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California's San Bernardino County restricts construction of solar, wind farms

latimes.com

101–110 of 214 posts

Re: California's San Bernardino County restricts construction of solar, wind farms

#101
post #63
post #54

San Bernardino County is home to the Ivanpah Solar Power Facility [1], which is a mirror-focused solar thermal power plant. It generates a lot of glare and is controversial for its impact on animals. It also took several years to ramp up to its promised output. Solar panels don't have problem with glare, but the landscape of the county has large viewsheds of sloping treeless desert, so any facility will have a large…

IANABotanist, but I wonder if there are plants that do well in sandy soil and shade that could be used as ground cover underneath the panels and keep the dust down.

IANABotanist either, but your real problem isn't finding the right species of ground cover. It's coming up with sufficient water in the Mojave desert.

Re: California's San Bernardino County restricts construction of solar, wind farms

#102

In USA local authority is derived from the state, so ca legislature can wipe out the county laws with some small legislation. Ianal

Probably not a good precedent to set.

I think it's a great precedent, when branches of governments abuse their authority a different power must step in.

Re: California's San Bernardino County restricts construction of solar, wind farms

#103
post #78
post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not how journalism is supposed to work. One of the first lessons in Journalism 101 is if one source says the weather is sunny and another source says it's raining then a competent reporter should look out the window! https://amp.economist.com/democracy-in-america/2012/08/08/th...

And when one source says they think it will rain in 20 days, and another says it they think it will not rain in 20 days?

Then source's credentials, data or other factual bases for the opinion can help the reader/listener/viewer decide (e.g. source1 is a 25y veteran meteorologist, source2's data is based on postings from 4chan).

Without facts and common assumptions, opinions are noise.

Re: California's San Bernardino County restricts construction of solar, wind farms

#104
Lots of commenters ITT who have obviously never actually been to the California desert. Paving the California desert with solar panels would be no less of an environmental tragedy than the clear cutting of the giant redwoods or the flooding of the Hetch Hetchy Valley.

Re: California's San Bernardino County restricts construction of solar, wind farms

#106
post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They’re just reporting what each side is saying without arguing against their claims. They leave it to the reader to make of it what they will. In my personal opinion, this is how reporting should be. Don’t do my thinking for me and don’t lead me in a particular direction. I doubt most people actually believe dust has anything to do with it. They don’t want these infrastructure projects near them, plain and simple.

There are plenty of readers who aren't sophisticated enough to judge for themselves. This is exactly analogous to the vaccine debate. Journalists can and should add context where one side's argument is not supported by evidence.

There is something that rather confuses me about this logic. If somebody is not "sophisticated" enough to come to an informed opinion, are they truly in a better place parroting what they read from a newspaper instead of simply being informed of the choices? There seems to be an increasingly pervasive view that people must have opinions on things they have no clue about. I don't think a society full of opinionated people whose basis of argument stems from 'I read it online' is really in a better place than one where fewer people may have an opinion one way or the other, but those who do tend to be substantially more informed.

You might appeal to the nature of democracy mandating 'your' view, yet I would argue that this view is precisely what's causing a deterioration of our democratic processes. This push towards trying to encourage people who have no basis for taking a stance on issues, to take a stance, waters down the views of the informed and returns us to Socrates critique of uncredentialed democracy. Who ought choose the captain of a ship, everybody including those who've never sailed, or experienced sailors? I think this is mostly self evident to the point of being rhetorical.

In times before the internet people were less inclined to form an opinion on every single issue and so, in practice, we ended up with the self evident choice. But as that has changed, we're now having the butcher vote for Richius as captain because of an opinion he heard from the Town Crier. That crier just happens to be best friends with the son of of one particularly influential Senator. That son's never once sailed in his life, though he thinks 'it sounds like a lot of fun!' Of course that son's name - Richius.

Re: California's San Bernardino County restricts construction of solar, wind farms

#107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Ivanpah Solar Power Facility Blew my mind when I drove past that (on the way to Las Vegas?). I swear it appeared as though the air was incandescing at the top of the tower where all the sun's rays were focused. Def something out of a Sci-Fi film....

You truly don’t understand how blinding it is until you drive past it. I didn’t realize it was in San Bernardino. I saw it driving from Las Vegas to SF. Remember it being near Zzyzx which reminded me of Sonic Youth music video.

Birds literally burst into flames in the air.

Re: California's San Bernardino County restricts construction of solar, wind farms

#108
post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Deserts are often teeming with life. The term refers to rainfall, not population. There are plants and animals equally deserving of protection, and it is worth protecting for the same reason any other biome is. If you look for beauty and balance there you might find it. Covering them with solar panels disrupts the environment and displaces it’s inhabitants. https://www.worldwildlife.org/habitats/deserts

> and it is worth protecting for the same reason any other biome is. Other biomes are worth preserving as they keep this planet habitable. I thought deserts do quite the opposite. https://www.environmentalscience.org/deserts-ecosystems > Even though the plant and animal species that exist in hot deserts are well-adapted to those environments, we know from studies that such organisms are treading a fine line over envi…

San Bernardino County is very different from the Sahara and Namib. Take a quick look at aerial images and this is clear.

Re: California's San Bernardino County restricts construction of solar, wind farms

#109
post #59

Will they accept nuclear reactors though? If you're going to ban these, then offer a non-fossil-fuel alternative that could work.

Their only remaining nuclear generation station is being closed down early because people in California don't like it regardless of its reliable carbon-free energy [1]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diablo_Canyon_Power_Plant#Clos...

Weird, I thought that Wikipedia page used to cite the costs of retrofitting Diablo Canyon's cooling to move away from once through water, but I don't see it there anymore. The history of that page shows scars of manipulating the narrative, but I stil didn't find it. Here's a PDF from PG&E that puts the cost at $2.6B:

https://www.waterboards.ca.gov/water_issues/programs/ocean/c...

These days you can buy a lot of solar, wind, and storage for $2.6B, so I'm not sure that closing the reactor is merely "not liking" nuclear. At this point we get more carbon free energy from solar and storage for the same amount of money, so if one is concerned about carbon it makes more sense to chug it down and build newer cheaper infrastructure.

Re: California's San Bernardino County restricts construction of solar, wind farms

#110
post #52

> “These vast open areas are precious for their natural, historical and recreational qualities. But they are fragile, and no amount of mitigation can counter the damage that industrial-scale renewable energy projects would cause,” Fairchild told the supervisors. “Once destroyed, these landscapes can never be brought back.” Because climate change won't destroy precious fragile landscapes? Okay, here's my deal: you get…

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