Does wind power cause visual pollution in your opinion?
I remember reading somewhere (probably my high school textbook) that one of the reasons people don't like wind power being built is they cause visual pollution.
In my opinion, I think it would be pretty cool to just look out my window and see a giant windmill there, the opposite of visual pollution.
"Visual pollution" is a bullshit term that rich people came up with to keep them from being built near their vacation resorts. It means "ugly"
Even if we agree that it causes visual pollution, I'd argue that visual pollution from fossil fuels is many multitudes worse. Case in point, major chinese and indian cities.
And light pollution is technically a part of visual pollution, and that is a big deal.
I was in New Delhi when the AQI was ~700, that is MUCH worse than visual pollution. My lungs started hurting within 20 minutes of being outside, and a huge amount of people on the domestic flight I was on (mostly local residents) had coughs.
Sometimes "ugly" is even "not pretty and wealthy looking".
Wind turbines aren't pretty but they're not any more of an eye sore as overhead power lines or whatever. And at least it's a symbol of caring about being sustainable.
A lot of people like to move all the "ugly" elsewhere out of their sight and then call those places shitholes. It doesn't bother them they're just moving the infrastructure where the less wealthy have to deal with it. They'd rather a coal plant destroy a lower class city in pollution than see wind turbines near their upper class neighbourhood.
I think any place that rejects renewables should get a coal fired power plant instead. Let them reconsider it as their kids grow up with heavy metals and all the other shit these things spew out.
We stayed at a private beach resort once and I never want to again. Sure it was nice for a bit having so much space to yourself, but I miss you guys. I missed the +90 year old couples holding hands, the kids hopped up on ice cream and youth and BEACH, the young families holding a newborn, the middle aged bikers, the weird guy driving a model T, teenagers being sullen and prodding jellyfish, dogs who look like they are in heaven, hipster bicycles, processed meat fried in sugar somehow, arcades that still take coins run by crooked carnies, the 12 guys who decided to dig a really deep hole, the weird religious ethnic immigrant group just chillin...
I missed humanity in all its loud happy glory. This is the way we are meant to have fun, together. Not alone on some beach chair while someone underpaid changes our towels.
Thatโs how theyโve been restricting multi home buildings for years. They donโt want it to lower their resale value by obstructing the skyline.
They look better than pump jacks and oil derricks.
Let alone power plants billowing steam and smoke
And they don't damage the environment as much as a hydro dam
And nowhere as ugly as giant farms of solar
Honestly its probably the BEST looking power source
Wind needs energy storage but it generates a ton of electricity ๐โก
Ah pump jacks are satisfying to watch too. And I mean derricks are temporary. But I've always liked windmills.
They look better than smoke stacks
And in all honesty they remind me of like a leisurely creek or small waterfall in that they kinda just keep going on in a pleasant consistent kind of way ya know?
Basically what I'm saying is that they're pretty IMO
They look pretty sweet and they generally aren't near populated areas
Windmills look so much better than rural Indiana
Would suggest a driving trip on I65 just north of Lafayette Indiana..
It is a flat boring patch of rural farm land just like the rest of rural indiana, but they added hundreds of wind turbines to the fields that stretch as far as the eye can see. It is truly a marvel to look at..
In essence, i drive through rural indiana every so often.. i can definitively confirm that the section with windmills is far more interesting looking than the rest.
Yeah I drove from central ohio to Chicago once. The thing that struck me most was how little renewables ohio had. The wind farms were exactly what rural America needed to look fine.
But yeah also I advise against driving through rural Indiana because you still have to be there to do it
Other power sources also cause visual pollution and I like windmills better than columns of smoke.
Gray smoke is a worse type of visual pollution imo
Yeah and blurry vision is pretty shit.
Windmills look pretty nice. I've only ever seen the "visual pollution" argument made by rich, entitled Karens and Fox News drones.
I think they look really cool. I can't get the rage about a friggin' giant electricity producing machine but they're fine with billboards everywhere.
Once The Man figures out that windmills would make good persistence-of-vision displays to play adverts on, I'm going to start burning them down.
They weren't there was a big campaign against them in the 60s. Which led to the Highway Beautification Act.
Its fossil fuel lobby propaganda.
I think they're pretty tbh. There's a huge stretch of them in a field I drive through sometimes, and at night I like to just stop for a second and watch 95% of them all flash their light on top in sync across an impressive distance.
