3 ms·
Birds won't be happy, unfortunately. Yet, better than wrecking Earth's cycles by pumping to much garbage in the atmosphere like we do today.
by Qem 3y ago
Birds won't be happy, unfortunately. Yet, better than wrecking Earth's cycles by pumping to much garbage in the atmosphere like we do today.
- steelbrain 3y agoNot trying to pick a fight but just posting because I hear this often from my friends, re birds being happy. The choice, if between coal-fired plants and windmills should be pretty obvious to birds. Sure we may not see them getting splashed to bits with coal-fired plants but they are silently getting ill/dying over time.
- mirko22 3y agoSo are people, yet we are afraid of nuclear power…
- kdmccormick 3y agoBird death from turbines small-scale and highly predictable. Deaths from nuclear can range from zero to regional catastrophe and it's basically impossible to predict when it'll happen and how bad it'll be. I'm not anti-nuclear, but the risk profile is SO different from wind.
- fasterik 3y agoThe worst case is worse, but nuclear disasters are so rare and reactors produce so much power that nuclear is safer than wind in terms of deaths per TWh. https://ourworldindata.org/safest-sources-of-energy https://ourworldindata.org/safest-sources-of-energy
- Gwypaas 3y agoLet's stop subsidizing their accident insurance then. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Price%E2%80%93Anderson_Nuclear_Industries_Indemnity_Act https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Price%E2%80%93Anderson_Nuclear...
- vGPU 3y ago> The Act required companies to obtain the maximum possible insurance coverage against accidents, determined to be $60 million It’s a necessity, and extremely logical and reasonable.
- cinntaile 3y agoThe most recent "disaster" was Fukushima, the actual cost there is far far greater than $60 million.
- vGPU 3y agoThe point being that they aren’t able to get private insurance higher than that, so the government has to come up with a way to help. They’re insured the exact same way the banks are.
- landemva 3y ago> the risk profile is SO different from wind. As is the power generation profile. Wind/solar/tidal are important to develop, and the risk profile should include whatever peaker or storage backs up the variability in generation.
- KennyBlanken 3y agoBecause solar and wind are a fraction of the capex and opex, have none of the risk or security headaches, more easily distributed (meaning less grid infrastructure) and don't generate nuclear waste.
- stephenr 3y agoPeople tend to be afraid of things that can blow up and make the surrounding area uninhabitable.
- karmakurtisaani 3y agoFortunately, this is an offshore turbine, so it gives a lot of surface area for marine life to live on, which eventually turns into food for birds.
- myshpa 3y agoPainting the blades lowers the number of collisions significantly.
- blendo 3y agoBut I’ve heard that birds, when flying, are mostly looking at the ground. Perhaps sound is a better way to alert them?
- squarefoot 3y agoBirds are a lot less happy about mirror glass buildings; in some places it literally rains dead birds.
- creatonez 3y agoJust to examine the common claim about wind turbines killing birds -- the number of birds killed by wind turbines is vanishingly small compared to other threats. https://www.fws.gov/library/collections/threats-birds https://www.fws.gov/library/collections/threats-birds 234,012 - Collisions: Land-based wind turbines 6,600,000 - Collisions: Communication towers 72,000,000 - Pesticides & other poisons 214,500,000 - Collision: Vehicles 599,000,000 - Collision: Glass skyscrapers 2,400,000,000 - Predation by cats [Unknown] - Habitat loss and climate change These are just some estimates of some admittedly very difficult to capture data, but the orders of magnitude differences are revealing nonetheless.