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Wind Turbines Kill a Few Birds
Guppy06 writes "The Houston Chronicle has an article about how a 7000-turbine windfarm in Altamont Pass, California (the world's largest collection) has killed an estimated 22,000 birds during the past 20 years or so of operation, 'including hundreds of golden eagles, red-tailed hawks, kestrels and other raptors(.)' There are efforts to keep the operators from renewing their permit until they take measures to protect bird populations. To put things in perspective the article goes on to point out that the Exxon Valdez spill is estimated to have killed around 250,000, while the whole story can just about be summed up by one quote by a biologist: 'When you turn on your lights you kill something, no matter what the source of electricity.'" Killing 3-4 birds per day doesn't seem too bad. It's a shame that larger, rarer birds are getting killed, but... How many birds would die from the acid rain that a coal power plant would cause?
Why not put big metal grid around each turbine ?
My fan here has one so I can't put my fingers in. Maybe we could use grid with larger holes so the flow of wind wouldn't be disturbed too much and so it would prevent bigger birds of going through.
I think it would cause some extra noise (wind going through the grid), cost some extra money and maybe lower the wind speed a little (and by the way lower efficiency) but that would definitely save the birds.
But maybe 22000 birds over 20 years (that's a little more than 3 birds a day) are not worth the expense...
Any solution with magnetic fields? I know that some birds use magnetic fields during their flight to find their destination... It could also help keeping birds out of the highway (60 millions/year in car collision ??? That's a LOT).
Iraq: war to save the U
Ya know, at one point I might have cared, but we need to end our reliance on petroleum Real Soon Now(TM), mostly for environmental consequences far greater than 22,000 birds over 20 years, not to mention the socio-political impact of foreign oil dependance.
...fuck the birds.
Anything we can do to remove ourselves from our current situation is beneficial, so with that I say...
I remember seeing something about it's location being in a migratory flight path and other wind projects did not have the same problem.
TastesLikeHerringFlavoredChicken
Evolution in action. Obviously it only kills the dumb birds, the *smart* birds fly *around* the propellors...
I wish we could take this tact with the human population. I say, take the warning labels off of everything and let the chips fall where they may.
If the turbines killed three people a day... ...well, we'd probably accept that, too, just as we do for cars.
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The Altamont story about wind farms killing birds is old news. While true, the story is misleading because the vast majority of wind farms are in very different settings with a much lower thread toi birds. A much more reasoned analysis can be found here: http://www.ibiblio.org/pardo/birds/archive/archive 2/msg00468.html
with 7,000 stones. In all seriousness, this number is probably tiny compared to the amount of birds that get shredded in personal, commercial and miliatary aircraft over the last 20 years. It's sort reporting the fact that blueberries are blue.
Hunters. Get hunters to stand below the turbines and SHOOT the birds before they can be chopped to pieces.
Oh wait, we're saving the BIRDS not the TURBINES.. damn damn damn!
If you were me, you'd be good lookin'. - six string samurai
"Researched by Wyoming-based Western EcoSystems Technology, the report contends that many more birds are killed annually in collisions with vehicles (60 million), window panes (98 million) and communication towers (4 million) than die nationwide in wind turbines (10,000 to 40,000).
Even the common household cat, wind power industry advocates argue, is responsible for more bird deaths than turbines"
heh, a little persective, there.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
7000 wind turbines kill 22,000 birds in 20 years? That means that a wind turbine will kill a bird (that's "1") every 7 years or so.
To put that in perspective... I have a greenhouse (glass enclosed room) on my home. On average, one or two birds fly into it and kill themselves each year. So my greenhouse is 7-14 times as deadly to birds as a wind turbine.
This is just Darwinian selection at work. By the way, the dead birds get eaten by other birds and animals, so some number of them survive from the free meal. I think they forgot to count those.
Worthless article.
Can You Say Linux? I Knew That You Could.
Not to mention the fact that hundreds of millions of birds are killed each year through collisions with glass windows, vehicles, guy wires, and so forth.
But don't take my word for it, check out this article which goes over the statistics, with references. Or, Google for yourself.
In Soviet Rush, today's Tom Sawyer gets high on you.
It's a bit Pythonesque, really. "The residents pass along here, through the rotating knives..."
Just encase the fans in glass.
