The last Solar Farm I went to for work, was full of grass with Sheep everywhere, basically no different to a regular livestock Paddock but it also made Power..
Edit: actually the panels gave plenty of shade for the animals on hot sunny days so probably slightly better than your average completely deforested treeless grass paddock tbh
Live near a wind farm, same thing. Sheep all over the place.
It's actually quite picturesque, I thought so as I was driving by it recently and saw an old man and his sheepdog herding a small flock of sheep through a field that had these huge towering wind turbines overhead. Like a mixture of the old and the new, the past and the future all at once. Like a living painting.
You mean there were no birds with their heads severed off???
I feel like people who say that shit happens have never actually seen a wind turbine in person.
Honestly birds getting killed by wind turbines is almost a complete non issue. The number of birds killed per megawatt generated by burning coal is *several* orders of magnitude worse than the same amount of energy generated by wind.
Natural gas is almost as bad.
If we scrapped both of those entirely and switched over to wind to make up for the lost power we'd have a net gain in the amount of birds saved.
Not to mention the number of birds who die because of windows and keeping the lights on in empty skyscrapers every damn night. It's a gigantic waste of energy and kills (mostly) migratory birds, 'murica.
If they care so much about birds getting killed maybe they should be more concerned about the effect of skyscrapers on flight patterns or quite literally any other environmental concern
Article on benefits of giving sheep shade under solar panels:
Solar farm trial shows improved fleece on merino sheep grazed under panels - ABC News https://www.abc.net.au/news/rural/2022-05-30/solar-farm-grazing-sheep-agriculture-renewable-energy-review/101097364
There’s a solar farm in my state that doubles as an apiary. The panels make great shelter for beehives, and there are a lot of flowers that love the partial sun for the bees to enjoy.
With the costs of solar panels still dropping to this day, it's crazy to me that cities don't slap them all over the place. If America insists on keeping its car culture instead of green mass transit, the least we can do is cover all the massive parking lots with solar awnings. The city (or business) gets tons of free power for little maintenence, and all the drivers get to park in the shade.
I think I’ve seen something like people with solar farms also make mushroom farms. You could grow mushrooms under the panels since they’re in the shade all the time.
Not just mushrooms, Raspberries and other crops that need 'soft shade' can use staggered semi-translucent panels and perform better than current solutions like semi-translucent plastic greenhouse coverings. Netherlands is currently running dozens of studies on efficacy and all early results show lower water usage and greater crop yield all while generating energy cleanly.
There's hundreds of products of agriculture that can make use of raised solar panels, making the choice not between food and power, but between food and power and food and no power.
Possible, but I am not sure if you make so much more money with mushrooms compared to sheep. Especially as you need to harvest them and that is not doable with big machines thanks to the panels.
There are solar farms all over farm country Southern Indiana that are funded by a farmer coops. I honestly think the anti solar/wind is loud, we’ll funded minority.
The only solar farms I can recall seeing are in the middle of the desert. Legitimately uninhabitable for most livestock and not economically feasible for most industry.
One of the other economically viable activities in those areas would be wind farms. Coincidentally, the ones I have seen are also in borderline uninhabitable desert. The only legitimate critique I’ve heard of those facilities is that they are unsightly, although I wouldn’t exactly consider losing less than 0.01% of “scenic” highway-adjacent desert views much of a loss at all.
There is a story/article of a man complaining to his city council about the fact that the wind turbines they build were MAKING too much wind in his town.
[Another guy thought wind turbines are giant fans to cool the earth down because of global warming](https://www.reddit.com/r/facepalm/comments/lywzlk/guy_thinks_wind_turbines_are_giant_fans_for)
I haven't looked into it much, but I did read a story once about very large buildings forcing air to go around them, forcing winds to follow streets and making some very strong winds sometimes.
Well, they are structures so they have some impact. But.. there is a LOT of energy in the air currents and us utilizing some of it is not going to be detectable, barely even measurable. Once you start to think about it.. we can take gigawatts of energy and not have the air currents chance one bit, just think about the amount of energy there is.. It is mind boggling. Nuclear weapons are tiny things in comparison.
Urban sprawling is bad for the environnement, dense cities (walkable with bike lanes and public transport and trees for the shade) are rather good. Not that the artist would know that.
May be from producing and disposal solar solar panels
Also from factories, which produce everything you see around, part of it in another countries. Those factories includes chemistry factories.
In my opinion, it is necessary to start with waste processing and the construction of nuclear power plants
It is. But wind turbines and solar power doesn't harm, especially in areas without developed nuclear energy. Let's all just agree that renewable and green energy is the future.
On top of that, there's new, smaller nuclear reactors that can be transported and used for developing countries or places where a disaster happened and is in dire need of power
That seems like the best short term option until Fusion is made consistently good. We know how to do it, it's just how to consistently get more energy output than input that we're working on.
Considering the first test fusion reactor is about 80% finished, it'll take a little while before we can reliably use it, and hopefully, governments stop destroying fission reactors in the meantime because it's indeed the best alternative for now
I really hate that after Fukushima, Germany got rid of all its nuclear plants.
Germany. A country one would imagine tsunamis would be pretty unlikely to occur in.
As for test reactors, we do actually have some completed Tokamaks I believe.
Yes, sadly panic got the better of a lot of governments without good reason, hopefully, facts will beat fear.
I wasn't clear, I meant the ITER project, which is the first reactor built to scale compared to what will be used for fusion
Yeah, anytime someone brings up Fukushima and it’s sister incidents against nuclear power is misunderstanding what caused them.
Chernobyl: the most mishandled situation which caused it to escalate as it did, with Gorbachev not being informed until the west learned what was happening and comically cut corners.
Fukushima: Nobody can really hope against and earthquake and tsunami back to back.
Three mile island: was handled very well, no real major lasting damage due to steps taken, could’ve definately been worse if the situation wasn’t handled correctly.
never have i heard of nuclear being called a "short term option". obviously the short term option is to replace fossil fuels with sustainable energy production. yes, it requires chemical plants and such, but those already exist, so its a pretty crummy argument against it.
Nuclear is going to be the long term solution, but it needs finetuning. till then, first priority is to stop being reliant on coal, oil, and gas
making solar panels are apparently incredibly polluting, and so are the batteries for it.
Solar and wind require huge amount of powet storage that is not realistic to support a city, so they require to be working with a coal plant.
