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North Carolina Town Defeats Big Solar's Plan To Suck Up the Sun (arstechnica.com)
mdsolar writes with this excerpt from Ars Technica: The citizens of Woodland, N.C. have spoken loud and clear: They don't want none of them highfalutin solar panels in their good town. They scare off the kids. "All the young people are going to move out," warned Bobby Mann, a local resident concerned about the future of his burg. Worse, Mann said, the solar panels would suck up all the energy from the Sun. Another resident -- a retired science teacher, no less -- expressed concern that a proposed solar farm would block photosynthesis, and prevent nearby plants from growing. Jane Mann then went on to add that there seemed to have been a lot of cancer deaths in the area, and that no one could tell her solar panels didn't cause cancer. "I want information," Mann said. "Enough is enough."
Srsly, I'm amazed that some people are clever enough to breathe.
More Sun to us!
Just checking the calender, no, not April 1, must be for real......oh dear...
Finally someone stands up to these big energy companies, the co2 emissions from the sun far exceeds anything produced by burning oil, and the radiation have caused massive problems with equipment!
The sun is dangerous, we need to stop using it!
These people will be the death of us all.
People with IQ's averaging UNDER 100 are 50% of the vote. Some day dumb people should be just set up to vote in fake elections. They won't know.
This is the lack of education and level of ignorance of the average American in the 21st century. You'd think this was an April fool's joke, or something from The Onion, but it's not. Anywhere else in the world this would've been dismissed as a joke, but in the U.S it's reality.
I think there might be other reasons for young people moving away. Their narrow-minded elders, a town council willing to be swayed by nonsensical arguments, the simple pure idiocy that seems to prevail. The people who stay are happy with the situation (or just can't get out).
Oh arse
I'm confused. Were the plans to build the panels directly over the town, Mr Burns style?
Or are Americans actually that stupid?
You see, that's the problem: all this radiation.
Nuclear energy creates radiation. And the sun IS radiation.
No, no. The only safe energy is the Oil that He has giveth, for us to burn as we please!
(do I need a sarcasm tag? I hope not)
I appreciate that the summary and associated news stories are presenting a fair, unbiased view of the situation, free from ridicule and sarcasm (SWIDT?).
This would have been the THIRD solar farm approved in the vicinity of the town -- there are already two solar projects underway.
The solar farm would not have increased tax revenues or added value to the town. It would not likely employ any of the town's residents.
Yes, the town residents are poorly informed about solar -- they have two projects underway and haven't seen the results of them yet.
The town council did what the town council is supposed to do -- represent the will of their constituents. The solar company seeking the zoning change would have been well advised to work on communicating and educating the town they needed permission from. Why would the town council overrule their voters in exchange for...nothing?
There's quite a double standard when it comes to education -- take someone in an urban environment who can't name their state capital or point to the United States on a map, and it's the fault of the school system and their environment. Take a similarly ignorant person for a rural environment and suddenly they become a willfully hick and fully at fault for not seeking out and drinking deep of the cup of knowledge.
Solar power is just nuclear power done in a very inefficient way. Here in Maryland we get the vast majority (~65% ) from two nuclear power plants. (And we share most of one with Pennsylvania). Yet people still want to build these tiny little 2 megawatt solar panels that only work during the day.
The mayor and 3 council members are Democrats, the final council member is unaffiliated.
Woodlawn is 65% registered Democrats. The state does have a single House member who is a Dem and one GOP senator and one Dem senator and a GOP governor.
So this is a Dem town, like other longtime Dem towns like Detroit, Baltimore and D.C.
Of course, Ars Technica can't let some accuracy in reporting interfere with getting a big hate going for Republicans who are pretty scarce in Woodlawn. The writer at Ars is one of their most shameless hacks on these kinds of tabloidy stories that play loose with facts. He is their lousiest writer.
At any rate, I would support these Woodlawn residents' right to refuse to put a big solar farm in their backyard. Clearly, they could find an area with less population density. You don't have to site these utility sites right next to a town. The solar plant can go buy some land out in the rural where it isn't zoned. Woodlawn is a tiny village of 800 people and the area has low population density.
Shocking news for some of you but communities do have a right to control where development occurs and what kinds of development occurs via their zoning laws. And every city, town and burg does so.
"expressed concern that a proposed solar farm would block photosynthesis."
Enough shade and nothing will grow, same reason you don't put the solar panels in the shade. Making him sound like an idiot when he is actually correct is a bit of a dick move. makes you wonder if who ever wrote this has an agenda...
