Wind Farms
Used to be you had to drive through Wyoming to see "the wind farm thing". Back then I thought it was the most awe-inspiring man made thing I ever saw but also figured they probably fucked up a perfectly good hang gliding ridge. Anyway they're a lot more common nowadays. The one shown is in Texas, and I noticed one in New Mexico and another in Arizona. So I mentioned it while in NY and someone said 'they' wanted to put one in the water off Long Island, and that they were ugly. hm!
Is it ugly? I don't think so, but damn they certainly are big. Absolutely command your attention from a hell of a long way off. The thin shot to the left is a zoom of some of the windmills. The foreground should kinda tell you how far away they are. If not the little green bumps at their base are full grown trees. So these wind farm things are BIG, but not in the way a sprawling factory complex is big. Figure there is actually very little stuff built inside the land used for this purpose. Each tower is connected by a trench which I guess holds the lines to service each tower and the power generated, and a road to allow workers to get to the tower. Other than that, the land area can still be used for whatever it was used for. Grazing or growing corn or whatever.
But big isn't ugly. Is it? I drove past building that were literally falling down. I drove past feed lots that were built maybe 50 years ago and are still working but have zero signs of any maintenance and clearly (to me) qualify as ugly. I drove past abandoned silo things where they did stuff with grains or whatever but don't anymore. And businesses that were abandoned years and years ago. Gas stations and places that seemed like where big giant machinery went to die. Gutted out buildings covered in graffiti and overgrown with vegetation. And fat chicks at gas stations along the way. While some people might be into these things I think most would agree they're ugly. AND serve no purpose.
I think the objection people have is that they're new. I wonder if the same people who call wind farms ugly would have been against factories with smoke stacks marring the horizon? At the time that was progress and how an economy started running. And before that electric line poles. And the railroad. All new at one point, all potentially 'ugly' to some, and all a sign of the times they were in. To me wind farms are different. They are energy production sites that produce no waste other than that which is produced to create and maintain them. They don't make emissions or barrels of waste as a byproduct is what I mean. And they don't consume the land they're on. They use it, but most of it can still serve some other purpose. A nudist colony for example.
Anyway I was into them, am into them, don't understand the "they're ugly" mindset, and needed to post from this computer instead of the laptop to do some troubleshooting on the twitter plugin. So in a minute or two I'll get some info and maybe fix something 
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3 comments
On 10/02/10 @20:00 admin said On 11/27/10 @10:32 my good friend Kimberly said I would much rather see the money spent on windmills spent on playing solar panels on every roof top in the USA all tied back into the grid. Second and third generation solar panels are more efficient with much lower costs than the early panels. Furthermore, the new solar panels can be incorporated into the roof structure of private homes instead of sitting above the roof. The energy source driving solar panels is much more constant (outside of a passing cloud) and the stream of photons hitting a solar panel is very constant on a sunny day. With the panels on roofs all over the US tied into the grid, even if it is cloudy in one area the sun is shinning in another. A nice aspect of solar panels is that they are not mechanical and don't have the mechanical problems that machines do.
Everywhere I go I see rooftops that could be producing electricity but are sitting doing nothing but keeping the rain out. The problem is that a lot more money is to be made off of the taxpayers by sticking up windmills than placing solar panels on rooftops. That is always the problem in the USA, corporate greed buying the lawmakers who in turn screw the taxpayers. However, that is an entirely different rant for another day.
On 12/15/10 @11:28 admin said But still wind power is pretty cool. I had the chance to pass by some very old farms where old towers are being replaced with new ones. The new ones are higher up - maybe double the height - and catch a breeze that isn't present at the lower levels. Also they're benefiting from increasing efficiency as the older models provided a learning opportunity.
Both solar and wind are intermittent, but both serve a useful purpose in renewable energy sources. Wind has a benefit of using very little actual real estate (footprint), thus saving most of the land for it's original or current purpose. Solar has the benefit of being able to go where development has already happened - in towns and so forth.
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