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This is a problem blown far out of proportion by those opposed to wind power who scream blue-bloody-murder about a few birds killed by turbines while ignoring t

This is a problem blown far out of proportion by those opposed to wind power who scream blue-bloody-murder about a few birds killed by turbines while ignoring the much greater number of birds killed by pollution from coal plants those wind turbines are replacing. https://www.eesi.org/articles/view/how-harmful-is-renewable-energy-to-birds https://www.eesi.org/articles/view/how-harmful-is-renewable-... > According to the data, while solar* is estimated to cause 1,000 to 28,000 bird deaths annually, and wind 140,000 to 328,000, coal kills far more – about 7.9 million birds a year That's thirty times more birds killed by coal than the upper estimate of birds killed by wind turbines. * "solar" being concentrated solar power, which is quite uncommon. PV panels do not cause significant avian deaths. For anyone about to suggest this is because there is more coal than wind: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/1943815X.2012.746993 https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/1943815X.2012.7... > It estimates that wind farms are responsible for roughly 0.27 avian fatalities per gigawatt-hour (GWh) of electricity while nuclear power plants involve 0.6 fatalities per GWh and fossil-fueled power stations are responsible for about 9.4 fatalities per GWh Study link: https://grist.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/contextualizing-avian-mortality.pdf https://grist.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/contextualizing... More data from the Sierra Club, showing wind turbines are the least of problems birds face: https://www.sierraclub.org/michigan/wind-turbines-and-birds-and-bats https://www.sierraclub.org/michigan/wind-turbines-and-birds-...

