Wind turbines are friendlier to birds than oil-and-gas drilling | Hacker News Reader

Wind turbines are friendlier to birds than oil-and-gas drilling

economist.com

474 pointslivueta377 comments

The local birds killed by oil drilling aren't even what we should be comparing to. Even if that number were zero, bird populations world still be better off in a world powered by wind turbines than oil and gas.

Global warning is coming for birds too. Global warming poses an "existential threat for two thirds of North American bird species" [1] and obviously a similar proportion of bird species around the globe.

1. https://www.audubon.org/climate/survivalbydegrees

Climate change causing larger fires hurt bird sanctuaries like this one that happened in my backyard

https://phys.org/news/2017-12-scientists-survivors-thomas-co...

Domesticated cats are by far the biggest threats to birds worldwide.

You won't see anti-wind advocates talking about curfews or outright banning them though.

That's because cats are not a power source?

I'm genuinely confused how they would even be part of this conversation.

I think they're bringing it up because cats are indeed the #1 killer of birds, and so for people who care about maintaining bird populations (presumably people who read this article) it would be better to focus on solutions that decrease the damage cats to do birds, rather than the damage wind turbines + oil-and-gas plants do to birds.

Of course, if you care about birds you're going to try to solve it across multiple fronts. But cat damage should be the first thing bird-lovers try to mitigate.

Also dogs aren't great for bird populations. Especially here in NZ where we have some flightless birds. I would even argue that dogs are a bigger issue here. At least around where I live, a large majority of people own at least 1 dog and often go walking with them in native reserves, often ignoring on-lead or no dog rules.

Are the bird species that cat kills the same ones that "wind turbines + oil-and-gas plants" kill?

Cat kills are basically indiscriminate, from anecdotal evidence I'd say that turbine strikes are probably not and certain species are more likely to get hit. In Australia at least there's species who routinely get hit by cars and others which rarely do.

That said, the enormous delta in raw numbers makes this line of argument quite spurious. Wind turbine bird strikes are magnitudes smaller than deaths from domestic cats.

> Collectively, roaming pet cats kill 546 million animals per year in Australia

https://invasives.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/Pet-cat-...

> Cats kill more than a million birds every day across Australia, according to our new estimate — the first robust attempt to quantify the problem on a nationwide scale.

> By combining data on the cat population, hunting rates and spatial distribution, we calculate that they kill 377 million birds a year.

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-10-04/cats-killing-one-mill...

> a report on bird and avifauna mortality commissioned by AGL Energy for its Macarthur Wind Farm found that 10.19 birds were killed by each turbine in a 12 month period. This equates to over 1 400 birds killed at the Macarthur Wind Farm alone and over 21 000 if extrapolated across the country.

This is likely underestimated due to scavenging but still magnitudes of difference.

https://www.aph.gov.au/parliamentary_business/committees/sen...

That just shows that it's not a conversation about birds. Birds are only incidental and brought up for the emotional (not actual) value.

> cats are not a power source

until you involve buttered toast: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z8yW5cyXXRc

Because anti-wind activists have brought them up.

More specifically, it's a disingenuous argument brought up by oil lobbyists.

It's directly comparable to gun nuts justifying their right to own weapons designed to murder people by claiming that it's for "protection". Those same people have zero interest in better door locks, stronger windows, or anything that would actually protect them. They just want the guns. The protection argument was never made in good faith, it's an excuse at best.

The "wind generators kill birds" argument is the same type of thing, typically made by people that would cheerfully feed every native bird they can into a grinder and sell the pulp for a profit if they could.

Except Bald Eagles.

> It's directly comparable to gun nuts justifying their right to own weapons designed to murder people by claiming that it's for "protection". Those same people have zero interest in better door locks, stronger windows, or anything that would actually protect them.

Ah, it's your fault for being robbed or mugged, and killed in the process - you should've just had a better lock or not go downtown for a show.

In fact, we should victim-blame more often - we should just tell rape victims they should've had more clothes - you were asking for it after all.

Probably should tell convenience store clerks to get a different job.

We should tell police officers that they don't need guns to stop criminals with guns.

Well cops definitely shouldnt have guns but everything else I agree with.

Nice to know that people who are endangered by others deserve their danger.

Ehhh I will never see a scenario where it is right for a cop to shoot or kill someone. There is a reason the courts exist. Did robocop teach you nothing? It is messed up to give some street bully the authority of judge jury and executioner.

I'm talking about victims who could've self-defended.

Either way, you want those people to be defenseless, and the people who are supposed to defend them to also be defenseless.

Who do you want to stop evil actions? Or does evil simply not exist?

I think maybe you misunderstood. I am pro guns. Everyone should have guns. Except cops. Cops should not have guns.

Cops represent the legal system and by giving them guns we are giving them the capacity to be judge jury and executioner. That is wrong. That circumvents the entire legal system.

My understanding is that feral cats kill far more than domesticated cats (as you'd expect), but this gets folded in under "cats kill $number of birds".

They're still impressive little killers, but that's important to keep in mind.

It feels like the assumption was always that I'd forget the oil industry doesn't give a shit about wildlife.

Ban my cat and you'll likely lose someone who does regularly vote for environmentally friendly politicians and you may get a new voting pattern out of me, and a lot of other people I suspect.

Nobody wants to ban cats. A lot of people would like to keep them indoors though, which would be great for birds and also for the cats. I live on the southern edge of Portland, OR and coyotes make meals of a lot of people's precious fur-babies.

Agree 100%. Wind turbines killing birds is a disingenuous argument when it comes to climate change.

> Birds of prey in Africa experiencing population collapse, study finds > new research used road surveys to find that nearly 90% of the 42 raptor species studied had experienced declines, with more than two-thirds showing evidence of being globally threatened.

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2024/jan/04/birds-of...

> 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]

[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...

You've convinced me: we should replace all cats in the US with wind turbines.

I find your ideas intriguing and I would like to subscribe to your newsletter.

And wind turbine manufacturers would agree:

UK December wind generation: Generation: 2.6 TWh Subsidy/MWh : £86.68 Market Price/MWh: £75.00

Where are these figures from?

Older projects were subsidised much more but around half the current wind capacity has been built from 2016 with far less subsidy.

I'd personally rather a single nuclear power plant replace all the capacity, but honestly, as far as birds go, it'd be a no-op.

Yes, but that would be tempting the gods of irony with the possibility of a nuclear CATastrophe.

It looks like cats in the US only produce about 560 megawatts of heat, so you could probably do it with a single nuclear plant.

> "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."

Humans eat 8 Billion chickens per year in the US alone: https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/22287530/chicken-beef-fac...

Some 15 MegaKilos of chicken: https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/chicken-c...

The difference is that cats don't tend to have systems in place to ensure the food supply without eradicating the species.

Those are domestic chickens. Cats kill wild birds. Does that make sense?

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.

Are you unconsciously keeping nuclear energy out of the equation, or why is nuclear not an option in your mind - where then bird populations will be better off, and where solar also isn't destroying the surface environment where life and forests could otherwise thrive [if we're talking about having energy generated locally, then most of the world doesn't have convenient desserts nearby, which arguably we could also turn green if we wanted]?

Based on the past 30 years, I think the safe assumption is that there will not be much nuclear built in the US+Europe in the next 15 years.

Meanwhile in France: https://www.france24.com/en/france/20240109-france-drops-ren...

I wouldn't really base my safety on a simple shallow metric like amount of time passing.

Nuclear energy may not kill birds, but it may kill fish in already overheated rivers. Which is also one reason why they've been turned off in France, where the problem started occurring in recent years and probably won't stop occurring due to global warming.

I worked in oil/gas for a long time. In addition to "windmills are killing all the birds", here are a few of the top green energy lies I've heard:

1. Solar panels are toxic, require more energy to produce than they generate, and can't be recycled.

2. EV's are worse for the environment than ICE vehicles.

3. Lithium mining is worse than oil/gas drilling.

4. Solar/wind prices are skyrocketing and everyone is abandoning solar/wind.

5. Solar/wind can't work because they're too intermittent.

6. Climate change isn't real OR climate change is real but natural and unstoppable OR climate change is helpful to the planet (these opposing beliefs are often repeated back to back)

Calling every dumb argument against the mainstream climate movement a "lie" without further explanation is the kind of "pick a side" logic that entrenches climate change deniers.

1. Yes, solar panel production is not particularly good for the environment but not any more so than many other common industrial processes and the panels themselves are perfectly safe. Yes that used to be true decades ago, but not anymore. For many years now solar panels generate more energy than they took to make after just a few years operation. Yes, but the fact that they are not particularly recyclable doesn't matter at all because we are never going to run out of sand.

