3 ms·

I don't think it's fair to dismiss the aesthetic argument entirely though. As your yourself said, some aesthetic concerns are dismissed because of utility, but

I don't think it's fair to dismiss the aesthetic argument entirely though. As your yourself said, some aesthetic concerns are dismissed because of utility, but not all of them can be. It's not a fiction that a large scale solar or wind farm will occupy more land than an equivalent gas or coal plant. So perhaps some of the concerns aren't quite so "status quo extremism" (lovely phrasing though, I'm going to be stealing that) as just realizing that we missed some things prior that actually mattered.

gibolt 2y ago
These aren't built in a city, where most people will be staring at them. They are in remote areas. I'd also argue that they are awesome, quietly spinning giants in the distance. Although maybe that wears off if you constantly live near one. Cell towers and oil wells are allowed to be built wherever by a landowner and are both eyesores, yet were built anyway.
- JumpCrisscross 2y ago
  > These aren't built in a city, where most people will be staring at them No, we reserve our cities for these lovelies [1]. [1] https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/05/nyregion/nyc-5g-towers.html https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/05/nyregion/nyc-5g-towers.ht...
  - ch4s3 2y ago
    That looks better than a transformer or a bunch of phone lines IMO.
- genocidicbunny 2y ago
  Does my not living in a city require that I change my sense of aesthetics? Is my sense of what is and isn't attractive required to be defined by where I live?
  - TheGRS 2y ago
    I think the whole point is that in cases of aesthetics, we built a bunch of eyesores for utilities and industries in the past anyway. Also I'm sure the next guy is going to say "does my land-ownership not mean anything? Why could my neighbor build an oil field in the past but I can't put up a big wind farm?" It's not black and white like that and trade-offs get made all the time.
    - gibolt 2y ago
      Most of a city is ugly. It doesn't mean we ban alleys, dumpsters, worn paint, trashy vehicles/houses, and most commercial buildings. We accept all of these and yet a beautiful, slow rotating turbine in some farmer's remote land or the middle of the ocean is unacceptable...
    - amadeuspagel 2y ago
      There was never a time when an oil field faced less opposition then a wind farm.
      - TheGRS 2y ago
        Really? Not even in the early oil rush?
        p51-remorse 2y ago
        [dead]
    - genocidicbunny 2y ago
      > It's not black and white like that and trade-offs get made all the time. Exactly. My point wasn't that we should sacrifice everything for the sake of aesthetics, as many replies to my comment seem to have taken. It's that for some people, aesthetics will matter, and you cannot just dismiss that without running into pushback -- pushback which will be even stronger if you're making people feel ignored. That also directly translates to things being more expensive.
- janniehater 2y ago
  [flagged]
- seabass-labrax 2y ago
  I live a couple of miles away from a windfarm. It's not directly visible, because my home is down in a valley, but it's by the main road into the town so you couldn't miss it. Now that I've set the scene, I can make my declaration: yes, they are awesome, quietly spinning giants, and no, the feeling doesn't wear off :) Nonetheless, I'll have to admit they are a bit noisy. If you're right underneath them, it's not so pleasant - but it's better than living by a main road, and especially so when there are internal combustion engine vehicles about. Thus, it's a tradeoff I'd personally be willing to take if it meant more sustainably-powered electric vehicles.
happypumpkin 2y ago
They might occupy more space but I still think most people would opt to live X miles from the center of a wind/solar farm than a coal plant. Mildly bad aesthetics vs breathing in heavy metals...
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
glenstein 2y ago
>a large scale solar or wind farm will occupy more land than an equivalent gas or coal plant The land use talking point is so old that I remember hearing it in high school nearly 20 years ago. And the answer now is the same as the answer then, which is that this is not an apples to apples comparison. Windmills actually don't physically occupy something like 99% of the space over which they are distributed, and they are located so as not to interfere with other forms of land use, on land that wouldn't otherwise be used for something. With solar panels it's a little bit more nuanced because apparently there have been some cases where land has been cleared to make space for panels, which is bad. I would like to think however that's unrepresentative, and the same thing is true of solar panels that they're located in ways that don't interfere with other forms of land use. Even if wind and solar were not renewable these would still be distinctive advantages they have on the land use question. But if you throw all those nuances away and purely look at something like energy generation per square meter, it makes it look like there's some sort of losing proposition you have to worry about with solar and wind, even though there really isn't. I do think it's fair to dismiss the aesthetic argument, because like so many other things in this thread, it's this dangling concern with an open unquantified implication for how significant it's supposed to be. That open-ended implication allows a skeptic to get away with implying that maybe it's a big problem without doing any of the work. In my opinion we are now far enough along into the renewable energy transition that this kind of rhetorical move should not be allowed, it should be considered poor form. You want to say it's a problem, that's fair and good, but how big of a problem? Are you at least interested in that kind of question or understand why it's important? What's the upshot? Is the idea that we abandon renewable energy altogether, do 5% less or something? Is it that we do exactly as much as before but we all just agree to be really careful? And why should I have to do your work for you of working through with the implication is supposed to be? I think a lot of the problems with aesthetics are similar in that there are strategic ways to mitigate them, but perhaps more importantly I don't think that there are actually aesthetic problems here in the first place, and we seem to get along just fine without applying those standards to status quo infrastructure. But, here again, even if we agree that it's a problem, and did some sort of like economic analysis of the trade-off there, we would have to weigh that against the benefits of renewables writ large, are we looking at one penny of problem versus $1 of benefit? I suspect that that even would overstate the problem, but again, It's this unquantified open-ended implication that seems to be doing no work whatsoever to assess the relative scale of the problem and weigh it against the benefits brought by renewables.
notTooFarGone 2y ago
>It's not a fiction that a large scale solar or wind farm will occupy more land This argument still baffles me - when we are talking about the US, things requiring a bit more space is laughable. There's SO MUCH UNUSED SPACE that no one cares about, there's offshore space and dual use space no one gives a damn about how is this even an argument. If it'd be orders of magnitude yea that'd be a problem but a few percent? Please.
- genocidicbunny 2y ago
  > This argument still baffles me - when we are talking about the US, things requiring a bit more space is laughable. There tend to be fairly good reasons for why so much land is seemingly unused. You also can't just build a wind or solar plant anywhere, there's areas where either the construction is not feasible, far too expensive, or is too remote. Or just not usable for that type of power generation. You also need access to the labour to build and maintain the facility, and that's going to be harder if you're too far from a population center.
raxxorraxor 2y ago
Wind farms also cause noise. You don't want to live too close to a working turbine. I will also agree that they are quite ugly. But that is all fine and we can just build them elsewhere where this isn't an issue.
- genocidicbunny 2y ago
  You can't always 'build them somewhere else' -- wind farm locations aren't arbitrary. Solar is a little less constrained in this way, but still has some location requirements (you wouldn't put a solar plant on a hillside that is shaded half the day.) There's also losses from transmission of the generated energy. The further you generate from where you use, the more loss you have to account for.
- ck425 2y ago
  Eh? Wind farms cause noise?? A massive windfarm was built on the hills behind the house I grew up on and I never heard any noise, even when visiting the extremely popular walking route that goes through them.

