Does wind power cause visual pollution in your opinion?
I remember reading somewhere (probably my high school textbook) that one of the reasons people don’t like wind power being built is they cause visual pollution.
In my opinion, I think it would be pretty cool to just look out my window and see a giant windmill there, the opposite of visual pollution.
Even if we agree that it causes visual pollution, I’d argue that visual pollution from fossil fuels is many multitudes worse. Case in point, major chinese and indian cities.
I was in New Delhi when the AQI was ~700, that is MUCH worse than visual pollution. My lungs started hurting within 20 minutes of being outside, and a huge amount of people on the domestic flight I was on (mostly local residents) had coughs.
Sometimes “ugly” is even “not pretty and wealthy looking”.
Wind turbines aren’t pretty but they’re not any more of an eye sore as overhead power lines or whatever. And at least it’s a symbol of caring about being sustainable.
A lot of people like to move all the “ugly” elsewhere out of their sight and then call those places shitholes. It doesn’t bother them they’re just moving the infrastructure where the less wealthy have to deal with it. They’d rather a coal plant destroy a lower class city in pollution than see wind turbines near their upper class neighbourhood.
I think any place that rejects renewables should get a coal fired power plant instead. Let them reconsider it as their kids grow up with heavy metals and all the other shit these things spew out.
We stayed at a private beach resort once and I never want to again. Sure it was nice for a bit having so much space to yourself, but I miss you guys. I missed the +90 year old couples holding hands, the kids hopped up on ice cream and youth and BEACH, the young families holding a newborn, the middle aged bikers, the weird guy driving a model T, teenagers being sullen and prodding jellyfish, dogs who look like they are in heaven, hipster bicycles, processed meat fried in sugar somehow, arcades that still take coins run by crooked carnies, the 12 guys who decided to dig a really deep hole, the weird religious ethnic immigrant group just chillin…
I missed humanity in all its loud happy glory. This is the way we are meant to have fun, together. Not alone on some beach chair while someone underpaid changes our towels.
The strobe effect is a thing but it really doesn’t impact a lot of people since you know windmills are usually not by apartment buildings. Being very kind to that point of view seeing things that are new can put you out of sorts.
Personally I think they look cool, that doesn’t mean I can’t see other POVs. Still, people will adapt when they get more common and frankly I am not into NIMBY anyway.
Would suggest a driving trip on I65 just north of Lafayette Indiana…
It is a flat boring patch of rural farm land just like the rest of rural indiana, but they added hundreds of wind turbines to the fields that stretch as far as the eye can see. It is truly a marvel to look at…
In essence, i drive through rural indiana every so often… i can definitively confirm that the section with windmills is far more interesting looking than the rest.
Yeah I drove from central ohio to Chicago once. The thing that struck me most was how little renewables ohio had. The wind farms were exactly what rural America needed to look fine.
But yeah also I advise against driving through rural Indiana because you still have to be there to do it
People didn’t seem to mind fugly coal plants but now that weve got a clean energy source usually built in the middle of nowhere they suddenly have a problem with “visual pollution.”
To me it sounds a lot like those dudes that spew smoke out the back of their truck for no other reason than to “trigger” anyone they think might not approve.
I’ve tended to find people against them want the same skyline their grandparents had 50 years ago, ignoring that even the trees changed shape. So to them its change and conservative rural people abhor anychange that doesn’t have an immediate and tangible benefit.
You offer anyone whose home is within sight of a wind turbine say… 5000kw/h a year in free electricity. With a little careful planning and given that your average turbine produces around 6 million kwh a year. Id imagine they shut up pretty fucking fast.
Makes sense to me. If people who have to deal with something are invested in that thing they will defend it. Never miss an opportunity to take someone outside pissing in and put them inside pissing out.
Whenever someone brings up that argument (windmills are ugly), which is quite a controversial topic in the country I live in, I take them to the open pit coal mines of the area. Those are really ugly.
I do understand the argument that the intermittent shadows the rotating blades may cast on residential areas are annoying.
Why the heck would you build that on residential area anyway? SimCity taught me since I was a kid that industrial factories and windmills shouldn’t be built beside houses
I love telling this story. I lived on the second story apartment above a restaurant, behind the restaurant was this shed. One sat morning, very hung over, I am awaken at sunrise with a bright bedroom. Wtf? Look outside and turns out the shed now has solar panels that just happened to catch the light at sunrise and reflect it into my window.
They can’t be set next to residential areas for many reasons. One freak reason most people don’t know is that ice can accumulate on the tip of the blades and get thrown into the air. Having a 5kg ice blocks randomly falling on your house isn’t nice.
This complaint about wind power has always come across as the kind of thing people say because they heard somebody else say it. imo, it's just stupid people who desperately want to have an opinion on the topic weighing in with the only piece of criticism they've overhead some Sky News host parrot at some point in the past, and because that host had authority on the matter in their minds, it gives them some kind of false confidence to then go forward and proclaim the visual pollution argument, as if it has any real basis in anything.
I have actually heard the “original person” complaining about this… but the original person is also the kind of person who wants a picture-perfect ocean view every single day. Wind turbines? Visual pollution. Ships passing by? Visual pollution. Their neighbor has too many holiday decorations up? Visual pollution.
They just genuinely expect the rest of civilization around them to comply to their demands for a fantasy-perfect oceanside existence.
Sounds like my dad. We don’t talk anymore. Remember his irrational anger to the idea that other people were using HIS highway when he was driving on it. Also he had a war against a neighbor who sublet to his cousin “cause it is zoned for single family and a cousin is a different family”. Just fucking admit you don’t want a brown family on your block, I would honestly respect honest bigotry more.
You get used to them, and in a way look very cool because of their use and what they represent. Although I wouldn’t like to see them in a natural reserve.
I have another neat use for them. Since I can see some out of my window and use this sight to check wind direction and plan my bike route to have tail wind on the end of the route!
Im not sure I even agree that visual pollution should be a real thing. People like to pretend that there is a divide between man-made structures and “nature” but humans are animals and we construct our environment out of natural materials. Humans ARE natural and the things we make are not separate from nature. Obviously that doesn’t remove our responsibility to avoid causing overall harm with toxic chemicals that pollute or structures that destabilize equilibriums, but that being said I dont think we should have this mentality about our structures being an inherent detriment to the area we make them in, and wind farms seem like a good example of good structures in a good environment to me. End rant.
Like with anything, too much of it will look/taste/smell/sound bad.
Is that a reason in and of itself to not build wind power plants? No.
Personally I find wind power plants to look cool, a bit sci-fi and futuristic.
The argument that they are ugly is dumb, using a term like “visual pollution” is just a way to try and make a subjective oppinion sound like objective fact.
Id say that they arent exactly picturesque but they provide clean energy. So like sure… maybe dont put them everywhere, lets leave out the Unesco world heritage sites and National parks but theres an awful lot of otherwise unremarkable land that Id rather see a bunch of windmills on than the currently existing “fuckall”
Exactly this. You maybe don’t want them in the middle of Yellowstone (although if you put it near a visitor centre or something to power it instead of putting in miles of pylons, it might even make sense there). But people that complain about random fields suddenly being a ruined view because of a turbine are just entitled.
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