2. Yes, EV's can have larger carbon footprints that ICE vehicles in the few areas where almost all electricity is from coal. But outside of that specific case EVs are always at least slightly better, typically by 20-30%.

3. Yes, it can be argued that lithium mining is worse than oil/gas drilling but it's not clear cut and would only be worse for the local environment if at all. The effect on climate of oil and gas drilling is always going to be far far worse.

4. No, Solar/wind prices are clearly falling and more solar/wind gets installed every year.

5. Yes, solar/wind are intermittent, so they can't be used alone, but work great when paired with investment in longer transmission lines, grid storage and non-intermittent carbon free sources.

For point 6 I can only say that people are will be less likely to make blanket denials if you tell them the truth in a non-judgemental way, respect their intelligence, and are forthcoming with the problems and challenges of addressing climate change.

I believe that it's only thin film solar panels that have high heavy metal content but mono-crystalline panels - which are now the super-dominant technology having drastically decreased in cost - are fairly non-toxic.

I thought 1 was potentially legit depending on how they are manufactured and where they'll need deployed. I understand that 80% of solar cells are produced in China which still gets most of its energy from coal so there is a huge carbon footprint. If you now deploy those in a place that doesn't get much sun, like Germany, the equation isn't great. I'm no expert on this though and am mostly parroting Peter Zeihan on this.

Even Chinese panels in Canada have a energy payback of less than 2 years

PDF link to a study comparing different installation countries: https://www.ise.fraunhofer.de/content/dam/ise/de/documents/p...

Thanks for sharing!

A lot of what you just said is false

Do you have sources as to why they are lies? I'm not doubting you, but simply saying they're lies is just as disingenuous as the people making the statements in the first place

This is an HN comment thread, not a peer-reviewed paper on "lies convenient to the fossil fuel industries".

However, for your convenience, I used google to search for "are solar panels net energy positive" and found this as the 2nd link:

https://www.solarmelon.com/faqs/solar-panels-use-energy-manu...

This contains a link to at least one peer-reviewed paper:

https://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/es3038824

I can almost guarantee that a similar process will elicit similar answers for every other point in the GP's list.

If solar panels were a net energy negative, they couldn't be made and operated for a profit[1]. It's such an obvious lie, it's just painful.

Very early solar cells, the type used to power calculators and the like, may have been so inefficient that their lifetime power generation didn't offset the energy cost of their production. That doesn't matter because the scale is tiny, and the portability and the elimination of batteries is the point, not net energy return.

Someone probably got it in their mind that "solar can't work" back in the 1960s or 70s based on this, and refused to budge half a century later when solar is the cheapest form of grid-scale energy.

[1] This is actually a great way to estimate the total energy that went into a product. It must be less than the wholesale price (or cost-of-manufacture), otherwise at least one profit-motived organisation must be selling the product, its raw materials, or the energy inputs below cost and losing money on purpose. Only in rare cases like gov subsidies, state-owned corporations, etc... is this rule violated.

The cases you describe in your last paragraph are not rare by any means — they’re everywhere, since all of the western world has seen a move towards bigger governments and socialism in the last decades.

This is an HN comment thread, hence we expect a higher quality of comments than elsewhere on the Internet. Thanks for the links.

I think there is more of an expectation here to Google simple things for yourself rather than condescendingly ask for a source that is a few keystrokes away.

Everyone can search things on the Internet. However when I state something on HN, I usually try to add some good links, which are not top Google results. Example: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38725734.

Well quite frankly, saying "the claim that these are lies are just as disingenuous as the claims themselves" is a pretty low quality, classic stick-in-the-spokes "debate" tactic that essentially hand waves the ball back in the other person's court with minimal effort or contribution or real debate and puts maximum onus on someone else in public in the "flow" of discourse.

This is "great" for televised debates but this is kind of passive aggressive for the tone people prefer here. We're talking to people here. More directly than a formal debate.

Someone participating earnestly knows they are capable of either politely expressing interest and asking for sources, or as another mentioned: typing and clicking all by themselves.

> saying "the claim that these are lies are just as disingenuous as the claims themselves"

I didn't say that, but I do think that providing links is helpful.

quote: simply saying they're lies is just as disingenuous as the people making the statements in the first place

paraphrase: the claim that these are lies are just as disingenuous as the claims themselves

claim: I didn't say that

I confess that I can't quite see the difference.

I'm not @jairuhme.

Ah, entirely fair point! :) Sorry about that.

The opinion that HN has particularly high quality comments is always surprising to me. Outside of the times where the person commenting is the actual creator of whatever the post is about I've found comments here to be a dumpster fire to the point where I often have fun looking at them specifically because they are often so wild and I love a good mess.

I assume people here will disagree but it's that exact stark difference in perspective that's so interesting to me

I agree with everything you said, yet I still believe HN comments are regularly the most high quality on the internet. Do you know anywhere that has better comments than HN?

I definitely noticed that the quality of the comments here is often better than simply stating some opinion. The latter is typical for social media echo chambers but not here.

I can provide many sources for each point, let me know if there's a specific one that you find questionable.

If we cared about birds we would be talking about reducing car traffic and saving more areas for wildlife. The argument against Solar and Wind with regards to wildlife preservation is almost always a distraction.

If we cared about birds we'd be aggressively controlling the cat population.

Generally we care about a bird species as a whole rather than about individual birds of that species.

If something is killing birds, even a lot of birds, but in a place where those birds are abundant and whatever is killing them will just lower lower their equilibrium population a bit rather than set it on a decline or lower it so far that they might die out in the area then there generally isn't a lot of concern over it.

Hence activities in places with species of birds that have low population or are threatened or endangered tend to draw more concern than activities in places where that isn't the case even if the latter kills way more total birds.

> If something is killing birds, even a lot of birds [..] then there generally isn't a lot of concern over it.

...from cat owners.

There's plenty of concern from wildlife-lovers:

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/aug/14/cats-kil...

I watched our neighbour's cat take a bird from a feeder in our garden earlier this month, I was pretty unimpressed :(

Cats are cute, I get that ... I'm just not sure that's enough of an excuse.

And I heard a cat being slowly murdered by a bird on the roof, this stuff you can't unhear...

Remember that this goes both ways. Birds are probably the deadliest predator for outdoor cats. This is why cats tend to have instinctive acute reaction to big flying objects.

I'm not a cat owner, I like both cats and birds

What, a bird kills a cat? How?

Maybe an Eagle?

As a descriptive matter people do support a lot of species preservation efforts. But we have strong reasons to increase our care for birds and other sentient animals as individuals, with their own subjective experiences and the suffering and harms they endure. After all we already take that view when it comes to companion dogs. We know they can feel a range of emotions and we have as individuals and as society taken some steps to limit harms to dogs and promote their wellbeing. Caring for birds as individuals can be expressed in many actions, individual and political, but a powerful step many can take right now is to stop buying eggs and chicken meat and choose plant based alternatives instead.

If we accept that we are responsible for minimizing the suffering of both domestic and wild animals, isn't the logical conclusion that we need to drive those species to extinction as quickly as possible, thus completely ending their suffering?

I mean, you are explicitly talking about ending our symbiotic relationship with the domestic chicken. We certainly would not have 20 billion chickens in the world if we all stopped eating eggs.

Factory farming of chickens and other animals causes massive aggregate suffering and should be ended, full stop. But chickens can continue to flourish in animal sanctuaries, where they live their own lives without being killed or exploited as food resources. As for wild animals and suffering, that's a big topic. I think for now we need lots more thinking and research, on what is feasible and reasonable there. Reducing suffering is one important consideration among others.

That is an interesting argument. Do you believe that the same would apply to humans? I.e. if someone wishes to minimize the suffering of humans, is the logical conclusion that they should pursue omnicide?

To be clear, I don't believe in that goal in either case. But yes, the only way to truly end human suffering would be to end the humans.

Cats are killing endangered birds everywhere outside their native range. They are killing them in the Americas, in Australia, in New Zealand... basically everywhere that's not Europe, Africa, or West Asia IIUC.

One reason you might not think it's a big deal is because the genocide is almost complete. They've already killed off 63 species and more in progress: https://abcbirds.org/program/cats-indoors/cats-and-birds/

Felis Catus doesn't have a native range in any meaningful manner, IMO. They are a global species like us, because of us. You can't put that cat back in the bag no matter the .22 cartridges you expend.

That shouldn't stop us from trying to limit their growth. "The cat is out of the bag" so to speak, but a lot of the growth comes from runaway cats, or cats that have been abandoned by their owners (happens more often than you think)

We could start by requiring all domestic cats to be sterilized, so that they don't breed. Then the cat population would be limited to certified breeders and wild cats.

