Dead birds --- the HOW

[underpants]

Power lines
130 million -- 174 million

Windows (residential and commercial)
100 million -- 1 billion

Pesticides
70 million

Automobiles
60 million -- 80 million

Lighted communication towers
40 million -- 50 million

Wind turbines
10,000 -- 40,000

http://science.howstuffworks.com/wind-turbine-kill-birds.htm

This is a connected thread to:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x8755287

[niyad]

1. thank you for posting that-- I knew I had seen that list not so long ago (on KO or Rachel,

I believe)

off to greatest with you

[panader0]

2. Hey BP---how much is a dead pelican worth?

[MajorChode]

3. It's likely the transmission lines required for wind turbines kill more birds...

than the turbines themselves.

[Gold Metal Flake]

4. You left off the top of the list entry

Feral and domestic cats
Hundreds of millions

[Jamastiene]

7. Not my domestic cats...

I am evil, don'cha know? (see other thread for funny reference) :P

[nashville_brook]

11. beat me to it -- :) meow.

[apocalypsehow]

5. Kick, Rec. n/t.

[A HERETIC I AM]

6. I guess the OP of the other thread doesn't understand why so few see the ease...

of building one of these;




To fit one of these;



Never mind that the latter can have an overall height of more than a 35 story skyscraper, or that the former will, when built to the scale suggested and of a construction adequate to actually keep birds away from the blades, act like a giant sail and make the generator itself useless. Forget all that.

It's easy, don't you see? Just build the damned thing out of carbon fiber or something. Who gives a shit if they cost $45 million a pop, as long as a fucking pigeon isn't killed, it's worth it, right?

[jimmyflint]

8. Also drunk flying!

Many birds eat fermented berries and fruit then try to fly. When I was a kid I used to watch them get AFU on juniper berries.

[Liberty Belle]

9. What happens as they build many more wind plants?

True, there are more deaths from powerlines currently, but a single wind far killed thousands of eagles. What happens when you put these things up all across America, increasing them exponentially--and worse, locating them right in the windiest areas where migratory birds use those wind currents on their migrations?

In Europe some birds are nearly extinct from decimation by wind turbines. These are NOT green!

[Altoid_Cyclist]

10. I know that we need to wean ourselves off of fossil fuels, but wind farms aren't always a panacea.

This is from the local Audubon Society chapter.


GIS analysis that was performed to derive the estimates of forest acreage cleared and forest-interior acreage "lost" involved a rather painstaking process of carefully digitizing the "before and after" forest and non-forest edges within the project area using high-resolution digital aerial photos from the USDA National Agricultural Information Program (NAIP), which were taken in 2008, 2005, and 2004.

The analysis determined that more than 300 acres of forest habitat was cleared to make way for the seventy-five wind turbines and for the project's very wide and extensive road/utility-line network. The clearing of forest for this windplant and the widening of the relatively narrow openings in forest canopy along the pre-existing forest roads (resulting in linear openings through the forest that are over thirty feet in width) caused extensive fragmentation of the formerly large blocks of contiguous forest that made up this area. The cumulative loss of ecologically significant forest-interior habitat totaled more than 2,360 acres — nearly 4 square miles! On a "per turbine" basis, the forest "loss" averaged over 4.1 acres, and the forest-interior "loss" averaged nearly 31.5 acres. The forest-interior impact is among the worst at windplants built along forested ridgetops of Appalachia — both in terms of total acres and especially for its "per turbine" loss.

Read more: http://www.jvas.org/cc_forest_impact_ar_wndplnt.html


Lots of related articles that explain more about the pitfalls that sometimes accompany the wind farms here: http://www.jvas.org/cc.html


As I said, I'm not against all wind farms. The ones around here just aren't always planned or placed well.