Birds Not Being Killed by Wind Farms

[papau]

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=570&ncid=753&e=5&u=/nm/20041125/sc_nm/environment_wind_dc

Birds Not Being Killed by Wind Farms -Ecologist

Thu Nov 25,11:19 AM ET

LONDON (Reuters) - Two major offshore wind farms in Denmark are giving the lie to fears that birds are being killed by flying into the huge vanes of such installations, a conference heard on Thursday.

In fact, not only were birds not dying, the Danish farms had actually benefitted the local environment, ecologist Charlotte Boesen of Denmark's Energi E2 energy trading and generation firm told the conference on wind energy.

Birds were simply flying over or around the huge packs of turbines, and the seabed foundations had created an artificial reef that was attracting new species to colonize and providing a haven for fish as trawling there was banned.

"So far the observed effects have been positive," she said. <snip>

[annabanana]

1. Well, that's hopeful news........

rate, and:

:kick:

[papau]

2. I agree - looks like Mass will have its wind farm

albeit a bit smaller per the GOP gov - but I think he is just drumming up some GOP "contributions"

[tridim]

3. I never understood the "but it'll kill birds" argument

Anti-renewable-energy types don't give a rat's ass if a few birds die.

[Ready4Change]

9. Some early generation turbines spun at bad rates.

From what I gather, some of the early turbine blades spun at rates that were just slow enough birds would try to fly through them, but fast enough that the larger birds would be struck.

More recent turbines are generally on either side of the earlier generations. They are either larger/taller, which means their blades travel slower, or shorter and faster, which discourages birds from attempting to fly through them.

This is just what I've gathered from reading little articles here and there. Don't have any factual sites to back my opinion up.

[wellstone dem]

4. imagine a time

when instead of off-shore oil rigs, we see off-shore wind mills-- instead of posing a risk to water species, creating a safe haven for them.

[Robbien]

5. Wow, so this bird killing excuse is just more propaganda

not to research alternate fuel?

Count me as one of the suckers who believed that bunk. Fooled again. You'd think I would have known better by now.

[amazona]

13. it is not propaganda

I suggest you visit the American Bird Conservancy for facts rather than one newspaper piece.

Cell phone towers and skyscrapers are documented to kill hundreds of millions of birds a year. Wind turbines will need to be carefully situated out of flyways or they will destroy whole populations of migrating birds.

Oil rigs in the Gulf of Mexico actually provide a resting place for migrating birds. During a fall-out, hundreds of warblers and other migrants can find safety and rest on an oil rig. Birds that have learned to look for these structures in bad weather could be killed in HUGE numbers if an oil rig was replaced by a wind farm in that location.

Wind farms need to be properly situated because, in the wrong location, they may indeed pose a serious threat to birds.

Wind farms are being proposed and built for profit, not out of the goodness of anyone's heart, and they must be studied as seriously for environmental impact as any other large-scale proposal. I have no problem with wind farms offshore Denmark, but I do not live in Denmark. I have a big problem with wind farms in my line of sight or in the central flyway unless the proper care is taken to protect the health and safety of our migrating birds.

[BlueJazz]

6. I'm glad you brought this up cause on a local talk radio....

...program some ignorant, lying right-wing idiot said something to the effect that: "I believe that these Wind Farms are going to change the climate by forcing more wind to change course and therefore....the weather"

It took me about 5 seconds to realize that this was probably the most asinine, stupid statement I had ever heard in my life.

(I guess the dumb fucker thought that wind farms MAKE wind..Geez..)

[tridim]

10. And of course fossil fuel waste doesn't affect the climate at all..

Idiots all.

[intheflow]

11. It's not that wind farms make wind, it's that they slow natural wind flow

patterns.

I heard the same thing, and it is worth at least considering. When people started using fossil fuels, they didn't realize global warming would happen. In fact, all kinds of human activity has effected the global ecosphere.

While I don't think we should dismiss wind farms all together, I do think the idea that wind farms might have unintended consequences deserves consideration. Never hurts to consider what effects our actions will have on the planet. Refusing to do so seems as arrogant a stance as Chimp and Co. refusing to admit global warming.