I really respect their decision. We had a solar plan around here and it got partially built and then the company went bankrupt. Same thing happened to a foreign wind power plan. Several hundred were going up and luckily the company went belly up before installing all those. We have a wind farm south of us that sits idle more then it provides power. Truth is not enough planning is being done with alternatives. Its like Solyendra it had no chance because it had no practical ideal on how to make money.
Just tell them we'll add two hours to daylight savings time to make up for it.
Mostly random stuff.
Looks like ALEC's misinformation campaign is going on more smoothly than scheduled.
This is speculation on my part but I think I have it right. You're going to have to read between the lines of the original side to see the serious side (newspaper article linked by ARS). Woodland is a tiny little farming community with almost no revenue coming in. The per capita income is ~$12,000 (wiki). There us no upside to these solar farms; it doesn't create jobs, it doesn't generate tax additional revenue, there is no return on the land/dollar trade. So Woodland wants a cut of the profits. Strata Solar has not offered said cut
However, Strata Solar has bought the acreage. Woodland is holding them over a barrel. Now, Woodland can't say that outright so instead they use NIMBY politics.
How the GOP get so many voters.
Trump must be proud of his peeps!!
rofl.
Truth isn't Truth - Guliani
Her primary concern is with property prices. I don't believe for one minute that she believes any of this crap - she's just trying to manipulate the rest of the town to keep her house value up.
Obviously they are nuts. Solar panel do not scare young people. However, a minimum of 405 idiots might just do the trick. Solar panel do also not suck energy from the sun. We all know that if they do not know that then they never really paid attention to the topics at school. But there is a positive side to that. First, the range of total nut cases is only between 405 and 809. It may be even lower, if people did not vote and if there are any children left. Second, we could promote the town to people who have similar ideas of "reality" and concentrate them in North Carolina. And third, now the town has at least one thing on Wikipedia for what they are famous for. I wonder why such small village is called a town.
All the young people are going to move out
Of course, that could not possibly have anything to do with the town being ruled by a bunch of retired retards.
Slashdot social media options: AIM, ICQ, Yahoo, Jabber and Mobile Text. Why no MySpace?
I thought people this stupid only existed in comedy films. However it should be noted that two other solar projects in the same area have been approved and one is already under construction. Sounds similar to something that took place in my area, they were trying to put up a wind farm and same NIMBY arguments were used (they're unhealthy (sound waves) they'll destroy property values (its all farmland anyway), etc). So instead of a new industry brought to our community, increased tax revenue and more (though limited) employment opportunities we've got nothing. I'm not saying that all renewable energy projects are worthwhile, but sabotaging them for these idiotic arguments is akin to burning all of your money because you're afraid the trace amounts of cocaine on the bills will get you thrown in jail.
"All the young people are going to move out."
If I were a young person and lived in rural America, I would be chomping at the bit to move to a city somewhere. As an older adult that is currently living in rural America, I can wholeheartedly understand. Living in rural America sucks, especially if you're educated and cultured. I spend the first 35 years of my life living in cities and thought country farm living might be a nice change of pace. Boy, was I wrong.
"The solar panels will block photosynthesis in nearby plants"
Absolutely true, if we change the word "block" to "reduce." After all, solar panels cast a shadow on the ground, and grass on the ground is a nearby plant.
But see, here's the reason it is completely irrelevant how this town voted. It is because they voted. We do not live in an authoritarian dictatorship where the technorati or envirorati or hipsterati get to decide for everyone else what is good for them. The voters of a political subdivision get to decide for themselves how to deploy and use their resources, because, you know, democracy. If they want to be stupid-as-fuck rednecks, it is their right whether the rest of us like it or not.
The one saving grace might be the ACA precedent that gave the government the power to force people to take action and buy products. This may allow the federal government to compel people against their will to buy solar panels and carbon credits and other products the government sees fit we should buy. But, someone with standing will have to sue in federal court that the lack of deploying solar panels is causing them a demonstrable loss. That might be tricky, but if the SCOTUS can apply the same tortured logic that they used in Wickard v. Filburn and NIFB v. Seleblius, then it should be only academic once a test case floats to the top.
Yeah, the concern about as valid, as the fear, that the inhabitants' flatulence raises the planet's temperature.
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
You can find ignorant people anywhere. Some places, like slashdot, just have more than their fair share.
This sounds just like the silly sorts of thing said by anti-nukes when they're fighting to keep a nuclear power plant from being built.
So, I take it that the problem here is that they're opposed to something that we like, as opposed to something we dislike?
