Wind Turbines Are Friendlier To Birds Than Oil-and-Gas Drilling, Study Finds (yahoo.com) 80
A new analysis suggests that wind turbines have little impact on bird populations, according to the Economist — and that oil-and-gas extraction may be worse:
Erik Katovich [an economist at the University of Geneva] combined bird population and species maps with the locations and construction dates of all wind turbines in the United States, with the exceptions of Alaska and Hawaii, between 2000 and 2020. He found that building turbines had no discernible effect on bird populations. That reassuring finding held even when he looked specifically at large birds like hawks, vultures and eagles that many people believe are particularly vulnerable to being struck.
But Dr. Katovich did not confine his analysis to wind power alone. He also examined oil-and-gas extraction. Like wind power, this has boomed in America over the past couple of decades, with the rise of shale gas produced by hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, of rocks. Production has risen from 37m cubic metres in 2007 to 740m cubic metres in 2020. Comparing bird populations to the locations of new gas wells revealed an average 15% drop in bird numbers when new wells were drilled, probably due to a combination of noise, air pollution and the disturbance of rivers and ponds that many birds rely upon. When drilling happens in places designated by the National Audubon Society as "important bird areas", bird numbers instead dropped by 25%. Such places are typically migration hubs, feeding grounds or breeding locations.
Wind power, in other words, not only produces far less planet-heating carbon dioxide and methane than do fossil fuels. It appears to be significantly less damaging to wildlife, too.
Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader SpzToid for sharing the article.
But Dr. Katovich did not confine his analysis to wind power alone. He also examined oil-and-gas extraction. Like wind power, this has boomed in America over the past couple of decades, with the rise of shale gas produced by hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, of rocks. Production has risen from 37m cubic metres in 2007 to 740m cubic metres in 2020. Comparing bird populations to the locations of new gas wells revealed an average 15% drop in bird numbers when new wells were drilled, probably due to a combination of noise, air pollution and the disturbance of rivers and ponds that many birds rely upon. When drilling happens in places designated by the National Audubon Society as "important bird areas", bird numbers instead dropped by 25%. Such places are typically migration hubs, feeding grounds or breeding locations.
Wind power, in other words, not only produces far less planet-heating carbon dioxide and methane than do fossil fuels. It appears to be significantly less damaging to wildlife, too.
Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader SpzToid for sharing the article.
How many birds per energy? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:How many birds per energy? (Score:5, Informative)
Fair point except for this: "He found that building turbines had no discernible effect on bird populations." Call it 0 per acre or 0 per megajoule or whatever you want.
Re:How many birds per energy? (Score:5, Funny)
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Fair point except for this: "He found that building turbines had no discernible effect on bird populations." Call it 0 per acre or 0 per megajoule or whatever you want.
As low as the number might be, "zero" seems unlikely, given that scientists did find dead birds associated with wind turbines [nature.com] in past studies.
Re:How many birds per energy? (Score:4, Informative)
Not mathematical zero, dummy. It means the effect of wind turbines on bird population is so small, it's negligible.
Re:How many birds per energy? (Score:4, Informative)
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Perhaps the lower counts around drill sites are 'dead' but more likely they just moved.
Still it's nice to have some counter info to the anti-windmill ppl.
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I interpret headlines like this on Yahoo as “A group published a study backing up their narrative.” And I would think the same thing about a study showing turbines kill more birds than previously thought. That said, in general, wind turbines seem like a pretty good contributor to cleaner energy to me.
Re: How many birds per energy? (Score:1)
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I invite you to re-read my post. It is not a post about oil, turbines or green issues. It’s about my view that a single study is at best meaningless but more probably an effort to further some particular narrative. I tried to explicitly point out that even though my post criticized a single headline that implied that turbines are good I would have been critical for the same reason of a single headline saying turbines are bad. Did that not come through?
I completely agree that wind farms hurt birds.
IIRC The whole Turbines kill birds (Score:2, Informative)
started with the AEI
According to BARD,
While the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) has been a prominent voice in raising concerns about the environmental impact of wind energy, including bird collisions, the statement that wind turbines kill birds predates their involvement.
Early observations:
1970s: Early concerns about bird mortality at wind farms emerged in the 1970s, primarily focused on raptor collisions at sites like Altamont Pass in California. These initial observations raised awareness of the poten
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I write optimistic hard science fiction and am working on a trilogy that takes place a 100 years from now when the Earth's surface is mainly uninhabitable because of the Heat. (global warming). Civilization has moved underground. Anyhow, the survivors refer to the previous (our) society as the Pluto (crats) and the Heat was caused by the Fossilistas.
