http://www.dailytech.com/Study+Wind+Farms++Bird+Killers/article18641.htm

Quote :

"Annual death toll expected to rise A recent study in Klickitat County, Washington shows that active wind farms in Washington and Oregon kill more than 6,500 birds and 3,000 bats annually. Biologist Orah Zamora works for West, Inc., an ecological field study company, monitors the Windy Flats project, one of the largest wind farms in the United States. Zamora looks for dead birds and bats that have been severed by the spinning blades of the surrounding wind turbines in order to conduct survey's to observe how wind-power development is affecting birds. "It's like a crime scene, and you try to figure out what happened," said Zamora. "Sometimes it's really obvious because you can see a slice mark." These surveys are financed by the wind industry and are mainly concerned with birds like eagles, hawks, and other raptors. Klickitat County is especially a concern because the area has an abundance of prey for these larger birds, hence, they tend to stay in the area. According to the study, these birds are diving for their prey and do not pay attention to the large wind turbine blades that may be in the way. There are differing views between scientists, biologists and wind-energy developers as to whether birds are at high risk because no one knows what cumulative death toll will have a significant impact on the species. Wind-power advocates say "these deaths are an acceptable trade-off for development of a renewable energy source." They also note that man-made hazards and house cats account for tens of millions of bird-related deaths per year. According to Mike Sagrillo, a consultant who writes for the American Wind Energy Association, bird mortality "at wind farms, compared to other human-related causes of bird mortality, is biologically and statistically insignificant." The surveys taken in Klickitat County showed that wind power is only a minor hazard to birds, but scientists say it's too early to really "discount the risks posed by the rush to develop Northwest wind power." A survey in Klickitat County at the Big Horn Wind Farm indicated that more than 30 raptors were killed "during an initial year of operations - more than seven times the number forecast in a pre-construction study." Among the dead birds were short-eared owls, kestrels, red-tailed hawks and a ferruginous hawk. "We take questions and concerns of wildlife impacts very seriously," said Jan Johnson, a spokeswoman for Iberdrola Renewables, which owns the Big Horn Wind Farm. In addition to these findings, Altamount Pass Wind Farms in California have older wind turbines from the 1980's that have killed more raptors "per megawatt of power than anywhere else in the nation." These wind farms kill more than 1,600 raptors per year. While developers have agreed to relocate turbines away from canyon ridges where the large birds of prey spend most of their time, the death toll is still expected to rise due to the lack of information regarding what death toll is biologically significant to these birds. A study by West, Inc. that was paid for by the Klickitat County Planning Department showed that the turbines would kill 516 raptors each year just in the Columbia River plateau region of Oregon and Washington if the industry doubled in size. The study determined that this was not a significant number, but ecologist K. Shawn Smallwood thinks the study underestimates the number of deaths and that it's hard to conclude whether these wind turbine-related deaths would harm an entire species. "

6/8/2010 12:54:27 PM

Windmills are fucking enormous and the blades are slow as shit. I see them around when I'm on the train. If you're stupid enough to fly into one then you need to be killed anyway.

[Edited on June 8, 2010 at 12:56 PM. Reason : ...speaking for european ones of course]

6/8/2010 12:56:23 PM

Windmills are fucking enormous and the blades are slow as shit. I see them around when I'm on the train. If you're stupid enough to fly into one then you need to be killed anyway.

[Edited on June 8, 2010 at 12:56 PM. Reason : ...speaking for european ones of course]

6/8/2010 1:01:57 PM

if you read, this is talking about Wind FARMS

6/8/2010 1:03:35 PM

That's like blaming a forest for some kid flying his kite into the trees

6/8/2010 1:04:19 PM

Apparently this wasn't a problem in the olden days in Holland, the American midwest and anywhere else that used wind power for farm purposes. Yep, a problem solely in modern times.

Another quality DailyTech post by BlackDog.

6/8/2010 1:04:46 PM

How big your farm grow?
We should burn more fossil fuels to save the birds.

