Solar Energy Farm Would ‘Suck Up All The Energy From The Sun’

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I have heard some crazy things in my day but this takes the cake. I double checked to make sure this wasn't a post from a satire site but it is indeed a true story. Thanks to cageymaru for the link.

“You’re killing your town,” he said. “All the young people are going to move out.” He said the solar farms would suck up all the energy from the sun and businesses would not come to Woodland.
 
Don't forget about damn wind farms sucking up all the winds. I can't even get a kite aloft nowadays.
 
Ok I can see the land value dropping because of the lack of natural beauty. But sucking up all the energy is a whole new level of stupid.
 
She is a retired Northampton science teacher and is concerned that photosynthesis, which depends upon sunlight, would not happen and would keep the vegetation from growing.
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Glad they gave her some recognition of her background!!!

While I would agree yes solar panels which naturally will block light over a given area, at least partially, this one takes the cake
She also questioned the high number of cancer deaths in the area, saying no one could tell her that solar panels didn’t cause cancer.
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I'm sure a lot of people could tell her that solar panels don't cause cancer.
 
Someone needs a lesson on the size of celestial objects, and our insignificance relative to them.
 
This is why we can't have nice things. Now if someone had just waved a fat check at them to frack the shit out of their backyard, they would have waved them right on by.
 
This lady is all kinds of stupid.

Someone needs to teach this woman the difference between a solar panel and a black hole.
 
the-one1 said:
Don't forget about damn wind farms sucking up all the winds. I can't even get a kite aloft nowadays.
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Wind turbines at least kill birds and are unsettling to look at (they make me feel queasy), solar farms don't do anything.

The young people leaving is the same reason they leave every other podunk town, lack of jobs. Do you know what generates jobs?

Solar farms.

The crazy old koots should sell up to the solar farms and move closer to their younger relatives.
 
Quix said:
Wind turbines at least kill birds and are unsettling to look at (they make me feel queasy), solar farms don't do anything.
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They take up lots of space, which in the case of this town looks to be green forests and meadows.
 
quote-asimov.jpg
 
This reminds me of my U.S. Congressman, Hank Johnson, who worried that Guam would tip over and capsize from overpopulation if too many troops were stationed there. True story.

To call him a fucking idiot would be a terrible insult to fucking idiots.
 
Sadly, the town I am originally from is 10 miles from this area and yes the whole area is this batshit stupid. I moved to Charlotte from there and have never looked back. I go there occasionally for a few of our IT clients in that area, but my brain hurts everytime I go back because I just can't dumb myself that far back down.
 
I'm thinking he meant that the panels would displace green vegetation / make the area unattractive. I know that's not as exciting ...
 
xorbe said:
I'm thinking he meant that the panels would displace green vegetation / make the area unattractive. I know that's not as exciting ...
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Do what Germany does and put them on every rooftop. They made it real easy for people to lease their roofs out to the energy providers and expanded like crazy.
 
Steve said:
I have heard some crazy things in my day but this takes the cake. I double checked to make sure this wasn't a post from a satire site but it is indeed a true story. Thanks to cageymaru for the link.

“You’re killing your town,” he said. “All the young people are going to move out.” He said the solar farms would suck up all the energy from the sun and businesses would not come to Woodland.
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view.php
 
xorbe said:
I'm thinking he meant that the panels would displace green vegetation / make the area unattractive. I know that's not as exciting ...
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It's obvious that was what was said despite the paraphrased quote. The person complained that large solar panels block the sunlight from the grass below which makes patches of brown grass.

Amazing that this is the headline of so many news articles when the town rejected putting another solar farm nearby because of economic reasons.
 
variant said:
Amazing that this is the headline of so many news articles when the town rejected putting another solar farm nearby because of economic reasons.
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Yes, the town had already approved three solar farms earlier but were not getting any benefits from them, either in increased tax revenue, local jobs or reduced electricity costs.
 
xorbe said:
I'm thinking he meant that the panels would displace green vegetation / make the area unattractive. I know that's not as exciting ...
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I guess that makes sense, its just really easily misread, especially since we are expecting to be reading crazy talk.
 
This feels along the lines of the internet is a series of tubes.
 
While the lady sounds like a crazy loon the concept does have merit. Now look at the military base in Tuscon Az that has 147 acres of panels and wants to double. No big deal but they want to do this in many places. Blocking the earth from a large amount of sunlight causing it to cool down could be catastrophic worst case scenario. I know we would haft to cover 1/16th of the earth for this but who knows. Now putting them on every roof is a no brainer.
 
