Meet California's New Death Ray

Source

This is the continuation of a previous post of mine (Wind Energy Is Killing More Than Carbon Emission's: Bird Fatalities)

Ok, fine it's not a death ray... but it's close.

Looks like a bunch of solar panels, right? Surprise, they're not. Meet the Ivanpah solar thermal power system, an alternative energy system located in the Mojave Desert (Southern California) that uses 300,000 software controlled mirrors to concentrate sunlight on boilers that sit on 459 foot tall towers.
The concentrated sunlight boils water which turns into steam and powers a generator which in turn produces electricity.

An incredible feat of engineering, and, might I add, very environmentally friendly.

Brightsource has gone extraordinary lengths to ensure environmental compatibility, claiming that they:
- Efficiently use the land (or at least less than competitors)
- Low carbon emissions and air pollution (yay)
- Low water usage (the water they use for the boilers is kept in a closed system), a majority of their water usage will be for cleaning the mirrors (I would hate that job)
- And a low impact on the land (keeping most of the lands natural landscape, using low impact pylons which allows vegetation and natural land contours)

The Problem
When building this facility, Brightsource acknowledged the risk of introducing concentrated solar flux to the air and the impact it could have on birds, but had no idea what the casualties would be. So, RESPONSIBLY,  they 

[asked the] U.S. Fish and Wildlife’s Office of Law Enforcement (OLE) [...] to examine the causes of bird mortality at three solar energy facilities in California, including the Ivanpah project. The OLE biologists found that “significant avian mortality is caused by the intense solar flux that produces feather singeing.

Because of this, Ivanpah received MAJOR backlash from "drama" writers: example a, example b. These article throw around numbers left and right but none of their "estimations" are supported by any evidence....

But, a few more clicks led me to the actual Fish and Wildlife Forensics lab report. 

This report may look a little gruesome (mostly because of the pictures), but other than that, the findings are not as severe as the above drama writers make it out to be. In fact, the report even states that the collection of carcasses was opportunistic, and that they were making no attempt to quantify the deaths which would include carcasses taken by predators and scavengers. The only attempt to quantify the amount of bird casualties was done by Ivanpah, which according to them, only 321 avian fatalities were found between January and June of 2014, stating that only 133 were related to solar flux. Is this true? Who knows, we'll have to trust their methods I guess. 

Obviously Ivanpah is going to defend their practice, what good business wouldn't, especially when it has so many benefits.... Brightsource brings up a great argument for the justification of a few bird deaths at alternative energy's expense:

When considering the impact our technology has on birds passing through the concentrated sunlight, or solar flux, it is important to keep in mind the leading man-made causes of bird deaths:ii

• An estimated 1.4-3.7 billion birds are killed each year by cats;
• As many as 980 million birds crash into buildings annually;
• 174 million birds die from power lines every year;
• Up to 340 million birds perish from vehicles/roads;
• Approximately 6.8 million birds die flying into communications towers;
• As many as one million die annually in oil and gas fluid waste pits; and
• Up to 330,000 die each year from wind turbines 

Fine, you win this time... It's hard to argue that they shouldn't be allowed to continue their practice when there are much larger causes of avian murder (and suicide). It's hard not to jump at businesses over their impact of thing that we love, but this is the wrong battle to fight bird enthusiasts... another time, another place....