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AP reports that wildlife investigators who watched as birds burn and fell at the Ivanpah Dry Lake Solar Tower Plant are urging California officials to halt the operator's application to build a still-bigger version until the full extent of the deaths can be assessed. Estimates per year now range from a low of about a thousand "streamers" by the plant operator to 28,000 by an expert for the Center for Biological Diversity environmental group. Those statistics haven’t curbed the enthusiasm of the Obama administration for the solar-power plant, which granted Ivanpah a $1.6 billion federal loan guarantee. The deaths are "alarming. It's hard to say whether that's the location or the technology," says Garry George, renewable-energy director for the California chapter of the Audubon Society. "There needs to be some caution." Federal wildlife officials say the plant might act as a "mega-trap" for wildlife, with the bright light of the plant attracting insects, which in turn attract insect-eating birds that fly to their death in the intensely focused light rays.
The $2.2 billion plant at Ivanpah Dry Lake near the California-Nevada border is the world's biggest plant to employ so-called power towers. More than 300,000 mirrors, each the size of a garage door, reflect solar rays onto three boiler towers each looming up to 40 stories high. The water inside is heated to produce steam, which turns turbines that generate enough electricity for 140,000 homes. While biologists say there is no known feasible way to curb the number of birds killed, the companies behind the projects say they are hoping to find one — studying whether lights, sounds or some other technology would scare them away, says Joseph Desmond, senior vice president at BrightSource Energy. Power-tower proponents are fighting to keep the deaths from forcing a pause in the building of new plants when they see the technology on the verge of becoming more affordable and accessible (PDF). When it comes to powering the country's grids, "diversity of technology ... is critical," says Thomas Conroy, a renewable-energy expert. "Nobody should be arguing let's be all coal, all solar," all wind, or all nuclear. "And every one of those technologies has a long list of pros and cons."
(Score: 0, Troll) by rfree on Thursday August 21 2014, @11:39AM
Heh it seems some of the crazy greens are so "ecological" that they fight even ecological technology (solar power), lol...
You know I feel for the birds too, but I would still allow people to use candels (oh no poor moths) or camp fires, or use cars while we have poor insects on windshield.
It would be nicer if we could make it easier for birds, but let's not ruin people lives who actually need that power plant.
And "mega trap", heh how sensational.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by Vanderhoth on Thursday August 21 2014, @11:50AM
Actually my impression of the people fighting this solar plant is they're ultra right wing anti-environment people. They want to kill the technology and are making a mountain out of a mole hill to have the plant dismantled before anyone can even look into what's causing the issue and how it can be resolved. Same story was on the CBC last week and the comments people were leaving defied all logic. Found the story I was looking for earlier BrightSource solar plant sets birds on fire as they fly overhead [www.cbc.ca]
A few choice comments I found particularly funny and a little ironic.
"Now we know", "And knowing is half the battle". -G.I. Joooooe
(Score: 1) by rfree on Thursday August 21 2014, @01:38PM
Btw, There is no left or right wing actually, it's an oversimplification used by powerful in political systems where idiots rule (e.g. in democracy) to trick voters.
You can have economical freedom "every man works for himself" or not "you all, you go to work and feed the poor and me!".
You can have questions of moral freedom in various aspects.
And other topics come up.
They are different issues usually.
Maybe your theory that this is a movement to stop the oil/coal-fobs is correct. That is quite funny then.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Vanderhoth on Thursday August 21 2014, @02:14PM
Not that I'm disagreeing with the sentiment. It definitely is an oversimplification and people can be both left and right leaning on different issues, but left and right politics are a thing and it's been around for a long time. Adding "wing" just indicates the left or right stance is to the extreme. I'm definitely a moderate or centrist, with a slight left leaning, but those with a "left wing" stance see me as extreme right and can't register people more right than I am. Both sides, in the extreme, are idiots and definitely play up the us vs. them for those of us that could really go either way at the polls. Knowing that is what their doing is important to keep yourself from blindly taking one side or the other. If you pretend it doesn't exist you're leaving yourself open for manipulation.
From Wikipedia [wikipedia.org]
"Now we know", "And knowing is half the battle". -G.I. Joooooe
(Score: 4, Interesting) by BasilBrush on Thursday August 21 2014, @02:31PM
There is no left or right wing actually, it's an oversimplification used by powerful in political systems where idiots rule (e.g. in democracy) to trick voters.
Of course there's a left and right wing. Ever since the term appeared in 18th century France, where the people of the two ends of the spectrum sat in the left and right wings of the house. People who watch Fox News for anything more than shits and giggles and actually agree with it are most certainly right wingers. And those that identify themselves as socialists are certainly left wing.