The 'renewable' energy companies always tout the economic benefits but in most cases, only the land owners that get the gizmo installed on their land gain anything. The neighbors get all of the disadvantages and none of the cash. And everyone gets to foot the bill for the tax credits. In a lot of cases, the energy farm also requires large transmission lines to carry the power several hundred miles away to the real customers.

Most jobs from these things are temporary construction jobs as most of these gizmos are highly automated. And the construction jobs are usually done not by locals but by outside contractors.
 
Birds on the wire and bring some frequency grease because the internet is crumbling.
Reading and Comprehension impaired be warned when reading the attached article.
You could only be listening to your own internal dialog when attempting the understand what has been written.
If all else fails try another source of information.
Like Snopes.com
 
AK0tA said:
While the lady sounds like a crazy loon the concept does have merit. Now look at the military base in Tuscon Az that has 147 acres of panels and wants to double. No big deal but they want to do this in many places. Blocking the earth from a large amount of sunlight causing it to cool down could be catastrophic worst case scenario. I know we would haft to cover 1/16th of the earth for this but who knows. Now putting them on every roof is a no brainer.
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The arrays are mounted on poles or frames, not directly on the ground. there's probably as much open land between the panels as there would be around a house in a modern subdivision. If subdivisions aren't cooling the earth, neither would a solar farm.

On a side note: I had proposed building the solar farms on top of open structures that looked like warehouses without the sides. Grow light sensitive crops or house livestock under the canopies. It's pretty much desert or high chaparral around that area. Might as well pull double duty on the land.
 
That's not how this works that not how anything works....
 
What do you expect when 4 in 10 Americans Believe God Created Earth 10,000 Years Ago?? :confused:
 
RadXge said:
What do you expect when 4 in 10 Americans Believe God Created Earth 10,000 Years Ago?? :confused:
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Ah, someone has to somehow bring God into it. Bravo, sir! :rolleyes:

Where di you get those numbers btw?

the-one1 said:
Don't forget about damn wind farms sucking up all the winds. I can't even get a kite aloft nowadays.
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WTF is this?! This is almost as stupid as what she s....... oh.... Oh..... OH!!!
You sir, deserves a cookie. :D
 
Article sure seems poorly written, paraphrased and taken out of context. I wish they had actual recording of the public comments so we could draw our own conclusions.

Sadly, it sounds like the solar companies are taking advantage of cheap land and providing little or no benefits to this poor and destitute headed region. The residents are obviously upset but have little or no recourse and are so poorly educated on how to argue their case, they're just lashing out.
 
Deadly Ramon said:
Actually, they lethally scorch birds who are unlucky enough to fly over them. One in California killed 3,500 birds in its first year.
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There are two kinds of solar farms: concentrated solar power (CSP) and concentrator photovoltaics (CPV). CSP is probably better described as a solar furnace, in which a bunch of mirrors direct the sun at a central point, while CPV is a bunch of solar panels that convert sunlight into electricity.

While I couldn't find a source which stated specifically which kind the three solar farms already around Woodland are, the one that got turned down would have been built by Strata Solar, which appears to only build CPV.

tl;dr: these solar farms don't burn birds.

Having gotten that out of the way, here's some perspective on what kills birds:

Avian Mortality By Energy Source

cwFgRZC.jpg


Source

Not included in graph:
Cell towers and radio towers: 6.8 million
Buildings: between 100 million and 1 billion
Cats: between 1.4 billion and 3.7 billion
 
Spidey329 said:
Do what Germany does and put them on every rooftop. They made it real easy for people to lease their roofs out to the energy providers and expanded like crazy.
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Whats funny is, rooftop solar panels perform a secondary function which most people don't talk about or probably realize... They minimize the amount surface area of the house that is exposed to the sun thus minimizing the amount of cooling a house needs... unless you are depending on that heat to warm up your house. Its not much, but a small amount adds up when you have millions of people doing it. So yeah, rooftop solar panels are the way to go, its space that would otherwise be unused and soaking up sunlight and only adding to cooling costs during warm seasons.

And that crazy teacher claiming things look "brown" where the solar farms are... well thats probably just because the chemicals they are using to prevent vegetative growth (so they dont have to cut the tall weeds so often) are leaking into the groundwater and killing off other vegetation.
 
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