Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

economist.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

221–230 of 413 posts

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

#221

Post by masklinn »

a_gnostic wrote: post #203
loceng wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you unconsciously keeping nuclear energy out of the equation, or why is nuclear not an option in your mind - where then bird populations will be better off, and where solar also isn't destroying the surface environment where life and forests could otherwise thrive [if we're talking about having energy generated locally, then most of the world doesn't have convenient desserts nearby, which arguably we could also t…

[flagged]

Cooling towers don’t pull anything, they’re evaporation columns. What air movement they cause is basically some passively generated wind at the base.

And if a migrating bird does not notice a cooling tower it’s on its last legs (or feathers), they’re completely static and about as stealthy as a cliff.

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

#222

Post by digging »

thomasmg wrote: post #204
flkenosad wrote: post #181

Why does nobody talk about the real issue with wind and solar? It's ugly. It distracts from the landscape.

Yes, I also prefer the beautiful oil rigs, and the nice smell of coal in the air. Anyway, all the buildings made by humans are so nice to look at, except for the really really ugly solar and wind installations!

I really loving driving through oil-rich areas and seeing flames dotting the horizon. Maybe we can start piping some natural gas directly to wind turbines to spew fires out the top so they're more elegant?

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

#223

Post by masklinn »

rootusrootus wrote: post #193
wredue wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ridiculous argument. Why on earth would people care about the birds in the context of natural processes compared to unnatural processes? This is a monumentally stupid apples and oranges “gotcha”.

> natural processes I'm curious, what are you thinking of when you say 'natural processes'? I hope it's not cats.

Or oil spills.

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

#224

Post by digging »

flkenosad wrote: post #181

Why does nobody talk about the real issue with wind and solar? It's ugly. It distracts from the landscape.

Among the countless reasons why this is an extremely bad argument, consider that the entire point of wind and solar is to prevent the landscape from being obliterated by climate change.

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

#225

Post by jeffbee »

pjc50 wrote: post #135
bell-cot wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah... Could you explain why any oil company would pay to install and maintain "daylight level" lighting equipment at every oil rig, then pay the electric bills to run it all night, 365 nights per year?

I suspect this is conflating wells with flaring, which can be a pretty big problem across a huge area. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/uk-scotland-54435653 (Mossmorran flare, Exxon-Mobil)

No.

https://www.nabors.com/for-contractors-ofs/rig-products/illu...

A lot of people in this thread are showing themselves to be people without any personal contact with oil exploration.

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

#226

Post by AlbertCory »

shadowgovt wrote: post #214
AlbertCory wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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)?

Clever of you to acknowledge but then glide over the wild exaggeration there. Still wrong, though:

https://www.statista.com/statistics/1022937/history-nasa-bud...

1965 NASA budget in billions: $5.25 (the peak year)

1965 GDP: $743 billion

giving us a NASA budget of 0.007 of GDP, or 0.7%

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

#227

Post by NoMoreNicksLeft »

deely3 wrote: post #17
widdershins wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And kill all pet cats.

If we continue sarcasm line.. this is sarcasm, yes? Then we should kill all cats globally. Billion of birds killed by cars even in places where cats native for thousends years.

[flagged]

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

#228

Post by bigbillheck »

wredue wrote: post #150
ajross wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because they migrated or are in hibernation, adaptations that exist precisely to accommodate the particular climate of your area. Disrupt that and you mess up their ecosystem. I really fail to understand how this kind of glib response persists even in forums like this one where people claim to be good at reasoning.

Lots of these are bots, and be careful responding to them, as HN views responding to the anti-science brigades as “not in the spirit of good conversation”, and will readily post limit you (while funnily allowing anti-science to remain rampant, while also complaining about how bigotry and anti-science is becoming too rampant here).

> Lots of these are bots

If you check that account's post history the entity behind it certainly seems to be an actual person.

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

#230

Post by ta1243 »

failTide wrote: post #186
ryandvm wrote: post #115

[flagged]

Cats and wind turbines present dangers to different types of birds, with the turbines being a danger to larger raptors including condors - so I think your comparison is an oversimplification of the issue, even though I'm a proponent of wind power in general.

LOL, I'm reminded of a Futurama episode from over a decade ago where one of the presidential candidates during the debate, when asked "Environment: Yes or No" replied:

  Two words: Condor attack. Don't want that. Got to say no.
It feels like "Condor" is a trigger phrase that's been around and programmed into people for years
Post reply on HN