Perhaps the BEST B1G Forum anywhere, here at College Football Fan Site, CFB51!!!

As wind energy expands in the United States, concerns have grown about the potential for tall turbines to be a drag on property values.

But a new nationwide study that analyzed data from 300 million home sales and 60,000 wind turbines finds turbines' impact on home values is much lower than previously thought – about a 1% drop on average for a home with at least one wind turbine within six miles.

The study's authors find the most impact on home prices happens if a home is less than five miles from a turbine; the further a home is from a turbine, the less of a value hit it takes.

Even for homes close to a turbine, the study finds the negative impact to property value "diminishes and eventually disappears" within a decade.

To measure the impact, scientists set out with a very simple question, said Max Auffhammer, a study co-author and professor at the University of California, Berkeley.

"We really wanted to get at, can you see that thing from where your house is?" Auffhammer told CNN.

Getting the answer required building a massive mapping database of the distance between US homes and wind turbines, accounting for changes in topography and other factors.

"We calculated whether you can see the turbine – or whether there is a mountain in the way, for example – and if so, how the house value changes compared to other houses in the same area where residents cannot see the wind turbine," Wei Guo, the study's lead author and a researcher at the Italian Centro Euro-Mediterraneo sui Cambiamenti Climatici, said in a statement.

The study also explored just how big wind turbines appear to the human eye. They found that, on average, a wind turbine five miles away appeared roughly the same size as an aspirin tablet held with an outstretched arm. If the same turbine were one mile away, it would appear the size of a golf ball.

Auffhammer said one of the study's most interesting findings was most of the dips in housing value were driven by early wind turbine installations in the US at the end of the 1990s. Closer to 2020, "we don't really find an effect," Auffhammer added.

https://www.ketv.com/article/how-much-are-wind-turbines-impacting-home-values/60233162?utm_campaign=snd-autopilot&fbclid=IwAR2YYWxePwJ3ysh3H39YD6Nk58zV6eLvXAFe_DKv6qVLahqW1uVgri693nA

Ah spring has sprung - since last sunday it's been more winter than the last month. High 20s last nite with snow cover and wind chill - 20°. Got sunny thu/fri but cold a.f.

I hope it helps

The upper 10 kilometers of the Earth’s crust contains vast geothermal reserves, essentially awaiting human energy consumption to begin to tap into its unstinting power output—which itself yields no greenhouse gasses. And yet, geothermal sources currently produce only three-tenths of one percent of the world’s electricity. This promising energy source has long been limited by the extraordinary challenges of drilling holes that are deep enough to access the intense heat below the Earth’s surface.

Now, an MIT spin-off says it has found a solution in an innovative technology that could dramatically reduce the costs and timelines of drilling to fantastic depths. Quaise Energy, based in Cambridge, Mass., plans to deploy what are called gyroton drills to vaporize rock using powerful microwaves.

“We need to go deeper and hotter to make geothermal energy viable outside of places like Iceland.”
—CARLOS ARAQUE, QUAISE ENERGY

A gyrotron uses high-power, linear-beam vacuum tubes to generate millimeter-length electromagnetic waves. Invented by Soviet scientists in the 1960s, gyrotons are used in nuclear fusion research experiments to heat and control plasma. Quaise has raised $95 million from investors, including Japan’s Mitsubishi, to develop technology that would enable it to quickly and efficiently drill up 20 km deep, closer to the Earth’s core than ever before.


https://spectrum.ieee.org/geothermal-energy-gyrotron-quaise

high of 50 here with wind and clouds

better day to drive the Vette than the golf cart