Wind Farms: Do they kill birds?
Ron House
deaths from wind farms on climaterealists.com. I immediately asked
myself: "Is that really true?" I wanted to know the right answer to this
question, whether or not I liked it. If we want to create a peace legacy
for future generations, to safeguard the planet for both humans and our
non-human friends, we need to know the truth.
The issue is this: the story above claims that millions of birds are
killed by wind farms. But a "green" friend I mentioned this to told me
that this is absurd: she had studied wind farms in depth, she had
personally visited them, and they were the safest, most
wildlife-friendly places imaginable; the blades rotate so sedately
nothing could possibly be killed by them; and there wasn't a dead or
injured bird to be found anywhere around about. She went so far as to
wonder if the writers of the above article weren't simply lying through
their teeth.
The paradox I was struggling with was this: my green friend is without
doubt one of the most truthful people I know. I did not doubt her
account for a second. Equally, it seemed impossible that anyone could
write such a credible-sounding article as the one linked above. Two
truthful sources in direct contradiction - I needed facts that no one
could dispute, because if lies are involved (and who won't at least
wonder about the possibility?), it isn't good enough to merely discover
the truth; I also needed it in a form that would allow anyone to prove
it for themselves.So here's what I did. Read more:
http://peacelegacy.org/articles/wind-farms-do-they-kill-birds
--
Ron House
Building Peace: http://peacelegacy.org
Australian Birds: http://wingedhearts.org
Principle of Goodness academic site: http://principleofgoodness.net
John M.
A very thoughtful piece, Ron, even though you rate increased animal
suffering much higher than loss of biodiversity, and you are to be
commended for taking the trouble to think the windfarm problem
through.
The answer has always been small is beautiful, and small turbines on
the roof, perhaps with solar panels additionally, has always appealed
to me. But the needed materials to manufacture these may be the crunch
that stops this solution. A new design of windmill with rare-earth
elements used in magnets on the tips of the rotors and fixed coils for
electrical generation and collection will likely founder because of
the shortage of materials. They're not called rare-earth for nothing.
Similar problems can be encountered for the latest super-efficient
designs for battery storage of electricity and likely will exist for
solar panels.
Meanwhile my local Golden Eagles have gone the same way my local
Bonelli's Eagles did eight years ago. It took just two years from the
installation of a mountain ridge string of 12 "aeolien" above our
village in Languedoc-Roussillon before they disappeared. How long I
wonder before I see my last local Short-toed Eagle?
Ron House
> On Sep 7, 9:19 am, Ron House <rho...@smartchat.net.au> wrote:
>> http://peacelegacy.org/articles/wind-farms-do-they-kill-birds
>
> A very thoughtful piece, Ron, even though you rate increased animal
> suffering much higher than loss of biodiversity, and you are to be
> commended for taking the trouble to think the windfarm problem
> through.
Thanks John. To some extent, biodiversity is yet another human-centred
thing, but real individual lives lived by sentient beings, that is
in-the-small concrete reality. Just a week or so ago a bird deliberately
flew down from its tree and warned me of a deadly snake I was about to
tread on, thus saving my life. It did that because I feed it in harsh
winters, I ask after her babies, I involve myself in their community.
And she remembers. I am 'one of the gang'. My wife has also had her life
saved similarly and we have had snakes repelled from our house often.
Photos here:
http://wingedhearts.org/minnie-miner-saves-me-from-snake
Due to what I have learned about the wisdom, intelligence, care, and
other higher qualities of birds coming from my personal involvement, I
have to treat individual birds as separate, invaluable lives, not to be
subsumed into 'bulk' considerations like diversity.
> The answer has always been small is beautiful, and small turbines on
> the roof, perhaps with solar panels additionally, has always appealed
> to me. But the needed materials to manufacture these may be the crunch
> that stops this solution. A new design of windmill with rare-earth
> elements used in magnets on the tips of the rotors and fixed coils for
> electrical generation and collection will likely founder because of
> the shortage of materials. They're not called rare-earth for nothing.
> Similar problems can be encountered for the latest super-efficient
> designs for battery storage of electricity and likely will exist for
> solar panels.
Good point. I don't give up on technology though. The impractical has a
way of becoming practical.
> Meanwhile my local Golden Eagles have gone the same way my local
> Bonelli's Eagles did eight years ago. It took just two years from the
> installation of a mountain ridge string of 12 "aeolien" above our
> village in Languedoc-Roussillon before they disappeared. How long I
> wonder before I see my last local Short-toed Eagle?
