How we will actually lose California?.

[bluestarultor]

Originally Posted by Marc v1.0

"Not In My Backyard" is a very tiresome mindset a lot of people have and, frankly, tough shit they can learn to deal with it.

Actually, wind farms do plenty well setting up on farm farms. It's nothing but benefit to the farmers, who don't lose the use of their own land and are paid good money as long as the posts are still standing, i.e. effectively forever. There is literally no downside for them.

[Wigmund]

Originally Posted by bluestarultor

Actually, wind farms do plenty well setting up on farm farms. It's nothing but benefit to the farmers, who don't lose the use of their own land and are paid good money as long as the posts are still standing, i.e. effectively forever. There is literally no downside for them.

Unless they are a threat to local endangered wildlife, then there's a slight problem with developing wind power.

While some areas may get to enjoy large-scale wind farms, Northwest Arkansas will not be one of those areas. And looking at the solar power potential for the US, we're not a great area to rely extensively on solar paneling either. We need cleaner power production here other than the coal and gas-fired plants we're currently relying on. And unfortunately, Nuclear (fusion and fission) looks like the best choice for growing areas like us.

[bluestarultor]

Originally Posted by Wigmund

Unless they are a threat to local endangered wildlife, then there's a slight problem with developing wind power.

While some areas may get to enjoy large-scale wind farms, Northwest Arkansas will not be one of those areas. And looking at the solar power potential for the US, we're not a great area to rely extensively on solar paneling either. We need cleaner power production here other than the coal and gas-fired plants we're currently relying on. And unfortunately, Nuclear (fusion and fission) looks like the best choice for growing areas like us.

Your argument would hold more weight if they actually had results on the bats. People love to pull the wildlife card, but the fact of the matter is that the turbines don't actually kill that much.

As for the solar, it looks to me like part of their ratings system is how much empty space there is, which is why Texas isn't lit up more. But to be frank, 4-5 kWh/m^2/day isn't exactly terrible. Not when half of Arizona, the absolute poster-state for solar power, only gets 6-7 and half of California only gets 5-6.

The point being that just because it's in a green area doesn't mean it's not viable. I direct you back to the example of Germany, which is by no means Arizona, who are using the technology just fine.

[Sithdarth]

In fact the best places in Germany for Solar don't even quite get up to the absolute worst places in the US in terms of Solar potential. Yet Germany is doing well for itself with Solar. If they can do it with a higher over all population density (or at least I imagine so) plus less overall resource per square foot then we have no excuse.