We could also have the same restrictions on cats as dogs. They should not be allowed to be outside unless they are in leash or in a controlled environment (the latter is hard, as cats can climb over standard fences). I guess fully enclosed "cat parks" would be an option.

You may have a harder time training a cat to wear a leash compared to a dog, but it's possible.

It's strange to me that we think cats need to be outside to satisfy their predator instincts, as if dogs and other animals like to be inside all day while we are at work. If someone doesn't like that thought, they have the option of not owning a cat.

That's my take. I like animals, so I decided to not own any of them. I wonder how people manage to love their animals and remove them from their natural environment.

I know that we've come a long way and pets have had humans around them for ages, but to me it still feels like we're doing them harm. I know that nature is even harder, but it's not like pets decided to live that way.

It's also hard to understand why people love one species, but also breed others on an industrial level, so they can eat them more easily.

Probably going to get a few downvotes for this.

No down-votes from me, but as an annecdote I can offer this.

We have feral cats in our neighborhood. One of them moved into our house and had a litter in the study. (We kept one, and found homes for the other 3). One of her daughters from an earlier litter moved in and fed the same.

All have been sterilised now obviously, but we stoll get regular visits from a local Tom, likely a brother to the first one. The all get along fine, and he's used to us but basically comes in for food or shelter and doesn't socialise with us like the others do.

I don't think we "own" them. They all come and go as they please. But I'd say 3 of them definitely live here, and tolerate us.

Interestingly none of them seem interested in birds. The occasional mole, otherwise the occasional lizard - mostly for sport.

I'm not negating your ethics at all, but it seems some cats like being part of the family, and others are aloof. They all have distinct personalities.

For domesticated cats and dogs, being inside the home is their natural environment (or can be, to varying degrees).

I've owned cats and dogs. I can let them outside and leave the door open, and they may go outside to explore or play briefly, but they'll want to come inside shortly afterward. Especially my dog - he doesn't even want to be outside by himself, except to relieve himself. He has herding instincts and is uncomfortable being alone outdoors for more than a short time. He would much rather be around people, but if he had to be by himself, then he'd rather be indoors. (Observation: if I were to leave the house, and left the back door open, he'd still spend most of the day inside rather than in the yard.) My cat acts downright frightened being outside.

It's not really possible to discuss what is "natural" here, and I'd recommend being cautious about the naturalistic fallacy [1]: the idea that because something is 'natural' it must be better. It is 'natural' for humans to die of all kinds of diseases, yet we do not wish to, and so we treat ourselves with antibiotics and other medicines. It is 'natural' for children and women to die in childbirth, but we take substantial steps to prevent that, and so on.

In the case of domesticated animals, it's hard to reason about what "natural" even is. The animals have adapted to living with humans; they want to be around humans. They aren't feral, and wouldn't want to live by themselves in the wilderness any more than a human would. They have a choice every time I open the door.

(And yes, if they ran away, I would feel obligated to find them, but that's because I'm responsible for their health and safety, not because they are my prisoners. The point is that they don't even come close to making the choice to do that. It is far more likely that they would simply get lost outside than actually intentionally run away. This has happened once before to my dog, and his emotional reaction upon me finding him demonstrated compellingly that he felt lost and was happy to be found and reunited.)

I might feel conflicted if I ever had a pet that behaved like it wanted to escape from me, but that's never been the case. Even pets that do enjoy to spend time outdoors alone - and I'm happy for them to do that - always want to return to the safety of the home after a time. I would not enjoy having a pet if I thought at all that it felt like a prisoner.

Lastly, I would remark on the fact that these animals were raised from infancy by humans and around humans. They are socialized to be part of the family, just like people are. While it is true that they would have different personalities if they were raised in the wilderness, the same would also be true of a human child. If a human child were abandoned alone in the wilderness and somehow survived, then this human would undoubtedly have great difficulty socializing as an adult, and fitting into a family - yet we would not say that this wild person is somehow better or more natural. We would say that their upbringing was cruel.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naturalistic_fallacy

"trying to limit their growth" is IMO approaching the whole situation incorrectly. Not saying I have answers, but IMO it's a narrow perspective that leads to things like the YouTube search results for "Australian cat hunter" or the feral hog tourist hunting shenanigans that go down in Texas. That shit should be condemned.

As something of a response to your proposed solutions, I'm a proponent of TNR and adoption, and teaching people to be better animal caretakers. You make some assumptions about "us" and "we" that doesn't line up with my personal take, so I won't say more.

I agree with that. Though we'd need some cost effective way to monitor on leash etc rules are followed by the owners. Around here we have native reserves to try bring back native birds, but vast majority of dog owners ignore the existing leash or no dog rules.

Most summers the reserves turn into more of a free dog toilet, and with the vast numbers of dogs going through, it ends up smelling quite bad to.

I dunno, Alberta has no rats. It's doable if you're willing.

Putting a tiny bell on cats is usually more than enough. At least it gives birds a fair chance.

This is a thoughtful response, put in words I've been missing for a while, to some reasons why the EA crowd seem to be hyperoptimizing on the wrong cost functions (not to mention the ethical dangers that come about when insisting all questions of ethics can be quantified).

Cats are mostly a problem because of suburban sprawl. You don't see many cats where there are no human residences. By creating massive sprawling car dependent suburbs we make huge deadly areas for birds. If we instead focused on making smaller walkable communities with public transport, then we could reduce the habitat destruction and have more land for birds and other wildlife.

deleted

The OP is pointing out that most pearl-clutching about the effects of wind turbines comes from people who don't care about birds in any other context. It's solely a way to continue fossil fuel production, using the language of environmentalism.

A serious discussion of the safety of birds would sound very different, but that isn't the goal. The goal is to talk about anything other than reducing fossil fuel production.

Ridiculous argument. Why on earth would people care about the birds in the context of natural processes compared to unnatural processes?

This is a monumentally stupid apples and oranges “gotcha”.

Ridiculous arguments are unfortunately common, and end up being part of politics and ultimately planning and decision-making.

Natural vs. unnatural is irrelevant though. "Nature" is normally out to kill you for its own benefit and does not care if the planet or any of its lifeforms survives. What matters is our interests in preserving the world we know or improving it in our eyes, and picking the best option for that.

The option that minimizes worldwide cancer development and doesn't screw up weather systems and various biomes would be the winner in that regard.

> natural processes

I'm curious, what are you thinking of when you say 'natural processes'? I hope it's not cats.

Symbiotic relationships are, in fact, a completely natural phenomena that is observed in non-human animal behaviour.

Housecats are not a symbiotic relationship. Seriously?

Or oil spills.

I think you and the parent commenter are using different scopes for the word "we" in this case. There are some great programs in places to manage feral cat populations, but in many areas they are no where close to large enough to help fix population-level impacts on birds.

Cats are a scapegoat to deflect the incalculable damage done to wildlife by humans themselves, their industries and habitat expansion.

They're not a deflection, the domesticated cat is in fact one of the incalculable harms done to the environment by humans. They're an extreme environmental problem that humans created and are solely responsible for.

The topic is how much damage is done to birds by energy production methods (even more specifically, wind vs oil & gas), not by all things. Cats are a deflection from that topic.

No, such argument is whataboutism. Bigger problems do not invalidate smaller ones.

The only case where your point would matter is if we could only fix one or the other - human- or cat-induced damage - but that is not the case. They can be addressed independently and in parallel.

I like cats though...

No, that's not what whataboutism is.

Whataboutism is if someone says something like "Oh, yeah well, we have a bigger problem - humans kill more, so who cares about cats?" No. I'm literally saying that when it comes to cats killing birds, there is no problem. There's no radical ecological devastation happening. There's nothing to fix.

What is happening is that the number of birds killed by cats is emotionally large, such that humans interpret it as a problem, because big numbers are scary. "Did you know cats kill close to 4 billion birds every year? That's awful! We have to do something!"

"Did you know that spiders kill and consume 600 million metric tons worth of animals every year? That's awful! That's more meat than humans eat! We have to do something!" Except, we don't, because no matter how scared you are of big numbers, their presence doesn't mean there's a problem.

Similarly, with cats, we can maybe make their bird-killing sound even scarier by framing it like the spiders above: "Cats are killing 1 million metric tons worth of birds every year! Birds are doomed! We have to do something!"

Big numbers scare me too, especially the spiders one. 600 million metric tons is a lot of meat. Four billion birds sounds like a lot. But are these problems? Don't think so.

