I learned something the other day.
Something I say a lot is “there is no such thing as green energy”. This is one of the reasons I created this blog. When I first learned about wind power, I had heard that they were real bird killers. The article I read oh-so-many years ago, was referring to one of the first experimental wind farms. “Hundreds of birds” were scattered around the base of the wind mills, including many large raptors. Since then, I have heard about windmills becoming “bird friendly”, and now that they are mainstream, I haven’t heard a peep about the birds.
Wind power has a lot of pros over fossil fuels. But there are also cons: local weather patterns are changed, they are not very economical*, not very aesthetic, a waste of land/habitat, etc. I am taking “bird killers” off of the list of cons though. This site has the following estimates on the sources for bird mortality:
- Buildings: 100 million to 1 Billion birds per year
- House cats: “hundreds of millions” of birds per year
- Towers: 5-50 million birds per year
- Windmills 10-40 thousand birds per year
Even if the number of windmills goes up by tenfold, which I fully expect it will soon, the number of birds killed will still be less than the minimum number of bird deaths caused by stationary towers.
Now don’t get me wrong, having a single bird killed is not good. However, we have so screwed up the natural ecology that we have no way of knowing if this number is statistically significant. How many birds would have died by coyote, if coyotes numbers were not drastically reduced? How many birds are saved by a reduction in smoke from coal plants?
For a long time, I was a mediocre fan of windmills, and bird killing was one reason. I have learned that this reason is invalid, and my opinion on windmills is now more favorable. I will study this issue some more. I suspect that when you eliminate the subsidies and calculate the true costs, windmills may not be worthwhile. However, being a skeptic, I will reserve judgment on this until the numbers come in.
–Dave
* I’ve had many people argue that windmills are very economical after various governments subsidize them. Well, to be economical, they need to be at least self-sustaining. We are using the cheapness of oil to sustain the windmills. I agree with this as a temporary measure— I just want to acknowledge that this is what is really happening.
