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Post by sandypine on Nov 8, 2024 9:28:17 GMT
That relatively small shadow must be the maximum shadow that can be cast as the tilt is to capture the maximum amount of light. They tend to be in fields of poor yield in that specific area or on that particular farm, they may be yields that farms in other areas would kill for. Total whatifery. 0.1% of farmland has solar panels on it. Many farms have land that does not produce profitable crop yields. We used to pay them to keep them fallow, now we don't unless they are registered as a nature reserve at huge cost, fenced off from the public and maintained. So farmers are turning to different ways to make a profit from them. Who are you to say they shouldn't grow electricity. We are back to tiny percentages now but you have to accept reality and that is that the most efficient production of solar panels will be in the south and in the lowlands. Obviously selection of what farmland to use for production is in question but the point was that yes it may the poorest yielding fields of a farm in the south but not of fields in the north and farmers select fields and crops dependant on many factors. My point is it is always government policy that directs/controls what farmers grow just as it was the CAP that laid down regulations for farmers. If we wish them to 'grow' electricity then government policy will generally direct them to that, which it is, my point is that we should be encouraging farms to feed us as opposed to chasing the Shibboleth of net zero. It is a nonsense as growing our own food is better for the planet but seeking net zero only considers our emissions not the emissions that others produce on our behalf. |
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Post by Dan Dare on Nov 8, 2024 9:36:20 GMT
As a general rule, the British Isles are better suited to growing food rather than as a base for generating electricity from solar panels. The prevailing cloud cover means that levels of insolation are lowest in Europe with the possible exception of Norway.
A European solution would place solar farms in the Iberian peninsula and along the Mediterranean littoral.
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Post by sandypine on Nov 8, 2024 9:39:10 GMT
I think that Zany got lucky in business given his apparent ignorance of basic economics. im beginnig to wonder. What was it Richard Branson said famously ,..............that business is 95% perspiration and 5 % inspiration.? This is just all basic stuff though regarding population and housing. im shocked people are still arguing that the majority of the uk isnt built on therefore we can invite the third world over . No wonder the yanks rejected these liberal centrist types big time. Lets hope the population in the uk have learned their lesson from the last general election , where if you stay at home. labour win , and get out and vote accordingly to kick these cunts and their ideas into touch big time. In Branson's if I recall correctly there was a bit of criminality involved as well by way of some form of tax fraud. Which probably did not work well for others in the market who were 95% hard work and 5% inspiration and zero percent fraud. That seems now to have become a bit of a wheeze as opposed to criminal skullduggery. |
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Post by sandypine on Nov 8, 2024 9:41:23 GMT
As a general rule, the British Isles are better suited to growing food rather than as a base for generating electricity from solar panels. The prevailing cloud cover means that levels of insolation are lowest in Europe with the possible exception of Norway.
A European solution would place solar farms in the Iberian peninsula and along the Mediterranean littoral.
Facts tend to escape the converted. |
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Post by Bentley on Nov 8, 2024 10:00:26 GMT
Funny you should say that part two. According to the solar farm planners there will be sheep grazing around the solar panels . Not only that but there will be a shit load of ‘ bio diversity’ around too. Around our village there has been a lot of pockets of land planted with different types of plants suitable for bees and butterflies etc .I suspect they could be used to grow crops after the solar panels are erected . I don’t imagine that net zero will stop farms producing meat . There are huge parts of our fields here used to grow ,hay, straw and animal feeds ( as well as biofuel) , its pig , sheep and chicken city out here . One local farm has an emu ! However hopefully Monte will notice and post . He knows a lot about farming stuff. Here's where I have a problem Ok so there is a field And there are the solar panels set up in it How is the grass going to grow under these panels when they take all the light and leave nothing underneath them for the plants to absorb. Yes, I understand that there will be vegetation around the panels Yes I understand that sheep and maybe even Welsh black cattle might be able to graze on that. The Welsh black is a breed engineered through quite a period of animal husbandry to thrive on poor quality feed on sparse Welsh hills But surely the overall productivity MUST be reduced ... Yes that’s been acknowledged. The local area that is going to be used as a solar farm is used to grow sugar beet. I’m not sure about crop rotation but that’s the crop mentioned. |
