![Bats-graphic[1]](http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2013/11/bats-graphic1.jpg?quality=83)
I wonder how many bats coal and nuclear power plants killed last year?
From the University of Colorado Denver
Bats pollinate crops, control insects
DENVER (Nov. 15, 2013) – More than 600,000 bats were killed by wind energy turbines in 2012, a serious blow to creatures who pollinate crops and help control flying insects, according to a new study from the University of Colorado Denver.
“The development and expansion of wind energy facilities is a key threat to bat populations in North America,” said study author Mark Hayes, PhD, research associate in integrated biology at CU Denver. “Dead bats are being found underneath wind turbines across North America. The estimate of bat fatalities is probably conservative.”
The study, which analyzed data on the number of dead bats found at wind turbine sites, will be published next week in the journal BioScience.
Hayes said areas near the Appalachian Mountains like Buffalo, Tennessee and Mountaineer, West Virginia had the highest bat fatality rates. Little information is available on bat deaths at wind turbine facilities in the Rocky Mountain West or the Sierra Nevadas.
The bats are killed when they fly into the towering turbines which spin at up to 179 mph with blades that can stretch 130 feet. Earlier estimates of bat deaths ranged from 33,000 to 880,000.
Hayes said his estimates are likely conservative for two reasons. First, when a range of fatality estimates were reported at a wind facility, he chose the minimum estimate. Secondly, the number of deaths was estimated for just migratory periods, not the entire year, likely leaving out many other fatalities.
“The number could be as high as 900,000 dead,” he said.
There are 45 known bat species in the contiguous U.S., many of which have important economic impacts. Not only do they control flying insects like mosquitoes, they also pollinate commercial crops, flowers and various cacti.
Those suffering the most fatalities are the hoary bat, eastern bat and the silver-haired bat.
Hayes said there ways to mitigate the killings. One is to have the turbines activated to spin at higher wind speeds when bats don’t tend to fly.
“A lot of bats are killed because the turbines move at low wind speeds, which is when most bats fly around,” said Hayes, who has studied bats for 15 years. “In a recent study in Pennsylvania, researchers adjusted the operating speeds from 10 mph to 18 or 20 mph and decreased fatalities by 40 to 90 percent.”
Hayes said with the expansion of wind energy in the future, more bats will likely die.
“I am not against wind energy. It’s clean, it reduces pollution and it creates jobs. But there are negative impacts,” he said. “Still, I think this is a problem we can solve.”
Here in NE Oregon, the biggest threat to survival is Spring cold weather of the sort that delays insect emergence. Bats appear capable of detecting a disrupted insect cycle (how I don’t know) and they can delay birth because of it. Problem there is that babies aren’t old enough to survive fall migration to warmer winter climates. There is NO question that we have had such Springs. This is easily measured by the size and number of mature grasshoppers in the fall, as well as Spring wheat frost/freeze damage. No wind turbines necessary.
That said, I would imagine such carnage in other warmer parts of the country. Wind turbines should be placed well away from water sources and located only near higher wind areas. This avoids/reduces the kill issue related to insects collecting near turbines and the avian/mammalian predators who eat these insects. Dry windy locations are not the favorite hangout for flying insects. Unless you consider biblical locusts. But even then locusts prefer vegetation, not desert conditions.
So from the land of unintended consequences …
How many extra tons of pesticide are produced to kill the insects not killed by the bats?
Bats are awesome bug eaters…
I have mixed feelings about seeing this story on WUWT. One the one hand, it can be useful to point out the drawbacks of wind power in order to provide some balance, and I appreciate the effort to raise awareness of neglected issues. On the other hand, this press release seems to me to be a good example of alarmist rhetoric of the kind many of us would like to see removed from the discussion of climate. We are told repeatedly how bad it is that a large number of animals are being killed, but, from an environmental science perspective, what would matter is the impact on the lifespan and population dynamics of bats. If there are 500 million bats in the US, and they only live an average of 3 years, or bat deaths are concentrated in only a few locations with no replacement from neighboring areas, or the deaths are primarily among old, sick or weaker bats that are unlikely to reproduce anyway, the impact is clearly very different than if there are 10 million bats in the US, with a 20-year lifespan, or the deaths are widespread and tend to be among the healthiest bats at the start of their breeding age, and so forth. The press release, of course, has very little in the way of such scientifically useful information.
