6000 sounds like a lot, right?
But in context, crashing into glass buildings kills about 600 million birds a year.
Cats? About 2.4 BILLION bird kills a year.
But in context, crashing into glass buildings kills about 600 million birds a year.
Cats? About 2.4 BILLION bird kills a year.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scope_neglect
- "In one study, respondents were asked how much they were willing to pay to prevent migrating birds from drowning in uncovered oil ponds by covering the oil ponds with protective nets. Subjects were told that either 2,000, or 20,000, or 200,000 migrating birds were affected annually, for which subjects reported they were willing to pay $80, $78 and $88 respectively.[2] Other studies of willingness-to-pay to prevent harm have found a logarithmic relationship or no relationship to scope size.[3]"
Not quite a fair comparison.
So it’s what ~1,000x as bad as the average structure but we’re talking about something several times the size of the average single family home. Plop down a housing development on those same 3,500 acres and it’s likely to kill far more birds.
Do you actually believe that? It seems obvious that single family homes don’t kill birds en masse.
Plop down 3500 acres of glass office towers and we’ll talk.
It’s uncommon with small windows, but a glass sliding door or big picture window regularly gets a thump. Some get back up, but many don’t.
I do live in an area with a lot of birds so that may be a major factor.
~30mil/year from power lines.
~300mil/year from cars/trucks hitting them.
6000 is nothing.
Whenever someone talks about how alternative energy kills a bunch of birds, you know they're a pretty dumb person who can't be bothered with context.
More than that, the solar plant itself is an entirely unnecessary addition. Photovoltaic cells were already viable in 2014. Other net-zero CO2 power options are also available, though wind turbines frequently suffer the same problem.
This plant exists to feel good about the energy it produces, and being able to sit around and watch it immolate protected species every day cuts against that goal.
The interesting thing about Ivanpah is that it's both generation and storage. It's probably a technological dead end, but that is not an absolutely sure thing now and it certainly wasn't obvious a decade ago. Batteries have come a long way in that time.