Ecotretas writes in with this sad video.
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First time I’ve seen an image of a big bird going down due to wind energy:
The important part is at 1:57 This occurred in Creta.
The effort to save the bird is notorious! Please check it out at:
and
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This video made me wonder why the vulture was hanging around these wind power turbines. Perhaps there were other birds felled by the turbines on the ground and the vulture just did what they do normally: circle and wait.
That was awful !!
Very sad !!
This is sadly a problem here in Norway as well. Some birds have totally vanished from the areas where they put up windmills. 🙁
But i guess it is okay when it is done in the name of global warming/climate change/or whatever they call it today.
Someone linked to that recently – it’s been around for a while.
I think it demonstrates just how rare an actual bird strike would be. How many times did it fly through the rotor without being hit?
OT but I hope interesting.
Is Google biased?
A year ago my colleague and I did an analysis of popular climate blogs based on Google ‘page rank’. The page rank goes from 0 to 10. The higher the rank the more enquiries Google is likely to send to that site. What we have found is the while non-sceptic sites are more or less in balance, as many sites have moved up as have moved down, for sceptic sites this is not the case. The number of demotions is more than 5 times higher than the number of promotions.
(http://www.climatedata.info/Discussions/Discussions/opinions.php )
It is not due to changes in posting frequency. We have also found that non-sceptical sites with few visitors (according to Alexa) sometimes have the same page rank as popular sceptic sites with 100 times as many visitors.
It seems as if Google is biased against climate sceptics.
Solve the “climate crisis…” kill an innocent birdie. 🙁
The WWF will save the birds.
cough
Worst form of energy production EVER!
“Windmill parks are a renewable form of production of electric energy. They produce cheap ….(CHEAP!!!)….electric energy, reducing the pollution…(POLLUTION!!!)… of the environment and the greenhouse effect. ”
Drinking the Warmist KoolAid: cheap energy indeed.
Well, at least they’ll save that particular bird.
Look for learned studies on the disappearance of large numbers of soaring birds from their usual habitat, all blaming it on Global Warming.
Oddly enough, they’ll be correct…in a very skewed way.
Very sad.
The only way these Greens/CAGW prophets of doom will be stopped is by being put on the stand and cross-examined by the best legal brains in the US or England.
None of their so called “evidence” nor any of their models will stand up to cross-examination by lawyers. Why are those of us who know better not engineering ways in which the CAGW farce can be exposed in Court?
Senator Inhofe is the only person I am aware of presently who is actually making threatening noises. Can we not get public interest type suits going somewhere? Are there any lawyers listening. I am prepared to get involved pro bono in England.
Anybody?
Kevin Oram
Colateral Damage…
In the war against fossil fuel addiction: Clean Energy 1, Vultures 0
Time to stamp another vulture outline on the side of the turbine tower. After 5 kills, the tower becomes and “ace”.
Steve – no. of crossings is less relevant than time in the area to a strike.
More about Birds
http://www.wind-watch.org/news/2009/07/05/northwest-wind-power-a-threat-to-raptors/
http://www.examiner.com/ExaminerSlideshow.html?entryid=455213&slide=3
This is what Audubon et al wants to do, trade our environment for wind power, so they can enrich their own coffers because of their “gullible and naive” green followers.
http://www.sunjournal.com/node/808976
This is a great slide show, by a wildlife biologist, to show how wind turbines impact our environment. This is what the Audubon society and other “environmental org’s are begging for, thousands upon thousands of these.
http://www.kutztown.edu/acad/geography/wildlife&windconf/Speaker_Presentations/Boone_GIS.pdf
The nuclear plant that is supplying my electricity now, (certainly not a wind farm, there is No Wind Today), puts out 2400 MW , 24/7 almost 365 per year.
5,000 (five thousand) 2 MW turbines with yearly ave capacity of 25% will put out 2,500 MW of erratic, unreliable electricity. The turbines will need about 20,000 acres of clearcut forest, impacting many times more of that forested area by FRAGMENTATION. That is what the Audubon et al used to preach about. Now they are lobbying congress to clearcut massive areas of prime ridge habitat in the Northeast US, because that is where the wind blows. It is complete “insanity” to think that we should cover our environment, our most precious resource, with these costly, wasteful, noisy MONSTERS. The bird kills are a small part of a picture that is overall DEVASTATING to anyone who cares about the land we live on. Another enormous consideration is the how these affect the lives and land values of people who live within 2 miles of these things.
:'(((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((
That was horrible. What a magnificent animal. I had heard that windmills killed birds but that video stopped my heart.
It’s a vulture, a carrion eater. It was undoubtedly employed by an oil company, whose employees are all just vultures feeding off the corpse of a dying planet!
*sobs*
[/sarcasm]
Shorter 30second clip here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9srPoOU6_Z4
Re: Steve Schaper (11:43:48) :
I think it demonstrates that their was something about the turbine that attracted the bird. Whether it was carrion near the windmill or something else I dont know, but it was obvious that the vulture was going to keep on flying around the turbine and the longer it did the more inevitable the strike.
“I think it demonstrates just how rare an actual bird strike would be. How many times did it fly through the rotor without being hit?”
If we are going to base it on the video alone, I would say that one large bird gets hit by a windmill every 2 minutes or so. At that rate, it’s 262,974 birds hit per windmill per year. How many windmills are there? 😉
I was wondering whether the turbulence generated by the windmills disturbs the wind pattern that the bird expects , creating updrafts and sinks its little brain cannot compute. Many birds depend on just planing rather than flying, taking advantage of the wind patterns.
Re: Steve Schaper (11:43:48):
One other thing. If you assume that the bird flew past the turbines 50 times then that would mean 1 in 50 birds flying through a turbine would get hit. That is of course a ridiculous extrapolation to make from a single piece of data. Similarly, it is also ridiculous to assume that strikes would be rare from a single piece of video.
An ecological consultant of my acquaintance (who was studying the impacts of wind turbines on birds) has seen the same behaviour with Australasian harriers in New Zealand, although in that case the bird didn’t collide with the blade. Harriers do scavenge, but this didn’t seem to be a case of a bird hanging around waiting for casualties, and I suspect the same applies to the vulture. It’s almost as if these raptors like to show off their flying skills – whether they’re trying to impress the ladies or just enjoying themselves, who knows? It does seem that wind turbines have some kind of appeal for at least some raptors, although just how common this behaviour is I’m not sure.
I read once there was an average of one large bird killed per windmill per month (or maybe year). Thing is these blades are deceptively slow moving but are really going pretty fast. 30m long is a circumference of 200m which if it goes around in 3sec is 66m/s or much much faster than a car.
Steve Schaper (11:43:48) :
I think it demonstrates just how rare an actual bird strike would be. How many times did it fly through the rotor without being hit
Steve, if you watched the video with a more open mind you would notice that the bird was attracted to these big wings and was destined to be clipped by a rotor. He appeared to be have come from afar and was attracted over. Perhaps the wind currents (these birds are experts on this) were interesting to it. It got a nice acceleration when it passed through the airstream.
Not good for biodiversity. It even selects the bigger birds.
Let’s not go to far here. If these things made technological and economic sense I would be arguing that the occasional bird strike is a small price to pay to power civilization. Unfortunately, they don’t – that is why they are a dumb idea – not because they kill some birds. Every source of power has similar type issues, e.g. fish, etc.
