USA Today ran an excellent article on solar projects in California written by K Kaufmann of The Desert Sun. K Kaufmann has many other interesting articles on the greenenergy blog of The Desert Sun that you can read HERE.
(Just a reminder that former Director of the Bureau of Land Management, Bob Abbey, is a partner of Abbey, Stubbs & Ford, which has BrightSource Energy as a client.) – Debbie Coffey
SOURCE: USA TODAY
by K Kaufmann, The Desert Sun
At the moment, Ivanpah — now in the testing stage — is the largest solar thermal plant in the world.
An injured northern rough-winged swallow found on Colosseum Road at Ivanpah Solar Electric Generating System. / Courtesy BrightSource Energy Inc.A small bird, barely the size of a human hand, had its wings reduced to a web of charred spines. No longer able to keep aloft, the bird was found on the ground after it had flown through the intense heat of a solar thermal project soon to go online in the California desert.
2010: Major Calif. solar projects make progress
The photograph, taken at BrightSource Energy’s Ivanpah plant in east San Bernardino County, has raised the stakes for a similar project in Riverside County. Months from final state and federal approvals, the Palen solar thermal power system could put two 750-foot-tall solar towers and thousands of reflecting mirrors near two of the region’s key wildlife refuges and stopping points for birds migrating along the Pacific Flyway.
The project is roughly 50 miles from both the Salton Sea to the southwest and the Cibola National Wildlife Refuge in Arizona to the southeast.
“A migrating bird has to be in top form, having the flight feathers in really good shape,” said ornithology collections manager Kimball L. Garrett of the Museum of Natural History of Los Angeles County, who has not seen the picture from Ivanpah but has been concerned about bird deaths at large solar projects.
“If some of its flight feathers are damaged, what does that mean for the rest of the bird’s migration?” he said. “It weakens feathers. These are things people don’t study because — how can you?”
Trying to estimate how many birds could be injured or killed because of large-scale solar projects and what might be done to prevent deaths has become a pressing concern for solar developers and environmental agencies as these projects multiply. Developers hope to have the Palen project online in 2016.
Of 34 birds reported dead or injured at Ivanpah in September, 15 had melted feathers. Dozens of other bird carcasses, not singed but with critical injuries, have been found in recent months at two solar projects about to go online on public land between Joshua Tree National Park and Blythe, Calif., a town of 20,800 on Interstate 10 near the Arizona border.
READ THE REST OF THIS ARTICLE AND SEE THE VIDEO HERE: http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2013/11/10/bird-feathers-singed-solar-power/3491617/
Categories: Horse News, Uncategorized
Straight from the Horse's Heart 
Why don’t they put grids over them so the birds don’t come in contact with the heat and what about the animals that cross over them????
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also my 1st thought – how hard could it BE? but then, WHAT would it be made ++of? METAL ? would that become just as HOT? (0r melt?). NYLON ? but could birds become entangled ? some noxious Odor 0r Sound ? –what else would be affected & how far? What Keeps birds from landing IN geothermal heated pools? (is it the Sulfur fumes?) I dunno… . .must be some feasible answer, though.
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We are drilling five miles deep in the oceans, severing our mountain tops, fracking for a reason, we’re running on empty. Yet the one power source that got us here before energy is being eliminated all to perpetuate the myth that greedy men tell us that some miracle new energy source will save the day. Me, when my car is out of gas I want my new one to be powered by grass.
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Mojave Desert Blog:
Waking up to the Solar Power Tower Threat
As BrightSource Energy began to bulldoze approximately 5.6 square miles of pristine desert to build its Ivanpah Solar power project, we quickly learned the impact on terrestrial species – rare wildflowers, long-lived yucca plants, and desert tortoises were displaced or killed. Now that the Ivanpah Solar project is powering on, thousands of mirrors focusing the sun’s rays at three towers have burned or battered dozens of birds in the first couple of months of becoming operational. Chris Clarke with KCET’s ReWire has been reporting on the troubling new trend – dead birds being found after colliding with mirrors or burning to death in super-heated air over the project. We need to replace fossil fuels with renewable energy, but we need to do so in a way that minimizes (not expands) the human threat to ecosystems and wildlife.