"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
I see bigotry for the southern US is alive and well here on Slashdot. Why look into all the facts when you can parrot this juicy headline.
Conservative, mod down for violating
I read TFA, Mary Hobbs of Woodland, N.C. lied. Why?
Seriously? "Appearance" is a rational objection?.. Kennedy much?
Wait, is this the moment of truth? Democrats admit, solar panels may have a negative environmental impact? Could you elaborate?
In a properly Capitalist environment, the cost/benefit analysis of a project is the private matter for the investors to consider...
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
I wonder if Canada is accepting the few remaining intelligent, informed Americans as refugees. :-) I've only half-considered moving -- I work for a multinational and could pretty easily get a European work visa through the company. Maybe if Trump wins the election, I'll finally go hand in the old passport.
This sounds a lot like the same folks who get scammed by homeopathic "doctors" and buy thousands of dollars in quack remedies. Or the people who are scared by exposure to "electromagnetic radiation" and cite it as a cause of health problems.
I like a previous poster's idea of setting up "dumb people elections" and running the government via a secret bunch of smart people. When all the candidates are going for the dumb people, the outrageous stuff they say should be very amusing, even more than it is now.
Brawndo -- it's got what plants need!
this guy is right.... in the shade below the panel, it prevents photosynthesis. So does his house. I suggest we demolish it and let him live in a hole in the ground.
...is complete balderdash sponsored by none other than Halliburton.
Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
are an environmental catastrophe. Solar panels and wind turbines require huge quantities of rare earth elements, and they all come from China today--even the ore mined in the US is shipped to China for processing. Until this is addressed, the so-called "green" technologies are not remotely green. Restoring our local rare earth industry would also enable local manufacturing of high-tech products, most all of which has been moved to China, for access to their rare earth resources.
There is no shortage of rare earths, and they could be mined and produced locally in an environmentally friendly manner. However, it would require changing the insane regulations surrounding thorium, which drove the industry to China in the first place. Concentrated ores invariably have high thorium concentrations, and the thorium could easily be separated and safely stored if only regulations allowed it. It is just barely radioactive, not water soluble, found in rocks everywhere anyway, and probably the least problematic of the mining wastes. Even ingesting it is essentially harmless; only inhaling thorium dust is of real concern. As it is a metal, there is a rather trivial way of preventing that from happening.
While this town may be shunning solar for the wrong reasons, there are good reasons. The area looks heavily wooded as well, and clearing vast areas of forest to collect a pitiful amount of unreliable solar energy is not productive. Moreover, unlike wind, PV solar does not coexist with vegetation at all, as even a stray leaf can damage the cells. The entire solar farm becomes a lifeless monument of irony to Big Green, which will long outlive the panels themselves.
Sadly, the greenest and most promising energy source is equally hampered by insane regulation. Nuclear is not only the least resource intensive, it also has the least environmental impact by far, and has proven to rapidly scale and displace fossil fuels in a number of countries.
Ugh... my face is pink from all the facepalms in that paragraph.
Sounds like a SimCity newspaper story.
I seriously checked the date to see if it was April 1st when I read the summary.
Please, please don't judge North Carolina by these rubes. This dumb little town is about 100 miles from Research Triangle Park, the largest concentration of PhDs in the world. North Carolina is a progressive and beautiful state with the best climate in the eastern US. It has traditionally had the best public education system in the South.
Yes, we are currently in the clutches of a backwards Republican state government so there are lots of headlines about regressive policies. But this is an aberration ( the first Republican government in over 100 years) and it will not last long.
"He took a duck in the face at 250 knots." -- William Gibson, Pattern Recognition
I was seriously hoping that was an Onion article that escaped into the wild masquerading as a real story but nope, just a whole town of people that obviously worship it's insightful reporting style.
NC town filled with drooling morons.
Seriously, this is a beautiful example as to how public school is an epic failure.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Uh, that entire website is a just a low grade parody site.
"Old man yells at systemd"
Oh and hellz yeah I only buy China Solar panels. Because the scumbags here in the USA are charging 4X the price for the exact same panel. I refuse to buy USA made solar panels unless I get them used at a deep discount that is lower than the monosilicon panels I am buying new from china.
Fuck american made, it's just as crappy and 99% of the time it's from the exact same parts that my China panels are made of, they just glue the frame on here in the USA to call it "made in the USA"
Right now most american companies are ran by incompetent and greedy assholes, and they do not deserve any of my money.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Stop global warming, move to a different solar system.
Have you ever fallen asleep at the keybhanusdiog?