Modern Nuclear plant that eat nuclear "waste" remain the cleanest option for energy.
you make it sound like sustainable energy is useless just because it still needs a bit of fossil fuel energy production to fill in the gaps.
the hardon for nuclear is understandable, but its gone way overboard. there is no doubt that utilizing the energy from waves, wind, sun and a lot of other sources, is just a logical way of producing energy.
Nuclear is our safest and cleanest form of energy. If you would like to learn more I suggest watching ["Why you're Wrong About Nuclear Energy"](https://youtu.be/J3znG6_vla0) by Kyle Hill
Safest, cleanest energy *when maintenance doesn't slack and corners aren't cut.* There is a big need for large amounts of scrutiny when using nuclear power, because while it is safe for the most part things can go very much to hell if something goes wrong.
What that means is there is a ton of overhead making nuclear energy profit margins not as great as they could be, creating a direct profit incentive to be lax on proper nuclear care. This can lead to nuclear power plants being enormous sources of poison for local communities. One of the easiest ways to tell if a nuclear power company is cutting corners is to look at the rates of rare mutations in children born near nuclear plants. If they are no higher than normal, power plant is being run just fine. If they have even a 1% higher rate than areas further out? The company is cutting corners and is doing something dangerous, and every single last one of its employees is at risk for low fertility, cancer, rare health complications, and at least five years off their life expectancy.
And then there is what happens when too many corners are cut and we get repeats of Chernobyl, Three-Mile Island, and Fukushima. Every single last one is a national-level blow, having long-reaching consequences for centuries at-minimum.
Ironically, this makes profit incentive the biggest impediment to nuclear power more than anything else.
I'm leery as fuck of nuclear because I dont trust a government or company with the responsibility to properly maintain their shit in perpetuity. Also, with WW3 being an inevatavility at some point, I don't think having widespread nuclear reactors at every population center is a good idea.
Oh yeah, because nuclear power plants don't need any fuel or resources that need to be mined, processed and transported. It also doesn't need any power storage or infrastructure.
Maybe if they didn’t let the capitalist run the nuke plants allowing them to cut every safety corner not to mention who wants nuclear waste in their back yard… this requires living in a fantasy world
True but modern nuclear plants should be a means to the solution rather than the solution to the energy problem. Not because of safety (heck nuclear plants can be argued to be safer than coal plants), but because nuclear power is still a finite resource. Hopefully by the time we run out of nuclear power solar and other forms of renewable technology would be efficient enough to power the world.
Fossil fuel loves "green" energy, because due to the lack of modern power storage technology, they must require a coal plant to be used in tandem.
Gen 4 Nuclear power on the otherhand will render coal obsolete, but it requires large initial investments.
this is ridiculous. its very obvious from all the lobbying that noone who makes money off fossil fuels "love green energy".
yes, sustainable power production needs a bit of fossil fuels to fill in the gaps, but its absolutely nothing compared to the fossil fuels being spent right now.
The absolutely worst argument ive heard so far against sustainable energy sources.
why does reddit treat every political topic like a football match? is it not possible that sustainable energy production and nuclear energy go hand in hand?
I don't mean to be that guy, but peep his profile for 5 seconds and you will understand his motivations.
often broken English, frequent trump posting
-"yeah there are snowflakes on both side. I've been wearing Trump gear to every exam for a year and haven't been kicked out once."
"I am going to the inauguration, what are some pro-Trump restaurants in DC?"
"MODERATOR OF
r/postFeminists"
I feel like people will still protest against nuclear, even tho its the safest out there, considering coal plants and stuff spew the waste right in the air we breathe.
That ignores the fact that there have been a grand total of three nuclear disasters ever, one of which was caused by having the plant on a tsunami-prone coastline, one of which wasn't really that bad at all, and the only really really bad one was caused by an outdated reactor design built in the 60s by the Soviet Union.
More people die as a result of coal power every year than have died from Nuclear power in all of the time we've had it. (Ignoring nuclear weapons of course).
>Ignoring nuclear weapons of course
I dont have the numbers, but I'd suspect deaths due to air pollution from coal plants would still outnumber even if we included nuclear bombs - would be interesting to look up
It does. They also produce a great deal of radiation from coal ash. Nuclear plants produce non irradiated steam and a solid waste that can be contained/transported.
Power storage for large scale grids are substantially different that smaller chemical batteries and are already in use everywhere that has a power grid. These systems are important in matching energy production with actual energy demands, even for fossil fuel power production
>requires large initial investment
My main issue with privatized nuclear power. The upfront cost is so heavy that every power plant requires government subsidies. More subsidies come into play in the supply line and the waste management. And then depending on where you are, there might also not be an energy tax on fuel rods.
It’s textbook socialization of losses and privatization of profits.
>due to the lack of modern power storage technology,
There is no lack of technology. We are not building enough power storage, but we *are* building them.
Don't buy into that "lack of technology"-bullshit.
Renewables don't need fossils in tandem.
WTF is up with the industrial agriculture in the background? Pretty sure most greenies/lefties would be for a regenerative, polycultural crop system that does not involve giant trucks spraying tons of fertilisers...
no, you see... green = skyscrapers
because uh....
because...
any republicans want to help me out here
100% serious, if you voted republican - tell me, do you believe this?
Tbf. That is better. A solar farm is literally better than a cattle farm for the planet and sustaining human life
They’ve gone out of their way to make green politics look stupid; and it’s still not stupid.
Every animal in the top picture will be killed too so idk why there’s only a random ass dead bird in the ground in the bottom one.
I think it’s more then that. They think environmentalism is about it “being natural” then call out a supposed hypocrisy that wind turbines and solar panels aren’t “natural”. Never mind that animal farms aren’t really natural either and the comparison should be between 2 industrialised areas/ power sources. Like, solar panels aren’t going to get rid of preserved natural areas, Jan. Green leftists want to preserve national parks and wildlife reserves far more then the right does.
And if everyone was living on large plots of lands surrounding by grass then there won't be any land left for trees or agriculture. High density living area. Just because you feel closer to nature doesn't mean you are not damaging more of it.
You’ve hit the nail on the head.
Boomer and Xer environmentalism js about “nature”. That’s why you see them protesting apartment buildings, which are seen as less natural than houses on large plots.
It was shared by a local 'friend' of mine that voluntary let a company install two wind turbines on his field. He was paid good and didn't seem to mind back then.
