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The rebuttal I've heard to this is that they're not killing the same birds. Cats kill small, common birds like robins and sparrows whose populations can easily absorb the loss. Wind turbines kill larger, rarer birds like eagles and owls, whose deaths have a much bigger ecological impact.

Someone more qualified than me can dissect this argument and crunch the data. Just mentioning it to illustrate that the "they kill birds!" argument might be more nuanced than you think.

> populations can easily absorb the loss

Cats drive bird species to extinction all the time.

I'm not convinced by this part too, but it doesn't invalidate the actual argument that these are partly disjoint.

Australia is concerned enough wrt cats impacting biodiversity:

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/sep/04/invasive...

https://www.npr.org/2023/09/12/1198822110/australia-weighs-c...

https://phys.org/news/2023-09-australian-year-feral-cat-clos...

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/09/08/world/asia/culling-curfew...

Also, https://abcbirds.org/program/cats-indoors/cats-and-birds/ | https://dariuszzdziebk.wpenginepowered.com/wp-content/upload...

> Outdoor domestic cats are a recognized threat to global biodiversity. Cats have contributed to the extinction of 63 species of birds, mammals, and reptiles in the wild and continue to adversely impact a wide variety of other species, including those at risk of extinction, such as Piping Plover.

> The ecological dangers are so critical that the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) lists domestic cats as one of the world’s worst non-native invasive species.

I completely agree it's a real thing. But couldn't we say the same thing about homo sapiens? Isn't the amount of domestic cats basically tied to the number of humans across history?

"The ecological dangers are so critical that the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) lists humans as one of the world’s worst non-native invasive species."

Pretty believable! My take is it's always better to put one's house in order before trying to influence the behavior of others.

Sounds like a false dilemma fallacy to me. Wind turbines and cats aren’t related in any way, and if both are a problem the solutions are completely independent of each other. How does painting turbine blades have any effect on birds killed by cats?

I would think his point is, that the number of bird deaths are simply neglectible compared to what for example house cats do (or windows). So no need for much further research, that could be spend better elsewhere.

The point is that efforts to curb wind power due to the threat to birds is irrational if you aren't bothered about the threat from domestic cats.

Many people are bothered by that. If there are low effort means to get ahead of shifting sentiments then they're worth pursuing.

How much of a shifting sentiment is bird death really? It’d be nice if windmills didn’t kill birds, and I agree with the idea that we should just do it if it’s low effort. But this topic has always felt a bit more like a talking point fueled by vested business interests, and less like genuine concern.

It's definitely a genuine concern, at least for some people (let's say degrowth ecologists). (not to say oil companies aren't using these in bad faith too)

Usually this argument exist in the framework of explaining how large wind turbines are actually industrial facilities with associated risks (among which killing birds, waste, need for concrete/infrastructure in agricultural land, ..) and not somehow "free" "green" or "renewable" energy. Modern "wind farms" have basically nothing to do with windmills or small-scale wind power like wind-powered water wells (which typically are used as direct power for mechanical or heat energy): they need global supply-chains and big companies.

This is a fair point. But the part that’s almost always missing is the comparison to what the windmills are replacing. It’s fair to say that wind turbines kill some birds and that they require some resources to build and maintain, etc.

When people try to point at the need for infrastructure for windmills as a risk or negative, and they leave out how much infrastructure is needed for the alternatives, it is a sneaky way to leave people with the impression that wind power has some kind of net negative or net risk, when often it’s a massive landslide of a net positive compared to what we will do if we don’t build the wind farm and get power some other way. The degrowth ecologists know this better than most of us.

As an example, the usual comparison brought up with birds getting killed is the number of birds killed by cats. We often don’t hear about the number of birds killed by oil spills. Deep water Horizon killed as many birds in a single spill as are killed globally in a year by wind turbines, and spills continue year after year. We don’t talk about the number of birds killed by power lines either.

I completely agree that in terms of nefariousness of industrial facilities, wind turbines are quite ok (in comparison with other energy infrastructure). But since you're talking about what they replace, i can't help but mention that they almost never replace anything, they're meant to absorb growing demand. That's the single biggest argument for global critics like degrowth: we always talk about switching to better X, but most of the time we also keep the old ones running. We typically picture coal usage as having peaked in the 19c with these images of london in smoke, but in fact it has never been as high as say last year (i didn't look at the numbers, but its basically a steady upwards trend for every primary resource since 200y). Rule of thumb your energy consumption is proportional to your GDP (it's actually pretty accurate).

So that's why, sure, wind or renewable (or even nuclear to some lesser extent) is better than fossil in some ways, but this in itself, in our current system, won't translate to much unless our prime effort goes to first maintain consumption at a steady level and then actually reduce it.

But i'm getting a bit off-topic! :)

> they almost never replace anything, they’re meant to absorb growing demand

That is a replacement though, when the alternative was something else. Yes I didn’t mean they tear down coal plants and put up turbines, but using the word “replace” is valid and accurate to discuss adding wind turbines instead of adding coal power, even if it’s in the future.

> most of the time we also keep the old ones running

This is true, and a good point. Hopefully what we’re talking about is phasing out the old ones over time, that it’s more of a slow dismantle than a permanent freeze of the existing infrastructure along with it’s existing environmental problems.

> then actually reduce it

Amen.

> but most of the time we also keep the old ones running.

I don’t think that this is true. [0]

Actual total energy production from things like coal have stayed constant despite some countries, e.g. china, building out large amounts of new coal power plants. This is only possible if other plants have been taken offline.

Part of the reason they are shut down (not just environmental ones) is simply because they are more expensive to run than the alternatives.

