4 ms·

> we're told the blades are a risk This is a moral panic emanating from the same people who brought you "climate change isn't real because snow still happens".

by kibwen 3y ago

> we're told the blades are a risk This is a moral panic emanating from the same people who brought you "climate change isn't real because snow still happens". If you look at graphs of the number of preventable bird deaths due to human causes, the graph is dominated by outdoor cats (which kill billions per year), then a sliver of that is from window collisions, then the part attributable to wind turbines is too small to be visible. https://birdhistory.substack.com/p/the-first-cat-war https://birdhistory.substack.com/p/the-first-cat-war (graph near the bottom)

ggm 3y ago
No disagree, its the availability of good hard facts to push back which interests me. The figures for Australian feral cats (6+ million) and the predation effects (billions) are so huge, it's hard to grasp sometimes. We saw the same thing with solar thermal: "oh no the birds will fry" -well sure, some will. but compared to birds hitting glass towers, birds dying in other ways, feral cats.. not a biggie. For specific threatened species, there are mitigations which have to be considered with wind towers. It's not nothing. But its functionally exceeded by the real risk.
pbhjpbhj 3y ago
Wind turbines affect different species of birds differently (they have different flight patterns and different abilities to avoid large objects) and are associated with different effects on populations of birds to those of predation. IIRC, it's not collisions that cause most deaths, it's actually pressure effects (barotrauma; to which bats are reportedly more susceptible - eg Barclay et al. "... bat fatalities ..." paper[s]). Larger species of bird get displaced which has a knock-on effect to the local eco-system. A particularly important point if the species is struggling to survive. From the studies I've seen, only maybe a dozen on these topics, the bigger issue is effect on bats. Also, fwiw, fracking and other fossil fuels do more damage to bird populations than wind turbines; but I don't feel that means we should be complacent. It's right to properly monitor the effects of new technologies on the wider environment. There's definitely a worrying difference in reporting of 'green' harms in Western media (eg Loss et al. "Estimates of bird collisions ...").

by kibwen 3y ago

ggm 3y ago

No disagree, its the availability of good hard facts to push back which interests me. The figures for Australian feral cats (6+ million) and the predation effects (billions) are so huge, it's hard to grasp sometimes. We saw the same thing with solar thermal: "oh no the birds will fry" -well sure, some will. but compared to birds hitting glass towers, birds dying in other ways, feral cats.. not a biggie. For specific threatened species, there are mitigations which have to be considered with wind towers. It's not nothing. But its functionally exceeded by the real risk.

pbhjpbhj 3y ago

Wind turbines affect different species of birds differently (they have different flight patterns and different abilities to avoid large objects) and are associated with different effects on populations of birds to those of predation. IIRC, it's not collisions that cause most deaths, it's actually pressure effects (barotrauma; to which bats are reportedly more susceptible - eg Barclay et al. "... bat fatalities ..." paper[s]). Larger species of bird get displaced which has a knock-on effect to the local eco-system. A particularly important point if the species is struggling to survive. From the studies I've seen, only maybe a dozen on these topics, the bigger issue is effect on bats. Also, fwiw, fracking and other fossil fuels do more damage to bird populations than wind turbines; but I don't feel that means we should be complacent. It's right to properly monitor the effects of new technologies on the wider environment. There's definitely a worrying difference in reporting of 'green' harms in Western media (eg Loss et al. "Estimates of bird collisions ...").