Let me begin with a couple of statements right out of the box. Firstly we are members of the National Audubon Society, Wilderness Society, and World Wildlife Fund; we support their programs both financially and volunteer here in Florida with habitat restoration projects.
Secondly we are also proponents of wind energy as a major supplier of clean renewable energy. We began our renewable energy design business in wind energy in Texas and have to this point worked of 15 wind farm projects over the last 18 years. We view bird and bat deaths as a major concern for wind farm design and placement.
With all that said we also know that those in the big corporate fossil fuel world love to use the bird strike issue as a giant red herring to try and find anything they can to slow down the adoption of wind farms around the country. So when we saw this piece in the Bloomberg news we thought it might be good to post on Alt Energy Shift as a good even handed assessment of the true issue. Please read on.
World’s Top Serial Bird Killers Put Infamous Windmills to Shame
http://www.bloomberg...d-killers-.html
Pity the birds.
As if cats weren’t bad enough, humans have invented all sorts of torture devices for our winged friends. We’ve paved over their nesting sites to make room for Olive Gardens and have broken up their skyscapes with glass buildings and radio towers.
Then came the most infamous bird killer of all: the wind turbine. As you can see in the chart below, these sky blenders don’t compare to other man made objects.
Bird deaths estimates.JPG 27.22K
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The estimates above are used in promotional videos by Vestas Wind Systems, the world's biggest turbine maker. However, they originally came from a study by the U.S. Forest Service and are similar to numbers used by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the Wildlife Society -- earnest defenders of birds and bats.
No matter whose estimates you use, deaths by turbine don’t compare to cats, cars, power lines or buildings. It’s almost as if there’s been a concerted effort to make people think wind turbines are more menacing than they actually are.
It’s nice for wind-farm planners to take migration patterns and endangered habitats into account. But even if wind turbines were to double in size and provide 100 percent of our energy needs (both of which defy the laws of physics as we currently understand them), they still wouldn’t compare to the modern scourges of high-tension power lines or buildings with glass windows. Not even close.
The alternative to renewable energy sources like wind and solar is to burn ever more fossil fuels. Animals are threatened by those, too, including North America’s most common hairless mammal: the human. Roughly 20,000 of these moderately-intelligent animals die prematurely each year from air pollution from coal and oil, according to a study ordered by Congress.
Pity the humans.
From E3 Wise
The American Wind Association has implimented several new programs to factor in bird nesting and migration routes to wind farm development and placement, but dont be suprised by big fossil fuel still trying to muddy the waters when it comes to wind turbines, just like climate change, their goal is to misinform and confuse.
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Wind Turbines and Birds
Started by E3 wise, Sep 14 2014 01:57 PM
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