The numbers they have to kill to be a problem are not billions, but hundreds. Some years back, the European Turtle Dove was estimated to only have 135 breedable pairs left in the entire country of Denmark - the approximately one million house cats in Denmark would only have to kill just 135 birds to make that one go locally extinct at that time.

Four billion birds isn't a lot globally, but cats aren't hunting geese or swans - the number to compare to is the number of prey-sized birds in a local area where they can be hunted by outdoor or feral cats to notable population drops or local extinction. You might just see "a bird" or "a dove", unaware that it's one of several dove types native to your area with few remaining individuals.

Cats are particularly effective/aggressive predators in that they hunt and kill for fun, without interest in eating the catch. This makes their impact much greater than it needed to be.

Now, you can then argue against that conservation is necessary - animals outcompeting each other to complete extinction is normal, and we also hypocritically domesticate animals and take them out of their natural habitats - but it is something we generally aim for by protecting species in decline, actively controlling and fighting invading species, and attempts to reintroduce locally extinct species, and we tend to use any deviation from the status quo as a measure for environmental health.

However, the cats differ from spiders.

They wouldn't exist in such large masses if they weren't bred and fed by humans.

So, there is at least the argument to make, that if we didn't hoard so many cats, the naturally occurring ones would probably kill less birds.

I think it's pretty clear if we cared much about anything we'd be doing a lot of things. But instead, we have this: We have a conversation like this one, I had it with my sister. We agree on this statement you've made in that conversation. Sister goes and buys a new gigantic SUV that gets 20 mpg. Understands we were just talking about how bad that is, but make a thousand excuses as to why she using the bad thing is an exception to the rule.

We're a few billion exceptions to the rules walking around, very few people want to give up their fun. I've had this conversation with gun owners, oversized truck owners, people interested in public transit it always comes down to something they want everybody else to have to do but not them.

We're not going to give up our toys til we're dead.

Many people struggle to motivate themselves to do their part on huge collective action problems like climate change. That's why national and international political action is needed, and in turn needs smaller groups of individuals to put in effort supporting campaigns for such action. That said lots of people do care in their daily lives and also put that care into practical individual action - and have a fun and meaningful time doing so. In my experience not owning a SUV or any car at all doesn't feel like "not having fun". It feels sensible and what I have good reason to do and it feels purposeful, a part of doing what I can to cause less harm in this world, from the lucky situation life has dealt me. I understand that some people really need a car for work, especially in car centric regions. But almost everyone has a range of other things where they can do their part and act to improve things.

Wouldn’t it be more effective to phase out oil and coal production? Couldn’t that be enforced with remote sensing satellites and cruise missiles?

I’m not seeing the collective action problem here. All the personal shaming stuff feels like a big grift.

Phasing out oil and coal production would be great, but that's a task for politics. It is still a collective action problem though since any such agenda needs to gain popular support in a democracy. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collective_action_problem As individuals we can both take some actions to reduce climate impact in our daily lives and also support movements and campaigns for actions on the political level. No contradiction there.

We don't need to stop production. Reducing/ eliminating demand will work just as well.

no, it's not ecologically effective to bomb all the oil platforms. That would actually be an ecological disaster.

Or you could actually make those things more important in your life. And realise you don't necessarily need to acquire more material things all the time to live a satisfied life. And you can be an example and inspiration to other people. Life is not just about toys.

or maybe she has, quite rationally, developed “epistemic learned helplessness”?

edit: forgot to add the link ( which was reposted to HN earlier today) https://slatestarcodex.com/2019/06/03/repost-epistemic-learn...

If you truly cared about birds and wildlife, SpaceX wouldn't have gotten away with everything they did at Boca Chica.

Who, me?

Everyone complaining about oil & gas, and how wind turbines are so much better for wildlife. But SpaceX gets a free pass for the carnage done and law-free territory they established down there in TX, because muuuh supposedly good tech.

Most silly comment in this whole 'discussion' was that remark about birds supposedly getting shredded in cooling towers, or flying into them. Oh the insanity!

I'm guessing you are the same disgruntled guy Elon fired from Twitter that regularly spams anti-SpaceX nonsense here.

One launch, once, sent some concrete debris onto a beach. Literally some rocks.

You're still going on about it, as if it was some sort of catastrophe that wiped out all of the native wildlife in Texas.

I wish a proper study on this could get some real funding. The cited study is certainly better than nothing but it's based on a volunteer reported survey with significant response bias (eg. maybe the drop in bird sightings near oil and gas drilling is because people don't want to go birdwatching near an oil field).

You want a "proper study" instead of an annual time series, comparable for over a century, conducted by millions of individuals? What a goofy comment. This is gold-standard data. The paper even explains why this is superior to nerd bullshit like eBird.

Whoa whoa whoa. Whoa! Watch what are you calling nerd bullshit. ;-)

you are right, in any case it would be nerd birdshit

It's estimated that cats kill 1.3–4 billion birds each year in the U.S. alone, with 69% of these kills attributable to feral or unowned cats: https://www.allaboutbirds.org/news/faq-outdoor-cats-and-thei...

> We initially focused this search on US studies, but due to a limited sample of these studies, we expanded the search

"Our data about US were so poor that we needed to add data from other continents"

> cats kill 1.3–4 billion birds each year in the U.S.

"But we still ended somehow with this bold and likeable value made with a mix of pure air, foreign data and statistical spice"

Another case of turd data polished to gold by the magic of science. People will repeat it for decades online.

You provide quotes but no attribution for those quotes.

Fair point. This is the original article in nature.

https://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms2380?WT.mc_id=FBK_NCOM...

"Methods: We searched JSTOR, Google Scholar, and the Web of Science database [...] within the Web of Knowledge search engine [...] to identify studies that document cat predation on birds and mammals"

"We initially focused this search on US studies, but due to a limited sample of these studies, we expanded the search to [...] other temperate regions. We also searched for studies providing estimates of cat population sizes [on] the contiguous USA and for US studies that estimate the proportion of owned cats with outdoor access and the proportion of cats that hunt wildlife. [Our] search terms included: ‘domestic cat’ [combined] with ‘predation,’ ‘prey,’ ‘diet,’ ‘food item’ and ‘mortality’;"

"We estimated wildlife mortality in [...] USA by multiplying data-derived probability distributions of predation rates by distributions of estimated cat abundance"

"[]" edited by me for clarity

Data-derived distributions based on a poor sample were extrapolated to every ecosystem in US?

Data with a special focus on temperate areas were extrapolated to temperate and non temperate? Have deserts the same amount of birds as forests?

Assuming that preys are equally distributed on USA would need to assume that every ecosystem is equal, or that cats are equally successful chasing birds in all terrains. This seems unlikely. To start because birds migrate and its distribution is patched. Cats can't migrate. Taiga in winter don't has the same birds as Florida in winter

not to mention that there is a huge bias in bibliography by design, because any predation study of type 'we didn't found any evidence of wild animals preyed by cats in our place' wouldn't be published.

If you base your search on bibliography you are pruning all the negative results. This is like removing all negative numbers before calculating an average value.

We need to remember also that "Local cats killed minus 1000 birds", would be a perfectly acceptable result [1] that is excluded from the search and the article.

[1] (= Cats save 1000 birds by killing egg-eating rats)

The title is symptomatic for the climate discourse; either for or against oil/coal and wind/solar. I find the question "what is a reliable, clean and affordable energy source?" much more relevant and productive.

Affordable is the trick, though - while I totally understand why that is important, sometimes it seems like we're going to end up saying: "Sorry we are going extinct... staying alive wasn't profitable."

I know that is both an idealistic and hyperbolic take on things. The bigger point is that when people say "affordable", they often really mean "profitable". But we cannot afford not to fix the problems.

"Affordable" could also be taken as "doable". Which broadens the scope largely but misses the main problem: sustainability. This take is not just not helpful but, i would argue, actively harmful to the debate.

By definition, sustainability is a waste management, that allows recycling rates of 90% or higher. CO2 is just one of our waste products we totally didnt care about.

The United States spent 6% of its GDP putting human beings on the moon. And this was done during a time that historians don't generally consider to be a time of vast deprivation for the populace; it turns out investing in and inventing rocketry and aerospace technologies the likes of which humanity has never seen before is great for job creation.

How much of the GDP should we be willing to spend to actively replace pollution generating energy plants with lower polluting alternatives?

I get where you're coming from but in 2024, solar is the cheapest source of power on earth, and wind is second-cheapest. Economics and survival are aligned for once, we just gotta actually build the new system and deprecate the old

Solar and wind are pretty expensive a lot of the time, e.g. on windless nights.

It seems to me that nuclear and fossil energy is heavily subsidized almost everywhere. So affordability is kind of a tricky metric.

