Posted on 06/07/2010 9:23:14 AM PDT by Sub-Driver
Study: Wind Farms = Bird Killers Tiffany Kaiser - June 7, 2010 11:51 AM
A recent study in Klickitat County, Washington shows that active wind farms in Washington and Oregon kill more than 6,500 birds and 3,000 bats annually.
Biologist Orah Zamora works for West, Inc., an ecological field study company, monitors the Windy Flats project, one of the largest wind farms in the United States. Zamora looks for dead birds and bats that have been severed by the spinning blades of the surrounding wind turbines in order to conduct survey's to observe how wind-power development is affecting birds.
"It's like a crime scene, and you try to figure out what happened," said Zamora. "Sometimes it's really obvious because you can see a slice mark."
These surveys are financed by the wind industry and are mainly concerned with birds like eagles, hawks, and other raptors. Klickitat County is especially a concern because the area has an abundance of prey for these larger birds, hence, they tend to stay in the area. According to the study, these birds are diving for their prey and do not pay attention to the large wind turbine blades that may be in the way.
(Excerpt) Read more at dailytech.com ...
A useful compilation of statistics that helps us all understand why the term “bird brain” is so appropriate.
Wind power, of course, won’t obviate the need for transmission lines, so any bird mortality associated with wind farms themselves would be in addition to the mortality related to getting the electricity they generate to the places that need it.
In my mind, these statistics reinforce the merits of relying on mini-nuclear power plants of a size that can power 20,000 homes. Such a decentralized power source would obviate the need for the thousands of miles of power transmission lines that apparently cause birds so many problems; it would eliminate the problems caused by widespread power outages; and it would be infinitely more secure against terrorist attacks on the power grid. Since such plants would be buried underground, their aesthetic advantages over massive wind farms also should be pretty obvious.
I used to have a cat that would leave a dead bird at the front door about once a week in the warm months of the year .... maybe fifteen a year. If there are ten million cats like mine in the country, they would account for about 150 million dead birds annually. It must really suck to be a bird.
Dear ArrogantBastard, you are well named. Now bite me.
Geez...I don’t pay any more attention to the Chicken Little Cartel than I pay to the “employment” figures, since each only provide information the WANT us to read.
If we find a way to provide energy, we must also be aware of the side-effects. Kinda like eating chili and drinking beer in a room full of ladies.
Fifteen years ago residents in the Altamont Pass area and near Mojave in the Techachi Pass, California were claiming that they found the remains of hundreds of raptors killed by the wind farms built there. Today, in both places, there are no reports of raptor sightings. Wind farms are a joke, pushed by rednecks like Boone Pickens.
Their Security guys were pretty much like us - cynical, sardonic ex-military/cops.
After work one evening, they told us about a high-tension line (I think it was 500kv) tower that kept shorting out and essentially blowing all of the wire and insulators all over the place, causing major disruptions, and costing a ton of money to fix. It was located in the middle of a swamp, and completely unapproachable by land, so they had to perform all of the maintenance and repairs from helicopters. High dollar and high risk.
After the third such "blowout", they decided to install surveillance cameras and figure out the cause. Sure enough, Boom! out it went. When they checked the cameras they found that large Egrets (~40" wingspan, ~15-25 lbs) that were proliferant in that area would spend the day catching and eating fish, and then fly up to sun themselves on the top of the tower.
After some research and consultation with wildlife biologists, it was determined that the birds normal digestive process involved sitting in the sun, then "expelling" their daily digested "load" upon take-off from their sunning roost. They could only defecate upon take off. It wasn't their wings arcing across the lines, but long plumes of wet (and highly conductive) bird s&*t, crossing lines and causing major outages and hundreds of thousands of dollars in damage. Also essentially vaporizing the stupid birds, and dropping what little evidence there may have been to the swamp to be consumed by the creepy crawlys waiting below.
By building their tower in the middle of the natural habitat for that particular bird they had created an ideal, but terminal roost.
They installed wire spikes and rotating balls to prevent the birds from landing on the tower and forced them back into the trees where they belong. Worked like a charm.
I'm curious though. Why is wind power "good"? It's incredibly inefficient (2-15%), is difficult to transmit for any appreciable distance, is reliant on too many uncontrollable factors (weather, climate, location, political will, etc.) and is plain ugly to look at.
I like to call them bird salad shooters.
What is not cheap is the amount of interest accruing on the original capital investment. The banks that finance the venture do not stop charging interest on the loan when the wind doesn't blow.
But we never hear that from the "Big Wind" lobbyists.
In high school, I was on a bus once driving across Europe on a tour.
We started drawing little birds on the side of the bus for all the birds crushed by the windshield. In the hundreds at the end of a month.
Thousands sounds high, but I doubt the signifigance.
All electricity on Earth was ultimately derived from nuclear fusion.
In California, I have them called condor cuisinarts.
Rat-Rod.
You and your pedantry are the reason I specified an Earth-based powerplant. See my other comments on the thread.
You have no sense of humor, at all.
I guess it doesn't show ...
I think we could resolve this issue easily over a beer (kosher, of course, and there's some mighty fine brew in Israel) or three ...
Ah, all beer is Kosher.* +
* OK, not “all” beer. But 99.999% of beer. grain, hops, water, malt.
+ Passover excepted
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