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Almost 7 million birds perish at communication towers in North America each year

sciencedaily.com

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Re: Almost 7 million birds perish at communication towers in North America each year

#31

Post by [deleted] »

tomjen3 wrote: post #25
ilkandi wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please take some time to research your inner techniques of logic, and how you assume outcomes and motives (in general). You appear (to me) prone to jumping to definite conclusions based on faulty logic and/or incomplete data. Not an attack, just a comment.

I can't fault him. Incomplete data is what we have in the real world and while he has shown no evidence in this story a lot of what we read in the media is planted to either pander to their readers or from public relation firms. I don't think it is a bad habit to assume that this has been planted for some reason. If not, 7 million birds should be enough that you can see them drop in droves. 7 million is a very, very…

[deleted]

Re: Almost 7 million birds perish at communication towers in North America each year

#32

Post by JoachimSchipper »

tomjen3 wrote: post #25
ilkandi wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please take some time to research your inner techniques of logic, and how you assume outcomes and motives (in general). You appear (to me) prone to jumping to definite conclusions based on faulty logic and/or incomplete data. Not an attack, just a comment.

I can't fault him. Incomplete data is what we have in the real world and while he has shown no evidence in this story a lot of what we read in the media is planted to either pander to their readers or from public relation firms. I don't think it is a bad habit to assume that this has been planted for some reason. If not, 7 million birds should be enough that you can see them drop in droves. 7 million is a very, very…

waterlesscloud at http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3903033:

> Looking at the numbers they offer, it seems like it's about 1 bird per tower every 4 days.

Re: Almost 7 million birds perish at communication towers in North America each year

#34

Post by mangodrunk »

tomjen3 wrote: post #4
kinleyd wrote: post #2

That is a tragically large number, and the solution seems easy enough to implement. Activism is the likely missing ingredient. Something needs to be done.

It is birds. Not humans. More humans properly perish from lack of communication. Screw the birds. Humans are better.

Not only is this a false dichotomy, but your points are baseless.

> More humans properly perish from lack of communication.

A citation would be helpful.

> Screw the birds. Humans are better.

To some humans, maybe. Screw X, Y is better has not been a good guide.

Re: Almost 7 million birds perish at communication towers in North America each year

#36

Post by tomjen3 »

fractallyte wrote: post #27
tomjen3 wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is birds. Not humans. More humans properly perish from lack of communication. Screw the birds. Humans are better.

Eventually you'd discover that (in some as yet unknown, obscure way) humans can't survive without birds. For your edification: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ecology

Well we are not talking about killing all the birds. We are talking about some dying.

And you don't need an obscure way, I know what China did and what happened there.

But I would rather see ten birds tortured to death, than one human die. Call it speciests if you want.

Re: Almost 7 million birds perish at communication towers in North America each year

#37

Post by tomjen3 »

Anechoic wrote: post #29
tomjen3 wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't fault him. Incomplete data is what we have in the real world and while he has shown no evidence in this story a lot of what we read in the media is planted to either pander to their readers or from public relation firms. I don't think it is a bad habit to assume that this has been planted for some reason. If not, 7 million birds should be enough that you can see them drop in droves. 7 million is a very, very…

As noted above, 7 million birds per year, spread across 84,000 towers is about 1 bird per tower every four days. That alone isn't exactly noticeable, and given that most towers are located in out-of-the-way areas, that number of bird deaths could very easily escape notice by most people.

I assumed there were a lot fewer towers.

Either way, I still wonder why this story was selected and not some other story (there is only so many stories a news paper can write) and because I have become cynical I assume that it was either a PR agency or pandering. I have not heard any evidence for anything else.

Re: Almost 7 million birds perish at communication towers in North America each year

#38

Post by SquareWheel »

zecho wrote: post #16
tocomment wrote: post #15

I wonder at what point natural selection will start taking effect?

Seeing as how moths still fly into flames, it's probably going to be awhile. Anyway, that's a shocking number, but I know it happens. I used to work at a TV station in college and once came out to my car to find a goose head on the hood. The body was a few feet away. It apparently had decapitated itself flying into the cables. My coworkers say it happens quite often during the migrations. They fly into the cables at…

Whoa, that last line just came out of nowhere.

Re: Almost 7 million birds perish at communication towers in North America each year

#39

Post by [deleted] »

tomjen3 wrote: post #37
Anechoic wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As noted above, 7 million birds per year, spread across 84,000 towers is about 1 bird per tower every four days. That alone isn't exactly noticeable, and given that most towers are located in out-of-the-way areas, that number of bird deaths could very easily escape notice by most people.

I assumed there were a lot fewer towers. Either way, I still wonder why this story was selected and not some other story (there is only so many stories a news paper can write) and because I have become cynical I assume that it was either a PR agency or pandering. I have not heard any evidence for anything else.

[deleted]

Re: Almost 7 million birds perish at communication towers in North America each year

#40

Post by MPSimmons »

aqme28 wrote: post #7
_delirium wrote: post #3

It's a bit odd that we hear a lot more about the ~300k birds killed annually by windmills than 7 million killed by communication towers (I didn't even know about this one). I would guess because windmills are a hotter political issue.

And that pales in comparison to the number of birds killed by glass. Estimates of 100 million to 1 billion birds annually in the US alone. Every time I hear bird-deaths as an argument against windmills I want to scream until I die. [1] http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/4134773/ns/us_news-environment/t...

Eventually natural selection will take over and the ones that figure out that glass isn't bird-permeable.
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