Perhaps there were updrafts it was sailing on?
And than another thing strikes me, this was most likely a place rarely visited by people because it is a barren hill/mountain top, ideal for wild life, and look at it now, apart from the windmills, look at the roads leading to it, the waste and rubble left behind. And this is happening all over the world.
Is this the greener and prosperous earth that is being promised by the Warmista’s if we act as they say we should?
Unintended consequence of knee-jerk environmentalism, combined with politics and greed.
I didn’t watch the video.
It’s all in the name of finding renewable and clean sources of energy. Fortunately for the world but unfortunately for the AGW control freaks, all of that will change soon due to a breakthrough in physics. A new analysis of the causality of motion reveals that we are immersed in a huge ocean of clean energy, lots and lots of it. It turns out that, contrary to the popular doctrine, Aristotle was right and that motion requires a cause. As a result we are moving in an immense lattice of energetic particles. No lattice => no motion.
http://rebelscience.blogspot.com/2009/09/physics-problem-with-motion-part-i.html
Physicists do not understand motion even if they think they do. In the not too distant future, we’ll have vehicles that require no wheels, travel at tremendous speeds and negotiate right angle turns without slowing down and without incurring any damage due to inertial effects. Floating sky cities, New York to Beijing in minutes, earth to Mars in hours; that’s the future of energy and transportation. Wait for it.
Several years ago, Univ. of Calgary was studying the effects of the reduction of bats down by Pincher Creek (large wind farms down that way). News coverage….nothing. Have a few ducks land on a tailings pond at Syncrude…world coverage….
well done on publishing this horrow story. I wrote about it in my London Sunday Telegraph column last month, http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/columnists/christopherbooker/7437040/Eco-friendly-but-not-to-eagles.html
“TerryS (12:34:48) :
I think it demonstrates that their was something about the turbine that attracted the bird.”
Vultures, eagles and other large birds of prey circle tall structures. It gives them a sense of coordination and direction. They used to do it with just mountain peaks, then buildings erected by men, and now we see them colliding with windmills. You can’t tell them not to circle the structures, it’s their nature to collect bearings this way.
one wonders how much greenhouse gas was emitted due to the efforts to save the bird? Extra juice for the x-ray machine, bandages, splits and other disposables that were manufactured somewhere, couple bags o’ vulture snacks, extra shift at the vulture rehab centre, and whatnot.
probably makes that particular windmill “carbon neutral.”
Must to read:
The hidden fuel costs of wind generated electricity.
http://www.clepair.net/windsecret.html
The impact of wind generated electricity on fossil fuel consumption.
http://www.clepair.net/windefficiency.html
sixwings (13:03:54) :
Aye, right! Perhaps you would care to elaborate on that or let us know which newspaper you found it in two days ago.
I’m sure we haven’t yet plumbed the full depths of our knowledge of physics but I can’t see this being practical anytime soon!
Here is a bit about those bird Cuisinarts:
http://www.wind-watch.org/news/2009/01/07/bird-strikes-lead-to-delays-in-wind-turbine-projects/
“Split Atoms,”
-not Birds” oops.
well done for writing about this horror story of our time. I reported on it in my London Sunday Telegraph column last month.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/columnists/christopherbooker/7437040/Eco-friendly-but-not-to-eagles.html
Mark Duchamp of Save The Eagles International is one of the real heroes of this story. A retired French banker. he retired to Alicante in Spain, where he came to admire the local eagles and other birds of prey. He was then horrified to see the damage being done to them by proliferating local windfarms. He has since become the most effective campaigner against this worldwide tragedy.
Consult his website at
http://www.iberica2000.org/es/Articulo.asp?Id=1228
Sad & not even necessary, since until electricity can be reasonably effectively stored, wind turbines don’t even save CO2, or so I’ve read. Fabrication, virtually 100% back up needed from conventional, inefficient loading of back up plus inefficiencies of ramping output up and down, as yet uncertain maintenance costs, etc.
I guess hydrogen production then fuel cell use might be the future answer?
At present, the rush to wind power seems one of the worst aspects of AGW panic, financed in UK by hidden levy on all electricity users.
Happy to be corrected if wrong.
“It’s a carrion eater”
Obviously it was attracted by the corpses of the 21,914.5 birds that that turbine had felled over the previous month.
Clearly we need to ban these horrible bird slaughtering machines before the global avian population is wiped out.
anna v (12:39:59) : This post shows quite clearly how the airflow is disturbed by wind turbines.
http://waweatherscience.com/recent-news/winds-turbines-produce-clouds-and-a-loss-of-efficiency/
The article also shows how this wake turbulence drastically reduces the output of the downwind machines.
For those with strong stomachs, pics of birds chopped up by wind turbines: click
[Skip the first & last links, they load Word for just one picture.]
While birds getting hit by windmills is a real problem I suspect this video is a fake video.
Why?
If you watch the video closley at 1.45-1.55 you can see that the camera moves a little bit to the left and the bird follows the camera and is moved closer the windmill the seconds before it gets hit.
I think it is a trick and possibly the bird got shot and then the video got adjusted afterwards to make it look like it got hit by the windmill.
AGW has lernt me one thing, dont belive everything that is shown or told.
Steve Schaper (11:43:48) :
“I think it demonstrates just how rare an actual bird strike would be. How many times did it fly through the rotor without being hit?”
Or maybe the bird was attracted to the swirling blades like they are to other swirling vultures then such strikes might be more common for vultures. I have no idea though, just speculating.
Besides Al Gore’s Holy Hologram (13:12:45) answer to “why”, there was also a high cliff, producing most certainly a nice current. Even paragliders were there for it.
@ christooher booer (13:11:23) : Yes, that’s your story and thanks for it, and to R North. That’s where I got the story and video for my own tiny blog, and it is somehow circulating indeed. The idea of bird kills by wind turbines is conceivable as long as you don’t see it, then it becomes unthinkable.
This bird flew regularly with these men. They did not expect the bird to fly in to the turbine blades, but it was temped by the warm updraft, as that is what vultures love to ride.
The wind plant offered them no help. They worked hard to save this poor bird. Supporting wind turbines is insane. We are destroying what we are suppose to be saving.
On 2008 SEO BirdLife was commissioned by the Spanish Government to set the guidelines for the installation of new windmill parks.
(see http://www.seo.org/media/docs/MANUAL%20PARQUES%20E%C3%93LICOS%20para%20web.pdf)
Spain as it is located between Atlantic and Mediterranean seas has a very favorable wind conditions, having at the time of the study, 670 wind parks and a total of 16.000 big windmills. The authors estimate the number of bird deaths due to impacts against the rotor blades, in the range of 19.000- 1.000.000 birds per year.
The study has not had any publicity at all. The main media simply ignored it. There was no interest at all to open a debate with Greenpeace and other eco- supporters of this bird killing technology, it seemed that the only interest of SEO BirdLife was to get the money from the Government and run. It is not difficult to imagine what would happen in case nuclear or coal plants would kill so many birds.
The vulture was trying to catch a thermal updraft off the hill. They do this to gain altitude quickly without burning a lot of energy flapping their wings, kind of like riding an elevator. Vultures, eagles, cranes, and most large birds do it all the time.
Thermals happen because of uneven heating of the hills and ground by the sun. Glider pilots and hang gliders even watch for birds doing this so they can use the thermals too.