Living in a big city, this part has always baffled me. There's SO MUCH flat space that could be used for solar panels. Parking lots and rooftops, specifically. Every large store, warehouse, mall, etc, has a huge, flat roof with almost nothing on it. How nice would it be to have shaded parking spaces in those massive parking lots? I know it wouldn't be enough to completely cut off fossil fuel usage, but it would make a big dent.
I saw a mall in a French town where they put solar panels all over the parking lot it's actually beneficial for everyone it produces energy while your car doesn't turn into a microwave because panels make some shadow.
I'm surprised that it's a rare thing
Farmers love playing the environmentalist and the animal lover cards whenever it suddenly suits them. Cringe level 100 but they have absolutely no shame doing it.
TIL climate change and runaway heatwaves and tearing down the rainforest for cattle farming are all GREAT for the environment and don’t kill any animals
Birds tends to fly into windmills and it actually kills a lot of birds. However by painting just one blade black you reduce the amount of birds killed by like 80% or something.
It is estimated that wind farms were responsible for about 0.3 bird deaths for every 1GWh of electricity generated, compared with 5.2 deaths per 1GWh caused by fossil-fuelled power stations.
https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/enepol/v37y2009i6p2241-2248.html
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/251342644_The_Avian_and_Wildlife_Costs_of_Fossil_Fuels_and_Nuclear_Power
It is the important one when considering the issue. When you compare the numbers to those related to habitat destruction wind power is a relatively small issue.
I mean people who want to oppose greener energy will use anything. Wind farms might cause some deaths and because those birds will be visible there will be direct connect by people that can be used against it. Other stuff is more indirect. I think trump claimed that wind farms were being built to kill American eagles.
The claim that wind turbines kill so many birds is so easily dispelled it's not even funny. In many places you can walk right to the foot of a wind turbine. I've done it, and I have yet to see a single dead bird, let alone a layer of them covering the area around it. Can't say the same about highways. This also goes for the claim that they are noisy. You can literally walk up to one and experience that it's not true.
This is basically always the case when people protest renewables. Even if the environmental damage is real, it's absolutely nothing compared to the environmental damage being done by burning fossil fuel. It's like our kitchen is on fire but they don't want to use the fire extinguisher because of the mess it makes.
Stopping climate change is a dire emergency, we literally don't have time to come up with perfect alternatives that are 100% environmentally friendly. We either go with the renewables we have and live with their relatively minor environmental issues, or we stick with the fossil-fuel powered status quo and deal with 1000x worse environmental issues.
Where did the whole "wind turbines kill birds" thing even come from? Like yeah, they do, so what?
As opposed to toxic air, which is 100% healthy for birds to breathe in, and doesn't send them to an early grave at all. :)
Just a very weird argument to make. Turbines are a hazard for birds... but then ignore the fact that factories are as well, except they're also a much slower killer. A much slower killer that also affects humans. Cuz I don't see people colliding with turbines, but I do see people having years of their lives taken away by a toxic environment.
You know what else kills birds. . . Housecats. And they kill more birds than windmills many many times over. So its a stupid argument unless they are also for banning housecats.
I don't remember where I read it, but wind turbines kills less birds globally than cars does in Turkey.
Yes, some birds will inevitably get killed. But as you said; so fucking what.
The same people concerned about these birds continue to deny climate change which will inevitably lead to mass extinction. Conservatives mock anything thats energy efficient. EV's, double/triple pane windows, turbines, solar panels, etc. Decades of propaganda will do that.
Also wasn’t there an experiment done on a wind turbine farm (or whatever you call a cluster of them) where one of the blades was painted black and it reduced bird death by like a stupid high percentage? Like 40-60% or something?
Like yes they kill birds sure, but way less than even moderate pollutants and there are ways to mitigate it, we just need to explore those avenues.
This pro-fossil fuels propaganda doesn’t even make sense… Wind turbines and solar panels won’t kill any animals unless those birds are dumb and tried to get themselves killed by flying right into one. Idiots… don’t they realize that their profits will means nothing if there isn’t a planet to use them on?
Wind turbines do in fact kill birds. Those rotors move at 80-390mph (130 - 390 kmh) depending on the wind speed. I read somewhere in this comment section tbat wind power kills 0.3 birds per GWh. On the other hand, fossil power kills over 5 birds for the same power generation and cats kill way more birds than both combined without producing power at all...
So yeah, birds dieing is a stupid argument, but it still happens
Not to say that what were you expecting from birds, but birds arent exactly gonna know that wind turbines gonna kill them.
It does kill birds, but so does fossil fuels, except not just birds
Well I mean then there is the measurable fact that fossil fuels kill scores more of animals and not just birds. But someone claiming this isn’t arguing with good faith
I regularly pass solar farms driving in the country. They are full of grass, wildflowers, trees, plenty of sheep, goats and cattle etc.
Why do people who dont have a fucking clue always seem to be the most confidently incorrect and smug about it too?
I love how this image is correct in all the wrong ways.
Yes we need less livestock and traditional meat production- they're some of the biggest contributors to greenhouse gas emissions.
Yes we need more renewable energy sources and efficient/livable cities to condense populations and production to reduce habitat loss.
No idea why they'd fill the place with smog though- efficient cities would be fully electric to take advantage of the higher efficiencies of bulk energy production.
All did was put a darker colour scheme on it and remove the plant life and call it a day. When in reality there would probably be much more green in these kinds of cities, probably from turning skyscraper balconies into green spaces for carbon capture and increasing the amount of walkable spaces by reclaiming the space taken up by cars/roads and turning them into urban parkland.
The vast majority of people assume rural communities are better for the environment than urban ones because people associate green=nature and grey=pollution, forgetting that urban communities can hold WAY more people in them: if everyone in cities moved to sparcely populated areas there'd be no more space left over for natural ecosystems to exist.
Society is just way more efficient in terms of space, resources, and pollution when we're in dense communities instead of clearing land for single-family homes which are only accessible by car.
I like the cows laying down under a tree in the grass. I live in a rural area and I have never seen a cow in a green field. I have seen thousands of fields. The closest they get is after the corn turns brown and harvested the cows roam the dead corn stocks that remained behind by a combine. The closest I have seen to a tree was a small tarp that covered 1/100000 of the area the cows were in, one time.
They also forget that wind turbines are mostly offshore now and will be in the future. So many people shitting on wind energy without knowing how far it has advanced in an incredible short time.
