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Wind turbines are friendlier to birds than oil-and-gas drilling

economist.com

51–60 of 413 posts

Re: Wind turbines are friendlier to birds than oil-and-gas drilling

#51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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It looks a lot less like "cognitive dissonance" and more like "bad faith arguments from fossil fuel industry-linked groups" when you dig a bit. https://climate.mit.edu/ask-mit/do-wind-turbines-kill-birds > A 2012 study found that wind projects kill 0.269 birds per gigawatt-hour of electricity produced, compared to 5.18 birds killed per gigawatt-hour of electricity from fossil fuel projects.

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Re: Wind turbines are friendlier to birds than oil-and-gas drilling

#52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not that I have any problem with people seeking to advance the scientific method but one wonders from this commenter’s other posts whether this was a legitimate desire for truth or someone just looking to poke holes in the post…

> legitimate desire for truth or someone just looking to poke holes in the post What is the difference?

Anger.

Re: Wind turbines are friendlier to birds than oil-and-gas drilling

#53

> their blades can spin at well over 200km per hour. It is easy to imagine careless birds getting chopped to bits. Interesting use of the word 'friendlier'.

What does it means for a wind turbine to spin at 200km per hour? Serious question.

The speed at which the tips of the very long blades move.

Re: Wind turbines are friendlier to birds than oil-and-gas drilling

#54

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You can look up numbers for the White-tailed eagle population around Smøla wind power plant in Norway, if you want a concrete example.

You have a study there where they looked at bird deaths before and after painting a wind turbine blade black btw. Quite interesting.

The population in the area has been increasing. We know that the wind turbine sometimes kill eagles. But now that we aren't actively hunting them to extinction anymore, it seems like accidents like that has negligible impact on the total population.

I'm guessing (my personal opinion) that if the deaths is under a certain threshold, it's made up for the balance of hunter/prey. If some hunter animal dies, the prey population goes up, which helps boost the hunter population again.

Wind turbines is something which causes a death here and there. Similar to anything else in nature that can kill birds. Not something that obliterates an entire ecosystem. Given that you don't build them directly on top of nesting areas of course.

That said, I would LOVE to see more high quality studies on this topic. The more data the better. We should not accept serious long term compromises like we have with the oil and gas industry.

Wind turbines can be near perfect. We can put radar and camera systems on them to turn them off when birds come nearby. We can paint them in a way that birds see them better. We can make them from better and more sustainable materials. We can work on recycling of them. And since everyone, both environmentalists and the oil lobby, is pushing for wind turbines to be perfect to be acceptable, we're continuously moving in the right direction.

Re: Wind turbines are friendlier to birds than oil-and-gas drilling

#56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> legitimate desire for truth or someone just looking to poke holes in the post What is the difference?

Anger.

You're right. We must be civilized and restrained from emotion. All anger is to be reserved for "Hate Week".

Re: Wind turbines are friendlier to birds than oil-and-gas drilling

#58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It looks a lot less like "cognitive dissonance" and more like "bad faith arguments from fossil fuel industry-linked groups" when you dig a bit. https://climate.mit.edu/ask-mit/do-wind-turbines-kill-birds > A 2012 study found that wind projects kill 0.269 birds per gigawatt-hour of electricity produced, compared to 5.18 birds killed per gigawatt-hour of electricity from fossil fuel projects.

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Re: Wind turbines are friendlier to birds than oil-and-gas drilling

#59
I am not a conspiracy theorist, it's just a simple case of "follow the money". The fossil fuel industry is a trillion dollar per year business and their interest is to keep it this way. So poisoning the well is a good strategy for them. If you thought about it, it was clear the bird argument was always just a talking point nimby types were fed with, so they have something alarming to repeat and to get outraged, without really caring if it's true. The only thing they cared about is not having wind turbines because of their (weird?) aesthetic preferences and desires to have things stay the same forever. Ironically the bird and animal population overall are struggling with the way things are now and how they want to keep it. But again, they don't really care about that.

Re: Wind turbines are friendlier to birds than oil-and-gas drilling

#60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It looks a lot less like "cognitive dissonance" and more like "bad faith arguments from fossil fuel industry-linked groups" when you dig a bit. https://climate.mit.edu/ask-mit/do-wind-turbines-kill-birds > A 2012 study found that wind projects kill 0.269 birds per gigawatt-hour of electricity produced, compared to 5.18 birds killed per gigawatt-hour of electricity from fossil fuel projects.

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Yes, suggesting that we should slow/stop the transition to alternative fuel sources due to bird deaths in turbines is absolutely fossil fuel propaganda.

The real danger to birds (and humans, and all other wildlife) is not flying into turbines, but systemic failure caused by extremely rapid environmental changes. You know, the kind that fossil fuel consumption is causing.

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