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With wind power killing 20,000 birds a year, and fossil fuel extraction killing 14,000,000 in the same time period... does it matter? I mean, paint the turbines
by wmeredith 4y ago
With wind power killing 20,000 birds a year, and fossil fuel extraction killing 14,000,000 in the same time period... does it matter? I mean, paint the turbines or whatever, but it's hard to care about sweeping the porch when the house is on fire.
The source for those numbers is linked in the article itself: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0960148112000857?via%3Dihub https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S09601...
- nickff 4y agoIf you want a proposal to succeed, it is usually better to address concerns from others, rather than to dismiss them. Dismissing concerns not only alienates the people bringing them forward, but also makes bystanders see you (and the proposal) as inflexible and rigid.
- wmeredith 4y agoI am totally on the same page with you in most cases. Having said that, I've got doubts about the sincerity of people arguing against renewable power for environmental reasons. It's hard to take it seriously.
- ok_dad 4y agoIt’s just a tactic those people use to force rational actors to become irrational. We should just ignore those who would throw the baby out with the bath water, when it comes to environmental “concerns” like this.
- ncmncm 4y agoYou can take bird deaths seriously without reducing build-out of renewables. The blades are painted all over, regardless. It doesn't cost appreciably more to put a stripe on.
- HeyLaughingBoy 4y agoPerhaps not, but if the stripe makes them more visible to the people living nearby, then they may not want the turbines there at all.
- sgustard 4y agoThere are lots of things visible from my house that I don't want to look at. Power lines, poles, buildings, cars and roads come to mind. I believe if you own a thousand acres you get to look at what you want, otherwise it's not up to you?
- throw__away7391 4y agoRight, I mean there's some reasonable limits, but especially in the US we've normalized the idea that incumbent homeowners have broad sovereignty to veto nearly anything that happens within sight/driving distance of their homes.
- ncmncm 4y agoThere are lots of people who wish they had veto power, or who insist they have or should have veto power. None of those is the same thing as having veto power.
- HeyLaughingBoy 4y agoIt really doesn't matter whether if it's "up to them" or not. If enough people object, then it ain't happening. No matter how beneficial the project is otherwise. That's just the reality of the world we live in.
- crooked-v 4y agoIt reminds me deeply of the various people who will use 'it doesn't have enough affordable housing' to argue against any housing development in general.
- dshpala 4y agoSome might see such dismissals (of "useless" proposals) as a marker of a focus and honesty, and thus give the author of the competing proposal more attention.
- nickff 4y agoI think that dismissals may improve one's standing within an 'in-group', at the cost of further hardening the opposition (by an 'out-group'). I generally see dismissals as indicators of arrogance, and signs that the author may not have thought through all the implications of their proposal.
- JetAlone 4y agoIf we could separate their entanglements, we would find that the cost of this or that sort of energy is nothing compared to the cost of systematically despising out-groupers.
- froh 4y agothe concerns on wind energy are blown up artificially. specific example from Germany is "the dangers of infrasound", which led to a highly restrictive anti wind energy "protective distance requirement" of 10 x height ("10H rule") in Bavaria. And then someone figured the underlying study was off by three orders of magnitude, i.e. 1000x off. yet the disinformation has sunk into the heads and wind energy now has an irrational and steep uphill battle.
- worik 4y ago> it is usually better to address concerns from others, rather than to dismiss them It is often better.... Many ideas are designed to be refuted. The refutation spreads the ideas. It is part of the strategy. A "mind worm" (to coin a phrase) only needs to be repeated and it will do its job. Refuting it is repeating it. So dismiss the speaker, attack the speaker's credentials and motivations ignoring the ideas. argumentum ad hominem, whilst rhetorically invalid, is the best tactic in those circumstances.
- anon_123g987 4y ago> A "mind worm" (to coin a phrase) It's called a "meme" (in its original definition by Richard Dawkins). And this kind of forcing a rebuttal is "trolling". Dismissing this trolling is phrased as "Don't feed the troll!". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meme https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meme https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_troll https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_troll
- trgn 4y agoAnd this particular example of trolling, is "concern trolling".
- ALittleLight 4y agoI'm imagining two conversations A: We should use more windmills. B: No, those kill too many birds. A: You don't know what you're talking about, you have no credentials, and you are just motivated to stop renewables! A': We can paint the rotors to avoid killing birds. A' seems like a much better response even if A is accurate. Maybe you need to be A if you can't be A', but if you can...
- Schroedingersat 4y ago"Wind turbines with a painted blade would still kill 1 million birds a year" Doesn't help any. The number is already vastly smaller than cars or regular buildings or a single coal plant so making it even smaller willdo nothing if it'snot zero.
