22 million BLM acres for development?

[Ben Lamb]

Thats not really true. In areas, there is grazing of it.

Beneath the Panels: How Sheep are Supporting Solar Energy by Improving Solar Farmland

Solar grazing by lamb and sheep are giving unusable farmlands new life as a cost-effective method for vegetation control on land used for solar panels.

americanlamb.com

more possible benefits:

Study shows how solar farms can revive insect populations

Within five years, insect abundance tripled at these two solar farms.

theprogressplaybook.com

The large solar farm near us hosts a healthy flock of goats to control the grass/weeds.

 

[Hilljackoutlaw]

Covered under most homeowners policies.

Everyone's favorite group to talk to my homeowners insurance. They always come through exactly like they should. Lol

 

[brocksw]

I love absurdist arguments based on ideological intransigence.

Somehow this entire thread seems to have been reduced to this binary argument where the two sides are, "hypocrites that support solar panels everywhere" or "solar is the worst thing man ever created". Perhaps not surprising. But nonetheless, I'm disappointed.

 

[Forkyfinder]

Everyone's favorite group to talk to my homeowners insurance. They always come through exactly like they should. Lol

Get an independent adjuster... mine rubbed the statefarms adjusters nose in the damage like a puppy with shit and alas - a check was issued.

 

[SAJ-99]

Stop it. Your sounding like someone who reads.

Also laugh at the thought of someone thinking the government is broken and should be torn down and would rather go completely "off the grid" but simultaneously worrying about the warranty on his solar panels. Not specifically BHR, but there are a few here...

 

[44hunter45]

"Sitting" home yesterday doing colonoscopy prep I was struck by how much time Buzz has to dick off on forums on a Thursday.

Looks like uncle sugar been mailing checks for decades to folks not earning them I guess

There's a "full of it" joke in there somewhere.

 

[jryoung]

Somehow this entire thread seems to have been reduced to this binary argument where the two sides are, "hypocrites that support solar panels everywhere" or "solar is the worst thing man ever created". Perhaps not surprising. But nonetheless, I'm disappointed.

We've hand this conversation like eleventy times, and it's always fresh with the same stale arguments.

 

[Hilljackoutlaw]

government is broken

I'm currently trying to use the idaho state department of Ag website...it is broken. So I called them yesterday and today and nobody has called me back. BROKEN! LOL

 

[Ben Lamb]

We've hand this conversation like eleventy times, and it's always fresh with the same stale arguments.

 

[SAJ-99]

I'm currently trying to use the idaho state department of Ag website...it is broken. So I called them yesterday and today and nobody has called me back. BROKEN! LOL

You live in Idaho. This shouldn’t be anything new.

 

[Benfromalbuquerque]

To the attorneys here: Are there any Federal acts yet pertaining to surface reclamation for solar, wind turbines?

 

[Hilljackoutlaw]

You live in Idaho. This shouldn’t be anything new.

It is not! A month ago I drove to their boise office to get a book. They looked at me and said you drove how far? You know you could of got it online right? I almost choked the bitch!

 

[Ben Lamb]

It is not! A month ago I drove to their boise office to get a book. They looked at me and said you drove how far? You know you could of got it online right? I almost choked the bitch!

Andrew Carnegie approves of this violence.

 

[FI460]

Somehow this entire thread seems to have been reduced to this binary argument where the two sides are, "hypocrites that support solar panels everywhere" or "solar is the worst thing man ever created". Perhaps not surprising. But nonetheless, I'm disappointed.

See the problem is you're bringing nuance to a BS fight. What you should have brought was a pair of waders since it's getting pretty deep.

 

[44hunter45]

Stop it. Your sounding like someone who reads.

Here is a Friday ramble. This may be my comments on ePlanner when the time comes. IDK, blogging seems so passe nowadays.

I'm reading "Cadillac Desert". Reading any book takes me a while because I'm a methodical OCD reader who annotates.

TLDR version, a single consumer group pulls off the biggest resource grab in the history of the world and gets the US taxpayer to fund it. They become a lobby BLOC that makes the NRA cower in fear and we continue to feed their dragon. Since John Westley Powell, if you controlled the water, you controlled the west. The science shows that current water use patterns are unsustainable, but we keep doing it. The water empire was built on the lie that the resource was inexhaustible and we would die without it. Looking at Lake Mead, is there anyone who still thinks that? There are actual proposals to pipe water from Alaska to California. Try to get your head around that.

