Solar Farm Rejected Over Fears It Could Drain The Sun...

[Lance]

I can't fucking believe this!

Solar Farm Rejected Over Fears It Could Drain The Sun, Cause Cancer
The Paris climate change agreement is a triumph for the planet, but the widespread ignorance of this subject demonstrates a failure of science communication. And this ignorance is more than just a laughing matter: it could represent an obstacle to reaching certain energy goals. For instance, a town in the U.S. has just blocked construction of a solar farm, in part due to fears it would drain the Sun’s energy, Roanoke-Chowan News-Herald reports. more...

But I do have a couple of questions on the physics of a couple of the comments in the article.

Solar panels do not suck up the Sun’s rays of photons. Just like wind farms do not deplete our planet of wind.

Certainly we all understand that all energy on Earth originally came from the Sun and will ultimately be radiated back out as heat, regardless of how it is used, transformed, or for how long and in what form it is stored. But in the smaller scale, if I intercept some of those photons and convert them to electrons, haven't I reduced the amount of energy that reaches the ground? And similarly, if I capture energy from the wind, haven't I reduced the total energy the wind contains?

[Enzo]

Yes. If you stand in the sunlight you are warmed. If you stand in the shade under a solar panel, you are warmed less. Those photons never reached you. If you completely covered the land with solar cells, I'd expect the land itself to be cooler. The energy goes somewhere, into heating the ground or heating the solar panel or into causing the reactions within the solar panel.

The panels do not suck photons out of the sun, but they do suck them out of the immediate environment. You have reduced the energy that reaches the ground under the panels, but the energy still reaches our earth.

There is so much wind, all those windmills take only a tiny fraction of its energy.

[Lianachan]

[Heid the Ba]

But if you turned the wind turbines off the wind would stop?

[Lianachan]

This is turning into a decent day for quick, easy memes.

[Heid the Ba]

Good FSM there is some heavy duty stupidity there:
Mary Hobbs has been living in Woodland for 50 years . . .
She said her home is surrounded by solar farms and is no longer worth its value because of those facilities.

Jane Mann . . . is a retired Northampton science teacher and is concerned that photosynthesis, which depends upon sunlight, would not happen and would keep the vegetation from growing. She said she has observed areas near solar panels where vegetation is brown and dead because it did not receive enough sunlight. She also questioned the high number of cancer deaths in the area, saying no one could tell her that solar panels didn’t cause cancer.

[Lance]

There is so much wind, all those windmills take only a tiny fraction of its energy.

Yes, of course, but that "tiny fraction" is still > 0. That's all I was asking.

[tubeswell]

But if you turned the wind turbines off the wind would stop?

But in a study funded by the government of Saudi Arabia and the BP corporation, it was found that if you have too many wind turbines, the earth's rotation would slow down LoL

I love this bit: "Each turbine produces thrust equivalent to slowing the Earth’s rotation by 0.00038%, which seems like a minute amount of drag. However, there are more than 317,000 wind turbines on planet Earth, which means that if all of these turbines were working at full efficiency at precisely the same time, the Earth’s rotation would be slowed by a staggering 120.46%… meaning the Earth would slow to a stop and begin to rotate in the opposite direction."

[Lianachan]

I love this bit: "Each turbine produces thrust equivalent to slowing the Earth’s rotation by 0.00038%, which seems like a minute amount of drag. However, there are more than 317,000 wind turbines on planet Earth, which means that if all of these turbines were working at full efficiency at precisely the same time, the Earth’s rotation would be slowed by a staggering 120.46%… meaning the Earth would slow to a stop and begin to rotate in the opposite direction."

And, as we all know, that would make time run backwards. Definitely to be avoided - I don't want shite going back up my arse, for a start.

[Arneb]

WIT - is that kind of a sciency the Onion/ Weekly world News analog or dot they really pretend to be serious?

