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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

#271

Post by Krasnol »

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.

You might take Berlin airport if all airports in the Western World would have problems being build and if there would be a cheaper and faster to deploy alternative.

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

#272

Post by arcticbull »

vixen99 wrote: post #267
saalweachter wrote: post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You've convinced me: we should replace all cats in the US with wind turbines.

And wind turbine manufacturers would agree: UK December wind generation: Generation: 2.6 TWh Subsidy/MWh : £86.68 Market Price/MWh: £75.00

I'd personally rather a single nuclear power plant replace all the capacity, but honestly, as far as birds go, it'd be a no-op.

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

#273

Post by fsflover »

PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #257
jairuhme wrote: post #253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you have sources as to why they are lies? I'm not doubting you, but simply saying they're lies is just as disingenuous as the people making the statements in the first place

This is an HN comment thread, not a peer-reviewed paper on "lies convenient to the fossil fuel industries". However, for your convenience, I used google to search for "are solar panels net energy positive" and found this as the 2nd link: https://www.solarmelon.com/faqs/solar-panels-use-energy-manu... This contains a link to at least one peer-reviewed paper: https://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/es3038824 I can almost…

This is an HN comment thread, hence we expect a higher quality of comments than elsewhere on the Internet. Thanks for the links.

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

#274

Post by hotsauceror »

saalweachter wrote: post #243
arcticbull wrote: post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

You've convinced me: we should replace all cats in the US with wind turbines.

I find your ideas intriguing and I would like to subscribe to your newsletter.

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

#276

Post by mrguyorama »

wredue wrote: post #255
rootusrootus wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Symbiotic relationships are, in fact, a completely natural phenomena that is observed in non-human animal behaviour.

Housecats are not a symbiotic relationship. Seriously?

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

#277

Post by kroltan »

arcticbull wrote: post #272
vixen99 wrote: post #267

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And wind turbine manufacturers would agree: UK December wind generation: Generation: 2.6 TWh Subsidy/MWh : £86.68 Market Price/MWh: £75.00

I'd personally rather a single nuclear power plant replace all the capacity, but honestly, as far as birds go, it'd be a no-op.

Yes, but that would be tempting the gods of irony with the possibility of a nuclear CATastrophe.

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

#278

Post by VoodooJuJu »

arghwhat wrote: post #171
VoodooJuJu wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cats are a scapegoat to deflect the incalculable damage done to wildlife by humans themselves, their industries and habitat expansion.

No, such argument is whataboutism. Bigger problems do not invalidate smaller ones. The only case where your point would matter is if we could only fix one or the other - human- or cat-induced damage - but that is not the case. They can be addressed independently and in parallel. I like cats though...

No, that's not what whataboutism is.

Whataboutism is if someone says something like "Oh, yeah well, we have a bigger problem - humans kill more, so who cares about cats?" No. I'm literally saying that when it comes to cats killing birds, there is no problem. There's no radical ecological devastation happening. There's nothing to fix.

What is happening is that the number of birds killed by cats is emotionally large, such that humans interpret it as a problem, because big numbers are scary. "Did you know cats kill close to 4 billion birds every year? That's awful! We have to do something!"

"Did you know that spiders kill and consume 600 million metric tons worth of animals every year? That's awful! That's more meat than humans eat! We have to do something!" Except, we don't, because no matter how scared you are of big numbers, their presence doesn't mean there's a problem.

Similarly, with cats, we can maybe make their bird-killing sound even scarier by framing it like the spiders above: "Cats are killing 1 million metric tons worth of birds every year! Birds are doomed! We have to do something!"

Big numbers scare me too, especially the spiders one. 600 million metric tons is a lot of meat. Four billion birds sounds like a lot. But are these problems? Don't think so.

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

#279

Post by VincentEvans »

MaxHoppersGhost wrote: post #249
ta1243 wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

A pumpjack is what goes up and down, not an oil Derrick. Pumpjacks are usually not that tall, rarely taller than a big tree. They also don’t have flares. But yeah wouldn’t want to live by that either.

If you stand by the pumpjack, and the sun is at just the right height, and you carefully position yourself in such way as to place the pumpjack structure directly between yourself and the sun - you could personally experience the abject misery of having a moving shadow be cast upon your person - so that you can experience the horrors of the wind turbines first-hand.

However do take care of not breathing any fumes or stepping into any toxic spillages in the vicinity of oil equipment as not to pollute your immersive experience with any negative effects that are unrelated to the wind turbines.

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

#280

Post by mrguyorama »

imafish wrote: post #141
chadbr wrote: post #36

Clearly nobody in the responses has stood next to an oil well or a wind turbine.

Why would you want to stand next to either? They are not exactly located in urban areas...

I have stood at the very base of Wind Turbines multiple times. They are awesome, in the traditional sense of the word. A giant tower with an engineering marvel of a prop that slowly turns, nearly noiselessly sapping energy from nation sized air masses that continuously convect due to the immense amount of light and heat energy pouring into our atmosphere 24/7. They look futuristic, and yet at the same time so simple and elegant. Fields of fans sucking energy out of the wind currents.

I would love to live about five miles away (infrasound might be a real issue for some people) from a hundred acre installation of them. Here in Maine we have capped a few small mountains with them up north and it's very aesthetic.

Pumpjacks are also pretty cool though I've never seen one in person. Their simple design and brutal metal structure are pretty in their own way. Flares look pretty neat too.

..... Alright maybe infrastructure is just cool to me

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