More:
http://www.mojavedesertblog.com/2013/11/waking-up-to-solar-power-tower-threat.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+MojaveDesertBlog+%28Mojave+Desert+Blog%29&utm_content
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Our multitudes and our insatiable need for energy, there is no type of energy that won’t harm the environment in some way. Nobody wants to pursue rooftop and parking lot solar to the extent it should be explored, where the land has already been developed and despoiled – and will keep growing. It would seem an ideal solution. We also need to learn to use and consume less.
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I truly hope you are not posting this because you work for an oil company who would be totally against solar. Hopefully, we can fix what’s wrong with solar….we can never fix what damage oil has done to our environment.
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Barbara, I do not work for an oil company. I am not against solar. I agree with idalupine, and think that solar developments should be over parking lots and more affordable so they could be on all homes. The only reason solar is on these big areas and not on more homes is because then the big utility companies like Edison wouldn’t be able to make lots of money, so instead, the environment is being compromised for the greed of big corporations that buy off politicians.
I post a lot of articles on many different land use issues, and with increased solar development in the West, and since we covered the Cibola Trigo roundups of burros, was just trying to give additional information to our readers who like to comment on Environmental Assessments.
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I was referring to RT who DOES work for an oil company. And I totally agree….solar should be on EVERY rooftop. We can fix what’s wrong with solar, since it is such a new form of energy, but we can never undo the damage oil has done…..and it WILL get worse with all the fracking going on.
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Barbara, RT didn’t post this article, I did. I’ve also written and posted many, many articles about oil and gas leasing and fracking. In fact, I’ve posted more articles warning the public about oil and gas leasing and fracking on RT’s site than any other wild horse advocacy group has investigated or posted. RT has been transparent about his work for an oil company (which, by the way, is to oversee the safety of workers and to prevent environmental problems).
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Just the fact alone that this company (and probably others) have connections to the BLM tells me all I need to know. Sigh. I wish people would surprise us sometimes instead of being so predictable.
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http://www.worldfinancialreview.com/?p=1547
Great article here about better ways to move forward, from an economics class. Worth reading everyone!
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These people just kill anything in the name of progress whether birds, horses, or puppies…..what happens to their children? Oh wait, we know they stomp burros to death and become Kill er buyers!
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Check this out….a $ENSIBLE use of solar power. You have to go to the website to see the pictures.
http://rt.com/news/norway-giant-mirrors-sun-688/
SciTech sundog: Giant solar mirrors bring light to Norwegian town
Published time: October 24, 2013 19:48
A Norwegian town, deprived of sunlight during the winter, has placed giant mirrors on top of surrounding mountains that will beam light into the valley to cheer up the locals.
Rjukan, some 160 kilometers west of the capital Oslo, is encircled by high hillsides which let no direct sunlight into the town between September and March. For years about 3,500 people living in the area suffered from the lack of sun and had to use a cable car to get on top of the mountains to enjoy some -rays in winter.
But now three 17-meter large mirrors – hoisted by helicopters and erected about 450 meters above Rjukan – will reflect light onto the town’s market square creating the illusion of a second sun. The mirrors – computer-driven heliostats – are designed to follow the movement of the sun over the horizon.
“We think it will mean more activities in town, especially in autumn and wintertime,” Karin Roe, head of the town’s tourist office, The Telegraph quotes. “People will be out more.”
The idea of reflecting sun with solar mirrors was first suggested by Rjukan’s founder Sam Eyde in 1913. But the technology that would make it possible did not exist at the time.
The idea was taken up again by Martin Andersen, an artist and a resident of the Norwegian industrial town.
“It’s the culmination of a 12-year-old dream,” he told BBC. He said the proposal was very logical. “You look around down there in the dark; you see the sun up here. Why not mirror it down?”
The reflected light will have between 80 and 100 percent of the effect compared to the light that is captured by the mirrors, according to the project’s website.
The scheme designed to send patches of sunlight into the shady town cost some 5 million kroner ($848,000).