To be fair, though: wind power is cheap as dirt, which is why we're building it out like crazy basically everywhere with real estate for the turbines. Which is also why it's being opposed with weird canards like "But Birds!" and not practical arguments about power grid management.

> "what is a reliable, clean and affordable energy source?"

"Clean" and "affordable" map immediately and obviously onto wind and solar; what then happens is people engage in a lot of wrangling around "reliable" to push nuclear, requiring bending both "clean" and "affordable" quite a bit and running into an invisible other criteria of "quick to deploy" and "politically acceptable".

It's mislieading to use "politically acceptable" like "quick to deploy". What's "politically acceptable" is something we shape with every word we say and which differs accross countries.

Speaking of countries, I could reduce this answer to one word, which refutes every single point you make: France.

France have done better than most, largely due to building their fleet before Chernobyl, but even they have long term maintenance and cost overrun problems that led to shortages: https://www.lemonde.fr/en/economy/article/2022/08/26/edf-s-n...

And the EDF reactor project in the UK is of course overrunning on time and budget.

(when is the next French nuclear reactor new build scheduled to come on line?)

For those that do not know: Flamanville 3. Commercial introduction delayed from 2012 to hopefully 2024. Current cost estimate is five times the original budget.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flamanville_Nuclear_Power_Plan...

Big projects overrun on time and budget. I've never seen anyone take the Berlin airport as evidence against airports.

Not just that, rivers overheating is becoming a real problem now in places that were perfectly fine 40 years ago.

That ship sailed 40 years ago. I get it - if Chernobyl didn't happen we would be in way better shape. But it happened, and expertise in nuclear plants rotted for 4 decades because of it.

It's now behind. Basically no one wants to fund new nuclear plants. They're incredibly risky considering how front-loaded the cost is.

Well, "quick to deploy" is absolutely essential. "Politically acceptable" is a red herring.

But the OP's question is loaded too. We don't need "reliable" right now. Fossil fuel can cover the reliability gap on the short term perfectly well. Until the question becomes "well, we replaced all the peak consumption with renewables, now what?", asking for reliability is status-quo propaganda.

Not sure I understand the objection. The research this article is about compared Wind vs Oil/Coal effects on birds. The title seems in line with the findings of the research.

> I find the question "what is a reliable, clean and affordable energy source?" much more relevant and productive.

Seems to me like examining externalities of different energy sources is a part of the nuance of this question. Feels like you're being a bit of a hater.

As long as you're including long-term negative externalities in the "affordable" portion of your analysis, sure.

Your framing implies that the answer must be a single source, which is nonsense. The best answer is almost certainly a portfolio of multiple sources that allows for dramatically more innovation.

It's a false dichotomy and it's funded and pushed by corporate, idealistic (but heavily funded) and political interests.

I mean, the title is in response to the specific, observed phenomenon of people in oil/gas/coal producing areas arguing for environmental restrictions on solar/wind/nuclear, but not arguing the same for oil/gas/coal.

In the context of "what is a reliable, clean and affordable energy source?", we need to address that whatever we pick will necessarily hurt somebody's bottom line, and they will dig in and fight tooth and nail to prevent that happening, even if their livelihood is at the expense of the species. So rationally addressing a bad faith argument against many options that answer your question is, I think, worthwhile.

Birds have sensitive lungs, Canary in a coal mine comes to mind.

... birds respiratory system being so sensitive, it is vitally important that the bird's breath fresh, pure air. Toxins or pollutants in the air can quickly become a major source of problem and even death for the bird: https://cdn.ymaws.com/petsitters.org/resource/resmgr/virtual...

Air Pollution Kills 10 Million People a Year[1]. Air pollution must impact birds a lot more than humans.

[1]https://www.nytimes.com/2022/07/08/opinion/environment/air-p...

Note that there has been a concerted effort to discredit windmills by the oil-and-gas industry to portray them as meat grinders for birds with the same photographs and handy boilerplate text distributed to various "special interest groups" (read: astroturfers) all over the globe to try to stave off the inevitable. And all of this is perfectly legal. They did the same with whales.

The problem is that they're not wrong, turbines and even solar towers wipe out vast bird and bat populations. Obama had to pass a last minute law approving the numerous deaths of bald eagle populations unfortunately. Water desalination projects leave behind dead zones of salt in the water that wipe out fish populations. Another example is recycling centers grinding up the plastic and releasing a scary amount of microplastics into the environment. I think we need a little bit of self introspection when it comes to environmentalism. When our green tech isn't so green we need to "do better" and make it healthier for the environment. I don't think we should ever stop trying to figure out how to make it less harmful. Hiding our collective heads in the sand and saying, "Look it is green so it can't be causing the same problems," is going to put us into an echo chamber where we can do no wrong. And, in the end justify doing damage we'll regret later. We all live on this planet together we should be good shepherds of it.

> The problem is that they're not wrong, turbines and even solar towers wipe out vast bird and bat populations. > Obama had to pass a last minute law approving the numerous deaths of bald eagle populations unfortunately.

316K Eagles vs 150 confirmed deaths due to windmills over a decade.

So yes, they're wrong. And amplifying this sort of thing is exactly what those campaigns hope for, so you're doing their work for them. You're in good company, Donald Trump did the exact same thing (and made up a number to go with it rather than to claim 'vast' numbers).

Does it mean that any numbers of Bald Eagles killed by windmills is acceptable? No, of course it doesn't. But either we have a different idea when we hear the word 'vast' or 'vast' is exaggerated.

edit: here is an article to back this up:

https://www.newsweek.com/fact-check-are-thousands-bald-eagle...

That's odd because the official eagle foundation that protects eagles discusses thousands of recorded deaths. From the website, "At the infamous Altamont Wind Resource Area alone, more than 2,000 Golden Eagles have been killed by the wind turbines there." : https://eagles.org/take-action/wind-turbine-fatalities/

So which seems more believable that only 150 eagles died over a decade or thousands? Something is off here. Is anyone even checking properly? You can't have two completely distinct numbers like that.

I'm sure there is an accurate number that is somewhere between 136 and 'thousands' but I wouldn't trust either the windmill operators or the people that run breeding programs for eagles to report them accurately.

Are golden eagles bald eagles?

Yes, the problem is exaggerated by the eagle people and the fossil fuel people and the nuclear people and simultaneously underreported by the wind energy industry and the renewables people etc. This should not surprise you.

Bald eagle numbers are soaring: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/bald-eagle-populat...

You're regurgitating pure propaganda put out by a multi-trillion-dollar industry that is orders of magnitude worse in every way.

"Americans execute record number of prisoners" -- Joseph Goebbels.

I mean I was basing it off numbers provided by the American Eagle Foundation. Which isn't a multi-trillion dollar industry, it's a small charity whose goal is conservation.

The American Eagle Foundation (AEF) is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization. Contributions to the American Eagle Foundation are tax-deductible to the extent permitted by law. The AEF’s tax identification number is 58-1652023.

And whose POV is obviously strictly neutral when it comes to eagles...

Link to the paper pprint https://ekatovich.github.io/files/Katovich_Birds_and_Energy_...

https://archive.is/3xriv

How does this compare to the estimates amount of birds that are killed by house cats every year?

I had an argument with a vegetarian cat owner about this the other week….

This is broken logic. Working primarily with averages leads directly to repeating the mistakes of the statistician who drown in a lake that was an average of three feet deep. Currently one of the notably large wind farms being operated is in the Altamont Pass in California which also happens to be the preferred spawning site for golden eagles. Does it make sense to assert that since wind farms are generally beneficial that we should not worry about drastically reducing or even eliminating golden eagles in California? The issue isn't wind farms or fossil fuels, it is exactly how we should build and maintain these wind farms and where. Using the critically needed energy transition to wipe out species of wild animals may not be an appropriate strategy.

> Does it make sense to assert that since wind farms are generally beneficial that we should not worry about drastically reducing or even eliminating golden eagles in California?

Yes. Boiling our atmosphere will harm bald eagles in addition to everything else. Bald eagles are cool birds, unless you live somewhere that they’re as common as seagulls and 20x as annoying. If forced to choose, I’d rather have a healthy world with few bald eagles than Venus with none.

CO2 levels were between 1500 and 3000 ppm during the Carboniferous era, a time of vast forests and thriving life. We are never going to end up like Venus, since its atmosphere is 100 times as dense as Earth's and 96.5% CO2. Since Earth is only 0.04% CO2 we would need to increase the amount of CO2 by more than 200,000X.

This is an easily debunked fossil-fuel industry propaganda talking point.

You either work in this industry and are being purposefully disingenuous, or you're carrying water for billionaires that will be dead from old age by the time the consequences of their lies are made manifest.

