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The article does not respond to the claim of the president that windmills kill birds. Do they really in a significant way? Is it worthy of being called an envir

• frik 10y ago
  Everything has pro and cons. Windmills have just a few cons like don't block the air space (bad for a few birds (but less bad than water power plans for fish), helicopters, planes) and some noise (but that's true for every powerplant technologies except photovoltaic panels). The good thing windmills are very eco-friendly. Only water/hydro and photovoltaic/sun-energy falls in the very same category.
  • jimmaswell 10y ago
    And nuclear is in an even more eco-friendly category than those. This seems accurate: http://energyrealityproject.com/lets-run-the-numbers-nuclear-energy-vs-wind-and-solar/ http://energyrealityproject.com/lets-run-the-numbers-nuclear...
    • Klinky 10y ago
      Isn't the AP-1000 reactor he is citing about to cause the downfall of Westinghouse and Toshiba due to extreme cost overruns? Upfront cost, liability and waste disposable with nuclear cannot be overlooked. He also noted: > A reactor has a 60-year service life. Fukushima suggests otherwise. Holding on to old reactor designs has resulted in catastrophic failures.
      • jimmaswell 10y ago
        From what I've heard, these cost overruns are due to political causes. Waste disposal is a non issue, and Fukashima was due to terrible planning. It wouldn't be solar's fault if someone put too many solar panels on a weak roof and they fell through.
        • mambodog 10y ago
          Humans have shown time and time again we cannot be trusted to consistently do things right, so the likely outcomes of some realistic percentage of 'terrible planning', as you put it, should be part of any comparison of power generation techniques. The analogy you make to solar ignores that the failure modes of nuclear are much worse than solar.
          • jimmaswell 10y ago
            From the page I found, "more Americans have died from installing rooftop solar than have ever died from the construction or use of American nuclear power plants". On average, nuclear is safer. The likelihood of another Fukashima is even lower now that it's happened and been documented.
            • mambodog 10y ago
              I think you mean 'on average, nuclear is safer than rooftop solar'. How about nuclear vs. large scale solar? Large scale solar + wind? These are more realistic equivalents to nuclear.
              • jimmaswell 10y ago
                This still seems to just mention rooftop but it's still telling how far US nuclear is below its next runner up, Hydro - .1 to 5 deaths/trillion kWh
                • jimmaswell 10y ago
                  Meant to link: https://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesconca/2012/06/10/energys-deathprint-a-price-always-paid/#2f56e537709b https://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesconca/2012/06/10/energys-d...
            • rawrRAWR 10y ago
              This can quickly change, when one terrorist attack happens on a single nuclear plant. Not so much with wind or solar, though ;)
  • ghaff 10y ago
    >water/hydro As you suggest in your prior sentence, hydro is very disruptive environmentally in some cases. The Glen Canyon Dam (and the once proposed dams in the Grand Canyon) are particular cases in point. There's a general trend toward removing old dams in New England in part because of their environmental impact. Of course, small scale hydro like microturbines is far less disruptive but it generates far less power.
    • heisenbit 10y ago
      Don't count hydro out as part of the energy mix. It can complement PV as a reasonably efficient energy store.
  • jnordwick 10y ago
    Dams are usually ecological disasters. The Hetch Hetchy Valley was dammed up and it destroyed a natural resource on par with Yosemite. People have been trying to remove it for years, but the San Francisco residents refuse to let it go since it supplies such a large amount of power to them.
    • djrogers 10y ago
      Not to mention it supplies their water
• ptaipale 10y ago
  I would say it is significant but not disaster. For some sources, look at http://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/how-many-birds-do-wind-turbines-really-kill-180948154/ http://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/how-many-birds-do-w... AFAIK, in terms of number of birds, house cats kill about 1000 times as many birds as windmills, but cats of course prey on small birds and windmills kill large birds which are far lower in numbers.
  • Animats 10y ago
    Altamont Pass, the first big wind farm, is the worst, with row after row of small wind turbines across a narrow pass in a mountain chain. It's a veg-o-matic for migratory birds. Those small turbines are obsolete, and are gradually being replaced with bigger ones.
• chasing 10y ago
  http://www.audubon.org/news/will-wind-turbines-ever-be-safe-birds http://www.audubon.org/news/will-wind-turbines-ever-be-safe-... I didn't realize that was such a big issue. Over time, humanity will figure out ways of making wind turbines less of a danger to birds. In the mean time, I would assume that wind power still remains a net positive for the overall environment versus coal, etc.
  • tim333 10y ago
    >Over time, humanity will figure out ways of making wind turbines less of a danger to birds. Or the birds will evolve to dislike wind turbines.
    • toomuchtodo 10y ago
      I'd assume this is the case, as birds already use the earth's magnetic field for navigation and wind turbines generate a significant magnetic field.
      • maxerickson 10y ago
        Detecting a small field while flying at 10-15 meters / second (30 miles per hour) might not be possible with whatever they use to detect the wider field.
        • toomuchtodo 10y ago
          Bookmarked to research.
  • sgustard 10y ago
    Just turn the problem around and replace large turbines with mini-turbines attached to the birds themselves. As they fly they charge, um, small batteries that they carry around and then periodically return to dropoff stations. OK I'm still working out some of the kinks.
  • Gibbon1 10y ago
• ThomPete 10y ago
  Not just kill birds, they are noisy too.
  • Faaak 10y ago
    Less and less with new gearboxes
• wnevets 10y ago
  It's a disingenuous position for trump to take in the first place.
• jonathansizz 10y ago
  Looking at the statistics, I'm not sure that wind turbines are any worse than man-made structures generally (or other human-caused threats, including other types of power plants). https://www.fws.gov/birds/bird-enthusiasts/threats-to-birds.php https://www.fws.gov/birds/bird-enthusiasts/threats-to-birds....
• theghostofjr 10y ago
  Of course, Trump has an offshore wind array in his view from his hold course in Aberdeen. So he may have ulterior motives than bird preservation here.
• anigbrowl 10y ago
  I think it's safe to say that the President is not motivated by concern for birds unless he's having chicken for dinner.
• rsynnott 10y ago
  I assume because Trump was just making up nonsense, as per normal. > About 599 million birds are killed annually in the U.S. when they fly into windows, trailing only loss of habitat and cats as the top causes of bird deaths, according to the National Audubon Society. Wind turbines account for about 234,000.