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Could Windfarms And Birds Get Along After All?
going_the_2Rpi_way writes "There's an ongoing argument as to whether wind farms actually are as environmentally friendly as is generally imagined. Opponents argue that the effect these farms have on local wildlife (birds, bats, etc.) may range from disruptive to devastating.
Well, it seems they've hit a nerve and ecologists are beginning addressing the issue and have begun to found some encouraging results:
Birds not being killed. The debate goes on ..."
It's not so much they the birds are being killed as that the turbines are freeing up bird prey for all the birds smart enough to not run into stuff. I don't think the turbines are going out of their way to kill birds.
I can see the headlines already:
Pigeons wiped out by wind turbines! Only less-dumb birds survive Avian Apocalypse!
The crackpots who are trying to stop windpower because it might kill birds should concentrate on the things that actually are killing birds: cars, cats, buildings, and loss of habitat.
Let's convene a conference about birds being killed by paned glass.
Maybe the UN can get hold of the issue and negotiate a deal with glassmakers that would see them manage a fund dedicated to supporting the abandoned chicks of deceased winged parents cut-down by clear glass panes.
Then they could siphon a little off for themselves and their immediate relatives and remain beyond the reach of the law, even as they grandstand as the judges of right and wrong in the world.
Birds are also being killed by the avian flu. Those concerned should be developing and distributing an innoculation for birds everywhere, but they're not, are they?
Perhaps those claiming to be avian rights supporters should be placed on trial by the UN after the UN has first secured the aforementioned sweet deal over the glass panes, at which point it might accuse the world's chief bird rights organization of fraud, misrepresentation, malfeasance and the mismanagement of the public trust.
This organization might become the subject of various resolutions, after which it might be accused of developing weapons of mass destruction, preparing the way for sanctions, an economic embargo and eventual invasion.
If you're going to go around claiming to care for birds, you'd g*ddam*ed well better be caring for birds, and not just pretending to while you pursue your hidden, nefarious anti-windmill agenda.
Angular speed is slower, but speed of the blades is probably faster.
Also, birds see at a much higher FPS than humans so they can probably see blades in the fast moving turbines just as well as the slow ones.
...(and perhaps by the story, too):
bird hazard or not, there are legitimate unresolved questions about how *massive* wind-farms might adversely affect weather.
I would agree with the birds comment, but they seem to die anyway (at least reportadly), so it must not be ENOUGH for the fast spinning windmills.
Either that or it's just the birds that are dumb as paste, in which case we may be doing nature a favor ;)
Comment forecast: Bits of genius surrounded by a sea of mediocrity.
So the less dumb birds that survive will be tempted to do dumb things like flying around a blade while the blade is moving just to impress some of the females.
The message on the other side of this sig is false.
*sounds of brain gears slowly grinding*
Then, we'll eventually be left with a race of super birds? Hitchcock time for us?
"... and I, for one, welcome our new avian overlords..."
http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/11/1 1/0056217&tid=126&tid=14
So now the summary of the referenced story is also trying to deceive you?
"A group of Canadian and American scientists has modelled the effects of introducing massive amounts of wind farms into North America and have come up with surprising results. While still having only 1/5th the impact of fossil fuels, wind power will still adjust the earth's climate with the equatorial regions warmed while the arctic grows colder."
"news rat (as your nickname suggests)"
"nusrat" is a tribute to great (deceased) spiritual musical artist.
see nusrat.com
About a year ago, I found a report posted on slashdot indicating that more birds die from glass than windmills. A lot more. Your birds are dumb hypothesis is accurate.
When I hear activists against wind energy, the first thing that comes to mind is how it benefits fossil fuels. Concious of it or not, putting up roadblocks as frequently as they do only helps the incumbant energy sources. Perhaps a reasonable comprimise for these people would be a provision to encourage citizens to purchase more energy efficient cars, fridges and furnace/ac's. This could be accomlished either through a tax break or a sales restriction. I certainly wouldn't mind a tax break on a new fridge or furnace.
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Although the angular speed of large windmills is low, the tip speeds are just as fast. In fact, high-efficiency windmills have very high tip speeds. The tip often travels on the order of 6 or 7 times the speed of the wind (about 150-180 mph in a 30 mph wind). If you think of a gliding airplane, the most efficient of them move more than 20 units forward for every 1 unit of distance dropped. Similarly, the blades of an efficient turbine move many units around the circle for each unit of wind that moves through them.
This tip speed ratio is irrespective of the diameter of the turbine.
Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do.
Here in Australia one of the biggest killers of birds is the heat and drought (8 years and counting) and cats (of course). I have seen birds just fall out of the sky dead on 40c plus days. With global warming we can expect to see that even more... therefore wind farms might save the lives of the birds in an indirect way.
It concerns me that the people who complain about wind farms might be funded by the producers of fossil fuel power. There are anti-windfarm people here in Oz and a lot of their propoganda is funded by a company that owns a coal-fired power plant. Bah.
99 bottles of beer in 175 characte
1. I make no assertions re global warming, local wind strength, greenhouse effects, windmills, or the causal relationship of cancer and wearing leisure suits.
.
I said:
"There are legitimate unresolved questions about how *massive* wind-farms might adversely affect" *WEATHER*,
and
"It affects more than merely..." (i.e., an effect greater than local).
The AC reply was:
*WEATHER* effects from "*massive* wind-farms" ***WILL*** only be seen on a very ***LOCAL*** scale.