6/8/2010 1:07:06 PM

less shit on cars

I'm AstralAdvent and i approved this message.

6/8/2010 1:09:52 PM

can we suspend posting privileges for BlackDog and have his username link to http://www.dailytech.com/rss.aspx instead?

it would amount to the same thing but with less wasted space on the tww server

6/8/2010 1:12:01 PM

Back in the 70s DDT was accused of being responsible for declining numbers of raptors and other birds. Despite its huge benefit (with regards to malaria) it was banned.

Now we have "clean energy" windfarms killing birds...but its all good b/c its energy from something other than oil.

6/8/2010 1:15:42 PM

I've been posting stories from that site on here for years, sad it took yall so long to notice.

6/8/2010 1:18:57 PM

^^ raptors are dinosaurs, retard

6/8/2010 1:47:19 PM

6/8/2010 1:47:45 PM

Quote :

"RAPTORS"

6/8/2010 1:48:41 PM

Quote :

"Back in the 70s DDT was accused of being responsible for declining numbers of raptors and other birds."

accused and rightfully convicted (sort of)...DDT very likely does not contribute significantly to the thinning of raptor eggshells...rather, it appears that DDE (a DDT metabolite) is the culprit (http://www.atsdr.cdc.gov/toxprofiles/tp35.html if you're interested)

unfortunately, since DDT can't help degrading into the DDE in the environment, you might as well blame DDT

Quote :

"Despite its huge benefit (with regards to malaria) it was banned."

i wouldn't go so far as to say that birds are more important than people, but i wouldn't say that the knowing decimation of multiple species is ethically acceptable, either

6/8/2010 1:54:46 PM

Quote :

"RAPTOR EGGSHELLS"

6/8/2010 1:56:19 PM

I like stories like this. It pits 2 camps of hippies against each other. Which side will the hippies support??


Clean energy hippies versus the PETA hippies. And go!

6/8/2010 1:58:46 PM

Quote :

"ANOTHER DailyTechDog PRODUCTION"

6/8/2010 2:00:46 PM

There were many factors at play in the decline of the birds and it was easier to blame DDT, which the media did a masterful job of. But look at the brightside, there probably 30 million fewer Africans to deal with as a result

Quote :

"DDT, as well as chlordane, PCBs and PBBs, are all stored in the fatty tissues of fish and most animals including humans. The environmental zealots claimed that the higher up the food chain that these stores of chemicals were consumed, the greater would become the concentration stored in fat. They again turned to fraudulent studies to prove their claims, selecting only tissue samples that they knew would produce the desired result. In reality honest studies disproved their biomagnification claims. On June 14, 1972 William Ruckelhaus, Administrator of the EPA, as a result of political pressure from environmental extremists, made a one man decision to ban the use of DDT in United States, a move that was illegal. He took this action ignoring 8,300 pages of testimony and the findings of the hearing examiner and most scientists and in the absence of any honest substantiating science. He subsequently refused to comply with requests made under the Freedom of Information Act and defied the National Environmental Policy Act by refusing to file an Environmental Impact Statement on the disastrous consequences of his decision. After he left the EPA Ruckelhaus affixed his name to letters soliciting membership in the Environmental Defense Fund, the organization that led the fight to ban DDT.[7] The pesticides that replaced DDT, such as dieldrin and aldrin, are far more toxic, and have been responsible for many deaths. Because of the low cost of DDT and the absence of equally effective substitutes with low toxicity, it continued to be used internationally. When huts were sprayed with DDT only 3 percent as many mosquitoes entered as compared with the most widely used alternative.[8] This effectiveness lasted for six months or more, a feature not matched by alternative pesticides that cost three times as much."

