The WSJ has a long article about solar panels and pine trees.....two comments that seem to be on target for appraisers:
......."Massive acreage in solar panels is one of the dumbest, most wasteful use of otherwise arable or usable land. There are far better ways to make electricity, and a lot of it, without using up land that could grow wood, be a carbon sink for years, an provide a renewable resources without filling the landfill in 20-years when the panels are no longer efficient. No more tax breaks for junk projects.
Each harvesting of Loblolly Pine forests captures and entrains more carbon than these solar fields displace.
In the absence of a house fire, harvested wood for housing permanently pulls, collects and keeps carbon out of the atmosphere. Build houses as carbon sinks rather than covering forests with growth-smothering panels."
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......"a federal jury awarded a couple $135.5 million after runoff from another Silicon Ranch project muddied their fishing lake. A federal judge overruled the damages amount, and the parties settled in January—yet the jury made clear how rural Georgians feel about solar farms."
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Last night on Oregon's PBS station was a story about the Ash Tree beetle. It is an invasive specie that entered Oregon about 15-years ago and kill Ash Trees which provide shade to river and streams in Oregon (primarily the Willamette Valley). The beetle kills all trees and so far there is no easy way to stop it and no substitute to shade the rivers (Ash Trees like wet, mucky soil next to rivers). Besides the pollution Portland dumps into the Columbia River, and Federal Judges micro-managing, beetles become another enemy to the great Columbia River Salmon.
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