I think you could be right about that. #EXXONKNEW is an example of spreading lies for market advantage. But so long as towns can zone to keep out fracking, they should be able to zone to keep out wind or solar too. They'll come around on the latter but the news on the former will only get worse.
I lived in NC for 15 years (unfortunately) - and was glad to see it go (I grew up in VA). Unless you are in Asheville or RTP....Beware!
There have been alot (let me say that again) ALOT of solar farms spring up in NC in just 3 years. I counted at least 12 during a recent trip to Wilmington - what I don't understand is...they've talked about solar and wind power since time out of mind. They finally have some infrastructure going into place, and I have to take a trip to see it????
Drive through NC and look at the poor towns and leaning houses, it's depressing! I've never seen so many ignorant hillbillies in my life. I'm just surprised something like this didn't come out sooner. People there never ceased to to amazed with being a few french fries short of a happy meal.
Goodbye NC
(paddle faster, I hear banjo music)
Motto: At Least We Aren't Mississippi
Well someone is a bit high and mighty, aren't they? Whatever the reasoning, these people are in the right. I live in southern Ontario and we have wind turbines dotted all over the landscape. I don't mind them. I actually like the way they look. I do however dislike the fact that in the years that they've been installing the turbines, hydro costs have only gone up. Hydro rates are at an all-time high here even though we were promised time and time again that the rates would go down substantially while "healing" the environment.
The only thing those turbines generate are profits for the companies and the farmers who let them build on their land. Now not to mention the fact we're losing good farm-able land to these turbines, but they generate such a massive amount of CO2 in their construction and transport that they are essentially useless. They generate too little power and rarely ever do I see more than a couple going at a time.
Hey, as long as they tell you it's good for the environment you can sleep easy while ignoring all the waste these things do in fact create, and they benefit nobody but the companies and the landowners.
The same is true of solar panels. Aside from the landowners, as most have to pay for their own. Around here they are older, expensive, and inefficient static models that don't do anything more than say "I can afford carbon credits so I'm able to pollute guilt-free." So pick on the little rural bumpkins if you'd like, editor, but they are doing more to realistically protect the environment than most people in the Church of Climate Change.
You can hang out up there on your high-horse all you want. I've got some tires to burn.
The science teacher actually read a little bit of physics and learned that technically the Sun is a black body, since it emits radiation in all frequencies. The town decided it is is too politically incorrect to state their real objection to the black body, at least not until Donald J Trump becomes the President. So they pulled a little euphemism and misdirection to give some vague reason for the ban.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
...are probably decrying the evils of that destructive and pervasive dihydrogen monoxide.
I think we should have an intelligence test to be allowed to vote...
Localities do have an interest in promoting things like public safety. If you want to put up a subdivision with no fire hydrants, zoning should prevent you from doing that.
You mean they're not going to give free weed to Syrian refugees? Darn.
(Serves me right for not looking at their front page.)
Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
According to the Wikipedia entry on Woodlawn, NC, right now:
Why not instead cite the Wikipedia entry on Woodland, which is the town being talked about here?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
(plotting new course to stay atleast 200 miles away from that town)
I love it when the Greens' favorite technique, letting a tiny minority of conspiracy-theorizing idiots manipulate the legal system to derail every needed infrastructure project, gets used against them.
We will enjoy progress again if we can elect candidates who will take more of a Chinese approach: whenever a protest movement gratuitously ignores scientific facts, just ignore the yammerheads and ram it through.
Interesting. Do we derive any other rights from the Government, or is everything else coming from our Creator (whoever that might be), with government merely being hired to help us protect them?
You are putting up great defence of property seizures by the government — without bothering with criminal convictions and even making accusations. You aren't alone, of course, but it is rather rare to see such an idea being so highly moderated.
Ah, so the grass is not mine either, right? It belongs to a community, is that it?
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
If your very first statement is factually incorrect, why should anyone listen to the rest of your argument?
There is simply enormous potential for not using electricity in the first place and people are pushing the expensive solution of solar power generation,.
A dehumidifier is this device that people put in their basement with the best intentions of fighting dampness and the accompanying mildew, a device that is cheaply made in a Certain Country so the refrigerant leaks out, after which the dehumidifier runs constantly to effectively double the household energy usage only the dehumidifier isn't doing anything except act as a space heater, a device that no one these days will repair after the refrigerant leaks out because government regulations, only it doesn't matter because homeowners with the humidifier discharging to a floor drain that they don't have to empty the bucket don't check on the operation of this device or even know how to check.