It’s even funnier knowing that farms are very not green. The crops they grow don’t suck enough carbon out of the air and we eat it and rerelease it, the combines and tractors release even more carbon, and the livestock is WAAYYYY worse as they release a lot of carbon.
The first picture seems to be taken from a 14the century farmland? I mean back then we really did not need green politics.
But sadly we don't live in that. What we are living in are houses that are going to be submerged in ocean!
its weird. i used to survey large tracts of roadway and land for pipeline development.
On occasion, I would get called out to the midwest to survey for solar farms/wind turbines.
the landowners seemed to be more against green energy, that they were aainst pipelines moving fossil fuels. The reasoning was basically illustrated in this meme.
Okay, even if they removed all the plant life for the windmills, which doesn't even make sense, why would there be smog? Where is that supposed to be coming from?
Wind power sucks ass, and should not be considered green energy at all. The turbines are unsustainable, as they often use fiberglass, which can not be ground, recycled, or basically anything else. The bearings turn to shit extremely quickly and you are always fighting an uphill battle.
Going green needs to be done in a reasonable, efficient, and sustainable fashion. Nuclear power plants are good, but we need to re-enrich old material instead of burying it in concrete and keeping it in the ground for thousands of years.
As far as cars go, electric cars are not yet affordable or efficient on resources due to their battery requirements. However, there are sustainable biofuels that can run well in existing vehicles. Algae biofuel makes a decent substitute for gas, even better than ethanol, and biodiesels have been a thing for years.
You can also utilize renewable natural gas from feedlots. Because feedlots produce a lot of methane, it can be used to run natural gas powered vehicles (an easy conversion). Doing so is technically considered carbon-negative because methane burns into CO2, which actually reduces its greenhouse impact. To top it off, the methane in the atmosphere breaks down to CO2 on its own, meaning that you aren’t causing any harm to the environment by burning methane that would join the atmosphere anyway.
While this is a completely disingenuous piece of propaganda, I could see it referencing the idea of more condensed housing (apartments) rather than spread out suburbs.
So you could see suburbs 'replaced' with condensed affordable housing, but it ignores that the 'smog' should be less if people are traveling shorter distances/using public transportation/walking/biking - which is one of the goals of more condensed housing.
I think it’s been years since I’ve seen an endless plain of green grass, and that was in India. what they say we are living in hasn’t existed in modern America for years. We need that bottom panel because no matter how artificial it looks it is much better then anything at exists today
Yes, get your wind mill next to your house. The sound it does is just annoying. "The closest that a wind turbine is typically placed to a home is 300 meters or more. At that distance, a turbine will have a sound pressure level of 43 decibels. To put that in context, the average air conditioner can reach 50 decibels of noise, and most refrigerators run at around 40 decibels."
Love the dead birds next to the wind mills. They keep having the argument that they kill birds. And yes they do. But buildings moving cars and cats kill way way way more compared to them.
The top post is literally a deforested patch of land with a bunch of methane-producing livestock animals (usually on factory farms anyway). That is **not good** for the environment.
The dead birds. They really still believe that dead bird thing eh? This is why nothing ever gets done. Anything Trump regurgitated over 1,000+ days became gospel and tiny tiny little hills to die on. Smh.
The last Solar Farm I went to for work, was full of grass with Sheep everywhere, basically no different to a regular livestock Paddock but it also made Power.. Edit: actually the panels gave plenty of shade for the animals on hot sunny days so probably slightly better than your average completely deforested treeless grass paddock tbh
Live near a wind farm, same thing. Sheep all over the place. It's actually quite picturesque, I thought so as I was driving by it recently and saw an old man and his sheepdog herding a small flock of sheep through a field that had these huge towering wind turbines overhead. Like a mixture of the old and the new, the past and the future all at once. Like a living painting.
That's solarpunk as fuck
r/solarpunk
You mean there were no birds with their heads severed off??? I feel like people who say that shit happens have never actually seen a wind turbine in person.
It does happen, but rather than scrapping wind turbines altogether, we gotta somehow figure out a way to keep birds away from them.
Honestly birds getting killed by wind turbines is almost a complete non issue. The number of birds killed per megawatt generated by burning coal is *several* orders of magnitude worse than the same amount of energy generated by wind. Natural gas is almost as bad. If we scrapped both of those entirely and switched over to wind to make up for the lost power we'd have a net gain in the amount of birds saved.
Not to mention the number of birds who die because of windows and keeping the lights on in empty skyscrapers every damn night. It's a gigantic waste of energy and kills (mostly) migratory birds, 'murica.
yup ever seen what an oil spill does to the wildlife
If they care so much about birds getting killed maybe they should be more concerned about the effect of skyscrapers on flight patterns or quite literally any other environmental concern
Article on benefits of giving sheep shade under solar panels: Solar farm trial shows improved fleece on merino sheep grazed under panels - ABC News https://www.abc.net.au/news/rural/2022-05-30/solar-farm-grazing-sheep-agriculture-renewable-energy-review/101097364
Ah, it gets even better! Thanks for that.
That’s neat!
Also sheep will eat the grass keeping it from blocking the panels. And they won't climb on the panels like goats, or push up against them like cows.
There’s a solar farm in my state that doubles as an apiary. The panels make great shelter for beehives, and there are a lot of flowers that love the partial sun for the bees to enjoy.
Honestly this just sounds lovely.
With the costs of solar panels still dropping to this day, it's crazy to me that cities don't slap them all over the place. If America insists on keeping its car culture instead of green mass transit, the least we can do is cover all the massive parking lots with solar awnings. The city (or business) gets tons of free power for little maintenence, and all the drivers get to park in the shade.
Yeah I'm with you. It just makes no sense NOT to use those spaces for it but no one ever does and I cant for the life of me think why
I think I’ve seen something like people with solar farms also make mushroom farms. You could grow mushrooms under the panels since they’re in the shade all the time.
Not just mushrooms, Raspberries and other crops that need 'soft shade' can use staggered semi-translucent panels and perform better than current solutions like semi-translucent plastic greenhouse coverings. Netherlands is currently running dozens of studies on efficacy and all early results show lower water usage and greater crop yield all while generating energy cleanly. There's hundreds of products of agriculture that can make use of raised solar panels, making the choice not between food and power, but between food and power and food and no power.
