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.
https://phys.org/news/2017-12-scientists-survivors-thomas-co...
You won't see anti-wind advocates talking about curfews or outright banning them though.
I'm genuinely confused how they would even be part of this conversation.
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.
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...
until you involve buttered toast: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z8yW5cyXXRc
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.
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.
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?
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.
They're still impressive little killers, but that's important to keep in mind.
> 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...
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...
UK December wind generation: Generation: 2.6 TWh Subsidy/MWh : £86.68 Market Price/MWh: £75.00
Older projects were subsidised much more but around half the current wind capacity has been built from 2016 with far less subsidy.
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...
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.