Streamers?
Workers at a state-of-the-art solar plant in the Mojave Desert have a name for birds that fly through the plant's concentrated sun rays - "streamers," for the smoke plume that comes from birds that ignite in midair.
Federal wildlife investigators who visited the BrightSource Energy plant last year and watched as birds burned and fell, reporting an average of one "streamer" every two minutes. They are urging California officials to halt the operator's application to build a still-bigger version.
You can read more by clicking this link. You can read a defense of this technology right here.
Image Credit:
http://www.ksbw.com/news/central-california/san-francisco-bay-area/solar-plants-scorch-birds-in-midair/27589996?treets=mty&tid=2658857232813&tml=mty_4pm&tmi=mty_4pm_1_05000108182014&ts=H#!bFQRW1
Two birds per minute? What a repugnant fiction. Such a claim from supposed "federal wildlife investigators" exists only in the imagination of Ellen Knickmeyer and John Locher, the petulant children responsible for this gravely misleading Associated Press attack piece [1].
ReplyDeleteThere aren't two sides to this issue. The AP article is dead wrong. You need to acknowledge this fact, or take this post down.
1. http://bigstory.ap.org/article/emerging-solar-plants-scorch-birds-mid-air
In reality, "avian fatalities between January and June 2014 ... 133 were related to solar flux." [1] That's one bird every 1,635 minutes [2]. Ellen Knickmeyer and John Locher were only exaggerating by 1229%! You need to cut this crap out, Gary. You're HURTING environmentalism by perpetuating blatant lies. Stop being an embarrassment to the movement.
ReplyDelete1. http://www.csp-world.com/news/20140820/001368/brightsource-responds-critics-about-bird-deaths-ivanpah-csp-plant
2. http://bit.ly/1BvseVg
Here's what National Fish and Wildlife Forensics Laboratory actually says about the streamers: "... these events represent the combustion of loose debris, or insects." [1]
ReplyDelete1. http://www.ourenergypolicy.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/avian-mortality.pdf
I've done the math, and it turns out Ivanpah causes fewer bird deaths per GWh than fossil fuel, nuclear, and even wind power. Read more: http://thephysicspolice.blogspot.com/2014/02/solar-power-and-birds.html
ReplyDelete