As If Getting Their Heads Whacked Off by Wind Turbines WASN’T ENOUGH…
…now we’re vapourizing them in mid-air. Oh, is there anything Green Energy CAN’T DO?!!
Solar plant’s downside? Birds igniting in midair
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, are urging California officials to halt the operator’s application to build a still-bigger version.
The investigators want the halt until the full extent of the deaths can be assessed. Estimates per year now range from a low of about a thousand by BrightSource to 28,000 by an expert for the Center for Biological Diversity environmental group.
The deaths are “alarming. It’s hard to say whether that’s the location or the technology,” said Garry George, renewable-energy director for the California chapter of the Audubon Society.
“There needs to be some caution.“
Ya THINK?
Gorebal Warming, Nanny State, Politics, Public Service Announcement | tree hugging sister | 
August 18, 2014 1:40 pm
Subscribe
Can we sprinkle the birds with some butter and tarragon before they fly through the beam?
Huh. So the same kids I saw burning ants on the sidewalk under magnifying glasses grew up to be solar engineers? Who’da thunk it?
We had to destroy the environment to save it.
Golly, concave surfaces reflecting sunlight can burn things? Who’da thunk it?
[face palm]
Seriously …. I’m looking forward to the bird protection plan.
Why not? Dams have to have plans to protect the fish from birds and seals. So expect some sort of plan to keep birds from flying over the solar collectors.
You wait and see.
Nope, there won’t be, Jeff. They got a dispensation for whacking bald eagle heads off when you or I would be locked up for 20 years, they’ll get a pass for air-crisping them, too.
Could be. But I know the greenies go into conniptions when seal munch on salmon coming out of the last dam on the Columbia, but neither gets whacked.
OTOH, birds at other dams, who feed on fish stunned by their passage through the turbines, DO get whacked. Nor often, but it does happen.
Roasted chicken falling from the sky!
Is there ANYTHING science can’t do?
Perhaps we could put this green energy to use on the southern border and turn “dreamers” into “streamers”.