Note the parts about thermals and ridge lift:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hang_gliding
Expect many more dead birds, especially large birds, anywhere these monstrosities are located on hills.
Jerker Andersson (13:45:38) :
Scepticism is fine but it has to be born out of at least some knowledge of the subject. It would be very difficult to fake this scenario in the way you described. The blade hits the bird’s wing and it nearly splits it in two but leaves the bird alive. A gunshot would have hit the bird’s body and killed it.
Things to note: there is no obvious blood. The bird is still alive. Its wing is obviously broken when it tries to move. A gunshot wouldn’t produce these effects. It’s pretty obvious that what you’re seeing is just an optical illusion.
Al Gore’s Holy Hologram (13:12:45) :
Birds are also attracted to stall structures because they generate updrafts and vortices that the birds can use to climb to a higher altitude. Wind turbines are usually placed where they can catch the winds that produce these same updrafts, with inevitable consequences for the large birds that use them. They also produce their own vortices that birds might use, though I’m less sure of that one.
I would suggest that the bird was circling in a thermal, which happen to form at the top of ridgelines. This is where they also put the windmill. At the beginning of the video is a shot from a paraglider, which would be there for the same reason.
So actually, a little bit of thought could prevent these types of incidents by not locating windmills on prime thermal soaring sites.
@ keith in hastings UK (13:30:36) :
“I guess hydrogen production then fuel cell use might be the future answer?”
AFAIK, it still takes more energy to produce hydrogen than we get back from it using it as a fuel.
Certainly something that WWF and Audubon need to discuss openly. Compared to DDT damage to bird eggs – how do these wind mills fare??
Miguel (14:01:46) :
The authors estimate the number of bird deaths due to impacts against the rotor blades, in the range of 19.000- 1.000.000 birds per year.
One million birds a year? A MILLION? Good grief! I thought you might have made a typo so I went and checked – and there it is. Up to a million per year, just in Spain. This is an absolute travesty!
Vultures would be very attracted to windmills. The reason is food; they are scavangers, and windmills kill birds and bats. So, they are a food source, luring the birds to a deadly danger.
IMHO, the large predatory birds (and most of those, including eagles, are scavangers as well as predators) my take the biggest impact from windmills. Soaring birds especially.
But, these made-in China non-exportable green job providing windmills are popping up everywhere. The simple fact is that they aren’t cost effective for most applications, and couldn’t survive without healthy doses of our money via subsidies. Give me nukes, any day, plus real onshore and offshore drilling, nationwide.
Well, look, we see animals (badger, fox, pheasant, deer, hedgehog) as roadkill every day but nobody says we should ban cars.
Makes you wonder if the turbines should be fitted with mesh guards like the table top fans in our office!
Sorry, I’m a global warming sceptic, but this mindless wind turbine bashing reminds me too much of the Luddites. Could someone please name me one 100% risk-free technology?
This is akin to Edison electrocuting dogs to show how bad AC power is. I’m sure the windmill people will work something out to keep stupid birds from flying into their equipment.
Also, this video has my vote for fake, as well.
The blades on those things don’t always move so slow, either. So I imagine this could happen to quite a few birds much faster and easier than in the video, especially if there was a whole flock.
@Jerker Andersson (13:45:38) :
Yes, it does jump but that doesn’t seem to affect anything. The bird looks fine up to and just before the strike. It wouldn’t still be fly/gliding about like that if it had been shot.
Not only are they a scar on the natural landscape,
http://www.flatrock.org.nz/topics/environment/assets/energy_windmills_california.jpg
… they don’t actually produce much electricity and they kill the natural wildlife.
I don’t see where the positive benefit for the environment is here (they just make some people feel better by pretending there is a positive effect on the environment).
@veronica (14:24:21):
That’s a very good point you raise, but for all that it is a good argument, cars, quite unlike these windmills, are not promoted as “good for the environment”. But I’ll keep that in mind (among the other reasons) the next time I criticize a Prius.
Andy Scrase: Thanks for your sane response which makes complete sense.
A classic case of human development competing for natural resources used by wildlife.
Ah yes, the hypocrisy of the environmentalist exposed.
For a conservationist, windmills are a horror story; they are killing machines. Forget these brutal monsters and build regular, CO2 emitting facilities. They’re good for the environment by releasing vital CO2 for use by plant life, don’t result in wholesale slaughter of birds, and are a reliable source of electricity for mankind. As for real pollution, most businessmen are focused on the bottom line; pollution indicates that the fuel is being poorly used, which impacts the revenue stream.
Growing up in Ohio I did plenty of bird hunting, mostly pheasant and duck. I don’t think that bird was shot.
The range was too far. Those blades are long, and they’re on top of a high pillar. Also, you can hear the wind, but no gunshot.
But the most convincing evidence is the video itself. Here’s a 30-second clip showing the bird getting whacked. How could someone time a shot to hit at that exact instant?
click
Johan (14:28:46) :
Sorry, I’m a global warming sceptic, but this mindless wind turbine bashing reminds me too much of the Luddites. Could someone please name me one 100% risk-free technology?
==============
The bashing is due to the inefficiency of the technology, not the risk. Wind power would not exist, without the subsidies (taxes) that make it profitable.
If this goes on, vultures will evolve into a new species that avoids windmills, Aegypius molitemerans.
GE and others make billions out of these ugly, expensive damn things by supporting and fostering the AGW scam.
No doubt they regard killing wildlife as collateral damage.
Vulchamatic.
It’s a shame we lost Billy Mays.
The Ecotretas blog also refers a link to an explanation here: http://www.epaw.org/multimedia.php?lang=en&article=b2
Ron (11:44:11) :
“A year ago my colleague and I did an analysis of popular climate blogs based on Google ‘page rank’. The page rank goes from 0 to 10. The higher the rank the more enquiries Google is likely to send to that site.”
Ron I hate to disappoint you but your knowledge of how a site actually get inquires via Google was divorced many years ago from being based upon PR (Pigeon Rank http://www.google.com/technology/pigeonrank.html ) as a high weight in determining the SERPs (search engine result placements) for any given search fragment.
You should read all of Google’s patents dealing with ranking and spend some time learning about what that means.
A visit to Matt Cutts (aka Senior member GoogleGuy on Web Master World http://www.webmasterworld.com) blog ( http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/ ) may also be of some benefit.
As far as PR (page rank) is concerned it is a mathematical construct. These days it only appears to be used as the last determinate to place equally ranked results.
Some time spent on learning about the long tail and semantic views would also serve you well if you ever get serious about search engine placement.
Benjamin (14:37:47) : “@veronica (14:24:21): That’s a very good point you raise, but for all that it is a good argument, cars, quite unlike these windmills, are not promoted as “good for the environment”. But I’ll keep that in mind (among the other reasons) the next time I criticize a Prius.”
Euripides said it best:
Quem deus vult perdere, dementat prius.
“Whom the gods would destroy, goes nuts for a Prius.”
Anybody know anything about this type of thing?:
http://www.imrex.com.sg/Products/197/150/Bird_Control_Radar.aspx
http://www.birdbusters.com/airport_bird_scare_1.html
“Andy Scrase (14:03:38) :
I would suggest that the bird was circling in a thermal, which happen to form at the top of ridgelines. This is where they also put the windmill. At the beginning of the video is a shot from a paraglider, which would be there for the same reason.”
Somebody got a videa of a paraglider getting whacked?