hnbad 3y ago
The article does mention that in passing, though not specifically coal but power lines. It also mentions that house cats literally kill billions of birds a year.
- wenebego 3y ago
  The article cites another article which cites https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0960148112000857 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S09601... for the coal figure
- pixl97 3y ago
  I wonder how many are taken out by our windows. More than once I've seen birds die after splashing themselves thinking it's a passage.
- Xirgil 3y ago
  The issue with just citing bird kill counts is that not all birds are equally endangered or of equal conservatory value. The birds people are worried about are predominately large birds like raptors. House cats kill lots of sparrows, but they're not killing California Condors for example. A more useful analysis would need to focus on impacts of different sources specifically on endangered birds.
quietbritishjim 3y ago
Those statistics would be much more useful scaled by power output of those respective sources. The birth date ratio between coal and wind is between 24:1 and 56:1 according to those figures - but surely the current power output of coal across the world has got to be way higher than wind? So replacing all coal with wind actually would kill more birds
- arghwhat 3y ago
  Those numbers are included above: 0.27 avian fatalities per GWh for wind, 9.4 avian fatalities per GWh for coal. I'm surprised nuclear has higher deaths, but I also feel like any large structure will cause avian deaths one way or another.
  - deathanatos 3y ago
    > Those numbers are included above The comment you're responding to is asking for bird deaths / W (power output). This, > 0.27 avian fatalities per GWh for wind, 9.4 avian fatalities per GWh for coal. Is birth deaths / J (energy output), essentially. It's not accounting for that there's roughly 30 times as much coal generation as there is wind generation. I've put a comment elsewhere that computes the /W numbers: coal is slightly better than wind at not killing birds. The core comment stands — the issue with wind is blown out of proportion — but the stats justifying it should account for the amount of generation. Edit: no, maybe I'm wrong here. I've not had the morning's coffee yet. While the unit is funny choice, … it should be fine. But the math doesn't check out with the first article's numbers. Table 1 from your article with the GWh numbers should contain the data I need, but the site is broken such that I cannot access table 1. So, like, these either grossly contradict the article … or something's amiss. Edit 2: yeah, I think you do want GWh; you have to involve time somewhere, as it's a rate of bird deaths that's calculated. I think the first article's per-annum deaths is what is giving me a headache here, since it's sort of an implied rate in a lot of the writing. So /GWh works … but the math still needs to check out, which it does not appear to.
    - Retric 3y ago
bad_alloc 3y ago
The main killers of birds are: Cats, cars, glass windows, power lines and pesticides. The amount of birds killed by wind power is tiny in comparison. NIMBYs like to abuse this argument to avoid building wind farms while not caring for birds at all.
- stronglikedan 3y ago
  I don'[t think it's reasonable to kill birds in the name of questionable science, just because it's not one of the primary killers, and I think we have a responsibility to do everything possible to limit the number of deaths.
  - mchanson 3y ago
    No we don't.
  - alpaca128 3y ago
    Wind turbines aren't questionable science and actually do reduce bird deaths compared to fossil power plants. In other words, they're fulfilling this responsibility better than expressing vague concerns.
  - rsynnott 3y ago
    > in the name of questionable science ... Hold on, are you suggesting that it's uncertain whether wind turbines work, or something?
- BurningFrog 3y ago
  Those are the main human related bird killers. I assume 99% of birds die of other causes.
- themaninthedark 3y ago
  There is the assumption that there is no difference in the kind of birds killed by cats vs the kind of birds killed by wind turbines. What are the populations and breeding rates of the birds killed by cats vs the birds killed by wind turbines? I would say that anyone who is not looking at that data and is attempting to frame it as cats are worse so who cares is being disingenuous.
__alexs 3y ago
Windows kill something like 600 million birds per year in the USA. There are just like, a lot of birds, and they reproduce quite quickly. [1] https://bioone.org/journals/the-condor/volume-116/issue-1/CONDOR-13-090.1/Birdbuilding-collisions-in-the-United-States--Estimates-of-annual/10.1650/CONDOR-13-090.1.pdf https://bioone.org/journals/the-condor/volume-116/issue-1/CO...
m0llusk 3y ago
That is distortion that fails to examine the real problem. Probably the best example of this is the Altamont Pass wind farm. It was built in a critical golden eagle breeding ground and has had a significant negative effect on the local raptor population. So go ahead and zoom out to where averages say there is no problem and maybe together we can get rid of eagles in North America forever.
- mchanson 3y ago
  Golden Eagles are 'Least Concern' according to wikipedia.
deathanatos 3y ago
Bird deaths per year is a meaningless stat — coal could easily be generating more bird deaths per year because it simply dwarfs wind in power generation. You want that in birds deaths / GW. So, taking the numbers for wind from the article, In [2]: 328_000 / 35 Out[2]: 9371.42857142857 9.3k birds / GW. The article lacks a generation number for coal. Looking it up in [1] it's 3748 TWh/year (sigh…) or 892 GW. Taking the bird deaths per year number from the article, that gives us: In [1]: 7_900_000 / 892 Out[1]: 8856.502242152466 So coal and wind are roughly comparable, with coal being marginally better at not killing birds. Which, TBH, I did not expect. Even so, the problem then with wind is still blown out of proportion. And we should still replace coal with wind, of course. [1]: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/electricity-coal?tab=table&time=earliest..2009 https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/electricity-coal?tab=tabl... > For anyone about to suggest this is because there is more coal than wind: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/1943815X.2012.7 https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/1943815X.2012.7... > > It estimates that wind farms are responsible for roughly 0.27 avian fatalities per gigawatt-hour (GWh) of electricity while nuclear power plants involve 0.6 fatalities per GWh and fossil-fueled power stations are responsible for about 9.4 fatalities per GWh Something is wrong here, then. If we use those numbers, and use the generation numbers for 2009 from [1], we get ~74,250 deaths due to wind, and ~73,479,800 deaths due to coal. These numbers are an order of magnitude off the first article's absolute death numbers, too low for wind and too high for coal.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]

hnbad 3y ago

The article does mention that in passing, though not specifically coal but power lines. It also mentions that house cats literally kill billions of birds a year.

wenebego 3y ago
The article cites another article which cites https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0960148112000857 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S09601... for the coal figure
pixl97 3y ago
I wonder how many are taken out by our windows. More than once I've seen birds die after splashing themselves thinking it's a passage.
Xirgil 3y ago
The issue with just citing bird kill counts is that not all birds are equally endangered or of equal conservatory value. The birds people are worried about are predominately large birds like raptors. House cats kill lots of sparrows, but they're not killing California Condors for example. A more useful analysis would need to focus on impacts of different sources specifically on endangered birds.

quietbritishjim 3y ago

Those statistics would be much more useful scaled by power output of those respective sources. The birth date ratio between coal and wind is between 24:1 and 56:1 according to those figures - but surely the current power output of coal across the world has got to be way higher than wind? So replacing all coal with wind actually would kill more birds

