Posted on 05/21/2023 6:58:09 PM PDT by AZJeep
How solar farms took over the California desert: ‘An oasis has become a dead sea’
Residents feel trapped and choked by dust, while experts warn environmental damage is ‘solving one problem by creating others’ eep in the Mojave desert, about halfway between Los Angeles and Phoenix, a sparkling blue sea shimmers on the horizon. Visible from the I-10 highway, amid the parched plains and sun-baked mountains, it is an improbable sight: a deep blue slick stretching for miles across the Chuckwalla Valley, forming an endless glistening mirror.
But something’s not quite right. Closer up, the water’s edge appears blocky and pixelated, with the look of a low-res computer rendering, while its surface is sculpted in orderly geometric ridges, like frozen waves.
“We had a guy pull in the other day towing a big boat,” says Don Sneddon, a local resident. “He asked us how to get to the launch ramp to the lake. I don’t think he realized he was looking at a lake of solar panels.”
The massive solar project covering 150,000 acres in Mohave desert causes major damage to environment, destroy plants and protected animals. The desert plants can live thousands of years and create underground forests, while removing CO2 and burying it underground. Now all this is destroyed!
(Excerpt) Read more at theguardian.com ...
A few acres needed for a nuclear power plant.
The people who opposed the southern border wall and said that the border wall would “damage the environment, destroy plants and protected animals.”
Now have what they want:
“The massive solar project covering 150,000 acres in Mohave desert causes major damage to environment, destroy plants and protected animals.”
Colorado River, which I’ve heard is running dry.
150,000 acres of shade on the ground where there isn’t supposed to be any! Did those idiots REALLY believe there wouldn’t be any effect on the plants and animals living there?
That’s 15 square miles of solar panels. Who goes out to clean the desert dust off of them? Do they need scarce water to clean them?
I got flamed by some moron on this board for predicting something very like this. The negative environmental outcome of vast arrays of solar panels was so predictable.
It is, I was trying warn people of this insanity over 20 years ago. It always boils down to energy density and uptime. The surface area alone required for either requires destruction of mass areas of acreage to support, meaning large scale impacts one being to life of course.
Solar and Wind have never been a model that can support reality beyond specialized or emergency uses.
This from “The Guardian”?!
OK, pigs do fly!
Oh please... “– and hundreds of people’s homes.”
HUNDREDS !!!
What a crock.
Oh please.
“... ancient Indigenous cultural sites “
WHAT A CROCK !!!
Oh please !
“...home to thousand-year-old carbon-capturing woodlands”
WOODLANDS ?!? What bleeping woodlands?!?
ITS A (bleeping) DESERT.
Oh PLEASE !!!
“... rich and fragile habitat for endangered species “
WHAT ENDANGERED SPECIES !!!
NAME THEM !!!
OH PLEASE !!!
“... Residents have watched ruefully for years as solar plants crept over the horizon, bringing noise and pollution that’s eroding a way of life in their desert refuge.”
BRINGING NOISE !!!
NOISE ?!?
Solar panels are bringing NOISE !!! LOL
and exactly WHAT POLLUTION ?!?
GEEZUM. YOU GOT SOME NEVER POSTING THIS CRAP.
OH PLEASE?
“...“We feel like we’ve been sacrificed,” says Mark Carrington”
SACRIFICED ? WHERE DID THEY DIG UP THAT LOON.
OH PLEASE !!!
“...which is increasingly surrounded by solar farms. “We’re a senior community, and half of us now have breathing difficulties because of all the dust churned up by the construction.”
LOTS OF BLEEPING DUST IN THE DESERT.
NOT THE FAULT OF CONSTRUCTION !
OH PLEASE.
Complains of BREATHING PROBLEMS BUT WEARING GOGGLES NOT A MASK !
“...but some days I have to go outside wearing goggles. “
OH PLEASE.
THIS PERSON JUST MOVED THERE !
““It has been psychologically gruelling,” says Teresa Pierce, who moved here six years ago. “From the constant pounding of the metal posts to the endless dust storms. I now have allergies that I’d never had before – my arms burn all day long and my nose is always running. I feel like a prisoner in my own home.””
COMPLAINING ABOUT TEMPORARY CONSTRUCTION NOISE?
This person is complaining about the desert environment they just used to.
640 acres per square mile. Check your math.
I was awake with insomnia. I calculated the size in miles square, not square miles. In other words, how big is the square of land? sqrt(150000/640) = 15.3
The CA desert is huge, so a chunk 15 miles square isn’t much. But any argument against this idiocy is a useful argument.
Agree on both points.
LOTS OF BLEEPING DUST IN THE DESERT.
NOT THE FAULT OF CONSTRUCTION !
= = =
Undisturbed desert is not dusty. Native plants hold it down.
Dust comes when the surface is disturbed, like from construction.
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