Weather response to a large wind turbine array
D. B. Barrie and D. B. Kirk-Davidoff
Abstract. Electrical generation by wind turbines is increasing
rapidly, and has been projected to satisfy 15% of world
electric demand by 2030. The extensive installation of wind
farms would alter surface roughness and significantly impact
the atmospheric circulation due to the additional surface
roughness forcing. This forcing could be changed deliberately
by adjusting the attitude of the turbine blades with respect
to the wind, which would enable the “management”
of a large array of wind turbines. Using a General Circulation
Model (GCM), we represent a continent-scale wind farm
as a distributed array of surface roughness elements. Here
we show that initial disturbances caused by a step change in
roughness grow within four and a half days such that the flow
is altered at synoptic scales. The growth rate of the induced
perturbations is largest in regions of high atmospheric instability.
For a roughness change imposed over North America,
the induced perturbations involve substantial changes in the
track and development of cyclones over the North Atlantic,
and the magnitude of the perturbations rises above the level
of forecast uncertainty.
http://www.atmos-chem-phys.net/10/769/2010/
Sue them
When we see the wackos claim the turbines are efficent, how much does a non rotating turbine produce?
Bipolar bears and now this. They sue to stop alternative power generation and sue to shut down turbines.
We need to genetically engineer virtual vultures that can’t be sliced by blades rotating at 150 MPH.
Most greenie weenie web sites will not allow a post that mentions turbines shutdown for breakdown or bird migration. It must be gobblergate.
The tall tower turkeys and the feathered turkeys
at war. They can’t both survive.
u.k.(us) (15:00:28) :
The bashing is due to the inefficiency of the technology, not the risk. Wind power would not exist, without the subsidies (taxes) that make it profitable
========
I accept that argument. But I do not accept the “bird-o-matics” argument. In general, bird mortalities at wind farms are not biologically significant at the local or regional level, or with respect to migratory populations. There are exceptions of course (a well-known example the Altamont Pass energy farm in California). But the impact can be greatly reduced by locating wind farms “in areas of poor habitat, low bird densities and without significant populations of susceptible species of high conservation importance” (Crockford, N.J., A review of the possible impacts of wind farms on birds and other wildlife. Joint Nature Conservation Committee, JNCC report no. 27, Peterborough, UK)
1. wind has a cooling effect
2. windmills slow down the wind (even if only a little)
3. electricity generates heat
Conclusion: windmills used to generate electric power must increase global temperature.
We have a tragedy of the commons brewing here. Soon to come – a becalmed hot world.
I don’t wish to excuse what happens in the video, but consider how much wildlife is killed in (say) transport.
Every economic activity comes at a cost. Sure we can try to minimise the costs, including the killing of wild animals. But if anybody wants to argue that some loss is wrong, they could start by avoiding any form of transport or industrialised agriculture and so on.
So my message to WUWT would be to leave off the tugging at the emotions.
Sorry for that, but not impressed!
Wasting millions of dollars on highly inefficient bird killing windmills, no wonder Greece and California went bankrupt.
“So actually, a little bit of thought could prevent these types of incidents by not locating windmills on prime thermal soaring sites.”
Ridges such as this are a natural hunting range for large Raptors. It’s not so much thermal lift they seek, but what is called “ridge lift”, well known among glider pilots. The raptor conserves energy by surfing the continuous wave of rising air created by even the lightest of breezes being forced up the ridge.
Unfortunately, the windmill industry has found that the ridges also create a venturi effect on light winds, accelerating them as they compress coming over the ridge. They are prime locations for these “farmers”.
This industry does not appear to have a realistic connection with protecting the environment.
johan (14:28:)
If you are serious,just absorb :-
Daniel (13:16:52) :
Must to read:
The hidden fuel costs of wind generated electricity.
http://www.clepair.net/windsecret.html
The impact of wind generated electricity on fossil fuel consumption.
http://www.clepair.net/windefficiency.html
It’s a numbers, not a ‘feel good’ game.
@Sam the Skeptic (13:17:46) :
It’s good to be skeptical but when this lattice stuff arrives on the world scene, don’t say you weren’t warned. Good or bad, we all live in interesting times.
keith in hastings UK,
You are correct sir about the need for backup generation. If we build wind turbines we will use them whenever they are making power since they have zero variable operating and maintenance (O&M) costs. However, they will displace the units with the highest variable O&M costs that are currently in service. In many areas this will be gas powered not coal. In addition, since….”the wind blows when it wants to”…as they say, you need to build additional generating assets to account for times when the wind isn’t blowing.
Another point some people don’t realize; Wind turbines have a capacity factor of only about 35%, and this in an area with good wind resources. Capacity factor is the actual amount of power generated in a given time period (usually annually) divided by the theoretical maximum over that same time period if operating at nameplate the entire time. You therefore need to install about three times the expected capacity to displace a given amount of conventional dispatchable generation such as nuke, coal, or nat gas. Even then wind is never dispatchable – you cannot call on it to produce power on the customer’s schedule.
A couple of other points:
Large utility scale wind turbines are typically synchronous machines so they turn at the same speed no matter how hard the wind is blowing.
The 35% capacity factor is just a function of optimal design considerations. The bulk of the cost of a wind turbine is not in the generator and the nameplate rating on the generator determines the capacity of the wind turbine. Generators are therefore relatively over sized to take advantage of generating capability when winds are blowing relatively hard. A typical cut in speed might be 8mph and generation would be minimal at that time. However, you also want to take advantage those times when the wind is blowing relatively quickly – perhaps 25-30mph. This would be a ballpark figure for when maximum generation would occur. With cutout about 50mph to prevent damage.
If you want to get rich figure out a way to store large amounts of electrical power efficiently and economically. We wouldn’t have to build another power plant of any kind for decades.
Jerker Andersson (13:45:38) :
While birds getting hit by windmills is a real problem I suspect this video is a fake video.
Why?
I had a close look, and I see what you mean, it looks very odd. I think, however, that this is merely the camera zooming out jerkily. The photographer probably wanted to keep the ‘mill in scope. When you do this the central object(s) appear stationary, and peripheral objects slide in (a technique used in films a lot).
And the point of showing this is (I didn’t bother to watch)? Something we’re not aware of? This is too sensational, please take this thread down.
nofreewind (12:04:22), excellent points. We don’t get spit from wind energy and yet it seems they will kill birds all day long for it. Nuclear is the way to go and we all know it. What I don’t understand is how the French of all people can be ahead of us on this particular issue? People’s fear of nuclear is based on the technology of 40 years ago! More Nukes!!
Lots of people making disparaging comments about wind energy without doing any homework. See http://www.energypulse.net/centers/article/article_display.cfm?a_id=981
If you want to reduce bird kill, stop building skyscrapers, raising pet cats and driving cars. The wind turbine contribution to total bird kill, or even to raptor kill is vanishingly small.
It is not a mill.
What a bunch of BS, more birds die from slipping on soap in the bathtub. I have two turbines on my farm in Minnesota. There has never been a bird killed by the turbines. I think posting bogus stuff like this makes think you guys are playing the same game those alarmist on Global Warming play…..not cool, just get they post hyped up contrived stories does not mean we need too…..a low for this site in my book……John.