And sometimes there's one or two flashing out of sync in a weird rhythm and I assume it's like an error code which I think is pretty interesting
I find them comforting in a reassuring, kinda awe inspiring way. Like, they're a visual sign of at least trying to address climate change, and there's something about having a giant, obviously artificial moving structure towering over the landscape that just gives me a sense of thrill and wonder that we are capable of building that. Those things are pretty massive if you get anywhere close to one, after all.
Like with anything, too much of it will look/taste/smell/sound bad.
Is that a reason in and of itself to not build wind power plants? No.
Personally I find wind power plants to look cool, a bit sci-fi and futuristic.
The argument that they are ugly is dumb, using a term like "visual pollution" is just a way to try and make a subjective oppinion sound like objective fact.
people arguing about visual pollution never had to worry about their kids growing up with asthma induced by exhaust fumes.
They did have to worry about it, but they chose not to anyway
I love seeing them on the horizon. I genuinely get excited to see them.
This complaint about wind power has always come across as the kind of thing people say because they heard somebody else say it. imo, it's just stupid people who desperately want to have an opinion on the topic weighing in with the only piece of criticism they've overhead some Sky News host parrot at some point in the past, and because that host had authority on the matter in their minds, it gives them some kind of false confidence to then go forward and proclaim the visual pollution argument, as if it has any real basis in anything.
I have actually heard the "original person" complaining about this... but the original person is also the kind of person who wants a picture-perfect ocean view every single day. Wind turbines? Visual pollution. Ships passing by? Visual pollution. Their neighbor has too many holiday decorations up? Visual pollution.
They just genuinely expect the rest of civilization around them to comply to their demands for a fantasy-perfect oceanside existence.
Sounds like my dad. We don't talk anymore. Remember his irrational anger to the idea that other people were using HIS highway when he was driving on it. Also he had a war against a neighbor who sublet to his cousin "cause it is zoned for single family and a cousin is a different family". Just fucking admit you don't want a brown family on your block, I would honestly respect honest bigotry more.
At least they're fair about it ๐คทโโ๏ธ
Like comic sans.
No, I like the rhythmic visual quality. And on a conscious level they make me feel happy about clean electricity. I see windmills every single day and they do not get old for me.
No, I cannot comprehend someone who'd rather just look at the endless fields of corn in Iowa.
It causes visual pollution like a politician telling the truth too much.
It's a load of bullshit
I think they're quite attractive
I'd rather wind generators than the thousands of billboards
People didn't seem to mind fugly coal plants but now that weve got a clean energy source usually built in the middle of nowhere they suddenly have a problem with "visual pollution."
To me it sounds a lot like those dudes that spew smoke out the back of their truck for no other reason than to "trigger" anyone they think might not approve.
The solution to this is so simple its insane.
You offer anyone whose home is within sight of a wind turbine say... 5000kw/h a year in free electricity. With a little careful planning and given that your average turbine produces around 6 million kwh a year. Id imagine they shut up pretty fucking fast.
Makes sense to me. If people who have to deal with something are invested in that thing they will defend it. Never miss an opportunity to take someone outside pissing in and put them inside pissing out.
I've tended to find people against them want the same skyline their grandparents had 50 years ago, ignoring that even the trees changed shape. So to them its change and conservative rural people abhor anychange that doesn't have an immediate and tangible benefit.
I live in the middle of a sprawling wind farm. Every direction I turn, I can see wind turbines looking ominously over my neighbor's houses. It's awesome, and way more interesting than the hundreds of square miles of corn fields they otherwise occupy.
The strobe effect is a thing but it really doesn't impact a lot of people since you know windmills are usually not by apartment buildings. Being very kind to that point of view seeing things that are new can put you out of sorts.
Personally I think they look cool, that doesn't mean I can't see other POVs. Still, people will adapt when they get more common and frankly I am not into NIMBY anyway.
Yeah you obviously shouldn't build them even close to buildings for many reasons
They turn at 20 rpm, so a blade every second, hardly a strobe effect.
I would much rather look at wind turbines than smog.
A little bit, in the same way that any man made structure does. But they're quite peaceful to look at and compared to a nuclear or coal plant they're way better to look at.
I wouldn't like to see them in an area of outstanding beauty, but I'm cool with them anywhere else.
Slight nitpick: they're wind turbines, not windmills. Windmills are used to grind things down, like wheat into flour.
Better than normal pollution though or visual pollution from smoke and smog. It's a tradeoff and a good one in my mind.
You get used to them, and in a way look very cool because of their use and what they represent. Although I wouldn't like to see them in a natural reserve.
I have another neat use for them. Since I can see some out of my window and use this sight to check wind direction and plan my bike route to have tail wind on the end of the route!
