Comment by nicoburns

3 years ago

I feel like it might look quite cool if it was patched with new copper (at least if it was done well). A bit like kintsugi pottery.

87 comments

nicoburns

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Latty  3 years ago

Often the kind of thing people hate for a while, and then with enough time becomes iconic and you'd probably end up with an article about how they were debating whether to preserve it or not as it aged.

I think about this a lot when it comes to "eyesores", particularly wind turbines. When you think of how windmills are considered picturesque, it always makes me a little surprised when people moan about modern wind generation, because I think they look great. Especially when most of the areas they are put up are crisscrossed with overhead power lines anyway, which are much less appealing.

  • wkat4242  3 years ago

    Yeah I don't understand why people hate them so much either. I think they look nice too. Better than old-fashioned windmills.

    Where I'm from in the Netherlands there's is much less resistance to them anyway because we know the alternative is for our country to be under the sea ;)

    • gerdesj  3 years ago

      The "Levels" in Somerset (UK) were drained from the C12th much of which involved Dutch engineers later on. It's not quite the same as your polders but quite a lot of village names here basically mean "island". Glastonbury Tor may well be the origin of the fabled Isle of Avalon. The Tor is a hill that was surrounded by marshland and waterways - it was only accessible by boat. Nowadays you drive up to it. There's a tower on it - the Tor.

      You may not be a fan of the old school windmills but I think they are a marvel of engineering. They were built without finite element analysis, CAD and all the rest. Take a look at say the iconic row of mills on Kinderdijk. They are pumps with sodding great archimedes screws that shuffle water from low to high. It has to be said that the Netherlands really go to grips with mills.

      The old school job is a tower mill - a tower with some sails on it and a simple pair of gears or a pulley system to turn a grooved round stone over another one to mill flour.

      I believe that most of the subsequent innovations in windmill technology were largely invented in the Netherlands and then copied or sold to elsewhere. By the time your forefathers (and mothers) had finished with them, you have things like a smock mill (the upper section looks a bit like a smock worn by rural workers) with a tail vane that automatically rotates the upper section of the mill into the prevailing wind. The sweeps are adjustable and can be rotated like an aircraft propellor - even feathered for a storm and the sails can be reefed much like a sailing boat's sails.

      There was the post mill - with a wooden trestle that a boxy shaped mill sits on with the sweeps and sails attached. The post mill was ideal if only wood is available and no bricks or whatever to make a tower. The smock was handy if you have some bricks to make a base and a lot of wood to make a lighter structure on top. The tower is basically very strong. There are several more options. There is an awful lot more to mill construction and design choice than you might idly imagine. Stuff built 300 years ago was absolutely using what we might consider cutting edge design decisions.

      Some relatives of mine renovated a towermill with an onion cap and tail vane to move the cap in Northamptonshire about 30 years ago. It took quite a few years but the flour it eventually produced was delightful. On the opening day we had to use long poles to get it started because the breeze was a bit naff. The bread baked from its flour in a big old wood oven tasted amazing.

      (edit - speling)

    • paganel  3 years ago

      Some of them kill a lot of birds and bats.

      On top of that, they of course need access roads for maintenance crews to come do their thing once in a while, if located in a former pristine environment that isn't ideal. To say nothing of when the construction actually takes place, again, if it all happens in a pristine location then it's not ok.

      15 replies →

  • asciimov  3 years ago

    As a kid that grew up on the south plains (Texas panhandle). I have a love hate relationship with those windmills. On the one hand it's neat seeing all that green power generation. On the other, it does ruin the landscape to some extent, it can be visually jarring to be driving some back road, go over a rise that, and be smack in the middle of a wind farm. It also can be a little distracting at night, where the darkness is awashed in blinking red lights.

    • wkat4242  3 years ago

      I think the red lights make them more mysterious at night.

      Especially when you drive over a hill and it's all foggy, and there's this big field of red dots flashing. It's like the robots are coming :) I like it.

      2 replies →

  • bnjms  3 years ago

    After seeing a video of someone showing how the nearby windmill cast a rotating shadow on their living room window some months of the year I understood it is a legitimate issue for some.

    But generally I’m with you. I just don’t get it. Windmills look neat and do neat things.

    • Latty  3 years ago

      For sure, not saying there are no issues (sound, shadows, etc...) especially when very close, but some people object to them literally just being in sight, which is wild to me.

  • poulsbohemian  3 years ago

    I live in an area with lots of windmills, where land owners of otherwise useless scrub ground have made good money providing a space for them. It has become a political issue for people literally "titling at windmills" as it were. Any conversation you have with them isn't about the windmill at all, apart from as you point out, some highly subjective statements about "eyesores" (which is ironic considering the ground on which these things are most commonly installed).

    The "real" complaints tend to be some absolute insanity about "medical issues" that are caused by the windmills. Or harm to wildlife, even though study after study debunks these views. Sometimes they try an environmental move, bringing up the waste from retired blades - all while ignoring the alternatives and their environmental harm.

    The real story is, these are people who just don't want progress. They don't want change. They are perfectly content with their Folgers coffee in a styrofoam cup and iceberg lettuce with ranch dressing. They want their news in paper form. Those windmills are just totems representing a world that scares them because it doesn't fit into their neat little navel-gazing bread basket.

    What I've noticed is that anger toward windmills in our area has grown over the decades since they started installing them rather than dissipated, as more of those angry old grumps realize that they won't get their old world back.

  • llimos  3 years ago

    People like a single windmill, standing picturesquely in the middle of the village.

    I don't think anyone would ever have gone for a field of tens or hundreds of them.

  • hoseja  3 years ago

    The modern wind turbines are absolutely massive and dominate the landscape in a mocking, domineering, ignorant hatred of nuclear power.

  • trgn  3 years ago

    the only time I'd appreciate windmills from an aesthetic point of view is when they are very very far away. Nearby, they are horrible to all senses.