The rules are changed. It is now "If you control the energy, you control the west." It started with with O&G, then wind, now solar. Wallets get fat and it has damned little to do with climate change. It is all about the same old model of exploiting the public lands to fill your coffers. The energy empire is built on the same lie that the resource is inexhaustible and we will all die without it. Even the arguments around breaching the Snake River Dams are more often about energy than irrigation; and that from the American Farm Bureau.

Now we enter the phase where the resource is not what's under the land or on the land, but the land itself. Why do you suppose that AFB and Big Energy rallied their minions to stop NACs from being publicly traded? It is to their advantage to perpetuate the myth that the land is worthless in and of itself.

The first lie the exploiters now have to sell is that "worthless" public land is inexhaustible. 22 million acres is such a big number that a human brain cannot grasp it. It seems infinite. This tilts the public land equation on its ear. Why not just sell it to them if it's junk land and make them pay taxes on it? Legalities aside, they would not do this if they had to own the land. That would tip their ledger to the expense side.

The second lie will be that we will die without it. What that really means is, "We are going to sell you a resource that your tax dollars helped us exploit at a favorable startup cost."
Don't think the profit margins are small. When I was on the road servicing computers, I once fixed a down server at a wind farm. The manager said it was costing him $50k per hour to be down. (Never mind that for one hour's revenue, he could have had a failover server in place...)

What are "incentives"? Incentives, be they land, resources, or checks, are the Government giving away the common assets of the people to encourage a behavior. The gods of industry help those who have lobby teams to push incentives their way.

 

[SAJ-99]

What are "incentives"? Incentives, be they land, resources, or checks, are the Government giving away the common assets of the people to encourage a behavior.

It’s all about money. I would add that a good way to think of an “incentive” is a payment from the peoples general account to keep them from realizing the price of something is actually 30% higher, all in. Some of the arguments are often about one group wanting to defer paying to fix a problem caused by the old method so it becomes the next guys problem.

 

[BigHornRam]

Thats not really true. In areas, there is grazing of it.

Beneath the Panels: How Sheep are Supporting Solar Energy by Improving Solar Farmland

Solar grazing by lamb and sheep are giving unusable farmlands new life as a cost-effective method for vegetation control on land used for solar panels.

americanlamb.com

Just wait till those woolies start gnawing on those solar panels, and to the butcher they go.

 

[44hunter45]

It’s all about money. I would add that a good way to think of an “incentive” is a payment from the peoples general account to keep them from realizing the price of something is actually 30% higher, all in. Some of the arguments are often about one group wanting to defer paying to fix a problem caused by the old method so it becomes the next guys problem.

You wander into the subject of cleanup.

Reading the BLM solar EIS, I was struck by how much of it is devoted to removal and cleanup. It is surprising how often it states that changes to the ecosystem might be irremediable, particularly regarding erosion and changes to water movement.

Rest assured, the developers will be required to put up a cleanup bond that is far smaller than the cost of the actual cleanup. They will forfeit it and hike. Like timber, mining, and O&G, we will get stuck with it as we always do.

 

[Ben Lamb]

Just wait till those woolies start gnawing on those solar panels, and to the butcher they go.

Rubber tires?! Wait till the mice get them. There won't be a rubber tire anywhere!

 

[Irrelevant]

I think "in theory" is the operative word here. Having grown up just outside a massive superfund site, and covered much ground in my home state, the scars are deep and lasting. I've seem some incredible reclamation work as well, but once you level a mountain (as they did in Butte), or destroy an old growth forest, you can never get something back.

...human's with our incredibly tiny capacity for understanding time.

Old growth forests can absolutely be recovered in a couple handfuls generations. People have existed for ~150,000 years. Modern government since ancient Greece (2,500 yrs).

Let's not muck up something by not having at least a bit forethought. If we have to subsidize at a rate of 2x, 3x, heck 10x, in order to preserve open public lands, whose value I think we all agree has risen exponentially, so be it. It's still a wise choice, it'll still pay dividends in the future.

The amount of people willing to, or even readily conceding the "necessary" permanent development of public lands while in thread after thread lamenting to loss of access, the destruction of habitat, the threats to our public lands from x, y, and z. It just seems so bass ackwards... it shocks me. That's not what I thought this community was about.

I don't view the issue as pro or anti solar, it honestly has nothing to do with solar, but everything to do with permanent exclusive development of public lands.