Slashdot Mirror

Or is it an actual solar cells of some sort that directly produce electricity?
They really need some sort of better name to differentiate between these...

No, it's the kind of solar that kills all those birds from the trucks having to haul all those raw and intermediate materials and finished goods around.

No, it's the kind of solar that poisons Chinese children from all the exotic materials that are needed to be refined and disposed of.

C'mon, let's not pretend that there are any perfect solutions - there are only trade-offs. Apple is choosing the trade-off that it thinks will project the best marketing image to its customers whilst having the lowest downside profile in their eyes, and hopefully Greenpeace which has found Apple to be one of its favorite whipping boys.

Greenpeace will probably still picket it, though - most energy policy objections are emotional, not rational. Their founder proselytizes nuclear for being zero-CO2 even though they picket that too. He feels good about finding solutions, while the protesters mostly feel good about being mad.

and it's making me more ill from reading "shock" stories. Man-made messes are never good, but in popular media - we never compare those events to what happens naturally. Natural oil and gas seepage has been occurring for as long as those items have been available. It's even been noted in recorded history. We also seem to forget that oil, tar, and natural gas are ... well ... natural. There are many natural and deadly events - earthquakes, mudslides, lava, etc.

Then the violin starts on how oil spills kill birds ... again, don't get me wrong. I'm not in denial. Yes - oil spills kill birds. But my rant is about the lack of perspective.Oil spills is near the bottom of most lists (Here's one list: http://www.currykerlinger.com/birds.htm). The estimate is 1-2 million die from this cause. What I didn't know is that glass windows (100-900 million) and cats (100 million) dominate the top half of the list. I don't see the bleeding hearts going off on a rampage to ban windows.

I understand that stories like this are focused. I understand that broadening the perspective may "water down" an issue or a solution to an issue ... but leaving out perspective is just a damned bad habit - and sloppy too.

I'm not sure about bats but buildings, cars, and cats kill more birds than wind turbines do. Over one billion birds strike windows in the U.S. every year. What Kills Birds? is a list of what does kill birds. Now that's on a wind power consultant's website so some may consider it biased. But Google returns more sites saying how many birds are killed by wind turbines versus other things that kill birds.

Falcon

Googling around...

http://www.currykerlinger.com/birds.htm

http://www.currykerlinger.com/studies.htm

And some quotes to sum it up:

"Window-crash bird mortality is our focus, with the intent of providing some pespective on the near urban-myth status that has been attained regarding wind-tubine caused bird mortality. Historically and presently, the biggest piece of the dead bird pie is, without doubt, attributable to window-crashes. From Audubon Magazine: "Millions of birds perish every year from crashing into glass windows...such small glass kills can add up to big trouble, believes ornithologist Daniel Klem of Muhlenberg College, in Allentown, Pennsylvania"."

"This argument is one of the main ones against wind farms, but is simply not true. The only windfarms to ever kill birds where the very old ones built using high speed blades, and no real gearbox. Those farms would spin at very high speeds, killing birds.

The modern farms spin at much lower speeds - just look at one and you'll see that it moves very slowly! Most birds are able to avoid these blades, and even if they are hit by them the chance of death is very much lower than the chance of death brought about by the high speed blades. The simple fact is, windfarms kill very few birds, certainly far fewer than will be killed by the effects of global warming, industrial pollution, collisions with peoples cars, with windows and with buildings etc."

Googling around...

http://www.currykerlinger.com/birds.htm

http://www.currykerlinger.com/studies.htm

And some quotes to sum it up:

"Window-crash bird mortality is our focus, with the intent of providing some pespective on the near urban-myth status that has been attained regarding wind-tubine caused bird mortality. Historically and presently, the biggest piece of the dead bird pie is, without doubt, attributable to window-crashes. From Audubon Magazine: "Millions of birds perish every year from crashing into glass windows...such small glass kills can add up to big trouble, believes ornithologist Daniel Klem of Muhlenberg College, in Allentown, Pennsylvania"."

"This argument is one of the main ones against wind farms, but is simply not true. The only windfarms to ever kill birds where the very old ones built using high speed blades, and no real gearbox. Those farms would spin at very high speeds, killing birds.

The modern farms spin at much lower speeds - just look at one and you'll see that it moves very slowly! Most birds are able to avoid these blades, and even if they are hit by them the chance of death is very much lower than the chance of death brought about by the high speed blades. The simple fact is, windfarms kill very few birds, certainly far fewer than will be killed by the effects of global warming, industrial pollution, collisions with peoples cars, with windows and with buildings etc."

You do realize that Audubon New York, the state's largest bird conservation organization, has gotten behind wind power 100%, right? The effect of wind turbines on birds is generally so ridiculously overstated it's embarassing. Here is the data from New York on bird kills from turbines: Madison site, 7 turbines, one year, 4 bird deaths. Copenhagen, 2 turbines, two migration seasons, zero bird deaths. That's it. The Madison site was the only site in the entire northeastern US with any reported bird deaths.

Want to save birds? Protest glass windows (especially on skyscrapers), housecats, habitat destruction, excessive pesticide use, climate change, and coal power plants. You know, the things that we do that *actually* kill large numbers of birds.

Don't like the look of wind turbines? Don't live near them; there are plenty of people willing to take your place. I, for one, find them quite attractive. You can go live near a nice pretty coal power plant instead (that is, after all, what those turbines are displacing).

yet you don't hear complaints calling for the building industry to stop installing windows

Migrating birds tend to like strong winds, which often place them in the same geography as wind farms. As a reference, see this interesting article on the Altamont Pass wind farm and its effect on raptors.

Millions of birds die every year from smashing into high-rise buildings, cars etc. Have we stopped building high-rise buildings ore cars because of that? No. Wind Turbines will have no significant effect on bird populations.

Here is an article on the Altamont Pass Wind Resource Area. Some good quotes from the article:

Birds avoid colliding with wind turbines in most instances. Certain behaviors may increase birds' risk of collision.
Night migrating birds rarely collide with wind turbines, contrary to some beliefs.
Low bird mortality has been found at European wind power sites

I would say that at least two thirds of the results returned by googling those words are sensationalist rehashes of the same misinformation. Well-researched sources of information include: Advice from an Expert - Putting Wind's Impact on Birds in Perspective, What Kills Birds?, and the single-site-specific Impact of the CNE Wind Turbine on Bird Populations.

here and here.

But this is my favorite: What Kills Bird.

Note that none of those sources says 1 billion, but the first two say 250 million in the UK based on a study, so it would not be unreasonable to assume a billion in the US. The final link reports only 100 million killed by cats, according the National Audubon society. The biggest culprit according to them? Glass windows, which kill up to 900 million birds a year.

But that last site is from "Consultants to the Wind Power Industry on birds and other wildlife issues." So they may have reason to slant things one way or another.

I have no idea why I am even reading this article, let alone posting to it.

Most of the nubmers they quote seem to come from this page. The site has also some data on newer sites.

Wind power is unsteady and kills birds.

raptor was endangered, right?

No, raptor is an entire order, not a species. All birds of prey are raptors.

Altamont pass just has a huge number of birds to begin with. No bird species are endangered by wind power. Other things kill orders of magnitude more birds.

the blades are extremely fast and kills a lot of birds in the area

On the contrary, that idea is generally a myth.

the blades are extremely fast and kills a lot of birds in the area

On the contrary, that idea is generally a myth.