From the youtube link:
WiegandsWindow “Putting these killers in the critical habitats of rare and endangered species is similar to putting a school crosswalk on a NASCAR racetrack. Most prop wind turbines have blade tips speeds of about 200 mph. The Prop turbines in this video are spinning at about 1/2 speed. This video clearly illustrates why all birds and bats do not have a chance near the spinning blades of a prop turbine.”
Perhaps 24/7 video-surveillance of ALL windmills should be REQUIRED BY LAW.
We have a high-profile windmill locally on Grouse Mountain in Vancouver, BC, Canada. I want to know how many whisky jacks are found dead by it (by staff in the morning BEFORE the tram starts bringing visitors up the mountain). Whisky jacks are VERY cute. They will come sit on your hand if you share your food. They like kamut pasta.
Paul Vaughan, M.Sc.
Ecologist, Parks & Natural Forests Advocate, Former Wildlife Researcher
The camera pans left…zoom in…unfortunate waterfowl caught in an oil slick released by an accident at sea. The media…plays, repeatedly captured video of unfortunate waterfowl. Dateline today…ExxonMobil is the greatest evil on the planet…spending excessive profits on exposing the global warming myth.
Camera captures large bird species severely disabled by “good” “planet-saving” technology. Where is the outrage? Where are the animal rights organizations? Blogger claims look how long it took to injure this bird. The technology must be good. Clearly very few birds are dying.
Introduce a technology into a wilderness area and wildlife will die, whether by oil spills or giant propellors.
Can we discuss this rationally? Apparently not!
“Tim McHenry (16:28:36) :
nofreewind (12:04:22), excellent points. We don’t get spit from wind energy and yet it seems they will kill birds all day long for it. Nuclear is the way to go and we all know it. What I don’t understand is how the French of all people can be ahead of us on this particular issue? ”
They needed it to maintain their own nukes before they became a full member of NATO.
@Murray Sandland
‘Lots of people making disparaging comments about wind energy without doing any homework. See http://www.energypulse.net/centers/article/article_display.cfm?a_id=981
If you want to reduce bird kill, stop building skyscrapers, raising pet cats and driving cars. The wind turbine contribution to total bird kill, or even to raptor kill is vanishingly small.’
I digress, it’s you that need to do your home work.
Albeit windmills kill less birds, they tend to kill the ones on the endangered list, for one simple reason: wind.
See where there is good wind there be the little birds, which is due to their innate laziness that tells ’em to make good use of draft as so not to flap their wings for no good god damn reason.
The horrible truth is you green muppets aren’t happy with just putting up one screwy windmill around, or worse in, protected areas, you put up hundreds, and thousands. And for what, but for the creation of yet another coal fired power plant to make sure those hundreds, and thousands, of muppet-mills deliver subsidised electricity about 30% of the year all the while slaying endangered birds.
Rodents seek protection from raptors, so the raptors food supply move near these wind mills. Those estimates on how many birds are being killed are not worth the paper they are printed on. Look who funds the research.
I would be skeptical of the video though, the odds are pretty low of capturing such an event on anything but a web cam. The hypothesis that the bird was lured to his fate might not be that far fetched. However, dead carrion could also be the attraction and perhaps a number of birds had met a similar fat prior to this (in which case video could show multiple birds on the ground in the area).
Wind energy is a big fraud designed to render land unusable for development and exploit the resources on that land. Trees, waterways and even agriculture will be adversely effected/controlled by the developers. Roads must be paved for maintenance/installation, electrc lines lines built, tons of concrete is used for the foundations for these metal rapture killers. Not to mention the noise. How environmentally friendly are they? Not much.
And when the generators fail in the post-subsidy days , and the windmills profit earning days end, who do you think is going to remove these eyesores, or restore them to operation. Nobody, they will just be left to corrosion, permanent (hundreds of years) monuments to mans idiotic ways, until the next ice age when some of them get plowed under by advancing glaciers.
Oh and i found a solution for the problem:
http://www.kentonline.co.uk/images/scarecrow1.jpg
Greenpeace in need of new name: GreenWar perhaps?
Fits well with all the other so called Green stuff that isn’t green at all i you have a closer look at it.
http://tomnelson.blogspot.com/2010/04/on-greenpeaceorg-physical-threats.html
Johan says,
“I accept that argument. But I do not accept the “bird-o-matics” argument. In general, bird mortalities at wind farms are not biologically significant at the local or regional level, or with respect to migratory populations.”
Is the kill that much more significant from oil spills? No. Yet every kid in primary school around the world will tell you that oil kills and wind technology is good.
Well as we’ve seen, technology, in general kills regardless of the “significance.” It is a price that we pay to live the way we live. In the end oil has brought greater prosperity to mankind than wind power and it will continue to do so for the remainder of this century!
Sheez………poor bird.
Now the bird’s babies will have to live off of government subsidies while the Mama/Papa bear is in rehab.
I think the bird should sue the owner/operator of the windmill farm for damages.
Think of the years of counseling and psychotherapy that this poor bird and his offspring will have to endure.
I think I’m gonna cry………sniff……..(cue the Enya music).
Don’t forget the bats. Windmills can kill bats without hitting them:http://www.cbc.ca/technology/story/2008/08/25/bats-wind.html
It is calculated that some windmills in Canada are killing 18 bats each a year, affecting ecology as far away as Mexico.
Could someone tell PETA so we can see a GreenPeace vs. PETA deathmatch?
Pragmatic (14:09:27) :
I am trying to figure out if you are serious. You must know that no one was ever able to produce evidence of Rachel Carson’s conjectures. There is NO scientific evidence that DDT ever had any effect on a bird egg.
The ban on DDT, on the other hand, did kill over 60 million Africans (mostly children) over its 40+ years. WWF will certainly not comment on that.
Once again environmentalists get behind an idea with unintended consequences worse than the original problem. And gullible fools just keep sending money to them.
Ever notice how Eco-chondriacs always describe wind power in terms of generating capacity? That’s because when the wind doesn’t blow at optimum speed, constantly, the turbine is producing variably less than rated capacity (which is most of the time)…….Wind power actual production is 5 times lower than capacity.
Wind power also must be backed up by fossil fuel generation in order to better regulate loads which means that the CO2 generated with or without wind power is essentially the same.
I don’t think the birds are “attracted” to the wind mills, rather the wind mills are deliberately placed where the birds will soar.
The birds are doing what humans do in hang-gliders, they are ridge soaring, using the natural uplift from the terrain to remain aloft and watch over a large area for prey or carrion.
The sad thing is that this terrain uplift is the exact reason the wind-mills are placed there, to take advantage of the stronger winds caused by the terrain forcing the winds up and over the ridge.
Hence same effects seen with Australian Harriers etc.
I believe in West Oz, we get quite a few of the large cockatoos being taken out also.
Re: DirkH (17:16:27)
LOL
Sorry, but as presented this clip has many elements of fakery, like images of UFOs usually have. It would be entirely possible and rather simple to create that sequence artificially. You have to look at pointers like constancy of clouds, effects of turbulence in wakes, shadow angles, sunlight levels and so on. There are many separated scenes where either the windmill or the bird are shown, but not both.
I am not denying that this is real; I am merely urging caution in its acceptance as gospel. Remember, evidence trumps belief.
