31–40 of 68 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Many / most plants need some darkness to keep internal clocks properly functioning. So maybe the effective day could be extended a bit, but likely not a whole lot; IDK if the increase in growth would be worth the LEDs.
Here's some cool info about extended sunlight crops. https://www.amusingplanet.com/2015/10/alaskas-giant-vegetabl...
Alaska outperforming warmer regions due to longer days is not something I had expected.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The root cause of the problem was plainly mentioned: 8 billion people and counting. Solutions to problems ought to address root causes.
There are barely more children in the world today than twenty years ago. Increases in population are down to not dying young. In almost all regions of the world people are having fewer children and trending towards lower than replacement levels as the necessity to having enough children that survive to adulthood and can care for you in old age disappears. These are hard facts. Given these facts the suggestion that we…
No it doesn't and I am tired of the dishonesty of that claim, which is nothing more than an ad hominem attack aimed at shutting down discussion.
Please refrain from this type of behaviour.
> There are barely more children in the world today than twenty years ago.
Nice tidbit but irrelevant to the point, which is population growth.
Anyway, there clearly is no discussion possible, so good day.
Anything that involves constructing precarious fragile structures over large areas of land is not a practical solution. Imagine wanting to harvest your crops and you can’t use any machinery because of all the structures. Or imagine there is a slight wind and it rips up 200k in solar panels.
https://www.pv-magazine.com/2022/11/16/baywa-velux-sign-euro...
> "According to BayWa, the installation will have rows of panels spaced more widely than usual, to allow passage of agricultural machinery and the cultivation of cereals. In addition, the rainwater that falls on the modules will be collected and used for irrigation."
It seems an odd idea when we have so many roofs, car parks, roads, and other things that don't already use the sun we could cover in solar panels.
And while tessellating every surface with little panels gets more energy than not (and is the only option if that's all the land you own, like people adding panels to their own houses), it's dramatically easier and cheaper to lay out 1MW of panels in one 100m X 100m square, than 1000 hetrogenous 1kW panels mishmashed over dozens or hundreds of buildings.
For large buildings, then, yes, it's a pretty clear win. The IKEAs in London have large arrays on their roofs, for example.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
If the top 1% would reduce their lifestyle to that of the next 10%, a lot would be gained right away. Private jets are evil.
You're thinking of the upper 0.01%. Global upper 1% starts at about $1M nw. Private jets are only really affordable at 9 figures.
This doesn't eliminate the need for either storage of PV power for use at night, or use of an alternative energy source (gas-powered turbines with rapid response times, etc.) at night, but clearly this could massively reduce demand for natural gas power during daylight hours.
Of course, the investors in private utilities tend to also invest in natural gas companies, and they'd be losing revenue to the farmers and solar panel owners. This is certainly the case in California, and seems to account for the recent decision to limit net metering for solar PV producers who feed power into the grid. Note that this happened in a state where the political leadership makes lots of noises about supporting renewable energy and 'fighting climate change'.
Here is my take as someone that is involved in farming in the Midwest. Both row crops and livestock: Taking out productive land to put in a solar farm is not practical. There are loads of acres that would be a perfect fit such as pasture land no longer being utilized for grazing. Or if there is pasture being used for grazing with sheep/goats would be another good place for these to be placed. Another suggestion would…
If people in rural areas NIMBY away solar power in these areas, more than likely the land is just going to have some exurban building plopped down on it.
Also, I don't get the whole thing where people act like farmland is sacred and good for the environment. I like food, I understand the value of farms, but farmland is typically pretty awful for the surrounding environment.
The area I live in Ohio has a whole handful of lakes, and any of them that are surrounded by farmland (and to a certain extent exurbs and suburbs) are incredibly polluted, to the point where you have to look at "forecasts" on ODNR's website to see if the water is healthy to swim in.
0: https://www.nass.usda.gov/Publications/AgCensus/2017/Full_Re... (check table 1 for historical data)
Then we can cover large chunks of the desert, lots of it is not really all that productive. I know it is an interesting environment and has some unusual animals to fill the weird niches, so we shouldn’t just totally cover it. But since we’ve already signed up for more deserts via climate change, surely we can panel-up some.