Fried Birds are only “Streamers”

So say workers at the Mojave Desert solar farm outside Vegas for the smoke from birds caught in the intense heat of mirrors. No big deal. After all, Green Power is far more important than migratory routes or the extinction of bird species.

Read more of this disgusting story @ http://www.rightwingnews.com/enviro...lant-workers-have-a-name-for-birds-streamers/

 

So how many birds are killed each year due to pollution caused from coal plants? Something tells me a lot more.

 

Anyone here been to Ivanpah? It is amazing, I stopped by back in June.

 

I am amazed at the concern shown by people for birds killed by wind power or solar power........but only when the birds are killed by solar or wind power.

Compare these numbers of bird deaths:
Wind turbines 2013 573,000
Towers 2012 6.8 million
Power lines 2005 175 million
Glass 2014 300 million - 1 billion

So- in 2005 high power lines killed 305 times more birds than wind turbines killed last year.

How outraged by that were you?

I think concern for birds is a good thing.

But using the death of birds, just to attack projects that you ideologically oppose is just sick.

 

Maybe if you count sparrows but it's a good question. For some reason I have more fondness for the larger the creature the more reverence it deserves philosophy. I'll swat a fly or kill a mouse but you won't catch me killing a bird of prey. Aren't we all wired that way?

 

Kinda weird like that. I agree. According to the article, apparently a billion birds each year are killed by domestic cats in the area. Kinda weird to think of it like that.

 

So prove it.

Coal plants these days emit fairly little pollution outside of carbon dioxide.

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Not sure it's that high, but environmentally speaking, cats are huge nuisances. Anybody who calls him/herself an environmentalist shouldn't have an outside cat.

 

Nothing about these solar plants stops power lines from running. Nothing about wind turbines stops power lines.

What's the source of the above?

The other thing is think about how many thousands of miles of power lines and high number of towers we have compared to the relatively low number of wind turbines. I bet that in my state alone there are more miles of power lines than there are wind turbines in the U.S.

What is the source of those stats? I can make stuff up too..

 

True, but you have to admit air pollution is a big killer.

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"The company is proposing the money for programs such as those to spay and neuter domestic cats, which a government study found kill over 1.4 billion birds a year. Opponents say that would do nothing to help the desert birds at the proposed site."
http://news.yahoo.com/emerging-solar-plants-scorch-birds-mid-air-054013072.html

 

Actually, this thread sounds like another fossil fuel industry propaganda induced rightwing brainfart.

Emerging solar plants scorch birds in mid-air
IVANPAH DRY LAKE, Calif. (AP) — 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....

So....some perspective.....an average of one bird "every two minutes", or 30 birds an hour are supposedly dying at this plant, but only during the daytime when the sun's energy is strong enough....to be generous, call it 12 hours a day although it would usually be less than that....so that makes it about 360 birds a day....times 365 days per year equals 131,400 bird deaths per year....an unfortunately high number that everyone hopes can be reduced through better designs and technological tricks to keep the birds away.....and seemingly a large amount until you consider the numbers involved in all of the other ways that human activities, structures and pets are killing birds in America.....
* Striking windows is estimated to kill close to 975 million birds per year.
* As many as 50 million bird deaths are estimated to occur from collisions with communication towers (cell phone and digital TV).
* Collisions with high tension power lines (and electrocutions) are estimated to kill around 175 million birds per year.
* Collisions with cars, trucks and other vehicles are believed to kill about 60 million birds a year.
* Hunters kill about 15 million birds per year in North America.
* "Pesticides may kill 72 million birds per year or possibly many more. The sub lethal effects of pesticides may also make the birds more susceptible to predators or unable to reproduce, essentially killing them."
* "Oil spills kill hundreds of thousands of birds a year or more."
* "Oil and wastewater pits may kill up to 2 million birds per year."
* Lead in the form of bullets and shot and fishing sinkers is ingested by the birds, ground up in the gizzard and absorbed by the body and causes a large but unknown number of bird deaths per year, perhaps as much as 4% of the total waterfowl population.
* All of the wind turbines in the country are estimated to kill about 33 thousand birds a year.
(source - Sibley Guides - Causes of Bird Mortality)

*** AND THEN there's the cats that people keep or have let escape to live wild...

Cats kill more than one billion birds each year
New estimate suggests hunting felines take bigger bite than expected out of wildlife
ScienceNews
BY SUSAN MILIUS
JANUARY 29, 2013
Domestic cats kill many more wild birds in the United States than scientists thought, according to a new analysis. Cats may rank as the biggest immediate danger that living around people brings to wildlife, researchers say. Cats may be killing far more birds each year than previously thought, as well as substantial numbers of mammals, says a new analysis based on hunting studies from around the world. America’s cats, including housecats that adventure outdoors and feral cats, kill between 1.3 billion and 4.0 billion birds in a year, says Peter Marra of the Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute in Washington, D.C., who led the team that performed the analysis.

