Massive on a personal scale but miniscule compared to the scale of oil production and combustion.
So many people are worried about small scale downsides to technologies that are trying to address truly massive problems.
So many people are worried about small scale downsides to technologies that are trying to address truly massive problems.
But to make that case you'd actually have to do the next step of assessing the relative scales of how much oil gets used in the creation of windmill components compared to an alternative case where the energy is generated with traditional fossil fuel infrastructure.
I feel like if we're going to bring up the fossil fuel inputs into the creation of critical components for windmills, the mandatory next sentence has to be an acknowledgment of the relative scales of consumption in both cases. Otherwise it's a throwaway line with no context and no clear upshot.
If oil inputs were so massive, the cost of a turbine (or by implication the electricity it generates) should be MUCH higher. Just guessing, but probably orders of magnitude higher.
We should switch, even if we don't convert to renewables. (Which we absolutely should)