The older article clearly demonstrates that "There are legitimate unresolved ***QUESTIONS***" etc.
It's time for your retraction.
2. It took me literally 30 seconds to find the full G&M text by googling for:
"Globe and Mail" Canadian American scientists "wind farms" climate arctic
GLOBE AND MAIL - A group of Canadian and U.S. scientists reported Tuesday that computer simulations show that a large-scale use of wind farms to generate electrical power could create a significant temperature change over Earth's land masses. While the precise tradeoff between the climate changes from wind farms versus that from carbon-based power systems is still a matter of contention, the fact that wind power isn't climate neutral leaps out of the simulations. .
Specifically, if wind generation were expanded to the point where it produced one-10th of today's energy, the models say cooling in the Arctic and a warming across the southern parts of North America should happen. The exact mechanism for this is unclear, but the scientists believe it may have to do with the disruption of the flow of heat from the equator to the poles.
Depending on how much energy is ultimately generated by wind power, the study's simulations say these changes could range from one-third of a degree to 2 degrees Celsius. One unexpected finding to the study is that the hotter temperate zone/cooler Arctic effect exists in the simulations if the wind farms are concentrated in a few spots or scattered across the world.
A modern high-performance sailplane can glide upwards of 60 feet forward for every foot it sinks (Lift/Drag >= 60), and the tip-speed ratio of a turbine isn't closely related to L/D. Heck, if you tried getting close to that ratio the tips would be supersonic at anything like good wind speeds.
Time is Nature's way of keeping everything from happening at once... the bitch.
Time is Nature's way of keeping everything from happening at once... the bitch.
How's Bryan Roberts coming along with the gyromill concept? I haven't seen anything new about this since the BBC news piece some time back.
Time is Nature's way of keeping everything from happening at once... the bitch.
Perhaps they could use the same strategies and techniques mentioned here
The Southwest Florida International Airport in Fort Myers has trained a 2-year-old border collie to chase birds away from the airport
Broadcasting bird distress calls to see if they can convince the birds to go elsewhere.
Bringing in trained hawks to intimidate smaller birds.
Stopping lawn mowing. If the grass around the airport is 7 to 14 inches high, it makes it harder for birds to peck for food
Set out a little bird food with purgatives to make the birds sick enough to move on to a better food supply
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Also, birds see at a much higher FPS than humans
I had to drop a small fortune on a new high end video card, my parakeet refuses to play Quake 3 at anything less than 160 FPS.
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- - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.
Keep in mind that the Danish study covered wind farms that were out at sea. Are the results different for land-based wind farms?
I'm vehemently opposed to windfarms.
l ls&hl=en&lr=&c2coff=1&sa=N&tab =wi
My favorite spot in the extreme south of Spain, until recently spared of mass tourism, is being completely and utterly destroyed by thousands and thousands of windmills. Every formally pristine hilltop now has a 6 meter wide access road, and a row of eyesores.
As a major passage between Europe and Africa for migrant birds they present an enormous danger to them. Each time I walk up to a mill I find carcasses of a birds nearby. Rare birds getting killed IS a major issue.
Ecologists are caught in a trap. While they must see the birds getting killed (unless they're armchair ecologists), they like 'green energy' and are being bought off because the status of the land around the mills is converted from hunting area to nature reserve. Not that anything changes, the hunting areas were pristine, and not much hunting took place before.
The windmills are being heavily subsidised. Owners of the land - in Spain nobility still owns nearly all uncultivated land - reap them, plus untold amounts of money for converting their useless 'hunting' lands into nature preserves.
Once the subsidies subside, the mills will become unprofitable and will be abandoned.
If you have the chance, go and see for yourself, or google for 'tarifa windmills' or something like this.
http://images.google.com/images?q=tarifa%20windmi
Flourescent (adj): smelling like ground wheat.
If we cover the world in wind mills we'll destroy the climate by stoping the wind across the world!y Id=4161624
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?stor
Technology, the cause of and solution to all of life's problems.
that's not a half-bad idea! They don't really take up that much of the view from a distance, but they're white for crying out loud. Paint 'em!
Uh...yeah, you go paint 'em, I have to rush to the patent office for...uh...to apply for a...job. Yeah. Hurry up and start painting, will ya?
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There are a lot more windows than windmills, though. A more appropriate metric would be something that takes that into account, like "bird deaths per 1000 square meters of window vs. deaths per windmill". If you're going to compare windmills to window glass, you might as well compare the number of people who choke to death on Kobe beef compared to those that choke on flank steak.
If a job's not worth doing, it's not worth doing right.
NPR just was reporting it as a Hmmmm that's interesting story. Not a 'true' story about climate change.
And while I don't really think there's any real problem with wind turbines some simple logic will show that they do have an effect on the climate.
If you generator X amount of gigwatts from the flow of air that's X less gigwatts of wind current. So if the entire world started sucking their energy from the wind, then there's logically going to be less wind.
Technology, the cause of and solution to all of life's problems.
Prostate cancer is a significant cause of death among men and is hard to avoid - be born female ( whereupon breast cancer becomes a major concern) or be castrated before age 40.
It's a matter of degree - not a heck of a lot of men are worried about breast cancer although, thanks to the efforts of Richard Roundtree, this is probably changing.
Here what I think is important - are rare or endangered birds being killed at a significant rate? Why are so many of the "concerned" groups funded by industries or interests that are antagonistic to wind power?
Pain is merely failure leaving the body