Sun Edison - Solar Energy is too expensive?

[The Conservative]

6000 annually? I'm sure 6000 birds are killed daily by big rigs

Lets take this into consideration, rigs have been around for how many decades?

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1 ... 0/abstract

Lets also look at this abstract:

Altamont Pass Wind Resource Area, California: 888,000 bat and 573,000 bird fatalities/year (including 83,000 raptor fatalities)/year in 2012...

You do the math...

What's your point? That orders of magnitude are killed more by wind than solar?

The point is that if you want to feel good about "not using coal" you better feel bad about killing hundreds of thousands of birds and animals that are required to keep the natural ecosystem in place. People are so desperate of saving they planet by "going green" they kill the planet by destroying the ecosystem around said plants.

Sorry, but either find a way to do it without destroying the ecosystem around the area, or hang up the idea till you can.

[SuburbanFarmer]

Yeah, just google videos about birds chasing bugs into those things.

They may help us, but they destroy ecosystems.

That's why you build them in places like Morocco, there is very little wildlife in the Sahara desert and you are not using valuable farmland. There are many such areas around the globe where the land has no other use and can be used for solar energy. If you really care about wildlife then the faster we can move away from fossil fuels the better. Changing the climate will damage the environment far more than solar energy.

http://www.latimes.com/local/california ... story.html

Not...

1 - I didn't know they were actually building these things already. VERY cool...

2 - that is the world's greatest bug zapper.

3 - Who gives a fuck about 6,000/year?? There's something like half a Billion killed by housecats every year.

[The Conservative]

That's why you build them in places like Morocco, there is very little wildlife in the Sahara desert and you are not using valuable farmland. There are many such areas around the globe where the land has no other use and can be used for solar energy. If you really care about wildlife then the faster we can move away from fossil fuels the better. Changing the climate will damage the environment far more than solar energy.

http://www.latimes.com/local/california ... story.html

Not...

1 - I didn't know they were actually building these things already. VERY cool...

2 - that is the world's greatest bug zapper.

3 - Who gives a fuck about 6,000/year?? There's something like half a Billion killed by housecats every year.

Ok, lets look at the math here...

Feral Cats kill 3.x Billion birds a year across the US.

This one site kills 573K Birds and 800K Bats a year...Expand this one site to multiple across the US, and you will have extinction level events because the ecosystems won't be able to recover the deaths.

[Montegriffo]

Yeah, just google videos about birds chasing bugs into those things.

They may help us, but they destroy ecosystems.

That's why you build them in places like Morocco, there is very little wildlife in the Sahara desert and you are not using valuable farmland. There are many such areas around the globe where the land has no other use and can be used for solar energy. If you really care about wildlife then the faster we can move away from fossil fuels the better. Changing the climate will damage the environment far more than solar energy.

http://www.latimes.com/local/california ... story.html

Not...

You are talking about the old fashioned tower type CSP power plants where huge banks of mirrors are concentrated on a single point to generate energy


The Moroccan plant uses a more efficient system where each individual mirror focuses the heat on a pipe a short distance in front of it where there is much less risk of a bird flying in front of it.

[SuburbanFarmer]

That's why you build them in places like Morocco, there is very little wildlife in the Sahara desert and you are not using valuable farmland. There are many such areas around the globe where the land has no other use and can be used for solar energy. If you really care about wildlife then the faster we can move away from fossil fuels the better. Changing the climate will damage the environment far more than solar energy.

http://www.latimes.com/local/california ... story.html

Not...

You are talking about the old fashioned tower type CSP power plants where huge banks of mirrors are concentrated on a single point to generate energy


The Moroccan plant uses a more efficient system where each individual mirror focuses the heat on a pipe a short distance in front of it where there is much less risk of a bird flying in front of it.

What did that take, a year? This shit can be fixed. It's not the end of the world, losing some desert birds in the process.

[The Conservative]

That's why you build them in places like Morocco, there is very little wildlife in the Sahara desert and you are not using valuable farmland. There are many such areas around the globe where the land has no other use and can be used for solar energy. If you really care about wildlife then the faster we can move away from fossil fuels the better. Changing the climate will damage the environment far more than solar energy.

http://www.latimes.com/local/california ... story.html

Not...

You are talking about the old fashioned tower type CSP power plants where huge banks of mirrors are concentrated on a single point to generate energy


The Moroccan plant uses a more efficient system where each individual mirror focuses the heat on a pipe a short distance in front of it where there is much less risk of a bird flying in front of it.

Oh that just makes it so much better

[Montegriffo]

http://www.latimes.com/local/california ... story.html

Not...

You are talking about the old fashioned tower type CSP power plants where huge banks of mirrors are concentrated on a single point to generate energy


The Moroccan plant uses a more efficient system where each individual mirror focuses the heat on a pipe a short distance in front of it where there is much less risk of a bird flying in front of it.

Oh that just makes it so much better

Yes it does. Far less impact on wildlife and more efficient energy production. Plus added bonus of being able to store excess heat in huge salt vats to be used after the sun goes down.

Also the deaths caused by wind turbines are due to inappropriate sites such as valleys being chosen due to the regular flow of wind conflicting with the flight patterns of birds.
Most of our wind generators are situated out at sea where they have much less impact on birds and have the added bonus of providing safer breeding grounds for fish because trawlers are prohibited from fishing around them.

[SuburbanFarmer]

http://www.latimes.com/local/california ... story.html

Not...

You are talking about the old fashioned tower type CSP power plants where huge banks of mirrors are concentrated on a single point to generate energy


The Moroccan plant uses a more efficient system where each individual mirror focuses the heat on a pipe a short distance in front of it where there is much less risk of a bird flying in front of it.

Oh that just makes it so much better

Actually, it does.... Focus the light on a 1-inch wide section of pipe, about 2 feet away, and the rest is scattered after impact. Should be near-zero impact on any wildlife, just don't put your hand in that beam.

[The Conservative]

You are talking about the old fashioned tower type CSP power plants where huge banks of mirrors are concentrated on a single point to generate energy


The Moroccan plant uses a more efficient system where each individual mirror focuses the heat on a pipe a short distance in front of it where there is much less risk of a bird flying in front of it.

Oh that just makes it so much better

Yes it does. Far less impact on wildlife and more efficient energy production. Plus added bonus of being able to store excess heat in huge salt vats to be used after the sun goes down.

Also the deaths caused by wind turbines are due to inappropriate sites such as valleys being chosen due to the regular flow of wind conflicting with the flight patterns of birds.
Most of our wind generators are situated out at sea where they have much less impact on birds and have the added bonus of providing safer breeding grounds for fish because trawlers are prohibited from fishing around them.

That's good, but still we have too many variants out there, and until we work on a standard, we have 1.3 Million animals dying a year in CA alone...

[SuburbanFarmer]

Oh that just makes it so much better

Yes it does. Far less impact on wildlife and more efficient energy production. Plus added bonus of being able to store excess heat in huge salt vats to be used after the sun goes down.

Also the deaths caused by wind turbines are due to inappropriate sites such as valleys being chosen due to the regular flow of wind conflicting with the flight patterns of birds.
Most of our wind generators are situated out at sea where they have much less impact on birds and have the added bonus of providing safer breeding grounds for fish because trawlers are prohibited from fishing around them.

That's good, but still we have too many variants out there, and until we work on a standard, we have 1.3 Million animals dying a year in CA alone...

Beats 1.3 billion humans dying of starvation and war, when the sea levels swamp coastal cities...