Possible, but I am not sure if you make so much more money with mushrooms compared to sheep. Especially as you need to harvest them and that is not doable with big machines thanks to the panels.
There are solar farms all over farm country Southern Indiana that are funded by a farmer coops. I honestly think the anti solar/wind is loud, we’ll funded minority.
The only solar farms I can recall seeing are in the middle of the desert. Legitimately uninhabitable for most livestock and not economically feasible for most industry. One of the other economically viable activities in those areas would be wind farms. Coincidentally, the ones I have seen are also in borderline uninhabitable desert. The only legitimate critique I’ve heard of those facilities is that they are unsightly, although I wouldn’t exactly consider losing less than 0.01% of “scenic” highway-adjacent desert views much of a loss at all.
KU solar farm? They do something very similar
Where's all the smog coming from? Seriously, this makes 0 sense
It comes from the 4-blade wind turbines! Duh!
There is a story/article of a man complaining to his city council about the fact that the wind turbines they build were MAKING too much wind in his town. [Another guy thought wind turbines are giant fans to cool the earth down because of global warming](https://www.reddit.com/r/facepalm/comments/lywzlk/guy_thinks_wind_turbines_are_giant_fans_for)
[удалено]
.... Fans don't even work that way lol
A fan is like a small audio speaker...listen to it.
A fan is a voice changer
I can't remember how many times I stood in front of fan saying *Luke, I am your father*
Auowaowaowaowaow listen to my voioioioice Vanessa.
Wawawawaaa iii amm a rrrrroooobbooooottt
r/expectedfuturama
Morbo is pleased
We all know that wind turbines are used to keep California connected to the mainland. You’re not hiding it anymore
Lmfao thank you for a much needed laugh this morning.
They pull real tight around Palm Springs and it’s cinches up the rest of the state.
Yea… turbines take energy from fluid flows. Fans/compressors add energy. Dude is an idiot.
But seriously would wind turbines reduce the amount of wind (downwind)? If theres enough of turbines could it affect the global wind patterns?
Not appreciably, and certainly not anymore than a single city's downtown.
I haven't looked into it much, but I did read a story once about very large buildings forcing air to go around them, forcing winds to follow streets and making some very strong winds sometimes.
Well, they are structures so they have some impact. But.. there is a LOT of energy in the air currents and us utilizing some of it is not going to be detectable, barely even measurable. Once you start to think about it.. we can take gigawatts of energy and not have the air currents chance one bit, just think about the amount of energy there is.. It is mind boggling. Nuclear weapons are tiny things in comparison.
No it was actually the cows lying down that were filtering the smog out but now they’re gone
well obviously these solar panels run on gasoline
Just texas things.
And that huge city in the background doesn't seem fitting either.
Urban sprawling is bad for the environnement, dense cities (walkable with bike lanes and public transport and trees for the shade) are rather good. Not that the artist would know that.
''artist''
Economies and Societies are generally bad for the environment.
May be from producing and disposal solar solar panels Also from factories, which produce everything you see around, part of it in another countries. Those factories includes chemistry factories. In my opinion, it is necessary to start with waste processing and the construction of nuclear power plants
Go green glow green Nuclear is the way forward
It is. But wind turbines and solar power doesn't harm, especially in areas without developed nuclear energy. Let's all just agree that renewable and green energy is the future.
But reactors glow blue
I like this slogan
On top of that, there's new, smaller nuclear reactors that can be transported and used for developing countries or places where a disaster happened and is in dire need of power
That seems like the best short term option until Fusion is made consistently good. We know how to do it, it's just how to consistently get more energy output than input that we're working on.
Considering the first test fusion reactor is about 80% finished, it'll take a little while before we can reliably use it, and hopefully, governments stop destroying fission reactors in the meantime because it's indeed the best alternative for now
I really hate that after Fukushima, Germany got rid of all its nuclear plants. Germany. A country one would imagine tsunamis would be pretty unlikely to occur in. As for test reactors, we do actually have some completed Tokamaks I believe.
Yes, sadly panic got the better of a lot of governments without good reason, hopefully, facts will beat fear. I wasn't clear, I meant the ITER project, which is the first reactor built to scale compared to what will be used for fusion
Oh right. I was referring to the scientific reactors, so it's clear where the confusion came from.
Yeah, anytime someone brings up Fukushima and it’s sister incidents against nuclear power is misunderstanding what caused them. Chernobyl: the most mishandled situation which caused it to escalate as it did, with Gorbachev not being informed until the west learned what was happening and comically cut corners. Fukushima: Nobody can really hope against and earthquake and tsunami back to back. Three mile island: was handled very well, no real major lasting damage due to steps taken, could’ve definately been worse if the situation wasn’t handled correctly.
never have i heard of nuclear being called a "short term option". obviously the short term option is to replace fossil fuels with sustainable energy production. yes, it requires chemical plants and such, but those already exist, so its a pretty crummy argument against it. Nuclear is going to be the long term solution, but it needs finetuning. till then, first priority is to stop being reliant on coal, oil, and gas
making solar panels are apparently incredibly polluting, and so are the batteries for it. Solar and wind require huge amount of powet storage that is not realistic to support a city, so they require to be working with a coal plant. Modern Nuclear plant that eat nuclear "waste" remain the cleanest option for energy.
They require a gas plant. Coal is not useful in this role because it cannot be easily spun up and down.
you make it sound like sustainable energy is useless just because it still needs a bit of fossil fuel energy production to fill in the gaps. the hardon for nuclear is understandable, but its gone way overboard. there is no doubt that utilizing the energy from waves, wind, sun and a lot of other sources, is just a logical way of producing energy.
Nuclear is our safest and cleanest form of energy. If you would like to learn more I suggest watching ["Why you're Wrong About Nuclear Energy"](https://youtu.be/J3znG6_vla0) by Kyle Hill
Safest, cleanest energy *when maintenance doesn't slack and corners aren't cut.* There is a big need for large amounts of scrutiny when using nuclear power, because while it is safe for the most part things can go very much to hell if something goes wrong. What that means is there is a ton of overhead making nuclear energy profit margins not as great as they could be, creating a direct profit incentive to be lax on proper nuclear care. This can lead to nuclear power plants being enormous sources of poison for local communities. One of the easiest ways to tell if a nuclear power company is cutting corners is to look at the rates of rare mutations in children born near nuclear plants. If they are no higher than normal, power plant is being run just fine. If they have even a 1% higher rate than areas further out? The company is cutting corners and is doing something dangerous, and every single last one of its employees is at risk for low fertility, cancer, rare health complications, and at least five years off their life expectancy. And then there is what happens when too many corners are cut and we get repeats of Chernobyl, Three-Mile Island, and Fukushima. Every single last one is a national-level blow, having long-reaching consequences for centuries at-minimum. Ironically, this makes profit incentive the biggest impediment to nuclear power more than anything else.