Just saying...

http://www.eco-imperialism.com/content/article.php3?id=89

[Edited on June 8, 2010 at 2:01 PM. Reason : k]

6/8/2010 2:00:47 PM

haha nice find

6/8/2010 2:03:07 PM

not that I care either way. but if you think about how big some of the "slower ones" are and then the time it takes them to make it around 1 revolution they're acually extremely fast (just such a large scale that they look slow) and it's very easy to see the problem when you put hundreds of them in an array

6/8/2010 2:03:10 PM

glass windows = bird killers

6/8/2010 2:04:06 PM

please find a Glass Window Farm with huge windows mounted on top of large poles

6/8/2010 2:05:25 PM

6/8/2010 2:06:21 PM

I don't see any poles with windows on top

I do see a lot of steel and concrete though

6/8/2010 2:08:15 PM

Thats just because you can't see the people due to the scale.

I assure you that NYC has an historic and vibrant polish community.

6/8/2010 2:10:30 PM

people = poles with windows on top?

6/8/2010 2:11:29 PM

Well, not all people are poles, BlackDog. That's part of the distinct beauty of living in a varied multi-ethnic city.

6/8/2010 2:13:07 PM

Quote :

"Just saying..."

uh, what exactly are you just saying? i didn't disagree with you in that DDT was yanked without substantial evidence (in fact, i'm sure you can find me saying on here, more than once, that carson was an environut)...but the truth is that DDE does in fact cause eggshell thinning in susceptible species (mostly raptors and waterfowl)

regardless of the reasons DDT came under fire, it is, in actuality, a product detrimental to the well-being of many species that would otherwise have healthy populations...there are any number of papers demonstrating and documenting the inhibition of the creation of particular lipid compounds necessary for creating eggshells of the correct thickness (i won't pretend to know what the compound(s) is(are) as it's been a few years since i did any research on it)

nor am i saying that the replacements for DDT are any better

[Edited on June 8, 2010 at 2:16 PM. Reason : .]

6/8/2010 2:15:00 PM

If we put windmills on skyscrapers they won't kill birds!!



Brilliant!!

6/8/2010 2:15:33 PM

NYC has actually had a bump in hawk and falcon populations over the years since the skyscrapers do a pretty good impersonation of cliffs.

^^good enough for me

[Edited on June 8, 2010 at 2:17 PM. Reason : k]

6/8/2010 2:16:59 PM

^^ Vertical axis windmills are great on top of skyscrapers because they can be stacked.

Also I doubt that they kill as many birds.

[Edited on June 8, 2010 at 2:18 PM. Reason : .]

6/8/2010 2:18:05 PM

If we put skyscrapers on windmills they won't kill birds!!



Brilliant!!

6/8/2010 2:27:43 PM

as long as they are ugly birds.

6/8/2010 2:28:41 PM

If we put birds in skyscrapers they'll stay away from our windmills...

6/8/2010 2:29:14 PM

There's a good pizza joint in the bottom left corner of this picture

6/8/2010 2:49:02 PM

I never went to Grimaldi's when I lived in NYC. Heard it was too much of a hassle/tourist trap. Been to Lombardi's and while good, I wasn't blown away. My favorite pizza joint was "The Pizzeria" on MacDougal Street just north of Bleeker. But alas, it went out of business

Just to the right of the pic, at the base of the Williamsburg bridge, lies the fabled Peter Luger steakhouse. Best steak in the city, almost 30 years running.

(yum)

[Edited on June 8, 2010 at 3:03 PM. Reason : bring lots of cash, k]

6/8/2010 2:59:21 PM

6/8/2010 3:01:55 PM

so basically you have to decide:

1. do you want birds killed by windfarms

or

2. do you want seabirds killed from oil spills

those are your only two choices

6/8/2010 3:04:25 PM

3. Breed birds big enough to ride

6/8/2010 3:05:01 PM

Oil?

Who said anything about oil?

Bitch, you cookin'?

6/8/2010 3:07:10 PM

we are forgetting the real enemy here....

6/8/2010 3:23:34 PM

Quote :

"That's like blaming a forest for some kid flying his kite into the trees"

6/8/2010 3:28:00 PM

THOSE DAMN DIRTY TREES!!!!

6/8/2010 3:34:41 PM