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> the potential of wind power to damage ecosystems by killing or disturbing wildlife has been a concern voiced by both environmentalists and those who more broa

> the potential of wind power to damage ecosystems by killing or disturbing wildlife has been a concern voiced by both environmentalists and those who more broadly oppose renewable energy... > In the following three years, just six birds were killed by the painted turbines, compared to the 18 killed by four nearby unpainted turbines, per Ars Technica. Seems like nothing but a distraction. My friend's cat (approximately 0.25m tall, negative 16 watts power production) is more of a menace to avian wildlife than an eighty-meter diameter, 2,300,000 watt wind turbine. That's not all that impressive, that cat is well-known to be quite a menace, but I'll have to tell her about her new rank the next time she switches from purring at belly rubs to biting my hand. Even in the global estimate of half a million birds killed by turbines per year, there are something like 50-90 billion birds on the planet, with an average lifespan of 2-5 years. Something like 20 billion birds die every year of various causes, if 0.0025% of those deaths are caused by 900 gigawatts of wind turbines that's OK. If the proposed alternative to these turbines is not austerity but coal-fired power, the long-term climate effects of that are more deadly still.

ricardo81 3y ago
Appreciate your point as there's solid numbers about avian deaths of birds from cats vs turbines. There's a fair point about larger birds of prey who have smaller populations (and quite possibly longer breeding times). I think it's a valid point, vs the isolated number of birds killed by turbines used as a reason against wind resource. Also have to factor in the amount of deaths caused by air pollution, humans or otherwise.
orev 3y ago
Sounds like a false dilemma fallacy to me. Wind turbines and cats aren’t related in any way, and if both are a problem the solutions are completely independent of each other. How does painting turbine blades have any effect on birds killed by cats?
- hutzlibu 3y ago
  I would think his point is, that the number of bird deaths are simply neglectible compared to what for example house cats do (or windows). So no need for much further research, that could be spend better elsewhere.
- kitd 3y ago
  The point is that efforts to curb wind power due to the threat to birds is irrational if you aren't bothered about the threat from domestic cats.
  - willis936 3y ago
    Many people are bothered by that. If there are low effort means to get ahead of shifting sentiments then they're worth pursuing.
    - dahart 3y ago
      How much of a shifting sentiment is bird death really? It’d be nice if windmills didn’t kill birds, and I agree with the idea that we should just do it if it’s low effort. But this topic has always felt a bit more like a talking point fueled by vested business interests, and less like genuine concern.
      - lapinot 3y ago
        It's definitely a genuine concern, at least for some people (let's say degrowth ecologists). (not to say oil companies aren't using these in bad faith too) Usually this argument exist in the framework of explaining how large wind turbines are actually industrial facilities with associated risks (among which killing birds, waste, need for concrete/infrastructure in agricultural land, ..) and not somehow "free" "green" or "renewable" energy. Modern "wind farms" have basically nothing to do with windmills or small-scale wind power like wind-powered water wells (which typically are used as direct power for mechanical or heat energy): they need global supply-chains and big companies.
        dahart 3y ago