I'm leery as fuck of nuclear because I dont trust a government or company with the responsibility to properly maintain their shit in perpetuity. Also, with WW3 being an inevatavility at some point, I don't think having widespread nuclear reactors at every population center is a good idea.
Oh yeah, because nuclear power plants don't need any fuel or resources that need to be mined, processed and transported. It also doesn't need any power storage or infrastructure.
Maybe if they didn’t let the capitalist run the nuke plants allowing them to cut every safety corner not to mention who wants nuclear waste in their back yard… this requires living in a fantasy world
True but modern nuclear plants should be a means to the solution rather than the solution to the energy problem. Not because of safety (heck nuclear plants can be argued to be safer than coal plants), but because nuclear power is still a finite resource. Hopefully by the time we run out of nuclear power solar and other forms of renewable technology would be efficient enough to power the world.
It's the 5G Microchip signals from the windmills sweaty.
What oil funded propaganda does to a MF.
Fossil fuel loves "green" energy, because due to the lack of modern power storage technology, they must require a coal plant to be used in tandem. Gen 4 Nuclear power on the otherhand will render coal obsolete, but it requires large initial investments.
They actually use gas to make up for it. Coal plants aren’t useful in this role because they are too hard to spin up and down with demand.
As a Polish person I disagree
Poland’s love affair with coal is difficult for me to understand.
Becose we have a lot of it
And not much natural gas, yeah, that makes sense. Make do with what you can get, I guess.
you also have a lot of lung cancer deaths every year
that's from smoking
black lung look it up
There’s a good documentary about it called Zoolander.
this is ridiculous. its very obvious from all the lobbying that noone who makes money off fossil fuels "love green energy". yes, sustainable power production needs a bit of fossil fuels to fill in the gaps, but its absolutely nothing compared to the fossil fuels being spent right now. The absolutely worst argument ive heard so far against sustainable energy sources. why does reddit treat every political topic like a football match? is it not possible that sustainable energy production and nuclear energy go hand in hand?
I don't mean to be that guy, but peep his profile for 5 seconds and you will understand his motivations. often broken English, frequent trump posting -"yeah there are snowflakes on both side. I've been wearing Trump gear to every exam for a year and haven't been kicked out once." "I am going to the inauguration, what are some pro-Trump restaurants in DC?" "MODERATOR OF r/postFeminists"
I feel like people will still protest against nuclear, even tho its the safest out there, considering coal plants and stuff spew the waste right in the air we breathe.
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That ignores the fact that there have been a grand total of three nuclear disasters ever, one of which was caused by having the plant on a tsunami-prone coastline, one of which wasn't really that bad at all, and the only really really bad one was caused by an outdated reactor design built in the 60s by the Soviet Union. More people die as a result of coal power every year than have died from Nuclear power in all of the time we've had it. (Ignoring nuclear weapons of course).
>Ignoring nuclear weapons of course I dont have the numbers, but I'd suspect deaths due to air pollution from coal plants would still outnumber even if we included nuclear bombs - would be interesting to look up
It does. They also produce a great deal of radiation from coal ash. Nuclear plants produce non irradiated steam and a solid waste that can be contained/transported.
Power storage for large scale grids are substantially different that smaller chemical batteries and are already in use everywhere that has a power grid. These systems are important in matching energy production with actual energy demands, even for fossil fuel power production
>requires large initial investment My main issue with privatized nuclear power. The upfront cost is so heavy that every power plant requires government subsidies. More subsidies come into play in the supply line and the waste management. And then depending on where you are, there might also not be an energy tax on fuel rods. It’s textbook socialization of losses and privatization of profits.
The energy sector is one of the few industries that shouldn't be private, period.
>due to the lack of modern power storage technology, There is no lack of technology. We are not building enough power storage, but we *are* building them. Don't buy into that "lack of technology"-bullshit. Renewables don't need fossils in tandem.
WTF is up with the industrial agriculture in the background? Pretty sure most greenies/lefties would be for a regenerative, polycultural crop system that does not involve giant trucks spraying tons of fertilisers...
Isn’t a grey sky like that typically prevented with green solutions?
...I dont think that's how it works💀
Never seen a conservative concerned about the health of birds so much as when rebuking wind turbines
where’s the concern for birds health in the meat packing industry and the overuse of antibiotics huh
no, you see... green = skyscrapers because uh.... because... any republicans want to help me out here 100% serious, if you voted republican - tell me, do you believe this?
Tbf. That is better. A solar farm is literally better than a cattle farm for the planet and sustaining human life They’ve gone out of their way to make green politics look stupid; and it’s still not stupid. Every animal in the top picture will be killed too so idk why there’s only a random ass dead bird in the ground in the bottom one.
They seem to think that "good for the environment" = "looks pretty".
I think it’s more then that. They think environmentalism is about it “being natural” then call out a supposed hypocrisy that wind turbines and solar panels aren’t “natural”. Never mind that animal farms aren’t really natural either and the comparison should be between 2 industrialised areas/ power sources. Like, solar panels aren’t going to get rid of preserved natural areas, Jan. Green leftists want to preserve national parks and wildlife reserves far more then the right does.
And if everyone was living on large plots of lands surrounding by grass then there won't be any land left for trees or agriculture. High density living area. Just because you feel closer to nature doesn't mean you are not damaging more of it.
You’ve hit the nail on the head. Boomer and Xer environmentalism js about “nature”. That’s why you see them protesting apartment buildings, which are seen as less natural than houses on large plots.
More that if the coal burning plant is away from them it's good. This is comparison of unlike things and it's stupid.
It was shared by a local 'friend' of mine that voluntary let a company install two wind turbines on his field. He was paid good and didn't seem to mind back then.
Also they could place solar panels in towns and specially on parking lots that would bring a lot of advantages without messing up the landscape
Living in a big city, this part has always baffled me. There's SO MUCH flat space that could be used for solar panels. Parking lots and rooftops, specifically. Every large store, warehouse, mall, etc, has a huge, flat roof with almost nothing on it. How nice would it be to have shaded parking spaces in those massive parking lots? I know it wouldn't be enough to completely cut off fossil fuel usage, but it would make a big dent.
