Nevada Solar farm

[Rayt]

I was driving into California when I saw in the valley far away what looked to be a something from Star Wars or Lord of the Rings. They were tall towers with beacons on top and on the ground shimmering pools like some mirage. So like any responsible photonut I found the entrance apparently never saw any trespass signs if there were any. I was looking for a vantage point to set up when I saw a caravan! of SUVs coming down the road towards me and my Spiderman senses told me to move my ass. I got out of the access road passing all of them. They were civilian vehicles of the same color but unmarked. I googled mapped the location once I confirmed to be safe and turned out it was a solar farm. It was so beautiful at sunset with the beacons all lit up like Eyes of Sauron and the lake of light below. I wonder if any one had taken nice 8x10 photos of it? No doubt it was a sensitive area and I was in the wrong but I didn’t see signs.

[Ulophot]

You were lucky. Next time expect black helicopters. Or drones...

[Pieter]

This has been up and running for years. No secret. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ivanpa...Power_Facility

[Drew Wiley]

It breaks my heart to see the glare of solar farms cluttering once pristine remote vistas. I need to drive past the largest one in the country soon to get a big wildlife refuge. But at least they're hypothetically far more removable some day than dams, and don't mess up the air like coal-burning power plants do. This particular one has elk and antelope grazing between the many rows of panel installations.

The type with towers works on a different premise than regular solar panels. They use mirrors to focus desert sunlight heat on a centralized collector which boils self-contained turbine fluid over and over again, to generate electrical power. Most of the controversy about one such giant experiments revolved around how it potentially affected rare desert tortoise habitat. But it too ruined the view from a nearby designated Wilderness Area.

[John Layton]

We have once chance to choose our poison wisely - and choose (and act!) we must!

[Drew Wiley]

Already too late. Now it's all about how best to crash land with the most survivors.

[John Layton]

...not sure if I'd want to be among them. Sometimes I think its time for all of us to drink that (J. Jones) cool-aid and give the planet a fair chance.

Makes me think of an interesting premise for a movie: to cryogenically freeze maybe one million otherwise young and healthy people, and at a time when associated sensors indicate that all is completely well with our planet...these folks will be brought back to life, with very explicit instructions on how to proceed in a way which will ensure a healthy future for the entire ecosystem. (hmmm...maybe implant something so whomever deviates from these instructions in the slightest - they will automatically be taken out, or maybe implant something so that they will just do what's right and not totally screw things up as we have been doing for so long).

[John Kasaian]

What if all those mirrors somehow got out of sync and focused on the giant thermometer in Baker instead? It could be the plotline for a new Netflix series!

[Drew Wiley]

Baker doesn't need any extra help, nor Bakersfield, nor Barstow - already uninhabitable, at least for intelligent life. Gosh - wonder how much of that toxic yellow-green atmosphere will filter over Elkhorn Ridge if I drive down to the Wildlife Refuge later this month. I've sure gotten some incredible sunrise and sunset colors there before. Maybe that's what the atmosphere and heat of Venus is like, just minus the sound of the Merle Haggard bar an hour away. Loudest thing in the vast Refuge are meadowlarks. I'm sorta in a conundrum whether to take 4x5 or thaw out a box of 8x10 Ektar - which would cost more than four times as much to replace today. I'll wait till more proximate weather reports. Lots of dirt roads back in there, potentially dusty, potentially mucky, potentially washed out, depending.

Right to the north of there, in the upper half of the Carrizo Plain, they just christened a whole new major solar field dedicated to supplying part of the City of San Jose, about a days's drive north. I think it too will use extant power lines along Hwy 5 in the San Joaquin Valley, hopefully preventing all the pristine backroad scenery in between from itself getting cluttered.

[Pieter]

"Maybe that's what the atmosphere and heat of Venus is like"

Interestingly enough, there was just an article about the color of Venus and its atmosphere, https://www.theatlantic.com/science/...lantic%20Daily
Turns out it isn't yellow or orange, that's just interpretive, artificial color added to the original images sent back by the Magellan space probe and others.