> Agree 100%. Wind turbines killing birds is a disingenuous argument when it comes to climate change.
If the people involved in this conversation actually cared about birds, they wouldn't be worried about either. They'd be worried about cats. Cats kill about 20-55% of the entire US bird population every single year. Somewhere between 1.3B and 4B birds per year in the US alone. [1] And an order of magnitude more small mammals (6.3B - 22.3B).
It's several orders of magnitude more than turbines and oil-and-gas drilling combined.
Studies put the number of birds killed by wind turbines in the US at 140K-690K. That's 0.0035% to 0.05% of the birds killed by cats. It would literally be a rounding error nobody would ever notice if all the wind turbines came down.
I honestly can't believe we're still having this conversation in the context of wind power. Put some UV stickers or black paint on them and move on. [3]
My indoor cats haven't killed any birds in their lives.
My windows, on the other hand, take out a few every year.
Really though, I know the term "bird brain" exists in my North American lexicon but birds aren't THAT dumb. They can fly around large, opaque, moving objects with a rather high degree of accuracy.
I don't know shit, but I'm pretty sure the kind of birds cats kill are very different from the kind of birds that get killed in wind turbines, i.e. eagles
Not having any birds or small mammals to eat because the cats killed all of them is going to do a number on them too. Despite their ability to win a physical confrontation.
If the people involved in this conversation actually cared about birds, they wouldn't be worried about either. They'd be worried about cats. Cats kill about 20-55% of the entire US bird population every single year. Somewhere between 1.3B and 4B birds per year in the US alone. [1] And an order of magnitude more small mammals (6.3B - 22.3B).
It's several orders of magnitude more than turbines and oil-and-gas drilling combined.
Studies put the number of birds killed by wind turbines in the US at 140K-690K. That's 0.0035% to 0.05% of the birds killed by cats. It would literally be a rounding error nobody would ever notice if all the wind turbines came down.
I honestly can't believe we're still having this conversation in the context of wind power. Put some UV stickers or black paint on them and move on. [3]
[1] https://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms2380
[2] https://www.denverpost.com/2019/09/20/bird-population-decrea...
[3] https://group.vattenfall.com/press-and-media/newsroom/2022/b...