Apparently it’s much easier to build solar panels on open land, so they’ve tried to get away with it whenever possible, clearing trees when needed. Economics prevails over aesthetics.

Solar energy is weaker per unit area than wind power, but I agree that everything that can physically support panels should be blanketed; even solar hats or shoulder pads to charge phones.

Distributed solar – houses, neighborhoods, businesses, roofs of skyscraper, condos, apartment blds., big box stores and their parking lots (the Institute for Self Reliance calaculated years ago how just covering parking lots could produce as much power as was being used nationally, while protecting cars and shoppers from weather) – could not only produce more than the electricity we use today, but also confer energy independence as well as independence from corporations and government, a key conservative principle.

One of the best ways to halt Big Wind is to replace it with something much more effective and much less sprawling. You have to offer a serious replacement or the blight will only be controlled piecemeal, shuffled to other areas.

I’m talking about newer, safer nuclear power designs like molten salt SMR (self-cooling). People need to get the facts and lose their exaggerated fears and weaponry associations.

https://falseprogress.home.blog/2016/08/29/windturbineslandscapes/

It’s taken too long for major environmental groups (e.g. The Nature Conservancy) to treat energy sprawl as a serious issue, but many still claim these monster projects can be “carefully sited” even though by necessity they’re built where the best wind is. It’s like saying you can hide skyscrapers and their lights just around the next corner.

Nuclear power looks like the best way to get energy from a much smaller area, and people should stop fearing it based on limited knowledge.

At least the windmills don’t have great impact on ground water. Now, that clean burning natural gas T. Boone Pickens is bragging on–that uses immense amounts of ground water to extract gas, and leaves it contaminated with heavy metals, including radioisotopes.

It all ends up in somebody’s back yard, whether in impoverished rural America, Nigeria, China….We need to be concerned about everyone’s back yards.

When multiple homes in project areas could not be sold or even obtain one bona fide offer during the recent “peak” of market activity, despite 100+ showings, it does not take a crystal ball to conclude that current conditions of the real estate market will make homes in the shadows of turbines completely unmarketable.

I would add that President Obama should encourage all efforts to require the wind industry to insure the property values of homes (and land) in the project areas, and thus avoid a meltdown within a meltdown that will be unprecedented.

Let the wind developers carry thier own burden, and maybe set an example for Wall Street to follow!

Sincerely,
Michael S. McCann
McCann Appraisal, LLC
500 North Michigan Avenue, Suite 300
Chicago, Illinois 60611
mikesmccann@comcast.net