- DoneWithAllThat 4y agoOn the other hand, all too often the thinking goes: - Something must be done - This is something - Therefore this must be done Some ideas are just bad.
- ncmncm 4y agoAnd, some ideas are good, and very, very cheap. There is no reason to avoid implementing those. Building out wind saves birds from petroleum pollution. A bit of paint saves more. Why not?
- Supermancho 4y agoNext you get people who don't like the patterns or think there are better patterns. It's not a bit of paint for existing blades. It's appreciable weight added to the blades, to repaint. Everyone in the US can easily identify the wind turbines, because of the uniformity. The uniformity and simplicity has inherent value in large projects (including large volume). White to dissipate heat or black to save birds (let the bats die either way?). It's not surprising that prolonging the state of the current environment may require short-term sacrifices. This is Parkinson's Law (bikeshedding) in action, imo.
- Maursault 4y ago> This is Parkinson's Law (bikeshedding) in action, imo. Common mistake, bikeshedding is the Law of Triviality[1], which is distinct from but often confused with Parkinson's Law,[2] likely because bikeshedding is also known as Parkinson's Law of Triviality. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_triviality https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_triviality [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parkinson%27s_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parkinson%27s_law
- ncmncm 4y agoSomething about wind power brings concern trolls just swarming out of the woodwork.
- 4y ago
- aeternum 4y agoYes but you also must make sure that addressing the concern does not create other larger issues. The paint job might make the windmills more visible to humans and make people not want them on their land or within eyesight. This could lead to fewer being built and more dependence on fossil fuels which ultimately kill more birds.
- Someone 4y agoI think it also could lead to lower life expectancy of the blades. Darker paint tends to lead to higher temperatures. And warmer blades might be less stiff, decreasing efficiency, and with it increasing birds killed/GWh (but that’s not even guessing from my side; I don’t know whether stiffness would be affected, and I don’t know whether it would affect efficiency, or in what direction)
- 10u152 4y agoPossibly. But if they're moving at a decent rate through the air that should cool them somewhat.
- harha 4y ago> make people not want them on their land or within eyesight I think that’s already the case. Better paint one black before someone has the idea to put ads on them, the only thing that could make them even less pleasant to have around
- gknoy 4y agoTime to patent the idea of putting LEDs on them that light up at specific times in their rotation ...
- stainforth 4y agoDo they spin at a high enough rate for that? If not, you could have some kind of person or service that records elapsed footage and speeds it up, although I don't know how that itself could become a viable service.
- arcticbull 4y agoCats kill 2,400,000,000 birds per year in the United States alone. [1] Wind power is 0.008% of that total. I strongly suspect that there are better ways to spend the time and money to reduce avian mortality like neutering a few thousand cats. [1] https://abcbirds.org/program/cats-indoors/cats-and-birds/ https://abcbirds.org/program/cats-indoors/cats-and-birds/
- jwond 4y agoI think the solution is clear: we should start painting the cats
- dragonsky67 4y agoThey already come in a variety of colours...
- Theory5 4y agoWe need to fund some studies then. Such as: Are birds more likely to avoid black, white, orange, or polkadotted cats? Is neon better than bright pastel?
- KennyBlanken 4y ago
- protomyth 4y agoCats don't kill bald eagles (the opposite actually). That's why there is a fuss. The wind folks will probably take the easy win and skip the what-about.
- arcticbull 4y agoI hope they do! A win is a win.
- dudus 4y agoAt some point you are just playing into the filibuster games.
- colordrops 4y agoThe concern wasn't dismissed. It was put into contrast with a much greater concern that is often overlooked.
- Schroedingersat 4y agoOnly when those concerns are brought forward in good faith. Nobody legitimately thinks bird strike is a reason to stop a wind farm. It's just a convenient thing to bring up if you don't care about the environment but know your opponent does.
- denkmoon 4y agoNot if they are merely being obstructionist and have no intention of engaging in rational and constructive dialog for a better outcome :)
- p1necone 4y agoSure, until the naysayers come up with a list of bullshit concerns so long that nobody would have the resources to deal with all of them. At some point you have to acknowledge that certain people are acting in bad faith and just ignore them if you want to get anything done. (Although in this case if the fix is just painting the turbines differently... you may as well do it)
- mech987 4y agoThat 20,000 number is off by at least an order of magnitude just for US bird wind turbine deaths. Turbine construction has been accelerating, so the 2013 numbers cited below are low. https://abcbirds.org/blog21/wind-turbine-mortality/ https://abcbirds.org/blog21/wind-turbine-mortality/
- InitialLastName 4y agoEven off by an order of magnitude, it's still 2 OOM below GP's rate for fossil fuels.
