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The Myth That Wind Farms Are a Guillotine for Birds Is Being Debunked by Hard Data (www.zmescience.com)
submitted 8 months ago by to c/energy@slrpnk.net
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[–] 112 points 8 months ago (14 children)

It was never a myth. It was a lie.

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  • [–] 31 points 8 months ago (2 children)

    Reading the article. Wind turbines do kill birds, but it's worse in certain areas, at certain times of year, and even certain times of day.

    We can plan around these known quantities.

    Also, guy wires and power lines can kill birds. Not quite as often, but sometimes a bird will hit the wire rather than land on it.

    But the main killer of birds by far is furry and has cute little claws.

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  • [–] 5 points 8 months ago (8 children)

    Anyone can drive out to a windfarm and look for dead birds, there never were any.

    Also, wind turbines are geared to spin slowly, it's not like a room fan, they only turn at 10-20 rpm.

    Anyone can also visit a glass office building and ask caretakers how many birds a day they clean up.

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  • [–] 5 points 8 months ago

    I work for a renewable energy company. We regularly find dead birds at our wind sites, including occasionally protected species like eagles (killing bats is also a concern).

    There are steps you can take to mitigate the threat. We have dumped a ton of money into a really cool technology that scans the skies constantly with super high res cameras and automatically stops turbines in the vicinity of protected species.

    Overall, renewable energy is still much better for wildlife than burning fossil fuels.

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  • [–] 5 points 8 months ago (3 children)

    Our house is older and is fairly light on windows, but the living room and kitchen both have a fairly sizeable one. I usually have to pick up 3-4 dead birds under them each year.

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  • [–] 4 points 8 months ago (2 children)

    Put a sticker on them?

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  • [–] 2 points 8 months ago*

    The stickers don’t actually work super well unless you cover your windows with them.

    According to the Audubon society:

    Window decals may help, but they must be placed no more than 2-4 inches apart in order to be effective. Birds will try to fly through larger gaps. This means that on large windows, many closely spaced decals may be necessary to deter bird collisions.

    4 inches is about 10cm

    There are more tips in the article but stickers don’t help nearly as much as people want them to.

    There are companies that are experimenting with whole window films, but when I looked a bit ago they didn’t seem to be widely available to consumers.

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  • [–] 5 points 8 months ago

    You should read the article fr. It says that wind turbines can and do kill birds, but that they are now designed and placed judiciously to reduce death toll. And that there are much greater threats, namely climate change which wind turbines helps with.

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