cover 1 million people. The world has 7 billion people and growing quickly. You really think windmills are feasible for Brazil, China, England, France, Germany, Russia, India, Pakistan, Vietnam, Iran, Japan, Mexico, Indonesia, South Africa, Spain, Argentina, Turkey, Colombia, Ukraine, or South Korea? (I can list several more if you want.) Get real.
  - tiredofcareer 13y ago
    > Calm down. No one put words into your mouth. I am quite calm, and I never wrote that anybody did. > You, however, did put words into my mouth, which I find quite astonishing. I think you need to look up what "putting words in someone's mouth" means, because I did nothing of the sort. > Those windmills currently cover 1 million people. The world has 7 billion people and growing quickly. You really think windmills are feasible for Brazil, China, England, France, Germany, Russia, India, Pakistan, Japan, Mexico, Indonesia, South Africa, Spain, Argentina, or South Korea? If power consumption had any sort of meaningful relationship with population, I might consider your argument remotely plausible. You're basing your entire argument on the flawed assumption that power consumption scales linearly with population. It doesn't, and you have reading to do[1]. Just as one example, the United States is the world's #1 electric energy consumer, beating both the whole European Union and China, but China has more than quadruple our population. As another example, India's population is quadruple ours, as well, yet about one-quarter our electric energy demand[2]. [1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_energy_consumption http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_energy_consumption [2]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electric_energy_consumption http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electric_energy_consumption
    - penny500 13y ago
      This is completely economically illiterate. China is a developing country. As a result, it uses less electricity than its developed counterparts. As China grows, it will be using much more electricity. Just look at their energy consumption trend since the late 70s. That applies to India, Russia, Indonesia, and any other developing country in growth mode. Oh, and guess what. China passed the USA in energy consumption in 2010.
      - tiredofcareer 13y ago
        > As a result, they use less electricity than its developed counterparts. It's almost like that's valuable information when we're discussing an electricity generation technology. You wrote this without qualification in terms of what you meant: "Those windmills currently cover 1 million people. The world has 7 billion people and growing quickly." I replied to exactly that, and you're calling me economically illiterate for pointing out the economic illiteracy in your original comment? You cannot be that stupid. There is absolutely no way. You have to be a troll. > China passed the USA in energy consumption in 2010. Total energy consumption, notably oil due to the sudden increase in automobiles in China since the 1990s once private citizens became able to own automobiles. China currently builds more automobiles than all of Europe, because demand is absolutely through the roof. So it would make sense that China passed the United States in total energy consumption rather quickly. We're discussing electric energy, remember?
johncarpinelli 13y ago
Actually, the US is described as the Saudi Arabia of wind. Most of the potential is on-shore which has better economics than off-shore also. http://www.pickensplan.com/wind/ http://www.pickensplan.com/wind/
- penny500 13y ago
  Do you have a more objective source?
  - Someone 13y ago
    What about http://www.osti.gov/energycitations/product.biblio.jsp?osti_id=5252760 http://www.osti.gov/energycitations/product.biblio.jsp?osti_... ? "As advances in turbine technology allow areas of moderate wind resource to be developed, more than a tenfold increase in the wind energy potential is possible. These areas, which cover large sections of the Great Plains and are widely distributed throughout many other sections of the country, have the potential of producing more than three times the nation's current electric consumption." (Via http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wind_generation_potential_in_the_United_States http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wind_generation_potential_in_th...)
madmoose 13y ago
The US would require roughly the same amount of windmills per capita as Denmark. (There's a chance that the average Dane uses less energy than the average American, but I can't be bothered to look that up...) The cost per capita in the US would be about the same as in Denmark. Probably less, due to economy of scale.
Someone 13y ago
If 5 million Danes can afford to build X windmills, I don't see how 60-ish times 5 million US citizens can't afford to build 60-ish times X windmills. Population density would be an argument (on average, higher population density means less wind power per capita), but there, New York probably has more land area nearby than Denmark.
- krschultz 13y ago
  Wind density over shallow water is the real reason.
- aj700 13y ago
  Yes, but Danes are quite prepared to pay 25% VAT and up to 62% income tax so that among many other things, The (evil statist) State can afford to buy hugely expensive turbines from Siemens just to avoid giving money to Arabs. And those loaded Norwegians. Americans, apparrently, while in huge numbers, in thrall to Rand/Objectivism and the Kochs, are not.
Dewie 13y ago
It doesn't make much sense to just compare the two countries by raw population numbers. Denmark has a population density of 130/km2 (or 336.7/sq mi), which is obviously vastly less than NYC, but almost 4 times that of the US. If Denmark was a country with enormous amounts of windmills and small pockets of actual humans, this wouldn't be much of a feat. But for a relatively densely populated country, it seems worth noting. Though if you actually need land proportionate in size, and with the geography of Denmark - so flat that the highest point is no more than 171m - to service 300 million people, you might be out of luck (I don't know how much of a role this plays).

tiredofcareer 13y ago

He didn't write that wind power doesn't make sense for the United States. He wrote that it doesn't make sense, period. You just put words in his comment, then used the words you invented to dispute me instead. I loathe when people do that. You might argue that contextually, given the comment he was responding to, I should have inferred some kind of Americentric context but he goes on to write "nuclear power is better," so there you have it. You might see that as pedantry, but since I'm an American I'm acutely aware of how Americans like to say "that would never work" when what they actually mean "that would never work for Americans." The United States is enormous and the #1 consumer of electric energy, yes, and we need to plan accordingly. That doesn't mean ideas are bad in the general, it just means things won't work for us due to our size, as you astutely observe. Google could never scale PostgreSQL to handle their index; does that make PostgreSQL silly? You're automatically writing off all future development that you could never possibly know when you dismiss a technology because it doesn't work in one case. I like to use every opportunity I get to point that out, so my fellow Americans will stop doing it and making us look like self-absorbed, spoiled people internationally, an assumption reinforced by our general diplomatic and military behavior on the world stage.

