Is This REALLY What Environmentalists Are After?
I have seen this story all over the place, touting some Indian airport that will, gasp, entirely power itself with solar. Look at the picture environmentalists are bragging about. The solar panels to power a few buildings cover perhaps 10x or more of the land taken up by the buildings themselves. They paved paradise and put up ... a solar farm.
Onlooker from Troy:
That's just hideous. And the fact that these morons would applaud this blight on the landscape is testimony to the extent of their delusional paranoia about those evil fossil fuels. Good grief
August 23, 2015, 2:19 pmJW:
So, it shuts down promptly at sunset.
August 23, 2015, 2:48 pmmlhouse:
Sort of like this image. Apparently the environmentalist prefer the world to be ice bound and frozen, rather than lush and hospitable.
http://www.detectingdesign.com/images/AncientIce/Portage%20Glacier%20Melt.jpg
August 23, 2015, 3:37 pmCanvasback:
Notice how the grass in the array is yellow compared to the perimeter? Probably from the use of herbicide to keep the weeds from covering the panels.
August 23, 2015, 3:55 pmrandian:
You will also hear the refrain "paved over by roads" from the anti-car people, which was never true. Wasting 10-50x the land for unreliable solar vs reliable nuclear or coal is a-ok though.
August 23, 2015, 6:52 pmJohn O.:
All the corn, or wheat, or some other crop that could HAVE been grown on that land, but no, its wasted by solar panels that SHOULD have been placed on the roofs of the buildings on the airport proper.
Paradise Valley Unified School District in Phoenix did a solar panel project on number of schools and they put all the panels on the roofs of the buildings and when they needed more space, put them up in the parking lot to give the teachers covered parking. If you're gunna go along with using solar at least do it right.
August 23, 2015, 10:49 pmBram:
Environmentalists are NOT Conservationists!!
From what I've seen, they are the opposite in every practical way. In Vermont, they clear-cut forest and blasted mountain tops to erect raptor-killing windmills that produce meaningless amounts of electricity.
August 24, 2015, 4:38 amfrankania:
John O is right. I have 2 solar-electric systems on 2 of our houses. ON THE ROOF, is where they --are out of sight, harder to steal, and perform very well, and have 25-YEAR warranties.
August 24, 2015, 6:10 amAndrew_M_Garland:
I would like to find an endangered species mouse in that field.
August 24, 2015, 6:24 amJoe:
Notice that this is a standard AGW pic - It doesnt show the glacier retreat by decade, so that you cant tell how much of the glacier retreat was in the 1920's and 1930's.
August 24, 2015, 2:24 pmThe depiction of the Muir Glacier in Glacier national park is a common example. The standard pic compares the glacier in the 1950's with the glacier today, But hiding the amount of glacier retreat that is documented starting circa 1780/1800.
John O.:
"If its worth saving, it must be destroyed first!" That's these people's ridiculous position on the environment with their ridiculous projects to improve the environment.
Then when you point out their doublethink, they double down and call you names because at that point they have no other constructive idea on protecting the environment.
August 24, 2015, 3:28 pmstevewfromford:
That something so expensive and foolish should be done in a country where people are so poor that millions literally starve to death every year shows not only how cruel and heedless people can be but the power and destructiveness of an utterly bad idea.
August 25, 2015, 8:30 pmmarkm:
When the area needed for solar is 10 times the building area, most of the solar panels are not going to be on roofs or parking lots.
August 26, 2015, 6:24 ammarkm:
Actually, the power tapers off all through the afternoon - when the air conditioning loads are highest. So solar power doesn't even match well to buildings that shut down by sunset, which airports do not do.
August 26, 2015, 6:26 amJohn O.:
True but then it becomes a problem of trade offs, how is this trade any better than the one its suppose to replace? That's at least 2 or 3 acres of land wasted of something far more productive than to produce the electricity of the handful of buildings in the background?
August 27, 2015, 2:06 amMillie_Woods:
Good catch.
August 28, 2015, 8:19 pmMillie_Woods:
Heh!
August 28, 2015, 8:21 pmDan:
How do you know crops could have been grown on the land? It may not be viable for that. And farmland is disappearing all over for parking lots and other ugly sprawl, so what's wrong with using some of it for energy production? I think we all can agree we need more. Better than using it to grow corn to make ethanol.
September 1, 2015, 6:07 pmjc collins:
Those panels have to be cleaned regularly. Maybe it's just foot traffic from the small army of squeegee men?
September 13, 2015, 12:42 pm