Mojave Desert solar plant kills 6,000 birds a year
By Paul Homewood
Shocking news from the LA Times:
Reporting from NIPTON, Calif. —
A macabre fireworks show unfolds each day along I-15 west of Las Vegas, as birds fly into concentrated beams of sunlight and are instantly incinerated, leaving wisps of white smoke against the blue desert sky.
Workers at the Ivanpah Solar Plant have a name for the spectacle: “Streamers.”
And the image-conscious owners of the 390-megawatt plant say they are trying everything they can think of to stop the slaughter.
Federal biologists say about 6,000 birds die from collisions or immolation annually while chasing flying insects around the facility’s three 40-story towers, which catch sunlight from five square miles of garage-door-size mirrors to drive the plant’s power-producing turbines.
https://www.latimes.com/local/california/la-me-solar-bird-deaths-20160831-snap-story.html
So much for “green energy”!
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NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT 
Instant closure of the plant would be demanded by so-called ‘greens’ if this carnage was caused by a fuel-burning power station.
Or heaven forbid it caused an imperceptable earth vibration!
“Instant closure of the plant would be demanded by so-called ‘greens’ if this carnage was caused by a fuel-burning power station.”
But it IS a fuel-burning power station!!
From the link below, scroll down to ‘Change Data Set’, then click ‘Annual’ button.
Scroll down to ‘Fuel Consumption Quantity / Natural Gas(mcf)’, and you’ll see in 2018 it had to burn 436,529 million cubic feet of Nat Gas! (1mcf is approx 320,000kWh)
https://www.eia.gov/electricity/data/browser/#/plant/57074
That is only Ivanpah 1.
Ivanpah 2
http://www.eia.gov/electricity/data/browser/#/plant/57073
Ivanpah 3
http://www.eia.gov/electricity/data/browser/#/plant/57075
Total Natural Gas for all was 1,282,478 in 2018.
More or less they burn as much as they can and stay under 5% so it qualifies as “Green Energy”. And get that 13.5 cents per kwh.
T2M
Reblogged this on Climate- Science.press.
Doesn’t matter. These are unfortunate sacrifices which have to be endured if we are to drop the modelled temperature of the Earth by .05 of a degree by 2100.
However, if a seabird gets covered in oil from passing ship, it’s a tragedy. Unless, of course, the ship is a Greenpeace vessel sent to monitor whales. In which case it’s the fault of Big Oil for not making fuel oil nature-friendly….
Let’s be clear about this – they are burning birds. It should be called avian power, not solar power. Time to ask Greta what she thinks!
Just more to add to list of those killed by measures to stop the climate changing or to ‘prove’ it is our fault.
What’s the context ?
– is 6,000 birds a lot there ?
– Are they special birds ?
I used to live at a mine in the Atacama desert .. there is zero humidity , so there was no wildlife. Nothing even rots.
So up the road the deaths of a few birds would have been a mega story.
‘And the image-conscious owners of the 390-megawatt plant say they are trying everything they can think of to stop the slaughter.’
Everything? Just put a chicken wire fence around the place.
‘birds fly into concentrated beams of sunlight and are instantly incinerated, leaving wisps of white smoke against the blue desert sky.’
Can anyone go watch? Wait . . . it’s about one an hour during daylight. Not worth the trip.
This is a report from 2016.
Reblogged this on ajmarciniak.
Warm air rises , just how much heat are they putting into the atmosphere, causing their own “global warming” definitely more than they are preventing not emitting CO2???
Reblogged this on Climate Collections.
Silent spring all over again but this time around no one cares.