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But it seems that the principal objection to these counts is that birds don't necessarily die on impact but may travel quite far before succumbing to their inju

by lutorm 2y ago

But it seems that the principal objection to these counts is that birds don't necessarily die on impact but may travel quite far before succumbing to their injuries, so the counts necessarily result in an underestimate of the true effect. Are you saying the area that's surveyed is large enough that this isn't true?

_yb2s 2y ago
I’m certain these studies are able to estimate those other deaths and consider factors beyond just carcasses on the ground, because I am personally close to a biologist that works on this, but I don’t know exactly how they do it. The author here seems to be incorrectly extrapolating research statements on static buildings to windmills, when the latter is much more researched.
- vouaobrasil 2y ago
  That seems like something very far from a certainty. Imagine if you were to cite this in a scientific paper: "a close friend of mine does this but I have no idea how they do it". What about this [1]: > We show that the use of the ORNIS 1%, the 5% mortality criterion, and potential biological removal criteria are inadequate for providing safe thresholds with respect to the impact of wind turbine collisions on populations. From a paper entitled "Mortality limits used in wind energy impact assessment underestimate impacts of wind farms on bird populations". 1. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/ece3.6360 https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/ece3.6360
  - _yb2s 2y ago
    Indeed, I am not qualified to answer that question and don’t have the answer, I am not planning on publishing research in this particular field anytime soon. I am personally satisfied that this is being done by people that do deeply understand the limitations and capabilities of their work, but I cannot transfer that to you.
    - vouaobrasil 2y ago
      I do not doubt that people deeply understand the current state of the art, and that they understand those limitaitons. I am 100% in agreement. But the fact that they understand the limitations and capabilities in their work has no bearing on the effectiveness of their work when it comes to the specific goal of protecting bird populations. (One does not logically imply the other.)
      - _yb2s 2y ago
        You misunderstood what I was trying to say. I closely know people that do this work with the specific personal goal of protecting bird populations. They are confident they are able to do so, and I have faith in their level of competence based on knowing them well, and also being a scientific researcher in a different but related field. I expect this to carry zero weight as an argument, I’m just explaining where I am coming from. I am curious enough that I will ask these details and follow up if I can…
        vouaobrasil 2y ago
        > They are confident they are able to do so I am certain they are confident they are able to effect change within the limitations that the economic system provides, which is also another difference.
        _yb2s 2y ago
        So I asked- and they said (1) when the facility is large enough, which many are, you can randomly sample locations and if they died from injuries elsewhere these will still end up in the sample; (2) they do a lot of separate experiments to measure things like the rate of carcass removal by scavengers which go into the calculations; (3) depending on the type of bird and turbine, in most cases injuries are immediately fatal, and they can quantify this for each case with direct observation. I’ll myself add that presumably the data collected on larger farms can be used as a prior to make accurate inferences on smaller farms.
      - 2y ago

by lutorm 2y ago

_yb2s 2y ago

I’m certain these studies are able to estimate those other deaths and consider factors beyond just carcasses on the ground, because I am personally close to a biologist that works on this, but I don’t know exactly how they do it. The author here seems to be incorrectly extrapolating research statements on static buildings to windmills, when the latter is much more researched.

vouaobrasil 2y ago
That seems like something very far from a certainty. Imagine if you were to cite this in a scientific paper: "a close friend of mine does this but I have no idea how they do it". What about this [1]: > We show that the use of the ORNIS 1%, the 5% mortality criterion, and potential biological removal criteria are inadequate for providing safe thresholds with respect to the impact of wind turbine collisions on populations. From a paper entitled "Mortality limits used in wind energy impact assessment underestimate impacts of wind farms on bird populations". 1. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/ece3.6360 https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/ece3.6360
- _yb2s 2y ago
  Indeed, I am not qualified to answer that question and don’t have the answer, I am not planning on publishing research in this particular field anytime soon. I am personally satisfied that this is being done by people that do deeply understand the limitations and capabilities of their work, but I cannot transfer that to you.
  - vouaobrasil 2y ago
    I do not doubt that people deeply understand the current state of the art, and that they understand those limitaitons. I am 100% in agreement. But the fact that they understand the limitations and capabilities in their work has no bearing on the effectiveness of their work when it comes to the specific goal of protecting bird populations. (One does not logically imply the other.)
    - _yb2s 2y ago
      You misunderstood what I was trying to say. I closely know people that do this work with the specific personal goal of protecting bird populations. They are confident they are able to do so, and I have faith in their level of competence based on knowing them well, and also being a scientific researcher in a different but related field. I expect this to carry zero weight as an argument, I’m just explaining where I am coming from. I am curious enough that I will ask these details and follow up if I can…
      - vouaobrasil 2y ago
        > They are confident they are able to do so I am certain they are confident they are able to effect change within the limitations that the economic system provides, which is also another difference.
        _yb2s 2y ago
        So I asked- and they said (1) when the facility is large enough, which many are, you can randomly sample locations and if they died from injuries elsewhere these will still end up in the sample; (2) they do a lot of separate experiments to measure things like the rate of carcass removal by scavengers which go into the calculations; (3) depending on the type of bird and turbine, in most cases injuries are immediately fatal, and they can quantify this for each case with direct observation. I’ll myself add that presumably the data collected on larger farms can be used as a prior to make accurate inferences on smaller farms.
    - 2y ago