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American solar farms

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Re: American solar farms

#261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had to google it and apparently the complaints are: Ruin the view, Lower property values, Habitat destruction, Noise from inverter fans

> Noise from inverter fans Not just the fans. The transformers, inductors, chokes, capacitors, etc can get extremely noisy as well. I have to plug my ears when I walk by the switchgear at my local Walmart's EV install because it is so loud. Any system that relies on high rate of change of current over time is prone to these issues. Look at the prevalence of coil whine in gaming PCs and workstations now. The level of…

Inverter coil whine is high-pitched, so it gets attenuated nearly instantly. Fan noise gets absorbed into the background just as the wind noise does.

I was on many solar farms, and the only ones that I could hear from the distance were the ones that had classic substations nearby. The 60Hz transformer sound can be heard for quite a distance.

Re: American solar farms

#264
post #98
post #36

I’ve seen some of the ones out in far west Texas. They’re amazing, you see this blue shimmer on the horizon that looks about the size of a lake and then when you eventually get close enough it turns out to be a huge solar array. There’s some smaller ones just south of dfw that I drive by when going hiking at a state park my wife likes. Still impressive but nothing like the giant farms in west Texas.

Texas also has a lot of wind power. I was driving though at night one time and there were turbines on either side of the road as far as could be seen. Thing is, they are tall so they have those red airplane warning lights on top - which would all flash at exactly the same time. A rather trippy thing to see.

Yeah, western Kansas is like that now too. A whole lot of wheat fields, wind turbines, and nothin' else.

Re: American solar farms

#265
post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can understand not wanting to live close to wind turbines but I don't understand the issue with living next to a solar farm since the panels just sit there silently.

The only problem that I kind of understand are the huge fences surrounding the farms. Because copper thefts are a big problem for them, it is quite common to have 3m high fences all around, which is obviously more gated community like than a monoculture field. And of course, it depends on how the farm is run. Solar farms can be ecological heaven if managed properly, unless growing weeds are just killed of with round-…

I filmed a solar farm the other month for an energy company and they had sheep amongst the panels keeping the grass down. The main infrastructure, like you said, was positioned centrally so there was no sound at all at the perimeter.

Re: American solar farms

#266
post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure! It's pretty trivial. I'm going to assume at least a high-school knowledge of math, since I'm assuming you're unfamiliar with terms like bimodal distribution, categorical data, et cetera. If you're interested in learning more, this kind of thing generally falls under statistics. So this boils down to the question of essentially "if everything is on a spectrum, how can we categorize it?" and the answer basically…

[flagged]

Sure! I think I understand what's going on here. I think we're having a few different misunderstandings, let me see if I can describe them.

By "human sex" I'm referring to everything that developmentally contributes to a human sexual genotype or phenotype. Here is a fun textbook example of all the things that go into human sexual development: https://open.lib.umn.edu/evosex/chapter/8-7-variations-in-hu...

From all these variables alone, we know there is some kind of spectrum to human sexual development. When we say something like "binary" that specifically means a discrete data type: true or false (nothing in between). Binary explicitly means there are two options and nothing else (discrete). For example, humans and butterflies, there's zero half-human half-butterfly hybrid. They're discrete. Most things in real life, however, are some form of continuous spectrum, and that's where "spectrum" comes is. We already know based on how many variables go into human sexuality that it's some form of spectrum for an individual, at the very, very least: male, some kind of intersex, or female. It's not binary (two options) for individuals.

(NOTE: also this is just for humans. As I mentioned, "female" and "male" aren't even that useful in a large part of life on Earth. There's a type of sea slug that essentially has penis battles to determine who donates which gamete, essentially, since every individual is capable of both at all times. As I mentioned before, all clownfish are hermaphrodites, they can switch if they need to. Many frogs and lizards can be too. That's why "female" and "male" are such abstract concepts, trying to describe generalized reproduction can be pretty gnarly once you get into any kind of detail, so no wonder the terms are fairly overloaded).

As I mentioned before, some of the factors that go into human sexual development include (1) number of chromosomes, (2) number of X's and Y's, (3) SRY gene on the Y chromosome, if present, (4) human sex hormones including the many forms of estrogen, testosterone, androgens etc, (for this discussion, probably not hormones like FSH, LH etc), (5) the receptors for these hormones. All of these things (and more) go into human sexual development. But you might have already noticed an issue with it: for example, all humans, regardless of sexual phenotype generally have both testosterone and androgens ("male" hormones) and various forms of estrogen ("female" hormones), so how does that work? How can we "measure" "sex"? What even is "sex"?

There's a few different abstractions at play. There's general abstractions like "female" and "male," which have multiple meanings. When we're making big generalizations about reproduction, it's helpful to talk about two general types of roles for mammals. For example, the male and female gametes for mammals are ova and sperm. We can also use it to talk about male and female hormones, estrogen, androgens, progesterone, FSH, LH, testosterone, to name a few. These are useful for talking about general reproductive abstractions, but each individual has aspects from both of these abstractions (estrogen, testosterone, androgens), so it's not a one-to-one mapping. You can't say "oh, human sexuality is determined by chromosomes," because it's not: XXY, XYY, and SRY gene all exist. You can't say "human sexuality is completely based on gametes" because hermaphrodites can have both ova and sperm, so are they male or female? That kind of thing. There's no "one determining" factor for human biological sex. Multiple things go into it, and therefore it's some kind of spectrum based on all the factors that go in.

