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Comment by johnwyles | Hacker News Reader

To be fair a lot of West Texas if you're not looking at a bunch of windmills you're looking at about as many derricks - neither are very pleasing to the eye.

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I find turbines quite beautiful. A small glimpse of that 1950s future that never came to be. We don't have jet packs, or flying cars, but we have immense white towers, slowly, steadily generating clean electricity. Just as steam engines sum up the industrial revolution, wind turbines sum up the green revolution, that is/I hope will be.

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder though. I remember people complaining about 2 massive cooling towers in the centre of Sheffield being torn down.

I'd be interested in what wind turbines say to you that lead you to call them ugly.

>I'd be interested in what wind turbines say to you that lead you to call them ugly.

It depends on the density. Once they clutter everything visible below 100 ft, it's pretty hard to see beauty: https://www.pentaxforums.com/forums/12-post-your-photos/2128...

I would say its the black ones that make it look ugly? And the lack of uniformity?

I did a google image search for that location and the other images didn't seem so bad (to me).

Is the uglyness an inherent feature of the scale. Or a feature of poor design?

The black ones are actually under a cloud. In Iowa, we have quite a few wind farms. I think for most people they are a source of pride. Maybe I just haven't met the grumps.

Might be shadow rather than cloud?

Some appear to have white nacelles and black towers.

That's an extreme telephoto shot, I don't think it's representative of what you'd see when you look at the landscape as a human. Unless it's from a very specific spot.

That picture doesn't do it justice. Driving through Palm Springs is pretty cool. There are a LOT of windmills.

Actually the 1950s view of the future was nuclear based. Nuclear flying cars etc. Wind turbines and towers in general are quite ugly and kill birds, especially when concentrated like in the fields near Vienna. Offshore wind is fine. Trees are beautiful.

FWIW, I've read speculation that painting them white attracts insects which attract birds.

I volunteered at Audubon for years. Love both birds and windmills.

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