Posted on 03/28/2015 1:36:07 AM PDT by grundle
JACKSON, N.J. (AP) — A theme park plans to cut down more than 18,000 trees for the construction of what it says will be the largest solar farm in New Jersey.
Six Flags Great Adventure says the facility will generate 21.9 megawatts, or enough to power about 3,100 homes, and capable of meeting all of the park's needs.
(Excerpt) Read more at huffingtonpost.com ...
Makes as much sense
This make sense only because of some government policies which is encouraging this action. This is like the Soviets. I’ll bet there some tax incentive to go solar. Environment comes distant last to central planner
How are they going to make that kind of power by cutting down some trees?
The Lorax is not amused.
Burn them?
New Jersey averages 94 days a year of sunshine. Sure makes sense to me to cut down all those trees.
It’s Jersey. The way their luck runs, most of the summer will be cloudy and the park will be closed due to lack of power.
However, this from Mother Nature News:
In the United States, which contains 8 percent of the world's forests, there are more trees than there were 100 years ago. According to the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), "Forest growth nationally has exceeded harvest since the 1940s. By 1997, forest growth exceeded harvest by 42 percent and the volume of forest growth was 380 percent greater than it had been in 1920." The greatest gains have been seen on the East Coast (with average volumes of wood per acre almost doubling since the '50s) which was the area most heavily logged by European settlers beginning in the 1600s, soon after their arrival.
>> This make sense only because of some government policies which is encouraging this action.
Exactly. And the dumb # Democrat voting base will be ecstatic.
Having droped a few trees of size, 18000 is a large effort.
Is that Al Gore? With a chain saw?
Six Flags Great Adventure says the facility will generate 21.9 megawatts during peak daylight hours, or enough to power about 3,100 homes during the day, and capable of meeting all of the park's needs in daylight. Nighttime power production will have to come from somewhere else.
Perhaps the park does not plan to operate at night.
In 1865 New Hampshire was 20% forested. We were a farming state. The White Mountain National forest had all been logged.
A hundred and twenty years later NH is 80% covered in forest.
All the smart farmers moved to Ohio, Indiana and Iowa. Too many rocks here. The forests of New England are Chris crossed with old stone walls that the farmers of the 1700s to 1800s piled up using horses and oxen. All three properties I have owned in southern NH had stone walls on at least one to three sides. Some rocks literally the size of a Vw bug.
I hike in former iron mining areas along the NY/NJ border; these places were stripped bare of trees to make charcoal for the forges. The few thick, old trees usually mark where a home had been (the tree was spared by the owner); everything else was cut. Much of that land is now state parks, and covered with trees; the only indications of what had happened 150 years ago are the lack of trees older than 150 years old and the many “coppiced?” trees (trees in which several seem to be sharing one trunk at the ground level - an indication that it had been cut and sprouted in a different direction afterwards).
What is becoming more prevalent is that existing house lots are being logged again. The last twenty years we have had several ice storms. People have begun to realize that you do NOT want hundred foot tall pine trees twenty feet from your house.
I have TWELVE acres. I logged about eight of it two years ago.
We took five trucks of logs and four vans of chips off the property. This house was built in 1972. They cleared just enough to build the house. I had hundred year old pines and oaks within fifteen feet of the house. The house was dark all the time. Not anymore.
I think it was a fad in the 70s and 80s to leave the trees real close. Stupid hippies. Now, people have come to realize that you really do not want anything bigger than an ornamental within fifty feet of your house. At least here in NH. Sometimes those big trees come crashing down in the winter.
The problem is unless you have a bunch, like me it costs thousands of dollars if you do not have room to drop them and you need a crane.
We want power. ... Who needs oxygen? ... Carbon dioxide - so what?
The main reason for not having large pines anywhere near your home are pine beetles. They will go through an entire stand of trees in no short order, and by the time you notice anything, the damage has already been done.
Sounds similar to the Adirondack forever wild state park.
That was also all cut in the 1800s. Now, you can not touch a tree there. A buddy of mine in-laws owned a camp on one of the lakes up there. I think it is on Saranac. It can only be reached by boat in the summer, snowmobile in the winter when the lake is frozen.
They wanted to rebuild it. What a pain in the neck. He also wanted to turn a boat house into a liveable cabin. It took years to get approval. He could not expand the footprint at all. All the materials had to be barged in. No electricity too. Generator only. No cell service either. A true escape.
He eventually got it done, but had to jump through many hoops.
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