[0] https://ourworldindata.org/energy-production-consumption

It's not an shifting sentiment though, it's opinion (propaganda) pieces from fossil fuels industries (well their PR firms) that keep stirring up this sentiment.

Letting them set the frame for the discussion and then following along is by no mean "getting ahead" it's simply playing their game.

It can be both things. Anyone interested in success should be defending their weaknesses.

I agree with you.

I think what we may be disagreeing on is the nature of the weakness. I see this weakness as being inherently PR rather than being inherently about the birds.

Exactly--the mere fact that this discussion is taking up mindshare is a sign of success for fossil fuel PR, and a sign of weakness for environmentalist PR. We need to improve the environmentalist PR!

Or, like, buildings. Far more birds die of hitting buildings than hitting turbines.

Or cars! I hit two birds so far this month. Once I hit a turkey; flew right out of the grass on the median; first I knew it was there, the windshield was splintering.

So, yeah, turbines. Birds and turbines are one of those eco-theatre things.

You need to read the article. It suggests that you should paint the blades of your car black.

It is not presented as a dilemma, but as a perspective: The numbers reported are tiny compared to other well-accepted causes of avian deaths. In other words, the numbers lack a good scale for comparison.

Minimizing the issue would definitely be positive, but is also largely inconsequential in the big picture, and if such measures slow adoption it would even be harmful as pollution is an indirect cause of avian death.

The point their making is that they're both equally irrelevant to the consideration of using wind turbines to generate electricity.

Why are we even having a discussion about bird death from wind turbines? That's the important question.

It isn't because people and companies suddenly started caring more about animal deaths from electricity production. It's straight up FUD about renewable energy.

Articles like this, and discussion about bird deaths from turbines in general, frame the issues as something that must be talked about and discussed before installing wind turbines. As if the status quo is 0 environmental impact.

But it's not. The status quo is oil, fossil gas, and coal. All of which have a significantly higher environmental impact, by orders of magnitude, than however many birds do or do not get killed by wind turbines.

This. Wind turbines occasionally kill a bird, but so do windows in houses, so do cars, so do cats. And oil and a warming planet definitely hurt birds.

The next argument is the fiberglass waste, of which nobody gave 2 thoughts about the the fiberglass recreational boats that similarly don't break down made over the last 70 years.

> Wind turbines and cats aren’t related in any way

This isn't even about the birds when you get down to it. Sure in a few areas with endangered species of birds, turbines can be an issue. Mostly though, it's about limiting the number of wind turbines installed. Some people hate turbines with a passion and protecting birds is an excuse to fight installation of new turbines.

What I've learned from debating this with people, online or offline, is that we apparently do not talk about the damage cats do to wildlife. The only people I've seen agreeing with me that cat ownership should be heavily restricted and limited to indoor cats is the hunters. Everyone else seem to be fine with cats killing birds, lizards and small mammals by the billions.

For the wind turbines, maybe paint or restrict them in areas with endangered birds, but just accept that every now and then they are going to cut a seagull in half.

> What I've learned from debating this with people, online or offline, is that we apparently do not talk about the damage cats do to wildlife.

There's a whole food chain going on on the outskirts of cities, where you might occasionally find foxes.

There's a fox living in my neighbourhood and from the yapping and hissing at night it seems to be actively at war with the local cats.

Fox can easily kill a cat. The entire head will fit in their jaws. They are probably yapping at eachother.

We live in a world where apex predators such as the wolf no longer exist where it evolved in many cases. Without the pressure from smaller more numerous predators such as coyotes or cats, I expect disease spreading pest populations such as the rat would explode. Theres a lot of handwringing about not disturbing the environment, but just about all around the world its already very disturbed and scarred with human activity anyhow, to the point we don’t even realize how badly we screwed up the dynamics of the environment, e.g. by culling the wolf for example.

> we apparently do not talk about the damage cats do to wildlife.

To the contrary--I love the damage that cats do to rat/mouse/pigeon wildlife in my city (New York)! When I was visiting Athens on vacation, I noticed that there were thousands of wild cats that roamed the ruins; I wonder if, rather than seeing wild cats as an animal control problem, we should see them as a pest control measure?

Appreciate your point as there's solid numbers about avian deaths of birds from cats vs turbines.

There's a fair point about larger birds of prey who have smaller populations (and quite possibly longer breeding times).

I think it's a valid point, vs the isolated number of birds killed by turbines used as a reason against wind resource.

Also have to factor in the amount of deaths caused by air pollution, humans or otherwise.

It is a distraction, but it's also a real issue for wind farm operators.

I've visited a wind farm and got a tour by one of the engineers who was involved with the permits and construction, and he told us that due to the population of several rare species of bats and birds, the turbine we were visiting couldn't operate at certain hours.

If painting one of the blades black could reduce the non-operation hours, that would be a significant win for the operators.

I can't imagine it would help with bats, given that I understand they use sound instead of light to navigate at night.

> My friend's cat (approximately 0.25m tall, negative 16 watts power production) is more of a menace to avian wildlife than an eighty-meter diameter, 2,300,000 watt wind turbine

Have you tried painting your friend's cat? ;)

Birds are also highly affected by air pollution. I would be surprised if coal-fired plants are not mass bird killers just like they kill hundreds of thousands of humans every year.

>>If the proposed alternative to these turbines is not austerity but coal-fired power

Nobody wants that, but gas or nuclear could be a good alternative.

How is gas a good alternative to wind? Do you mean gas + carbon sequestration?

Well it works and is continuously available as a start, but I mainly meant against the strawman of replacing wind turbines with coal.