If you consider that as a framing metaphor, you can see in articles every day a broad-based campaign to slow, delay, denigrate, and generally lie about any alte
What really kills birds (Score:5, Informative)
Forget wind turbines. Turns out that what really kills birds is plate glass windows. [abcbirds.org]
Re:What really kills birds (Score:5, Informative)
https://www.sciencenews.org/ar... [sciencenews.org]
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That would be song birds that cats kill, while a lot of the problems with wind is supposed to be large birds, rapters, eagles and other birds that are more likely to kill cats then get killed by a cat, or at least a house cat.
Personal anecdote as a cat owner, my cats seem much better at killing rodents then birds while my living room window kills at least half a dozen a year. Actually, this winter, there does not seem to be any song birds. Perhaps bird flu, which has led to many chicken/turkey farm culls ar
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So according to your link, cats kill 5 to 15 times as many birds as windows. Or 220% to 660% of all birds killed. Hrrm. I guess we need a few more links to clear this up.
Re:What really kills birds (Score:5, Informative)
1) How many birds are killed by glass collisions in the U.S. each year?
Because glass is used so widely, giving a definitive answer is difficult, but Smithsonian researchers attempted to do so in 2014.
They estimated that homes and other buildings one to three stories tall accounted for 44 percent of all bird fatalities, about 253 million bird deaths annually. Larger, low-rise buildings four to 11 stories high caused 339 million deaths. And high-rise buildings, 11 floors and higher, kill 508,000 total birds annually. Individual skyscrapers can be quite deadly for birds, but they kill fewer birds overall due to their limited numbers.
By combining these numbers, the Smithsonian reported that collisions likely kill between 365 million and 1 billion birds annually in the United States, with a median estimate of 599 million.
We believe that the true number is closer to a billion, or higher, for several reasons. For one, data used in the study is now more than ten years old, and there has been a steady increase in glass use since that time, increasing the likelihood of fatal collisions. In addition, we've learned that bird carcass reports tend to underestimate deaths (see questions 4 and 5), meaning that more dead birds go uncounted than we realized.
This means that the only anthropogenic (human-caused) threat that kills more birds in the United States each year is domestic cats.
So, about a billion by buildings, then according to the reference about cats from the article:
Abstract
Anthropogenic threats, such as collisions with man-made structures, vehicles, poisoning and predation by domestic pets, combine to kill billions of wildlife annually. Free-ranging domestic cats have been introduced globally and have contributed to multiple wildlife extinctions on islands. The magnitude of mortality they cause in mainland areas remains speculative, with large-scale estimates based on non-systematic analyses and little consideration of scientific data. Here we conduct a systematic review and quantitatively estimate mortality caused by cats in the United States. We estimate that free-ranging domestic cats kill 1.3–4.0 billion birds and 6.3–22.3 billion mammals annually. Un-owned cats, as opposed to owned pets, cause the majority of this mortality. Our findings suggest that free-ranging cats cause substantially greater wildlife mortality than previously thought and are likely the single greatest source of anthropogenic mortality for US birds and mammals. Scientifically sound conservation and policy intervention is needed to reduce this impact. Source: https://www.nature.com/article... [nature.com]
Apparently, many of these bird deaths are easily & cheaply preventable so why aren't the AEI campaigning to reduce these shocking numbers? I mean, they seem really concerned about the deaths from wind turbines so this is a fantastic opportunity to save even more birds.
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Wonder what percentage of those mammals are vermin, mice and rats, that we're happy to see killed in town.
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I've had enough experience with rats and mice competing for my living space that I do not put up with them in my space.
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Think about them a lot as they're currently missing. It's weird, only crows and ravens around, no winter robins (varied thrush), actually 1, instead of the flocks. No Tahoes, no bushtits, none of those white headed birds, its weird, even no raccoons.
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Forget wind turbines. Turns out that what really kills birds is plate glass windows. [abcbirds.org]
What about all those whales going batty [theguardian.com] from offshore wind turbines? Won't someone think of the whales!
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But that is not a valid comparison. Comparing two different ways of creating electricity is different from comparing a method of creating electricity to a building.
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Not sure why you think this is "invalid".