975 million
50 million
175 million
60 million
15 million
72 million
2 million
Call it 2 billion
Adds up to about
3,349,000,000 cats killed per year by human activities and structures
Or possibly as high as
5,349,000,000 dead birds per year in just the USA because of humans.

But the anti-environmental, "coal-rolling", rightwingers have their panties in a twist over 130,000 possible deaths at a solar plant???

Or could it be that their puppetmasters, the billionaire owners of the fossil fuel industry who oppose solar power as a threat to their profits, have filled their heads with meaningless nonsense propaganda about a relatively insignificant number of bird deaths? Oil spills and oil drilling and oil refining wastewater pits kill several million birds a year so the hypocrisy of the rightwing AGW deniers stinks to high heaven.

 

Not sick - fun...anytime you can get greenie vs greenie its fun.......like the environmentalists killing trout in Yellowstone, or the ones shooting owls in the pacific NW.....amusing.....(I do feel sorry for the birds however)

 

Now now LF.....since 70% of America's power comes from fossil fuel (45% Coal) unless you have taken my advice of some years ago and shut off you home's power 17 hours a day, you are either:
1) a supporter of those right wing fossil fuel brain farters, or
2) a common left wing hypocrite

which will it be?

 

I still fondly remember the days when Conservatives actually believed in Conservation.

 

Ridiculous nonsense. This thread is a joke.

 

Nuclear plants don't kill birds.

 

Not to mention the environmental damage and animal deaths caused by oil spills. Doesn't matter one iota to the "drill, baby, drill!" crowd.

But then, I understand that the OP is only meant to pick on environmentalists who think that green energy is safe. Just what do they actually think about birds being fried in midair by a solar plant and swatted out of the air by turbines? Considering the fuss they make about saving fish in California waters and preventing oil spill disasters, it's a worthwhile question to me.

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They only generate extremely dangerous and ultimately unmanageable toxic waste that can spoil whole swathes of otherwise habitable land.

 

You on the 7 hours of power you are allowed then LF??

 

I do Jeff, I do....I don't know who is right and wrong in the controversies named, but I do think it is a huge over-reach of the EPA and others to presume they can tell which side "Nature" would be on and then take radical expensive action in that regard.

Now conserving eagles, whales, bison and snow leopards and stuff like that I am all for. We can have our energy and not destroy beautiful creatures like that. But like the owl controversy, one species is driving another species out and the Forest Service is shooting the successful species !!! STUPID.

I like to poke fun at the super radical "greenies" as I call them who DO think they know what nature intends, and believe because 1 frog has a spot 2 millimeters different than another it is another "species" and the who economy must stop until these God-Greenies rule on what to do. Something like 99.99999% of all species on earth are extinct and man had nothing to do with it.......

just like the climate has be changing for billions of years without my SUV to cause it......

 

Another silly failed thread based on deceptive anti-solar-power propaganda cooked up by the fossil fuel industry.

All of the bird deaths at this solar plant OVER THE WHOLE YEAR amount to about the same number as happens in just 6 HOURS as a result of all of the other ways that human activities, structures and pets kill birds. See post #10 for the details. The number of bird deaths due to solar concentrator plants like Ivanpah, while unfortunate, is relatively insignificant compared to just the two million birds killed by oil spills, oil refining and oil wastewater pits, not to mention the effect all of the environmental damage and destruction associated with coal mining and burning has on wildlife, including birds. Compared to the possibly 4,000,000,000 birds killed annually by cats and the other 1,000,000,000 killed by collisions with window glass, buildings and towers, the possible 100,000 bird deaths per year at this plant are totally insignificant.

The reason for this thread has a lot more to the effect of solar energy on the profits of the fossil fuel industry than on any supposed concern over bird mortality.

 

Ok lets use this logic on the death in Missouri of the young man at the hands of the police.

Since he is just 1. And about 6000 black men are murdered each year (94% of them by black men), we should tell the people of Ferguson to just go home and forget it, Live Free has declared such things "totally insignificant".

Keep pounding those keys and using that power LF, we in the fossil fuel industry (the guys that keep you from shivering in the dark) thank you for your support......

 

Insane drivel and waaaaay off topic.

 

No off topic at all. I was posting a simple example of how your "logic" regarding bird deaths is flawed.

Keep pounding those keys Live....every click means a gram of coal burned somewhere.......

 

More rightwingnut quackery from FauxNews. Trying to equate the murder of a young black man BY THE POLICE, who are supposedly sworn to "serve and protect" the citizens of this country, when he was unarmed and surrendering, with the murders committed by criminals and gangsters is totally insane and even more meaningless than the propagandized drivel the rightwingnuts usually fall for.