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Louie, I saw this somewhere in a magazine. Amazing & they don’t seem to interfere with ANYTHING – at least as far as I could tell. Tell me why couldn’t someone here borrow that idea.
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Icarus and Daedalus come to mind after the article headline and the picture. I found the Norwegian town’s solution interesting and of course doesn’t seem to do harm either. When will we learn? I fear never, or when we self-destruct.
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Michelle ,
Never “I Fear
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Deb,
What is so tragic about all of this is that the environmental damage being done because a group of very wealthy people decided to shut down an inexpensive, easy to access, fuel source in Appalachia, not because they never intend to use it, but because they want to save it until they can profit from it, and so many wild horse, wildlife, and environmentalist groups got behind the propaganda about how bad coal is and have worked to make these very wealthy men even more wealthy and powerful. Some of these groups are actually funded through foundations association with some of these men.
I do not doubt that many people working to shut down coal believe that they are doing the right thing, but if they were to go into areas of Appalachia where coal is mined they would be surprised at how effective the restoration has been. It is hard for me to believe that coal confined to relatively small region of the United States that has relied on it for years could possibly be worse for the environment than
these not green energy boon doggles.
The people in Appalachia have studied how to make coal cleaner and how to extract it from the ground for years. The coal particles that hung in the air during the 1950’s and 1960’s were cleaned up long ago. Now thanks to the leadership
of the Sierra Club, the Wilderness Society, The Nature Conservancy, the Audobon Society, Earth Justice and others, instead of having clean, inexpensive coal being with the knowledge of established communities or where established communities no longer exist because they understood 40 years ago that it would be better to relocate than live too close to the mines, you have all kinds of unknown
environmental threats appearing all over the West. The powers that want our oil are not quite ready to get it yet—it’s still too early—but they will.
America has been taken to the cleaners to make a few international businessmen wealthy in he name of the environment. Public lands are being managed by an influx of environmentalists that know nothing about taking care of the land. Our anti-ranching, anti-farming tirades ignore that in the private sector, the people who are the best stewards of land are educated farmers, and more and more farmers are better educated than the generations that came before them.
Our wild horses and burros are losing their native homeland because the people who were supposed to care for them and be their voices have played right into the hands of the people hell-bent on destroying them.
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Coal mining in Wyoming – photos:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/aerial-views-of-coal-mining-operations-in-wyoming/2011/12/23/gIQAa3WqHP_gallery.html#photo=1
and you may want to take a look at the big coal mine in the Salt Wells area on google earth and the thousands of oil/gas sites in that area also.
Follow the money …
This whole disgusting and sad mess is not actually about the wild horses and burros – it is all about the money, money money.
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There is no clean energy. It all causes some damage. Burning coal is never going to be clean just witness the upstate NY lakes and forests. Don’t blame the environmentalists for the profit driven energy czars and think that wealthy environmentalists are rich international businessmen that are anti-ranching and farming. Tar sands, fracking, ocean drilling, mountain top removal, wind turbines and reflecting mirrors are all an attempt to prolong the inevitable, we are running out. Oil being the life blood of capitalism will be first. The planet can only support 1 billion of us without it, the rest is only smoke and mirrors. I think the only way to the future is to live as we did before energy. We must conserve but prepare for the inevitable. It’s going to be a hell of a ride.
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I find this perplexing, as I was just informed by an idiot who told me Wind Turbines, are Killing Birds . A turbine that goes 4 mph’s kills Birds ? I think not, if so its very rare . This is Big Oil talking, as one can see . I didnt see where this Bird was before this Pic was taken .This is an attempt at Keeping up the Big Lie, that Fossil Fuels and Fracking are the only options . These 2 Venues Are Not options as “ They Have Destroyed Our Pangaea
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Unfortunately I am afraid it is true – not only do wind turbines and their right of way and their footprint cause wildlife to loose habitat but the turbines have been documented as causing numerous wild bird deaths including our federally protected Bald Eagle.
http://blog.heritage.org/2012/05/09/interior-looks-to-expand-permits-for-killing-bald-eagles-to-accommodate-wind-energy/
and
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/wind-farms-killed-67-eagles-years-study-article-1.1453704
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