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Comment by blackeyeblitzar | Hacker News Reader

I don’t think you can dismiss the aesthetic concerns. Many people consider the natural beauty around them to be a core part of their living experience. Like with offshore wind farms - if you take coastlines and dot them with wind farms, it does hurt that beauty and experience in a meaningful way. And if you’ve been near them, they produce immense and constant noise that is hard to ignore. There will definitely be effects from that on marine life, as boat noise also affects them. Many of the things you listed like telephone wires or roads don’t make noise, so it’s not the same trade off, and they are in places we expect nature to be displaced.

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> roads don’t make noise

You're proving GP's point. Roads on their own don't make noise, but if I go outside I can hear the road noise from cars going down a IH-35 which is a mile away. (It isn't even the only road I can hear noise from)

It’s totally different from the noise a wind turbine makes. Watch a video of what it’s like on YouTube. Road noise can also be mitigated in many ways and in many areas it is - based on the surface, walls, etc. But also consider that we expect that urban areas have a degree of noise, but we also generally expect that serene natural spaces are free of those things to a greater extent.

It's hypothetically true that road noise can be mitigated, it is also nevertheless true that we have societally chosen to endure road noise, and the harms it causes which have measurable outcomes on everything from quality of life to mental health to property values.

As I noted in a different comment, if all we're saying is that we are open to windmills having the same adverse impacts on environments as roads already do, then to me that's the same as saying there's no such thing as a windmill noise problem.

Road noise is almost never mitigated. Low speed limits could mitigate some of it, but many people drive faster than the speed limits.

Right, you can't marvel-snap the realities of road noise away just by noting the hypothetical possibility of it being mitigated.

Transmission lines absolutely do make noise. Plenty of smaller scale power line elements can also hum.

For anyone complaining about offshore wind (which is way the hell off in the distance) it may be worth considering that the alternative is those houses and beaches on the shore cease to exist in the future if we don't build the turbines.

> Transmission lines absolutely do make noise. Plenty of smaller scale power line elements can also hum.

Maybe higher power ones can, but I’ve never had residential lines hum. And as for long distance transmission lines - even their noise is nothing compared to what a spinning blade on a wind turbine generates. You can find videos of the noise on YouTube.

> For anyone complaining about offshore wind (which is way the hell off in the distance) it may be worth considering that the alternative is those houses and beaches on the shore cease to exist in the future if we don't build the turbines.

This feels like a strawman argument or something. I don’t think such an extreme positioning makes sense. There are many other variables like power sources (nuclear power for example), reduced consumption, changing population levels (trending downwards in many countries). It’s not like building wind power is the only way for humanity to thrive.

  > There are many other variables like power sources (nuclear power for example)

The problem is that there aren't. You might be a wind NIMBY and nuclear YIMBY, but guess what, there's millions of nuclear NIMBYs ready to oppose whatever vision you personally hold.

The end result is permanent gridlock all in the name of preserving the subjective aesthetic preferences of a tiny handful of people. You can't run a society like this, you just can't.

At some point the urgent global concerns need to override sufficiently frivolous local concerns.

Having lived near both simultaneously I can tell you power lines definitely do makes noise while I'm genuinely having to google to confirm which wind turbines make noise because I never noticed.

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