I’ve found DJT’s long lost twin. There is a proposal to install PV solar on 28 acres near a highway. Between the highway and the closest subdivision.
One person is complaining about the noise it will cause and electromagnetic fields.
The alternative is of course another subdivision and another 100 houses.
There is NO way to reach these people. I wrote the county about it in full support of it course.
Make them define the noise (there is none) and EM fields that are a “problem” (EM fields are everywhere…we can’t get away from them if we wanted to…the earth itself has an EM field…we’d be dead without it).
Yeah, right? The noise??? The EMF??? They are apparently afraid of anything they don’t understand. Which must be… everything.
You want noise? Wait until you have 100 neighbors. What about the sound of 100 homes being built? If they are generally against anything ‘green’ and good for the earth, at least come up with a reason that isn’t so absolutely ridiculous.
Just say that PV panels are black and I prefer a bunch of houses. I donno. But good grief, The noise?
Of course what they really want is for the dirt to remain undisturbed. Not out of greenery, but out of the misplaced notion that the entire local area must remain exactly as it was the day they moved in. They have a right to the world stopping as soon as they show up.
That reminds me of a quote I heard long ago (sorry, I forgot who said it and may not have the quote exactly right but close enough):
“Definition of an environmentalist: Someone who already has a house in the woods.”
There are a lot of published variations on that sentiment.
Right down to NIMBY. Well guess what Bozo, your back yard was built right near some other people’s existing [whatevers]. How 'bout you object to your backyard existing instead?
What is PV in this context?
I am guessing photovoltaic (solar cell).
Yeah, I’m sure your correct. Myself, I think any solar power (especially windmills) are beautiful. They are a testament to our ingenuity.
Yep. photovoltaic. Solar panels. I thought that was a common abbreviation. But I’ve got a friend that used to be in the business, so it may be more common to me.
I tell you, I see the panels on my house when I walk the dogs. I think it’s beautiful. But then I’m a bit of a tech/tool geek. But while I want to save our only planet, I’m not a super green environmentalist (my wife and I each have an SUV).
I want to know more about them too. I’m gonna find out. My panels, installed this summer are still not active. Permitting/inspections are very slllooooowwww.
Not to mention all of the radiation emitted by the giant, unshielded nuclear reactor! Won’t someone think of the children?
Stranger
Ask them if they have a cell phone. EM field right next to their head.
Do they have WiFi at home. EM field.
Radio? EM field. They do not even need a radio…the EM field is there anyway.
Electricity at home? EM field.
We could go on all day with this.
Do they realize that lots of people choose to put those on the roof of their homes, and that other than a reduced electric bill, there’s really no way to know you have them from inside the house?
And DJT is getting rid of the tax credit for installing the PV panels. We think we got in under the wire (make it a pun or not)
Our electric bill for a 3700 sq. ft. house is going to be about $10 a month. I had them add two extra panels to be sure. We will see once it finally goes online.
I have friends whose roofs generate so much power they pay three electric bill of a friend, as well as their own.
And this is crazy. We have a hot tub at the new house (neither of us are hot tub people). And the garage is wired for electric vehicles. That was all calculated into this installation.
When things get weird, and I suspect they will, we could go full battery and get off the grid. But that would be above my level of knowledge.
We’ve lived in the house in fall, summer, and now autumn. We will see what winter brings. I’m not worried about that. Winter will bring more chess games inside is all.
You mean the flying cancer factory? That’s just a sunscreen lobby conspiracy theory!
I’ve had the dubious fortune of having lived amongst, and gotten to know, many a “EMF skeptic”. They range from Aunt “Stand a few feet away from the microwave, dearie” (thankfully, a discussion about the spectrum and ionizing radiation put her at ease) to Uncle “My $10 EMF detector gadget proves this thing is not transmitting!” (no, uncle, it’s just not looking at the right frequency range… here, let me switch the mode and show you…) to pamphlet-waving 5G protestors to people who show up at public meetings to complain how the offshore wind project 50 miles away is going to disturb the solitude of their “EMF-free” cabin in the woods (as long as they ignore all satellites, radio, TV, the sun, the earth, etc.).
I blame our woeful science education.
These people are so obsessed sometimes I wonder what would’ve happened if they encountered more “positive” interactions about the EM spectrum earlier in life. If a grade school science teacher had shown them some cool experiments, or let them play with a software-defined radio… could they have turned that obsession into a passion instead of lifelong paranoia? We’ll never know…
And then as if that’s not bad enough, yeesh, there was quite often the inter-environmentalist civil wars that such projects would often bring. Solar farms would impact some endangered tortoise. Wind farms would kill precious birds. Offshore anything wouldn’t harmonize well with whalesong.
A lot of them were the type that @Whack-a-Mole mentioned… older folks who already got their share (in our area, that meant old hippie homesteaders turned black-market weed growers) and wanted to preserve the remaining wilderness and ensure nobody could move in after them, nevermind the housing crisis or energy needs.
And elsewhere, sometimes people got pretty good at weaponizing NEPA and CEQA (environmental regulations) to purposely drag on permitting approval for years if not decades until the developers scurried away in fear.
The academics were often stuck in the middle, trying to more-or-less fairly explain the actual risks (and also, what were specifically not considered a significant risk), but they were altogether out-shouted by the much louder NIMBY neighbors. You can’t really reason somebody out of their emotional attachment to their home environment, and if they want to keep it just the way they like it, they’re going to find or make up any excuse they can.
I suppose we should be glad those neighbors at least participated in the public processes instead of just going straight Ted Kaczynski on their opponents…
Frankly, I’m kinda surprised there hasn’t been a Parks & Rec type spoof TV show about this stuff.
No, no, the alternative is a fracking well. Then the noise will be good old fashion American oil music, and the air will be full of healthy benzene, or whatever.
Please don’t forget what fracking does to our water quality.
I’m sure real pollution from fracking is agreeable to the complainer, but imagined contamination from PV is something to be vigorously fought against. Keep your photons out of my reservoir!
(Probably it’s real NIMBYism, and fracking would also be bad. Keep that kind of stuff the other side of the freeway in Weld county.)