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Comment by terminalcommand | Hacker News Reader

Plus wind energy kills birds. Engineers try to minimize this risk, but greedy entrepreneurs with connections to lobyists and the government tend to "flex" restrictions.

Hydroelectricity also kills the nature, I heard that some argue that hydroelectricity shouldn't be classified as environmentally friendly.

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Studies show that a windturbine kills approximately as many birds as a domestic cat does.

According to a French study ( https://www.lpo.fr/la-lpo-en-actions/developpement-durable/e... ): 0.3 to 18.3 birds/windturbine/year 5.2 according to Loss et al, 2013 and 8.2 according to Zimmerling et al. 2013.

I can't read the study as it is in French. I am living under a highly corrupt government. You can build wind turbines / airports directly on bird migration paths here, no one says anything if you got an OK from the government. That's why I said engineers figure out ways to minimize bird deaths, however they are not always enforced. France may apply these principles, but my country doesn't.

A news article (in Turkish) substantiating what I'm talking about: https://www.sozcu.com.tr/2021/gundem/kuzey-ormanlari-simdi-d...

I understand. Any corrupted government seems a dangerous proposition to me. As for gridpower it means that nuclear is out of the equation (because corruption distorts expertise) in a gov-corrupted nation. Sadly most active nuclear projects run in such nations.

> Plus wind energy kills birds. Engineers try to minimize this risk, but greedy entrepreneurs with connections to lobyists and the government tend to "flex" restrictions.

That is a long-since debunked myth. In the US [1], 2.4 billion birds are killed each year by cats, 600 million die in collisions with glass buildings, 214 million in collisions with cars... and not even 250.000 due to wind turbines.

If you really care about birds, go and argue for cat TNR programs and for restrictions on glass usage on buildings. Otherwise, you're just using a strawman argument.

[1] https://www.statista.com/chart/15195/wind-turbines-are-not-k...

US doesn't have a corrupt government like mine :). Under ideal circumstances this might be the case. But here you can build wind farms directly on bird migration paths without any counter measures. It would only become a problem if there are mass bird deaths you can't cover up. Environmental impact studies in my country are a joke.

An article (in Turkish) substantiating what I'm talking about: https://www.sozcu.com.tr/2021/gundem/kuzey-ormanlari-simdi-d...

It's odd to think no one has come up with a way to repel birds. It would be interesting to see all the things they've tried.

Airports have: https://flightsafety.org/asw-article/birds-at-work/

Yeah, that's one approach. Far more often, airports just shoot them.

Some work has been done. I seem to recall that painting the turbine blades to create a visible flicker helped keep birds away. I am sure some studies are ongoing. The number of birds killed by windfarms is miniscule compared to the number that die simply from flying into windows on skyscrapers, however.

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