Roaring Forties another carpetbagger wind farm company (50% owned by the Tasmanian Government) has a similar problem with wedge tailed eagles at Woolnorth Wind Farm in Tasmania. Their plan is to have two men on site at all times to watch for birds and they will radio central control to turn off the turbine that the bird is flying near. What a joke! They plans for turbines in Pipers Creek in central Victoria another well known wedge tailed eagle habitat their wind turbines will be placed over 3500 hectares (10000 acres) I imagine their solution will the same as at Woolnorth. They will also claim that no bodies will be found easy to do when foxes clean up remains. In Tasmania this is a little more dificult as there are no foxes.
California has spent millions on restoring the condor.
The government lists collision as the leading cause of death for reintroduced condors, but collision with what is never specific.
Coverup. When one third of a species is wiped out by flying guilotine in the Tehachapi and Greenpeace, the WWF, PETA, and most importantly, Darryl Hannah
say F’ all about it, that’s a coverup.
Condors are clumsy fliers in the first place. It’s the reason why they’re on the threshold of extinction. This vulture is an acrobatic genius by comparison.
If we get some video like this from Tehachapi or Altamont we could end the windmill merchants easy ride in Californai as fast as you could say viral video.
For all those making comments about how insignificant this is…
It is, when considered from the perspective of dead birds, but that’s not the point. The point is that these windmills aren’t any better/worse for the environment than anything else. But that is the reason tons of money is being spent on these kinds of projects. And speaking of these projects…
If you’ve lost your job in this “recovery”, or if you lose it later on, just remember that the capital that once employed you is being spent on such things as these useless, ego-friendly wind turbines.
Should we pay the price for these unreliable things that aren’t any better for the environment than anything else is, nor better for the economy?
The asnwer is of course no, we should not. And the mis-spending won’t stop until these flaws are pointed out. The more people who see this, the better it is for everyone. And given that WUWT is a high-traffic site, it very much belongs here.
Thank you posting this, Anthony.
If we could recover the corpse of one condor, done in by windmill, we could have demolition crews out tearing down windmills by the end of the week.
Thank you for putting this up again. It needs to be seen often! No matter how hard it is to watch. It makes me so very angry! Send this video to anyone that claims wind is sustainable!
Grrrrr.
jorgekafkazar (15:10:41) :“Whom the gods would destroy, goes nuts for a Prius.”
Thank you for pointing that out. Believe it or not, I wasn’t even refering to that particular problem, nor was it even in mind. Rather, I was refering to the battery disposal/recycling problem. But “road kill” and Priuses… Geez, how did I miss that?!
Isn’t it (very) illegal to cause the death of an endangered species (such as a California Condor)?
Papertiger, I respectfully disagree with you. Environmentalists never admit they are wrong. And most of the environmentalist movement is driven by money (read carbon credits) anyway, so they don’t really care. Lose a few animals? Big deal! There’s contracts and money to be made!
I read this article,then read my local paper,what a coincidence.
http://www.themercury.com.au/article/2010/04/04/137841_tasmania-news.html
Around the world, birds have been the biggest hurdle for wind farms and that is no different for Cattle Hill, which is home to the endangered wedge-tailed eagle and white-bellied sea eagle and two eagle nests.
At Woolnorth, which began in 2001, 17 wedge-tailed eagles have died after flying into some of the North-West wind farm’s 62 turbines.
Parks and Wildlife estimates that only 130 pairs of wedge-tailed eagles successfully breed in Tasmania a year.
But Mr Bartel is confident the risk to eagles at Cattle Hill can be managed.
“Our modelling has shown that even with up to 100 wind turbines on site, the estimated average eagle mortality will be well below one per year,” he said.
End
So there you go,only one a year,even though 17 have been killed at Woolnorth since 2001.
I agree with lance (13:05:22) :, the outrage caused by a few ducks landing on a tailings pond at Syncrude’s tar sands project is completely overblown when compared to how many birds and bats get chopped up by wind turbines. Humans are a baffling species……
Well, look, we see animals (badger, fox, pheasant, deer, hedgehog) as roadkill every day but nobody says we should ban cars. – Veronica (14:24:21)
1. Actually there are people that say we should ban cars. Ironically they’re the same people that would advocate wind “power”.
2. Most sane people would say that car transport is essential for modern society. However, the same can not be said wind “power,” which is functionally an eco-fad. If every wind farm shut down tomorrow nobody would miss it except maybe a few birds… get it?
3. Also if these “environmental” groups could demonstate that a particular road was a detriment to a particular road. They’d be in court trying to shut down that road (or any other project) faster than you could say, “who shot John.” It happens frequently.
4. Falcons and Eagles rightly or wrongly rank a little higher on the endangered species list than your typical road kill type animal.
corrections;
However, the same can not be said for wind “power,”
Also if these “environmental” groups could demonstate that a particular road was a detriment to a particular endangered species…
Steve Schaper (11:43:48) :
“I think it demonstrates just how rare an actual bird strike would be. How many times did it fly through the rotor without being hit?”
I think you are dead wrong on this Steve, I know I have read stories from a wind farm in California where the numbers of raptors killed was very large. On the order of 2 or more a week. If it was any other tyoe of facility it would be shut down by the environmentalists
Just think if it had been a spotted owl or California Condor.
On the wind farms in Minnesota, there has been some concern about the number of bats that are hit by windmills, and the utility dutifully hired “scientists” to do a study. The conclusion was that about 3 bats were killed per windmill per season. The locals laughed quite a bit about the conclusion and the methods — the individuals doing the study were based about 140 miles way and they periodically would drive out to the windmills to count the number of dead bats under the windmills. Needless to say, the coyotes, foxes, and other animals had long carried away most of the bats before the “scientists” got to the site. (Perhaps an interesting note: these bats are effective eaters of mosquitoes and locals believe that the mosquito population has gone up since the windmills went up.)
Slightly OT, but I was interested in the airborne wind turbine concept
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Airborne_wind_turbine
There’s a couple of companies involved (links on my blog) and it’s pretty speculative stuff, but the idea is interesting.
Oh, and Google have chipped in a bit too..
Several years ago I made a suggestion to a wind power company in the Tehachapi [California] area that they paint each the blades in alternating color scheme, say black and white stripes, so that the rotating blades would make a more visible impression and possibly alert birds to the flight hazard.
Probably just a partial solution but cheap enough to test for effectiveness.
The company was supposedly seeking practical ideas to reduce bird kills.
That company’s response was, basically, don’t bother us; not interested.
Go figure.
One of the interesting aspects of the AGW proponents’ recommendations to use hydrogen fueled automotive engines is their complete disregard of the combustion byproduct and emission of dihydrogen monoxide, which is a far more powerful so-called greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide ever was.
Speaking of these blights on the rural landscape …
http://hro001.wordpress.com/2010/03/21/the-answer-hes-shown-is-not-blowin-in-the-wind/
Have fun with the information on this site. See what miss-facts you can pick out
http://www.peaceenergy.ca/windpower.html
This is near Dawson Creek British Columbia. Such a beautiful horizon.
“This video made me wonder why the vulture was hanging around these wind power turbines”
Some places are just good for generating thermals. The vultures will know where to look. (Man made structures are always worth investigating, A mini UHI effect)
My interest in the weather
Re dave ward (13:39:31) :
quote http://waweatherscience.com/recent-news/winds-turbines-produce-clouds-and-a-loss-of-efficiency/ unquote
But think of the global cooling caused by those ‘contrails’! The sea boundary layer was obviously too smooth to generate low level cloud, so it needed stirring up. More low level stratus means more cooling. If we deploy enough windmills we’ll be able to set the world’s thermostat at any level we want.
