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.
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.