See: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZqA4bDVmBB8

TL;DW: Yes, CO2 levels were higher hundreds of millions of years ago, but the layout of the continents was different and the Sun had lower power output, so it worked out. If CO2 levels reached the same point now, 80% of the land surface would turn to desert and most higher forms of life would be wiped out by heat waves. Awesome! Let's aim of that then because some Shell Oil executive wants his bonus.

If you honestly believe installing any number of wind turbines is going to stop our "atmosphere from boiling" I've got a couple of bridges to sell you.

Awesome! I haven't talked to a real live environmental scientist in a few months. What aspect are you studying?

> Does it make sense to assert that since wind farms are generally beneficial that we should not worry about drastically reducing or even eliminating golden eagles in California?

Absolutely, 100% yes, fuck eagles, who needs them when windmill can go brrrbrbrbrbrbrbr, in fact it would be even better to manually hunt them before even installing the windmills so that they do not damage them.

That's a second order question - and one worth asking when decision-makers and stakeholders are being intellectually honest.

The problem is that Trump et al. are disingenuously saying that we shouldn't build wind turbines at all because of the birds.

I am not a conspiracy theorist, it's just a simple case of "follow the money". The fossil fuel industry is a trillion dollar per year business and their interest is to keep it this way. So poisoning the well is a good strategy for them. If you thought about it, it was clear the bird argument was always just a talking point nimby types were fed with, so they have something alarming to repeat and to get outraged, without really caring if it's true. The only thing they cared about is not having wind turbines because of their (weird?) aesthetic preferences and desires to have things stay the same forever. Ironically the bird and animal population overall are struggling with the way things are now and how they want to keep it. But again, they don't really care about that.

Yeah but the alternative / green energy industry is also worth hundreds of billions; [0] says solar will be a $373B industry by 2029, [1] says wind will be $278B by 2030, and [2] says nuclear will be a tiny $38B by 2029. My point is that the alternative energy sector's financial interests are at least as big as the fossil fuel industry's, but they put a lot of effort into coming across as The Good Guys That Will Save Our Planet For The Future Of Our Children, because that means they will get government funding and investments from new energy and infrastructure projects.

Disclaimer: I pulled these numbers from the first google search results. I don't know why they all look 5 years ahead. I am not an energy or financial expert.

[0] https://finance.yahoo.com/news/solar-power-market-size-2022-...

[1] https://www.renewableenergymagazine.com/wind/global-wind-pow...

[2] https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/global-nuclear-energy-market-...

Everything they say deserves scrutiny too. So if they say for instance "we are the cheapest form of energy" of course people should question it. But we are not talking about them here, it's simply a fact the fossil fuel industry is deploying the same tactic of sowing doubt for decades now. From birds to "we don't know definitely if climate change exists" to again "there is climate change but who says people can't adapt" and so on. Their talking points have been debunked and you won't change that by saying others are bad.

The number of birds killed annually by windows is probably 100x that killed by turbines. Hard to convince everyone to remove windows.

>"follow the money". The fossil fuel industry is a trillion dollar per year business and their interest is to keep it this way.

Meanwhile, the green energy industry is not-for-profit, volunteer, altruistic and unbiased.

That's incredibly naive. If you don't think the global capitalists are moving towards a green transition, I'm not sure what to tell you.

Newer industries are at least not that monopolistic and politically "connected".

Everyone is a capitalist today, not sure what else to say to that.

I agree. There is none so blind as those who will not see.

> with the exceptions of Alaska and Hawaii

What is it about these places that made them effect the bird population?

Did it negatively effect it?

Our level of consumption, whatever the source of energy, is killing so much life on Earth. There are better ways to coexist. Arguing about the source is a diversion from making steps towards significant decreases in per capita energy consumption.

The entire "it kills birds" feels like such a canard, to me. I don't understand to whom this kind of appeal is directed. It seems to me that the primary interests at stake are 1) the myriad financial interests in the extraction, distribution, and consumption of petroleum-based energy products, and 2) the negative impact on the environment of these same activities.

So let's just have that discussion, on those terms?

I cannot believe that someone like Donald Trump, for example, actually gives a shit about birds, and that that is what informs his opposition to the use of wind turbines. It seems unlikely, although possible, that that argument would persuade others of a like mind? And there have been other, similarly pitiful positions advanced, such as that an increase in the use of solar and wind power increases our exposure to UV radiation and skin cancer, from the sun?

I just don't understand why these arguments are made, and to whom. I cannot imagine that either 1) they would convince anyone who cares about the debate, or 2) that the population of people who WOULD be convinced by such arguments, would amount to much - either in the size of the population or the force of their support.

Based on the people I’ve heard make points like this, I don’t think it does convince anyone.

I think this type of argument fills a totally different role:

“I don’t believe or care about climate change and would like to keep my life as is, but this creates cognitive dissonance when someone shows it’s bad. I can use this argument to say your idea is as bad too! Dissonance lessened.”

At least when I’ve heard it it’s that context. The person saying it doesn’t really care if it’s accurate or equivalently bad, just that they have a gotcha to say when presented evidence for wind being good.

Yes, right. It seems like some sort of desperate, last-minute thing to fling in someone's face. "Oh yeah? If you care about nature so much how come you're in favor of these giant things that slaughter birds? I guess we can safely disregard all your arguments."

Donald Trump specifically hates windmills because they were being installed off-shore near one of the golf resorts that he owns, and he felt that it was "ruining the view".

So basically it's a billionaire complaining that we should stop saving the entire planet because his millionaire friends might not get a pristine view of the ocean at their exclusive club.

The bird thing is just a talking point he latched onto.

To be fair though, there were similar complaints when they wanted to put a wind farm off of Cape Cod or Martha’s Vineyard or some wealthy leftist outpost like that. As you say, rich people don’t want their view spoiled.

The article has some logical flaws. The allegation is that wind turbines kill birds, not that they chase them away. There was no evidence at all that oil and gas drilling kills birds, only that their numbers are decreased in that area. Perhaps oil and gas drilling does kill birds; if so, the article's author should have explained how that happens. True, global warming might also kill birds, but none of the evidence in the article was about the effects of global warming.

Clearly nobody in the responses has stood next to an oil well or a wind turbine.

I've been on several frack sites. On one, it was literally raining oil and chem on everything as they were wirelining. I'll take the windmill thanks.

Elaborate. Haven’t stood next to either. My curiosity is piqued. What should I be expecting when I find myself so lucky?

For my taste - wind turbines are disgusting. A blight on the landscape for minimal benefit compared to other energy sources. Give me 1000’s of acres of solar vs 100 acres of wind farm. If you have to live close to them - they never go away… everywhere you look, giant white (why are they white anyway? Why not sky blue?) Not to mention the nighttime visual pollution. Drive into Rockport, TX after dark and its endless skyline of red flashing lights — that all cycle at the same time. Beyond obnoxious.

That just my view of the aesthetics…

Nobody ever bothers to talk about what will be done with these football field sized blades (I’m guessing at least 100k of them by now?) when they’re decommissioned? Completely useless material that has to be buried somewhere… I guess everyone here will volunteer to bury one in their backyard?

You think the “buy and dump” problem is bad in oil and gas? … do you think any of the companies who signed these 30 year leases will be around to de-com the turbines when they start falling apart? (Answer is no)

https://www.power-eng.com/news/evolving-regulations-for-wind...

Then there’s the never ending problem of freezing… nobody has good solutions and most of them involve the same harmful chemicals or secondary energy sources or helicopters or whatever that all derive from the hydrocarbons everyone seems to hate.

https://www.windpowerengineering.com/the-cold-hard-truth-abo... https://energypost.eu/how-to-keep-winter-ice-off-a-wind-turb...

https://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/news/scottish-news/dozens-scot...

——

As for oil wells - most are hidden from view (unless you’re in West Texas, of course … not much growing to hide them…)

Also fwiw - a pump jack is only one form of artificial lift for a well. There are lots of others systems that are far less obnoxious (i.e. you can’t see them in the brush unless you get close)

https://www.estiscompression.com/learning-center/how-to-comp...

> That just my view of the aesthetics…

As wind turbines aren't a very rare sight, I think it's reasonable to assume that most have already seen a wind farm in person. Newer generations in Germany also only flash when planes are nearby.

> Nobody ever bothers to talk about what will be done with these football field sized blades (I’m guessing at least 100k of them by now?) when they’re decommissioned?

At least I've seen a lot of talk about it, most of it ending in "we're trying to reuse them for something else with mixed success" or "recycling is possible, but not yet done on a large scale, but we hope it'll increase".