JF
Its playing with the turbulence of the wing tips. Probably a young bird. Simply including downed bird recovery training for the maintenance staff would solve the problems. Fewer birds and bats die. I think this technology will be obsolete soon with new wind mill designs in the works. Particularly Flodesign and venturi based systems. Screened intakes are possible on both. With greenhouse gone as a reason for rash urgency better designs will emerge as the industry rationalise.
One reason of several reasons for attracting especially soaring raptors is coincidence of location. The thermals are used by the soaring birds, as mentioned by others.
But the wind turbine removes energy from the thermal. Which may be similar effect to a pot-hole in the road for a soaring bird. It also generates turbulence in its wake. It may simply be to complicated to compensate for these phenomena.
As raptor population declines, rodent populations would tend to increase. Which, especially in coastal regions, can impact on the population of ground-nesting birds.
Is this what they mean by “death spiral”???
I’m no expert but it looked absolutely contrived to me from beginning to end.
slayer (19:19:16) :
Papertiger, I respectfully disagree with you. Environmentalists never admit they are wrong. And most of the environmentalist movement is driven by money (read carbon credits) anyway, so they don’t really care. Lose a few animals? Big deal! There’s contracts and money to be made!
If only we could get that lucky. To have a California Condor get chopped out of the sky on viral video, and have the envirohypocrits duck the issue entirely in favor of their capitalist ventures.
I respectfully submit that something very simular happened to ACORN just resently. Let the WWF sit on their hands. Let the Peta and Sierra Club kick back and count the tax deductable contributions from windmill merchants.
Then watch their funding dry out until they’re nothing but desicated husks.
Squidly (11:53:37). Yes, it’s probably the stupidest form of energy production (not comparable with energy production in local wind mills of the old era). (Proponents tend to forget it produces energy at night and other times when the production cost is several times higher than the electricity price; this subsidised.)
It’s not surpricing that something like this comes out of the former political (far) left anti-american and pro-east movement, who picked up global warming as its scientific truth to fuel societal transformation towards its ends, and who have now succeeded in doing this to a common in academia defended discourse.
But this absurd theatre is an immensely sad thing — for the environment, economy etc. We should urge people in the academia to speak out.
“This video made me wonder why the vulture was hanging around these wind power turbines”
I often wonder the same thing when I go running and notice that the buzzards are circling overhead. It’s a little freaky.
I must admit I had little sympathy for vultures until I viewed this clip of a “bat-whacker” in action.
I find Jerker Andersson’s suggestion that the bird was shot doubtful. I’ve never tried it, but apparently it’s very hard to hit a bird at any distance with a bullet, which is why hunters use shotguns or rifles with birdshot. However, shot doesn’t carry very far.
In any event, like the famous polar bear-in-distress photos, one would do well to check with whoever took the video or was present to corroborate the image. Was the “rescued” bird eventually healed, or just summarily euthanized after capture?
Vultures eating roadkill are often hit by fast-moving cars, because they don’t perceive something is coming until too late. But if you see one ahead, laying on your horn will often get it to move before you get there. Perhaps “deer whistles” on the ends of the blades would get their attention and frighten them away?
Perspective. We see Greenpeace and the Sierra club will drag out pictures of birds covered with oil to say every oil well, pipeline and device is deadly. Now with this, how is death to birds any different? Each bird can eat it’s weight in insects in a few days? We should ask Greenpeace and the biggest name in eco terrorism what they plan to do about this massive slaughter of woildlife.
Condor Cuisinart
Martin Mason (04:29:38) :
I’m no expert but it looked absolutely contrived to me from beginning to end.
If it was faked, they’d have used a polar bear.
Josualdo (14:07:24) and others
My remark about hydrogen was in the context of possibly being able to use unwanted wind energy to make same, so that at least some of the energy could be used when needed. Otherwise the need for conventional back up makes wind a total nonsense for centralised generation/current useage patterns. Wind probably increases CO2.
Hopefully, if water is used to get the H2, the dihydrogen monoxide GHG could be tolerated.
As to the merit of the post, the total irony of green solutions killing birds the greens love was surely just to much to miss, given that that kind of effect might even slow wind turbine deployment whereas thier uselessness hasn’t? What a world we live in. (PS I’m a conservationist and dislike road kill, oil slicks, unecessary killing of any sort – and BAD SCIENCE)
I live a few kilometers from three windmills on the northern Baltic sea. We have lots of white-tailed eagles here, but I have not heard of any hitting the rotor blades. Of course our landscape is also much flatter than Crete, so there are no particular updrafts to attract large birds to where the windmills are.
The AGW true believers rationalizing the windmills’ impact on bird life (and bats) is disgusting.
For the sake of fear of CO2, the AGW community is willing to trade of millions of acres of open land. Except it is not only fear, is it. The NGO’s promoting the fear in many cases will profit from windmill royalty fees. The video on this this thread shows three windmills.
The vulture, by the way, was circling to eat carrion of other birds killed by the windmill.
The AGW social movement is venal, petty, magical thinking motivated by false fear and the basest of greed.
hunter (07:53:06) :
“The AGW true believers rationalizing the windmills’ impact on bird life (and bats) is disgusting.”
With a capital “D”. If I said what I really think of these lowlifes, I would be censored. Excellent post – magical thinking is so rampant among this crowd as to be a defining characteristic.
“wesley bruce (02:46:05) :
Its playing with the turbulence of the wing tips. Probably a young bird. Simply including downed bird recovery training for the maintenance staff would solve the problems. Fewer birds and bats die. I think this technology will be obsolete soon with new wind mill designs in the works. Particularly Flodesign and venturi based systems. Screened intakes are possible on both. With greenhouse gone as a reason for rash urgency better designs will emerge as the industry rationalise.”
Oh that one’s good. Yeah, place some emergency rescue teams on standby 24/7, that’ll help the economics. And yeah, as soon as “the greenhouse is gone” the engineers will have time to “rationalise” because they don’t have to “rash”. Say sonny, you obviously never worked in an industrial project of any kind and the word “budget” doesn’t tell you anything, right?
Ok, it’s probably useless but just a little information: Development of new technologies is so WAAAYY expensive that you ALWAYS cut any corner you can. This has nothing to do with “rushing” something out the door. The cost simply kills you if you’re not quick enough.
So, no, when “the greenhouse is gone” the developers will still build the cheapest fastest thing they can. And give a rat’s ass for raptors as long as environmental regulations don’t force them to. It’s a simple outcome of competition.
It is fantastical thinking to expect anything else.
Way to go greenies, once again thinking you are saving the world only for horrible unintended consequences.
Someone could point to any information about birds deaths because of crashing against windows/buildings? or better an study of death causes in birds.
To answer myself i found this:
http://www.awea.org/faq/sagrillo/swbirds.html
So sad… The bird is so attracted by the construction. A scientific spirit inside the bird makes it suffer so much.
Really bad computer graphics. keep your eyes on the wind turbine, not in the bird, and you see how the bird moves and twitches with the camera movements..
Same effect can be seen in some UFO sighting videos.
Definitely fake. I have seen this video first on a 3D rendering forum and the guy said it was his job and the tracking was not perfect. The video contained at that time no introduction about Crete, no music…
At 1:51 the camera moves a lot, and the bird follows the camera movement. This is typical effect of a bad motion tracking.
