The local birds killed by oil drilling aren't even what we should be comparing to. Even if that number were zero, bird populations world still be better off in a world powered by wind turbines than oil and gas.
Global warning is coming for birds too. Global warming poses an "existential threat for two thirds of North American bird species" [1] and obviously a similar proportion of bird species around the globe.
My understanding is that feral cats kill far more than domesticated cats (as you'd expect), but this gets folded in under "cats kill $number of birds".
They're still impressive little killers, but that's important to keep in mind.
Ban my cat and you'll likely lose someone who does regularly vote for environmentally friendly politicians and you may get a new voting pattern out of me, and a lot of other people I suspect.
Agree 100%. Wind turbines killing birds is a disingenuous argument when it comes to climate change.
> Birds of prey in Africa experiencing population collapse, study finds
> new research used road surveys to find that nearly 90% of the 42 raptor species studied had experienced declines, with more than two-thirds showing evidence of being globally threatened.
> Agree 100%. Wind turbines killing birds is a disingenuous argument when it comes to climate change.
If the people involved in this conversation actually cared about birds, they wouldn't be worried about either. They'd be worried about cats. Cats kill about 20-55% of the entire US bird population every single year. Somewhere between 1.3B and 4B birds per year in the US alone. [1] And an order of magnitude more small mammals (6.3B - 22.3B).
It's several orders of magnitude more than turbines and oil-and-gas drilling combined.
Studies put the number of birds killed by wind turbines in the US at 140K-690K. That's 0.0035% to 0.05% of the birds killed by cats. It would literally be a rounding error nobody would ever notice if all the wind turbines came down.
I honestly can't believe we're still having this conversation in the context of wind power. Put some UV stickers or black paint on them and move on. [3]
Are you unconsciously keeping nuclear energy out of the equation, or why is nuclear not an option in your mind - where then bird populations will be better off, and where solar also isn't destroying the surface environment where life and forests could otherwise thrive [if we're talking about having energy generated locally, then most of the world doesn't have convenient desserts nearby, which arguably we could also turn green if we wanted]?
Nuclear energy may not kill birds, but it may kill fish in already overheated rivers. Which is also one reason why they've been turned off in France, where the problem started occurring in recent years and probably won't stop occurring due to global warming.
I worked in oil/gas for a long time. In addition to "windmills are killing all the birds", here are a few of the top green energy lies I've heard:
1. Solar panels are toxic, require more energy to produce than they generate, and can't be recycled.
2. EV's are worse for the environment than ICE vehicles.
3. Lithium mining is worse than oil/gas drilling.
4. Solar/wind prices are skyrocketing and everyone is abandoning solar/wind.
5. Solar/wind can't work because they're too intermittent.
6. Climate change isn't real OR climate change is real but natural and unstoppable OR climate change is helpful to the planet (these opposing beliefs are often repeated back to back)
Calling every dumb argument against the mainstream climate movement a "lie" without further explanation is the kind of "pick a side" logic that entrenches climate change deniers.
1. Yes, solar panel production is not particularly good for the environment but not any more so than many other common industrial processes and the panels themselves are perfectly safe. Yes that used to be true decades ago, but not anymore. For many years now solar panels generate more energy than they took to make after just a few years operation. Yes, but the fact that they are not particularly recyclable doesn't matter at all because we are never going to run out of sand.
2. Yes, EV's can have larger carbon footprints that ICE vehicles in the few areas where almost all electricity is from coal. But outside of that specific case EVs are always at least slightly better, typically by 20-30%.
3. Yes, it can be argued that lithium mining is worse than oil/gas drilling but it's not clear cut and would only be worse for the local environment if at all. The effect on climate of oil and gas drilling is always going to be far far worse.
4. No, Solar/wind prices are clearly falling and more solar/wind gets installed every year.
5. Yes, solar/wind are intermittent, so they can't be used alone, but work great when paired with investment in longer transmission lines, grid storage and non-intermittent carbon free sources.