When we talk about gender this becomes even more readily apparent. There's no "one determining factor" for what makes a woman or a man. It can't be chromosomes, SRY, hormones, gametes, or any one thing alone. We also know that it can't purely be about reproduction: infertile or sterile men and women can still be considered men and women. And this is just English, there are plenty of other languages that have had and have always had more than two main gender roles etc. So what on earth is it? The truth is, it's literally just an arbitrary line in the sand that we're trying to come to some form of consensus on. In general, we've found the most respectful way to do this, is to treat everyone as fully functional humans and have them self-report based on their language, culture, experience et cetera. Language and words are constantly changing and updating with our understanding, so whatever we decide on today, might change in the future too and that doesn't matter either.

Does that help the discussion at all? This is all fairly standard, there are quite a few textbooks on it, including the one I linked if you're interested.

Re: American solar farms

#267

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think every engineer knows that all things come with trade-offs. A great engineer, however, is able to readily admit when one option among others has a far, far greater set of costs than another, for the exact same benefit. And if said engineer can't decide (for claim of ignorance), they mature to learn that the experience and knowledge of others is the best source for understanding the trade-offs involved to make…

Interesting that just sharing a link of the trade-offs got a bunch of down votes when I didn't even take a side. Maybe it was a misunderstanding of my intentions to purely share information based on your reply. If you don't mind, please help me understand. Did it come across as anti-solar in general? That's how I'm interpreting your reply. The article, which I wonder if anyone read, argues local environmental concern…

I didn't downvote or anything, but I read the article a few hours ago and felt the information in that article is only political. If we're talking about destruction, ecological or of heritage, your choice not in whether it happens, but how much and where. Consequently, I feel that the stated reasons of political action groups are usually myopic at best. But really, I always suspect they're speaking in bad faith.

If you really care about animals, plants, or archeology, you're probably not a fan of coal or natural gas, which are obviously destructive of geology and habitats, and that's _without_ getting into more nebulous and catastrophic climate stuff.

Re: American solar farms

#268

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seeing them feels dystopian. I actually don't think that opinion is so fringe. There were lots of environmental protesters when the solar farm near us went up. The valley was rich in low shrubs and wildlife, and even some forest was leveled. A multi billion dollar energy company destroyed it to pick up their share of the free government funding while powering less than 2% of homes. Sure, it's better than a gas refine…

What do you propose instead?

Get rid of the ethanol mandate. Replace those acres of corn with solar panels and an understory of native plants. One likely biased source I read a while back said that about 1/3 of this land would be sufficient to power all the cars and trucks in the US if they were all EVs.

Re: American solar farms

#269

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think every engineer knows that all things come with trade-offs. A great engineer, however, is able to readily admit when one option among others has a far, far greater set of costs than another, for the exact same benefit. And if said engineer can't decide (for claim of ignorance), they mature to learn that the experience and knowledge of others is the best source for understanding the trade-offs involved to make…

Interesting that just sharing a link of the trade-offs got a bunch of down votes when I didn't even take a side. Maybe it was a misunderstanding of my intentions to purely share information based on your reply. If you don't mind, please help me understand. Did it come across as anti-solar in general? That's how I'm interpreting your reply. The article, which I wonder if anyone read, argues local environmental concern…

"When I didn't even take a side" sea-lioning and worse is so prevalent with regards to solar, wind, and climate change that frankly if you are going to link dump without much of your own input, it's going to be written off as disingenuous.

So many people constantly talk about the costs of solar. If that is all you are contributing to the discussion, you aren't adding much new or interesting, in my opinion.

As an aside, I also just generally hate when commentors link to stuff with nothing else. It feels smug. Start the discussion you want to spark with honesty and earnest thoughts. Those who "just ask questions" engage in this same tactic to derail topics and pretend like they didn't take any side. Just "linking to useful information". What's useful about it? Highlight something to start discussion.

I am not claiming you are doing these things. But surely you are aware of and can appreciate the tactics of those that spread misinformation.

Re: American solar farms

#270

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interesting that just sharing a link of the trade-offs got a bunch of down votes when I didn't even take a side. Maybe it was a misunderstanding of my intentions to purely share information based on your reply. If you don't mind, please help me understand. Did it come across as anti-solar in general? That's how I'm interpreting your reply. The article, which I wonder if anyone read, argues local environmental concern…

"When I didn't even take a side" sea-lioning and worse is so prevalent with regards to solar, wind, and climate change that frankly if you are going to link dump without much of your own input, it's going to be written off as disingenuous. So many people constantly talk about the costs of solar. If that is all you are contributing to the discussion, you aren't adding much new or interesting, in my opinion. As an asid…

That's fair & I get your point. Thank you. The parent link was really light on details. My link gave some opposition reasons but I could have summed them up or dug into them better. Since it's a very local issue, I assumed getting real info would be challenging without digging into local government minutes.

While I was just trying to help understand some opposing reasons, you're right that it didn't add much to the overall discussion.

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