Here's the original paper out of the University of Calgary: http://www.ucalgary.ca/~keith/papers/66.Keith.2004.WindAndClimate.e.pdf

[arwalden]

12. Too Funny...

The wind farms only gather energy from the motion of the surface winds... not upper winds that affect our environment. They have less surface area than a small tree.

[intheflow]

18. If there's one thing both the ecological movement and quantum physics

teach it's that natural forces work in infinitely complex and unpredictable ways.

I mean, weather forecasters can't even get the weather right half the time. How do we know how large scale wind farms will affect both the surface winds, and the surface winds' interactions with the upper winds unless we study it?

[arwalden]

19. Ahh... trot out the old QUANTUM physics, eh? LOL!!

I imagine that the color the windmills are painted will become an issue too since WHITE reflects and scatters the sun's energy, and black absorbs it. Oh dear!

And bee-farts cause tornados. And the wind from butterfly's wings causes wind gales at sea.

[TahitiNut]

17. Skyscrapers, radar dishes, houses, ....

... all of which actually block the wind, and some numbnuts think a miniscule number of wind turbines that actually "go with the flow" and allow the wind to pass (they wouldn't work if they didn't) have any comparable effect?

How about deforestation? Over time the elimination of vast tracts of tall trees ... maybe wind turbines, in a very small way, counteract that impact.

[luaneryder]

7. TVA wanted to build

a wind farm on a mountain in east TN. It was defeated because of the ridge law that prevents any structure above a certain height to built that will detract from the aesthetics of the mountain ridge line. That same mountain has a housing development now complete with septic tanks that can contaminate the well water of lower lying homes and add to the air pollution with more vehicular traffic. I had never heard the bird argument.

[Gregorian]

8. It could depend on the bird specie.

But to be honest, I've never believed the bird problem hype. And here's why- with three small blades, and a slow rpm, the probability of a bird hitting a blade is quite small. Combine that with the fact that birds seem to know how to avoid things quite well.

I hate to be pessimistic, but our problem isn't energy. It's population. With large enough numbers, I imagine even windmills will have their problems. For example, just being downwind of one would diminish your wind, perhaps. I'll take my chances over pumping black goo out of the ground, any day. But people really need to know what the problem is. It's not oil. It's not energy. It's numbers of users. And here's just another problem- it takes energy to make windmills. There are things that require so much energy density, that we must use petroleum. Like mining the copper for generator windings, and aluminum for propeller blades, etc. And shipping of windmills. It's not a free ride by any means. Again, it boils down to how many. But everything we can do, will help. Our only option, given the 120 year transit time of CO2, is to reduce and or stop combustion.

Bla bla bla.

[amazona]

14. birds do not know how to avoid things quite well

Combine that with the fact that birds seem to know how to avoid things quite well.

There is absolutely no evidence that birds do know how to avoid "quite well" structures that do not occur in nature. The statistics for the numbers of birds killed flying into cell phone towers and skyscrapers is sickening. Birds will be killed by this technology, it is our responsibility to reduce the harm as much as is practical. Certain areas (such as flyways) should not have wind farms. They shouldn't even have as many cell phone towers as they do, but that horse is already out of the barn.

Here's American Bird's Conservancy statement:

http://www.abcbirds.org/policy/windenergy.htm

We can reduce harm to birds by building wind farms in "agricultural desert" but we should not blindly support any and all wind farms. I would need to see proof of harm reduction before I could support a wind farm offshore the northern Gulf of Mexico, but the proposals are coming, just to get taxpayer funds into the corporate hands that will be building these projects.

[found object]

15. simply recycle the petrol-power plants...

for their copper, aluminum and the amount of wind they diminish.

http://images.google.com/imgres?imgurl=&imgrefurl=http://www.fpl.com/about/plant/contents/manatee_news.shtml&h=414&w=500&sz=58&tbnid=Jap1AVCVqJsJ:&tbnh=104&tbnw=126&start=1&prev=/images%3Fq%3Dpower%2Bplant%26hl%3Den%26lr%3D%26sa%3DN

[KDLarsen]

16. That's news to me..

.. and I try to update myself on Danish news a couple of times during the day. It's good to hear really, the government have set a goal to reduce the dependancy on fossil fuel, so these news will only make it easier for it to reach that goal.

Go Denmark :D