From NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT
By Paul Homewood
h/t Dennis Ambler
Even the greeniacs are starting to understand the damage to wildlife from wind turbines:
As wind power grows around the world, so does the threat turbines pose to wildlife. From simple fixes to high-tech solutions, researchers are finding ways to reduce the toll.
About twice a month, many of Australia’s wind farms receive an important visit from dogs and their handlers. The dogs are professionals and know exactly what they’re there for. Eagerly, they run along transects under the wind turbines, sniffing until they catch a scent, then lying down, sitting or freezing once they’ve located their targets: the carcasses of bats and birds that were killed by turbine collisions.
For nearly two decades, wind and wildlife ecologist Emma Bennett’s company, Elmoby Ecology, has been using canines to count the victims of wind turbines in southern Australia. The numbers are troubling. Each turbine yields four to six bird carcasses per year, part of an overall death toll from wind turbines that likely tops 10,000 annually for the whole of Australia (not including carcasses carried away by scavengers). Such deaths are in the hundreds of thousands in North America. Far worse are the numbers of dead bats: The dogs find between six and 20 of these per turbine annually, with tens of thousands believed to die each year in Australia. In North America, the number is close to a million.
In fact, some experts predict that turbine collisions could drive certain bat species to extinction. “It’s the No. 1 threat facing our small microbats,” Bennett says.
Numbers like these have caused strife in environmentalist circles, pitting those pushing for a rapid buildout of renewable energy — necessary to combat climate change — against those who oppose turbines due to their impact on wildlife; some bird conservation groups have frequently obstructed wind energy projects.
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The article asks how we can make wind turbines safer.
I would suggest we start by imposing punitive fines on any wind farms who do not take adequate precautions.
“”Wind turbines kill too many birds and bats. How can we make them safer?””
Dismantle them.
Twice a month?
I doubt many carcasses sit around for 2 weeks in nature.
They must be vastly undercounting.
The gold mining industry went through a similar evolution in Nevada, starting more than 30 years ago. The heap-leaching process, utilizing a cyanide solution, required collecting the cyanide solution, with gold, in what was called a pregnant pond. Ponds in the Nevada desert quickly became resting spots for ducks and geese, who died in alarming numbers. Enter a sequence of bird death avoidance measures, starting with playing loud rock music (Twisted Sister reportedly having some of the desired effect), transitioning to propane cannons, then to the actual solution, netting set up as a physical barrier. Try to imagine a giant windmill with a physical barrier keeping the birds, bats, and bugs out of the chopper. Isn’t going to happen.
“Each turbine yields four to six bird carcasses per year”
between six and 20 of these [bats] per turbine annually
using canines to count the victims
I’m sorry, but is this a joke? Even the green Grauniad ‘fesses up to much more ‘mortality’ than that :
“Hundreds of bats are being killed in collisions with wind turbines in the UK each month, despite ecological impact assessments predicting that many windfarms were unlikely to affect such animals, according to a new study. All UK species of bats are protected by law.”
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/nov/07/wind-turbine-collisions-killing-hundreds-of-uk-bats-each-month-study-finds
Some ecologists are not happy
“Why is the public not more aware of this carnage? First, because the wind industry (with the shameful complicity of some ornithological organisations) has gone to great trouble to cover it up — to the extent of burying the corpses of victims. Second, because the ongoing obsession with climate change means that many environmentalists are turning a blind eye to the ecological costs of renewable energy. What they clearly don’t appreciate — for they know next to nothing about biology — is that most of the species they claim are threatened by ‘climate change’ have already survived 10 to 20 ice ages, and sea-level rises far more dramatic than any we have experienced in recent millennia or expect in the next few centuries. Climate change won’t drive those species to extinction; well-meaning environmentalists might.”
https://www.pbssocal.org/redefine/uk-ecologist-wind-farms-driving-birds-bats-to-extinction
Fair comment.
Gotta remember.
The people behind the wind turbine farce are “environmentalists”..
ie…. they don’t give a rat’s **** about the environment !!
Time for this one again:
Easily made safe, bring in bulldozers and knock them all down, of course do this after throwing all executives and politicians who pushed this environmental disaster on the people of the world into to prison for life and seizing ALL their ill-gotten gains.
Light curtains. If a bird or bat breaks the light curtain, the blades stop.
Put them upside down : they will as efficient as ever.
Here’s a thought…..stop building these pariahs!
For years there’s been a concern about bird deaths caused by their flying into the exterior glass of commercial buildings.
How do we make wind turbines safer?
Tear ’em down. Tear ’em all down.
Nothing that a large ring charge at the base would not cure.
On shore turbines were a problem so they started putting them off shore. Now that’s a problem to sea birds and whales and also financially a lost cause so they need to find another location. How about a California-style law that says you can build as many windmills as you like as long as they are off planet. Lots of space on Mars.
The bird and bat kill numbes are total BS
The actual kills are MUCH higher
I read a great scientific study on the subject years ago, which I can’t find now. Maybe there was a related article here
The windmills kill insects
Small birds and bats go foe the insects
Some small birds and bats get shredded
Big birds come to eat the small birds and bats
Some big birds get shredded
Carnivores come to eat the dead big birds
The counts are always too low because
evidence has been eaten by the next day.
In addition, some birds are injured and die a distance from the windmill where they would not be counted
Windmills should be banned just for bird and bat kills. Add whale kills.
They are also worthless for reliable power when it is needed. And their power output is highly unpredictable, which is bad for grid load balancing.
All windmills are a redundant waste of money
They could be repurposed.
Strap leftists to the blades and spin some sense into them. If that’s possible.
Having politicians pretending to be grid engineers is as dumb as having inmates at a lunatic asylum pretending to be doctors and doing operations.
Can anyone say ‘mosquito borne illnesses’?
So it really just ends with “any wind farms who do not take adequate precautions.” Without a single word on what those “adequate precautions” might be? Lame.
Windmills can also cause local warming, resulting in an inverted solution to the perceived problem.
Harvard Study Finds Wind Turbines Will Cause More Warming In Minnesota Than Emissions Reductions Would Avert (americanexperiment.org)
Take the useless bastards down, problem solved.
Suggest starting at the sum total of all subsidies received per “farm” facility, per carcass. Double for nationally or internationally recognized endangered species. Triple for sea life (since the article didn’t mention whales, dolphins, or other sea mammals).
Settling in lieu of the fine should be satisfied by removing ~20 MW (per facility, per carcass) nameplate capacity plus restoring the land or seascape to its former condition.
We are not in a climate crisis, CO2 is not the control knob for climate, we are not going to reach a tipping point and suffer irreversible global warming. Fire up all fossil fuel and nuclear generators and remove all wind and solar from the grid.
Twice a month? That’s a lot of time for predators to find and dispose of many of the carcasses.
There’s also the issue of birds and bats that were not killed instantly, but managed to fly a few hundred yards before dying.
The Warmists say these numbers pale compared to the number of birds killed by cats and other predators and collisions with buildings, etc., and even those killed by “fossil fuel”…not sure how, maybe by colliding with oil derricks????…
One counter argument I have heard is that those birds are all small birds that reproduce by the millions and are in no danger of extinction; whereas, the wind turbines are placed in migratory bird corridors and kill the larger birds whose populations are dwindling quickly.
Any suggestions for other arguments to use in the discussions?
There are design that are much safer. One question of interest is whether they are all technically inferior are producing electricity per unit of wind or if there are various gatekeeper interests that assure these alternate designs don’t get fair trials.
Make them safer: limit blade diameter to 20 inches and move them into enclosures. In other words morph them into box fans………