5 ms·

> "Meh, a 5 Mega Watt wind turbine kills less wildlife than the average outdoor cat." Do you have some sort of data to back this up?

JadeNB 9y ago
I imagine that Retric (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15228800 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15228800) is referring to stories like https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/outdoor-cats-kill-between-14-billion-and-37-billion-birds-a-year-study-says/2013/01/31/2504f744-6bbe-11e2-ada0-5ca5fa7ebe79_story.html https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/outdo... and https://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/22/opinion/sunday/the-evil-of-the-outdoor-cat.html https://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/22/opinion/sunday/the-evil-o... (DDG results for "outdoor cats wildlife death"), compared to, say, 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... (DDG result for "wind turbine wildlife death"). This is likely unpopular (especially with cat people like me), but I'm not sure what's callous about it—unless you mean the "meh" part, in which case I'm not sure how backing it up with data makes it any less callous.
- Retric 9y ago
  That's where the comparison comes from, however it's more that these articles are linking to harm without putting it into any perspective. If we replaced all electricity generation with wind farms you would kill fewer birds from pollution than the existing power plants directly kill. There are 10+ billion birds in the US and a smaller but very large number of bats and well over 1 billion of them die every year. Talking about hundreds of bird/bat deaths in that context is almost meaningless. PS: A fungus on the other hand is decimating bat populations and represents a real threat. However the actual threat is not exactly making the news. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White-nose_syndrome https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White-nose_syndrome

JadeNB 9y ago

I imagine that Retric (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15228800 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15228800) is referring to stories like https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/outdoor-cats-kill-between-14-billion-and-37-billion-birds-a-year-study-says/2013/01/31/2504f744-6bbe-11e2-ada0-5ca5fa7ebe79_story.html https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/outdo... and https://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/22/opinion/sunday/the-evil-of-the-outdoor-cat.html https://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/22/opinion/sunday/the-evil-o... (DDG results for "outdoor cats wildlife death"), compared to, say, 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... (DDG result for "wind turbine wildlife death"). This is likely unpopular (especially with cat people like me), but I'm not sure what's callous about it—unless you mean the "meh" part, in which case I'm not sure how backing it up with data makes it any less callous.

Retric 9y ago
That's where the comparison comes from, however it's more that these articles are linking to harm without putting it into any perspective. If we replaced all electricity generation with wind farms you would kill fewer birds from pollution than the existing power plants directly kill. There are 10+ billion birds in the US and a smaller but very large number of bats and well over 1 billion of them die every year. Talking about hundreds of bird/bat deaths in that context is almost meaningless. PS: A fungus on the other hand is decimating bat populations and represents a real threat. However the actual threat is not exactly making the news. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White-nose_syndrome https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White-nose_syndrome