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There isn't a whole lot, but here's some extra information (refs available on request):
Osborn et al. 2000
Minnesota, estimate 36 +/- 12 birds per year, less than one per turbine
Osborn et al. 1998 (same site):
Observed flight patterns, found that most bird flew above or below the turbine level
Johnson et al. 2002 (same site):
"We assessed effects of the wind farm on birds from 1996 to 1999, with 55 documented collision fatalities. Recovered carcasses included 42 passerines, 5 waterbirds, 3 ducks, 3 upland game birds, 1 raptor, and 1 shorebird."
De Lucas et al. 2004:
Straits of Gibralter, most birds altered flight path to avoid turbines
Several of these researchers seem to think that turbines do kill birds, but in very small numbers compared to other structural sources of mortality. (birds hit stuff, especially plate glass windows)
The problem is that it's easy to count dead birds at the base of turbines, but hard to count birds that died from most other sources of power...
I prefer to be called Evil Scientist.
I live in San Jose, very close to altimont pass. I don't watch birds as a hobby, but when I do watch them it's because of my facination with flight.
As sorry as it sounds (22k birds dead) it's plain old Darwinism. Adapt or die basically.
Next time you're near an overpass populated with pigeons, take the time to watch them, and I mean REALLY watch them. I've noticed a behavior these birds have on freeway's I call "Car Surfing"
Lately i've noticed that the pigeons on the highway 17 camden av overpass won't leave thier roost until there are cars passing underneath. I'm guessing the cars going 60mph below them must produce some sort of small air wave, because the birds never seem to smash into them. They swoop down, grab that little updraft of wind from the car below, and get launched another 30-40 feet into the air.
These birds have adapated to having 1ton+ metal boxes moving around their flight path. Not only have they adapted, but they've learned to use it to their advantage.
As far as altimont pass is concerned, i'm sure the ratio of Kestral/Eagles to common birds is pretty low. I would bet the majority of the birds dying are blackbirds or doves. Carnivoires are oppertunistic, living or dead if it's meat they're going to go for it. So i'm sure most of these accidents with the exotic preditors have nothing to do with the windmills, and much to do with the altimont pass groundskeepers not cleaning up the dead carrion. Perhaps if they made it a part of their daily job to toss all the dead birds in the back of their pickup and move them to a safer place for the preditorial birds to eat, we would see less deaths.
Until that happens though, what we will see is a fine example of these birds adapting to their enviroment. The stupid ones will be weeded out of the genepool.
My office has a mirrored window and has provided me with a great opportunity to view and examine a variety of birds (both rare and common) up real close (both dead and stunned). The ground below my window is littered with bird remains. The local feral cat has caught on though.
I say outlaw mirrored window before outlawing wind turbines.
On the plus side, we'd have to get Godzilla and Mothra to team up against the scarecrow, so, it wouldn't be a complete loss.
"Destroy science and religion. Science would re-emerge exactly the same; but not religion." - Penn Jillette, paraphrased
I work at a Nuclear Power plant, and the process is very money-efficient.
For starters, the energy release by a fission event, per atom involved, is at least 2 million times greater than a chemical reaction- ie, burning.
Now, in the core at my plant, we have 193 fuel assemblies, each of which contains a little more than half a ton of uranium. Skipping over some details, we can basically use this hundred tons of fuel to generate 1.2 GW for 4.5 years.
The coal powerplant down the road 10 miles burns something on the order of 500 tons of coal a day to make half the electricity we do.
Each of our fuel assemblies costs us $750,000. For coal to be as cheap as nuclear, coal would have to go for $0.46 per ton. It actually costs more in the neighborhood of $28.00 per ton.
So even with the added burdens of security and (ridiculous) regulation, nuclear power is still cheaper. My plant is actually a base load plant- we run at 100% capacity 24/7, and other plants (coal, oil, gas, etc) vary their load with demand- because we underbid all of them in the local deregulated market.
If it wasn't for the ornerous regulation, idiot groups like greenpeace, and widespread misunderstanding about nuclear power, you'd see Nuke plants being built on quite a regular basis.
THey'd never be the entire source of electricity for the country, because nuclear plants don't change load gracefully over the course of the day. You start them, fully load them, and run them till they need to be refueled, or shit needs service sooner than you expect, because it's not in it's design parameters.
Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms should be the name of a store, not a government agency.