Unexpected Downside of Wind Power

i say leave them up, i dont like birds (kidding about the leave them up of course)

 

Should we ban windows too because birds fly into them? Or cars because they hit deer? There is some down side to every scheme for power and wind mills are far preferable to coal and nuclear or most other alternatives.

I expect birds will learn to avoid the blades, and we will learn to help the birds stay away or avoid most of the damage with newer designs.

I like the idea of tidal power and wave power too, but I am sure that will kill some fish.

I would like to see smaller windmills with one in everyone's back yard, which would solve most of the problem, but that would keep the power companies from getting richer and selling us overpriced electricity. But where I live they won't even let me have a satellite dish to watch the tv I want to see.

 

That has got to be so much bunkum, and a barely-hidden bid from the
NIMBYs to get rid of the windmills and go back to lining the fossil
fuel providers' pockets. Argh. Birds see *way* better than we can,
by and large, and if they screw up and slam into *any* object and
die then it was meant to be in the first place.
.
Now, how do we arrange for those so-called "environmentalists" to
slam into solid objects and thus cease spreading their misguided
propaganda...

_H*

 

I'm with tom.

EVERY intervention with nature has a price, as does every medicine.

Name your poison.

 

I'm not sure if you're serious. Even if you aren't, there are too many other people who feel that the natural world exists at our pleasure, when, in fact, it's the other way around: we exist because the natural world can accomodate us. Eventually, we'll reach a point where our ignorance and arrogance will trip the balance (of which birds are an integral part, your dislike notwithstanding) and we might not fare so well. This isn't about whether we "like" a group of animals or choosing which species will live or die, it's about the life supporting ecosystem we call home.

 

I'm an energy consumer. I depend on electricity for heat, hot water, air conditioning, food safety, etc.

I'm a birder. There have been articles about kill rates around towers, buildings, etc. in the literature for years.

I'm also an advocate for "green" energy production. I realize current technologies are not perfect and will only meet a small fraction of energy demands but these efforts deserve to be encouraged.

Migratory birds, some of them endangered, use specific routes each year. Many of these routes are along ridgelines, where the birds can use thermal updrafts to help them soar, or along feeding grounds, like the edges of the Chesapeake Bay and Cape May, NJ.

Unfortunately, some of the best locations for wind farms and communication towers intersect known migratory routes. The kill rates from rotating blades, as well as the guidelines of cell and other towers, can be alarming.

The best course of action would have been for the tower and wind farm owners to consult with local ornithologists before purchasing or leasing property and developing construction plans. Then many of these structures could have been located in the least obstructive area that still receive good wind exposure.

Since the prep planning work was not properly done, then turning the wind generators off at peak migration days and hours can be coordinated to minimize the amount of down time. Replacing the blades with slower moving ones will help but not eliminate the problem. Moving problematic cell and other towers should be considered too, especially as technology advances make them obsolete and spur replacements.

We should use local environmental and cultural research to assist in making tough decisions. That's just good strategic planning. A reactionary response, i.e., introducing the term "NIMBY" into the discussion, helps no one and automatically polarizes the issue. The best use of resources comes when developers, environmentalists, and locals work together. That's happening at Ayers Rock in Australia and at some of the dams and power plants on the Delaware and Susquehanna rivers.

Really, we're better off when all points of view are considered in a good planning process -- and we spend less time and money in courts too.

 

All these storys seem to leave out PHOTOS of dead birds lying about the ground around towers. I am not convinced this story is really a legitimate concern. Come on, you can SEE all the roadkill.

 

Replace them with safe, clean nuclear power.

 

PCers seem to be more "with it" than the general population so I'm surprised that most seem unaware of the reports of bird kills associated with towers.

Reports about this have been in the literature for decades.

