It was never a myth. It was a lie.
Reading the article. Wind turbines do kill birds, but it’s worse in certain areas, at certain times of year, and even certain times of day.
We can plan around these known quantities.
Also, guy wires and power lines can kill birds. Not quite as often, but sometimes a bird will hit the wire rather than land on it.
But the main killer of birds by far is furry and has cute little claws.
And windows. Kills loads of birds.
Yet another reason to switch to Linux.
Anyone can drive out to a windfarm and look for dead birds, there never were any.
Also, wind turbines are geared to spin slowly, it’s not like a room fan, they only turn at 10-20 rpm.
Anyone can also visit a glass office building and ask caretakers how many birds a day they clean up.
Our house is older and is fairly light on windows, but the living room and kitchen both have a fairly sizeable one. I usually have to pick up 3-4 dead birds under them each year.
Put a sticker on them?
Doesn’t work. Just makes people feel better.
I work for a renewable energy company. We regularly find dead birds at our wind sites, including occasionally protected species like eagles (killing bats is also a concern).
There are steps you can take to mitigate the threat. We have dumped a ton of money into a really cool technology that scans the skies constantly with super high res cameras and automatically stops turbines in the vicinity of protected species.
Overall, renewable energy is still much better for wildlife than burning fossil fuels.
Very few people that oppose wind turbines are actually any type of animal lover. If bird deaths really were the cause of their apprehension, ironically you’d see them push more for clean energy such as wind and solar, since pollution has killed and will continue to kill countless more beings than any wind turbine could dream of.
Ya because fossil fuel never directly killed any birds… Cut to images of millions of birds covered in oil from a spill… And indirectly fossil fuels has killed trillions of birds.
Before anyone starts shouting windturbines don’t kill birds because they saw this headline without reading the article, he is the key takeaway:
It turns out that while wind turbines do kill birds, they are statistically insignificant compared to the bigger killers we have in our cities and in our bedrooms.
Aside from the number being insignificant, there are efforts being made to minimize the amount of animals dying. The main solution is what is called bird curtailment - shutting the windmill off during migration activity.
Here is an article if you want to know more: https://appliedecologistsblog.com/2024/05/30/a-safe-passage-protecting-migratory-birds-in-the-north-sea/
Almost like birds have eyes and a brain
Local ones with eyes and brains do hit my very dirty window sometimes. Natural selection I suppose.
Wind turbines are not transparent I guess
Wait, birds that are quick, nimble, agile and through evolution are designed to feel the tiny differences in air flow aren’t actually being cut in half by the huge and relatively very slow wind turbines?
IMPOSSIBLE. LIES!!Thanks for this debunk!
People saying this is some kind of hoax have not done their research. As someone who works for a renewable energy company they do hit birds (and bats, which are attracted to their low-frequency hum). I thought it was kind of nonsense before this job, but up close you realize those blades are spinning FAST. Theres nothing like them in the animal kingdom so birds arent afraid of them. There are steps you can take to mitigate the threat, but it is a valid concern. On the whole, though, they are still much better for the environment than pretty much any other type of energy generation.
Did you read the article? It contains numbers for the amounts of birds killed by turbines. To be clear: the article does not say no birds are killed. The number just is not very relevant as compared to other dangers, such as buildings, power lines and, most importantly, cats. 4,000 birds are killed by pet cats for every bird killed by a turbine.
Yeah people in the comments are talking about wind turbines killing birds being a hoax though. It definitely isn’t.
Another important distinction is that wind turbines disproportionately kill raptors like eagles, which are not threatened by cats.
Good article.
I see this as a chance for birds to go through natural selection.
If Trump is really concerned about birds, he should ban domesticated cats.
A while back, I found myself driving across South Dakota, where there are plenty of fields of wind turbines.
There was one about 20
yearsyards from the road, with a paved driveway leading to it. Curious about all of Trump’s allegations, I decided to check it out, and I pulled up next to the turbine.First of all, his claim that they make lots of noise is a LIE. They make almost no noise at all. There was a quiet, regular mechanical thump, every few seconds or so, but it wasn’t loud, and it couldn’t be heard from the road.
Secondly, there wasn’t one dead bird in the vicinity, despite there being MANY turbines operating in close proximity. If turbines were so deadly to birds, there should be a lot of them around this area, or at least a few, or at least ONE. But there were none.
Its almost like Trump either had no idea was he was saying, or he was just lying. Or both. Based on past experience, I’m going with BOTH.
As article says (and IIRC from other sources) it’s the offshore turbines that pose the most risk to birds, and mostly to gliding fishing birds (bald eagle, osprey) because they barely see in front of them (they are looking down) and do not expect obstacles on open water.
