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The local birds killed by oil drilling aren't even what we should be comparing to. Even if that number were zero, bird populations world still be better off in

by SamBam 3y ago

The local birds killed by oil drilling aren't even what we should be comparing to. Even if that number were zero, bird populations world still be better off in a world powered by wind turbines than oil and gas. Global warning is coming for birds too. Global warming poses an "existential threat for two thirds of North American bird species" [1] and obviously a similar proportion of bird species around the globe. 1. https://www.audubon.org/climate/survivalbydegrees https://www.audubon.org/climate/survivalbydegrees

swader999 3y ago
[flagged]
- ajross 3y ago
  Because they migrated or are in hibernation, adaptations that exist precisely to accommodate the particular climate of your area. Disrupt that and you mess up their ecosystem. I really fail to understand how this kind of glib response persists even in forums like this one where people claim to be good at reasoning.
  - wredue 3y ago
    Lots of these are bots, and be careful responding to them, as HN views responding to the anti-science brigades as “not in the spirit of good conversation”, and will readily post limit you (while funnily allowing anti-science to remain rampant, while also complaining about how bigotry and anti-science is becoming too rampant here).
    - bigbillheck 3y ago
      > Lots of these are bots If you check that account's post history the entity behind it certainly seems to be an actual person.
botanical 3y ago
Agree 100%. Wind turbines killing birds is a disingenuous argument when it comes to climate change. > Birds of prey in Africa experiencing population collapse, study finds > new research used road surveys to find that nearly 90% of the 42 raptor species studied had experienced declines, with more than two-thirds showing evidence of being globally threatened. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2024/jan/04/birds-of-prey-in-africa-experiencing-population-collapse-study-finds-aoe https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2024/jan/04/birds-of...
- arcticbull 3y ago
  > Agree 100%. Wind turbines killing birds is a disingenuous argument when it comes to climate change. If the people involved in this conversation actually cared about birds, they wouldn't be worried about either. They'd be worried about cats. Cats kill about 20-55% of the entire US bird population every single year. Somewhere between 1.3B and 4B birds per year in the US alone. [1] And an order of magnitude more small mammals (6.3B - 22.3B). It's several orders of magnitude more than turbines and oil-and-gas drilling combined. Studies put the number of birds killed by wind turbines in the US at 140K-690K. That's 0.0035% to 0.05% of the birds killed by cats. It would literally be a rounding error nobody would ever notice if all the wind turbines came down. I honestly can't believe we're still having this conversation in the context of wind power. Put some UV stickers or black paint on them and move on. [3] [1] https://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms2380 https://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms2380 [2] https://www.denverpost.com/2019/09/20/bird-population-decrease-third-fewer/ https://www.denverpost.com/2019/09/20/bird-population-decrea... [3] https://group.vattenfall.com/press-and-media/newsroom/2022/black-turbine-blades-reduce-bird-collisions https://group.vattenfall.com/press-and-media/newsroom/2022/b...
  - 725686 3y ago
    I don't know shit, but I'm pretty sure the kind of birds cats kill are very different from the kind of birds that get killed in wind turbines, i.e. eagles
    - arcticbull 3y ago
loceng 3y ago
Are you unconsciously keeping nuclear energy out of the equation, or why is nuclear not an option in your mind - where then bird populations will be better off, and where solar also isn't destroying the surface environment where life and forests could otherwise thrive [if we're talking about having energy generated locally, then most of the world doesn't have convenient desserts nearby, which arguably we could also turn green if we wanted]?
- a_gnostic 3y ago
  [flagged]
  - SoftTalker 3y ago
    Those cooling towers are just large hollow hyperboloids. There's nothing in there that would "shred" a bird. And since they don't move, it's not likely that a bird would collide with one (though maybe that happens from time to time)
    - mikepurvis 3y ago
      Them being solid and made of concrete is almost certainly a huge step up over skyscrapers made of glass, which is a deathtrap for birds on account of being reflective and basically invisible to them. That said I think the GP might just be trolling, as I've never heard of anyone raising an issue with cooling towers being a threat in this way. The anti-nuclear discourse has always (rightly) been focused squarely on operational safety and waste disposal.
      - deleted 3y ago
        [deleted]
  - masklinn 3y ago
    Cooling towers don’t pull anything, they’re evaporation columns. What air movement they cause is basically some passively generated wind at the base. And if a migrating bird does not notice a cooling tower it’s on its last legs (or feathers), they’re completely static and about as stealthy as a cliff.
dawnerd 3y ago
Climate change causing larger fires hurt bird sanctuaries like this one that happened in my backyard https://phys.org/news/2017-12-scientists-survivors-thomas-condor-sanctuary.html https://phys.org/news/2017-12-scientists-survivors-thomas-co...
Grimburger 3y ago
Domesticated cats are by far the biggest threats to birds worldwide. You won't see anti-wind advocates talking about curfews or outright banning them though.
- Loughla 3y ago
  That's because cats are not a power source? I'm genuinely confused how they would even be part of this conversation.
  - wanderingbit 3y ago
    I think they're bringing it up because cats are indeed the #1 killer of birds, and so for people who care about maintaining bird populations (presumably people who read this article) it would be better to focus on solutions that decrease the damage cats to do birds, rather than the damage wind turbines + oil-and-gas plants do to birds. Of course, if you care about birds you're going to try to solve it across multiple fronts. But cat damage should be the first thing bird-lovers try to mitigate.
    - wingworks 3y ago
      Also dogs aren't great for bird populations. Especially here in NZ where we have some flightless birds. I would even argue that dogs are a bigger issue here. At least around where I live, a large majority of people own at least 1 dog and often go walking with them in native reserves, often ignoring on-lead or no dog rules.
    - belorn 3y ago
      Are the bird species that cat kills the same ones that "wind turbines + oil-and-gas plants" kill?
      - Grimburger 3y ago
        Cat kills are basically indiscriminate, from anecdotal evidence I'd say that turbine strikes are probably not and certain species are more likely to get hit. In Australia at least there's species who routinely get hit by cars and others which rarely do. That said, the enormous delta in raw numbers makes this line of argument quite spurious. Wind turbine bird strikes are magnitudes smaller than deaths from domestic cats. > Collectively, roaming pet cats kill 546 million animals per year in Australia https://invasives.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/Pet-cat-impacts-June-2023.pdf https://invasives.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/Pet-cat-... > Cats kill more than a million birds every day across Australia, according to our new estimate — the first robust attempt to quantify the problem on a nationwide scale. > By combining data on the cat population, hunting rates and spatial distribution, we calculate that they kill 377 million birds a year. https://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-10-04/cats-killing-one-million-birds-in-australia-every-day-estimates/9013960 https://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-10-04/cats-killing-one-mill... > a report on bird and avifauna mortality commissioned by AGL Energy for its Macarthur Wind Farm found that 10.19 birds were killed by each turbine in a 12 month period. This equates to over 1 400 birds killed at the Macarthur Wind Farm alone and over 21 000 if extrapolated across the country. This is likely underestimated due to scavenging but still magnitudes of difference. https://www.aph.gov.au/parliamentary_business/committees/senate/wind_turbines/wind_turbines/~/media/Committees/wind_ctte/Final_Report/c05.pdf https://www.aph.gov.au/parliamentary_business/committees/sen...

