Re: [cayugabirds-l] Conservation vs Ecology

[Duane]

Don't even have to get to Europe.  I've been under a couple over 10 years
ago and know of others in sunny Arizona. They weren't the typical "farm" as
they vary in size. I hesitate to say many since I don't know the number and
been awhile since I've been there.

Duane


On Sun, Jun 11, 2023, 4:49 PM John Gregoire 
wrote:

> Many in europe and mandated in some areas. Terrific idea. Add dirt instead
> of asphalt and add more benefits.
>
> On Sun, Jun 11, 2023 at 1:18 PM sarah fern  wrote:
>
>> Have there been any trials of solar farms located over parking lots?
>> Double benefit: shade for the cars and use of space that otherwise is
>> driving up global warming.
>>
>> On Thu, Jun 8, 2023 at 12:44 AM Colleen Richards  wrote:
>>
>>> Thank you Dave for a clear, concise presentation that helps point out
>>> the multiple problems facing us in choosing how we want to live. Ultimate
>>> value choices may not be agreed upon by everyone, though. And that has been
>>> apparent in these posts.
>>>
>>> Thanks for being honest about how birds can be affected by each form of
>>> energy's procurement / usage. That perspective helps to "round out" the
>>> information needed for each person's decision-making.
>>>
>>> In the end, each of us is required to make our own choices, and perhaps
>>> to enter into the public, or political, arena to stand up for those
>>> choices. It has been good to voice our thoughts and to encourage one
>>> another to keep perspective.
>>>
>>> For now I am planning to continue to point out the beauties of nature to
>>> those around me and to educate young people (and older ones, too) to
>>> appreciate and understand our responsibility to care for and about this
>>> world that we have been blessed with.
>>>
>>> Colleen Richards
>>>
>>> -- Original Message --
>>> From: Dave Nutter 
>>> To: CayugaBirds-L b 
>>> Subject: Re: [cayugabirds-l] Conservation vs Ecology
>>> Date: Wed, 7 Jun 2023 17:43:26 -0400
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> Carl makes a valid point about the destructiveness to flora and fauna of
>>> large scale solar arrays. Solar panels which cover huge fields should be
>>> called mines, not farms. The arrays’ extraction of energy is industrial,
>>> not biological, and it is done while trying to overcome natural systems, so
>>> the solar arrays disrupt biology. By contrast, a farm harnesses biology
>>> using our soil and rain, and it diverts some of the biological products to
>>> human purposes in a repeatable annual process. When agriculture is
>>> practiced on the scale of a family farm, it can do so in concert with
>>> plants and wildlife in hedgerows, along streams, and around ponds, and
>>> agriculture’s incidental waste products can be more easily absorbed and
>>> used by nature along all those edges. Factory farms differ from traditional
>>> farms because with “efficiency†of scale, they eliminate nature and
>>> nature’s ability to handle agriculture’s side effects. At large scale,
>>> the waste is no longer incidental and absorbed, it is toxic.
>>>
>>> If farm land is abandoned, it can be reclaimed by plants and animals.
>>> When the solar panels wear out in a couple decades, will the regulations
>>> make it worth the effort and expense to recycle the old ones and install
>>> new ones? Or will it be cheaper to abandon those arrays? On my daily walks
>>> I see metal playground equipment in the woods because the City of Ithaca
>>> took it from where the Children’s Garden was being built, and chucked it
>>> alongside the old railroad grade, which became the Black Diamond Trail. I
>>> imagine hundreds of acres of metal of a big solar array, but overgrown
>>> among trees, vines and shrubs.
>>>
>>> For a solar array to work in our climate, vegetation must suppressed.
>>> This can be done by pasturing sheep among them, which makes cute
>>> advertising video, but how often is this practice used? How often is plant
>>> suppression done instead by covering and/or poisoning the soil? This has
>>> effects of heating the ground and speeding rain runoff. How often is plant
>>> suppression among solar arrays done with fossil-fuel powered machinery
>>> which also wastes the plant material? Maybe folks think that’s no big
>>> deal because so much land area is already mown, wasting both plants and
>>> fossil fuel, but I think mowing should be drastically scaled back. A
>>> reasonable sized personal lawn is the area a person can keep mowed with a
>>> reel mower pushed by hand without using fossil fuel. It’s not worth
>>> adding to the destruction of the natural climate, flora, and fauna in order
>>> to have a bigger lawn than one actually uses.
>>>
>>> So, yes, I agree, big solar arrays are poor for plants & animals. I also
>>> see at least 3 other parts to the equation as we evaluate the harm and
>>> benefit of solar arrays. What did the solar arrays replace on the
>>> landscape? What were the solar arrays built instead of for energy? How much
>>> energy do we need?
>>>
>>> 

Re: [cayugabirds-l] Conservation vs Ecology

[John Gregoire]

Many in europe and mandated in some areas. Terrific idea. Add dirt instead
of asphalt and add more benefits.

