RYA Spring Magazine - 'Star Letter'

[Plevier]

Wind could meet many times world's total power demand by 2030, Stanford researchers say http://news.stanford.edu/news/2012/september/wind-world-demand-091012.html



- W

Have you actually read the paper behind that media department press release that you link to?
All that the paper referenced in the PR - published in 2009 by the way, so maybe what lustyd saw is more up to date, don't know - does is calculate the total wind energy theoretically available and show that (in the view of these two researchers, other researchers think differently) the world's power demands could theoretically be met from it. It makes no claim to consider what is practical.

This stuff in the PR
"Archer and Jacobson showed that 4 million turbines, each operating at a height of 100 meters and producing 5 megawatts, could supply as much as 7.5 terawatts of power – well more than half the world's all-purpose power demand – without significant negative affect on the climate."
does not appear in the referenced paper and is presumably not peer reviewed research, just thoughts post publication.

The paper I linked to is 2012 and a practical consideration not just an academic exercise. As to calling it a "drivel cobbled together by...", have you looked at the list of 9 think tanks involved in it?

I might as well dismiss the Carnegie people as a bunch of loonie greenies, that would contribute as much to the discussion as your invective.

Enough. I wish you would keep things like this to the lounge then I wouldn't see them.

 

[webcraft]

Enough. I wish you would keep things like this to the lounge then I wouldn't see them.

That's rich.

I had no intention of starting a daft anti-environmentalism spat in here. My post was about the suitability or otherwise of the 'Star Letter' in the current RYA members magazine. The drivel and personal attacks on me - to which I have responded - are all from other people who appear to be congenitally incapable of sticking to the subject matter.

No-one asked you to join in. I suggest you put me on 'ignore' or try to control yourself.

- W

 

[Daydream believer]

School - Inverness Royal Academy to 17.5 years
Worked for National Trust for Scotland at Culloden Battlefield - sacked for being English
Aberdeen University to 22 years
2 years labouring on gas pipelines, oil rigs etc and dossing around - to 24 years
1 year Teacher Training college (Aberdeen) to 25 years
2 more years pipeline labouring, van driving, on the rigs and dossing around - to 27 years
4.5 years teaching - to 31 years
5 years manufacturing designer knitwear - to 36 years
1 year on the dole / selling encyclopedias / ducking and diving / furiously tarting up my CV - to 37 years
8 years oilfield downhole survey engineer worldwide - to 45 years - started Webcraft towards the end of this period in 1996
15+ years web design, supply teaching, running IT courses, RYA courses, skippering charters - to 60 years and counting

So - were you an RYA member before 1952 ?

- W

No 1963 so you win

Pity-- your cv sounds like you could be a decent bloke - except or the eco bit!!
I would probably let you buy me pint
Oh well cannot win them all

 

[Plevier]

That's rich.

I had no intention of starting a daft anti-environmentalism spat in here. My post was about the suitability or otherwise of the 'Star Letter' in the current RYA members magazine. The drivel and personal attacks on me - to which I have responded - are all from other people who appear to be congenitally incapable of sticking to the subject matter.

No-one asked you to join in. I suggest you put me on 'ignore' or try to control yourself.

- W

You didn't consider this in your first post
"hysterical climate change denying turbophobic fossil fuel lobbying nonsense I would expect to read in the letters pages of the Mail or the Telegraph"
to be just the teeniest bit provocative then?
It was quite unnecessary to your argument. You could have kept to a sober description of the irrelevance.
Would a hysterical doom laden diatribe from a Grauniad reading wind fanatic have been any more appropriate in the RYA mag?
(Before you have sense of humour failure again, that description is not meant to refer specifically to you.)

 

[webcraft]

have you looked at the list of 9 think tanks involved in it?

The Reason Foundation publishes it, not the others. is funded, in part, by what are known as the "Koch Family Foundations," and David Koch serves as a Reason trustee. The others are all right-wing conservative think tanks, many also with traceable ties to the Koch brothers. Don't you think it peculiar that renewable energy shoudl be split down right/left lines? It makes no sense - unless the right, funded by big business, has another agenda.