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Post by Bentley on Nov 8, 2024 10:02:29 GMT
In real terms 0.3 % is a huge swath of land . I’m not against it as such but it can’t be written off as irrelevant . In reality its 0.3% of an enormous piece of land, that's why it is big. When people talk of overcrowded country they don't realise how much land we are talking about, they imagine towns spreading to join up into a vast patch of concrete. In reality overcrowding means roads full of cars, traffic calming systems, delays, long waits for hospital treatment, packed classrooms, water shortages etc. In other words infrastructure doesn't keep pace with population growth. Land wise we could double the number of houses and not really notice. Please make it clear whether this 0.3% is a fraction of land overall or farmland . |
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Post by Bentley on Nov 8, 2024 10:04:14 GMT
Funny you should say that part two. According to the solar farm planners there will be sheep grazing around the solar panels . Not only that but there will be a shit load of ‘ bio diversity’ around too. Around our village there has been a lot of pockets of land planted with different types of plants suitable for bees and butterflies etc .I suspect they could be used to grow crops after the solar panels are erected . I don’t imagine that net zero will stop farms producing meat . There are huge parts of our fields here used to grow ,hay, straw and animal feeds ( as well as biofuel) , its pig , sheep and chicken city out here . One local farm has an emu ! However hopefully Monte will notice and post . He knows a lot about farming stuff. And a lot of the fields being proposed for solar panels are problem ones with poor yields. They tend to grow grass well and are ideal for livestock, but often the number of animals per acre is too low to be profitable, So a mix of livestock and solar works well. I Suspect that that is bullshit tbh. It certainly doesn’t apply to my local area . If it was true then solar farms will be built on moorland etc. There is plenty of room around the Thames estuary and Dartmoor, Exmoor etc but they are planning the solar farms on good quality farmland around here. |
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Post by buccaneer on Nov 8, 2024 10:45:54 GMT
I suppose you do know that producing DAP is one of the most enviromentally damaging process next to burying nuke waste....
It is produced by treating finely ground rock phosphate with sulfuric acid or by smelting (burning) rock phosphate with coke and silica in an electric furnace and reacting with water.
Indeed, though many farmers are using more environmentally sustainable methods now. Simple things like crop rotation, allowing natural rotting of vegetation, light weight farming vehicles. Most are finding a saving over buying expensive DAP. Many are looking at other ways to use poor quality soil, such as solar farms. Labour are looking at poor quality fields to allow building instead of the one size fits all green belt. So if farming is of little relevance now in terms of food security due to degradation in soil type etc. Why were you and fellow remainers wetting yourselves over the Brexit deal farmers got? Or was that a type of Starmer bullshittery used to sway a vote? |
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Post by Dan Dare on Nov 8, 2024 10:52:39 GMT
In reality its 0.3% of an enormous piece of land, that's why it is big. When people talk of overcrowded country they don't realise how much land we are talking about, they imagine towns spreading to join up into a vast patch of concrete. In reality overcrowding means roads full of cars, traffic calming systems, delays, long waits for hospital treatment, packed classrooms, water shortages etc. In other words infrastructure doesn't keep pace with population growth. Land wise we could double the number of houses and not really notice. Another unsourced claim from Zanygame.
As a datapoint, if Labour's dream of building 1.5 million houses comes to pass that will mean building 150 Northstowes.
At similar densities, that will require around 300 sq miles of land, or an area three times the size of Birmingham. I think some of us might notice that.
Doubling the number of houses/dwellings - currently 25.2 million in England - would definitely be noticeable even to the chronically short-sighted, as in 'What happened to Yorkshire? It's now a giant housing estate!'.
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Post by zanygame on Nov 8, 2024 12:26:52 GMT
Cheaper where, exactly?
I will grant you that outside of major cities housing tends to be cheaper.
And that's because they have twice the land mass for a similar population.
Land is therefore cheap.
