No respectable person took idiotic politicians who claimed otherwise seriously. It is sad the economist had to put an article out on this topic.
Wind turbines are friendlier to birds than oil-and-gas drilling
211–220 of 413 posts
Re: Wind turbines are friendlier to birds than oil-and-gas drilling
#212Birds have sensitive lungs, Canary in a coal mine comes to mind.
... birds respiratory system being so sensitive, it is vitally important that the bird's breath fresh, pure air. Toxins or pollutants in the air can quickly become a major source of problem and even death for the bird: https://cdn.ymaws.com/petsitters.org/resource/resmgr/virtual...
Air Pollution Kills 10 Million People a Year[1]. Air pollution must impact birds a lot more than humans.
[1]https://www.nytimes.com/2022/07/08/opinion/environment/air-p...
Re: Wind turbines are friendlier to birds than oil-and-gas drilling
#213Why does nobody talk about the real issue with wind and solar? It's ugly. It distracts from the landscape.
I actually think wind farms look really relaxing and cool, and love driving past them.
But that's just individual aesthetic preferences.
Re: Wind turbines are friendlier to birds than oil-and-gas drilling
#214Earlier quoted context omitted.
The United States spent 6% of its GDP putting human beings on the moon. And this was done during a time that historians don't generally consider to be a time of vast deprivation for the populace; it turns out investing in and inventing rocketry and aerospace technologies the likes of which humanity has never seen before is great for job creation. How much of the GDP should we be willing to spend to actively replace p…
> The United States spent 6% of its GDP putting human beings on the moon. Sorry, wrong. The Apollo program cost about $25B in 1960's dollars. That's over the entire period, not just one year. https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20190712-apollo-in-50-num... "In 1965, Nasa funding peaked at some 5% of government spending," But government spending != GDP. According to this, https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/USA/unite…
My mistake. Amortizing the numbers, it comes out to more like 2.5% annually. https://www.herkulesprojekt.de/en/is-there-a-master-plan/the...
... so the question stands. How much are we willing to spend, and do we think it will actually damage either the economy or people's quality-of-life (when having a major industrial project in fact creates job and business opportunities, historically speaking)?
Re: Wind turbines are friendlier to birds than oil-and-gas drilling
#215Earlier quoted context omitted.
If we cared about birds we'd be aggressively controlling the cat population.
Generally we care about a bird species as a whole rather than about individual birds of that species. If something is killing birds, even a lot of birds, but in a place where those birds are abundant and whatever is killing them will just lower lower their equilibrium population a bit rather than set it on a decline or lower it so far that they might die out in the area then there generally isn't a lot of concern ove…
Cats are killing endangered birds everywhere outside their native range. They are killing them in the Americas, in Australia, in New Zealand... basically everywhere that's not Europe, Africa, or West Asia IIUC.
One reason you might not think it's a big deal is because the genocide is almost complete. They've already killed off 63 species and more in progress: https://abcbirds.org/program/cats-indoors/cats-and-birds/
Re: Wind turbines are friendlier to birds than oil-and-gas drilling
#216Earlier quoted context omitted.
Here you go: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OQksc1-5Zoc imagine living with that 12 hours a day. like a drop of water hitting your forehead every few seconds. forever.
Lol, thats it? This is the downside compared to the oil and coal?
When I picture an oil derrick, I see the arm going up and down and thus blocking the sun. Also the methane coming off, the the flares lighting up the night sky. And the smell.
Re: Wind turbines are friendlier to birds than oil-and-gas drilling
#217If we cared about birds we would be talking about reducing car traffic and saving more areas for wildlife. The argument against Solar and Wind with regards to wildlife preservation is almost always a distraction.
If you truly cared about birds and wildlife, SpaceX wouldn't have gotten away with everything they did at Boca Chica.
Re: Wind turbines are friendlier to birds than oil-and-gas drilling
#218I 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, witho…
The number of birds killed annually by windows is probably 100x that killed by turbines. Hard to convince everyone to remove windows.
Re: Wind turbines are friendlier to birds than oil-and-gas drilling
#219Why does nobody talk about the real issue with wind and solar? It's ugly. It distracts from the landscape.
I didn't realize how stupid of an argument this was until my girlfriend pointed out how every single highway/landscape/street is absolutely covered in powerlines. The very few wind turbines are beautiful in comparison to what you see all over the continent, every day.