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Comment by sschueller | Hacker News Reader

Even without I think wind will become too expensive eventually to make it worth while. Especially when solar gets more efficient and cheaper.

Wind has down sides like moving parts and requiring giant concrete poors. Birds strikes, noise as well as ground vibration are also issues.

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> Wind has down sides like ...Birds strikes

Many birds die as a result of human activity. In the US, the leading cause of these deaths is cats [1]. Cats cause four times more bird deaths than the next anthropogenic cause of death, flying into windows.

Cats cause ~1000x more bird deaths than collisions with wind turbines.

[1] https://www.statista.com/chart/15195/wind-turbines-are-not-k...

By sheer numbers, yes, but the kinds of birds killed are different. Larger, slower reproducing birds such as eagles, condors, etc. are more at risk being killed by wind turbines because deaths in those groups have a much larger effect whereas cats kill a much larger number of birds but they tend to be smaller, faster reproducing species and as such their numbers overall aren't as much at risk.

Cats are one of five categories with >100x the rate of wind turbine bird deaths [1].

If your position is that all five of these factors don't impact larger birds, the onus is on you to back that claim up.

[1] https://www.statista.com/chart/15195/wind-turbines-are-not-k...

I’m not saying they don’t but I am saying looking at sheer numbers of deaths as a comparison is misleading because it’s the details of what kinds of deaths that make the difference. Your linked article even mentions this: “ While the relationship between wind turbines and different types of bird populations, particularly apex birds, is understudied, there is some evidence that turbines can hurt those populations.”

I think his point was that birds much too large for a cat to take down are taken down by wind turbines, also some birds are much more rare than others, and many large species are relatively slow to reproduce as well.

> Cats cause ~1000x more bird deaths than collisions with wind turbines.

Edit: this should be Cats cause ~10,000x more bird deaths than collisions with wind turbines.

>Birds strikes...are also issues.

Unless you're vegetarian, or vegan, how so?

There’s plenty meat eaters that care of birds for multiple reasons and perceive their diminution as an issue. One of them might be other animal (that they care less) regulation, like mosquitos and mouses. Another one is the delight to see them flying and singing around. And another one: seeds dispersions that contribute to the flora health.

You can add (no) recycling of huge composite balades.

So what? Even if every wind turbine blade were landfilled it would add only slightly to waste streams already in existence.

The US produces hundreds of millions of tons of construction and demolition waste per year.

That's fair. Most demolition waste can be crushed and used as stabilisation for new constructions instead of mined rocks, and that's also often cheaper. However you are right to point out the quantity which is small, for now because we didn't really scale yet.

It will be comparatively small even when scaled out. PV waste too.

My biggest concern with wind is not the blades, it's concrete foundations and perhaps steel. Concrete inherently releases CO2 when produced (from calcining of limestone), even if the energy source is non-fossil. Nuclear also faces this issue, of course. PV doesn't typically use concrete footers these days, instead using steel anchors that go directly into the ground.

There are plans to make lime from silicates, but this is not a mature technology.

That just isn't a real problem. A single large American landfill could take 100 years worth of wind turbine blades and not even be 25% full. If we were so inclined, we could also shred them and add them to concrete for sidewalks or the like.

Recyclable blades are gaining traction: RecyclableBlade, ZEBRA, PECAN...

There even are efforts to recycle existing ones: https://www.offshorewind.biz/2023/02/08/newly-discovered-che...

In most advanced nations landfilling them is prohibited, and many are now burnt in cement kilns.

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