On Sun, Jun 11, 2023 at 1:18 PM sarah fern  wrote:

> Have there been any trials of solar farms located over parking lots?
> Double benefit: shade for the cars and use of space that otherwise is
> driving up global warming.
>
> On Thu, Jun 8, 2023 at 12:44 AM Colleen Richards  wrote:
>
>> Thank you Dave for a clear, concise presentation that helps point out the
>> multiple problems facing us in choosing how we want to live. Ultimate value
>> choices may not be agreed upon by everyone, though. And that has been
>> apparent in these posts.
>>
>> Thanks for being honest about how birds can be affected by each form of
>> energy's procurement / usage. That perspective helps to "round out" the
>> information needed for each person's decision-making.
>>
>> In the end, each of us is required to make our own choices, and perhaps
>> to enter into the public, or political, arena to stand up for those
>> choices. It has been good to voice our thoughts and to encourage one
>> another to keep perspective.
>>
>> For now I am planning to continue to point out the beauties of nature to
>> those around me and to educate young people (and older ones, too) to
>> appreciate and understand our responsibility to care for and about this
>> world that we have been blessed with.
>>
>> Colleen Richards
>>
>> -- Original Message --
>> From: Dave Nutter 
>> To: CayugaBirds-L b 
>> Subject: Re: [cayugabirds-l] Conservation vs Ecology
>> Date: Wed, 7 Jun 2023 17:43:26 -0400
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> Carl makes a valid point about the destructiveness to flora and fauna of
>> large scale solar arrays. Solar panels which cover huge fields should be
>> called mines, not farms. The arrays’ extraction of energy is industrial,
>> not biological, and it is done while trying to overcome natural systems, so
>> the solar arrays disrupt biology. By contrast, a farm harnesses biology
>> using our soil and rain, and it diverts some of the biological products to
>> human purposes in a repeatable annual process. When agriculture is
>> practiced on the scale of a family farm, it can do so in concert with
>> plants and wildlife in hedgerows, along streams, and around ponds, and
>> agriculture’s incidental waste products can be more easily absorbed and
>> used by nature along all those edges. Factory farms differ from traditional
>> farms because with “efficiency†of scale, they eliminate nature and
>> nature’s ability to handle agriculture’s side effects. At large scale,
>> the waste is no longer incidental and absorbed, it is toxic.
>>
>> If farm land is abandoned, it can be reclaimed by plants and animals.
>> When the solar panels wear out in a couple decades, will the regulations
>> make it worth the effort and expense to recycle the old ones and install
>> new ones? Or will it be cheaper to abandon those arrays? On my daily walks
>> I see metal playground equipment in the woods because the City of Ithaca
>> took it from where the Children’s Garden was being built, and chucked it
>> alongside the old railroad grade, which became the Black Diamond Trail. I
>> imagine hundreds of acres of metal of a big solar array, but overgrown
>> among trees, vines and shrubs.
>>
>> For a solar array to work in our climate, vegetation must suppressed.
>> This can be done by pasturing sheep among them, which makes cute
>> advertising video, but how often is this practice used? How often is plant
>> suppression done instead by covering and/or poisoning the soil? This has
>> effects of heating the ground and speeding rain runoff. How often is plant
>> suppression among solar arrays done with fossil-fuel powered machinery
>> which also wastes the plant material? Maybe folks think that’s no big
>> deal because so much land area is already mown, wasting both plants and
>> fossil fuel, but I think mowing should be drastically scaled back. A
>> reasonable sized personal lawn is the area a person can keep mowed with a
>> reel mower pushed by hand without using fossil fuel. It’s not worth
>> adding to the destruction of the natural climate, flora, and fauna in order
>> to have a bigger lawn than one actually uses.
>>
>> So, yes, I agree, big solar arrays are poor for plants & animals. I also
>> see at least 3 other parts to the equation as we evaluate the harm and
>> benefit of solar arrays. What did the solar arrays replace on the
>> landscape? What were the solar arrays built instead of for energy? How much
>> energy do we need?
>>
>> In our moist temperate region, the land was mostly forested until being
>> cleared for agriculture, which was a big investment. Abandoned agricultural
>> land can, through succession, become meadows, shrub fields, and secondary
>> forest, all of which harbor a wide variety of birds, but that’s a value
>> we take for granted, not one with a price tag on it. People generally like
>> and are uplifted by wild 

