Aren't these also massive mass bird slayers ? The last I read, over half a million birds were killed (official under-estimate) by wind turbines in UK alone every year
But you might want to sit down before i tell you how many are killed by cats.
The recent kurzsesagt video is a great intro to the topic ( https://youtu.be/5sVfTPaxRwk)
You're trying to turn "I don't care about that" into "it's logically incorrect to care about that" which is not a game you can win.
Other attributes the bird may have (wild/bred) or species (rare/common) has no bearing on the pain and kind of death they suffer. The importance of those attributes is lens we see from, it does not change their suffering.
> People who have no problem with eating meat will still not find it OK to kill a pet pig
It doesn't make it acceptable to view life raised for food[2] as a lesser (therefore ok to be tortured) than other life because they are pets, merely because it is common practice.
How is it different than valuing human life was valued differently in age of slavery or even today if you say correlate level of aid, support, news coverage or empathy to simple numbers on human conflict impact[1].
[1] https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/deaths-in-armed-conflicts...
[2] The argument here is not becoming vegetarian, it is about not torturing needlessly what we need to eat. The human equivalent is akin to not following Geneva conventions in a war not abolish war altogether, while ideal everyone agrees is not practical today.
As opposed to the minimal ecological consequences continuing to burn fossil fuels are currently yielding you mean?
Wind/nuclear: 0.3-0.4 birds/GWh
Fossil: 5.2 birds/GWh
[1]: https://climate.mit.edu/ask-mit/do-wind-turbines-kill-birds
[2]: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S09601...
The nuclear source bird death estimates are extrapolated from one bad weather incident over two nights from a single plant on the Florida coast.
This is not a serious or rigorous study. Is there anything more recent?
Wow.
You can dismiss any source by saying “nuh-uh” but you need to back it up to be taken seriously here.
https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/poultry-and-poultry...
I find the horrors of industrial animal farming horrendous, while not having a moral problem with the idea of raising an animal in decent conditions for slaughter.
Okay, something else which affects wild birds: "Bird corpses were counted - and, where possible, identified - at 166 locations throughout Britain during the summer of 1985. The survey covered all roads except motorways. It is the most recent such study, and the most comprehensive. The results were depressing. A minimum of 30 million birds are killed on Britain's roads every year. Depending on the assumptions made in the statistical analysis, the death rate could be even higher: 70 million a year is not impossible."[1] And that's as well as wild rabbits, hedgehogs, badgers, foxes, deer, and so on killed by cars which wind turbines don't affect.
So the wildlife in the UK would be much better off if we built more viable alternatives to driving and road trucking than if we scrapped wind turbines. We can also note that people are working on wind turbines that don't kill birds, e.g. [2]. It's not a fixed fact that all wind turbine designs do the same damage.
In the context of a world where fossil fuel propaganda really does exist[3] and Trump's recent executive order on unleashing energy generation where he tells government departments to look for all kinds of energy sources on their land - geothermal, hydroelectric, oil, gas, anything - except wind or solar - exists, and in the wider climate change context where there isn't a magically perfect answer - and where the UK is uniquely well suited in Europe to wind power - it can't just be left that "sensational $bignum means stop wind turbines" with nothing else mentioned.
[1] https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/carnage-on-...
[2] https://www.audubon.org/magazine/surprisingly-simple-solutio...
[3] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hX2aZUav-54 - Climate Town video on how the gas industry sets up groups of 'concerned citizens' which pay social media influencers to post about how great cooking with gas is, and agitate politically while obscuring the source of their funding, among other things.
(but we can; the UK has 30 million homes; if 500,000 of them put up wild bird feeders, that would lead to more wild birds. Again the context of the comment was the shock value of $bignum not a comment on specific species or habitats or desired outcomes).
Bringing up bird welfare to oppose wind turbines is bullshit. If people cared about birds or wildlife we wouldn't be in this mess at all.
Likewise, there's the (unproven) connection with noise generated by offshore wind farms disturbing wildlife migration and movement, especially among whales.
It'd be nice to know that we're not replacing one disaster with another, though I'm out of date on my personal research as to whether any of these concerns still warrant further investigation.
The person I replied to was making a quantity-of-birds argument. Not an endangered species argument.
> there's the (unproven) connection with noise generated by offshore wind farms disturbing wildlife migration and movement
Do they make a lot more noise than giant cruise ships? Luxury yachts? I don't see much of a movement to ban those. It's almost like people decide the things they want to have for themselves (undisturbed views), then make up whatever noble-sounding reasons (whales, birds) will preserve those things.
Your comment seems to be a blanket opposition to bird welfare in general, not a limited critique of quantity harmed. I do think the distinction remains important, hence why I made my post.
> Do they make a lot more noise than giant cruise ships? Luxury yachts?
Given that the ships are itinerant and their turbines are much smaller, I do believe the type of noise pollution they generate is qualitatively less harmful. I imagine the scale is something along the lines of:
1. windmills
2. sonar
3. marine vehicle engine and turbine noise
Sonar gets the second for the extreme volume some ships (esp. military) are capable of producing, though there are far fewer of them.
Marine vehicles come last. There's a greater danger of animals being hit by fast moving boats (for example, manatees) than discombobulation from engine and turbine noise.
I don't know how you got that. I just think a lot of fake bird lovers come out of the woodwork to oppose wind turbines because of $MADE_UP_REASON. Real wildlife lovers recognize that clean energy is good for wildlife.
Do you have sources for this scale?
> Windmills take the top spot for being a constant barrage over a large area.
They're also static, so animals can just avoid them. Their blades spin a hundred feet above the water.
Ships move around so their sounds can be anywhere. Their propellers spin in the water. And there are way more large ships than offshore windmills.
Aka 0.2% of birds.
How many birds do coal power plants or other power sources kill?
> Climate change is a critical threat to birds. Recognizing this fact, ABC supports renewable energy, including wind energy, and the transition away from fossil fuels. However, not every wind project is proposed in a suitable location.
If you’re trying to save birds, the first place you should be looking is outdoor cats.
https://www.sibleyguides.com/conservation/causes-of-bird-mor...
I don't care about Donald Trump. (How did this even become about him ?) And your second statement is laughably false as even elementary research would tell you.
Do note that there are ~100 million cats and only ~70k wind turbines, if you use US as a reference. Cats are clearly not the top-predators of birds anymore.
You said you “read” about turbines killing birds (shockingly with no citation). There is literally nobody else claiming such stupidity.
> Do note that there are ~100 million cats and only ~70k wind turbines, if you use US as a reference. Cats are clearly not the top-predators of birds anymore.
Do note, a tiny fraction of the 100m cats are outdoor cats. And yes, they are absolutely one of the top predators of birds and have been for decades.