That is shocking. You must feel so frustrated watching this destruction.
The pointlessness of it is the worst part. Wind is set up to minimise
fossil fuel usage, and then 40% more fossil fuel is used in nutty
schemes to bury ('sequester') CO2 (which is plant food, and thus
indirectly animal and human food, not pollution). I saw a target of 20%
wind mentioned somewhere a few days ago. Big Coal is laughing all the
way to the bank. Promote the global warming hoax, sell 40% more coal to
80% of the previous market, and end up about 15% ahead of the game. And
of course they know the 20% figure is itself fantasy.
I believe humans need to admit something clearly to themselves: saving
on fossil fuel is a human-centred activity. No animal 'cares' whether
coal and oil is left in the ground. We humans care because we want some
still there for a rainy century sometime. But it doesn't benefit any
other creature on Earth. They are benefited by the CO2 plant food; they
are benefited by burning fossil fuel. What are we humans thinking? -
depriving them of the plant food and killing them with wind farms in the
bargain. What is in it for wildlife - indeed, for the rest of the planet
apart from ourselves?
Day Brown
towers will not.... evolve. End of problem.
There is the economy of scale to consider. The cost/watt for a 15kw unit
is not much higher than that of a 20 megwatt tower. But the 15kw job can
be in the neighborhood or village that uses the power, so the cost of
transmission lines is dramatically reduced.
If the new aluminum/gallium hydrogen generators work out as advertised,
then the excess windpower can be stored, and the whole system becomes
local, much more competitive in the free market, and sustainable as well
as financially rewarding to small investors.
Big business and big government love big installations like windfarms
where there is less free market competition and they are more able to
dictate the price.
amacm...@aol.com
Some time ago Dr Malcolm Ogilvie of Scottish Natural Heritage
suggested ridiculously low figures for bird strikes at wind turbines -
something like one in seven years if I remember correctly. He
referred to something being on the Internet about it, but declined to
identify the website. IIRC John supported his stance.
In my view many birds will be killed by wind turbines and the true
number will never be known as predators will remove corpses
I believe the Climate Realists article.
Last Post
> In article <h85qd5$tg...@news.eternal-september.org>, terryc
> <newsninespam-s...@woa.com.au> writes
>
> >On Tue, 08 Sep 2009 11:27:44 +0100, amacmil304 wrote:
>
> >> In my view many birds will be killed by wind turbines and the true
> >> number will never be known as predators will remove corpses
>
>
> >It is simple really. Wind turbines are driven by the air passing over the
> >blades. they are being pushed around by the air, just the same as birds
> >are. Birds are experts at reading the wind currents and reacting, so they
> >have little to fear from a very noisy, slowly moving turbine blade.
>
> >Basically, birds easily go around them, except for the predators that
> >perch on the housing or other birds that nest on them.
>
> All the turbines erected in the UK have solid towers so not allowing any
> perches or nesting places.
•• So what!! It is the fan that does the damage
Migration season will be devastating
terryc
> •• So what!! It is the fan that does the damage
> Migration season will be devastating
AFAIK, there is no fan on a wind turbine.
Ron House
>
> In article <nsbca5dop86vds41f...@4ax.com>,
> amacm...@aol.com writes
>>
>> Some time ago Dr Malcolm Ogilvie of Scottish Natural Heritage
>> suggested ridiculously low figures for bird strikes at wind turbines -
>> something like one in seven years if I remember correctly. He
>> referred to something being on the Internet about it, but declined to
>> identify the website. IIRC John supported his stance.
>>
> badly sited windfarms at which total bird deaths can run into hundreds
> per year. There are some other windfarms where much small numbers are
> killed on an annual basis. Then there are a great many other windfarms,
> properly sited, where deaths either don't occur at all or are very rare.
>
>> In my view many birds will be killed by wind turbines and the true
>> number will never be known as predators will remove corpses
>>
>
>> I believe the Climate Realists article.
>
> quotes who claims millions of birds killed annually did so on the basis
> of spurious figures and specious arguments.
>
My article sites an official report on the European Environment Agency
website - same result. Why would an official government agency paid to
promote reusable energy make up stuff that hurts their own cause?
http://peacelegacy.org/articles/wind-farms-do-they-kill-birds
Ron House
> Where in that report, which is a sober, scientific study of the subject,
> does it say that "millions of birds are killed by wind farms" as you
> stated in your original post?
