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> Why are we ignoring the fact that this geographic location is unusable now? Everyone always ignores the huge amount of land made unusable by hydro and increa

by erentz 7y ago

> Why are we ignoring the fact that this geographic location is unusable now? Everyone always ignores the huge amount of land made unusable by hydro and increasingly solar. It’s unfathomable to me how okay people seem to be with the amount of CA land being covered by solar panels. Pretty sure most desert tortoises would rather live next to a nuclear power plant.

tdhoot 7y ago
With solar you remove the solar panels and the area is immediately reusable. Or the panels can be mounted above usable space. Or am I missing something?
- bargl 7y ago
  The problem is that you can never remove them, we just have to replace them. Unless we reduce our use of electricity or come up with a new source, those panels will always be there. It will also take time for the wild life to grow back and if the the ecosystem has changed enough it won't come back the same. This isn't a problem by itself. But if Chernobyl is an example all you have to do is wait 50 years and wild life will move back in too. I'm 100% for renewable energy, but we're making a lot of assumptions on how we're going to get rid of and recycle solar panels. That's a lot of material we have to re-process and see how much we can use and how much was consumed.
  - stephenr 7y ago
    If you want to go build a house out there, it’s hardly rocket science to put the panels on top of it.
    - bargl 7y ago
      Even rocket scientist have fairly bad foresight, see space debris as an example. The reason these plants are reasonably cheap is that there are rows and rows of uniformly hooked up and distributed easy to access solar panels. What you're suggesting is best accomplished by a government subsidy on solar panels. But then individuals own them and we won't have a way to recycle them when they all go bad in 30 years.
jwr 7y ago
> It’s unfathomable to me how okay people seem to be with the amount of CA land being covered by solar panels. Is that serious, or are you joking? I'm having a hard time deciding. First, the land that's being covered is mostly a desert, where no one wanted to live anyway. Second, it's being covered in solar panels so that we can generate electricity without emitting CO2, which is rather important given that our planet will be turning mostly to desert in the next 30-50 years.
- erentz 7y ago
  Of course its serious. Did you read my comment in the context of the subject of this post and the comment it was replying to? Because it seems like you didn't. > First, the land that's being covered is mostly a desert, where no one wanted to live anyway. So you're fine if we put nuclear plants in the desert then right? That would certainly be more environmentally friendly to the wildlife that live in those areas. But even ignoring putting nuclear plants in the desert, we should compare the lost utility of land by Chernobyl and Fukushima weighed against that of all hydro and solar, on a per megawatt basis over time. When showing concern about the lost land to Fukushima and Chernobyl the parent I was replying to exhibited, we should also look at the lost utility of land to climate change vs how much worse it would be without nuclear power in the mix, and how much better it might have been if we'd not substituted nuclear plants for coal and gas over the years. I'm pretty confident the small loss at Fukushima and larger loss at Chernobyl are peanuts on this scale. > Second, it's being covered in solar panels so that we can generate electricity without emitting CO2, which is rather important given that our planet will be turning mostly to desert in the next 30-50 years. You do understand that nuclear power does not emit CO2 right?
- vondur 7y ago
  Environmentalists always put up a court fights to block large scale solar deployments in the CA desert. I'm surprised anything gets built here in California.
SkyBelow 7y ago
>Everyone always ignores the huge amount of land made unusable by hydro and increasingly solar. Because it is easy to make it usable again. Break the dam and in a year people can move back. In a few years it will be populated with animals. After a century there might as well never have been a dam. With nuclear the timeslines are far longer. The worst possible disaster caused by a dam to some future civilization that has regressed would be if they built under one and it broke killing mass amounts. But once broken the danger is now gone. Land lost to solar is similarly regained once you remove the panels and in a century entire forest can have returned with the land being safe for humans (civilization advanced or regressed).
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]

by erentz 7y ago

tdhoot 7y ago

With solar you remove the solar panels and the area is immediately reusable. Or the panels can be mounted above usable space. Or am I missing something?

bargl 7y ago
The problem is that you can never remove them, we just have to replace them. Unless we reduce our use of electricity or come up with a new source, those panels will always be there. It will also take time for the wild life to grow back and if the the ecosystem has changed enough it won't come back the same. This isn't a problem by itself. But if Chernobyl is an example all you have to do is wait 50 years and wild life will move back in too. I'm 100% for renewable energy, but we're making a lot of assumptions on how we're going to get rid of and recycle solar panels. That's a lot of material we have to re-process and see how much we can use and how much was consumed.
- stephenr 7y ago
  If you want to go build a house out there, it’s hardly rocket science to put the panels on top of it.
  - bargl 7y ago
    Even rocket scientist have fairly bad foresight, see space debris as an example. The reason these plants are reasonably cheap is that there are rows and rows of uniformly hooked up and distributed easy to access solar panels. What you're suggesting is best accomplished by a government subsidy on solar panels. But then individuals own them and we won't have a way to recycle them when they all go bad in 30 years.

jwr 7y ago

> It’s unfathomable to me how okay people seem to be with the amount of CA land being covered by solar panels. Is that serious, or are you joking? I'm having a hard time deciding. First, the land that's being covered is mostly a desert, where no one wanted to live anyway. Second, it's being covered in solar panels so that we can generate electricity without emitting CO2, which is rather important given that our planet will be turning mostly to desert in the next 30-50 years.

erentz 7y ago
Of course its serious. Did you read my comment in the context of the subject of this post and the comment it was replying to? Because it seems like you didn't. > First, the land that's being covered is mostly a desert, where no one wanted to live anyway. So you're fine if we put nuclear plants in the desert then right? That would certainly be more environmentally friendly to the wildlife that live in those areas. But even ignoring putting nuclear plants in the desert, we should compare the lost utility of land by Chernobyl and Fukushima weighed against that of all hydro and solar, on a per megawatt basis over time. When showing concern about the lost land to Fukushima and Chernobyl the parent I was replying to exhibited, we should also look at the lost utility of land to climate change vs how much worse it would be without nuclear power in the mix, and how much better it might have been if we'd not substituted nuclear plants for coal and gas over the years. I'm pretty confident the small loss at Fukushima and larger loss at Chernobyl are peanuts on this scale. > Second, it's being covered in solar panels so that we can generate electricity without emitting CO2, which is rather important given that our planet will be turning mostly to desert in the next 30-50 years. You do understand that nuclear power does not emit CO2 right?
vondur 7y ago
Environmentalists always put up a court fights to block large scale solar deployments in the CA desert. I'm surprised anything gets built here in California.

SkyBelow 7y ago

>Everyone always ignores the huge amount of land made unusable by hydro and increasingly solar. Because it is easy to make it usable again. Break the dam and in a year people can move back. In a few years it will be populated with animals. After a century there might as well never have been a dam. With nuclear the timeslines are far longer. The worst possible disaster caused by a dam to some future civilization that has regressed would be if they built under one and it broke killing mass amounts. But once broken the danger is now gone. Land lost to solar is similarly regained once you remove the panels and in a century entire forest can have returned with the land being safe for humans (civilization advanced or regressed).

deleted 7y ago
[deleted]