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

economist.com

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

#231

Post by pvaldes »

thelastgallon wrote: post #208

It's estimated that cats kill 1.3–4 billion birds each year in the U.S. alone, with 69% of these kills attributable to feral or unowned cats: https://www.allaboutbirds.org/news/faq-outdoor-cats-and-thei...

> We initially focused this search on US studies, but due to a limited sample of these studies, we expanded the search

"Our data about US were so poor that we needed to add data from other continents"

> cats kill 1.3–4 billion birds each year in the U.S.

"But we still ended somehow with this bold and likeable value made with a mix of pure air, foreign data and statistical spice"

Another case of turd data polished to gold by the magic of science. People will repeat it for decades online.

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

#232

Post by shadowgovt »

AlbertCory wrote: post #226
shadowgovt wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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%

Apollo project is generally considered to have cost $25 billion, not $5 billion. Still, if we consider 0.007 of GDP in modern numbers, that's 2.65 trillion (2023) * 0.007 --> $18 billion.

The fossil fuel industry receives $760 billion in subsidy. We're already spending more on energy; we're just spending it on the wrong energy.

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

#233

Post by nullstyle »

coryrc wrote: post #215
tzs wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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/

Felis Catus doesn't have a native range in any meaningful manner, IMO. They are a global species like us, because of us. You can't put that cat back in the bag no matter the .22 cartridges you expend.

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

#234

Post by jes5199 »

codingdave wrote: post #97
l5870uoo9y wrote: post #88

The title is symptomatic for the climate discourse; either for or against oil/coal and wind/solar. I find the question "what is a reliable, clean and affordable energy source?" much more relevant and productive.

Affordable is the trick, though - while I totally understand why that is important, sometimes it seems like we're going to end up saying: "Sorry we are going extinct... staying alive wasn't profitable." I know that is both an idealistic and hyperbolic take on things. The bigger point is that when people say "affordable", they often really mean "profitable". But we cannot afford not to fix the problems.

I get where you're coming from but in 2024, solar is the cheapest source of power on earth, and wind is second-cheapest. Economics and survival are aligned for once, we just gotta actually build the new system and deprecate the old

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

#235

Post by arcticbull »

botanical wrote: post #169
SamBam wrote: post #25

The local birds killed by oil drilling aren't even what we should be comparing to. Even if that number were zero, bird populations world still be better off in a world powered by wind turbines than oil and gas. Global warning is coming for birds too. Global warming poses an "existential threat for two thirds of North American bird species" [1] and obviously a similar proportion of bird species around the globe. 1. ht…

Agree 100%. Wind turbines killing birds is a disingenuous argument when it comes to climate change. > Birds of prey in Africa experiencing population collapse, study finds > new research used road surveys to find that nearly 90% of the 42 raptor species studied had experienced declines, with more than two-thirds showing evidence of being globally threatened. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2024/jan/04/birds-o…

> Agree 100%. Wind turbines killing birds is a disingenuous argument when it comes to climate change.

If the people involved in this conversation actually cared about birds, they wouldn't be worried about either. They'd be worried about cats. Cats kill about 20-55% of the entire US bird population every single year. Somewhere between 1.3B and 4B birds per year in the US alone. [1] And an order of magnitude more small mammals (6.3B - 22.3B).

It's several orders of magnitude more than turbines and oil-and-gas drilling combined.

Studies put the number of birds killed by wind turbines in the US at 140K-690K. That's 0.0035% to 0.05% of the birds killed by cats. It would literally be a rounding error nobody would ever notice if all the wind turbines came down.

I honestly can't believe we're still having this conversation in the context of wind power. Put some UV stickers or black paint on them and move on. [3]

[1] https://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms2380

[2] https://www.denverpost.com/2019/09/20/bird-population-decrea...

[3] https://group.vattenfall.com/press-and-media/newsroom/2022/b...

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

#236

Post by clintonbush »

Or nuclear. There's that. Way less land occupation, no carpeting hillsides with solar panels, no ungainly windmills, no millions of pounds of toxic heavy metals to dispose of when batteries and panels go bad, and...oh....it works regardless of the weather.

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

#237

Post by dalyons »

amadeuspagel wrote: post #207
pjc50 wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

France have done better than most, largely due to building their fleet before Chernobyl, but even they have long term maintenance and cost overrun problems that led to shortages: https://www.lemonde.fr/en/economy/article/2022/08/26/edf-s-n... And the EDF reactor project in the UK is of course overrunning on time and budget. (when is the next French nuclear reactor new build scheduled to come on line?)

Big projects overrun on time and budget. I've never seen anyone take the Berlin airport as evidence against airports.

Nuclear will always be “big projects”. Renewables don’t overrun much.

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

#238

Post by foxyv »

MrEd wrote: post #217
foxyv wrote: post #105

If 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.

Who, me?

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

#239

Post by mikepurvis »

SoftTalker wrote: post #210
a_gnostic wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Those cooling towers are just large hollow hyperboloids. There's nothing in there that would "shred" a bird. And since they don't move, it's not likely that a bird would collide with one (though maybe that happens from time to time)

Them being solid and made of concrete is almost certainly a huge step up over skyscrapers made of glass, which is a deathtrap for birds on account of being reflective and basically invisible to them.

That said I think the GP might just be trolling, as I've never heard of anyone raising an issue with cooling towers being a threat in this way. The anti-nuclear discourse has always (rightly) been focused squarely on operational safety and waste disposal.

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

#240

Post by 725686 »

arcticbull wrote: post #235
botanical wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agree 100%. Wind turbines killing birds is a disingenuous argument when it comes to climate change. > Birds of prey in Africa experiencing population collapse, study finds > new research used road surveys to find that nearly 90% of the 42 raptor species studied had experienced declines, with more than two-thirds showing evidence of being globally threatened. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2024/jan/04/birds-o…

> Agree 100%. Wind turbines killing birds is a disingenuous argument when it comes to climate change. If the people involved in this conversation actually cared about birds, they wouldn't be worried about either. They'd be worried about cats. Cats kill about 20-55% of the entire US bird population every single year. Somewhere between 1.3B and 4B birds per year in the US alone. [1] And an order of magnitude more small…

I don't know shit, but I'm pretty sure the kind of birds cats kill are very different from the kind of birds that get killed in wind turbines, i.e. eagles
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