arghwhat 3y ago
Those numbers are included above: 0.27 avian fatalities per GWh for wind, 9.4 avian fatalities per GWh for coal. I'm surprised nuclear has higher deaths, but I also feel like any large structure will cause avian deaths one way or another.
- deathanatos 3y ago
  > Those numbers are included above The comment you're responding to is asking for bird deaths / W (power output). This, > 0.27 avian fatalities per GWh for wind, 9.4 avian fatalities per GWh for coal. Is birth deaths / J (energy output), essentially. It's not accounting for that there's roughly 30 times as much coal generation as there is wind generation. I've put a comment elsewhere that computes the /W numbers: coal is slightly better than wind at not killing birds. The core comment stands — the issue with wind is blown out of proportion — but the stats justifying it should account for the amount of generation. Edit: no, maybe I'm wrong here. I've not had the morning's coffee yet. While the unit is funny choice, … it should be fine. But the math doesn't check out with the first article's numbers. Table 1 from your article with the GWh numbers should contain the data I need, but the site is broken such that I cannot access table 1. So, like, these either grossly contradict the article … or something's amiss. Edit 2: yeah, I think you do want GWh; you have to involve time somewhere, as it's a rate of bird deaths that's calculated. I think the first article's per-annum deaths is what is giving me a headache here, since it's sort of an implied rate in a lot of the writing. So /GWh works … but the math still needs to check out, which it does not appear to.
  - Retric 3y ago

bad_alloc 3y ago

The main killers of birds are: Cats, cars, glass windows, power lines and pesticides. The amount of birds killed by wind power is tiny in comparison. NIMBYs like to abuse this argument to avoid building wind farms while not caring for birds at all.

stronglikedan 3y ago
I don'[t think it's reasonable to kill birds in the name of questionable science, just because it's not one of the primary killers, and I think we have a responsibility to do everything possible to limit the number of deaths.
- mchanson 3y ago
  No we don't.
- alpaca128 3y ago
  Wind turbines aren't questionable science and actually do reduce bird deaths compared to fossil power plants. In other words, they're fulfilling this responsibility better than expressing vague concerns.
- rsynnott 3y ago
  > in the name of questionable science ... Hold on, are you suggesting that it's uncertain whether wind turbines work, or something?
BurningFrog 3y ago
Those are the main human related bird killers. I assume 99% of birds die of other causes.
themaninthedark 3y ago
There is the assumption that there is no difference in the kind of birds killed by cats vs the kind of birds killed by wind turbines. What are the populations and breeding rates of the birds killed by cats vs the birds killed by wind turbines? I would say that anyone who is not looking at that data and is attempting to frame it as cats are worse so who cares is being disingenuous.

__alexs 3y ago

Windows kill something like 600 million birds per year in the USA. There are just like, a lot of birds, and they reproduce quite quickly. [1] https://bioone.org/journals/the-condor/volume-116/issue-1/CONDOR-13-090.1/Birdbuilding-collisions-in-the-United-States--Estimates-of-annual/10.1650/CONDOR-13-090.1.pdf https://bioone.org/journals/the-condor/volume-116/issue-1/CO...

m0llusk 3y ago

That is distortion that fails to examine the real problem. Probably the best example of this is the Altamont Pass wind farm. It was built in a critical golden eagle breeding ground and has had a significant negative effect on the local raptor population. So go ahead and zoom out to where averages say there is no problem and maybe together we can get rid of eagles in North America forever.

mchanson 3y ago
Golden Eagles are 'Least Concern' according to wikipedia.

deathanatos 3y ago

Bird deaths per year is a meaningless stat — coal could easily be generating more bird deaths per year because it simply dwarfs wind in power generation. You want that in birds deaths / GW. So, taking the numbers for wind from the article, In [2]: 328_000 / 35 Out[2]: 9371.42857142857 9.3k birds / GW. The article lacks a generation number for coal. Looking it up in [1] it's 3748 TWh/year (sigh…) or 892 GW. Taking the bird deaths per year number from the article, that gives us: In [1]: 7_900_000 / 892 Out[1]: 8856.502242152466 So coal and wind are roughly comparable, with coal being marginally better at not killing birds. Which, TBH, I did not expect. Even so, the problem then with wind is still blown out of proportion. And we should still replace coal with wind, of course. [1]: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/electricity-coal?tab=table&time=earliest..2009 https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/electricity-coal?tab=tabl... > For anyone about to suggest this is because there is more coal than wind: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/1943815X.2012.7 https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/1943815X.2012.7... > > It estimates that wind farms are responsible for roughly 0.27 avian fatalities per gigawatt-hour (GWh) of electricity while nuclear power plants involve 0.6 fatalities per GWh and fossil-fueled power stations are responsible for about 9.4 fatalities per GWh Something is wrong here, then. If we use those numbers, and use the generation numbers for 2009 from [1], we get ~74,250 deaths due to wind, and ~73,479,800 deaths due to coal. These numbers are an order of magnitude off the first article's absolute death numbers, too low for wind and too high for coal.

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]