Think about all the environmentalists who you have heard speak about humans destroying species, and then consider what is the single biggest location for killing birds in the world other than plants where chickens or turkeys are killed for food. The answer may surprise you. The single biggest killer of birds in the world is the Ivanpah power plant in California. That plant doesn't merely kill the birds; it burns them alive like some massive production line engineered by the crazies at ISIS. Ivanpah uses large numbers of mirrors to focus sunlight onto a few boilers in the center of the complex. The sun heats the boilers and the steam produced then powers the generators housed in the plant to produce some electricity. Any animal that ventures near the boilers is incinerated by the focus heat from the sun. Thousands upon thousands of birds have been destroyed in this way.
This massive bird torture device was built with one and a half billion dollars of federal funds and a much smaller amount of private money. None of the geniuses who designed the plant realized that the plant would be a death machine for local wildlife. They also did not realize that the plant would not work as expected in producing electricity. The plant just got an extension from the California PUC which will permit it to continue to operate despite its failure to produce even 2/3 of the power it was supposed to create. This action by California lets the plants private owners continue to fry birds in hopes of getting power while increasing the cost of power for consumers all across the state.
And while we are talking about killing birds, maybe we should also mention the second worst destroyer of birds on the planet. That is, of course, the windmills that harness wind energy across the land. The big rotors of the windmills hit unsuspecting birds flying by on a regular basis. Rarely a day goes by when one or more birds are not killed by each of these installations.
If there were a coal, gas or oil facility that was killing birds in these numbers, the environmentalists would be marching to save the birds. Once the killer is some group with friends in the government who are trying but failing to produce solar power in order to make a fortune from taxpayers' money, the environmentalists stay quiet.
This massive bird torture device was built with one and a half billion dollars of federal funds and a much smaller amount of private money. None of the geniuses who designed the plant realized that the plant would be a death machine for local wildlife. They also did not realize that the plant would not work as expected in producing electricity. The plant just got an extension from the California PUC which will permit it to continue to operate despite its failure to produce even 2/3 of the power it was supposed to create. This action by California lets the plants private owners continue to fry birds in hopes of getting power while increasing the cost of power for consumers all across the state.
And while we are talking about killing birds, maybe we should also mention the second worst destroyer of birds on the planet. That is, of course, the windmills that harness wind energy across the land. The big rotors of the windmills hit unsuspecting birds flying by on a regular basis. Rarely a day goes by when one or more birds are not killed by each of these installations.
If there were a coal, gas or oil facility that was killing birds in these numbers, the environmentalists would be marching to save the birds. Once the killer is some group with friends in the government who are trying but failing to produce solar power in order to make a fortune from taxpayers' money, the environmentalists stay quiet.
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