Left/right is most certainly one of the axis on which political opinion is identifiably arranged. The other most common one being libertarian/authoritarian.
This FUD is much the same as the "Wind Turbines cause too many bird deaths" FUD, and mostly comes from right wingers, that simply hate environmentalism on the basis that they associate it with left wing ideas. They may self identify as "conservationists", but never as environmentalists.
Hurrah! Quoting works now!
(Score: 0, Troll) by rfree on Thursday August 21 2014, @03:17PM
While of course many issues can have opposite sides, they should be called like side 1 and 2 or A and B.
What does left mean? It's not decided (globally).
For example:
leftists - is what many people call the lazy people who want to rip income tax out working middle class as "YOU go work so that we call can feed the poor".
an opposite view is for example agorism, which says that what you earn is yours and you should pay others only if you both voluntary agreed, and rather not be forced to be king/majority/who-ever. and yet that opposite view is also called LEFT by many.
On the other hand right is often used to mean paying taxes, supporting gov and gov enforcement of various restrictions.
And yet RIGHT can also mean party (like KNP in Poland) that fights taxes (especially on income) and over-blown beurocracy and instead proposes economical freedom and free trade with minimal regulation.
So the words "left" and "right" have no clear meaning.
If you say "right" above it was mean as demonizing
- oh no you do not care about mother earth
- oh no you want to kill all the black people or something
- oh no are you from the government
- oh no do you want police to with force kick butt of all eco guys?
while to me it means many other things in some contexts.
Therefore this L/R words are quite useless.
(Score: 2) by ragequit on Thursday August 21 2014, @07:27PM
My kingdom for mod points!
The above views are fabricated for your reading pleasure.
(Score: 2) by khallow on Thursday August 21 2014, @10:37PM
We don't have to speculate on the basis of comments to a news story. We can read the story and find that the opposition to the project on this basis comes from "federal wildlife investigators" and the Center for Biological Diversity (take a glance at the staff [biologicaldiversity.org], does that look like ultra-right wing anti-environment people to you?).
And of course, only ultra-right wing anti-environment people would oppose a project like this on the basis that it kills a bunch of birds.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 21 2014, @01:02PM
Wow, you sound real classy. You say you care for the birds but it's obvious their lives are next to worthless to you. Just because a creature is of a different species or of lesser intelligence and can't speak up for itself you feel it's just fine to mock those who defend it and to let it die in the thousands because of a thoughtless design. Do you realise that sort of attitude is not a whole lot different from racism?
You're right to highlight the conflicting goals of greens - but having conflicting goals doesn't make you crazy. It just means things need to be given some careful thought to work around the difficulties.
(Score: 1) by rfree on Thursday August 21 2014, @01:40PM
I take it you never ate roasted chicken or a hamburger, you are strict vegetarian?
(Score: 2) by acid andy on Thursday August 21 2014, @01:57PM
No, but every time I eat meat I feel guilty, so that makes it OK.
I'm kidding - yup, strict vegetarian.
If a cat has kittens, does a rat have rittens, a bat bittens and a mat mittens?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 21 2014, @02:25PM
You don't use any medicines though, right?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 21 2014, @04:38PM
Just LSD!
(Score: 2) by acid andy on Thursday August 21 2014, @05:36PM
lol good one!
If a cat has kittens, does a rat have rittens, a bat bittens and a mat mittens?
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 21 2014, @01:05PM
Right cause building a 75 story solar tower right smack in the middle of a bird migration path,
when the comparable 40 story building not on a bird migration path is supposedly frying a bird every couple of minutes is the obviously green thing to do
not every thing sold as green is actually green.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 21 2014, @01:15PM
Plus, it causes nationwide shortages of dippin' sauce.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by BasilBrush on Thursday August 21 2014, @02:37PM
when the comparable 40 story building not on a bird migration path is supposedly frying a bird every couple of minutes
"Supposedly" being the operative word. The supposedly call these events "streamers" for the visual effect produced. Which makes it more than a little strange that there is no video footage of it happening. A 6 minute youtube video ought to be able to show us 3 of these events. And yet there's not even a video with a single such event happening.
Another clue that this is pure FUD is The Atlantic article linked doesn't stop at birds, but claims it threatens bats as well. Which would be quite difficult given that bats go out hunting for insects at night.
Hurrah! Quoting works now!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 21 2014, @04:35PM
Which makes it more than a little strange that there is no video footage of it happening.
