The Electric Revolution

[theprestige]

I don't get the hate on for solar. And don't you live in the Pacific Northwest and benefit greatly from the power from the massive amount of hydroelectric power here?

To be clear: I have no hate for solar in principle. What I have hate for is the double standard and special pleading, when it comes to Politically Correct power solutions.

I'm in favor of exploiting natural resources to benefit humanity. I also think this exploitation should be careful, thoughtful, and consistent with principles of good stewardship of the resources available to us. Hydro, solar, nuclear... They all have their place in our civilization. What bugs me is how quickly the conservationist narrative goes out the window when it's solar terraforming instead of hydro.

I can see putting solar on rooftops, because you've already paved wilderness to accommodate human activity, and what else can you really do to add power generation there? It makes much less sense to me to just pave over tens of thousands of acres of desert with solar, when you could flood a river valley instead. Less mining of rare materials. Less incredibly-polluting manufacturing processes. Concrete for dams is much less polluting than PV cells for solar farms. But for some reason the conventional "wisdom" seems to deprecate the former and celebrate the latter. That's what pisses me off about the "electric revolution".

 

[Rolfe]

This is a view near where I live. Looks fairly wild, doesn't it?



The whole damn lot is man-made, not just the few fields surrounding the farm buildings and the road. The loch is a reservoir formed by damming a glen, and the bare hillsides are the result of grazing sheep stripping the temperate rainforest that ought to be there.

 

[acbytesla]

To be clear: I have no hate for solar in principle. What I have hate for is the double standard and special pleading, when it comes to Politically Correct power solutions.

I'm in favor of exploiting natural resources to benefit humanity. I also think this exploitation should be careful, thoughtful, and consistent with principles of good stewardship of the resources available to us. Hydro, solar, nuclear... They all have their place in our civilization. What bugs me is how quickly the conservationist narrative goes out the window when it's solar terraforming instead of hydro.

I can see putting solar on rooftops, because you've already paved wilderness to accommodate human activity, and what else can you really do to add power generation there? It makes much less sense to me to just pave over tens of thousands of acres of desert with solar, when you could flood a river valley instead. Less mining of rare materials. Less incredibly-polluting manufacturing processes. Concrete for dams is much less polluting than PV cells for solar farms. But for some reason the conventional "wisdom" seems to deprecate the former and celebrate the latter. That's what pisses me off about the "electric revolution".

I have no problem with solar farms in the desert. Or agrivoltaics. I do have issue displacing farmland for solar. I'd like to see floating solar farms and wind farms close to hydroelectric dams. Let them make use of the transmission lines. As for dam removal. Some of them should be removed. Some should never have been built.

It does bother me a bit that the greatest salmon fishery in the Western Hemisphere perhaps the world was devastated. But what was done was done. I don't blame the indigenous tribes wanting to see some dams removed. Removing the Klamath and the Elwha dams made a hell of a lot of sense. Neither produced much electricity and their removal was mostly a good thing.

Removing the Snake River dams is much more problematic since their real benefit is the barge traffic.

 

[Pixel42]

In general, I'm of the opinion that "wildnerness" is a kind of hoax, and that terraforming all the things is perfectly acceptable. My only quibble is that if we're going to do terraforming well, then we probably shouldn't do too much of it.

Space Core Directive 723: Terraformers are expressly forbidden from recreating Swindon.