Chip Bok's Bokbluster

The Atlantic reported in late April that a huge solar power plant in the California desert is scorching birds with 800 degree heat.

The Ivanpah plant uses 300,000 mirrors to focus the sun on a water filled boiler. When birds fly through that beam the effect is the same as when you focused the sun through a magnifying glass to scorch an ant. Oh, you didn’t do that when you were a kid? Well, here’s what happens:

At times birds flew into the solar flux and ignited.

Not only that:

“It appears Ivanpah may act as a ‘mega-trap,’ attracting insects which in turn attract insect-eating birds, which are incapacitated by solar-flux injury, thus attracting predators and creating an entire food chain vulnerable to injury and death,” concluded scientists with the National Fish and Wildlife Forensics Laboratory in a report that investigated 233 bird deathsrepresenting 71 species at three Southern California solar power plants.

War on Birds

Bird immolation’s not your style? Well, did you know windmills are licensed to behead bald eagles?:

A leading bird conservation organization—American Bird Conservancy (ABC)—has announced its intention to sue the Department of the Interior (DOI), charging DOI with multiple violations of federal law in connection with its December 9, 2013, final regulation that allows wind energy companies and others to obtain 30-year permits to kill eagles without prosecution by the federal government. The previous rule provided for a maximum duration of five years for each permit.

Hardly seems fair if you have malaria due to the ban on DDT in order to save bald eagles.