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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

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
    You’re off by an order of magnitude. Coal is 35.7% of the world’s electricity supply in GWh/year vs 7.5% for Wind. So it’s only 4.7x as much coal as wind.
    - deathanatos 3y ago
      No, I'm not. Your ratio is correct for the current numbers for coal/wind; the article is using 2009 numbers for bird deaths. If we want to fairly scale those numbers, we can't do (bird deaths from wind in 2009) / (wind power gen in 2022) or we end up with more nonsense. In 2009, wind power gen was ~275 TWh, coal was 7817 TWh.[1] There's roughly a 30x difference between those. [1]: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/electricity-production-by-source https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/electricity-production-by...
      - Retric 3y ago
        Which might be relevant if the most recent data we had was from a study published in 2009 except it’s not. As turbines got larger the deaths per GWh decreased due to multiple factors. Which is why people have largely stopped looking into it. https://climate.mit.edu/ask-mit/do-wind-turbines-kill-birds https://climate.mit.edu/ask-mit/do-wind-turbines-kill-birds “A 2012 study found that wind projects kill 0.269 birds per gigawatt-hour of electricity produced, compared to 9.36 birds killed per gigawatt-hour of electricity from fossil fuel projects.” And things have continued to improve.
- quietbritishjim 3y ago
  Oh, so it is - either I totally missed it or the comment has been edited since. I seem to remember the comment was quite a bit shorter when I replied (but maybe I'm just thinking of the bit I actually read!).
Retric 3y ago
Coal use as a percentage of total generation is down and Wind has taken off so your intuition is wrong here. In 2022, 7.5% of the worlds electricity supply came from Wind vs 35.7% from coal so 30x easily makes up the difference. https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/share-electricity-wind?tab=chart&facet=none https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/share-electricity-wind?ta... https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/share-electricity-coal?tab=chart https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/share-electricity-coal?ta... PS: Coal was 40.5% in 2014, so the drop is only 12% in 8 years which isn’t massive but it is still significant.

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
  You’re off by an order of magnitude. Coal is 35.7% of the world’s electricity supply in GWh/year vs 7.5% for Wind. So it’s only 4.7x as much coal as wind.
  - deathanatos 3y ago
    No, I'm not. Your ratio is correct for the current numbers for coal/wind; the article is using 2009 numbers for bird deaths. If we want to fairly scale those numbers, we can't do (bird deaths from wind in 2009) / (wind power gen in 2022) or we end up with more nonsense. In 2009, wind power gen was ~275 TWh, coal was 7817 TWh.[1] There's roughly a 30x difference between those. [1]: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/electricity-production-by-source https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/electricity-production-by...
    - Retric 3y ago
      Which might be relevant if the most recent data we had was from a study published in 2009 except it’s not. As turbines got larger the deaths per GWh decreased due to multiple factors. Which is why people have largely stopped looking into it. https://climate.mit.edu/ask-mit/do-wind-turbines-kill-birds https://climate.mit.edu/ask-mit/do-wind-turbines-kill-birds “A 2012 study found that wind projects kill 0.269 birds per gigawatt-hour of electricity produced, compared to 9.36 birds killed per gigawatt-hour of electricity from fossil fuel projects.” And things have continued to improve.
quietbritishjim 3y ago
Oh, so it is - either I totally missed it or the comment has been edited since. I seem to remember the comment was quite a bit shorter when I replied (but maybe I'm just thinking of the bit I actually read!).

Retric 3y ago

Coal use as a percentage of total generation is down and Wind has taken off so your intuition is wrong here. In 2022, 7.5% of the worlds electricity supply came from Wind vs 35.7% from coal so 30x easily makes up the difference. https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/share-electricity-wind?tab=chart&facet=none https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/share-electricity-wind?ta... https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/share-electricity-coal?tab=chart https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/share-electricity-coal?ta... PS: Coal was 40.5% in 2014, so the drop is only 12% in 8 years which isn’t massive but it is still significant.