Spark wrote:
ruisleipa wrote:
JohnG@lt wrote:
Eh, I can dig up a few articles containing environmentalists bitching and moaning about wind farms disrupting bat migrations if you want. There's always something.
So what if there's always something? Sure why shouldn't bat migration be a factor in deciding where to put up windmills? Certainly doesn't imply the whole idea/tecnology/benefits are wrong does it? What's your point then?
his point is that environmentalists are often very, er, one sided and many can only look at one thing at once. they'll lobby and hassle for wind powers and block coal mines and shit and then complain about wind farms chopping off the odd bird, or solar panels forcing a few turtles to migrate.
he's right about it too...
He's right about it if you consider 'environmentalists' to be in any way one homogenous group. However, like lowing and his banding of Muslims together, or indeed any other very large group, it's a false idea. I consider myself an 'environmentalist' in the sense that I think we should care for the environment (obviously there's more to it than that but surely that's the basic belief). beyond that you have a few billion people, most of whom will have differing ways of understanding how best to achieve that goal. Some think that building wind farms should take into account the local environment, including bat migration routes. Others might think it's more important to get the windmills up any old where. And let's not forget that wind farms are a business like any other which still have a otentially negative effect on the enironment (again, especially locally). Obviously many people, including perhaps galt and you, just consider 'environmentalist' to be some kind of insult, and have some weird hippy tree hugger image in mind. It's just ignorant labelling innit?
By the way although Galt made it sound trivial - possibly because he doesn't know anything about it - the issue of bat migration is important enough for those noted environmentalists the U.S. Geological Survey (
http://www.fort.usgs.gov/BatsWindmills/) and, er, Science Daily (
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/20 … 132107.htm) to report on it. The bat issue is simply one of location, and has nothing to do with the effeectivemess of wind power. So using bat migration as an example of how ridiculous 'environmentalists' are and to rubbish the need for alternative energy, in this case wind power, is itself ridiculous.