> do you think any of the companies who signed these 30 year leases will be around to de-com the turbines when they start falling apart? (Answer is no)

At least in Germany, where wind turbines from 20+ years ago are being replaced by newer ones (due to the much higher power output), this hasn't been an issue yet. In contrast to oil and gas sites, after the wind turbine has seen it's EOL the land isn't worthless for the purpose, but a new wind turbine can be installed. Thus for most sites this isn't much of an issue. This isn't to say that regulation is a bad idea (and I'm wondering why leases were signed without a clause to obligate the operates to remove them), but I don't see the fundamental point of conflict, since the land isn't worthless afterwards for energy purposes.

> Then there’s the never ending problem of freezing…

At least your first two sources suggest that electric heating works (but unfortunately not if it's doable from the energy generated by the wind turbine itself, but I assume that to be the case, otherwise it doesn't make any sense), and the third suggests a fault of the power connection of the initial fault (and quite a bit of tabloid rambling that I didn't read, I have to admit).

Here you go: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OQksc1-5Zoc

imagine living with that 12 hours a day. like a drop of water hitting your forehead every few seconds. forever.

Looks like it would be an issue for maybe an hour or two a day in either the morning or the evening. Unless that's a location close to the arctic circle where the sun stays that low for significant portions of the day.

Don't get me wrong, that looks extremely annoying, especially if it happens in the evening hours. And I don't whish it on anybody. But the people in that video don't have to endure it the entire day, only while the sun is very close to the horizon.

> imagine living with that 12 hours a day

Given the video clearly depicts sunset, that is indeed an imaginary problem.

As in most places the earth is rotating fully once every 24 hours the sun isn't stationary in the sky. Consequently the depicted shadow - if it is bothersome at all, is so only a few minutes per day. Mind that, only on a clear day, clouds would prevent taht too.

This is nothing that regulation can't solve. German regulations prohibit wind farms with such periodic shadowing if it occurs more than 30 minutes a day or 30 hours per year for a house.

Lol, thats it? This is the downside compared to the oil and coal?

When I picture an oil derrick, I see the arm going up and down and thus blocking the sun. Also the methane coming off, the the flares lighting up the night sky. And the smell.

I would go on a rampage.

Why would you want to stand next to either?

They are not exactly located in urban areas...

I have stood at the very base of Wind Turbines multiple times. They are awesome, in the traditional sense of the word. A giant tower with an engineering marvel of a prop that slowly turns, nearly noiselessly sapping energy from nation sized air masses that continuously convect due to the immense amount of light and heat energy pouring into our atmosphere 24/7. They look futuristic, and yet at the same time so simple and elegant. Fields of fans sucking energy out of the wind currents.

I would love to live about five miles away (infrasound might be a real issue for some people) from a hundred acre installation of them. Here in Maine we have capped a few small mountains with them up north and it's very aesthetic.

Pumpjacks are also pretty cool though I've never seen one in person. Their simple design and brutal metal structure are pretty in their own way. Flares look pretty neat too.

..... Alright maybe infrastructure is just cool to me

I've lived within 200 meters of a massive windfarm and out of 365 days per year I would typically be able to actually hear them for maybe three or four of those and when the sun was just right (for a couple of minutes on those days when the sun lined up with the house and the windmills) there would be some shadows.

Don't the nearby homeowners usually get paid if they're really close?

Wind turbines are not very friendly at all to oil-and-gas drilling!

Direct competition, why would they be?

Nuclear reactors are friendlier to birds than either.

Buildings are less friendlier to birds than either.

Nobody uses bug screens on cars anymore because the bugs are fewer.

Bee populations are in decline.

And we're killing off birds.

Have a nice day staring at the smart tablet in your car.

I want to believe, but this article is less than convincing without reading detail about the study’s methods.

I didn’t see a link to the paper on my first read. When I decided to go back and get the author’s name, Economist’s paywall kicked in.

If anybody can see the full article, it would be lovely if you put the name of the researcher in the comments so I can read the original paper.

It's easy to believe. The massive ecological destruction caused by the oil and gas industry is well documented. Whatever downsides there are to wind mills, pale in comparison to that.

>Whatever downsides there are to wind mills, pale in comparison to that.

So in your world we're going to do whatever because it can't be as bad? Sounds like a terrible plan.

So in your world, we make no attempt to improve anything unless we can achieve 100% perfection? Sounds like a terrible plan.

No in my world we don't delay the process of stopping to destroy our planet over some minor concerns that are typically raised by people who argue against this because they want to continue burning stuff and slow down the demise of the fossil fuel industry. These people don't actually care about our planet, the environment, or any of this. And I suspect your concern is disingenuous.

This comment has the link: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38968302

No respectable person took idiotic politicians who claimed otherwise seriously. It is sad the economist had to put an article out on this topic.

Good luck telling India or China.

I can't quite tell in what sense you mean this- whataboutist? defeatist? something else?

Anyway, we should all be part of the solution, and also work on convincing the worst polluters to join us. In fact, doing the former would help with accomplishing the latter.

The West already has the lowest carbon emissions out of all major industrialized regions. The worst polluters are India and China, both of which are building more coal plants. Crippling our economy while they build theirs is insipid.

China's emissions are actually set to decrease this year (https://www.carbonbrief.org/analysis-chinas-emissions-set-to...)

And China and India are less polluting per capita than the US. The U.S. has the thirteenth-highest per capita emissions at 13.68 tons, while Russia is 20th (11.64), Japan is 26th (8.39), China is 28th (8.20), and India is 110th with a mere 1.74 tons per capita.

"Crippling our economy" is a one-sided and negative way to view it. I question your objectivity.

tell that to the birds under protection because they're going away that we fetch ded around those wind turbines weekly. including very rare and going away eagles in some countries.

just build nukes

Hackernews. The pseudo politics portal of the new age. Came here for computers..

try lobste.rs -it has almost identical structural behaviour and is (IMO) purely IT. Many HN stories are on that site.

Thanks, looks indeed promising.

> their blades can spin at well over 200km per hour. It is easy to imagine careless birds getting chopped to bits.

Interesting use of the word 'friendlier'.

That's the article's introduction; the rest of the article goes on to indicate why that imagined concern isn't as bad as imagined, especially when compared to the impact on birds of fossil fuel production and use.

What does it means for a wind turbine to spin at 200km per hour? Serious question.

The speed at which the tips of the very long blades move.

Why does nobody talk about the real issue with wind and solar? It's ugly. It distracts from the landscape.

I didn't realize how stupid of an argument this was until my girlfriend pointed out how every single highway/landscape/street is absolutely covered in powerlines. The very few wind turbines are beautiful in comparison to what you see all over the continent, every day.

It's really crazy how easy it is to convince people of something.

I actually think wind farms look really relaxing and cool, and love driving past them.

But that's just individual aesthetic preferences.

Uglier than fossil extraction, or the concealed ugliness of nuclear waste? Uglier than climate change?

Yes, I also prefer the beautiful oil rigs, and the nice smell of coal in the air. Anyway, all the buildings made by humans are so nice to look at, except for the really really ugly solar and wind installations!

I really loving driving through oil-rich areas and seeing flames dotting the horizon. Maybe we can start piping some natural gas directly to wind turbines to spew fires out the top so they're more elegant?

Among the countless reasons why this is an extremely bad argument, consider that the entire point of wind and solar is to prevent the landscape from being obliterated by climate change.

What a weird comparison. Nobody is saying we should drill oil and gas instead of wind turbines.

Well, there have been campaigns and articles for years attacking wind energy on the basis of protecting birds.

May I introduce you to our lord and saviour nuclear energy.

I'm genuinely curious, why are there so many extraordinarily pro-nuclear people on this forum? And how many of them have greater than zero experience with nuclear anything? I worked in the nuclear power industry for a decade and people in the industry are not as maniacally pro-nuclear as the people in this forum.

This forum has lots of highly intelligent individuals and nuclear power is the most intelligent energy source to switch to so we can stop relying on fossil fuels.

Perhaps you were working with people who don't feel the need to talk about how great nuclear is all the time because you all work in the industry and understand that already.

I think it's because the enormous costs of plant construction are not well understood. Or maybe, we think these costs can be reduced greatly.

The latter. Costs are artificially high. Indeed in a weird roundabout way they are mandated to be high. It has nothing to do with actual needs.

It's weird, isn't it? There's a lot of nuclear cheerleaders, and it makes me suspicious when they're also anti-renewables rather than "yes, and".

Essentially everyone has forgotten the arguments of the nineties: nuclear weapons proliferation, waste dumping, and covering the entirety of western Europe in a thin layer of airborne radioactive particles. As well as the more practical cost overruns. Personally I think it would be worth someone giving SMR a go, but in a different country from me and at their own expense.

