140 Comments
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Rudeone4life's avatar

Green scam… total waste of money and resources. Then the environment. Stupid MF’ers

The Una_Bonger's avatar

Decentralize power by putting it closer to the end user. Every home and all of the warehouses should have solar and wind. Mall parking lots cover them to collect solar, keep your car cooler, less radiating heat from asphalt.

Matt's avatar

They changed their minds and went to blocking the sun and covering is with metals

Dave Skinner's avatar

They are completely missing the point .. on purpose.

Geoff CARTER's avatar

And in 20-25 years it’ll all have to be replaced and where will they dump all the old panels?

Kirsten Schubring's avatar

In WA we have farmers leasing their land to the power companies to “diversify” their crops. Because commodity prices are volatile and margins are compressed, they need a guaranteed income. Eastern WA is in a 3rd year of drought, farmers have had to leave crops unwatered. Others have ripped out sections of their orchards and vineyards. You might not want to look at it. NIMBY!!! But with data centers escalating electricity prices and demand for electricity increasing, we need more electricity. Solar is one way to do that. Electric rates increased 12% in WA in 2024 alone. So what’s the answer?

TheTruthTeller's avatar

And one large hail storm will destroy the entire thing. Hail gets as large as baseballs at times.

Loquacious1's avatar

When people start starving they’ll fight this

pedweirdo's avatar

This is beyond criminal!

Scott C. Rowe's avatar

Most of the pro solar rhetoric comes from the same place as the global warming rhetoric – solar panel companies in China.

Methowraven's avatar

I grew up on the black land prairie around Dallas and I’ve watched that area go from rangland to unban sprawl over the last 50 years. To be honest, essentially the entirety of prairie ecosystems in North America were destroyed by cows and plows by the 1930’s, so putting more cows or solar panels or another 5,000 unit housing development isn’t going to change that fact.

Darlene Sellers's avatar

There is nothing positive about solar, wind etc.., they are destroying our environment! It is financed with subsidies and probably money laundering, I imagine it is corrupt. Just my opinion. I am a Farmer and it makes me sick to my stomach.

Jaap Zandhuis's avatar

Every KWh produced by a solar park or wind park is avoiding fossil fuel consumption: that’s a net gain. Add batteries for storage, to cover for drops in production.

And maybe the average US citizen should start thinking on reducing (energy) consumption.

Michelle's avatar

We should move to nuclear.

Kerry Panavas's avatar

The thing is the panels are not destroying the environment the way mining does. Once the technology has advanced, those panels can be removed and you’ll still have farmland.

Barnes Moore's avatar

Do you think solar panels magically appear out of thin air? A lot of mining is required to extract the minerals that go into manufacturing solar panels and wind turbines. They are 100% dependent on fossil fuels from cradle to grave.

• Both wind turbines and solar panels require massive amounts of minerals extracted from the earth in countries around the world with many countries having little to no labor laws and no environmental controls – they don’t care if rivers, land and ground water get polluted. The Pulitzer Prize nominated book “Clean Energy Exploitations” describes the human atrocities among folks with yellow, brown, and black skin, and the environmental degradation occurring in developing countries so that the wealthy countries can go green.

• Mining uses a lot of very heavy fossil fuel powered equipment, except the Congo where manual labor including children is used.

• Then the minerals need to be processed to separate the ore from the overburden – again using fossil fuel powered machinery.

• Then the minerals need to be transported to wherever the manufacturing facility is (mostly China) by truck, rail and ship.

• Then the energy intensive manufacturing process powered by fossil fuels (mostly coal).

• Then transported again by truck, rail, and ship to the ultimate destination which of course has to be prepared (cleared) using fossil fuel powered machinery, site assembly using fossil fuel powered machinery, life cycle maintenance – which for wind turbines at least requires fossil fuel powered machinery along with petroleum based lubricants, for solar, maybe just water to clean – imagine how much water would be needed to clean the enormous industrial solar arrays being promoted.

• Then of course ultimate decommissioning and disposal with the added benefit that since these things have a relatively short life span, the entire process needs to be repeated far more frequently than just using coal, gas or nuclear power plants to begin with, all of which require far less land.

• According to Mark Mills in https://media4.manhattan-institute.org/sites/default/files/mines-minerals-green-energy-reality-checkMM.pdf, “compared with hydrocarbons, green machines entail, on average, a 10-fold increase in the quantities of materials extracted and processed to produce the same amount of energy”.

• And of course, both wind and solar need a backup system for the times the wind does not blow and the sun does not shine adding to overall system cost. The net is, wind and solar are far more environmentally destructive than simply using fossil fuels to begin with given that wind and solar are pretty much 100% dependent on fossil fuels from cradle to grave and if anything, only increase FF consumption. Proponents of wind and solar claim that the fuel is free while completely ignoring the enormous amount of mining and infrastructure required to capture the “free” fuel. Wind and solar are weather dependent, intermittent, variable, expensive and unreliable. They are parasitic energy sources that require 100% backup by fossil fuels.