Novocastrian

Aesthetics are very subjective and a bit of a red herring, as I'm sure you're very aware. I suppose suburban sprawl in Canada is aesthetically pleasing? Thought not. Let's fix that first and worry about windfarms after that.

You can't be serious. Well, I already knew that, of course. You appear to have already discovered another important use of wind: pissing into it.

All the best,

Novo

dbd33

lol!

Of course suburban sprawl isn't pleasing. As a rule of thumb, land with nothing built on it is pleasing, land with houses less so, land with industrial developments such as oil refineries and wind farms even less so.

Oakvillian

Why on earth not?

Steve_P

Based on the above I would have to put wind farms extremely low perhaps even at the bottom of the industrial less pleasing scale.

Novocastrian

Actually, although I willingly admit to be not in a NIMBY relationship with them, so do I. I think they're rather attractive. Which is beside the point though.

Steve_P

A few years ago when I first saw these turbines I felt that way, it was the shear numbers of them this time that blew me away.

The ones in the pictures in my first post are a very very tiny sampling of them.

Novocastrian

And this from the man who, until 2 short years ago, bragged of never having been north of Bloor in twenty years.

My, my. How things change.

Novocastrian

About eight years ago, I revisited the desert between Riverside and Palm Springs, an area I knew very well in the 1970's and 80's. There are now hundreds and hundreds perhaps thousands of turbines in the valley (where strong winds are common). I honestly felt it looked very beautiful. And despite the large scale of it, it's still just a speck in the desert as a whole.

I'm sure dbd33 and I can find common ground when I point out that a lot of power is needed for irrigating the golf courses in Palm Springs.

dbd33

Because there are great strips of concrete across it. I suppose it'd be possible to plant around the access roads and aprons but potato farming is highly mechanised and the machines are not set up for making pretty patterns; they're geared to going in a straight line for the length of the field.

(Perhaps not at a tangent, I notice that the people who farm under the windmills near to us belong to some sort of religious sect. I'd guess they're fringe Mennonites. They don't use machines which may relate to their being there.)

dbd33

I drove through there a couple of years ago. I thought it awe inspiring in the way that the Alberta oilsands or the Arizona golf courses are awe inspiring, it's impressive that man can create these things but I'd rather he didn't.

dbd33

Damn, you edited while I was posting my dig at golf courses!

Novocastrian

Yes. This prescience stuff comes in handy now and again.

dbd33

I didn't, of course, claim Toronto to be physically attractive.

I'm not quite in a NIMBY position as regards windmills, btw, they're a way to the west of us. I commuted through them while I was working in Guelph and that's when I came to dislike them. I think advocates for wind power who live in Toronto should take an excursion along CR 17 between highway 10 and 89 and then follow then following the cabling south. It's not pretty. It may however be possible to implement windmills in a more enviromentally sensitive way. I assume the mess of poles and wires is just the cheapest method.

Novocastrian

BTW, I've just noticed your new self-descriptor. How the hell did that get there? There must be an interesting background? Link, please.

dbd33

http://britishexpats.com/forum/showthread.php?t=560110

post 56.