Solar Panels at Heart of the Sands Nature Center, White Sands National Monument
I’ve never paid much attention to the whole Freakonomics thing, and I don’t intend to start, but I’ve noticed that among the many complaints about the discussion of climate change in Superfreakonomics is its apparent insistence that photovoltaic solar panels are black. As many people have noted, they are of course blue. Sometimes they can look sort of black from some angles, but that’s just a trick of the light; they’re still blue. There are other kinds of non-photovoltaic solar panels, but they’re generally a sort of light brown or gray color. Still not black. I don’t have much more to say about this, except that it makes me even less inclined to read the book or take its authors at all seriously, but as a result of my various travels in sunny regions I have a fair number of pictures of solar panels to back up what everyone’s been saying on this, and I figured I might as well put some up.
Various Types of Solar Panels at Natural Bridges National Monument
That first photo looks like a photo of a model, or tilt-shift at best. Is it really real?? If so, where did you take it from?
It’s real. I took it from the top of a dune right next to the Nature Center. Here is a ground-level shot; you can see the dune on the left.