From the BBC:
More Britons than not regard subsidies for wind power development as a good deal, an opinion poll suggests.
Commissioned by trade body RenewableUK, the Ipsos-Mori poll found that 43% see the UK subsidy as good value for money against 18% who do not. Another survey has also found a big majority in favour of renewable energy.
Remind me to run a Fun Online Poll on this to see what real people think, I suspect that RenewableUK might be just a little bit biased and might have asked leading questions or pre-selected its audience.
Monday 23 April 2012
A likely story...
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14 comments:
So only 18% of the population are sane?
Or was the poll conducted at Renewable UK's hospitality tent at the latest Hot Air Convention. With the other 39% too pissed to answer!
Pre-selection, or individual leading questions are unlikely if it's Ipsos-MORI, they stake their reputation on not doing that kind of blatant trickery.
On the other hand,
1) Are you concerned about your children's future?
2) Do you think environmental pollution is a bad thing?
3) Do you think it's important to defend the environment from polluters?
4) Are you in favour of renewable energy?
5) Do you view the renewable susbsidy as a good thing?
...or a slightly subtler version of the same approach, is highly likely given the client. Get everyone except the hardcore Randians into a green-and-fluffy mindset, then ask questions that reinforce the response for the follow-on.
BB, JB explains not.
JB, you are suspiciously good at this. Do you design leading questions for a living?
Mostly I try and avoid them (carrying out consumer surveys that companies actually use for internal strategy development, rather than for marketing). There may, however, have been one or two projects where a certain kind response was seen as particularly important to the client.
The first time I heard about this technique was as a kid watching Yes Minister, though.
There's talking bollocks. There's talking absolute and complete bollocks. And then there are outright liars with vested interests who support all MMGW/Green Energy/Renewable energy bolllocks.
The old uniform cap is doffed in john b's direction for that Yes Minister pointer.
Now to work out some questions for my bank manager.
some people are taking rather a different angle to the question - but I guess they were asked a different question :)
http://www.clarewind.org.uk/
Lola, there's nowt wrong with all-the year round renewable energy, like hydro and tidal, but I'd agree with you about wind and solar PV. The oil has got to run out one day, after all. Mind you, I think fusion is the ultimate answer.
Bayard/Lola,
Solar is getting cheaper. The big cost is in the cost of producing panels (which currently need "clean rooms"), but a lot of research is going in that is reducing the price. In not too many years, it might make sense for say, people in New Mexico to have power from solar arrays. Fitting them on roofs of houses in the UK right now is completely nuts.
Windmills, on the other hand, are little more than cathedrals to Gaia worshipping, a gesture of penance and concern.
BB far less than that are sane I reckon. Proof? Read on...
There is plenty of energy. Why wait for it to turn into wind before taking and using it.
Total global energy supply 150,000 TW
Total energy demand liberally 15 TW
Er, hello! We have 10,000 times more than we need just from sunshine.
Granted take out the inefficiencies and we have only 1000 times. Oh shit that's just not enough free energy is it?
Start collecting it in the morning and see very very very cheap energy, with much much much higher efficiency within 10 years. Just like all other technology advances, necessity is the mother of invention.
Granted2, this will avail nothing while we still have private property in land. It will only increase land values compared to earnings. Things will have gotten worse in general.
Fucking twats all of us.
So we just cover the entire planet in solar panels...
then replace them every 10 years...
Anyone see a problem with this?
Bueller...
Australia's obviously a better region for solar PV than the UK what with the sun occasionally shining and all, but my mates working in the solar industry here say (both on and off the record) that they'd like to see all subsidies abolished, and believe that it's now fully cost-competitive with conventional energy. But also that it would never have reached that stage without pump-priming subsidies to boost scale.
"So we just cover the entire planet in solar panels..."
Well, no, just 1/1000th of the surface. One third of the world's land surface is desert, just under 10% of the total surface, so we would need to cover 1% of the deserts with solar panels, which, of course, could be the bits where the sun shines the most.
Of course, what we really need in the deserts is not a machine that turns sunshine into electricity, but one that uses sunlight to turn water and carbon dioxide into hydrocarbons, like a leaf does.
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