I quoted their estimates of kills per turbine, I calculated an estimated
number of turbines by multiplying the stated total capacity by the
capacity of a typical turbine as located on the GE turbine
manufacturer's website. I stated that this was just an estimate. If it
is out by even 10%, it is up to you to tell us why a simple
multiplication gives such a wrong number. Then I multiplied that turbine
estimate by the kills per turbine.
> You used highly selective figures from the report, concentrating on the
> quoted examples of the very few windfarms that are so badly sited that
> they do indeed kill birds. You then use a figure of 20 bird+bat
> deaths/turbine/year (which you appear to have plucked out of the air)
> and then do some calculations based on that and extrapolate to the total
> 52,000 turbines that you calculate exist in the EU.
>
> This is as spurious as the calculations by Duchamp that you quote later on.
>
> You have quoted the sentence about the few, appallingly sited, windfarms
> in Germany that have killed up to 50 birds/turbine/year, and ignored the
> preceding sentence which reads: "A compilation of existing evidence for
> the German Federal Ministry of Environment (H�tker et al., 2004) showed
> that at almost half of the wind farms studied, the number of fatalities
> was less than one bird per turbine per year."
>
> So why did you use 20?
Read what I said. They estimate 50, so I divided it by 5 to be
conservative. They said more bats than birds are killed, so I assumed
that bat kills equalled bird kills (again, to be conservative). You are
welcome to disagree with my reasoning, but don't go off making out that
I have written anything without explaining where I got the figures from.
> Also, you should note this comment in the report: "The majority of
> studies of collisions caused by wind turbines have recorded relatively
> low levels of mortality, perhaps reflecting the fact that many of the
> studied wind farms are located away from large concentrations of birds."
They also say that the figures they have are very likely underestimates.
> So why did you use 20?
Stop being boring. We've all seen this trick before and it fools no one.
> Even the very high number of deaths at Altamont in California, which is
> mentioned in the report, of 35-100,000 deaths, is spread over 20 years
> and caused by a maximum of 7,300 turbines. The number of turbines has
> fluctuated but has rarely been less than 4,000 except in the initial
> construction phase. So, taking the worst case figures of 100,000 deaths
> over 20 years by 4000 turbines gives a death rate of 1.25
> birds/turbine/year.
>
> So why did you use 20?
P 75: "Using correction factors for search efficiency and scavenger
removal, Brinkmann & Schauer-Weisshahn (2006) estimated a mean of 16.4
bat fatalities per turbine per year at 16 study sites in south-west
Germany." That is 60% more than my figure of 10 bats per turbine, and it
is an average, not a high figure, and they also state: "The number of
fatalities is probably underestimated as dead bats are even harder to
find than birds."
So bats alone ON AVERAGE (the mean - the Report's words) account for
almost all of my 20 per turbine estimate. I think I am way, way
conservative. I gave the original references precisely because that's
how you do things honestly, so others may go and check.
Your boring repetition of the same question three times, however, is an
old trick for influencing minds subliminally. We know all about it, so
give it a rest and argue openly an honestly in future.
Ron House
>
> In article <4AB2DB72...@smartchat.net.au>, Ron House
> <rho...@smartchat.net.au> writes
>> Malcolm wrote:
>>
>>> Where in that report, which is a sober, scientific study of the
>>> subject, does it say that "millions of birds are killed by wind
>>> farms" as you stated in your original post?
>>
>> I quoted their estimates of kills per turbine, I calculated an
>> estimated number of turbines by multiplying the stated total capacity
>> by the capacity of a typical turbine as located on the GE turbine
>> manufacturer's website. I stated that this was just an estimate. If it
>> is out by even 10%, it is up to you to tell us why a simple
>> multiplication gives such a wrong number. Then I multiplied that
>> turbine estimate by the kills per turbine.
>>
Capacity of the entire EU divided by capacity of a typical turbine gives
an estimate of total number of turbines. Not exact, because we don't
know exactly how many of which types of turbine are installed, but it is
certainly a good estimate. Multiply that number by the estimated kills
per turbine and you have an estimate of total kills. And by using
figures from a recognised authority with a stake in underestimating the
total, we can be reasonably sure we have not overestimated by much; more
likely we are greatly under. It's not rocket science. My original
article here:
http://peacelegacy.org/articles/wind-farms-do-they-kill-birds
The question is, why cannot you and those like you understand such a
simple argument? What motivates such a bizarre statement as "Kill and
capacity are not related"? Two different things are related when a valid
argument relates them, and my argument clearly does so. I have discussed
the kind of psychological malfunction displayed by global warming
believers here:
http://peacelegacy.org/articles/climate-change-understanding-evil-religion