Solar Power Destroys Miles and Miles of Desert

[elektra]

California's desert is fast becoming a Solar Wasteland, what was once pristine desert habitat is being replaced with Industrial Scale Solar.

Thanks to Obama and the State Government of California.

California solar projects plan undergoing major overhaul - SFGate

With billions of dollars in federal stimulus money in hand, the Obama administration set out five years ago on a grand experiment in the California desert.

The goal: Open public lands to renewable-energy development to wean the nation from fossil fuels.

The results haven't been pretty, a fact the administration has tacitly acknowledged by devising a new plan, expected to be released this month, to find better places to put industrial-scale solar farms in the California desert.

The solar plants were rushed through the environmental approval process. Miles of unspoiled desert lands were scraped and bulldozed to make way for sprawling arrays of solar panels. Desert tortoises required mass relocation, and kit fox burrows were destroyed. Surprise troves of American Indian artifacts found in the Mojave Desert were moved to a San Diego warehouse, where they remain.


And once it was built, the largest solar plant of its kind in the world - the Ivanpah installation in the Mojave - began igniting birds and monarch butterflies that fly through intensely concentrated, reflected sunbeams aimed at 40-story "power towers," according to a confidential report by federal wildlife officials.

Much is at stake. Several projects are proposed near the three big national parks of the California desert: a 23-square-mile wind and solar farm in the Silurian Valley near Death Valley; a 3,000-acre solar project at Soda Mountain near the Mojave National Preserve that would straddle a bighorn sheep corridor; and another project by BrightSource at Palen, near Joshua Tree NationalPark, that would be a bigger version of Ivanpah and be located in a bird migratory path.

Other conflicts are playing out elsewhere in the desert.

Brian Brown, fourth-generation owner of the China Ranch date farm, is one of the few residents of the Silurian Valley, a remote area at the southern end of Death Valley National Park that is the site of the proposed 15,000-acre wind and solar farm by the Spanish firm Iberdrola Renewables. The area is all but surrounded by federally protected wilderness and home to historic pioneer trails.

The Silurian Valley is "all big, long vistas and gorgeous purple and blue mountains," Brown said, views he believes will be destroyed by creating "a big industrial zone."

And all of this is just the beginning. We are forced to buy an expensive product literally created by the government.

I do not want Obama's and California Energy policy driving up the cost of food, which is what expensive Solar does in a state dependent on Electricity to pump water.

Destruction of the Desert and forced to pay more for food, while the Republicans created the EPA, now they need to create another Agency to protect the Environment from the Government

 

[ScienceRocks]

lol,

a DESERT IS A FUCKING WASTE LAND. Most of the desert solar is built on isn't useable.

I've come to the conclusion that both parties in this country are full of people that are truly sick in the head.

 

[Tom Sweetnam]

Lysenkoism run amok.

 

[elektra]

lol,

a DESERT IS A FUCKING WASTE LAND. Most of the desert solar is built on isn't useable.

I've come to the conclusion that both parties in this country are full of people that are truly sick in the head.

A desert in Arizona produces cotton, A desert in California produces artichokes, there are birds and animals that live there, Butterflies and bugs.

But to mattpew, the Desert he does not like, its as if Mattpew is a bigot, a "waste land"? A "fucking waste land", in bold letters, so we see the true colors of mattpew. Matthpew does not see the desert, most likely never touched the desert, so he thinks its all waste land. I admit big areas of dry land may seem like a waste to some, but they are part of the environment, part of the earth, some of us enjoy the desert, people in the future will not if mattpew and people the same get their way. Bigots pass judgement without knowledge of what they judge.

If most of the land Solar is built on non-usable wasteland, why did President Bill Clinton declare all the Desert Solar is destroying protected federal land.

 

[elektra]

Solar must destroy the Earth to save the Earth?

 

[haissem123]

it's the whole monopolization of power that keeps us all enslaved to stupidity and greed. The goal should be to take all houses off the grid right were they are and with installations put on them. period. ground heat and cooling, solar power/ wind with battery or converted to hydrogen gas stored in tanks etc... But nobody wants to set anybody free from their rule. it's sad.

 

[Roadrunner]

lol,

a DESERT IS A FUCKING WASTE LAND. Most of the desert solar is built on isn't useable.

I've come to the conclusion that both parties in this country are full of people that are truly sick in the head.

Define "useable".

 

[Roadrunner]

Solar must destroy the Earth to save the Earth?

Deserts are beautiful.

 

[CultureCitizen]

Solar must destroy the Earth to save the Earth?

No , only half a million kilometers of desert is needed to cover current and future energy needs of the whole planet up to 2030.

Land Art Generator Initiative

 

[Moonglow]

Why is the desert any different than strip mining a mountain for coal?

 

[ScienceRocks]

Solar must destroy the Earth to save the Earth?

No , only half a million kilometers of desert is needed to cover current and future energy needs up to 2030.

Land Art Generator Initiative

Yep, we could power our entire nation with only a half million kilometers of desert with solar. This isn't including wind, geo-thermal or even roof top solar, etc. Most of this desert would already be effin wasteland in the middle of no where...

Better than digging up a large chunk of our nation for coal or drilling here and their for natural gas! Also, humans are never going to be perfect as we build cities and roads. But, hey that's why we form national parks and try to focus our impact only in cities.

 

[Old Rocks]

This is much preferable, Elektra?





The Appalachian region is home to one of the oldest and most biologically diverse mountain systems on the continent. Tragically, mountaintop removal mining has already destroyed more than 500 mountains encompassing more than 1 million acres of central and southern Appalachia.

After the coal companies blast apart the mountaintops, they dump the rubble into neighboring valleys, where lie the headwaters of streams and rivers, like the Kanawha, Clinch, and Big Sandy. The exposed rock leaches heavy metals and other toxics that pose enormous health threats to the region’s plants and animals — and people.

- See more at: Ecological Impacts of Mountaintop Removal Appalachian Voices

 

[ScienceRocks]

And what else is the reality that the solar is mostly off the ground. It isn't destroy shit..Unlike what oldrocks just posted.

 

[elektra]

Solar must destroy the Earth to save the Earth?

No , only half a million kilometers of desert is needed to cover current and future energy needs of the whole planet up to 2030.

Land Art Generator Initiative

That is all, a bargain, for a form of energy that was not needed and is going bankrupt left and right.

 

[elektra]

This is much preferable, Elektra?





The Appalachian region is home to one of the oldest and most biologically diverse mountain systems on the continent. Tragically, mountaintop removal mining has already destroyed more than 500 mountains encompassing more than 1 million acres of central and southern Appalachia.

After the coal companies blast apart the mountaintops, they dump the rubble into neighboring valleys, where lie the headwaters of streams and rivers, like the Kanawha, Clinch, and Big Sandy. The exposed rock leaches heavy metals and other toxics that pose enormous health threats to the region’s plants and animals — and people.

- See more at: Ecological Impacts of Mountaintop Removal Appalachian Voices

Solar Power plants require square miles of land, while providing a tiny bit of electricity, that strip mine that would fit into one Solar Farm can supply California with its entire Energy needs for a fraction of the cost.

But Solar causes even more damage, Solar requires strip mining, Solar literally doubles the size of strip mines.

 

[elektra]

Why is the desert any different than strip mining a mountain for coal?

Because Solar can not provide a fraction of the Power that Coal can.

 

[Moonglow]

Why is the desert any different than strip mining a mountain for coal?

Because Solar can not provide a fraction of the Power that Coal can.

Still does not change the fact that nature suffers for human needs....

 

[ScienceRocks]

Why is the desert any different than strip mining a mountain for coal?

Because Solar can not provide a fraction of the Power that Coal can.

Still does not change the fact that nature suffers for human needs....

Then you probably should just climb into a tree.

 

[Moonglow]

Why is the desert any different than strip mining a mountain for coal?

Because Solar can not provide a fraction of the Power that Coal can.

Still does not change the fact that nature suffers for human needs....

Then you probably should just climb into a tree.

I am three feet off the ground now...

 

[CultureCitizen]

That is all, a bargain, for a form of energy that was not needed and is going bankrupt left and right.

Wait a few months more and you'll discover which form of energy is not needed and going bankrupt, because its break-even price is arround 70 USD per barrel.