"nuclear weapons proliferation,..." Seems like we got that anyway thanks to the military industrial complex without getting much in the way of nuclear energy generation.

Lots of places built dual-purpose reactors? The initial UK nuclear program (Windscale) was weapons-first. The famous French reactor programme and their independent nuclear deterrent are also linked.

Also, this is why people are reluctant to let some of the world's larger carbon emitters, the oil states in the middle east, build nuclear reactors. Iran has a small, heavily monitored fleet.

By definition then, those people have experience with decades-old technologies and installations?

The enthusiasm is largely for newer nuclear designs that address the FUD that gets thrown around whenever nuclear is mentioned.

That's a "yes, and" kind of thing. We can't build nuclear fast enough yet. So we need both. I'd argue that wind and solar is much more important at this point since the growth of those is now faster than nuclear has ever been. And fast growth of non-fossil energy sources is priority #1 right now. We can free up some land later with nuclear. Wind and solar isn't going to push any species to extinction, so any damage is reversible.

Though I'm a bit wary of nuclear given there are studies indicating that the heat energy added by thermal power plants contributes surprisingly much to global warming. If we can replace all thermal power plants with renewables that's a nice contribution to reducing global warming. On the order of CO2 emissions from planes if I remember correctly.

I'm sure we could "afford" the heat from thermal power plants if we didn't have so many greenhouse gases. But when we're already so close to the edge of the cliff, every little bit counts.

If we produced a gigawatt of energy by cleanest way possible, where do you think this gigawatt ends up? Some "energy dumpyard" somewhere outside the solar system?

In the long term .. yes?

The temperature is a balance between energy incoming from the sun and energy being radiated off into space. Wind and solar don't change that balance directly, although the lower reflectivity of solar panels makes a small local difference. Ultimately it's the transmissibility spectrum of the atmosphere that matters. Which is why we care about CO2 in the first place.

Nuclear energy is a little scary to me because I suspect it makes it more economical to build nuclear weapons.

-Many more people become atomic experts, and they may be hired by weapons programs in the future.

-We will learn how to deal with nuclear materials more efficiently - good for energy, but maybe also good for building weapons.

-With more nuclear material being manufactured for energy, will it be easier to hide weapons manufacturing in the mix?

I'd like to acknowledge that I'm speaking from ignorance here. I don't know much about nuclear technology.

Nuclear weapons aren't that tough on a nation-scale to produce. It's generally thought that places like Saudi Arabia, Japan, Australia, etc. could make a nuclear weapon in a few months if they really wanted.

The barriers are more geopolitical than anything.

Nuclear weapons have very little to do with nuclear energy.

Can you elaborate on that? Are the processes for making fuel for energy so different from the processes for bomb material that one doesn't help the other at all?

The people who are concerned about wind turbines killing birds also tend to not want nuclear power plants.

And by wanting nuclear, within the context of the build pace of nuclear is to support the status quo - ie oil and gas.

It's the same conclusion as hydrogen car investment. It's easy to maintain ice technology, but the generation, storage, trabsport, use are riddled with issues.

It blows up though.

Yeah and planes crash and it's spectacular, but they're still the safest means of transportation by far.

Planes are fast though. Even if less safe that cars we would still use them.

And nuclear is cheap. It is literally free energy.

Generally it does not. Makes a lot of people upset if things don’t work out, sure.

Agree. Usually it doesn't blow up but sometimes does. When it does, all of the squirrels in the area get 3 eyes and 5 legs.

More accurately they suffer defects and die.

Then there is Chernobyl which now has healthier and more diverse wildlife than much of the world because humans have evacuated.

How often does such incident occur?

Not often but sometimes.

Of course, if your neighbor has a good turbine spot and you don't, you have to look at it while his property's utility rises over yours.

That, cannot be tolerated. They're free to move to industrial zoned land if they want to be a power plant.

(Neither the ag-backwoods voters controlling their zoning nor capitalists installing them are hyper concerned about sparrows getting chopped up. It's a ruse.)

> That, cannot be tolerated.

Why, exactly?

If you search zoning meeting wind turbine Google images it will be revealed quickly. Scan the demographic. Old people who've already gotten theirs with mostly invented blame for ailments. It's all downside for them, to see their landscape change and plant a tree who's shade they'll never see.

bah, old people is the reason why we are climatically bad in the first place, its a downside they are going to have to accept.

I originally thought you were arguing that wind turbines should not be able to be installed on someone’s property if they can’t also go on the neighbors property, but now I’m not sure. Was your first comment sarcasm? Maybe I’m just misreading.

They absolutely are saying that.

https://theintercept.com/2021/12/08/oil-industry-wind-farm-p...

> The plan, which was approved in 2017, sanctioned a Danish company to build a 120-megawatt capacity wind energy project — enough to power 40,000 homes by placing turbines 26 nautical miles offshore. The letter warned that the project would “irreparably damage beach tourism, home values and the economy,” “lower rents generally,” and produce “no environmental benefit.” “In fact,” the letter claimed, “regional air quality would become worse because of them.”

> While the letter was signed by a local resident, it made little mention of its true author: the Caesar Rodney Institute, a libertarian think tank at the time funded by the oil industry. The subterfuge was intentional. In an interview with the State Policy Network, a group that coordinates best practices for oil-and-gas-backed and libertarian think tanks, the Caesar Rodney Institute said it produced the letter and had it signed by a local concerned beach homeowner to “establish rapport” with the target audience of local residents and merchants.

The Canadian province of Alberta has more or less this exact policy.

The province with the most solar (1511mw to #2-Ontario's 944mw[0]), and most wind power (4431mw to #2-Ontario's 3822mw [1]) in the country?

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_photovoltaic_power_sta... [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wind_farms_in_Canada

I didn’t say that they don’t have green energy. I said that they currently have a government policy that is designed to promote oil and hinder green energy projects.

https://www.wsj.com/world/americas/canadas-oil-rich-alberta-...

You are sort of correct, nobody is saying that directly, but that is the result.

The people who are concerned about wind turbines killing birds aren't offering any alternatives, that would be widely accepted, so the result is fossil fuel, because that's what we already have in place.

The anti-nuclear protests in the 60s and 70s also didn't want fossil fuels, but they also didn't understand that an increase in fossil fuel usage was the alternative, because it was the only one that made financial sense.

A lot of the anti-nuclear protests during the Cold War were against nuclear reactors because of nuclear weapons, which offered a much more immediate threat against the habitability of the earth.

I think some people are saying exactly that.

Yet those opponents of the wind turbines want to have all the benefits of the modern society like medicine and transportation and that sweet electricity that enables the electromagnetic waves used for planet wide communication. It almost feels like they are shilling for oil and gas companies or for authoritarian regimes that receive their main income from oil and gas drilling.

It really doesn't matter what anyone wants. Hydrocarbons are a huge but decreasing part of the energy mix. Eventually we will not use them but it is going to take 50-100 years.

I don't know where you are, but in the US there is a large percentage of the population who claim to believe that, who claim that "green coal" is a thing, and they vote like they believe it.

Former President Trump has repeatedly stated that wind turbines are terrible for birds. I'm no mind reader, but it is also a fact that he owns a coastal golf course and sued to prevent development of a wind farm because he didn't want his golfers experience to be affected by seeing offshore wind turbines.

2016: https://www.factcheck.org/2016/06/trumps-hot-air-on-wind-ene... 2018: https://www.factcheck.org/2018/09/trump-again-overblows-risk... 2019: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/dec/23/trump-bizarr... 2020: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/donald-trump-wind-energy-kills-... 2023: https://www.newsweek.com/fact-check-are-thousands-bald-eagle...

I'm sure if I looked beyond the first page of search results, I could fill in the other years.

Some information about the lawsuit: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trump_International_Golf_Club_...

What would be a better comparison?

Nuclear. Solar. Geothermal. Hydro.

My Fox News Dad sure does.

There's currently a big public debate in my country regarding relaxing building restrictions for wind turbines, and all the FUD about noise levels, killing birds etc is very much in use.

Current law is so harsh that you can build a coal powerplant closer to peoples' houses than a wind turbine :)

That's despite the fact we have the worst air pollution in EU and the wind turbines would replace coal powerplants...

TL; DR: you're wrong.

Or nuclear. There's that. Way less land occupation, no carpeting hillsides with solar panels, no ungainly windmills, no millions of pounds of toxic heavy metals to dispose of when batteries and panels go bad, and...oh....it works regardless of the weather.

...and also requires uranium mining and risks nuclear weapons proliferation. I prefer solar and wind.

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