Solar Farm Rejected For Fear of Too Much Energy Sucking
- Thread starter John Keefer
- Start date
For the sake of my sanity, I am going to jump head first into denial and assume that the idiots who made that statement were in the minority and the reason that this wasn't passed was because of the "falling property value" things. At least, I hope so because the alternative results in a burning feeling which I am assuming is excess stupidity emitted by Mr and Mrs Mann.
That was my thinking. It was basically down to 4 towns council people to vote on the issue, rather than the sun worshipping peasantry, and there might have been quite a legitimate reason to block solar panel construction (lowering land value/loss of green space being the ones that come to mind).MiskWisk said:
I read an interesting piece on the subject by a biologist who is definitely in favour of renewables.
He looked deeper, and found that many of the concerns raised in the town were actually fairly legitimate. Like how there actually is some heavy metal content in the panels that might pose some health risk (more in the place where they were made than where they were planted, really), and that dedicating a big old plot of land to having an opaque roof put over it would serve the plantlife below about as well as just fucking paving it.
And then there's fairly legitimate concerns about just what dedicating a big slice of land to passively absorbing solar energy is likely to do to economic opportunities in town. Not a lot of favours, that's for damn sure.
Honestly, the place they ought to be looking to put solar collectors is on land that's already got stuff on it. Stuff that doesn't mind shade. Buildings, for example. Parking lots. Modern pavement technology does not yet benefit from photosynthesis, after all.
He looked deeper, and found that many of the concerns raised in the town were actually fairly legitimate. Like how there actually is some heavy metal content in the panels that might pose some health risk (more in the place where they were made than where they were planted, really), and that dedicating a big old plot of land to having an opaque roof put over it would serve the plantlife below about as well as just fucking paving it.
And then there's fairly legitimate concerns about just what dedicating a big slice of land to passively absorbing solar energy is likely to do to economic opportunities in town. Not a lot of favours, that's for damn sure.
Honestly, the place they ought to be looking to put solar collectors is on land that's already got stuff on it. Stuff that doesn't mind shade. Buildings, for example. Parking lots. Modern pavement technology does not yet benefit from photosynthesis, after all.
Whelp, then it's another indictment of the education system.John Keefer said:
Sucking energy from the surrounding energy? Do these people still believe in witches?
Or she was a "certified" science teacher at some creationist college, and was basically sporting a self proclaimed degree that actually didn't apply to anything tangible. Wouldn't be the first time something like that's happened.Matthew Lynch said:
Even creation scientists like clean energy. Creation scientists are typically biologists anyways, since solar power doesn't touch the area of cosmology that is the only distinguishing characteristic of creation scientists. There's literally no downside to a solar farm besides the land being taken up. There is no religion or group of real people with any complaints regarding it besides people invested in coal or other energy sources. I mean, occasionally they'll kill birds or something like that depending on if it's a mirror farm or a panel farm. But that's about it.Happyninja42 said:
I'd far more believe that there was some money flowing in this area than that any kind of teacher with any understanding of solar tech would really think that it would be sucking energy out of nearby areas...
Then again, my old high school had a physics teacher that had an English degree. It was so infuriating that I dropped the class after the first week of her bungling through the material and immediately transferred into a physics class in college. The moral of the story being that just because you teach a class in high school doesn't mean you know anything about it. You just know how to read a book and convey information.
I bet these people get a huge sense of accomplishment and a feeling that they've made a difference in the world when they see the words "DO NOT ATTEMPT" flash across their TV screens.
Seriously... Three pages of making fun of these morons and it still doesn't feel like it's enough.
Seriously... Three pages of making fun of these morons and it still doesn't feel like it's enough.
And this is EXACTLY WHY you don't ask "Joe the plumber" and his stupid as shit wife for opinions regarding energy, or environment.
Why the fuck don't we just (may sound a bit cherlish from my vantage point of Denmark, but still, we're having similar issues where politicians think they know better than analysts and engineers) demand that engineers, geologists, analysts, and biologists get to dictate policy like this?!?
Politicians know fuckall about solar-power, or renewable energy at all, so why should they be allowed to make decisions regarding this?!?
EDIT: Also, I'd like to add to the record, that the statements of Mrs Mann, makes me want to smash her head in with a 2x4, but unfortunately, I think the plank would break before her skull.
Why the fuck don't we just (may sound a bit cherlish from my vantage point of Denmark, but still, we're having similar issues where politicians think they know better than analysts and engineers) demand that engineers, geologists, analysts, and biologists get to dictate policy like this?!?
Politicians know fuckall about solar-power, or renewable energy at all, so why should they be allowed to make decisions regarding this?!?
EDIT: Also, I'd like to add to the record, that the statements of Mrs Mann, makes me want to smash her head in with a 2x4, but unfortunately, I think the plank would break before her skull.