You are assuming that the plant owners would permit that footage to get out. A cynic would expect that that the federal wildlife investigators are contractually forbidden from releasing any videos filmed on the property.
but claims it threatens bats as well. Which would be quite difficult given that bats go out hunting for insects at night.
It is more of an exaggeration, googling reveals that they find 5-10 dead bats each month there. Bats don't wait until it is 100% dark to come out, given the scale of the plant, even 5% of its peak reflected energy could be dangerous if they are close to the focal point.
(Score: 2) by tathra on Thursday August 21 2014, @06:39PM
it doesn't matter. if it was really happening and people were honestly outraged at it (as opposed to standard FUD which just requires getting idiots to act on your behalf) they'd go out of their way to get a video of it happening out in the public, if for no other reason than "extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence" (and i assure you, "its lighting all the birds on fire!" is an extraordinary claim).
(Score: 2) by M. Baranczak on Thursday August 21 2014, @07:28PM
It is more of an exaggeration, googling reveals that they find 5-10 dead bats each month there.
A meaningless statistic. How many dead bats per month were they finding before the generator was built?
Bats don't wait until it is 100% dark to come out, given the scale of the plant, even 5% of its peak reflected energy could be dangerous if they are close to the focal point.
I don't know about the bats in that area, but here, they don't come out until well after the sun goes down. At that point, there's still light, but it's not coming from a single source, so the solar array wouldn't work. (As a matter of fact, these types of arrays don't work when it's cloudy, either.)
Bats do come out in the daytime when they're rabid, though.
(Score: 2) by evilviper on Thursday August 21 2014, @09:07PM
What are you, 12? The world existed before YouTube. The US government doesn't operate on the America's Funniest Home Videos-model.
How exactly do these "Federal wildlife investigators" who reported this phenomenon, fit into your crazy conspiracy theory? Are they all getting money under the table from the Koch brothers?
Bats go out around dusk... Some earlier than others. They don't all wait until the sun sets and flood out. There's still sunlight around dusk, and with thousands of concentrating mirrors, probably still hot enough to kill unlucky animals.
Hydrogen cyanide is a delicious and necessary part of the human diet.
(Score: 2) by BasilBrush on Friday August 22 2014, @09:42PM
What are you, 12?
I'm most probably a lot older than you are. I wish I was still young, but I'm not.
The world existed before YouTube.
But Ivanpah Solar Power Facility didn't. So the creation date of YouTube is irrelevant.
The US government doesn't operate on the America's Funniest Home Videos-model.
We're not the US Government. We're soylentnews commenters. And YouTube would be reasonable evidence here for the events that are claimed.
How exactly do these "Federal wildlife investigators" who reported this phenomenon, fit into your crazy conspiracy theory?
There's a world of difference between what "Federal wildlife investigators" say, and what is written in The Atlantic. Go to the original document, purporting to be from the National Fish and Wildlife Forensics Laboratory, and you'll find that all witnessed were a number of dead birds at 3 solar sites. The didn't see a single bird actually fry, let alone one every 2 minutes. The carcasses amounted to 233, over 3 sites. With no way to tell over what period the birds died. They are clear about how little they know, and recommend...
wait for it...
video monitoring. Perhaps you should tell them that YouTube wasn't invented...
Also turns out the bat issue is not your ridiculous theory about dusk light being enough to fry them, but that some bats try roosting in the condenser building - cause of death unstated, but perhaps it gets a bit steamy in there. Or perhaps they just collected the naturally dead corpses that you would find on the floor of any bat roost. In either case an issue that could be completely eliminated with chicken wire over access points.
Hurrah! Quoting works now!
(Score: 2) by evilviper on Saturday August 23 2014, @11:31PM
I like how you apparently read the report, yet conveniently left out the purtinent details that don't happen to agree with your skepticism.
"Solar flux injury was identified as the cause of death in 47/141 birds", and just as many were in too poor of shape to be identified. That's with only minimal attempts to recover carcasses, and solar flux was only active during HALF of the observation period, making the stats excessively weighted towards other causes of death that were occurring while still under construction.
So even without YouTube, we've established that a large and inordinate number of birds are being killed by solar flux at Ivanpah, multiples of the numbers by other conventional causes.
Hydrogen cyanide is a delicious and necessary part of the human diet.
(Score: 2) by BasilBrush on Sunday August 24 2014, @12:11AM
So even without YouTube, we've established that a large and inordinate number of birds are being killed by solar flux at Ivanpah, multiples of the numbers by other conventional causes.
