It was never a myth. It was a lie.
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Anyone can drive out to a windfarm and look for dead birds, there never were any.
Also, wind turbines are geared to spin slowly, it’s not like a room fan, they only turn at 10-20 rpm.
Anyone can also visit a glass office building and ask caretakers how many birds a day they clean up.
I’m not saying wind turbines kill a lot if birds, but that 20 RPM can translate to blade tip speeds well over 100MPH because of how long they are.
And yet, no dead birds.
If every wants to save birds, remove the windows from your house.
You should read the article fr. It says that wind turbines can and do kill birds, but that they are now designed and placed judiciously to reduce death toll. And that there are much greater threats, namely climate change which wind turbines helps with.
Very few people that oppose wind turbines are actually any type of animal lover. If bird deaths really were the cause of their apprehension, ironically you’d see them push more for clean energy such as wind and solar, since pollution has killed and will continue to kill countless more beings than any wind turbine could dream of.
Good level headed article. Doesn’t pretend wind turbines don’t kill birds, but relativizes with the true killers: cats, windows and climate change (from which wind turbines are a remedy).
Yes, and well written too. It was easy to read, and not too long.
Came here to make some smart-ass comment, but the article already says it all. One additional thing I’ve read though is that rat poison (used by farmers) is also a major killer for birds-of-prey. But it may be a local problem.
Before anyone starts shouting windturbines don’t kill birds because they saw this headline without reading the article, he is the key takeaway:
It turns out that while wind turbines do kill birds, they are statistically insignificant compared to the bigger killers we have in our cities and in our bedrooms.
Aside from the number being insignificant, there are efforts being made to minimize the amount of animals dying. The main solution is what is called bird curtailment - shutting the windmill off during migration activity.
Here is an article if you want to know more: https://appliedecologistsblog.com/2024/05/30/a-safe-passage-protecting-migratory-birds-in-the-north-sea/
Fuck them birds. Now study the effects of fossil fuel and compare the two.
It’s obvious parties who are against renewables will use this problem to their advantage acting like the dead birds are the thing care about. Obviously switching from wind energy to fossil energy is not desirable, and luckily fossil fuels aren’t the only alternative. Birds prefer to travel during the day, when there is also solar power for example. This is not a black and white discussion where you are either in favour of killing birds or in favour of saving the planet. Halting climate change and limiting the amount of animals dying for bad reasons are not mutually exclusive goals.
I also find that birds movements are not black and white as some birds such as the owl prefers moving under the cover of night.
However I feel like everyone who meets you is pro killing of the conversation.However I feel like everyone who meets you is pro killing of the conversation.
How so?
My favorite part is that people who are against wind farms pretend to care about animals
Almost like birds have eyes and a brain
A while back, I found myself driving across South Dakota, where there are plenty of fields of wind turbines.
There was one about 20
yearsyards from the road, with a paved driveway leading to it. Curious about all of Trump’s allegations, I decided to check it out, and I pulled up next to the turbine.First of all, his claim that they make lots of noise is a LIE. They make almost no noise at all. There was a quiet, regular mechanical thump, every few seconds or so, but it wasn’t loud, and it couldn’t be heard from the road.
Secondly, there wasn’t one dead bird in the vicinity, despite there being MANY turbines operating in close proximity. If turbines were so deadly to birds, there should be a lot of them around this area, or at least a few, or at least ONE. But there were none.
Its almost like Trump either had no idea was he was saying, or he was just lying. Or both. Based on past experience, I’m going with BOTH.
As article says (and IIRC from other sources) it’s the offshore turbines that pose the most risk to birds, and mostly to gliding fishing birds (bald eagle, osprey) because they barely see in front of them (they are looking down) and do not expect obstacles on open water.
20 years from the road
When your measuring distance in years, it’s too far to drive
Got it, edited.
It was a fun thought. Assuming a speed of 60 miles per hour, one car-year would be 525,600
minutesseasons of lovemiles
It always sounded so ridiculously unlikely, and that I’ve only heard people who definitely is just grasping for arguments never helped either.
Good that there is some actual data on it now
Oh…but what about the HEADACHES.
Probably hysteria, but infrasonic emissions should be considered in the engineering. I have no clue what the infrasonic signatures are like for various wind turbines setups. I have lived near industrial infrasonic generators of other sources, and I have hated it before knowing anything about it.
Bottom line for me:
- wind powered electricity, good
- pollution of any kind, bad
- emissions are an engineering problem, not an intrinsic one (usually)
Amazing how the headaches go away when there is a cash offer.
I suspect “infrasonic emissions” are mentioned to summon the image of some scary new unknown. Except cars produce it too, at least the ones with combustion engines. It is sound. It doesn’t matter if it is produced, it matters how loud it is.
I swear this comes from people thinking they work like giant fans, sucking birds in.
They areliterally functinally opposite of fans. Wind pushes the blades, not blades pushing wind.
Dude, if hard data mattered to the maga cult, Trump would never have gotten elected in the first place.
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Thanks for this debunk!
It always sound stupid, especially because birds aren’t that stupid
It hasn’t got anything to do with brain but with vision, we make these things light grey so they blend with the white sky. Just like birds have trouble seeing glass, another thing we made to be as invisible as possible.
Birds can see more colors than us, at least the majority of them, we have 3 types of photoreceptor: red, green and blue, but they also have a 4th one that allow to see ultraviolet light; that means that bird see a wider range of colors than humans so i strongly doubt that they can’t distinguish between light grey and white
The sky is never pure white, and i’m not saying all birds will fly into them if the sky and the windmill are a perfect match. But at the same time, if it were a bright colour less birds would fly into it. Collisions will still happen. It also has to do with the blades rotating, but also that is easier to calculate when the blades are very visible. Still the best thing is to do turn them off sometimes. Best case scenario would be that you can switch over to a source that is also renewable.
It will still kill less birds than coal and oil, and again they will still distinguish it even if it’s the ssme color of the sky, very few birds will collide with it;
I DO NOT know if this image tells the truth, i don’t have enough time to do a real research just for a lemmy comment so just search it up if you have more time than me
