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

371–380 of 413 posts

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

#371

Post by jiggawatts »

exoverito wrote: post #174
kstrauser wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Does it make sense to assert that since wind farms are generally beneficial that we should not worry about drastically reducing or even eliminating golden eagles in California? Yes. Boiling our atmosphere will harm bald eagles in addition to everything else. Bald eagles are cool birds, unless you live somewhere that they’re as common as seagulls and 20x as annoying. If forced to choose, I’d rather have a healthy wo…

CO2 levels were between 1500 and 3000 ppm during the Carboniferous era, a time of vast forests and thriving life. We are never going to end up like Venus, since its atmosphere is 100 times as dense as Earth's and 96.5% CO2. Since Earth is only 0.04% CO2 we would need to increase the amount of CO2 by more than 200,000X.

This is an easily debunked fossil-fuel industry propaganda talking point.

You either work in this industry and are being purposefully disingenuous, or you're carrying water for billionaires that will be dead from old age by the time the consequences of their lies are made manifest.

See: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZqA4bDVmBB8

TL;DW: Yes, CO2 levels were higher hundreds of millions of years ago, but the layout of the continents was different and the Sun had lower power output, so it worked out. If CO2 levels reached the same point now, 80% of the land surface would turn to desert and most higher forms of life would be wiped out by heat waves. Awesome! Let's aim of that then because some Shell Oil executive wants his bonus.

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

#372

Post by jiggawatts »

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…

If solar panels were a net energy negative, they couldn't be made and operated for a profit[1]. It's such an obvious lie, it's just painful.

Very early solar cells, the type used to power calculators and the like, may have been so inefficient that their lifetime power generation didn't offset the energy cost of their production. That doesn't matter because the scale is tiny, and the portability and the elimination of batteries is the point, not net energy return.

Someone probably got it in their mind that "solar can't work" back in the 1960s or 70s based on this, and refused to budge half a century later when solar is the cheapest form of grid-scale energy.

[1] This is actually a great way to estimate the total energy that went into a product. It must be less than the wholesale price (or cost-of-manufacture), otherwise at least one profit-motived organisation must be selling the product, its raw materials, or the energy inputs below cost and losing money on purpose. Only in rare cases like gov subsidies, state-owned corporations, etc... is this rule violated.

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

#373

Post by qwery »

palisade wrote: post #358
jacquesm wrote: post #345

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The problem is that they're not wrong, turbines and even solar towers wipe out vast bird and bat populations. > Obama had to pass a last minute law approving the numerous deaths of bald eagle populations unfortunately. 316K Eagles vs 150 confirmed deaths due to windmills over a decade . So yes, they're wrong. And amplifying this sort of thing is exactly what those campaigns hope for, so you're doing their work for…

That's odd because the official eagle foundation that protects eagles discusses thousands of recorded deaths. From the website, "At the infamous Altamont Wind Resource Area alone, more than 2,000 Golden Eagles have been killed by the wind turbines there." : https://eagles.org/take-action/wind-turbine-fatalities/ So which seems more believable that only 150 eagles died over a decade or thousands? Something is off here…

Are golden eagles bald eagles?

Yes, the problem is exaggerated by the eagle people and the fossil fuel people and the nuclear people and simultaneously underreported by the wind energy industry and the renewables people etc. This should not surprise you.

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

#374

Post by abenga »

junofan wrote: post #323
sprucevoid wrote: post #260

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Many people struggle to motivate themselves to do their part on huge collective action problems like climate change. That's why national and international political action is needed, and in turn needs smaller groups of individuals to put in effort supporting campaigns for such action. That said lots of people do care in their daily lives and also put that care into practical individual action - and have a fun and mea…

Wouldn’t it be more effective to phase out oil and coal production? Couldn’t that be enforced with remote sensing satellites and cruise missiles? I’m not seeing the collective action problem here. All the personal shaming stuff feels like a big grift.

We don't need to stop production. Reducing/ eliminating demand will work just as well.

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

#375

Post by ithkuil »

jiggawatts wrote: post #340
knodi123 wrote: post #327

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because anti-wind activists have brought them up.

More specifically, it's a disingenuous argument brought up by oil lobbyists. It's directly comparable to gun nuts justifying their right to own weapons designed to murder people by claiming that it's for "protection". Those same people have zero interest in better door locks, stronger windows, or anything that would actually protect them. They just want the guns. The protection argument was never made in good faith,…

Except Bald Eagles.