- ben_bai 4y agoIt doesn't matter. Both are orders of magnitude less than cats. "We estimate that free-ranging domestic cats kill 1.3–4.0 billion birds and 6.3–22.3 billion mammals annually" from "The impact of free-ranging domestic cats on wildlife of the United States" (2013)
- onion2k 4y agoCats tend to kill small garden birds though, which are very common. Wind turbines take out eagles. I don't think a domestic cat could kill an Eagle. Although one of my cats thinks he could, and might be tempted to have a go.
- gumby 4y agoRaptors are more likely to take the houscat than the other way around.
- Errsher 4y agoThey do not just kill "common" birds, they have led to the extinction of several bird species. Keep your cats indoors.
- acchow 4y ago> Keep your cats indoors Are cats not naturally supposed to be outside?
- oefnak 4y agoAren't all animals?
- acchow 4y agoI guess the ones meant to live in caves or underground would do fine indoors?
- havelhovel 4y ago
- linuxftw 4y agoNot all birds are equal. I believe the turbines are making a sizable dent in birds of prey, whereas the 14m is probably a variety of birds.
- tomxor 4y agoAbsolute fatalities are not a useful comparison, in fact they are meaningless without the context of the proportion of each source of power. The same study provides adjusted numbers per GWh in the abstract: 0.3 to 0.4 fatalities per GWh for Wind farms and nuclear power 5.2 fatalities per GWh for fossil fueled power stations i.e Wind and Nuclear cause between 5.8% and 7.7% fatalities per GWh compared that of fossil fuels.
- ncmncm 4y agoYes, numbers that mean something, and may be compared with other meaningful numbers, is a necessity for useful reporting. There was a very dumb Two Bit da Vinci vid recently on YouTube about a big advance in dehumidifier tech. It had lots of numbers, but none of the meaningful numbers. The meaningful numbers they did not say were that it captured moisture 2.4x cheaper than current methods, but still 60x more expensive (in kWh/L) than desalination. There is a hell of a lot of basement dehumidification going on, so switching to the new method will be very valuable. But it won't supply drinking water. In other news, desalination is astonishingly cheap nowadays. It just needs cheap, opportunistic power, and could be built out everywhere. Inland, aquifers that are a little too salty for irrigation could be put into use.
- akozak 4y agoAsk anyone deep in the wind or RE development industry! It does matter, because policymakers (at least in the US) have decided it matters though law, regulation, and treaty. It doesn't ultimately matter (practically) if policy doesn't conform to your moral calculus. *even if it is a sensible calculus
- marcodiego 4y agoThe ultimate metric would be "killings per megawatt hour".
- acchow 4y ago> With wind power killing 20,000 birds a year, and fossil fuel extraction killing 14,000,000 in the same time period... does it matter? That depends. Do we need to increase wind power production 1000x to replace fossil fuels? Or 100x?
- suprjami 4y agoIt does, because we could apparently reduce that 20k down to 6k, which lets us scale wind power up even more while looking after the planet even better. We need to reduce our negative impact on the earth as much as possible. So a simple action which results in a 70% harm reduction is a huge win!
- est31 4y agoWe could, but it might drive up prices of wind turbines a little bit. It's only a little you would say, but there are also other proposals to e.g. do away with forever chemicals in some components of wind turbines. If you follow all of them, eventually wind turbines cease to be cheaper than conventional energy.
- AmericanChopper 4y agoAir pollution supposedly kills 2,000,000 people a year. Nuclear energy has killed far less than that in its entire history. Debates around this topic tend to have no basis in rationality at all, and many of the most vocal “environmentalists” are really just extreme anti-consumerist or anti-capitalist. Talk to somebody from the anti-wind lobby of environmentalists and you’ll likely discover their preferred solution is that we simply stop using energy for things like heating, or watching tv, or using our computers…
- karmakaze 4y ago> Within the uncertainties of the data used, the estimate means that wind farms killed approximately 20,000 birds in the United States in 2009 but nuclear plants killed about 330,000 and fossil fueled power plants more than 14 million. This falls along the lines of planting trees for CO2. Sure I could do it and feel good but maybe there's a more effective way to go about it. I wouldn't tell anyone not to plant trees though.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- BurningFrog 4y agoIt doesn't matter, but it looks bad to have piles of dead birds below the turbines, and it makes the employees sad. If you can fix much of it with some paint, most people would do it.
- Alupis 4y agoSince the inevitable result is 14,000,000 killed by fossil fuel extraction + another 20,000 from wind turbines, it seems silly to just hand wave these things away. We currently need fossil fuels. We don't currently need wind turbines. There's plenty of other energy sources that are better and don't directly kill birds.