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Comment by zeamaize | Hacker News Reader

That's a conservative straw man. Skyscrapers have much more impact and no one notices.

If conservatives care so much about wildlife why do they support things that lead to deforestation and desertification and loss of biodiversity and pollution and...?

To be a conservative is to hold multiple contradictory positions at once, many of which directly harm your own health or well-being

Exactly. All these questionable concerns about the negative impacts of clean energy are straw men conjured up to protect the real devastating energy sources.

Not to mention cats. Some stats here:

http://www.currykerlinger.com/birds.htm

I'm pretty sure some people notice. I'm also reasonably sure that if we produce a substantial amount of our energy needs from wind, turbines will far outnumber any skyscrapers.

"Wind turbines kill between 214,000 and 368,000 birds annually ... compared with the estimated 6.8 million fatalities from collisions with cell and radio towers and the 1.4 billion to 3.7 billion deaths from cats, "

https://www.treehugger.com/renewable-energy/north-america-wi...

The problem is not wind turbines or radio towers. The problem is cats.

That data isn’t true. Multiple studies put that number into the millions.

http://www.nature.com/news/the-trouble-with-turbines-an-ill-...

Well, the data is definitely questionable - but unclear whether the Ornithological Society (or TreeHugger) cites unbiased studies, I'll give you that. Here is a Stanford Study with some sources:

http://large.stanford.edu/courses/2016/ph240/white1/

What I like about it, is that it cites avian mortality in terms of Mortality per MW, (though one might suggest MWh is a better number, but we can extract that by assuming 20% Capacity Factor) which is the more relevant number than total deaths, because are going to see a lot more MW in the future, and presumably deaths will scale linearly.

Total Average US was 4.12 Avian Deaths / MW. With California really leading the pack at a high 18.76 per MW.

Presuming a 20% capacity factor, and assuming the united states uses about 10 million MwH/day, that means the United States will need 10 million * 5 / 24 MW in capacity, or about 2 million MW capacity (Sanity Check - 2 million MW = 2000 GW which is about 400 GW of nuclear power plants @ 100% Capacity factor - about 400 Reactors,- seems within the realm of reason given the US has about 100 Reactors right now), which means that on average, we'll see about 8 million bird deaths in the future because of wind farms.

That compares to (in 2009) - 4 million due to communication towers, 14 million due to fossil fuels, 72 million due to Pesticide, 97 million due to Building Windows, and 110 million due to feral cats.

And bird deaths from cats and skyscrapers will be many orders of magnitude greater. This is well-reasearched, and it's not hard to find the journal articles on this topic. We need not guess.

How is “protecting birds” a conservative straw man? Non-conservatives routinely block all sorts of projects because of endangered fish or frogs. How often do non-conservatives use the Endangered Species Act as a tool to prevent projects with which they ideologically disagree? It’s like they oppose a project and then find whatever legal means they have available to block it. It isn’t like non-conservatives in California have a profound desire to protect the delta smelt; if they did, then why wouldn’t they oppose the Altamont Pass wind farm that kills 114 golden eagles each year? How about the death of highly endangered condors because of of California wind farms? A skyscraper has never killed a condor but a wind farm has.

http://savetheeaglesinternational.org/new/us-windfarms-kill-...

Non-conservatives use the same straw man by somehow suggesting fossil fuels harm wildlife. But their own pet projects seem to escape the same scrutiny with which they apply to fossil fuels. My theory is that by restricting fossil fuels they can redirect the balance of economic power towards a direction that is more in line with their particular ideology. My point is that “environment” itself is being used as a straw man with the ultimate goal of changing wealth distribution.

Oil spills definitely harm wildlife and windmills also definitely harm wildlife.

It’s fair to point out the ecological effects of fields of windmills just as it’s fair to point out the harms of oil spills.

Also, we aren’t talking about skyscrapers— we are talking about energy generation. Whether or not skyscrapers harm wildlife and to what degree isn’t relevant because skyscrapers already exist and people aren’t suggesting we cover the countryside with skyscrapers. If that were the topic under debate, then the effects of skyscrapers on wildlife would be a relevant point.

If you want to protect birds, you have to ban people from keeping cats and letting them loose in rural areas. Good luck with that.

When complaining about loose cats, no one ever seems concerned about all the rats that are also killed.

Various international bird (and bat) societies support wind power as a net positive for their particular species, while contributing expert guidance on siting and design to minimize bird casualties and opposing individual projects that they feel are poorly designed or sited. (Of relevant interest to HN are computer vision projects that track rare birds and stop nearby turbines when they come too close)

So, if conservatives are really opposing wind power on the basis of "saving birds" then they're massively misinformed and ignoring the relevant experts.

Since they don't actually care about the birds, it's obviously a cynical ploy to protect fossil fuels that on balance are a greater threat to the very birds they claim to want to save.

And in doing so they're choosing not only an environmentally destructive option, but one which is more costly to society, just because the special interests who receive the benefits will provide kick backs to politicians that help them.

You couldn't really summarize modern conservative thought better if you tried.

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