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

#376

Post by Aldipower »

ggm wrote: post #266
Aldipower wrote: post #263

Hackernews. The pseudo politics portal of the new age. Came here for computers..

try lobste.rs -it has almost identical structural behaviour and is (IMO) purely IT. Many HN stories are on that site.

Thanks, looks indeed promising.

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

#377

Post by arghwhat »

VoodooJuJu wrote: post #278
arghwhat wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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, s…

The numbers they have to kill to be a problem are not billions, but hundreds. Some years back, the European Turtle Dove was estimated to only have 135 breedable pairs left in the entire country of Denmark - the approximately one million house cats in Denmark would only have to kill just 135 birds to make that one go locally extinct at that time.

Four billion birds isn't a lot globally, but cats aren't hunting geese or swans - the number to compare to is the number of prey-sized birds in a local area where they can be hunted by outdoor or feral cats to notable population drops or local extinction. You might just see "a bird" or "a dove", unaware that it's one of several dove types native to your area with few remaining individuals.

Cats are particularly effective/aggressive predators in that they hunt and kill for fun, without interest in eating the catch. This makes their impact much greater than it needed to be.

Now, you can then argue against that conservation is necessary - animals outcompeting each other to complete extinction is normal, and we also hypocritically domesticate animals and take them out of their natural habitats - but it is something we generally aim for by protecting species in decline, actively controlling and fighting invading species, and attempts to reintroduce locally extinct species, and we tend to use any deviation from the status quo as a measure for environmental health.

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

#378

Post by ThunderSizzle »

jiggawatts wrote: post #340
knodi123 wrote: post #327

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because anti-wind activists have brought them up.

More specifically, it's a disingenuous argument brought up by oil lobbyists. It's directly comparable to gun nuts justifying their right to own weapons designed to murder people by claiming that it's for "protection". Those same people have zero interest in better door locks, stronger windows, or anything that would actually protect them. They just want the guns. The protection argument was never made in good faith,…

> It's directly comparable to gun nuts justifying their right to own weapons designed to murder people by claiming that it's for "protection". Those same people have zero interest in better door locks, stronger windows, or anything that would actually protect them.

Ah, it's your fault for being robbed or mugged, and killed in the process - you should've just had a better lock or not go downtown for a show.

In fact, we should victim-blame more often - we should just tell rape victims they should've had more clothes - you were asking for it after all.

Probably should tell convenience store clerks to get a different job.

We should tell police officers that they don't need guns to stop criminals with guns.

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

#379

Post by jacquesm »

palisade wrote: post #359
jiggawatts wrote: post #351

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bald eagle numbers are soaring: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/bald-eagle-populat... You're regurgitating pure propaganda put out by a multi-trillion-dollar industry that is orders of magnitude worse in every way. "Americans execute record number of prisoners" -- Joseph Goebbels.

I mean I was basing it off numbers provided by the American Eagle Foundation. Which isn't a multi-trillion dollar industry, it's a small charity whose goal is conservation. The American Eagle Foundation (AEF) is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization. Contributions to the American Eagle Foundation are tax-deductible to the extent permitted by law. The AEF’s tax identification number is 58-1652023.

And whose POV is obviously strictly neutral when it comes to eagles...

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

#380

Post by jacquesm »

palisade wrote: post #358
jacquesm wrote: post #345

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The problem is that they're not wrong, turbines and even solar towers wipe out vast bird and bat populations. > Obama had to pass a last minute law approving the numerous deaths of bald eagle populations unfortunately. 316K Eagles vs 150 confirmed deaths due to windmills over a decade . So yes, they're wrong. And amplifying this sort of thing is exactly what those campaigns hope for, so you're doing their work for…

That's odd because the official eagle foundation that protects eagles discusses thousands of recorded deaths. From the website, "At the infamous Altamont Wind Resource Area alone, more than 2,000 Golden Eagles have been killed by the wind turbines there." : https://eagles.org/take-action/wind-turbine-fatalities/ So which seems more believable that only 150 eagles died over a decade or thousands? Something is off here…

I'm sure there is an accurate number that is somewhere between 136 and 'thousands' but I wouldn't trust either the windmill operators or the people that run breeding programs for eagles to report them accurately.
Post reply on HN