And surprise surprise they do - their profits. As with so many other 'right wing libertarian' think tanks Reason has past ties with the tobacco industry and their long fight to delay anti-smoking legislation - a fight which undoubtedly cost many smokers their lives.

Jacob Sullum is the senior editor of the monthly magazine published by the Reason Foundation. The Foundation received at least $10,000 from Philip Morris in 1993. Sullum wrote an article for Forbes Media Critic which was later used in a week-long advertising series by Philip Morris; the report argued that the EPA findings on secondhand smoke were one-sided and represented the "corruption of science by the political crusade against smoking."

Sorry, this type of organisation is corrupt to its heart (like the now in decline 'Heartland' institute). If you choose to take your information from polluted sources like this then you really cannot expect me to take it very seriously.

- W

 

[webcraft]

You didn't consider this in your first post
"hysterical climate change denying turbophobic fossil fuel lobbying nonsense I would expect to read in the letters pages of the Mail or the Telegraph"
to be just the teeniest bit provocative then?
It was quite unnecessary to your argument. You could have kept to a sober description of the irrelevance.
Would a hysterical doom laden diatribe from a Grauniad reading wind fanatic have been any more appropriate in the RYA mag?
(Before you have sense of humour failure again, that description is not meant to refer specifically to you.)

Perhaps a teensy bit provocative.

Finally you have made a valid point. Congratulations, but why did it take you so long to get round to it?

- W

 

[Plevier]

I don't think the issue is split on right/left lines.
Some of the most influential supporters of and lobbyists for renewable energy are commercial outfits cleaning up on the huge investment and subsidies who you would assume to be "right wing".
Some "left wing" environmentalists have conceded that wind can't do it all and we need nuclear as well.
You can't dismiss every report that you disagree with on political grounds. I've pointed you before to Prof David Mackay's very thorough study - or are you suggesting Cambridge University is "corrupt to its heart" as well?

 

[webcraft]

Some "left wing" environmentalists have conceded that wind can't do it all and we need nuclear as well.

Actually I am one of them, have been for some time and have said so several times. Strange how people never seem to hear that.

You can't dismiss every report that you disagree with on political grounds. I've pointed you before to Prof David Mackay's very thorough study - or are you suggesting Cambridge University is "corrupt to its heart" as well?

Now you are being silly. Cambridge University is not a right wing libertaran think tank, neither does it, as far as I know, recieve any funding from the Koch brothers nor does it fund or engage on an institutional basis in climate change denial. Prof. Mackay has some good ideas and is not anti-renewables. I am not aware that I did disagree with his report - if I recall correctly he said that a scenario featuring 40% wind was the most cost-effective and was cheaper than doing nothing.

- W

 

[Tomahawk]

An entertaining diversion. I found that bit pretty hilarious.

- W

You have just demonstrated how much you are out of touch with reality..
You may not be a billionare...or even a millionare.... but you live in a wealthy part of the Uk.. you have enough spare time and money to buy a computer and contribute to this forum... You don't want for anything other than luxeries...

By comparison to most people across the planet... you are in financial heaven...
If you were a Barazilian peasant living in a Pfavella or a Chinese worker living in a dormatory... or even a East Eurpoean working the fields of east Anglia in a work gang.. you would not have time to "care" about the environment...

 

[HoratioHB]

Oh for goodness sake you lot - stop it! If you don't I'll start a thread on Rocnas.

 

[webcraft]

Oh for goodness sake you lot - stop it! If you don't I'll start a thread on Rocnas.

Oh go on - we haven't had one of them for ages

- W

 

[webcraft]

If you were a Barazilian peasant living in a Pfavella or a Chinese worker living in a dormatory... or even a East Eurpoean working the fields of east Anglia in a work gang.. you would not have time to "care" about the environment...

And people in the favelas (where 90% have internet access btw) are stinking rich compared to African bushmen - so what. 'Extremely wealthy' according to you appears to mean anyone with more than two dollars a day to live on. That's rubbish. I am simply 'not poor'. 'Extremely wealthy' means having the money to bend the environment (political or physical) to your wishes.

