Iām missing the connection between wind turbines and light pollution.
Couldnāt they just run in the darkness, night sky undisturbed?
ETA: well, I guess youād need beacons to alert planes. Shoot. Just no-fly-zone the whole thing?
Oh, noes, green energy near rich peopleās summer houses. This is an outrage.
Thereās a solution. Donāt use any lights on the wind farm. If planes crash into the towers, rebuild the towers.
When it comes to carbon-neutral energy, to quote Joe Louis (or whoever actually said it first) ā everybody wants to go to heaven, but nobody wants to die.
Yep. āWhen I voted to prohibit fracking, and to dismantle the dams, and to decommission the reactors, how was I to know they were going to build a wind turbine RIGHT WHERE IT BLOCKS MY VIEW???ā
O frabjous day, the standard list of Big Oil talking points got a new entry!
People who live there should look at the good side. Lots less shit on their driveways from all those migrating birds.
Are they really that loud? Iāve walked through a few large windfarms (Tehachapi was one, but canāt recall the others) and they didnāt seem that loud to me, although I wasnāt actively trying to discern windfarm noise versus standard wind/forest noise. Damage to the local wildlife would be my foremost concern.
This. Yes.
NIMBYs attack. Why is this on BoingBoing? And seriously Jason, āexpensive and loudā energy? Is this a talking point from a coal industry ad?
What am I missing about this? Isnāt like a 95% of Canada a ādark sky preserveā? Thereās NOTHING THERE! Canada has roughly the same land area as the US (which has plenty of dark sky) with 1/10 the population. And almost all of that is within 100 mi of the US border.
I think anything high enough is going to need some blinkers for planes. And I also think anything making use of that darkness is going to need super dark.
well at least a wind turbine can be torn down in the future. Itās a little more reversible than, letās say, an oil spill or strip mining.
A dark sky preserve is not a nature preserve, except in the sense that the night sky is part of nature. Unless the wind farm will be brightly illuminated, itās no threat to the dark sky status of the preserve.
Though actually the construction is going to bring lights in for a good period of time, next to the possible idea that anything with electricity running through it is going to have lights of some sort.
Oil & coal are pumping money into Ontario, purchasing loud nimby attacks on any and all renewable energy plans. Much louder than the wind turbines.
Unfortunately the current Ontario government is fairly corrupt, does make some of the worst energy investment decisions in North America, and lines itās pockets all the while. It isnāt as though oil & coal are the only bad guys. Big energy is Big energy.
So what to do?
Have renewable energy anyway, since youāre stuck with corruption in any case. Vote out the current provincial government to try and secure something less corrupt for a few years (difficult, the provincial NDP sorely needs new leadership to win an election IMO) and ignore the minority nimby attacks.
As for dark skiesā¦
It hasnāt proved that much of a draw for tourists.
Tourists are their own brand of ecological trouble.
Cottagers leave their lights on all the damn time.
Even so, itās pretty frickin dark around here. Naked eye star-gazing at night at my cottage on a lake is awesome, I canāt say regarding telescopes & such.
As for lights on towersā¦ have we not by now got some transponder technology that could replace this? And if there is some schmuck mucking about in a low tech plane late at night with no flight plan or clueā¦ need we plan so much for them?
While Big (green) Energy is devoted to not leaving money in the areas they exploit, many people around here do support wind and solar, though the preference is solar despite the province fucking that up as well.
But the complaints about the source/intent of anti-wind efforts are very much justifiedā¦ it is nimbyism, it is a concerted effort by fossil fuels & given the alternatives, Iād do wind & solar over fossil fuels. Iād even accept nuclear so long as they donāt try and shove a uranium mine down our throats (another frontenac drama, hopefully past)
Build it in the daytime and make the towersā anti-aircraft lights directional so they canāt interfere with ground-based astronomy.
I think a ādark sky preserveā is a wonderful thing, and maybe the farm should be built elsewhere. But, yes, calling wind energy āexpensive and loudā isā¦ wellā¦ itās more than wrongā¦ it seems uninformed to the point of the author playing stupid on purpose.
Oh and BTW, regarding the post title. Frontenac boasts Canadaās -latest- dark sky site. About 16 years from being first.
edit - As for the letter,
Hardly, and itās teh worst one. Manitoulin Island is far less developed and farther from urban centres to boot. Also, all communities are local communities, stop talking that way.