In my opinion, it would be nice if “scientific” press releases coincided with the publication of papers rather than being in advance (some papers do get pulled back at the last minute, and in this age of instant communication a wait of even a few days means very few will follow up to see the paper itself). Also, if the public affairs people want to put out a press release, they should pay the fee (if necessary) for open access publication (if the work is so valuable, it’s a small price to pay). One way to encourage better press releases would be to ignore ones like this that give us lots of attention grabbing statements but not much actual science. Just my own personal opinion.
Gino says: “shoddy research” (November 15, 2013 at 6:01 pm)
Completely correct. The bends occurs because gases, absorbed by the body at higher pressure, bubble out of the body when the pressure is reduced. This is avoided by careful ascent, giving time for the gases to leave gradually.
Explosive events occur when divers fail to breathe out while ascending. Take a breath at the surface, dive down 10 feet, then rise to the surface: all is well, because the lungs are at normal size, get compressed on descent, then return to normal size as the diver surfaces. Take a breath from an air supply at 10 feet down, then rise to the surface without breathing out, and you are risking death.
So, when does a bat hold its breath? Because without a closed airway, the risk is not there: the air simply leaves.
Those that do not read the main Article V site are missing a lot of very interesting items – read the Einstein debate with the Professor. Enjoy the work done in the site it is more than Constitutional debate it is LIFE.
http://articlevprojecttorestoreliberty.com/spirit-of-america.html
A link to the actual study would certainly be nice.
Reblogged this on gottadobetterthanthis and commented:
We Oklahomans are acting the fool. We live in tornado alley, and we put up giant fans. It is windy here, but wind is still highly variable between dead calm and gale force. (And the tornadoes.) The windmills screw with our weather radar, weather radar that saves lives every storm.
We are an energy state, yet we think we should put up windmills. We have significant bat preserves and cave areas. Not for long, it would seem.
Over and over for over three thousand years, we have abandoned windmills. We will again, hopefully this time before the costs are horrific and long-enduring.
RE: CD (@ur momisuglyCD153) on November 15, 2013 at 10:09 am: “The only rational and logical (with all due respect to Leonard Nimoy) way to go if we are to move away from fossil fuels for electricity generation is nuclear. And the Liquid Fluoride Thorium Reactor is the best nuclear path to take.”
The problem here is that ‘Thorium’ is not a source of energy. It is only a source of artificial uranium (U233) that actually provides energy after a complicated three-step process. Most of the advantages quoted for ‘Thorium’ are actually the advantages of using liquid fueled, molten salt reactors. According to Canadian Dr. David Leblanc, molten salt reactors burn uranium so much more efficiently than solid fueled reactors that we may have enough natural uranium to last more than a thousand years before thorium would be required to manufacture artificial uranium. This is because the solid fuel rods bulge with accumulated nuclear waste products, and all too soon, these contaminated rods must be removed and archived after burning only a small fraction of their uranium content.
Molten salt reactors can, in theory, consume almost all their nuclear fuel and transuranic (plutonium and beyond) long-lived by-products, which decay by nuclear fission. All that remains are the neutron-heavy, short-lived (300 yr) fission fragments that usually decay to stable states by nuclear electron emission (beta decay.) Dr. Leblanc expects to obtain at least six times as much energy from a given amount of natural uranium than that which is currently being obtained from today’s standard, high-pressure, light-water cooled reactors.
For reference, here is a recent presentation given by Dr. Leblanc:
David LeBlanc of Terrestrial Energy on Denatured Molten Salt Reactors @ur momisugly TEAC5
Wind energy is “…clean, it reduces pollution and it creates jobs”? Hardly. Up to 500 gallons of oil in the base of each of them? And there’s more oil in the nacelle. What about the tons of concrete they take for the base of those things? How about the fuel it takes to transport them? Have they addressed the issue of land reclamation?
If ever there was a loser, it’s wind power. Adding another unnecessary step in energy production fails the common sense test. Does it make sense to burn fuel to produce a machine to create energy or is it more practical just to burn the fuel to produce energy directly?