Wait, do they rotate to face the wind or something? If so, that's awesome and I never noticed
Not always. Some are designed for areas with a prevailing wind and deal with smaller direction changes using pitch (angle) of the blades
It's a made up word for fossil-fuel execs.
I would anytime put up a wind turbine in my yard and enjoy the free energy then complain about how it looks like.
In fact I am planning to power my side building/garage, utility rooms, freezer box and yard lights (basically everything except my house) by wind power. Domestic wind turbines are super cool and you can even make one yourself or just get a smaller one with super easy installation.
Windmills are awesome. While traveling in Europe, I saw a massive wind farm off the coast of Sweden, cool as hell. Then I took a hike, and ended up at the base of one of these giant behemoths! Still cool.
The only visual pollution that irritates me is advertisements and billboards. I hate them passionately.
Im not sure I even agree that visual pollution should be a real thing. People like to pretend that there is a divide between man-made structures and "nature" but humans are animals and we construct our environment out of natural materials. Humans ARE natural and the things we make are not separate from nature. Obviously that doesn't remove our responsibility to avoid causing overall harm with toxic chemicals that pollute or structures that destabilize equilibriums, but that being said I dont think we should have this mentality about our structures being an inherent detriment to the area we make them in, and wind farms seem like a good example of good structures in a good environment to me. End rant.
visual pollution = advertisements and billboards everywhere
okay yeah that is totally fair, societal pollution
Whenever someone brings up that argument (windmills are ugly), which is quite a controversial topic in the country I live in, I take them to the open pit coal mines of the area. Those are really ugly.
I do understand the argument that the intermittent shadows the rotating blades may cast on residential areas are annoying.
They can't be set next to residential areas for many reasons. One freak reason most people don't know is that ice can accumulate on the tip of the blades and get thrown into the air. Having a 5kg ice blocks randomly falling on your house isn't nice.
Why the heck would you build that on residential area anyway? SimCity taught me since I was a kid that industrial factories and windmills shouldn't be built beside houses
I love telling this story. I lived on the second story apartment above a restaurant, behind the restaurant was this shed. One sat morning, very hung over, I am awaken at sunrise with a bright bedroom. Wtf? Look outside and turns out the shed now has solar panels that just happened to catch the light at sunrise and reflect it into my window.
I invested in better curtains.
Windmills (yeah, turbines, whatever) are beautiful. I think they enhance the view.
Personally I like the look of windmills๐ค
I think it looks good, personally. Definitively less ugly than radio towers or pylons.
Id say that they arent exactly picturesque but they provide clean energy. So like sure... maybe dont put them everywhere, lets leave out the Unesco world heritage sites and National parks but theres an awful lot of otherwise unremarkable land that Id rather see a bunch of windmills on than the currently existing "fuckall"
Exactly this. You maybe don't want them in the middle of Yellowstone (although if you put it near a visitor centre or something to power it instead of putting in miles of pylons, it might even make sense there). But people that complain about random fields suddenly being a ruined view because of a turbine are just entitled.
Ehhhh I can see it. It's usually out in nature where people might want to just see nature... but I also usually see it in places where people aren't going sight seeing as much. It's fields. Which are nice. Those are nice to see. But it's not the thing people are seeing in the towns as much. But if they were, I don't see how it could really ruin the view of a neighborhood.
If it was something like in campgrounds, going out to the lake and it's just right there in front of the view of the mountains, right off to the side of hiking trails, I would hate it. But over all I don't see it as that huge of a deal. They tend to find the best places for it with causing the least amount of trouble for others.
They look fine to me. Same as windmills creating a certain aesthetic in the places they are built.
It's much better than having a giant power plant blocking the view of the landscape.
I think they're cool as hell, I could watch those big fuckers go round and round all day.
Nah, they are cool.
I agree, always found them cool
BS. I wanted to build one on my property, but here in Germany you need a permit if you wanna build a birds house (I'm not kidding, in some areas you do), I didn't get one, neighbors and shit, so I sold the house, we're moving to Denmark this year. No neighbors, no problems. Especially not German neighbors! As long as you have a Danebrog (Danish flag) on your property, you can build a lot. It's your property at last.
Dude, the windows in my apartment just look at the wall of another apartment. I would much rather see a god damn wind turbine.
not at all, on the contrary, they are pretty impressive and I love how they look.
Dude. They're so fucking cool. I wish I had a wind turbine in my backyard or something. A feat of engineering I tell you.
Yea they massively change the views in the local area. How ugly they are is probably the top complaint in the UK about them
As unlike a lot of the American commenters here saying we donโt have huge sprawling areas of nothing (Except Scottish highlands) just waiting to be filled with something. So for rural voters that live in the countryside for the views damaging/changing the views is unsurprisingly not that popular.