If we have a goal of avoiding killing birds, we should address the things we do that kill the most birds. Focusing on wind turbines is addressing the least important part of the problem.
Paint the blades BLACK & WHITE (Score:4, Interesting)
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1. Because it's not actually necessary. Modern large wind turbines spin so slowly that a bird is unlikely to ever hit it by accident.
2. The blades on these large turbines are composites and must be painted white to keep the temperature down as heat can damage them. The last color you would ever want to paint them is black because that would result in significantly higher temperatures. The other thing you don't want to do is paint part of the black black and part of it white because now you are going to get
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Sorry nice try. Large turbines spin way faster. try looking up Angular velocity or try some wide turns while water skiing or an ice skating chain. RPM could be lower but the blade is longer...
The bird brains don't see the full circular path of the sweep which not only is massive but it's unnatural to have a massive tree move in a circle and not in a linear path. They never fly into the CENTER; it's further out in the blades. It's a non-issue used to bash wind power's tiny swept area that I doubt has surpas
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I completely understand angular velocity. They still do not spin that quickly because these blades are specifically designed for lower speed operation.
And none of what you wrote changes the fact that you cannot paint them black because they are composites so your idea is still useless anyway.
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I never said I was for painting blades which if you understand what I wrote you'd realize that no color would help a bird brain figure out the big rotating tree trunk is moving 200 miles per hour faster than it's "stump" is. Larger may spin at a lower RPM because the tip speed ratio impacts efficiency and certainly they don't want that going too far outside ideal for the wind speeds available. Even if it's only moving a slow 100 mph it's a large swept area for bird brains to think about. The birds have gr
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Birds largely aren't blinded by turbine blades. They are not glass. They are clearly visible. The "solution known for a while" has for a long time been known to be completely statistically insignificant. Even the very article you link stops short of announcing any kind of actual definitive result noting that study is not statistically significant, has a small sample size, and that more research is needed.
Research that hasn't happened yet. So no nothing is "known" unless you're the type of person who still t
Nuclear (Score:2)
How friendly is nuclear power to birds? I suspect quite.
Re:Nuclear (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Nuclear (Score:5, Insightful)
Nuclear beats pretty much everything as long as nothing goes wrong. Which it will eventually.
That's true for everything. Wind and solar are fine until it causes a forest fire. Hydroelectric dams are fine until they burst.
We've seen things go wrong at nuclear power plants before but that's not an argument against nuclear power, not any more than a door blowing off a 737 in flight is an argument against passenger airline service. The meltdown at Three Mile Island was an expensive mess, and it did have a release of radioactive gasses that had some negligible impact on public health. That's not good but better than the alternatives for energy. The meltdown at Fukushima had a similar impact as TMI, an expensive mess and some radiation released into the environment that had some negligible impact to people and wildlife. Big disasters like at Chernobyl are the result of a bad design, poor construction, and criminal levels of negligence by government, which can only happen in tyrannical nations where the government maintains fear and secrecy among the public. Kind of like the dam failures in China killed many people with similar disregard for public safety. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Nuclear power is not safe, because nothing is truly safe, but it is the best we have for energy. Will something go wrong eventually? Of course. Because we've learned from previous mistakes on nuclear power we can expect future nuclear power plant failures to be more like TMI and Fukushima than Chernobyl or Banqiao. Future failures will likely be very expensive, perhaps even kill a few people, but that's still better than all other options including doing without that power generating capacity.
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Extremely unlikely. Nuclear energy is generations past 1970s Soviet technology that powered Chernobyl. New nuclear technology is vastly safer.
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perhaps even kill a few people or a few million people.
Extremely unlikely. But even if it were to happen, it would still be at least an order of magnitude safer than coal, which has already killed tens of millions globally.
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Mining heavy metals is mining heavy metals, lots to go wrong, especially in the past when regulations were lax.
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Worst is likely the toxic tailing ponds from mining the uranium. There's been quite a few problems with tailings from uranium mines, as well as other mines, including bitumen mines which are probably currently the worst in N. America for number of sq miles polluted by tailings and bird deaths.
Uranium mining was pretty bad environmentally wise 70 odd years back, though at the time, as it mostly affected the Apache, it was generally covered up and/or ignored. Some other types of mining is similar, ponds full
Bad methodology (Score:3)
He is using counts of birds reported by bird watchers in specific areas. He has no idea if those birds moved to a different area due to development or any other reasons. The actual bird population overall may have increased.
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Best comment. TYFYS.