Re: [cayugabirds-l] Conservation vs Ecology, not a "vs"

[David G. Russell]

Bye everyone.  Can get this elsewhere.

On Jun 11, 2023, at 4:00 PM, Karen 
mailto:confergoldw...@aol.com>> wrote:


Aw. Come on. If you are going to carry out a prolonged discussion on this 
theme, at least you could get the definition of the main terms correct.  
Ecology is a science that tries to objectively describe the natural world, and 
derive predictions about objectively measured interactions. Conservation is a 
value-laden effort to protect one ecological interaction. They are not in 
conflict.

FYI

Human death rates

<1686510741334blob.jpg>




Estimated bird mortality by cause.
"There's no standardized way of doing it that everyone can agree to," says 
Garry George, renewable energy director for Audubon California – but when it 
comes to bird kills by the electricity industry, here's the approximate pecking 
order:


Solar: Anywhere from about 1,000 birds a year, according to BrightSource, to 
28,000 birds a year, according to an expert at the Center for Biological 
Diversity.

Wind: Between 140,000 and 328,000 birds a year in the contiguous United States, 
according to a December 2013 study 
 published 
in the journal Biological Conservation. Taller turbines tend to take out more 
birds.

Oil and Gas: An estimated 500,000 to 1 million birds a year are killed in oil 
fields, the Bureau of Land 
Management
 said in a December 2012 memo.

Coal: Huge numbers of birds, roughly 7.9 million, may be killed by coal, 
according to analysis 
 by 
Benjamin K. Sovacool, director of the Danish Center for Energy Technologies. 
His estimate, however, included everything from mining to production and 
climate change, which together amounted to about five birds per gigawatt-hour 
of energy generated by coal.


Nuclear: About 330,000 birds, by Sovacool’s 
calculations.

Power Lines: Between 12 and 64 million birds a year are felled by transmission 
lines, according to a study 

 published July 3 in the journal PLOS ONE.

All told, felines kill 1.4 to 3.7 billionbirds a year.


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Re:[cayugabirds-l] Conservation vs Ecology, not a "vs"

[Karen]

 
Aw. Come on. If you are going to carry out a prolonged discussion on this 
theme, at least you could get the definition of the main terms correct.  
Ecology is a science that tries to objectively describe the natural world, and 
derive predictions about objectively measured interactions. Conservation is a 
value-laden effort to protect one ecological interaction. They are not in 
conflict. 
FYI
Human death rates




Estimated bird mortality by cause."There's no standardized way of doing it that 
everyone can agree to," says Garry George, renewable energy director for 
Audubon California – but when it comes to bird kills by the electricity 
industry, here's the approximate pecking order:


Solar: Anywhere from about 1,000 birds a year, according to BrightSource, to 
28,000 birds a year, according to an expert at the Center for Biological 
Diversity.

Wind: Between 140,000 and 328,000 birds a year in the contiguous United States, 
according to a December 2013 study published in the journal Biological 
Conservation. Taller turbines tend to take out more birds.

Oil and Gas: An estimated 500,000 to 1 million birds a year are killed in oil 
fields, the Bureau of Land Management said in a December 2012 memo.
Coal: Huge numbers of birds, roughly 7.9 million, may be killed by coal, 
according to analysis by Benjamin K. Sovacool, director of the Danish Center 
for Energy Technologies. His estimate, however, included everything from mining 
to production and climate change, which together amounted to about five birds 
per gigawatt-hour of energy generated by coal.

Nuclear: About 330,000 birds, by Sovacool’s calculations.

Power Lines: Between 12 and 64 million birds a year are felled by transmission 
lines, according to a study published July 3 in the journal PLOS ONE.

All told, felines kill 1.4 to 3.7 billion birds a year. 