In 2015 because of lots of local opposition the government made it easier to object to wind farms in your areas but people have since said that those rules make it too easy to get planning permission rejected.
Recent polls seem to suggest people care less now though lack of increase in planning permissions for onshore wind seem to show that people like it more in theory than when the wind turbines will be built in their view.
No, I like them. They bring some variety to landscapes. Many people here hate them though.
There are windmills all over the place here and I love seeing them. To me this is what the future should look like. Poeple have used windmills for centuries, why stop now?
No
It's difficult to consider them pollution even if we were to accept the subjective opinion on displeasing aesthetics.
The pollution we're all concerned about tends to be:
Even light pollution, which is arguably barely physically harmful, has all of the remaining qualities (or nearly) for sure.
If these qualities even apply wind generators at all, they do so very weakly. They can be moved/unbuilt, the "free market" is pricing them cheaper by the day, and if you really don't like looking at them, it's not impractical to avoid them.
Yes. Do does most things humans build. Certainly better than a power plant, shopping center, warehouse, or even many houses and office buildings.
There is a beautiful lake close to where I live and if you are there in late evening you can see lights from the nearest wind farm blinking on the horizon. You can also see them on top of historical castle mounds my region is famous for which cheapens the experience of visiting them. I am all for renewable energy, but I understand the argument.
On a scale from 1 to 10, they're like a 2.
No.
I'm not a coal industry propagandist, so the only opinion I have on wind turbines is to build more of the fucking things.
What, you don't find them strangely unnerving?
https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/alternative_energy_revolution.jpg
I would much rather the visual pollution of a windmill than the combined pollutions of fossil fuel based power plants.
There are 2 windmills not far from my place and they are a good point of reference for where you are.
I've never seen a wind turbine in person but I'd imagine no more than buildings and a lot less than most other power sources.
Isn't it sound pollution instead of visual pollution, though, if anything? I'd rather have that than coal anyway
Modern windmills are almost completely silent.
Only if there would be one casting a shadow of spinning blades on my face every day. Otherwise I don't mind them.
Please define "visible pollution". I think you mean something like "ugly". So there's not really much of a discussion to have, because it is opinion. Of course some people feel that way.
But anyway, since you asked, I'd rather look at wind turbines than the smog around, let's say, Chicago or Los Angeles. But still that's opinion.
I think they look dope as hell.
Yes, but not much more than any other man-made construction. I can see windmills from my appartement and they have never even bothered me a little. However if my view was a beautiful tolkienesque landscape they probably would stand out like a sore thumb.
Well they look farrr better than coal mines and plants and smoke plumes. Even beyond that I think they just look plain nice though, like when I rarely get to see some it makes me happy.
I do think they're visual pollution and I don't like looking at them at all. That said, I do understand they are needed.
Just wish they'd find a way to stop birds from flying into them all the time.
Yes, in the form of dead birds and bats.
Personally, I think wind turbines look cool.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visual_pollution
All human activity creates "visual pollution" of all kinds. It is completely unavoidable. By the textbook definition, farmland, barns, barbed wire fences for livestock, all could qualify as visual pollution.
Wind turbines are no different. They could technically be defined as visual pollution, but they are quite benign in the grand scheme of things. They are typically designed with smooth edges and sweeping curves, and don't give off a cluttered look, and as such do not really "interrupt" one's environment. They do move, which can be a bit distracting, I guess.
They're certainly much nicer to look at compared to the average nuclear/coal/nat.gas power plant
Until this happens
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/prince-edward-island/pei-hermanville-damage-blades-1.7074298
I don't mind them and lived in the midst of two wind "farms". They aren't usually clumped tightly together so you don't see many until you're out on the road.
Personally found them kind of calming to look at as part of the backdrop when it was nice outside and I could go out and listen to music or radio and just unplug. Personal opinions vary wildly and some people will hate them just for existing just as some people will find a mural or new building an eyesore, they don't have a tangible reason and usually they just don't want change, ontop of there being no shortage of easily disproveable conspiracy theories about turbines they cling to because someone said they were bad once and they can't be bothered to fact check anything that doesn't already support their opinion.
So ultimately I don't mind them anymore than a water tower or grain bin/silo, they are just part of my skyline now and it didn't take long to get used to them.
Just try to look at the sky at night. Most places in the world you won't see the stars and yet no one complains too much about the visual pollution
Yes. I would not want a row of them in my way looking out over the wilderness that I live next to.
Looking out over the town or farmland I don't really care.