But not a single response.... (Score:1, Offtopic)
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They're pretty well inert. Look ugly, take up little room when dumped, unlike a lot of waste, much of which is toxic.
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Interesting. Wonder how it compares to the coal mining waste and ash, or the thousands of sq kms of land ruined by bitumen mining or all the abandoned wells that have been left uncapped and will need cleaning up. The worst seems to be nuclear and how the depleted uranium is disposed of after extracting the fuel. Uranium is pretty toxic being a heavy metal.
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Poly Vinyl Chlorinates are some of the most toxic substances on the Earth. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/p... [nih.gov]
And is in so much of the stuff we use on a daily basis that it becomes questionable if the blades add that much more.
Our whole system is based on using crap that is bad in the medium to long run along with this attitude that out of sight means it's gone. For energy, might as well go for a mixed bag as they all seem to have drawbacks, even the hydro I use meant flooding a lot of land.
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Could trade for aprox 1 cubic km of toxic bitumen mining tailings, nice shiny watery stuff.
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Unclear comparison. (Score:2)
Comparing bird populations to the locations of new gas wells revealed an average 15% drop in bird numbers when new wells were drilled, probably due to a combination of noise, air pollution and the disturbance of rivers and ponds that many birds rely upon. When drilling happens in places designated by the National Audubon Society as "important bird areas", bird numbers instead dropped by 25%.
But did the birds die, or just move somewhere else? Population and distribution are different metrics.
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I’ve scanned the actual paper and it seems he’s just using proxy data of bird watcher reports which is highly unreliable. You don’t often go bird watching near industry like oil rigs and wind turbines are often located and make access roads to forests. The study is suspect, just p-hacking your way to a desired result.
You’d expect someone that publishes a paper like this to be out in the field, counting birds, touching nature. He’s an economist with a clear anti-oil agenda, basi
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Oh, wait...
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Suggesting that lower populations = increased deaths in combination with using very unreliable bird-watching data to start with raises a lot of questions about the judgement or skill of the authors of this study. I suspect that it quite likely =is= true that the net effect of fossil fuels on wildlife wildly surpasses the impact of windmills -- there's a lot of potential causes of the violent decrease in biodiversity in the last 100 years but fossil fuels has to be considered a likely contributor -- putting
People who complain about... (Score:5, Insightful)
...wind turbines killing birds aren't bird lovers with genuine concerns, they are supporters of fossil fuels or people whose political tribe requires that they hate anything supported by environmentalists
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Or they are just narrow minded and jump on a bandwagon. Don't criticise people about what they don't know. By definition they can't know any better. It's like people complaining about EV subsidies not realising that the automotive industry got where it is today through subsidies, government assistance in the form of infrastructure and continuing and ongoing subsidies of fossil fuels. The people who complain about how many birds are killed by windfarms have never looked at the percentage of bird deaths overa
Cats don't kill condors (Score:2, Troll)
The usual reply to any complaint on windmills killing birds is how many birds are killed each year by domesticated cats. But... cats don't kill condors, windmills do.
Small songbirds and such breed quickly and in large numbers, they are equivalent to flying rodents in that respect. Large birds, such as condors and eagles, are far smaller in number and don't breed as quickly. The size of the population, and the rate in which he population can recover, would perhaps be more analogous to wolves, deer, bears,
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But... cats don't kill condors
So what about the 10999 other species of bird?
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I think there is a significant difference between bird avoiding a certain area, and birds being killed.
just try (Score:1)
Of course they are. (Score:2)
The "windmills kill birds" thing always was a l00ny argument by l00ny crackpots collecting silly soundbites to argue against windmills that "spoil the landscape" and other retarded nonsense objections they came up with.
It's blatantly obvious to anyone with two or more brainchells that the eco-balance of fossil fuels is about as abysmal as it gets, even accounting only for directly related bird deaths.
Every oil spill killing hundreds of thousands of birds and the staggering masses of plastic waste killing w
I'm doing a study. (Score:2)
Thank you for funding my study. What result would you like?
I'll go with it. (Score:2)
Anyone here consider birds' reaction times? Ever try to approach a bird?
Birds will see the blades and avoid them. If this is not so, can someone show me a study where they count the number of bird that have hit turbine blades. You can either find the bodies, or the splatters on the white-painted blades.
No, huh?
As opposed to the study that was just out last week of *many* birds found dead that flew straight into giant office buildings that are all glass.