England makes up 40% of the land of the british isles , but has nearly 80 % of the population. France has a population of something like 68 million , compared to england 57 million. England can fit inside France 5 times over. France has expensive areas , like some of the rich suburbs of Paris , or ski resorts like Chamonix , whereas over in western France , like the Marais poitevin , house prices are extremely cheap by comparison to the uk. In Scotlands central belt , which is massively overpopulated similar to Englands south east , if you want to buy a house in a rich suburb of Glasgow or Edinburgh , for example Bearsden or morning side , you will pay a premium as you would in south east england. Contrast that with the thinly populated north of scotland, where you can get a detached council bungalow overlooking the sea such is the lack of people , and you begin to see the pattern and truth of your words that zany appears to be unable to understand. Zany tells me he Is a businessman , yet doesn't appear to understand the basics that the higher the population , the higher the demand for housing ,the higher the price . Thats before we even get onto the fact how much land is needed to sustain human population in terms of food , water , producing energy and such like. Pushing past all the other stuff which ignores the fact Zany has already pointed out that only 11% of England ( not uk) is built on. Zanys point is shortage of houses has nothing to do with shortage of land to build on, it is about shortage of land released for building. Regarding self sufficiency in food.that stopped 4 decades ago. |
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Post by Bentley on Nov 8, 2024 12:35:39 GMT
“ Regarding self sufficiency in food.that stopped 4 decades ago.”
Fair enough ..let’s just add to the problem .
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Post by The Squeezed Middle on Nov 8, 2024 12:38:54 GMT
England makes up 40% of the land of the british isles , but has nearly 80 % of the population. France has a population of something like 68 million , compared to england 57 million. England can fit inside France 5 times over. France has expensive areas , like some of the rich suburbs of Paris , or ski resorts like Chamonix , whereas over in western France , like the Marais poitevin , house prices are extremely cheap by comparison to the uk. In Scotlands central belt , which is massively overpopulated similar to Englands south east , if you want to buy a house in a rich suburb of Glasgow or Edinburgh , for example Bearsden or morning side , you will pay a premium as you would in south east england. Contrast that with the thinly populated north of scotland, where you can get a detached council bungalow overlooking the sea such is the lack of people , and you begin to see the pattern and truth of your words that zany appears to be unable to understand. Zany tells me he Is a businessman , yet doesn't appear to understand the basics that the higher the population , the higher the demand for housing ,the higher the price . Thats before we even get onto the fact how much land is needed to sustain human population in terms of food , water , producing energy and such like. Pushing past all the other stuff which ignores the fact Zany has already pointed out that only 11% of England ( not uk) is built on. Zanys point is shortage of houses has nothing to do with shortage of land to build on, it is about shortage of land released for building. Regarding self sufficiency in food.that stopped 4 decades ago. Nope, as usual it's way more complex than that Zany. It's about land that's suitable to build on. Land that's where people want to live. Local infrastructure. Employment etc. TLDR: You can't just plonk a town in any old place. We have plenty of virtual ghost towns already. |
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Post by johnofgwent on Nov 8, 2024 13:36:24 GMT
Pushing past all the other stuff which ignores the fact Zany has already pointed out that only 11% of England ( not uk) is built on. Zanys point is shortage of houses has nothing to do with shortage of land to build on, it is about shortage of land released for building. Regarding self sufficiency in food.that stopped 4 decades ago. Nope, as usual it's way more complex than that Zany. It's about land that's suitable to build on. Land that's where people want to live. Local infrastructure. Employment etc. TLDR: You can't just plonk a town in any old place. We have plenty of virtual ghost towns already. Indeed. Back in 88 when I moved from the two bed terrace starter home to the three b d semi now we had a second kid on the way, the south Wales argus offered alongside my £39,000 2 bed semi (wow, remember when houses could be bought for less than three times a single salary ? ... a broom cupboard in London and a Castle with ten acres of land in Scotland each for £35,000. But you had to put up with visitors roaming over your ten acres to fish in the river for salmon (fishing rights and river access a separate lot in the sale, price £500,000 and a further problem of grouse shooters next to your garden, again the shooting rights being sold separately for £500,000 I chose not to make an offer on the castle because there was nowhere I could get employment for some 55 miles |
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Post by Bentley on Nov 8, 2024 13:42:52 GMT
The government is intent to build huge swaths of solar farms and are imposing them to achieve net zero.
However they don’t seem to be that keen to build the infrastructure first EVs (ie a huge increase of charging stations ) to achieve net zero .
So maybe the intent is to reduce car ownership instead .
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Post by The Squeezed Middle on Nov 8, 2024 14:46:48 GMT
The government is intent to build huge swaths of solar farms and are imposing them to achieve net zero. However they don’t seem to be that keen to build the infrastructure first EVs (ie a huge increase of charging stations ) to achieve net zero . So maybe the intent is to reduce car ownership instead . That was always the intention. This is not about the environment. It's about control. |
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