In fact a lot of extremely poor people do care deeply about the environment - because they live in it and the rich are destroying it. If you missed the video below on Al Jazeera then it really is worth watching - joining Amazonian tribes together via the internet to fight illegal logging:




- W

 

[Heckler]

a) I didn't say there was anything wrong with it

b) In fact I didn't mention carrier bags at all in any shape of form until LustyD brought the subject up

c) I only posted to point out that his statement that there was more plastic in two shirt buttons than in a year's supply of carrier bags was arrant nonsense

d) This thread has been hijacked by people with a complete inability to concentrate on the subject in hand and an overwhelming desire to post made-up factoids about carrier bags and wind turbines or have (yet another) personal swipe at me.

The point of the thread was that the RYA Members magazine had awarded 'letter of the month' to a letter that had virtually nothing to do with boating, that made incorrect and unsupported statements about climate change and that appeared to be actively lobbying for more fossil fuel exploration in the Arctic.

This sort of material is fine in the Lounge, but as far as I am concerned it has no place in our members' magazine. The fact that it was awarded 'Star Letter' status makes it even more bizarre.

If you are not an RYA member or have not read the letter in question then really this thread is nothing to do with you. If however you do know what the thread is about then please try to focus on the issues raised in the original post.


- W

BUT
thats what you think, and because you think it, it doesnt make it right!
Stu

 

[webcraft]

BUT
thats what you think, and because you think it, it doesnt make it right!
Stu

Are you still on about shirt buttons? Or is it carrier bags?

And if I think it, does that make it wrong?

Did you watch the Amazon video?


- W

 

[robertj]

We put the letter in as part of the ongoing debate within the RYA and its membership about the provision of renewable energy and the proliferation of offshore windfarms. Letters in RYA Magazine do not necessarily reflect the views and policies of the RYA or of the staff of the magazine. Indeed, it is a forum for RYA members to express their opinions, especially if they are contrary to the received wisdom of RYA House.

The letter links itself to boating in three specific places: '...encircling our shore with industrial-scaler turbines...', ...an immediate brake on offshore and onshore wind turbines', and '...subsidising offshore wind farms - at a time of national debt austerity management
Windfarms and, by extension, renewable energy and, therefore, the whole climate change debate is very relevant to yachtsmen. The magazine has published letters expressing views at both extremes of the climate change spectrum.

I do agree.
It's a forum and therefore should reflect members views even if they do not go along with mainstream conditioned views.
Good on the RYA who have all members views aired.

 

[webcraft]

I do agree.
It's a forum and therefore should reflect members views even if they do not go along with mainstream conditioned views.
Good on the RYA who have all members views aired.

No, THIS is a forum.

The medium in question is a boating magazine which never has nore than three or four letters in it. It is not a suitable place for wildly off-topic hobby horses to be ridden.

- W

 

[onesea]

No, THIS is a forum.

The medium in question is a boating magazine which never has nore than three or four letters in it. It is not a suitable place for wildly off-topic hobby horses to be ridden.

- W

Sorry did not realize only here we are allowed to post/ publish opposing views to yours on here, get off your high horse.

IMHO you do more damage for the green cause than good posting like you do on here, you just peoples backs up...

 

[webcraft]

Sorry did not realize only here we are allowed to post/ publish opposing views to yours on here, get off your high horse.

IMHO you do more damage for the green cause than good posting like you do on here, you just peoples backs up...

I am arguing about the context of the letter, not the content. One letter difference but a whole world of meaning.

You can't see that simple point so choose to replace rational argument with personal invective.

Ho hum.

- W

 

[dgadee]

I am arguing about the context of the letter, not the content.

If you didn't have problems with the content, you wouldn't be arguing about the context. I haven't read the letter, but you seem very worked up about it.

 

[webcraft]

If you didn't have problems with the content, you wouldn't be arguing about the context. I haven't read the letter, but you seem very worked up about it.

I'm not 'worked up'.

I would say the people who are 'worked up' are the people who have subjected me to personal abuse in the course of this thread while studiously avoiding the subject.



- W