Even if you keep tabs on your dehumidifier, if you run it on the humidistat control, the humidity setting can be wildly inaccurate and setting it to a "reasonable" level can have the unit run constantly at great expense in electric use, and even if you check it against a humidity gauge that you have checked against outdoor weather reports of temperature and humidity, most units today either run the fan continuously or have a long fan run-on time past when the humidistat clicks off, where you end up evaporating moisture clinging to the coils by surface tension amounting to about half the moisture condensed during the on-time part of the cycle. And this is for an Energy Star qualified unit. And the neither manufacturers nor Energy Star won't answer their e-mail when asked about this.
So we are to spend effectively 10's of thousands of dollars per house to generate the electricity to supply the energy wasted by a $200 dehumidifier?
I do not have any solar cells nor any exotic tech and don't do anything apart from 1) run the dehumidifier on a timer and empty the bucket manually, 2) use fluorescent lights, and 3) turn off stuff not is use, and my electric usage (I air condition, dehumidify, cook, and dry clothes electrically) runs about 220 kWHr/month whereas houses in the same neighborhood are using 4 times as much per month or more. The local power company lets you look up household energy use by address and I have checked.
Because clearly one small town in North Carolina is representative of the other 330 million people.
Didn't anyone tell you that painting hundreds of millions of people with the same brush is even stupider than anyone quoted in TFA?
Slashdot still doesnâ(TM)t support Unicode after it was added to the HTML standard in 1997.
They would have been all over that solar deal then.
Lived in Hickory for 4 years, nice town. State is pretty, but wouldn't want to live their....plus I hate colslaw, and they put it on everything.
They are right to worry, it seems like something has already sucked up all their common sense.
Website Just Down For Me? Find out
Okay, sure, the people of this town have some loony reasons but one should also consider how panels covering a vast land area (not on rooftops) will affect the natural effects of sunlight on the soil and vegetation.
And your objection to this is?..
Has the court ever held that — contrary to the cited statement?
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
they all come from China today--even the ore mined in the US is shipped to China for processing. Until this is addressed, the so-called "green" technologies are not remotely green.
"Made in China" has nothing to do with whether or not a resource counts as renewable. Economies of scale frequently make it more efficient to ship raw materials halfway around the world than to process them on-site.
You could, of course, argue that anything mined has a finite supply present on Earth; but at least in the case of the Rare Earths, we can recycle 100% of them (and in fact, we'd count as idiots not to - Your $100 solar panel, even once it has reached the end of its working life, contains a good $20 in silver alone).
I'm surprised they didn't' attribute solar panels to witches, witchcraft, and the moral degradation of the youth. Maybe throw in the existence of D&D and we can call it a day, although I didn't see any mention of Obama, or terrorism so there may be a few more things that could be piled in there too.
Time to offend someone
"Build yourself a power plant?" "Give my daughter a job?" You've got to remember that these are just simple Southerners. These are people of Fox News. The common clay of the new America. You know... Morons.
Bugrit! Millenium hand and shrimp!
because those folks... aliens or an asylum.
if this is supposed to be a new economy, how come they still want my old fashioned money?
There is a troubling trend in media to give a voice to nonsense. Reporting anonymous twitter messages or the ranting's of fools to cherry pick or reinforce narratives that may very well have no basis in reality.
If you want to report on what people think about a subject then conduct a poll. Random quotes from random folks are completely worthless.
Too sunny already. I'm having to stoke the coal fires more often just to help blot it out.
The citizens of Woodland, N.C. have spoken loud and clear: They don't want none of them highfalutin brain cells in their good town. They scare off the kids. "All the young people are going to move out," warned Bobby Mann, a local resident concerned about the future of his burg. Worse, Mann said, brain cells suck up all the intelligence from everyone else. Another resident -- a retired science teacher, no less -- expressed concern that a proposed school would block education, and prevent nearby kids from growing up. Jane Mann then went on to add that there seemed to have been a lot of cancer deaths in the area, and that no one could tell her brain cells didn't cause cancer. "I want information," Mann said. "Enough is enough."
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
I'll take the hot, humid summers any day over the crappy winters everywhere north of Virginia.
Mom's basement is air conditioned isn't it? :-)
Seriously, I don't get that. From personal experience hot humid seems the worse. The cold can be dealt with using layered clothing. The wet can be dealt with using an outer layer. Hot and humid can only be endured. You don't even get relief at night like you do in hot and dry regions.
