Hacker News Reader

Comment by kinleyd | Hacker News Reader

That is a tragically large number, and the solution seems easy enough to implement. Activism is the likely missing ingredient. Something needs to be done.

View on HN

It is birds. Not humans. More humans properly perish from lack of communication.

Screw the birds. Humans are better.

Fortunately we don't have to choose! We can make the red lights more blinky, apparently.

7 million dead birds seems like it would be easy to video/photograph. Choosing to forego documentation that supports these claims has to be intentional.

Please take some time to research your inner techniques of logic, and how you assume outcomes and motives (in general). You appear (to me) prone to jumping to definite conclusions based on faulty logic and/or incomplete data. Not an attack, just a comment.

I can't fault him. Incomplete data is what we have in the real world and while he has shown no evidence in this story a lot of what we read in the media is planted to either pander to their readers or from public relation firms.

I don't think it is a bad habit to assume that this has been planted for some reason. If not, 7 million birds should be enough that you can see them drop in droves. 7 million is a very, very high number.

As noted above, 7 million birds per year, spread across 84,000 towers is about 1 bird per tower every four days. That alone isn't exactly noticeable, and given that most towers are located in out-of-the-way areas, that number of bird deaths could very easily escape notice by most people.

I assumed there were a lot fewer towers.

Either way, I still wonder why this story was selected and not some other story (there is only so many stories a news paper can write) and because I have become cynical I assume that it was either a PR agency or pandering. I have not heard any evidence for anything else.

I'm going to assume kangaroos have psychokinetic powers and are secretly plotting to take over the world.

I have not heard any evidence for anything else.

Surely it is up to you to disprove my theory if you don't think it is correct.

waterlesscloud at http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3903033:

> Looking at the numbers they offer, it seems like it's about 1 bird per tower every 4 days.

Eventually you'd discover that (in some as yet unknown, obscure way) humans can't survive without birds. For your edification: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ecology

Well we are not talking about killing all the birds. We are talking about some dying.

And you don't need an obscure way, I know what China did and what happened there.

But I would rather see ten birds tortured to death, than one human die. Call it speciests if you want.

Not only is this a false dichotomy, but your points are baseless.

> More humans properly perish from lack of communication.

A citation would be helpful.

> Screw the birds. Humans are better.

To some humans, maybe. Screw X, Y is better has not been a good guide.

The solution is to build new towers without guy-wires.

To operate a communications tower in the US, you need a permit from the FCC. To get a permit or renew a permit from the FCC, you have to file an Environmental Impact Statement. Based on this study, it will likely no longer be possible to claim that a tower with guy-wires has no significant impacts. This means towers without guy-wires will likely be the preferred alternative in an EIS, and what you will have to build if you want a new permit. To renew a permit, you will likely have to have blinking lights, or at least have a very convincing reason for not using them in your EIS.

Also, the Migratory Bird Treaty Act, with a few exceptions, outlaws all take of migratory birds. That will likely also come into play.

Activism and lawsuits may speed up the process, but assuming this study is replicated by future studies, the wheels have already started turning.

I didn't see a solution mentioned?

"Longcore estimated that changing the steady-burning lights on the 4,500 towers greater than 490 feet tall (about 6 percent of the total) could reduce mortality about 45 percent, or about 2.5 million birds. The study also recommended that businesses share towers to reduce their number and build more freestanding towers to reduce the need for guy wires."

edit: After I posted this I realized you may be talking about the Activism component mentioned above? Not sure.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com