Austrian Town Sees the Light 339
pin_gween writes "The Austrian town of Rattenberg (a 10 minute walk from sunlight during the winter) plans to install a mirror on a mountain to redirect sunlight towards the town. The town was built in the winter shadow of Rat Mountain. The plan is to place heliostat mirrors to shine light in several locations around town, where villagers could 'congregate and get sunned up.' The EU is ponying up half the $2.4 million costs. The company installing the mirrors, Bartenbach Lichtlabor GmbH, is contributing $600,000, and hopes other communities will use their technology."
Sun reflecting mirrors in space (Score:5, Interesting)
I don't know what happened, however between this and Solar Power Satellites [aol.com] transmitting solar generated electricity to earth via microwave I wonder if the research has hurricane implications.
That is, if they could construct an enormous sun-reflecting hurricane death-ray which could be projected/reflected into the eyes of hurricanes, or over oceans to heat the air/water before Hurricanes can form.
Playing with weather... Won't that annoy the hippies!
10 Minute Walk? Hah! (Score:5, Interesting)
Barrow, Alaska residents say they tend to sleep more during the long months of round-the-clock dark. The sun sets in Barrow on Friday at 1:40 p.m. and doesn't rise again until Jan. 23 at 1:01 p.m.
Diana Martin is an Inupiat Eskimo and a lifelong Barrow resident. She says it's much easier to start the day when Barrow receives round-the-clock daylight in summer.
Re:being an EU citizen (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Not the brightest idea (Score:2, Interesting)
This discussion gave me a nice idea... (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:If you can't stand the heat... (Score:5, Interesting)
Yeah, good job it doesn't happen anywhere else in the world
no wait,
"America's 25,000 cotton farmers received more than $3bn in subsidies last year, equivalent to 100% of the market value of cotton output. This works out at a staggering subsidy of $230 an acre."
Not that I'm defending the C.A.P.
some depressing reading :
http://www.guardian.co.uk/leaders/story/0,3604,10
Rattenberg Homepage (Score:5, Interesting)
The article says that Rattenberg is famous for its glass-processing industry.
Re:If you can't stand the heat... (Score:5, Interesting)
The worst part of the mirror is that it is an entire waste of money. Consider the following quote from the article.
"So Lichtlabor plans to create about a dozen "hotspots" - areas not much bigger than a front yard scattered through the town, where townspeople can gather and soak up rays. "
Now compare that comment to the comment from the beginning of the article.
"That's because sun is plentiful less than 10 minutes' walk from the town and from Rat Mountain, the 910m hill that blocks its sunlight between November and February each year."
Let's see, the EU pays 2,400,000 Euros for "hotspots", when they could walk 10 minutes to get the exact same thing! Additionally, as I live near the Alps, during the winter you are cloud covered or in the fog for most of the winter anyways.
This is an example of pork, plain and simple!
Re:being an EU citizen (Score:4, Interesting)
Actually, that's not at all weird. Here in the US, there are a number of universities that have done this. I attended two of them. In the winter, when visitors commented on the "waste" of heated sidewalks, it was fun to explain that it was a side effect of the cost-saving heating system.
What they do is obvious: There's a big campus heating plant, with underground pipes connecting it to the other buildings. Mostly, the pipes are inside tunnels, which contain other long, skinny things like wiring of various sorts. And, for obvious reasons, the tunnels are usually built underneath sidewalks, so that the leaking heat will keep the walks clear in winter.
The only problem is that they don't put them under all the sidewalks. But in general, such central heating systems cost a lot less than separate heating systems in each building.
Too bad that people in towns generally can't implement something similar. But if they did, the cost would be called "taxes", and no matter how much less they were than per-house heating systems, people wouldn't accept them. Taxes are, you know, evil; paying twice as much to a private corporation is good.
There is technology to do similar things with light. Google for "light pipe". How practical this might be on a town level isn't obvious.
Re:Potential Problem (Score:2, Interesting)
You know they could sunbathe all day in the visible and still be white as their sheep, not bronzed like the governor of CA.
"I've sold heliostats to Brockway, Ogdenville and North Haverbrook."
Re:If you can't stand the heat... (Score:3, Interesting)
If you're in the US, see also the National Flood Insurance Program. We pay people to build on coastlines and floodplains.
There are a handful of people whose homes we've made into floodplains due to misguided and they deserve to get this, but when you've got a $5M chateau going up on the beach and Bob who welds girders for a living is subsidizing that - well, we start to see the cracks in the Republic.
Sure, it's all 'self-funded' until a major event happens and they need to 'borrow' from the treasury.
There's plenty of dry land to build homes on around here but those who influence policy don't wish to live there.