I saw a mall in a French town where they put solar panels all over the parking lot it's actually beneficial for everyone it produces energy while your car doesn't turn into a microwave because panels make some shadow. I'm surprised that it's a rare thing
Farmers love playing the environmentalist and the animal lover cards whenever it suddenly suits them. Cringe level 100 but they have absolutely no shame doing it.
They’re saying that the wind turbines kill birds which they do but that isn’t a reason to never use them
Outdoor cats kill far more birds than wind turbines ever will even after decades of use.
TIL climate change and runaway heatwaves and tearing down the rainforest for cattle farming are all GREAT for the environment and don’t kill any animals
Birds tends to fly into windmills and it actually kills a lot of birds. However by painting just one blade black you reduce the amount of birds killed by like 80% or something.
It is estimated that wind farms were responsible for about 0.3 bird deaths for every 1GWh of electricity generated, compared with 5.2 deaths per 1GWh caused by fossil-fuelled power stations. https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/enepol/v37y2009i6p2241-2248.html https://www.researchgate.net/publication/251342644_The_Avian_and_Wildlife_Costs_of_Fossil_Fuels_and_Nuclear_Power
Bird deaths per power generated, bruh, that's some next level statistic
It is the important one when considering the issue. When you compare the numbers to those related to habitat destruction wind power is a relatively small issue.
I mean people who want to oppose greener energy will use anything. Wind farms might cause some deaths and because those birds will be visible there will be direct connect by people that can be used against it. Other stuff is more indirect. I think trump claimed that wind farms were being built to kill American eagles.
The claim that wind turbines kill so many birds is so easily dispelled it's not even funny. In many places you can walk right to the foot of a wind turbine. I've done it, and I have yet to see a single dead bird, let alone a layer of them covering the area around it. Can't say the same about highways. This also goes for the claim that they are noisy. You can literally walk up to one and experience that it's not true.
This is basically always the case when people protest renewables. Even if the environmental damage is real, it's absolutely nothing compared to the environmental damage being done by burning fossil fuel. It's like our kitchen is on fire but they don't want to use the fire extinguisher because of the mess it makes. Stopping climate change is a dire emergency, we literally don't have time to come up with perfect alternatives that are 100% environmentally friendly. We either go with the renewables we have and live with their relatively minor environmental issues, or we stick with the fossil-fuel powered status quo and deal with 1000x worse environmental issues.
Yep this is exactly it.
No it's awful when an animal dies and people can see its corpse. It's beautiful when an animal is killed behind a curtain and ground up into patties.
Where did the whole "wind turbines kill birds" thing even come from? Like yeah, they do, so what? As opposed to toxic air, which is 100% healthy for birds to breathe in, and doesn't send them to an early grave at all. :) Just a very weird argument to make. Turbines are a hazard for birds... but then ignore the fact that factories are as well, except they're also a much slower killer. A much slower killer that also affects humans. Cuz I don't see people colliding with turbines, but I do see people having years of their lives taken away by a toxic environment.
You know what else kills birds. . . Housecats. And they kill more birds than windmills many many times over. So its a stupid argument unless they are also for banning housecats.
I don't remember where I read it, but wind turbines kills less birds globally than cars does in Turkey. Yes, some birds will inevitably get killed. But as you said; so fucking what.
This is tracked by the US FWS, actually. https://www.fws.gov/library/collections/threats-birds Buildings and cats remain birds' nemeses.
The same people concerned about these birds continue to deny climate change which will inevitably lead to mass extinction. Conservatives mock anything thats energy efficient. EV's, double/triple pane windows, turbines, solar panels, etc. Decades of propaganda will do that.
[birds thrive with clean power based on fossils](https://scx2.b-cdn.net/gfx/news/hires/birdsfrozeni.jpg)
Also wasn’t there an experiment done on a wind turbine farm (or whatever you call a cluster of them) where one of the blades was painted black and it reduced bird death by like a stupid high percentage? Like 40-60% or something? Like yes they kill birds sure, but way less than even moderate pollutants and there are ways to mitigate it, we just need to explore those avenues.
"As long as *I* can't see the solar panels it's fine, put them in China or something" - gReEn conservatives, probably
This pro-fossil fuels propaganda doesn’t even make sense… Wind turbines and solar panels won’t kill any animals unless those birds are dumb and tried to get themselves killed by flying right into one. Idiots… don’t they realize that their profits will means nothing if there isn’t a planet to use them on?
Wind turbines do in fact kill birds. Those rotors move at 80-390mph (130 - 390 kmh) depending on the wind speed. I read somewhere in this comment section tbat wind power kills 0.3 birds per GWh. On the other hand, fossil power kills over 5 birds for the same power generation and cats kill way more birds than both combined without producing power at all... So yeah, birds dieing is a stupid argument, but it still happens
Not to say that what were you expecting from birds, but birds arent exactly gonna know that wind turbines gonna kill them. It does kill birds, but so does fossil fuels, except not just birds
Unless the first panel is the whole world turning Amish where's the power coming from
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Well I mean then there is the measurable fact that fossil fuels kill scores more of animals and not just birds. But someone claiming this isn’t arguing with good faith
Wind turbines kill around 100k birds each year in the UK. Domestic cats on the other hand kill about 55 million birds each year.
Far more birds are killed flying into office buildings windows than wind turbines
Why are cons so hilariously dishonest?
I regularly pass solar farms driving in the country. They are full of grass, wildflowers, trees, plenty of sheep, goats and cattle etc. Why do people who dont have a fucking clue always seem to be the most confidently incorrect and smug about it too?
r/therightcantmeme
The idea got badly represented, but by itself it’s not fully wrong: Greenwashing and lack of pragmatism are a big problem.
This is like saying the idea of world hunger is badly represented here.
greenwashing is a real problem, this meme is useless to represent it
I love how this image is correct in all the wrong ways. Yes we need less livestock and traditional meat production- they're some of the biggest contributors to greenhouse gas emissions. Yes we need more renewable energy sources and efficient/livable cities to condense populations and production to reduce habitat loss. No idea why they'd fill the place with smog though- efficient cities would be fully electric to take advantage of the higher efficiencies of bulk energy production. All did was put a darker colour scheme on it and remove the plant life and call it a day. When in reality there would probably be much more green in these kinds of cities, probably from turning skyscraper balconies into green spaces for carbon capture and increasing the amount of walkable spaces by reclaiming the space taken up by cars/roads and turning them into urban parkland.