        This is a fair point. But the part that’s almost always missing is the comparison to what the windmills are replacing. It’s fair to say that wind turbines kill some birds and that they require some resources to build and maintain, etc. When people try to point at the need for infrastructure for windmills as a risk or negative, and they leave out how much infrastructure is needed for the alternatives, it is a sneaky way to leave people with the impression that wind power has some kind of net negative or net risk, when often it’s a massive landslide of a net positive compared to what we will do if we don’t build the wind farm and get power some other way. The degrowth ecologists know this better than most of us. As an example, the usual comparison brought up with birds getting killed is the number of birds killed by cats. We often don’t hear about the number of birds killed by oil spills. Deep water Horizon killed as many birds in a single spill as are killed globally in a year by wind turbines, and spills continue year after year. We don’t talk about the number of birds killed by power lines either.
- arghwhat 3y ago
  It is not presented as a dilemma, but as a perspective: The numbers reported are tiny compared to other well-accepted causes of avian deaths. In other words, the numbers lack a good scale for comparison. Minimizing the issue would definitely be positive, but is also largely inconsequential in the big picture, and if such measures slow adoption it would even be harmful as pollution is an indirect cause of avian death.
- _aavaa_ 3y ago
  The point their making is that they're both equally irrelevant to the consideration of using wind turbines to generate electricity. Why are we even having a discussion about bird death from wind turbines? That's the important question. It isn't because people and companies suddenly started caring more about animal deaths from electricity production. It's straight up FUD about renewable energy. Articles like this, and discussion about bird deaths from turbines in general, frame the issues as something that must be talked about and discussed before installing wind turbines. As if the status quo is 0 environmental impact. But it's not. The status quo is oil, fossil gas, and coal. All of which have a significantly higher environmental impact, by orders of magnitude, than however many birds do or do not get killed by wind turbines.
  - smileysteve 3y ago
    This. Wind turbines occasionally kill a bird, but so do windows in houses, so do cars, so do cats. And oil and a warming planet definitely hurt birds. The next argument is the fiberglass waste, of which nobody gave 2 thoughts about the the fiberglass recreational boats that similarly don't break down made over the last 70 years.
- mrweasel 3y ago
  > Wind turbines and cats aren’t related in any way This isn't even about the birds when you get down to it. Sure in a few areas with endangered species of birds, turbines can be an issue. Mostly though, it's about limiting the number of wind turbines installed. Some people hate turbines with a passion and protecting birds is an excuse to fight installation of new turbines.
mrweasel 3y ago
What I've learned from debating this with people, online or offline, is that we apparently do not talk about the damage cats do to wildlife. The only people I've seen agreeing with me that cat ownership should be heavily restricted and limited to indoor cats is the hunters. Everyone else seem to be fine with cats killing birds, lizards and small mammals by the billions. For the wind turbines, maybe paint or restrict them in areas with endangered birds, but just accept that every now and then they are going to cut a seagull in half.
- Tade0 3y ago
  > What I've learned from debating this with people, online or offline, is that we apparently do not talk about the damage cats do to wildlife. There's a whole food chain going on on the outskirts of cities, where you might occasionally find foxes. There's a fox living in my neighbourhood and from the yapping and hissing at night it seems to be actively at war with the local cats.
  - kjkjadksj 3y ago
    Fox can easily kill a cat. The entire head will fit in their jaws. They are probably yapping at eachother.
- kjkjadksj 3y ago
  We live in a world where apex predators such as the wolf no longer exist where it evolved in many cases. Without the pressure from smaller more numerous predators such as coyotes or cats, I expect disease spreading pest populations such as the rat would explode. Theres a lot of handwringing about not disturbing the environment, but just about all around the world its already very disturbed and scarred with human activity anyhow, to the point we don’t even realize how badly we screwed up the dynamics of the environment, e.g. by culling the wolf for example.
