Discussion for article #226590
As a Liberal with OCD, Iâm going to go lie down now.
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But they taste just like chicken!
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OOoohâŚthatâs no good. Maybe they can set up a perimeter using some kind of bird warning system or series of beacons using sound or something. On Star Trek beacons are set up around dangerous space anomalies to warn off flying starships that donât want to get drawn into a SuperNova or Asteroid field, for example. I know, I knowâŚridiculous right? Just trying to think outside the box folks.
Still, the oil companies are thrilled with this reportâŚAfter all, killing birds has always been their purview. In fact, Exxon and BP seemingly have product placement and tie-ins with Dawn detergent to help them with their OOopsy-daisies.
So sickening and/or killing wildlife, marine life and humans is preferable, they contend?
I think not.
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Thatâs a shame.
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Do not accept the invitation to the corporate picnic!
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Maybe Kirk can come back in time, capture a pair of birds for breeding, and save the species from extinction⌠juts like he did with the whales!
Well then, I guess itâs back to oil and coal! That doesnât hurt anyone or anything at all!
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Might I offer a modest proposal?
How about we use the area around the solar plant as a toxic waste dump, effectively creating a perimeter of death around it. We could simply put all the hazardous to wildlife items in the same place, thus limiting the total overall damage.
Better yet, we could put it in a low income housing neighborhood, or place one around it. No one cares what happens there!
prairie chicken
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TPM: More than 300,000 mirrors, each the size of a garage door, reflect solar rays onto three boiler towers each looming up to 40 stories high. The water inside is heated to produce steam, which turns turbines that generate enough electricity for 140,000 homes.
Would a system with lenses focusing light downwards on a similar tower work just as well?
One would think that could alleviate this type of problem.
Same as in London , UK . Glass fronted building , suns rays bounced off of it that heated up the pavement/sidewalk in front of it . Someone actually cooked an egg directly on the sidewalk . I think they was going to put a âscreenâ on the front of the building .
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The science-fiction reference of choice isnât to Star Trek, but to the âsunflowersâ in Larry Nivenâs Ringworld.
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There are high intensity directed sound beams. Track and blast.
How much can you bend light? reflection works to nearly any angle. Next, instead of 300,000 mountings on the ground, they all move high in the air, much more difficult. Also, to get the same amount of energy, you still need the same flux, it is just closer to the ground.
convince the birds to only fly in this area at night?
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This power tower thing strikes me as a terrible idea. Whatâs wrong with photovoltaic panels? Theyâre dropping in price like a rock. They donât reflect concentrated light that can cook or blind living things. Theyâre getting to where theyâre efficient to install at almost any scale. Powertowers put us back to an overcapitalized, over centralized way of producing electricity with the added disadvantage of killing, maiming or dangerously distracting living creatures, evidently including birds and airline pilots.
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Surround the plant with LRADs? Or collect the birds and put sauce on them?
Iâm with option 2.
Solar panels do have their shortcomings as well. They typically contain rare earths, materials that are very scarce and come from places like China where the mining operations are probably environmental disasters as well.
There is work on solar panels that use only more abundant materials but I donât think they have those working well enough yet. Iâm not following that closely so my information may be out of date.
We are pretty good at dealing with generating power with heat so this isnât such a terrible idea. Iâm assuming we arenât giving up on trying to fix the bird kill problem.
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