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.
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
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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.