Posted on 03/21/2009 9:27:50 AM PDT by Joiseydude
WASHINGTON -- California's Mojave Desert may seem ideally suited for solar energy production, but concern over what several proposed projects might do to the aesthetics of the region and its tortoise population is setting up a potential clash between conservationists and companies seeking to develop renewable energy.
Feinstein said Friday she intends to push legislation that would turn the land into a national monument, which would allow for existing uses to continue while preventing future development.
(Excerpt) Read more at foxnews.com ...
BANANA
Build Absolutely Nothing Anywhere Near Anything
“Feinstein: Don’t Spoil Our Desert With Solar Panels”
LOL!!!!!!!!!
Watermelons - green on the outside, red on the inside
LOL! Solar panels are hideous, and even more hideous are those gawdawful windmills. Aside from chopping up birds, they march over every hill in California, destroy the view, and make a roaring noise that can be heard for miles. But I guess in the view of the greenies, anything is better than petroleum or nuclear...
Why can’t Stalin and Trotsky get along? So sad.
And lets not forget that no one must make any money off the production of that energy.
Time for the Monkey Wrench Gang to resurface only this time, they will be on OUR side not the greenies! LOL! (LOLOLOLs fully activated on Saturdays, a FReeper had a great essay on LOLers)
No wind farms near the Kennedys.
No gitmo detainees at Pelosi’s Alcatraz.
Now, no solar panels in Fienstein’s Mohave Desert?
Really? Would you like to throw some more straw men up there? I've NEVER heard of the second complaint. There are legitimate reasons that we shouldn't be adopting wind power, but these two arguments aren't anywhere near legitimate.
I agree that we should be building nuclear plants. But there are issues with those. Nuclear plants are not responsive enough to deal with fluctuating demand. It takes timeframes on the order of weeks to change the output of a nuclear plant. Wind, combined with energy storage technologies can be responsive to this demand. I'm an engineer. I deal with making the peg and the hole fit together. Putting up windmills for the sake of putting up windmills is a square peg, round hole thing. But putting up windmills with a defined storage strategy that makes them fill a niche in the power generation industry is good engineering and makes use of the resources available to us.
Arguments like yours are a detriment to those of us trying to propose "common sense" solutions.
I think Sam Kinison pretty much summed it up about world hunger and deserts when he was on Letterman for his 1st appearance;
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VKNoJ2BzSRU
No common sense in the Obama While House.
Nuke-power IS economical AND environmentally friendly though...
GREAT!! Feinstein fighting the greenies. I love it. May they both lose.
I'm glad this discussion has started among the left, nuclear is an option that we can construct in attractive architecture closer to already urban areas, we shouldn't spoil our outdoors.
Wonder what the senator’s carbon footprint looks like?
Watermelon. I love it.
Having said that, I actually prefer B***H for this gun-grabbing HYPOCRITE!!!
Been to her beautiful hell-hole of a desert and it’s an ideal spot for a witch like Fineswine to prep her corpulent body for the spot in which she’ll almost certainly spend eternity.

"Hey, Diane, a little shade around here might be kind of nice!"
For your education AntiKey
http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2005-01-04-windmills-usat_x.htm
http://birds.suite101.com/article.cfm/birds_and_windmills
Man this is getting serious,....
My solution, convert liberals into fossil fuels.
the damn idiots.
Feinstein doesn’t want the California desert sprinled with solar panels. Kennedy doesn’t want the ocean off his Cape Cod estate littered with windmills. And they don’t want nuclear power anywhere. Harry Reid won’t let the nuclear waste storage isolated in the safest part of the Nevada desert at Yucca Mountain. The Beltway liberals don’t want new powerlines across their horse country estates in Virginia.
What am I missing about this need for “renewable energy” and carbon-free production that all these idiots say we must have?
She advocates nukes and also solar poiwer from space. Said NASA was wroking on the option now.
Sorry, I can't remember her name or book. It was about 3 weeks ago on Dennis Prager. He said he would post it, but I never saw it.
>> Nuclear plants are not responsive enough to deal with fluctuating demand.
Yeah... like wind turbines are. And solar.
Oh, but you throw in “...combined with energy storage technologies...” for wind and solar, but nuke has to stand alone in its “unresponsiveness”.
They have a word for that sort of argument: disingenuous.
I don’t have a problem with alternatives as long as it’s my choice to pay for them.
I’ve been considering the possibility of using a small windmill to pump water out of the lake to water my garden and lawn. No electricity just a direct drive to a small pump.
They are planning a two solar plants near where I live. One is a couple hundred megawatt, producing steam, and takes up a square mile. the other is photovoltaic, planned to produce 500 megawatts, and expected to take up something like 9000 acres. Thats right, you read it right.
Solar as a supplement on rooftops has its place. As a serious source of electricity, though, it is a bust. It is a fool’s game. It is an enormous waste of land.
