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Often the kind of thing people hate for a while, and then with enough time becomes iconic and you'd probably end up with an article about how they were debating
by Latty 4y ago
Often the kind of thing people hate for a while, and then with enough time becomes iconic and you'd probably end up with an article about how they were debating whether to preserve it or not as it aged.
I think about this a lot when it comes to "eyesores", particularly wind turbines. When you think of how windmills are considered picturesque, it always makes me a little surprised when people moan about modern wind generation, because I think they look great. Especially when most of the areas they are put up are crisscrossed with overhead power lines anyway, which are much less appealing.
- trgn 4y agothe only time I'd appreciate windmills from an aesthetic point of view is when they are very very far away. Nearby, they are horrible to all senses.
- NotYourLawyer 4y agoPeople hated the Eiffel Tower for a long time.
- oh_sigh 4y agoIt is said that Guy de Maupassant ate lunch everyday at the base of The Eiffel Tower, because it was the only place in Paris where he couldn't see it
- WJW 4y agoIt's a great story, but surely even at places that had a clear view of the Eiffel tower he could simply sit facing away from it?
- llimos 4y agoPeople like a single windmill, standing picturesquely in the middle of the village. I don't think anyone would ever have gone for a field of tens or hundreds of them.
- asciimov 4y agoI kinda wonder what is gonna happen to them when they reach end of life. Knowing the history of these kinds of things, they will be left to rot and dangle in the fields they were planted.
- soperj 4y agoThey're buried in places like Wyoming currently.
- wkat4242 4y agoThey're replaced obviously because we really need the electricity they produce.
- kortilla 4y agoNot if solar keeps improving or we get the fabled affordable nuclear.
- astrange 4y agoSolar and wind peak at different times, and windmills don't compete with farmland. They're complementary. (Sometimes farmers do complain about windmills - that's because farmers are a kind of landlord and their actual problem is that it's harder to sell the land with a windmill on it.)
- mthq 4y agoTell that to the Dutch https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windmills_at_Kinderdijk https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windmills_at_Kinderdijk
- asciimov 4y agoAs a kid that grew up on the south plains (Texas panhandle). I have a love hate relationship with those windmills. On the one hand it's neat seeing all that green power generation. On the other, it does ruin the landscape to some extent, it can be visually jarring to be driving some back road, go over a rise that, and be smack in the middle of a wind farm. It also can be a little distracting at night, where the darkness is awashed in blinking red lights.
- wkat4242 4y agoI think the red lights make them more mysterious at night. Especially when you drive over a hill and it's all foggy, and there's this big field of red dots flashing. It's like the robots are coming :) I like it.
- chucksmash 4y agoEverybody likes to tell their "...and that's what inspired me to go into a technical field" story. We had several radio masts in an opening near our home growing up. I'm going to start incorporating those into my story. "It was then, gazing at those red lights as a two year old, that I knew I was destined to spend my life writing YavaScript." Probably some truth to it, tbh. That and locomotive engineers honking when we'd drive by making the universal "honk the horn" sign.
- Zircom 4y agoI love the red dots. My partner and I drive out to Big Bend every couple years to spend a week or so there, and on the drive back there's a stretch of road where at night there's a huge number of the dots juuuust barely visible over the horizon, and then you start to crest a certain hill and suddenly BOOM there's even more! It's always glorious and I wake her up everytime so at least one of us can fully appreciate the majesty. Unfortunately my partner doesn't drive these days, her epilepsy has gotten bad enough that they (honestly thankfully) yoinked her license, so I don't really get to take it all in since I'm also driving the car at the same time and trying not to die while staring at the pretty lights :(
- wkat4242 4y agoYeah I don't understand why people hate them so much either. I think they look nice too. Better than old-fashioned windmills. Where I'm from in the Netherlands there's is much less resistance to them anyway because we know the alternative is for our country to be under the sea ;)
- paganel 4y agoSome of them kill a lot of birds and bats. On top of that, they of course need access roads for maintenance crews to come do their thing once in a while, if located in a former pristine environment that isn't ideal. To say nothing of when the construction actually takes place, again, if it all happens in a pristine location then it's not ok.
- nine_k 4y agoHouse cats kill an order of magnitude more birds and bats than windmills. Practically no one calls domestic cats ugly, or suggests to ban them. Access roads required for wind generator maintenance are neither large nor busy: there's no fuel to bring, and no ash to take away.
- melagonster 4y agoI hope people don't let their cat go to outside. problems are problems.
- bnjms 4y agoAfter seeing a video of someone showing how the nearby windmill cast a rotating shadow on their living room window some months of the year I understood it is a legitimate issue for some. But generally I’m with you. I just don’t get it. Windmills look neat and do neat things.
- Latty 4y agoFor sure, not saying there are no issues (sound, shadows, etc...) especially when very close, but some people object to them literally just being in sight, which is wild to me.
- kevin_thibedeau 4y agoThey are obnoxious at night when a large cluster of them are all flashing their warning lights.
- runarb 4y agoHere are some gif showing the effect: https://www.nrk.no/nordland/mdg-mener-vindturbin-i-vindpark-gir-negative-konsekvenser-pa-naturen-pa-grunn-av-lysforurensning-1.15323885 https://www.nrk.no/nordland/mdg-mener-vindturbin-i-vindpark-... The article is in Norwegian, but look at the pictures. It must be stressful to have all those read warning lights blinking all night.
- enneff 4y agoLooks beautiful to me.
- mrguyorama 4y ago>It must be stressful to have all those read warning lights blinking all night. Why?
- themaninthedark 4y agoBecause what was once a dark hill side is now lit up every 5 seconds by bright flashes.
- hoseja 4y agoThe modern wind turbines are absolutely massive and dominate the landscape in a mocking, domineering, ignorant hatred of nuclear power.
- poulsbohemian 4y agoI live in an area with lots of windmills, where land owners of otherwise useless scrub ground have made good money providing a space for them. It has become a political issue for people literally "titling at windmills" as it were. Any conversation you have with them isn't about the windmill at all, apart from as you point out, some highly subjective statements about "eyesores" (which is ironic considering the ground on which these things are most commonly installed). The "real" complaints tend to be some absolute insanity about "medical issues" that are caused by the windmills. Or harm to wildlife, even though study after study debunks these views. Sometimes they try an environmental move, bringing up the waste from retired blades - all while ignoring the alternatives and their environmental harm. The real story is, these are people who just don't want progress. They don't want change. They are perfectly content with their Folgers coffee in a styrofoam cup and iceberg lettuce with ranch dressing. They want their news in paper form. Those windmills are just totems representing a world that scares them because it doesn't fit into their neat little navel-gazing bread basket. What I've noticed is that anger toward windmills in our area has grown over the decades since they started installing them rather than dissipated, as more of those angry old grumps realize that they won't get their old world back.