I live near the largest contiguous beech forest in the northeast. It is also one of the largest and best black bear habitats in New England and home to three nesting pairs of bald eagles that have developed here in the last ten years. So what do you think the greenies did to appease their fairy god. I know, you guessed. They mowed the protected ridgelines for miles to erect 400’ windmills that are lucky to achieve 20% uptime efficiency. That and the solar farms that sit covered in snow for a good part of the winter are a blight on the landscape IMO.
Oh yeah, as to the eagles, there was a bruhaha regarding a juvenile eagle found dead from blunt force trauma this summer with everyone running around trying to figure out what happened. If only they had looked over their shoulders and seen the giant windmills less than 2 miles away they might have gotten a clue.
As far as thermal solar goes I do support that here on a small scale as an adjunct source. Actually I support most small scale so called “alternative” energy production, but in this area I don’t support it as “base load power”. Hot standby is required which destabilizes the grid, wastes energy, and makes people believe alternate sources are viable base load power. It’s a dream, and a bad one at that.
I should have been clear that I was referencing utility-scale thermal solar as a terrible boondoggle. The Ivanpah solar thermal plant in CA is a disaster from and economic and performance standpoint. Likewise Solana in AZ. APS was bamboozled into a long-term PPA with Solana for 14 cents per Kwh, which will likely cost ratepayers over 20 cents per Kwh when delivered. Ironic because just down the road the Palo Verde nuclear plant is putting power on the grid at a cost of around four cents per Kwh.
I seem to recall an article in one of the VT publications where the company that sells PV solar was bragging about covering an "unused" field with a few hundred acres of solar panels. Well, geez, all they did was take a formerly verdant and lush greenfield and turn it into a lifeless, muddy (or dusty) brownfield, that will be lucky to pull a 20% capacity factor in the NE climate.
And yes, those windmills are having a deadly effect on avian and other flying species. I remember reading about how some western states that have gone all-in on windmills have found out the hard way the significant impact of widespread windfarms is taking on avian and other flying species. In particular, they kill untold numbers of, ready for this, bats. A mature bat can consume up to 10,000 mosquito-sized insects each night, some of which are in fact mosquitoes. Evidently the swooshing sound of windmills used in power generation fools the sonic locating apparatus of the bat senses, causing them to fly right into the windmill blades.