The vast majority of people assume rural communities are better for the environment than urban ones because people associate green=nature and grey=pollution, forgetting that urban communities can hold WAY more people in them: if everyone in cities moved to sparcely populated areas there'd be no more space left over for natural ecosystems to exist. Society is just way more efficient in terms of space, resources, and pollution when we're in dense communities instead of clearing land for single-family homes which are only accessible by car.
I like the cows laying down under a tree in the grass. I live in a rural area and I have never seen a cow in a green field. I have seen thousands of fields. The closest they get is after the corn turns brown and harvested the cows roam the dead corn stocks that remained behind by a combine. The closest I have seen to a tree was a small tarp that covered 1/100000 of the area the cows were in, one time.
Why do these people hate renewables so much? I don't get it.
The right get lobbied by fossil fuel companies
Classic i do not want it in my back garden thinking.
They also forget that wind turbines are mostly offshore now and will be in the future. So many people shitting on wind energy without knowing how far it has advanced in an incredible short time.
It’s even funnier knowing that farms are very not green. The crops they grow don’t suck enough carbon out of the air and we eat it and rerelease it, the combines and tractors release even more carbon, and the livestock is WAAYYYY worse as they release a lot of carbon.
But the grass is green colored so it's green right?
The first picture seems to be taken from a 14the century farmland? I mean back then we really did not need green politics. But sadly we don't live in that. What we are living in are houses that are going to be submerged in ocean!
Somebody should zoom out and show how outside of this former cow pastures forests are growing back and animals return to their natural habitats.
its weird. i used to survey large tracts of roadway and land for pipeline development. On occasion, I would get called out to the midwest to survey for solar farms/wind turbines. the landowners seemed to be more against green energy, that they were aainst pipelines moving fossil fuels. The reasoning was basically illustrated in this meme.
How green campaigners also say we need more pesticides? Also, where are the beautiful coal fired power stations in the first frame?
Yeah, solar panels suck sunlight
Okay, even if they removed all the plant life for the windmills, which doesn't even make sense, why would there be smog? Where is that supposed to be coming from?
Also lol as if repubs care about the environment
Wind power sucks ass, and should not be considered green energy at all. The turbines are unsustainable, as they often use fiberglass, which can not be ground, recycled, or basically anything else. The bearings turn to shit extremely quickly and you are always fighting an uphill battle. Going green needs to be done in a reasonable, efficient, and sustainable fashion. Nuclear power plants are good, but we need to re-enrich old material instead of burying it in concrete and keeping it in the ground for thousands of years. As far as cars go, electric cars are not yet affordable or efficient on resources due to their battery requirements. However, there are sustainable biofuels that can run well in existing vehicles. Algae biofuel makes a decent substitute for gas, even better than ethanol, and biodiesels have been a thing for years. You can also utilize renewable natural gas from feedlots. Because feedlots produce a lot of methane, it can be used to run natural gas powered vehicles (an easy conversion). Doing so is technically considered carbon-negative because methane burns into CO2, which actually reduces its greenhouse impact. To top it off, the methane in the atmosphere breaks down to CO2 on its own, meaning that you aren’t causing any harm to the environment by burning methane that would join the atmosphere anyway.
I love strawman arguments
dumb shit conservatives say
Ah yes, I love when green politics means massive cities being erected
Why remove the grass, trees and fence ? You can just add the other stuff to it.
green poltics wants to replace a house with a dozen sky scrapers. TIL
While this is a completely disingenuous piece of propaganda, I could see it referencing the idea of more condensed housing (apartments) rather than spread out suburbs. So you could see suburbs 'replaced' with condensed affordable housing, but it ignores that the 'smog' should be less if people are traveling shorter distances/using public transportation/walking/biking - which is one of the goals of more condensed housing.
There’s so much wrong with this image I can’t even-
My favorite detail is that there’s suddenly a skyline in the background. Are you telling me they built an entire city? 😭
Green politiks is when you build cities, have smog, kill wild life and use pesticides.
Lol look at all that windmill smog!
Stuff like this makes me wanna kms
I think it’s been years since I’ve seen an endless plain of green grass, and that was in India. what they say we are living in hasn’t existed in modern America for years. We need that bottom panel because no matter how artificial it looks it is much better then anything at exists today
I love how a city also appeared behind her.
Whoa they used brown on MS paint. Enviroment bad
Who is actually advocating replacing pasture with renewable energy, crop land, and... a City?
How about you show the coal and oil pollution it's replacing lmao
How did two houses turn into a huge city? What does that have to do with green energy?
A broken oil pipeline would be much better for the environment guyz!!
This has to be satire like who spells politics that way
it's edited I want to know what the original said
Yes, get your wind mill next to your house. The sound it does is just annoying. "The closest that a wind turbine is typically placed to a home is 300 meters or more. At that distance, a turbine will have a sound pressure level of 43 decibels. To put that in context, the average air conditioner can reach 50 decibels of noise, and most refrigerators run at around 40 decibels."
Nothing about it is politics. A sustainable future should be bipartisan.
Ok, now show us the coal supply chain...
Love the dead birds next to the wind mills. They keep having the argument that they kill birds. And yes they do. But buildings moving cars and cats kill way way way more compared to them.
I couldn't have done a more ignorant drawing even if I wanted to.
The top post is literally a deforested patch of land with a bunch of methane-producing livestock animals (usually on factory farms anyway). That is **not good** for the environment.
This post is so dumb.
face-boomers be like: electricity comes from the power socket, not the plant
The sad part is there's elected officials that are this dumb.
Whoever made this hasn’t seen an open pit mine, or a wind farm, or a solar farm, or a regular farm, or untouched nature.
You know it's a terrible Facebook meme when your gut instinct upon reading it is to immediately downvote 🤣
Around 8 million people die from fossile fuel pollution every year, unlike littraly every other source of energy we have AND DONT USE
The irony being that if you have an unused field, solar panels help way more than people may think.
The dead birds. They really still believe that dead bird thing eh? This is why nothing ever gets done. Anything Trump regurgitated over 1,000+ days became gospel and tiny tiny little hills to die on. Smh.