- yowzadave 3y ago
  > we apparently do not talk about the damage cats do to wildlife. To the contrary--I love the damage that cats do to rat/mouse/pigeon wildlife in my city (New York)! When I was visiting Athens on vacation, I noticed that there were thousands of wild cats that roamed the ruins; I wonder if, rather than seeing wild cats as an animal control problem, we should see them as a pest control measure?
gadders 3y ago
>>If the proposed alternative to these turbines is not austerity but coal-fired power Nobody wants that, but gas or nuclear could be a good alternative.
- p1mrx 3y ago
  How is gas a good alternative to wind? Do you mean gas + carbon sequestration?
  - gadders 3y ago
    Well it works and is continuously available as a start, but I mainly meant against the strawman of replacing wind turbines with coal.
0x000xca0xfe 3y ago
Birds are also highly affected by air pollution. I would be surprised if coal-fired plants are not mass bird killers just like they kill hundreds of thousands of humans every year.
arrowsmith 3y ago
The rebuttal I've heard to this is that they're not killing the same birds. Cats kill small, common birds like robins and sparrows whose populations can easily absorb the loss. Wind turbines kill larger, rarer birds like eagles and owls, whose deaths have a much bigger ecological impact. Someone more qualified than me can dissect this argument and crunch the data. Just mentioning it to illustrate that the "they kill birds!" argument might be more nuanced than you think.
- rcpt 3y ago
  > populations can easily absorb the loss Cats drive bird species to extinction all the time.
  - lapinot 3y ago
    I'm not convinced by this part too, but it doesn't invalidate the actual argument that these are partly disjoint.
    - toomuchtodo 3y ago
      Australia is concerned enough wrt cats impacting biodiversity: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/sep/04/invasive-species-no-1-driver-of-biodiversity-loss-in-australia-and-feral-cats-have-biggest-impact-report-finds https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/sep/04/invasive... https://www.npr.org/2023/09/12/1198822110/australia-weighs-cat-curfews-and-neutering-requirements-to-rein-in-feral-felines https://www.npr.org/2023/09/12/1198822110/australia-weighs-c... https://phys.org/news/2023-09-australian-year-feral-cat-closer.html https://phys.org/news/2023-09-australian-year-feral-cat-clos... https://www.nytimes.com/2023/09/08/world/asia/culling-curfews-and-caps-australia-declares-war-on-its-cat-problem.html https://www.nytimes.com/2023/09/08/world/asia/culling-curfew... Also, https://abcbirds.org/program/cats-indoors/cats-and-birds/ https://abcbirds.org/program/cats-indoors/cats-and-birds/ | https://dariuszzdziebk.wpenginepowered.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/Lowe-et-al.-2004-IUCN-top-100-invasives.pdf https://dariuszzdziebk.wpenginepowered.com/wp-content/upload... > Outdoor domestic cats are a recognized threat to global biodiversity. Cats have contributed to the extinction of 63 species of birds, mammals, and reptiles in the wild and continue to adversely impact a wide variety of other species, including those at risk of extinction, such as Piping Plover. > The ecological dangers are so critical that the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) lists domestic cats as one of the world’s worst non-native invasive species.
notahacker 3y ago
> My friend's cat (approximately 0.25m tall, negative 16 watts power production) is more of a menace to avian wildlife than an eighty-meter diameter, 2,300,000 watt wind turbine Have you tried painting your friend's cat? ;)
perlgeek 3y ago
It is a distraction, but it's also a real issue for wind farm operators. I've visited a wind farm and got a tour by one of the engineers who was involved with the permits and construction, and he told us that due to the population of several rare species of bats and birds, the turbine we were visiting couldn't operate at certain hours. If painting one of the blades black could reduce the non-operation hours, that would be a significant win for the operators.
- D13Fd 3y ago
  I can't imagine it would help with bats, given that I understand they use sound instead of light to navigate at night.

ricardo81 3y ago

Appreciate your point as there's solid numbers about avian deaths of birds from cats vs turbines. There's a fair point about larger birds of prey who have smaller populations (and quite possibly longer breeding times). I think it's a valid point, vs the isolated number of birds killed by turbines used as a reason against wind resource. Also have to factor in the amount of deaths caused by air pollution, humans or otherwise.

orev 3y ago

Sounds like a false dilemma fallacy to me. Wind turbines and cats aren’t related in any way, and if both are a problem the solutions are completely independent of each other. How does painting turbine blades have any effect on birds killed by cats?

hutzlibu 3y ago
I would think his point is, that the number of bird deaths are simply neglectible compared to what for example house cats do (or windows). So no need for much further research, that could be spend better elsewhere.
kitd 3y ago
The point is that efforts to curb wind power due to the threat to birds is irrational if you aren't bothered about the threat from domestic cats.
- willis936 3y ago
  Many people are bothered by that. If there are low effort means to get ahead of shifting sentiments then they're worth pursuing.
  - dahart 3y ago
    How much of a shifting sentiment is bird death really? It’d be nice if windmills didn’t kill birds, and I agree with the idea that we should just do it if it’s low effort. But this topic has always felt a bit more like a talking point fueled by vested business interests, and less like genuine concern.
    - lapinot 3y ago
      It's definitely a genuine concern, at least for some people (let's say degrowth ecologists). (not to say oil companies aren't using these in bad faith too) Usually this argument exist in the framework of explaining how large wind turbines are actually industrial facilities with associated risks (among which killing birds, waste, need for concrete/infrastructure in agricultural land, ..) and not somehow "free" "green" or "renewable" energy. Modern "wind farms" have basically nothing to do with windmills or small-scale wind power like wind-powered water wells (which typically are used as direct power for mechanical or heat energy): they need global supply-chains and big companies.
      - dahart 3y ago
        This is a fair point. But the part that’s almost always missing is the comparison to what the windmills are replacing. It’s fair to say that wind turbines kill some birds and that they require some resources to build and maintain, etc. When people try to point at the need for infrastructure for windmills as a risk or negative, and they leave out how much infrastructure is needed for the alternatives, it is a sneaky way to leave people with the impression that wind power has some kind of net negative or net risk, when often it’s a massive landslide of a net positive compared to what we will do if we don’t build the wind farm and get power some other way. The degrowth ecologists know this better than most of us. As an example, the usual comparison brought up with birds getting killed is the number of birds killed by cats. We often don’t hear about the number of birds killed by oil spills. Deep water Horizon killed as many birds in a single spill as are killed globally in a year by wind turbines, and spills continue year after year. We don’t talk about the number of birds killed by power lines either.
arghwhat 3y ago
It is not presented as a dilemma, but as a perspective: The numbers reported are tiny compared to other well-accepted causes of avian deaths. In other words, the numbers lack a good scale for comparison. Minimizing the issue would definitely be positive, but is also largely inconsequential in the big picture, and if such measures slow adoption it would even be harmful as pollution is an indirect cause of avian death.
_aavaa_ 3y ago
The point their making is that they're both equally irrelevant to the consideration of using wind turbines to generate electricity. Why are we even having a discussion about bird death from wind turbines? That's the important question. It isn't because people and companies suddenly started caring more about animal deaths from electricity production. It's straight up FUD about renewable energy. Articles like this, and discussion about bird deaths from turbines in general, frame the issues as something that must be talked about and discussed before installing wind turbines. As if the status quo is 0 environmental impact. But it's not. The status quo is oil, fossil gas, and coal. All of which have a significantly higher environmental impact, by orders of magnitude, than however many birds do or do not get killed by wind turbines.
- smileysteve 3y ago
  This. Wind turbines occasionally kill a bird, but so do windows in houses, so do cars, so do cats. And oil and a warming planet definitely hurt birds. The next argument is the fiberglass waste, of which nobody gave 2 thoughts about the the fiberglass recreational boats that similarly don't break down made over the last 70 years.
mrweasel 3y ago
> Wind turbines and cats aren’t related in any way This isn't even about the birds when you get down to it. Sure in a few areas with endangered species of birds, turbines can be an issue. Mostly though, it's about limiting the number of wind turbines installed. Some people hate turbines with a passion and protecting birds is an excuse to fight installation of new turbines.

mrweasel 3y ago

What I've learned from debating this with people, online or offline, is that we apparently do not talk about the damage cats do to wildlife. The only people I've seen agreeing with me that cat ownership should be heavily restricted and limited to indoor cats is the hunters. Everyone else seem to be fine with cats killing birds, lizards and small mammals by the billions. For the wind turbines, maybe paint or restrict them in areas with endangered birds, but just accept that every now and then they are going to cut a seagull in half.

Tade0 3y ago
> What I've learned from debating this with people, online or offline, is that we apparently do not talk about the damage cats do to wildlife. There's a whole food chain going on on the outskirts of cities, where you might occasionally find foxes. There's a fox living in my neighbourhood and from the yapping and hissing at night it seems to be actively at war with the local cats.
- kjkjadksj 3y ago
  Fox can easily kill a cat. The entire head will fit in their jaws. They are probably yapping at eachother.
kjkjadksj 3y ago
We live in a world where apex predators such as the wolf no longer exist where it evolved in many cases. Without the pressure from smaller more numerous predators such as coyotes or cats, I expect disease spreading pest populations such as the rat would explode. Theres a lot of handwringing about not disturbing the environment, but just about all around the world its already very disturbed and scarred with human activity anyhow, to the point we don’t even realize how badly we screwed up the dynamics of the environment, e.g. by culling the wolf for example.
yowzadave 3y ago
> we apparently do not talk about the damage cats do to wildlife. To the contrary--I love the damage that cats do to rat/mouse/pigeon wildlife in my city (New York)! When I was visiting Athens on vacation, I noticed that there were thousands of wild cats that roamed the ruins; I wonder if, rather than seeing wild cats as an animal control problem, we should see them as a pest control measure?