by SamBam 3y ago

swader999 3y ago

[flagged]

ajross 3y ago
Because they migrated or are in hibernation, adaptations that exist precisely to accommodate the particular climate of your area. Disrupt that and you mess up their ecosystem. I really fail to understand how this kind of glib response persists even in forums like this one where people claim to be good at reasoning.
- wredue 3y ago
  Lots of these are bots, and be careful responding to them, as HN views responding to the anti-science brigades as “not in the spirit of good conversation”, and will readily post limit you (while funnily allowing anti-science to remain rampant, while also complaining about how bigotry and anti-science is becoming too rampant here).
  - bigbillheck 3y ago
    > Lots of these are bots If you check that account's post history the entity behind it certainly seems to be an actual person.

botanical 3y ago

Agree 100%. Wind turbines killing birds is a disingenuous argument when it comes to climate change. > Birds of prey in Africa experiencing population collapse, study finds > new research used road surveys to find that nearly 90% of the 42 raptor species studied had experienced declines, with more than two-thirds showing evidence of being globally threatened. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2024/jan/04/birds-of-prey-in-africa-experiencing-population-collapse-study-finds-aoe https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2024/jan/04/birds-of...

arcticbull 3y ago
> Agree 100%. Wind turbines killing birds is a disingenuous argument when it comes to climate change. If the people involved in this conversation actually cared about birds, they wouldn't be worried about either. They'd be worried about cats. Cats kill about 20-55% of the entire US bird population every single year. Somewhere between 1.3B and 4B birds per year in the US alone. [1] And an order of magnitude more small mammals (6.3B - 22.3B). It's several orders of magnitude more than turbines and oil-and-gas drilling combined. Studies put the number of birds killed by wind turbines in the US at 140K-690K. That's 0.0035% to 0.05% of the birds killed by cats. It would literally be a rounding error nobody would ever notice if all the wind turbines came down. I honestly can't believe we're still having this conversation in the context of wind power. Put some UV stickers or black paint on them and move on. [3] [1] https://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms2380 https://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms2380 [2] https://www.denverpost.com/2019/09/20/bird-population-decrease-third-fewer/ https://www.denverpost.com/2019/09/20/bird-population-decrea... [3] https://group.vattenfall.com/press-and-media/newsroom/2022/black-turbine-blades-reduce-bird-collisions https://group.vattenfall.com/press-and-media/newsroom/2022/b...
- 725686 3y ago
  I don't know shit, but I'm pretty sure the kind of birds cats kill are very different from the kind of birds that get killed in wind turbines, i.e. eagles
  - arcticbull 3y ago