And then there is the complication that different parts of North Carolina have very different climates. Its not simply a north/south thing, there is also altitude. There are parts that get a lot of snow and very cold temperatures.
I'm not sure where the cancer risk concept is coming from ...
Solar panels absolutely produce cancer, but its at the factory in China where they are made.
Two photons walk into a bar... The first waves while his friend particles on the wall.
http://www.roanoke-chowannewsh...
The original article shows several disputes concerning the project including the fact that the community would not receive any benefit from converting the property besides working along with the power company which owns the massive power junction around the town. No tax benefits, no diminshed power bills, unsightly sites all over the place (This was to be another addition to the 4 solar locations in their area). The council disputed the more controversial/uninformed reasons, passed 3 additions and rejected one (for unspecified reasons). Then tabled discussions for further additions. The people primarily objected to loss of taxable business property locations and lack of a tangible benefit to the community (which the town council represents). The sunlight comments arent in quotes which makes them at least questionable considering the rest of the comments are in quotes. If one makes reasonable accomodations to the nature of the objections, you could easily see that the comments about cancer would apply to the GIANT ELECTRICAL ARRAY in town, which the WHO states the that they arent sure why but there seems to be high incidents of correlation to cancer... The article amounts to so much Trolling by the original author, and subsequent hangers on to illegimately bash objectors to the current idealogical correctness.
Here you go:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Only I can judge you.
I've been to tremendously shitty places in Virginia, West Virginia, Maryland, SC, New York, Pennsylvania, etc. I would live in Raleigh, NC over any place on the east coast except maybe for Boston. I've seen dumb, ignorant people in rural areas of all those states. I will say, I did get the hell out of rural NC as soon as I could. HOWEVER, Raleigh NC is a very nice place to live and it is very diverse. And if you want to generalize or stereotype NC, reply back with your own state and let the peanut gallery decide if there's any backwards dumbasses where you live. In response to some of the KKK comments, in over 30 years living in this state, including very rural areas, I have never once seen anyone that said they were in the KKK, I've never seen anyone in a robe, never saw any marches, etc. The most racist person I've ever met was an Italian guy who lived in a town about 1-2 hours outside New York City. Racism is everywhere. I do have a theory about a lot of the racism in rural NC however. I grew up in a small area that was 50% minorities and it was not fun. My elementary school was literally in the projects. We had Rodney King backlash going on in our high school. The problem is that a lot of the locals who don't leave these towns end up living with high minority populations. They only know very uneducated people that act obnoxious and dangerous and they draw correlations along racial lines. When they see a redneck they don't say, 'oh look, there's a dumb white person...white people sure are dumb!', but they draw those conclusions when the person isn't white because they don't know any other minorities. The minorities (and everyone else) that are educated and more intelligent leave to find better jobs in the city.
Just thinking how many of these people actually go out and vote. Pretty scary.
http://gamehacking.org/vb/threads/12747-nensondubois-codes http://twitter.com/nensondubois_
Over half of NC's population was not born in the state, a majority of them moving to NC from the Northeast. It is well known to be a huge transplant state.
The actual original article is here: http://www.roanoke-chowannewsh... Various phrases and the general tone makes me question the accuracy. There are other little tidbits that make me wonder. The town gets no benefit. And there are a few other phrases that creep in that somewhat makes me question the bias of the article in Roanoke-Chowan News-Herald, the cited article in Ars Technica, and the little clip posted in slash dot. To my eyes, this looks like a smear campaign by big solar to make it clear that if anyone pushes back against the big American corporations, you will get mocked by the ignorant blood thirsty press. And, it also may be a poker game that has not finished the last hand. Perhaps what the town is really saying is -- make it worth my while to allow you to build there and then we'll talk. Seriously, if you want me to welcome you, then do something positive for me. Otherwise, get off my @#$%ing lawn! Are you thinking some hip liberal Austinite is going to do anything different?
This is the link to the ORIGINAL source article. (http://www.roanoke-chowannewsherald.com/2015/12/08/woodland-rejects-solar-farm/) It appears that they already have several solar farms and they are sick of seeing them. There is no benefit to the town. The only money goes to the solar firm and the landowner. It does not help their utility cost nor does it contribute to their tax base. It looks like some of the quotes are out of context. Since some of you are making this a political issue you should note that the county went to Obama in 08 and 12. The Mayor of Woodland is also a democrat.
Tell them all that the sun is really just an out-of-control nuclear power plant showering them continuously with solar radiation! That'll fix their wagon. Next generation will have our first fully formed Morlock society in NC.
If I sound stupid, it's not me talking....