gadders 3y ago

>>If the proposed alternative to these turbines is not austerity but coal-fired power Nobody wants that, but gas or nuclear could be a good alternative.

p1mrx 3y ago
How is gas a good alternative to wind? Do you mean gas + carbon sequestration?
- gadders 3y ago
  Well it works and is continuously available as a start, but I mainly meant against the strawman of replacing wind turbines with coal.

0x000xca0xfe 3y ago

Birds are also highly affected by air pollution. I would be surprised if coal-fired plants are not mass bird killers just like they kill hundreds of thousands of humans every year.

arrowsmith 3y ago

The rebuttal I've heard to this is that they're not killing the same birds. Cats kill small, common birds like robins and sparrows whose populations can easily absorb the loss. Wind turbines kill larger, rarer birds like eagles and owls, whose deaths have a much bigger ecological impact. Someone more qualified than me can dissect this argument and crunch the data. Just mentioning it to illustrate that the "they kill birds!" argument might be more nuanced than you think.

rcpt 3y ago
> populations can easily absorb the loss Cats drive bird species to extinction all the time.
- lapinot 3y ago
  I'm not convinced by this part too, but it doesn't invalidate the actual argument that these are partly disjoint.
  - toomuchtodo 3y ago
    Australia is concerned enough wrt cats impacting biodiversity: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/sep/04/invasive-species-no-1-driver-of-biodiversity-loss-in-australia-and-feral-cats-have-biggest-impact-report-finds https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/sep/04/invasive... https://www.npr.org/2023/09/12/1198822110/australia-weighs-cat-curfews-and-neutering-requirements-to-rein-in-feral-felines https://www.npr.org/2023/09/12/1198822110/australia-weighs-c... https://phys.org/news/2023-09-australian-year-feral-cat-closer.html https://phys.org/news/2023-09-australian-year-feral-cat-clos... https://www.nytimes.com/2023/09/08/world/asia/culling-curfews-and-caps-australia-declares-war-on-its-cat-problem.html https://www.nytimes.com/2023/09/08/world/asia/culling-curfew... Also, https://abcbirds.org/program/cats-indoors/cats-and-birds/ https://abcbirds.org/program/cats-indoors/cats-and-birds/ | https://dariuszzdziebk.wpenginepowered.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/Lowe-et-al.-2004-IUCN-top-100-invasives.pdf https://dariuszzdziebk.wpenginepowered.com/wp-content/upload... > Outdoor domestic cats are a recognized threat to global biodiversity. Cats have contributed to the extinction of 63 species of birds, mammals, and reptiles in the wild and continue to adversely impact a wide variety of other species, including those at risk of extinction, such as Piping Plover. > The ecological dangers are so critical that the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) lists domestic cats as one of the world’s worst non-native invasive species.

notahacker 3y ago

> My friend's cat (approximately 0.25m tall, negative 16 watts power production) is more of a menace to avian wildlife than an eighty-meter diameter, 2,300,000 watt wind turbine Have you tried painting your friend's cat? ;)

perlgeek 3y ago

It is a distraction, but it's also a real issue for wind farm operators. I've visited a wind farm and got a tour by one of the engineers who was involved with the permits and construction, and he told us that due to the population of several rare species of bats and birds, the turbine we were visiting couldn't operate at certain hours. If painting one of the blades black could reduce the non-operation hours, that would be a significant win for the operators.

D13Fd 3y ago
I can't imagine it would help with bats, given that I understand they use sound instead of light to navigate at night.