loceng 3y ago

Are you unconsciously keeping nuclear energy out of the equation, or why is nuclear not an option in your mind - where then bird populations will be better off, and where solar also isn't destroying the surface environment where life and forests could otherwise thrive [if we're talking about having energy generated locally, then most of the world doesn't have convenient desserts nearby, which arguably we could also turn green if we wanted]?

a_gnostic 3y ago
[flagged]
- SoftTalker 3y ago
  Those cooling towers are just large hollow hyperboloids. There's nothing in there that would "shred" a bird. And since they don't move, it's not likely that a bird would collide with one (though maybe that happens from time to time)
  - mikepurvis 3y ago
    Them being solid and made of concrete is almost certainly a huge step up over skyscrapers made of glass, which is a deathtrap for birds on account of being reflective and basically invisible to them. That said I think the GP might just be trolling, as I've never heard of anyone raising an issue with cooling towers being a threat in this way. The anti-nuclear discourse has always (rightly) been focused squarely on operational safety and waste disposal.
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
- masklinn 3y ago
  Cooling towers don’t pull anything, they’re evaporation columns. What air movement they cause is basically some passively generated wind at the base. And if a migrating bird does not notice a cooling tower it’s on its last legs (or feathers), they’re completely static and about as stealthy as a cliff.

dawnerd 3y ago

Climate change causing larger fires hurt bird sanctuaries like this one that happened in my backyard https://phys.org/news/2017-12-scientists-survivors-thomas-condor-sanctuary.html https://phys.org/news/2017-12-scientists-survivors-thomas-co...

Grimburger 3y ago

Domesticated cats are by far the biggest threats to birds worldwide. You won't see anti-wind advocates talking about curfews or outright banning them though.

Loughla 3y ago
That's because cats are not a power source? I'm genuinely confused how they would even be part of this conversation.
- wanderingbit 3y ago
  I think they're bringing it up because cats are indeed the #1 killer of birds, and so for people who care about maintaining bird populations (presumably people who read this article) it would be better to focus on solutions that decrease the damage cats to do birds, rather than the damage wind turbines + oil-and-gas plants do to birds. Of course, if you care about birds you're going to try to solve it across multiple fronts. But cat damage should be the first thing bird-lovers try to mitigate.
  - wingworks 3y ago
    Also dogs aren't great for bird populations. Especially here in NZ where we have some flightless birds. I would even argue that dogs are a bigger issue here. At least around where I live, a large majority of people own at least 1 dog and often go walking with them in native reserves, often ignoring on-lead or no dog rules.
  - belorn 3y ago
    Are the bird species that cat kills the same ones that "wind turbines + oil-and-gas plants" kill?
    - Grimburger 3y ago
      Cat kills are basically indiscriminate, from anecdotal evidence I'd say that turbine strikes are probably not and certain species are more likely to get hit. In Australia at least there's species who routinely get hit by cars and others which rarely do. That said, the enormous delta in raw numbers makes this line of argument quite spurious. Wind turbine bird strikes are magnitudes smaller than deaths from domestic cats. > Collectively, roaming pet cats kill 546 million animals per year in Australia https://invasives.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/Pet-cat-impacts-June-2023.pdf https://invasives.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/Pet-cat-... > Cats kill more than a million birds every day across Australia, according to our new estimate — the first robust attempt to quantify the problem on a nationwide scale. > By combining data on the cat population, hunting rates and spatial distribution, we calculate that they kill 377 million birds a year. https://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-10-04/cats-killing-one-million-birds-in-australia-every-day-estimates/9013960 https://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-10-04/cats-killing-one-mill... > a report on bird and avifauna mortality commissioned by AGL Energy for its Macarthur Wind Farm found that 10.19 birds were killed by each turbine in a 12 month period. This equates to over 1 400 birds killed at the Macarthur Wind Farm alone and over 21 000 if extrapolated across the country. This is likely underestimated due to scavenging but still magnitudes of difference. https://www.aph.gov.au/parliamentary_business/committees/senate/wind_turbines/wind_turbines/~/media/Committees/wind_ctte/Final_Report/c05.pdf https://www.aph.gov.au/parliamentary_business/committees/sen...