[MM_Dandy]

Locally (to me), there's been some arguments over the pros and cons of wind turbines. They aren't proposing to put any in my backyard, so I'm staying out of the debate for the most part, but these guys have posters everywhere - in town, out of town, all the way up to Sioux Falls. The we-care organization seems a bit alarmist to me, and many of the claims kind of end up in the hard-to-prove category (the bird strike issue seems to be valid, though). Worse yet, when you follow the wind turbine syndrome link, you end up at a site that will sell you their book to tell you how bad wind turbines are, and even I can start to see red flags waving.

[Lance]

Well, when I see other articles there like Liberalism Caused By Defective Chromosome, I would hope it's satire.

[MM_Dandy]

WIT - is that kind of a sciency the Onion/ Weekly world News analog or dot they really pretend to be serious?

Doing a little looking into it, and I must say that if they are trolling, they are doing an exceptional job. Here's their "visit us" page. The requirements are...odd, to say the least. Here's a quote from the about WIT:

In December of 1999, WIT literally saved the world, after our computer science researchers managed to stop the Y2K virus from spreading globally. The Y2K virus would have caused airplanes to fall from the sky, the stock market to crash, cars to stop functioning, cell phones to randomly dial strangers, and more. WIT’s tireless work led to several WIT researchers being awarded a Nobel Peace Prize in 2000, and Presidential Medals of Freedom in both 2000 and 2001.

I didn't even know there was a Y2K virus!

EDIT: Yeah, I think WIT is a troll effort along the lines of the Onion/WWN. The more I look at their site, the more I think that they are the source for at least 80% of the bizarre claims made at GLP.

[Lance]

I didn't even know there was a Y2K virus!

See? That's how good of a job they did.

[Lance]

From http://realorsatire.com/witscience-org/

There is no Wyoming Institute of Technology.
Period
...
WITscience is a satirical piece of art that simply has a scientific slant.

[Enzo]

Oh next you're gonna tell me there is no Sam Houston Institute of Technology.

[Lance]

Oh next you're gonna tell me there is no Sam Houston Institute of Technology.

Yeah, no S.H.I.T.

[Мастер]

LMAO I saw the story about solar panels extinguishing the sun, and wanted to post about it here, but couldn't, because I was on the wrong side of the great firewall. I hadn't seen the bit about a town banning it.

Well, when I see other articles there like Liberalism Caused By Defective Chromosome, I would hope it's satire.

Yes, although there seems to be some disagreement about which version of the chromosome is the defective one.

Oh next you're gonna tell me there is no Sam Houston Institute of Technology.

Yeah, no S.H.I.T.

This place is across town from where I've been the last few days.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shenzhen_ ... Technology

Certainly we all understand that all energy on Earth originally came from the Sun and will ultimately be radiated back out as heat, regardless of how it is used, transformed, or for how long and in what form it is stored. But in the smaller scale, if I intercept some of those photons and convert them to electrons, haven't I reduced the amount of energy that reaches the ground? And similarly, if I capture energy from the wind, haven't I reduced the total energy the wind contains?

I've wondered about this. To my untrained, uneducated mind, it seems like everything eventually turns into heat anyway, so it shouldn't really make a big global difference. However, I have wondered if it might have local environmental effects.

[Lance]

Certainly we all understand that all energy on Earth originally came from the Sun and will ultimately be radiated back out as heat, regardless of how it is used, transformed, or for how long and in what form it is stored. But in the smaller scale, if I intercept some of those photons and convert them to electrons, haven't I reduced the amount of energy that reaches the ground? And similarly, if I capture energy from the wind, haven't I reduced the total energy the wind contains?

I've wondered about this. To my untrained, uneducated mind, it seems like everything eventually turns into heat anyway, so it shouldn't really make a big global difference. However, I have wondered if it might have local environmental effects.

I don't think we could do much more that the equivalent of farting in a hurricane or spitting into the ocean, but still. Isn't the whole anthropogenic climate change issue based on the accumulation of small events over a long time? Once car probably won't have any measurable effect but billions of them for a hundred years...

Of course, one big oceanic methane fart could put us irreversibly over the edge and we don't have any control of that, but that's a different conversation.