The most efficient source of power in terms of land and effort has still got to nuclear. Natural gas is right up there with it. They are both very clean. They produce, in the case of nuclear power, no emissions whatever, and in the case of natural gas, very little. Compared to the square miles of land spoiled by wind and solar they are far far less environmentally obtrusive.
Environmentalists are searching for magic power. We already have several good and efficient sources available to us, and in enormous quantities. You can’t let people who believe in magic dictate your policies and actions.
Don’t go attacking our beautiful deserts just because they get hot and don’t do grass well....
Someone came up with a brilliant idea.
Put the arrays on top of strip centers, malls, warehouse, plants and bigbox stores and let them use the electricity.
They want us all living in un-heated, un-lighted tin-shack slums. Except for themselves, of course.
Why cant Stalin and Trotsky get along? So sad.They ARE getting along.
Stalin says: "no energy but green energy!"
Trotsky says: "No energy is green!".
They are working together. Against us.
Use nukes for your base load. Nat gas for your peaks. They are typically started up and shut down twice a day, they can be up and running within a short time of getting the call.
You always want a mix of sources. Its not a problem; people who live in that world know how to make it all come together. Its not that complicated.
Hey DIFI how about those ugly and new bigger and really ugly windmills you allowed to be built in Solano and Contra Costa farm and ranch land?
Besides being ugly and noisy, these windmills slaughter beautiful wild birds 24/7 including eagles, falcons and other winged critters on the endangered species list.
According to your links, 4000 windmills kill 4700 birds annually. Just over 1 bird per year per windmill. Hardly a holocaust.
Welcome to the Stinking Desert National Indian reservation
and Nuclear Cobalt Testing RAnge...
Or medicine...or food...or transportation...or health care...
I have no idea where you got that notion. When we travel west out of the Palm Springs area, we pass right thru the massive windmill "farm" - and noise is no factor whatsoever.
Is this too much?
Not for the Navy it doesn't. I think maybe minutes to hours, and then it depends on the direction of change. Ramping up the power is not a problem, ramping it down can "poison" the process and it can then take much longer to ramp it up again.
BTW, I too am an engineer, and have even taken a nuclear engineering course, but it was many, many moons ago, like around 420 of them. :)
But in essence you are correct. Nuclear plants are used for "base load", plus filling storage, if you have any.
I've seen a few articles about this. The greenies are just overjoyed at the prospect of having clean renewable energy.
What they don't say is that they have to clear cut 300 acres of trees just to put up the panels. Plus, the cost of the energy will be more than what the electric companies are now charging. They believe people will actually pay for the more expensive energy because they think it helps the environment. It is absolute madness.
And your arguments are off the mark too.
Nuclear power is not designed for fluctuating loads. It is used to provide the baseline, steady state component of the power loads. Other sources with faster response times (natural gas, petroleum,hydro,coal) address the peak load requirements.
Spend some time near a windfarm and you will see that dead birds and noise are a problem. Ironically, it’s the envirofreaks that are worried about the dead birds. The noise with its low frequency is particularly annoying after long term exposure.
And if you go to most long standing wind farms, like South Point, Hawaii, or Pincher Creek, Alberta in your own Canada prairies you will see half the wind turbines out of commission and rusting in the breeze.
And the wind doesn’t always blow.
One of the most important criteria for the watermelon crowd, which includes our White House Resident.
It's also the one that guarantees failure.
The ultimate in hypocracy!!
Typical progressive attitude...I want a mansion with “undocumented” servants and Kobe beef dinners (shhh, don’t tell my PETA friends) and the finest caviar and champagne...
YOU put the solar panels on your roof and yard so I can show how good of a steward of the earth I am....
I am trying to chip away at my liberal friends to point out this but they just keep on coming up with excuses..it’s very sad...
What aesthetics? Has she ever even been here? Solar panels might actually improve the landscape.
Just drive through California if you want to see how ugly they are and they really don't contribute much of anything toward power.
You want power, just build nuclear plants. The euros are so far ahead of us on this it's funny. The french get 80% of their power from nuclear.
Now yer talkin HYDRO-ELECTIC DAMS!!!
The price isn’t terrible but I was thinking more along the lines of a small version of the old style farm windmills. I’m not looking for a great deal of efficiency. Just enough to move water through a garden hose and out a sprinkler head.
Right on the mark. They are as nutty as the peta crowd, totally disconnected from reality.
Tell me more. Either you don't have a clue about what you are talking about OR I need to turn in my Senior Reactor Operator's license :-)
Nucs like 100% power from startup to refueling but they can change power fast/easy enough to load follow but there are other issues that make it easier/more economical for fossil and hydro to load follow. Yes we could have all of our generation by nuclear plants but some of the operators would be busy changing power.
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