Ron – your post about Google skewing the results is nonsensical. I can think of a dozen explanations for climate skeptic sites not showing high PR, not that PR means much anyway.
Google is unashamedly pro-AGW and in general environmental, but it chooses to show this by direct investment in technology and funding of groups. To think it would fiddle with it’s prime product shows not only a fundamental misunderstanding of how the technology works, but also a fundamental misunderstanding of how google makes its money. The entire network of climate skeptic sites provides google with income as most (like this one) run google adsense advertising. I hardly think they are going to stop traffic to sites which provide them with income for very little actual benefit. The search system is almost entirely automated, so unless they have a special group deep within their buildings finding climate skeptic sites and manually changing their rankings, I dont’ believe it. This would be massively inefficient, time and money consuming and ultimately ineffective.
No, if they wanted to do something, they’d just give x amount of dollar to their favourite cause. Which they already do.
How many whales will be killed by wave energy devices in the Pacific before we’re through?
How many porpoises?
“…Ocean Power Technologies, Inc. (OPT) would deploy a state-of-the-art wave energy buoy – 140 feet long, 40 feet wide, weighing 200 tons – off the shoreline near Reedsport in autumn 2010.”
http://www.newportnewstimes.com/v2_news_articles.php?heading=0&story_id=22466&page=72
.
Why did the rescuer have a ready-made vulture-snagging pole, if this was not a common occurance?
I applaud whoever did the soundtrack, but who added it, and when?
Also, when the bird gets whacked, there is a very audible “WHACK!”. Could this have been audible from the ground, or was it added?
Drama is good, but it’s good to know what is real and what is drama.
Hu McCulloch (18:54:29),
I thought about the soundtrack, too. The audible ‘whack’ happens as the bird is hit, not a fraction of a second later. At the very least, the sound track was advanced to synchronize it with the video.
Also, the pole/snare was in a different scene. They’re not clear about the time line. Maybe someone called their equivalent of the Humane Society.
But aside from all that, there have been way too many pictures and eyewitness accounts of birds and bats getting sliced ‘n’ diced to reject this video outright. It’s evidence. So if someone claims it’s faked, then they need to convincingly falsify it.
I watched with the sound off. Don’t know about the sound track, but the video of the bird getting injured and coming down is not altered.
Windmills are a futile attempt to harness nature to power production. They tend to slow down when the weather gets cold, just when the grid needs the extra juice.
I wonder just how many more of these useless eyesores will be build before the realisation happens. Don Quixote had the right idea.
Hu – check the second link in the article:
“News update for the Griffon vulture injured by the windmill”
from the Hellenic Wildlife Hospital
http://www.ekpazp.gr/multi158/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=164%3A2009-11-23-22-05-47&catid=1%3A-&Itemid=2&lang=en
I’ve heard a leg bone break and they do go with a crack.
Hope someday windmills make fall down all Global Warming BIG BIRDS Al “Baby”, (aka “FAT GOOSE”), JH (“Coal trains”, aka “NEVER MORE CROW”), etc.
The devil is in the details, even Sherlock Holmes would have spotted some of those, for example:
When the accident took place it was a clear sunny day.
When the bird was rescued it was totally overcast.
When the bird fell it was to the right of a car, then, later, it was to the left of that car.
The car at the end of the video was not the same as the car cited above.
Send this video to Ed Miliband – and EVERY local authority faced with a planning application for a wind farm…
melinspain (08:24:17) :
Sherlock Holmes was supposed to be a master of observation, so your first sentence makes no sense. I knew Sherlock. Sherlock was a friend of mine. You are no Sherlock.
Those dark clouds on the horizon in the very first frames couldn’t possibly have moved over the likely timeline of a few hours? And, the vulture may be hopping around, but he couldn’t possibly move in anything but a circle, right?
I can’t believe all the mush-for-brains doofus deniers on this board. The excessive deaths of rare large birds via windmills is extensively documented. Let us be clear: these self-described “environmentalists” are not against raping the Earth and decimating wildlife to make profits for energy fatcats. They just have a preferred coterie of fatcats.
It has been hypothesised that some soaring birds use infrasound to detect thermals from a distance. I once thought about building a thermal detection device based on this but I think it is another “forest and trees” problem for human beings. The tip vortices from the wind turbine blades will produce sound at audible and probably sub audible frequencies and the interaction of the blades passing to tower support will do the same. Possibly this can confuse soaring birds.
As for shooting a bird with a rifle – forget it. It’s hard enough to hit stationary targets at any significant distance which is what makes target shooting fun.
I’ve had birds fly into my car and glass windows of my home. The “smart” birds manage to survive.
Bart (09:56:52)
The Sherlock Holmes I was referring to was a fictitious personage created in 1887 by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and I can use a fictional character at my discretion so your friend Sherlock should not be offended. Of course I am not Sherlock, that is a fact.
Totally agree with you with your second paragraph although if you read my post carefully I just exposed facts and observations, I made no opinions, I did not speculate.
I am quite lost with your third paragraph, since I am not and English speaking native can you kindly explain what does “mush-for-brains doofus” means? I hope it is a courteous expression and not and ad hominen attack – contrary to the rules of this site.
As for the rest of that paragraph I do not understand anything.
I honestly think many of the comments are a good argument for modifying economic theory to account for long-term cost. What are some of your plans, people–wait until the fossil fuels run out? The economic chaos leading up to, and after, the stuff runs out will be horrible.
Remember, not all fossil fuel plants run on coal…we’re far too reliant on natural gas, for example.
And really…traditionally fueled industry never causes wildlife deaths? C’mon.
Bart (09:56:52) :
Oh, pipe down, Mr. Bentsen. I don’t suppose it’s occurred to you that some proponents of switching to alternative energy, now, might be concerned about the collective lack of concern about dwindling fossil fuels? In case you weren’t aware, not only are they dwindling, but like windmills, oil, coal, and natural gas are all subsidized. There’s really no energy source which is NOT subsidized, at least here in the U.S. The subsidy argument is a canard.
Also, before anyone says “b-b-but nuclear!” Atomic energy is heavily subsidized, and it takes years to build a plant, and decades to break even. In the U.S., at least, atomic energy has been far from being the cheap-energy revolution which was promised to the American people and has ended up being an albatross not only for us, but for generations to come.
Show me someone who claims we humans can go about our daily lives without negatively impacting nature, and I’ll show you a liar.
regeya (20:05:21) :
It’s just painful having to confront this kind of mentality. All the decades of my life, its been the same. People who are not in the energy business, and have only a perspective fueled by superficial reading of alarmist media, hectoring us about how we are running out of energy and we have to do something about it RIGHT NOW.
No, guys. We’re not going to suddenly run out of oil tomorrow. There’s enough for hundreds of years, and when it runs out, all the oil wells in the world aren’t going to suddenly burp and cough up a few final spurts of black gold, then die. Production will taper off, and it will become more expensive, to the point where other energy sources become competitive. The energy producers will hop into those markets, and we will transition to new sources in a normal evolutionary flow, at a time when we will be exponentially richer, more knowledgable, and easily able to do so.
You guys are like the mental cases who sit around worrying about death so much that they never have a life. Work, play, and enjoy. The sky is not falling, and you do not need to obsess over how we are going to construct the girders to keep it fixed in place. Let the people whose job it is to do so worry about it. They are far more knowledgeable and capable of doing so than you.