But at what cost? Alphabet pressures local governments to let them drain aquifers to cool their machines¹, and powers them using vast swaths of bulldozed former habitats of endangered desert tortoises and focused beams of light that literally burn alive thousands of birds:
Workers at a state-of-the-art solar plant in the Mojave Desert have a name for birds that fly through the plant’s concentrated sun rays — “streamers,” for the smoke plume that comes from birds that ignite in midair.
Federal wildlife investigators who visited the BrightSource Energy plant last year and watched as birds burned and fell, reporting an average of one “streamer” every two minutes, are urging California officials to halt the operator’s application to build a still-bigger version.².
"Once built, U.S. government biologists found the plant's superheated mirrors were killing birds. In April, biologists working for the state estimated that 3,500 birds died at Ivanpah in the span of a year, many of them burned alive while flying through a part of the solar installment where air temperatures can reach 1,000 degrees Fahrenheit." — https://www.wsj.com/articles/high-tech-solar-projects-fail-t...
Why the hell would you even care that much about 3,500 fucking birds? There are FAR better uses for taxpayer money than figuring out how to save a vanishingly small number of them, when we kill them in the billions for dinner anyway.
The plant still seems to be a decent step forward, and nothing ever is going to be perfect. If we're going to go down that road, then we're completely paralyzing ourselves, because no matter your solution, some construction worker will step on a rat, and now we need to go figure out the more expensive solution where no rats have to die.
Why the heck would you care about soda fizz and not about the 2.9 billion wind and solar deaths contributing to the 29% loss of the entire country’s birds? (Or the endangered species being killed, or the human deaths?)
I'm all for nuclear, but I'll also acknowledge that solar is a good step forward, even if it (gasp!) kills birds.
And that 29% claim is very dishonest of you. That's how much the bird population declined overall, since 1950 (!), and says nothing about how many birds are anually killed by solar, at all. (You've updated your post since, to a statement that again basically says nothing.)
This is one of the most intellectually dishonest things I have ever read on Hacker News. There is _no_ evidence presented here that wind and solar are responsible for anything more than a negligible fraction of this species loss.
You’re saying the alternative is doubling the entire world’s coal consumption? First, we’re talking about one company’s energy (and cooling). Second, what about nuclear, etc?
Workers at a state-of-the-art solar plant in the Mojave Desert have a name for birds that fly through the plant’s concentrated sun rays — “streamers,” for the smoke plume that comes from birds that ignite in midair.
Federal wildlife investigators who visited the BrightSource Energy plant last year and watched as birds burned and fell, reporting an average of one “streamer” every two minutes, are urging California officials to halt the operator’s application to build a still-bigger version.².
1: https://www.postandcourier.com/news/google-s-controversial-g...
2: https://www.sbsun.com/2014/08/18/emerging-solar-plants-in-mo...
"Once built, U.S. government biologists found the plant's superheated mirrors were killing birds. In April, biologists working for the state estimated that 3,500 birds died at Ivanpah in the span of a year, many of them burned alive while flying through a part of the solar installment where air temperatures can reach 1,000 degrees Fahrenheit." — https://www.wsj.com/articles/high-tech-solar-projects-fail-t...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ivanpah_Solar_Power_Facility#B...