gibolt 2y ago

These aren't built in a city, where most people will be staring at them. They are in remote areas. I'd also argue that they are awesome, quietly spinning giants in the distance. Although maybe that wears off if you constantly live near one. Cell towers and oil wells are allowed to be built wherever by a landowner and are both eyesores, yet were built anyway.

JumpCrisscross 2y ago
> These aren't built in a city, where most people will be staring at them No, we reserve our cities for these lovelies [1]. [1] https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/05/nyregion/nyc-5g-towers.html https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/05/nyregion/nyc-5g-towers.ht...
- ch4s3 2y ago
  That looks better than a transformer or a bunch of phone lines IMO.
genocidicbunny 2y ago
Does my not living in a city require that I change my sense of aesthetics? Is my sense of what is and isn't attractive required to be defined by where I live?
- TheGRS 2y ago
  I think the whole point is that in cases of aesthetics, we built a bunch of eyesores for utilities and industries in the past anyway. Also I'm sure the next guy is going to say "does my land-ownership not mean anything? Why could my neighbor build an oil field in the past but I can't put up a big wind farm?" It's not black and white like that and trade-offs get made all the time.
  - gibolt 2y ago
    Most of a city is ugly. It doesn't mean we ban alleys, dumpsters, worn paint, trashy vehicles/houses, and most commercial buildings. We accept all of these and yet a beautiful, slow rotating turbine in some farmer's remote land or the middle of the ocean is unacceptable...
  - amadeuspagel 2y ago
    There was never a time when an oil field faced less opposition then a wind farm.
    - TheGRS 2y ago
      Really? Not even in the early oil rush?
      - p51-remorse 2y ago
        [dead]
  - genocidicbunny 2y ago
    > It's not black and white like that and trade-offs get made all the time. Exactly. My point wasn't that we should sacrifice everything for the sake of aesthetics, as many replies to my comment seem to have taken. It's that for some people, aesthetics will matter, and you cannot just dismiss that without running into pushback -- pushback which will be even stronger if you're making people feel ignored. That also directly translates to things being more expensive.
janniehater 2y ago
[flagged]
seabass-labrax 2y ago
I live a couple of miles away from a windfarm. It's not directly visible, because my home is down in a valley, but it's by the main road into the town so you couldn't miss it. Now that I've set the scene, I can make my declaration: yes, they are awesome, quietly spinning giants, and no, the feeling doesn't wear off :) Nonetheless, I'll have to admit they are a bit noisy. If you're right underneath them, it's not so pleasant - but it's better than living by a main road, and especially so when there are internal combustion engine vehicles about. Thus, it's a tradeoff I'd personally be willing to take if it meant more sustainably-powered electric vehicles.

