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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.
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!
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
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.
So you're saying that current elections are going to have any effect?
I think he is saying is that the dumb ignorant people are easily manipulated and that any "progress" will be limited to anything vested interests want the dumb people to believe.
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
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.
Just tell them we'll add two hours to daylight savings time to make up for it.
Mostly random stuff.
More than 50%.
100 on the IQ scale is not an average. It's a standard.
http://www.photius.com/ranking...
...gis sdrawkcab (usually not responding to ACs; don't bother posting as AC)
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.
Some day dumb people should be just set up to vote in fake elections. They won't know.
They already are. Not caught on to that yet?
I'd expect there to be significantly more outliers in the low region, as it is easy to permanentely lower a humans IQ: by accident, medical issue, drug use and so on.
The opposite is not true however.
To still aquire 98 points on average as a country under these conditions, the amount of people with 100+ IQ should be more than 50% of the population.
"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.
No it is not implicit, but have you read Flynn's The Bell Curve? An IQ test is supposed to be normed such that the mean is 100. That is the definition. That the test is flawed is a whole other ball game.
"I said we should set up fake elections for the dumb people, so our elections WORK."
If your surname happens to be Rockefeller or something like that then you don't need to ask. That's been already the case for ages now.
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
Like your shit doesn't stink as bad. There are plenty of stupid people, and America has its fair share. It also has a fair share of extraordinarily ordinary and exceedingly intelligent ones. Any deviation in distribution from the developed worlds average is almost certainly minimal. Insinuating that a country is full or morons isn't going to achieve any kind of constructive discussion.
As other people have pointed out here there are other reasons why the project was turned down that probably paid a bigger part; however, a story about a couple of deranged residents causing concern amongst the uninformed population makes for a better 'news' story.
Other AC here.
The IQ tests are designed and adjusted to give a bell curve with an 100 mean in actual countries. Then they adjust the raw test score so people fit the curve.
Oh, and I hope you know that the only thing IQ test measures is how good you are at IQ test.
So the "real" intelligence distribution doesn't matter at all.
I've seen this story a couple of times already today. I hope someone does an analysis of where this "information" about the solar farm came from.
We've had similar campaigns against wind farms in Indiana. It's resulted in an outright ban of wind farms in at least one county. The claims were also very dubious in that case as well.
I tend to think that these folks didn't come up with the ideas themselves. I think someone needs to look to see if ALEC and other such groups were part of it.
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.
IQ is normalised so that 100 is where the divisor between half the people lies.
Yes, it keeps changing.
How goes the joke...
A UN poll asked the question "What, in your opinion, would be the best solution the problem of food shortages in the the rest of the world ?"
The poll was a miserable failure:
People in China, Russia, and North Korea didn't understand the word "opinion."
People in Canada and Western Europe didn't understand the word "shortages".
People in South America didn't understand the word "solution".
People in Australia didn't understand the word "problem".
People in Africa didn't understand the word "food"
And people in America didn't understand the phrase: "the rest of the world"
Unicode killed the ASCII-art *
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.
Motto: At Least We Aren't Mississippi
Some day dumb people should be just set up to vote in fake elections. They won't know.
The irony, oh god.
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.
Farming is an environmental disaster. I don't know about Canada but in the US we pay huge subsidies in order to have unnecessary fertilizer poured onto the land only to wash into the river so that we can grow food that will never be eaten. Replacing farmland with wind turbines is an environment benefit even if they never produce any electricity!
So this is the real deal: Only the rights granted to you by the consensus of the society are actually your rights. Anything else, is just your imagination. We have granted you the freedom of thought. So go ahead and engage in childish fantasies.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact