Birders,
I'm going to try and tread warily here, this could boil over again.
Please not that Solar Cells will not necesasrily be bird-harm free.
Imagine a hectare of reflective glass in the middle of the outback, or
the 'collecting' thermal-solar plants. Both of these designs will
cause great disturbance to birds at the very least; many deaths at the
worst.
But, renewables need to be developed ASAP, and clearly this needs to
be done with the birds that we're trying to preotect in mind. A little
bit of funding and political motivation and the problems could
actually be solved. I've heard of red-lights and sonic devices that
can keep birds away. So maybe you can have turbines and not kill every
bird in the country.
Further to this the statement 'we have plenty of solar' is slightly
erroneous. We also have plenty of water, just not where it's needed.
Building mega-solar farms in the desert (they will need to be big for
economics of scale) sounds good, but the power will have to be
converted to AC (which is expensive in terms of power and dollars) and
then transmitted a long way. Conversely a wind farm might be a viable
option in place X, but there are rare birds there, so we could use
solar instead.
Neither one or the other is the 'Final Solution', rather a little bit
of each will be as the economic, environmental and technical factors
are are accounted for in each location.
I wonder if we'll start seeing IMBY towns popping up. Enlightened
souls that WANT the next Renewable Development in their town as a sign
of pride, rather than digging their heals in and declaring it an
eyesore.
EB
On 4/9/07, Greg <> wrote:
It is a shame that people are putting around the myth that only people with
a vested interest in the coal industry or those that suffer from the NIMBI
syndrome are opposing wind farms. There is a real threat to birds and bats
and, especially in Australia where solar energy could provide most of our
energy needs, wind farms are not needed. It is true that global warming is
the greater threat but the loss of countless birds and bats to wind farms is
not acceptable when there are alternatives (solar and demand management).
If you follow your line of argument further Dave we could reopen the duck
season in NSW and allow egg collecting as these impacts are not as great a
threat as global warming.
Sorry for buying into this again but the earlier comments had to be
answered.
Greg Clancy
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