No you haven't established that at all. You don't have a figure for numbers by "other conventional causes", nor even the length of time that those corpses had been on site. And "large and inordinate" is nothing more than opinion.
Birds, like every other living thing, die. They have a limited life span. This is just one cause, of countless human causes, and even more natural ones. Flying into building window panes and being hit by traffic being two major anthropogenic ones. There is precisely nothing in the document to show that the numbers from this solar plant are large or inordinate.
Hurrah! Quoting works now!
(Score: 2) by evilviper on Sunday August 24 2014, @02:43AM
Yes, I do. The cause of death is broken-down in the report.
It was an active ecosystem. Scavengers were quite active. In addition, they made regular sweeps over a year and a half, not just one appearance, as you seem to want to think, so they have a very good time-frame on how long those corpses would have been there.
The breakdown by cause of death shows that. The number of deaths at the two other sites where solar flux was a non-issue show that as well.
You are clinging quite firmly to your willful ignorance.
Hydrogen cyanide is a delicious and necessary part of the human diet.
(Score: 2) by BasilBrush on Monday August 25 2014, @08:02PM
From the report: "It should be emphasised that we currently have very incomplete knowledge of the scope of avian mortality at these solar sites."
Wilful ignorance is thinking you know that which you don't.
Hurrah! Quoting works now!
(Score: 2) by evilviper on Monday August 25 2014, @09:14PM
This coming from the guy who is convinced that birds are dying of natural cause in mid-air while they happen to be flying over Ivanpah.
Hydrogen cyanide is a delicious and necessary part of the human diet.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Thexalon on Thursday August 21 2014, @02:09PM
These "environmentalists" are actually an astroturfing effort funded by the oil / coal / natural gas industry. They've used precisely the same objection to delay wind farm projects, even though both wind farms and this solar farm kill far fewer birds than, for example, skyscrapers with large reflective windows (because birds think that's more sky and slam right into 'em).
More to the point, bird populations are harmed far more by habitat destruction than anything else humans are doing. A typical mating pair will have 4-5 young, and that means that if half of 'em die by building or raccoon or cat or airplane or the gazillions of other causes of avian death, the population is completely stable. Where there's real trouble is where the mating pair doesn't have the resources to nest, and therefor has no young.
And in general, birds are doing just fine. For example, bald eagles [fws.gov] have gone from being endangered to somewhere around 10,000 breeding pairs of wild birds.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 2, Informative) by Joe Desertrat on Thursday August 21 2014, @04:23PM
Bird populations in general are NOT doing fine. There may have been success bringing the bald eagle back from the threat of extinction, but many other bird populations are in serious decline. Do a quick Google search for "us bird populations in decline" and read up.
(Score: 3, Funny) by nukkel on Thursday August 21 2014, @07:55PM
The American bald eagle died along with the Constitution, I suppose.
(Score: 2) by mhajicek on Thursday August 21 2014, @10:38PM
I propose we shut down the highway system until an extensive study can be performed on the impact on the squirrel population.
The spacelike surfaces of time foliations can have a cusp at the surface of discontinuity. - P. Hajicek
(Score: 1) by Freeman on Friday August 22 2014, @12:25AM
Do that and the squirrels will take over the world. ;-)
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 2) by khallow on Thursday August 21 2014, @10:44PM
They got MoveOn fooled [moveon.org]. Link is to a MoveOn advertisement for an anti-petroleum rally sponsored by a bunch of organizations including the Center for Biological Diversity which is in the story the main private-side opposition to the solar plant.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 21 2014, @02:23PM
i agree but i'm pretty sure we can find a way to prevent most birds from flying into the 'death rays'. maybe some scarecrows and a few fake predator birds, etc. i'm certain there are cheap ways to do this.
(Score: 1) by rfree on Thursday August 21 2014, @03:46PM
If we can do it a bit better for local env (and if people LIVING THERE want that) then sure, let's do it.
If it's a huge cost and/or a tool to extract bribes (on company, corporation or state level) or if it would destroy industry and make people much poorer etc, then nope (unless it's actually a total and obvious disaster).
Applies to this case, and to all eco cases.
(Score: 1) by wantkitteh on Thursday August 21 2014, @10:29PM
Airports in the UK use Falconry to keep the majority of birds away from the danger areas. Fly birds of prey around at just the right times when the plane activity is low, all the other birds keep the fuck away. Problem solved. And that's when there's human lives at risk and it's dirt cheap.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 21 2014, @04:14PM
let's not ruin people lives who actually need that power plant.
And "mega trap", heh how sensational.
"Ruin people's lives," heh how sensational.