From: pingback_bot

2011-05-31 11:00 am (UTC)

Interesting Links for 31-5-2011 andrewducker Userreferenced to your post from Interesting Links for 31-5-2011 saying: [...] Pylons and the Green movement (George Monbiot is...odd) [...] From: elvum

2011-05-31 12:26 pm (UTC)

How about underground wind farms, too? From: pozorvlak

2011-05-31 12:43 pm (UTC)

Your ideas intrigue me, and I wish to subscribe to your newsletter. From: half_of_monty

2011-05-31 01:52 pm (UTC)

There's an underground hydroelectric (pumped storage) plant under Snowdonia somewhere. Incidentally. From: pozorvlak

2011-05-31 02:04 pm (UTC)

Yep, Dinorwig . You can see it from the top of Y Garn or Elidir Fawr. From: gareth_rees

2011-05-31 02:13 pm (UTC)

You're thinking of Dinorwig, which, incidentally, is connected to the grid via underground cables rather than overhead power lines, " because of the outstanding natural beauty of the area " (I would have described it as a post-industrial wasteland myself, but I guess tastes differ). From: pozorvlak

2011-05-31 04:48 pm (UTC)

Much of it is, but there are still some beautiful bits away from the spoil-heaps. From: gareth_rees

2011-05-31 12:46 pm (UTC)

This kind of conflict within the green movement is going to come up more frequently, as global goals (climate change, sea-level rise, energy sustainability, feeding people) conflict with local goals (saving species, preserving historical use and appearance of the countryside). From: pozorvlak

2011-05-31 02:04 pm (UTC)

Excellent point. From: ciphergoth

2011-05-31 01:05 pm (UTC)

The thing that bugs me about it is that if pylons were to turn out to be a great mistake, we could tear them up and relatively little damage would be done. I'd like to think that the modern green movement could be about preventing mistakes that would be harder to reverse than that. From: pozorvlak

2011-05-31 02:06 pm (UTC)

I think the mainstream green movement mostly is, but "environmentalism" is ill-defined and many people can claim to be environmentalists without having much of an overview of the real problems. From: half_of_monty

2011-05-31 02:05 pm (UTC)

Yeah, it is about tactics, rather than content. And I very much admire his attempts to get hold of the actual numbers on the p/kWh that this would actually add to the cost. I'd like to know the answer to that before I attempt to give any opinion on the question.



(Except that, myself, I like wind farms, but find pylons ugly and disturbing -- for that hideous moment when you go past and they all match up all along. I just don't like things outdoors that go in straight lines. I find forests planted in straight lines deeply deeply disturbing too and wonder why the local conservation activists never march against those. Butanyway.)



But I am confused as to why this issue has found the green movement on the back foot (in general, even if the SGP are up to speed on it -- he's mostly talking about the London-based commentariat, no?). Back when I was little I had a picture book about a giant who helped the people build a power station and lay down the pylons. Then the giant confessed that he hated pylons and built a machine to dig them underground. Valuable lessons. From: (Anonymous)

2011-05-31 02:58 pm (UTC)

I've long said Monbiot is an asshat 1. Not so. I object to pylons, but not windfarms. Windfarms are pretty. Pylons are one of the worst things humans have imposed on the countryside.



2. What about the impact of pouring the concrete bases for pylons every few hundred metres or so? Making and shipping all that steel to site and erecting it and so on. Not to mention the hideous visual impact. Oh god pylons are so hideous.



3. I have read that. But pylons aren't maintenance free either. I also think that perhaps the case in JWZ's article is perhaps specific to situations where space is limited for the cabling. If I were laying an underground cable, I'd duct that mother in such a way that I could send a fixit robot down the duct whenever I liked. Someone else is bound to have thought of that. You could even power the bot by induction..



4. Whacking great horrible steel pylons+cables are not in the same league as some field boundaries or whatever.



Still, Monbiot is conflating "I want things to look pretty in places I never go" with "lets do the best thing for the environment". If there's a strong, rational case for erecting pylons, then up the pylons should go. Also Monbiot's an asshat. He manages to piss off people like me, who are - broadly speaking - on his side, so goodness only knows how much he annoys people who's minds he needs to change. No movement needs someone like that on their side.



I sometimes wonder if some kind of above-ground cabling might work? Like an oil pipeline, but with a cable bundle inside the tube. Low visual impact, easy to maintain, etc.



-mat From: danieldwilliam

2011-06-01 09:39 am (UTC)

Re: I've long said Monbiot is an asshat From memory, looking at the National Grid Transmission Charging DCLF model, the monetised cost of building and then maintaining a section of underground cable is about 20 times the cost of over head cables.



This would take the cost of Buely Denny from an estimate of £350m to £7bn.



For the cost of the wiring for a couple of wind farms we could (if we thought it prudent) put 1 or 2 1.6GW nukes in the Central Belt

From: Michael Prior-Jones

2011-05-31 09:14 pm (UTC)

I've rather lost patience with large chunks of the green movement, which seems to be of the opinion that All Progress Is Bad, and that wouldn't we all like to go back to subsistence farming?



More seriously, David MacKay makes it clear in "Without Hot Air" that the amount of energy required to run the UK without significant changes in everyone's lifestyle is so colossal that we cannot do it without either a) doing lots of nuclear b) importing colossal amounts of energy from overseas (say from solar panel farms in the Sahara Desert) or c) constructing so many wind farms, tidal barrages, power lines and so on that the landscape would be irrevocably altered.



Option d), of course, is that postulated in John Christopher's book "The Death of Grass" - the government drops nuclear bombs on all the major conurbations in order to reduce the population to one that the land can support. Can't see anyone arguing for that one. From: pozorvlak

2011-05-31 11:15 pm (UTC)

All Progress Is Bad, and that wouldn't we all like to go back to subsistence farming?



I've yet to meet anyone like that, though that doesn't mean they don't exist. I've met lots who advocate (and practice) community-owned gardens and the like, but growing your own vegetables is hardly a return to universal subsistence farming. In general, I see quite a lot of enthusiasm for technology among Greens. But my experience may be atypical.



I've only read some of "Without Hot Air", though I was (mostly) impressed by what I read. Finishing it is high on my to-do list. While we're on the subject, can you recommend a good book-length treatment of nuclear fission and its use in power generation, the various reactor designs, proliferation and disposal issues?



In general, I agree that the Green movement could and should be more rigorous about running the numbers on its proposals. Though that's true of every political movement, and I think most are worse than us! And it's very difficult if your budget and staffing levels are as low as that of most environmental groups. From: danieldwilliam

2011-06-01 08:23 am (UTC)

If you haven’t already read it the Sustainable Development Commissions – Role of Nuclear in a Low Carbon Economy and the papers around the BERR nuclear white paper have lots of good references to stuff on the technology. From: Michael Prior-Jones

2011-06-01 11:37 am (UTC)

As you may have guessed, I was in a rather cynical mood last night...



More seriously, there's definitely a split between the "conservation" movement, which would like to preserve the countryside as it is / was / might have been in an idealised version of the past, and what might be called "progressive environmentalism" - the idea that technological progress should be harnessed in such a way as to minimise its negative environmental impact, and replace older, more harmful technologies. The Cambridge area attracts a lot of "conservationists", it seems to me.



I can't recommend a nuclear text as such, though I would recommend looking up the Pebble Bed reactor as a reactor design that is intrinsically resistant to coolant failures and has low proliferation issues.