happypumpkin 2y ago

They might occupy more space but I still think most people would opt to live X miles from the center of a wind/solar farm than a coal plant. Mildly bad aesthetics vs breathing in heavy metals...

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

glenstein 2y ago

>a large scale solar or wind farm will occupy more land than an equivalent gas or coal plant The land use talking point is so old that I remember hearing it in high school nearly 20 years ago. And the answer now is the same as the answer then, which is that this is not an apples to apples comparison. Windmills actually don't physically occupy something like 99% of the space over which they are distributed, and they are located so as not to interfere with other forms of land use, on land that wouldn't otherwise be used for something. With solar panels it's a little bit more nuanced because apparently there have been some cases where land has been cleared to make space for panels, which is bad. I would like to think however that's unrepresentative, and the same thing is true of solar panels that they're located in ways that don't interfere with other forms of land use. Even if wind and solar were not renewable these would still be distinctive advantages they have on the land use question. But if you throw all those nuances away and purely look at something like energy generation per square meter, it makes it look like there's some sort of losing proposition you have to worry about with solar and wind, even though there really isn't. I do think it's fair to dismiss the aesthetic argument, because like so many other things in this thread, it's this dangling concern with an open unquantified implication for how significant it's supposed to be. That open-ended implication allows a skeptic to get away with implying that maybe it's a big problem without doing any of the work. In my opinion we are now far enough along into the renewable energy transition that this kind of rhetorical move should not be allowed, it should be considered poor form. You want to say it's a problem, that's fair and good, but how big of a problem? Are you at least interested in that kind of question or understand why it's important? What's the upshot? Is the idea that we abandon renewable energy altogether, do 5% less or something? Is it that we do exactly as much as before but we all just agree to be really careful? And why should I have to do your work for you of working through with the implication is supposed to be? I think a lot of the problems with aesthetics are similar in that there are strategic ways to mitigate them, but perhaps more importantly I don't think that there are actually aesthetic problems here in the first place, and we seem to get along just fine without applying those standards to status quo infrastructure. But, here again, even if we agree that it's a problem, and did some sort of like economic analysis of the trade-off there, we would have to weigh that against the benefits of renewables writ large, are we looking at one penny of problem versus $1 of benefit? I suspect that that even would overstate the problem, but again, It's this unquantified open-ended implication that seems to be doing no work whatsoever to assess the relative scale of the problem and weigh it against the benefits brought by renewables.

notTooFarGone 2y ago

>It's not a fiction that a large scale solar or wind farm will occupy more land This argument still baffles me - when we are talking about the US, things requiring a bit more space is laughable. There's SO MUCH UNUSED SPACE that no one cares about, there's offshore space and dual use space no one gives a damn about how is this even an argument. If it'd be orders of magnitude yea that'd be a problem but a few percent? Please.

genocidicbunny 2y ago
> This argument still baffles me - when we are talking about the US, things requiring a bit more space is laughable. There tend to be fairly good reasons for why so much land is seemingly unused. You also can't just build a wind or solar plant anywhere, there's areas where either the construction is not feasible, far too expensive, or is too remote. Or just not usable for that type of power generation. You also need access to the labour to build and maintain the facility, and that's going to be harder if you're too far from a population center.

raxxorraxor 2y ago

Wind farms also cause noise. You don't want to live too close to a working turbine. I will also agree that they are quite ugly. But that is all fine and we can just build them elsewhere where this isn't an issue.

genocidicbunny 2y ago
You can't always 'build them somewhere else' -- wind farm locations aren't arbitrary. Solar is a little less constrained in this way, but still has some location requirements (you wouldn't put a solar plant on a hillside that is shaded half the day.) There's also losses from transmission of the generated energy. The further you generate from where you use, the more loss you have to account for.
ck425 2y ago
Eh? Wind farms cause noise?? A massive windfarm was built on the hills behind the house I grew up on and I never heard any noise, even when visiting the extremely popular walking route that goes through them.