Posted on 08/18/2014 8:30:30 AM PDT by No One Special
Thousands of birds are flying into a new solar "mega-trap" in the middle of California's Mojave Desert, killing the avian lot at a rate of up to one bird every two minutes, according to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS).
The state-of-the-art Ivanpah Solar Electric Generating System (ISEGS), which opened in February, is the world's largest solar plant to utilize "power towers," skyscraping structures that receive beams of focused solar rays to generate electricity.
At Ivanpah, the sun's ray's are redirected from a sea of more than 300,000 mirrors on the desert surface below to hit water filled boilers atop three 459-foot "power towers." Temperatures near the towers can climb to 800 degrees, which causes the water to produce steam that turns turbines which generate energy.
All told, the facility at Ivanpah generates enough electricity to power 140,000 homes and eliminates carbon dioxide emissions equivalent to 72,000 vehicles a year, according to a press release from Bright Source Energy, one of the trio of investors behind the solar plant.
That sort of renewable energy source might seem like a triumph for the environment, but the same super-heated skyscrapers that generate renewable electricity are also taking a toll on wildlife in the area.
According to the Associated Press, up to 28,000 birds per year might be meeting an early death after burning up in the focused beams of sunlight, with birds dying at a rate of one bird every two minutes. The burned-up birds are being dubbed "streamers," after the poof of smoke produced by the igniting birds.
A report by the USFWS states that most of the birds are dying from various levels of exposure to "solar flux" which causes "singeing of feathers."
"Severe singeing of flight feathers caused catastrophic loss of flying ability, leading to death by impact with the ground or other objects," the report states. "Less severe singeing led to impairment of flight capability, reducing ability to forage and evade predators, leading to starvation or predation."
A quasi-food chain is being established around the solar plant, with predators eating birds and bats that burn up in the plant's solar rays chasing after insects which are attracted to the bright light from the sun's reflected rays. That prompted wildlife officials to refer to Ivanpah as a "mega-trap" for wildlife.
Unfortunately, the USFWS doesn't yet know the full extent of the solar facility's impact on bird populations, and is calling for a full year study of the death toll at the site before the plant's operators are allowed to construct an even bigger "power tower" solar plant between Joshua Tree National Park and the California-Arizona border, the Associated Press reports.
The proposed facility would have a power tower nearly twice the size of the ones found at Ivanpah and is located in an area with more than 100 species of birds, including protected species like golden eagles and peregrine falcons. Officials estimate that if the plant were built it would be nearly four times deadly to avian species than the solar plant at Ivanpah.
A spokesperson for NRG Solar, another one of the companies behind Ivanpah told the Associated Press that "we take this issue very seriously." So far, the only remedy appears to be cash. BrightSource has anted up $1.8 million to compensate for bird deaths and the trio of companies behind the project is looking into potential solutions to stop wildlife from colliding with the solar plant.
Ha! Also made me think of Icarus
What did they think? They couldn’t see this coming? it is the most obvious thing imaginable. And windmills chop birds in pieces.
What is this? the left hates birds?
(no. birds are being sacrificed on the altar of political correctness)
We need right wing lawyers to shut down this ENTIRE travesty for the good of the birds. The left does it for snail darters, the yellow bellied bumblebee and the redheaded pterodactyl (or whatever).
Precooked sqab....
Toasted sky rat in the skies....
“Every energy source is Murder” soon to be the rally cry of environmentalist wack jobs....
I guess we should all just kill ourselves to make the green nazi’s happy...
How about Poof Power!
No Pooftahs.
I’ve heard the British use both “poofter” and “poof” to refer to gays.
Hopefully somebody gets to eat crow.
Remember how the Left went apoplectic over ANWR because the Caribou would have to migrate a little?
If I were a Republican I would have an ad up showing these fried birds and ask their opponent what side they were on, the birds or Solyndra? Then remind the voters that their opponents side lent AND LOST a nearly $600 million dollar loan to fund the BIRD KILLERS.
We need to start to throw the language right back in their faces!
Look at your liberal acquaintances and freak them out by calling BIRD MURDERERS.
“Someone needs to check their math. There are about 525,000 minutes in a year, so a death every two minutes would be more than 262,000 a year, not 28,000. “
But the sun only shines during the day.
“All told, the facility at Ivanpah generates enough electricity to power 140,000 homes...”
So long as those homes only use electricity during the bright, sun-shiney hours of the day.
Sorta.
It's the typical cognitive dissonance we see every day coming from the Left.
They say we need these inefficient energy boondoggles to "save the planet," yet these inefficient energy boondoggles end up annihilating the planet's wildlife.
To this, they just shrug.
Their hypocrisy baffles the mind.
We have to build the solar farms, because The Models predict that if we don’t convert to solar energy, the globe will overheat in 100 years. We should even do this notwithstanding the fact that The Models didn’t predict that when birds fly though megawatt solar energy beams, they will get singed. Not in 100 years, but in a small fraction of a second. Still, we have to trust The Models, and their incontrovertible Predictions. Because who are we to say the models make errors in their predictions? Such blasphemy is for the birds.
Perhap this: "So far, the only remedy appears to be cash. BrightSource has anted up $1.8 million to compensate for bird deaths." . . . to who(m)? The birds' relatives?
1.8 million seems a good price when these companies are getting billions in direct subsidies in a state that forces consumers to buy this extremely expensive energy. And great planning there. Steam boilers in the dryest place on US soil where people are fined for watering their lawns.
Reminds me of a film from my psych 1 class.
A baby (toddler?) is sitting up watching a toy train go down an incline, through a tunnel and out the other side, and it's repeated some number of times, the kid following the train.
Then the tunnel is blocked, stopping the train from going through to the other side.
During that next run, the kid dutifully follows the train to the other side, but since there's no train, the head snaps back to the tunnel exit.
Liberals somehow lose the ability to notice when something has gone awry.
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