Live data from Hacker News

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

economist.com

291–300 of 413 posts

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

#291
post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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]

Then let's start with the strays. Our cat was a rescued stray whose ear was docked when she was spayed. A block away from us is a house with a whole colony of stray cats that people have put up housing and other people come by and feed them. It doesn't look like those cats have been fixed judging by their ears.

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

#292

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The opinion that HN has particularly high quality comments is always surprising to me. Outside of the times where the person commenting is the actual creator of whatever the post is about I've found comments here to be a dumpster fire to the point where I often have fun looking at them specifically because they are often so wild and I love a good mess.

I assume people here will disagree but it's that exact stark difference in perspective that's so interesting to me

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

#293

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Solar and wind are pretty expensive a lot of the time, e.g. on windless nights.

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

#294

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you search zoning meeting wind turbine Google images it will be revealed quickly. Scan the demographic. Old people who've already gotten theirs with mostly invented blame for ailments. It's all downside for them, to see their landscape change and plant a tree who's shade they'll never see.

I originally thought you were arguing that wind turbines should not be able to be installed on someone’s property if they can’t also go on the neighbors property, but now I’m not sure. Was your first comment sarcasm? Maybe I’m just misreading.

It was sarcasm.

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

#295
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…

As a descriptive matter people do support a lot of species preservation efforts. But we have strong reasons to increase our care for birds and other sentient animals as individuals, with their own subjective experiences and the suffering and harms they endure. After all we already take that view when it comes to companion dogs. We know they can feel a range of emotions and we have as individuals and as society taken…

If we accept that we are responsible for minimizing the suffering of both domestic and wild animals, isn't the logical conclusion that we need to drive those species to extinction as quickly as possible, thus completely ending their suffering?

I mean, you are explicitly talking about ending our symbiotic relationship with the domestic chicken. We certainly would not have 20 billion chickens in the world if we all stopped eating eggs.

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

#296

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

The opinion that HN has particularly high quality comments is always surprising to me. Outside of the times where the person commenting is the actual creator of whatever the post is about I've found comments here to be a dumpster fire to the point where I often have fun looking at them specifically because they are often so wild and I love a good mess. I assume people here will disagree but it's that exact stark diff…

[deleted]

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

#297
post #238
post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you truly cared about birds and wildlife, SpaceX wouldn't have gotten away with everything they did at Boca Chica.

Who, me?

Everyone complaining about oil & gas, and how wind turbines are so much better for wildlife. But SpaceX gets a free pass for the carnage done and law-free territory they established down there in TX, because muuuh supposedly good tech.

Most silly comment in this whole 'discussion' was that remark about birds supposedly getting shredded in cooling towers, or flying into them. Oh the insanity!

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

#298

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You need to just admit error, not pivot. 5B is for 1965 alone, the peak year. As I said. 25B is the total over all years.

Error admitted. Now about the point, which is "How much should we be willing to spend on something that may be life-or-death for much of humanity?" Because, again, $760 billion in fossil fuel subsidy. A tenth of that for renewables.

OK, thanks.

It was pretty easy to look up NASA budgets and GDP's. I haven't studied energy subsidies, though, so maybe someone else wants to jump in.

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

#299

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…

[flagged]

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

#300

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

The opinion that HN has particularly high quality comments is always surprising to me. Outside of the times where the person commenting is the actual creator of whatever the post is about I've found comments here to be a dumpster fire to the point where I often have fun looking at them specifically because they are often so wild and I love a good mess. I assume people here will disagree but it's that exact stark diff…

I definitely noticed that the quality of the comments here is often better than simply stating some opinion. The latter is typical for social media echo chambers but not here.
Post reply on HN