Dave Johnson
You hear a lot about wind turbines killing birds.
CATS kill many orders of magnitude more birds.
How come we hear about wind turbines killing birds all the time but not about cats doing that?
Witness the power of the fossil fuel companies and the way they are able to spread propaganda
Rui Seabra
I'm truly sorry, but sadly there's a flaw in that reasoning: it's not taking in account the geographical availability of the bird killing agents: power lines, Windows, traffic, and cats are much more widely available. As those raw numbers don't take in account equivalent geographical availability, and wind turbines are much rarer than the others, these may very well be worse killers in proportion of geographical availability. #justsaying
Mina
The bar chart shows numbers of birds killed annually in Germany by cause:
Wind turbines: 100K
Hunting: 1.2M
Power lines: up to 2.8M
Windows and buildings' glass fronts: at least 18M
Traffic: 70M
Cats: 100M
Birds killed by wind turbines are a non-issue, except if you are a lobbyist for fossil energy.
Note to the data source:
I stumbled over this particular image about a year ago or so in a tweet without source.
Searching the web, I found the particular numbers …
1/2
Rui Seabra
@Mina @dcjohnson @luisfcorreia The point is that charts with absolute numbers are useless if they're comparing apples to oranges. Of course the best bird killer are Santa's Elfs at a score of zero kills (due to zero availability). Only equivalent scales can be compared, eg estimate kills per square meter. The ration may be worse, or may be better, but not known... it's an useless number prone to abuse from either side of the debate.
Mina
The numbers are rather crude estimates anyway, and you might be right, but given the relatively small size and high population density of Germany, I don't see the general pattern to change significantly. Even a factor 10 in the number for wind turbines would leave the chart not changed to a large degree.
@dcjohnson @luisfcorreia
Rui Seabra
@Mina @dcjohnson @luisfcorreia Eg Cats... (5000-7000 wildcats in Germany) means about 273972 birds per day, which means about 39 birds per day per cat. (ref https://www.tierart.de/en-us/interesting-facts-about-animals/about-wildcats-felis-silvestris-silvestris) just this is enough to place the graph in question.
Rui Seabra
@Mina @dcjohnson @luisfcorreia make it ten times the maximum number of estimated wild cats in Germany and it would still be 4 birds per day per cat.
Rui Seabra
@Mina @dcjohnson @luisfcorreia house cats? You must know a different kind of house cats than those I know.
Mina
The original source, which is linked in the follow-up toot, puts the estimate at 20-100M, and yet:
Wild cats are hardly the problem,. House cats are.
In the end, all numbers are irrelevant compared to industrialised agriculture, with pesticides and herbicides, and to the loss of natural habitats.
Rui Seabra
@Mina @dcjohnson @luisfcorreia it would still be 6.6 bitds per year per every single cat in Germany ( https://www.statista.com/statistics/552971/pets-number-by-type-germany/ ), but in any case, that's only more reasons not to use those numbers, because using 20 to 100 M and then placing in the graph the max... er... shady. Misusing numbers doesn't help a good cause, quite the contrary. It's better to acknowledge a problem and check how to improve the odds of killing birds.
Luis Correia
Nevertheless, Wind Turbines are the least relevant factor of bird deaths, that's the WHOLE POINT
Rui Seabra
@luisfcorreia @Mina @dcjohnson You can't tell that from those numbers / graph because you can't tell if it's comparing 10 Km against 1000 mm, it just says 10 is smaller than 1000. That's not enough to claim it's the least relevant factor because it's arguing towards expanding use.
Rui Seabra
@Mina @luisfcorreia @dcjohnson in any case, the turbines are also quite pollutant and we still don't know the effects of removing kinetic wind energy in weather patterns, it would be quite ironic if wind energy capture could make climate change worse, or even harder to predict. I still view collecting solar energy as the safer way.
Mina
Yes you can. Germany has currently about 65GW of wind turbine capacity installed.
Suitable sites onshore are getting very scarce, so there are three main ways to increase capacity:
bigger turbines at existing locations (which will not change significantly the overall picture),
smaller, vertical turbines without blades in populated areas (also, no change)
More offshore capacity in the North and Baltic sea.
Rui Seabra
@luisfcorreia Oh wow, down to insults. Nice. Not.
Luis Correia
@RuiSeabra sorry buddy, it seems your brain has short circuited there
Luis Correia
@RuiSeabra "citation needed"
all "research" that says wind turbines kill birds is fossil fuel funded and Germany isn't an example for anyone
remember, they've shutdown nuclean power stations in order to burn fuel, coal or gas
Rui Seabra
@luisfcorreia
Yet somehow I am the one who has a short circuit in the brain. *Sigh*
Rui Seabra
@walsonde the average wild cat kils *for sure* orders of magnitude more birds than the average house cat. Most of the later live in apartments. I question that graph as a valid tool.
walsonde
@RuiSeabra so you unironically think, the 5000 wild cats eat all the birds and the 15M domestic cats eat none? I rest my case. @Mina @dcjohnson @luisfcorreia
Rui Seabra
@walsonde ur you must be arguing against someone else, as I've not mentioned that. The interference on wind caused by the wind wings has a noticeable effect, big wind farms may be cause for some concern beyond the high pollution they themselves cause at the end of life. ref: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-021-02089-2
walsonde
@RuiSeabra oh, for f***'s sake! Wind doesn't occur because someone or something shoved it but because there are differences between high and low pressure areas. Wind turbines don't affect those, hence wind doesn't cease to exist just because there are wind turbines in it's way. You're welcome. @Mina @luisfcorreia @dcjohnson
Rui Seabra
@dcjohnson it's hard to have conversations when stupid polarization leads people to think there is only a us vs them and any opinion that contradicts a piece of "my side" must mean the interlocutor is fully on "their side". That's how *they* win.
Dave Johnson
@RuiSeabra @Mina @luisfcorreia
The POINT of this was to ilustrate how fossil fuel propaganda diverts us from converstions about the climate crisis.
Rui Seabra
I've just pointed to a scientific article detailing how wind farms have a noticeable effect on weather patterns.
We know too little of how these changes can influence the current climate crisis, for better or for worse.
Insulting other people while sticking fingers on your ears and closing your eyes is unhelpful.
Also, please stop placing words on my mouth. Your creative interpretations of what I wrote, are not what I wrote.
walsonde
@RuiSeabra unless you're insisting that high and low pressure areas cease to exist due to the presence of wind turbines, your argument is invalid. otherwise it's unscientific bs.
nobody controverts that wind turbines — like all man-made things — have downsides. Using wind energy in the present global climate catastrophy situation inarguably is less harmful than not limiting damage by all means possible and necessary.
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