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

latimes.com

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

#41

Post by vidarh »

almost_usual wrote: post #26
aaronblohowiak wrote: post #4

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.

Neither is a blanket ban. A precedent of striking down blanket bans and tell them to instead actually set out criteria that would block the specific things that does not address their concerns would be quite good.

E.g. if their concern is the risk ruining views, then ban construction that ruins views, don't ban things you think may ruin views whether or not they actually do, while not banning a near infinite number of things that also might ruin views; if your concern is dust, then require plans and documentation that you're taking sufficient measures to prevent it, don't ban just some of the things that may or may not cause the problem while leaving the door wide open for other projects that would cause the same problem just because people aren't pursuing those other kind of projects right now.

[I keep fantasizing about "acceptance tests" for laws and regulations: Too often laws and regulations are set out based on totally untested hypotheses about their effects, but without any kind of process to review efficacy or side-effects, and with an inherent political cost to revisit an issue; imagine if all laws and regulations had to set out intended goals and define an objective set of criteria to measure if they meet the goals, and would automatically be suspended if they do not have the intended effects or have sufficiently large negative side-effects; it wouldn't stop bad laws, but it would at least document what the actual intended direct effects are]

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

#42

Post by api »

almost_usual wrote: post #26
aaronblohowiak wrote: post #4

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.

Sure it is. NIMBYs are totally out of control. The time is long past for intervention.

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

#43

Post by ngngngng »

almost_usual wrote: post #26
aaronblohowiak wrote: post #4

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.

We set it all the time over here in Utah. Some heavy tourist cities wanted to ban plastic bags at grocery stores. The state swooped in and made it illegal to ban plastic bags in the entire state. The "free market" has to decide if we want them or not.

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

#44

Post by almost_usual »

torpfactory wrote: post #40
zenexer wrote: 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.

Have you ever seen any heavy equipment operate before in a dry area? It churns up dust, this isn’t rocket science guys. It’s so obvious you shouldn’t need evidence.

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

#46

Post by sbov »

torpfactory wrote: post #40
zenexer wrote: 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.

You can have it both ways. Have a section of facts and statistics along with links. And have a section of opinion.

Media companies are heavy on opinion, and shockingly short on full facts. The vast majority of articles never do much work to explain where they get their information - usually its "a study shows this" or "Jane said that" without linking the study or the FULL statement and context in which Jane said what she said.

The thing that is frustrating is because of this we all just read from news sources we agree with. It's impossible to show people how they're wrong if you don't link original sources and I just have to take it on your word that it meant exactly what it meant.

I say this as someone who actually engages with people who disagree with me but with the quality of most news articles it's basically impossible to convince people of something against their current views using them.

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

#49

Post by NotAnEconomist »

zenexer wrote: post #39
OldHand2018 wrote: post #23

I gave this a little bit of thought. I agree with the decision, but not at all for the reason that San Bernardino County cites. We have (and California/Western States especially) drastically reduced per capita water consumption over the past few decades. Almost nobody has noticed. This same approach needs to happen with electricity and other forms of energy. We shouldn't build any net new large-scale generation facil…

It doesn’t really matter how much electricity you consume if it’s coming from the sun. 1J of energy is 1J of energy. If the sun just hits the desert floor, it’ll heat up the earth immediately. If you collect the energy and convert (some of) it to electricity, whatever’s converted successfully won’t heat up the planet immediately, but it’ll end up back in the form of heat eventually. There’s really no benefit to decre…

> There’s really no benefit to decreasing consumption of electricity. There’s no difference between decreasing demand by 1W and increasing solar output by 1W.

This ignores the sunlight that reflects back into space, and if conversion into electricity and slow return to heat actually increases the amount of energy that the planet can effectively absorb.

At some level, it's just a question of if the planet would heat up by painting the deserts black -- and I suspect that the answer is "yes".

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

#50

Post by pirocks »

zenexer wrote: post #39
OldHand2018 wrote: post #23

I gave this a little bit of thought. I agree with the decision, but not at all for the reason that San Bernardino County cites. We have (and California/Western States especially) drastically reduced per capita water consumption over the past few decades. Almost nobody has noticed. This same approach needs to happen with electricity and other forms of energy. We shouldn't build any net new large-scale generation facil…

It doesn’t really matter how much electricity you consume if it’s coming from the sun. 1J of energy is 1J of energy. If the sun just hits the desert floor, it’ll heat up the earth immediately. If you collect the energy and convert (some of) it to electricity, whatever’s converted successfully won’t heat up the planet immediately, but it’ll end up back in the form of heat eventually. There’s really no benefit to decre…

> 1J of energy is 1J of energy. If the sun just hits the desert floor, it’ll heat up the earth immediately. If you collect the energy and convert (some of) it to electricity, whatever’s converted successfully won’t heat up the planet immediately, but it’ll end up back in the form of heat eventually.

This is also true for water. I'm not sure exactly what you're saying.

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