penny500 13y ago
Calm down. No one put words into his mouth. You, however, did put words into my mouth, which I find quite astonishing. Those windmills currently cover 1 million people. The world has 7 billion people and growing quickly. You really think windmills are feasible for Brazil, China, England, France, Germany, Russia, India, Pakistan, Vietnam, Iran, Japan, Mexico, Indonesia, South Africa, Spain, Argentina, Turkey, Colombia, Ukraine, or South Korea? (I can list several more if you want.) Get real.
- tiredofcareer 13y ago
  > Calm down. No one put words into your mouth. I am quite calm, and I never wrote that anybody did. > You, however, did put words into my mouth, which I find quite astonishing. I think you need to look up what "putting words in someone's mouth" means, because I did nothing of the sort. > Those windmills currently cover 1 million people. The world has 7 billion people and growing quickly. You really think windmills are feasible for Brazil, China, England, France, Germany, Russia, India, Pakistan, Japan, Mexico, Indonesia, South Africa, Spain, Argentina, or South Korea? If power consumption had any sort of meaningful relationship with population, I might consider your argument remotely plausible. You're basing your entire argument on the flawed assumption that power consumption scales linearly with population. It doesn't, and you have reading to do[1]. Just as one example, the United States is the world's #1 electric energy consumer, beating both the whole European Union and China, but China has more than quadruple our population. As another example, India's population is quadruple ours, as well, yet about one-quarter our electric energy demand[2]. [1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_energy_consumption http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_energy_consumption [2]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electric_energy_consumption http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electric_energy_consumption
  - penny500 13y ago
    This is completely economically illiterate. China is a developing country. As a result, it uses less electricity than its developed counterparts. As China grows, it will be using much more electricity. Just look at their energy consumption trend since the late 70s. That applies to India, Russia, Indonesia, and any other developing country in growth mode. Oh, and guess what. China passed the USA in energy consumption in 2010.
    - tiredofcareer 13y ago
      > As a result, they use less electricity than its developed counterparts. It's almost like that's valuable information when we're discussing an electricity generation technology. You wrote this without qualification in terms of what you meant: "Those windmills currently cover 1 million people. The world has 7 billion people and growing quickly." I replied to exactly that, and you're calling me economically illiterate for pointing out the economic illiteracy in your original comment? You cannot be that stupid. There is absolutely no way. You have to be a troll. > China passed the USA in energy consumption in 2010. Total energy consumption, notably oil due to the sudden increase in automobiles in China since the 1990s once private citizens became able to own automobiles. China currently builds more automobiles than all of Europe, because demand is absolutely through the roof. So it would make sense that China passed the United States in total energy consumption rather quickly. We're discussing electric energy, remember?

johncarpinelli 13y ago

Actually, the US is described as the Saudi Arabia of wind. Most of the potential is on-shore which has better economics than off-shore also. http://www.pickensplan.com/wind/ http://www.pickensplan.com/wind/

penny500 13y ago
Do you have a more objective source?
- Someone 13y ago
  What about http://www.osti.gov/energycitations/product.biblio.jsp?osti_id=5252760 http://www.osti.gov/energycitations/product.biblio.jsp?osti_... ? "As advances in turbine technology allow areas of moderate wind resource to be developed, more than a tenfold increase in the wind energy potential is possible. These areas, which cover large sections of the Great Plains and are widely distributed throughout many other sections of the country, have the potential of producing more than three times the nation's current electric consumption." (Via http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wind_generation_potential_in_the_United_States http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wind_generation_potential_in_th...)

madmoose 13y ago

The US would require roughly the same amount of windmills per capita as Denmark. (There's a chance that the average Dane uses less energy than the average American, but I can't be bothered to look that up...) The cost per capita in the US would be about the same as in Denmark. Probably less, due to economy of scale.

Someone 13y ago

If 5 million Danes can afford to build X windmills, I don't see how 60-ish times 5 million US citizens can't afford to build 60-ish times X windmills. Population density would be an argument (on average, higher population density means less wind power per capita), but there, New York probably has more land area nearby than Denmark.

krschultz 13y ago
Wind density over shallow water is the real reason.
aj700 13y ago
Yes, but Danes are quite prepared to pay 25% VAT and up to 62% income tax so that among many other things, The (evil statist) State can afford to buy hugely expensive turbines from Siemens just to avoid giving money to Arabs. And those loaded Norwegians. Americans, apparrently, while in huge numbers, in thrall to Rand/Objectivism and the Kochs, are not.

Dewie 13y ago

It doesn't make much sense to just compare the two countries by raw population numbers. Denmark has a population density of 130/km2 (or 336.7/sq mi), which is obviously vastly less than NYC, but almost 4 times that of the US. If Denmark was a country with enormous amounts of windmills and small pockets of actual humans, this wouldn't be much of a feat. But for a relatively densely populated country, it seems worth noting. Though if you actually need land proportionate in size, and with the geography of Denmark - so flat that the highest point is no more than 171m - to service 300 million people, you might be out of luck (I don't know how much of a role this plays).