A quick search on the Web yielded this summary from the Audubon Soc.:
http://magazine.audubon.org/features0109/faulty_towers.html
"...the threat that the nation's 75,000 radio, television, and cell-phone towers pose to birds, particularly to the 300 or so species that migrate by night between their breeding grounds in North America and their wintering grounds in the tropics. Using Clark's body count and numbers from several other long-term studies, conservation groups and government biologists estimate that communications towers kill 4 to 50 million birds annually. Most are warblers, thrushes, vireos, or other songbirds, and they represent at least 50 species considered threatened or endangered.
...Yet the first methodical study of tower kills didn't begin until 1955, when biologist Herbert Stoddard started monitoring a 700-foot TV tower built near the Tall Timbers Research Station, in Tallahassee, Florida. During the next 28 years he and his colleagues tallied more than 44,000 victims representing 189 species. In 1957 physician Charles Kemper mounted a similar watch on a 1,000-foot spire in Eau Claire, Wisconsin. In 38 years he counted more than 121,000 casualties from 123 species, including 12,000 birds killed on a single night in 1963. During that incident, "birds were falling at the rate of four to six a minute," Kemper noted in a scientific report that appeared in Audubon in 1964."

Bird kill photos have not been seen in the recent press because bird stories do not sell. Besides, this has been known about for decades; why should reporters pursue old stories? Especially when much more juicy ones (video iPod, Rove, earthquakes, trans-fats, Wilma, the latest Prius recall) abound.

 

OK, I'm convinced. However, that study is about cell towers etc. Logic might say that #1- there are far fewer windmills than communication towers, and #2, the fact that they move would provide a lessened chance of hitting something. No????

I am still leaning toward the "there is always a cost" argument.

 

I guess I'd look at it this way: how many raptors are getting killed by windmills, versus the number killed on the sides of your average interstate highway?

I have to suspect it's a pretty small percentage (particularly because raptors tend to try to feed on roadkill, and then accidently get sucked into the airflow of passing trucks.)

Also need to ask what the population of raptors are in the area -- in a number of areas, they're growing, due to DDT being eliminated and other reasons.

Depending on the information, I'd tend to bend towards leaving the windmills up. (Also: birds learn. News at 11!)

 

Why is it that people will readily pay for crown moulding (which has no payback), but always justify not doing efficiency upgrades on a payback calculation. As a post above pointed out TV transmitters are dangerous for birds - let's just get rid of those pesky transmitters.

Here's an excerpt from another study:
"One September night the 555-foot high Washington Monument took a toll of 576 vireos and warblers between 10:30 P.M. and midnight. A newly erected TV tower on the outskirts of Topeka, Kansas killed 1,090 birds of 61 species over a period of several days. A TV tower at Eau Claire, Wisconsin killed an estimated 20,000 vireos and warblers the night of September 19 -20, 1963."

Here's another quote:
"But residential windows continue to kill the most birds for the simple reason there are so many more houses. That and the fact many residences are surrounded with shrubs and trees, Also there is a growing trend for people to move into rural areas, sometimes for weekends and vacations, in other instances as permanent residents."

Ahh Haa - too many houses. Sounds like we need population control - and no more vacation homes. Actually, that would reduce our need for additional power and help the birds and every other species that we are ignoring on our planet.

 

It's funny how now that wind power is coming of age so many people are whining about birds all of a sudden. House cats probably kill more birds each year. What about all of the mercury poised fish in our lakes (thanks to Coal). What about the MASSIVE (0.62 gal/kWh) amount of water need to run a single nuclear power plant? Unless a cheap means of desalination is developed (and biomimicry may offer a solution), replacing base load coal plants with nuclear ones probably isn't going to be feasible (sustainable) in the Southwest.

Anyone have any idea what the uranium reserves look like? If we switched all base load electricity in this country to nuclear how long would the uranium last?

 

Besides aren't the wind turbines in the Altamont farm really old and out dated? My alma mater recently installed (SEP 2004) a 1.65 MW Vestas turbine. The operators said that they have seen no evidence of bird kills. The turbine operates about 98% of the and I think the production factor has been somewhere around 30%.

 

I'll take a few dead birds over radiation, sulphur dioxide, HC, and CO emissions any day. Some of these people need to get a life.