I've seen this floated around a lot, and it's actually just being reported sensationally. NC has been under a major drought for years now and the local farming community, with the information that Woodleaf and the surrounding area consists pretty much of farms, is more worried about how the water runoff from even more landclearing and leveling (This is in the piedmont on NC, many hills, many trees.) could affect the local water table. After all, the town already has three solar farms, it's not like they've completely shut out solar energy. They just want to take a break while NCDENR can study the actual affect of what's already there.
Really, it's a sign of bad journalism to report what the imbeciles on the outskirts of logic say. Might as well report that people are scared the local Bigfoot population could be disrupted.
Really, it's a sign of bad journalism to report what the imbeciles on the outskirts of logic say. Might as well report that people are scared the local Bigfoot population could be disrupted.
The only people whose arguments had any merit were the ones who felt their property value would decrease, that I understand. These other people, well they're above and beyond stupid. Hopefully, this article getting around will force them to reconsider because they're coming off as such idiots.
And now for a response from someone who didn't see instant clickbait...
http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/428534/media-mock-north-carolina-town-over-fear-sucking-suns-energy
So the real reason it was rejected was over concerns of property value and the loss of agricultural land, both very real and very rational concerns. But because 2 idiots spoke, it's apparently enough for the media to write off hundreds of people.
Maybe we should stop using HuffPo as a source. They're about as accurate as a tabloid.
http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/428534/media-mock-north-carolina-town-over-fear-sucking-suns-energy
So the real reason it was rejected was over concerns of property value and the loss of agricultural land, both very real and very rational concerns. But because 2 idiots spoke, it's apparently enough for the media to write off hundreds of people.
Maybe we should stop using HuffPo as a source. They're about as accurate as a tabloid.
Ah, so one guy said it during a meeting and the reporter claimed that a bug of ignorant hillbillies blocked it when they really just didn't want to rezone to allow for the solar panels.LordLundar said:
However, I'm not seeing where you get a "loss of agricultural land" as part of the reason. Property value, yes, but agricultural land no. Only in as much as the lost of agricultural land contributes to property value.
At least someone did some digging. It's unfortunate that there isn't any reporting on the council's comments to actually know for sure, but that's probably because everyone's getting busy to tear into the ignorant comments from the townsfolk.TheSYLOH said:
Hey, maybe the town's been reading something as rigorous as the Escapist's Science section? We can all laugh at how these people are so wrong about solar power, but take a gander at how wrong the Escapist is about Nuclear Fusion. There's errors there at least on a scale with sucking up all the energy, and causing cancer. Then there's how wrong they are about railguns, genetics, just to name a few more.
There's an awful lot of people calling the townsfolk stupid, and maybe they're right. They're certainly ignorant. But they're doing it to chime in on a site which routinely misleads its readers about science. We can joke about creationist schools all we like, but here they don't twist science for religion, they do it for clicks. I've seen some of these people reading the other articles uncritically, I've seen the comments, where people have been misled and become ignorant, and they haven't checked it. Your comment has gone unnoticed by most, because they're just reading the article, much like how the Solar companies comments about the safety of solar power went ignored by the townsfolk.
Plus, they only put a moratorium on the building of more. To support your suggestion more, if the council believed that they caused cancer, sucked up the sunlight, destroyed businesses, etc, then surely they'd be trying to shut down the others.
This is poor editorial work, and poor reporting. Don't just report on other people's reports. Use primary sources. Contact those you are quoting for comment. Before running the headline "Solar farm rejected for fear of too much energy sucking" contact the council and ask for their reasoning, rather than just assuming it. There isn't a quote from the council members suggesting this was their reasoning, only the townsfolk. Who are wrong and very ignorant, sure. Throw those stones from your glass houses. If we judge everywhere by their most ignorant inhabitants, I'd hate to see what we think of ourselves, there is some dark stuff on this site. If we were to judge science literacy by the content of this site, I'm sorry, but from where I'm sitting we can't claim to be any more informed than the townsfolk, and that's on us.
Not that I think that National Review has the wrong end of the stick here, they're speculating the same way I am, but they're hardly a more credible source. They don't have a good reputation at all. And they also didn't contact the town, the council, for comment, just turned it into a chance to do a "mainstream media" bit with a conservative spin. That's not good journalism. This is clickbait, that's political polemic. No-one has bothered to follow the story up, because they're all interested in spinning it. National Review spins it while calling out everyone else for spinning it.LordLundar said:
Basic journalism says you need sources for what you say. High school essay writing says you need it. You're a journalist, make a call to the council. It's not really that hard. None of these people did this. We're talking Editors in Chief, we're talking reporters, we're talking bloggers with delusions of grandeur, none of them could be arsed to do journalism.
It's more than 2 people complaining, incidentally. Which the National Review article gets emphatically wrong. They emphatically state that it's one person, and put their foot all the way in their mouth, and back out their ass. Because they also used Huffington Post as a source, because they suck just as hard.
If you want a source with any accuracy, a more local publication actually sums up the whole thing: http://www.roanoke-chowannewsherald.com/2015/12/08/woodland-rejects-solar-farm/