  
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Re: [cayugabirds-l] Conservation vs Ecology

[sarah fern]

Have there been any trials of solar farms located over parking lots? Double
benefit: shade for the cars and use of space that otherwise is driving up
global warming.

On Thu, Jun 8, 2023 at 12:44 AM Colleen Richards  wrote:

> Thank you Dave for a clear, concise presentation that helps point out the
> multiple problems facing us in choosing how we want to live. Ultimate value
> choices may not be agreed upon by everyone, though. And that has been
> apparent in these posts.
>
> Thanks for being honest about how birds can be affected by each form of
> energy's procurement / usage. That perspective helps to "round out" the
> information needed for each person's decision-making.
>
> In the end, each of us is required to make our own choices, and perhaps to
> enter into the public, or political, arena to stand up for those choices.
> It has been good to voice our thoughts and to encourage one another to keep
> perspective.
>
> For now I am planning to continue to point out the beauties of nature to
> those around me and to educate young people (and older ones, too) to
> appreciate and understand our responsibility to care for and about this
> world that we have been blessed with.
>
> Colleen Richards
>
> -- Original Message --
> From: Dave Nutter 
> To: CayugaBirds-L b 
> Subject: Re: [cayugabirds-l] Conservation vs Ecology
> Date: Wed, 7 Jun 2023 17:43:26 -0400
>
>
>
>
>
> Carl makes a valid point about the destructiveness to flora and fauna of
> large scale solar arrays. Solar panels which cover huge fields should be
> called mines, not farms. The arrays’ extraction of energy is industrial,
> not biological, and it is done while trying to overcome natural systems, so
> the solar arrays disrupt biology. By contrast, a farm harnesses biology
> using our soil and rain, and it diverts some of the biological products to
> human purposes in a repeatable annual process. When agriculture is
> practiced on the scale of a family farm, it can do so in concert with
> plants and wildlife in hedgerows, along streams, and around ponds, and
> agriculture’s incidental waste products can be more easily absorbed and
> used by nature along all those edges. Factory farms differ from traditional
> farms because with “efficiency†of scale, they eliminate nature and
> nature’s ability to handle agriculture’s side effects. At large scale,
> the waste is no longer incidental and absorbed, it is toxic.
>
> If farm land is abandoned, it can be reclaimed by plants and animals. When
> the solar panels wear out in a couple decades, will the regulations make it
> worth the effort and expense to recycle the old ones and install new ones?
> Or will it be cheaper to abandon those arrays? On my daily walks I see
> metal playground equipment in the woods because the City of Ithaca took it
> from where the Children’s Garden was being built, and chucked it
> alongside the old railroad grade, which became the Black Diamond Trail. I
> imagine hundreds of acres of metal of a big solar array, but overgrown
> among trees, vines and shrubs.
>
> For a solar array to work in our climate, vegetation must suppressed. This
> can be done by pasturing sheep among them, which makes cute advertising
> video, but how often is this practice used? How often is plant suppression
> done instead by covering and/or poisoning the soil? This has effects of
> heating the ground and speeding rain runoff. How often is plant suppression
> among solar arrays done with fossil-fuel powered machinery which also
> wastes the plant material? Maybe folks think that’s no big deal because
> so much land area is already mown, wasting both plants and fossil fuel, but
> I think mowing should be drastically scaled back. A reasonable sized
> personal lawn is the area a person can keep mowed with a reel mower pushed
> by hand without using fossil fuel. It’s not worth adding to the
> destruction of the natural climate, flora, and fauna in order to have a
> bigger lawn than one actually uses.
>
> So, yes, I agree, big solar arrays are poor for plants & animals. I also
> see at least 3 other parts to the equation as we evaluate the harm and
> benefit of solar arrays. What did the solar arrays replace on the
> landscape? What were the solar arrays built instead of for energy? How much
> energy do we need?
>
> In our moist temperate region, the land was mostly forested until being
> cleared for agriculture, which was a big investment. Abandoned agricultural
> land can, through succession, become meadows, shrub fields, and secondary
> forest, all of which harbor a wide variety of birds, but that’s a value
> we take for granted, not one with a price tag on it. People generally like
> and are uplifted by wild birds, and some of us are passionate about them.
> But abandoned farmland is considered “unproductive†by those who tax the
> land, and therefore also by those who own the land, so this habitat is apt
> to be shredded and converted to a large scale solar