For point 6 I can only say that people are will be less likely to make blanket denials if you tell them the truth in a non-judgemental way, respect their intelligence, and are forthcoming with the problems and challenges of addressing climate change.
I believe that it's only thin film solar panels that have high heavy metal content but mono-crystalline panels - which are now the super-dominant technology having drastically decreased in cost - are fairly non-toxic.
I thought 1 was potentially legit depending on how they are manufactured and where they'll need deployed. I understand that 80% of solar cells are produced in China which still gets most of its energy from coal so there is a huge carbon footprint. If you now deploy those in a place that doesn't get much sun, like Germany, the equation isn't great. I'm no expert on this though and am mostly parroting Peter Zeihan on this.
Do you have sources as to why they are lies? I'm not doubting you, but simply saying they're lies is just as disingenuous as the people making the statements in the first place
If we cared about birds we would be talking about reducing car traffic and saving more areas for wildlife. The argument against Solar and Wind with regards to wildlife preservation is almost always a distraction.
Generally we care about a bird species as a whole rather than about individual birds of that species.
If something is killing birds, even a lot of birds, but in a place where those birds are abundant and whatever is killing them will just lower lower their equilibrium population a bit rather than set it on a decline or lower it so far that they might die out in the area then there generally isn't a lot of concern over it.
Hence activities in places with species of birds that have low population or are threatened or endangered tend to draw more concern than activities in places where that isn't the case even if the latter kills way more total birds.
Cats are mostly a problem because of suburban sprawl. You don't see many cats where there are no human residences. By creating massive sprawling car dependent suburbs we make huge deadly areas for birds. If we instead focused on making smaller walkable communities with public transport, then we could reduce the habitat destruction and have more land for birds and other wildlife.
I think it's pretty clear if we cared much about anything we'd be doing a lot of things. But instead, we have this: We have a conversation like this one, I had it with my sister. We agree on this statement you've made in that conversation. Sister goes and buys a new gigantic SUV that gets 20 mpg. Understands we were just talking about how bad that is, but make a thousand excuses as to why she using the bad thing is an exception to the rule.
We're a few billion exceptions to the rules walking around, very few people want to give up their fun. I've had this conversation with gun owners, oversized truck owners, people interested in public transit it always comes down to something they want everybody else to have to do but not them.
We're not going to give up our toys til we're dead.
Many people struggle to motivate themselves to do their part on huge collective action problems like climate change. That's why national and international political action is needed, and in turn needs smaller groups of individuals to put in effort supporting campaigns for such action. That said lots of people do care in their daily lives and also put that care into practical individual action - and have a fun and meaningful time doing so. In my experience not owning a SUV or any car at all doesn't feel like "not having fun". It feels sensible and what I have good reason to do and it feels purposeful, a part of doing what I can to cause less harm in this world, from the lucky situation life has dealt me. I understand that some people really need a car for work, especially in car centric regions. But almost everyone has a range of other things where they can do their part and act to improve things.
Or you could actually make those things more important in your life. And realise you don't necessarily need to acquire more material things all the time to live a satisfied life. And you can be an example and inspiration to other people. Life is not just about toys.
I wish a proper study on this could get some real funding. The cited study is certainly better than nothing but it's based on a volunteer reported survey with significant response bias (eg. maybe the drop in bird sightings near oil and gas drilling is because people don't want to go birdwatching near an oil field).
You want a "proper study" instead of an annual time series, comparable for over a century, conducted by millions of individuals? What a goofy comment. This is gold-standard data. The paper even explains why this is superior to nerd bullshit like eBird.
The title is symptomatic for the climate discourse; either for or against oil/coal and wind/solar. I find the question "what is a reliable, clean and affordable energy source?" much more relevant and productive.
Affordable is the trick, though - while I totally understand why that is important, sometimes it seems like we're going to end up saying: "Sorry we are going extinct... staying alive wasn't profitable."
I know that is both an idealistic and hyperbolic take on things. The bigger point is that when people say "affordable", they often really mean "profitable". But we cannot afford not to fix the problems.
"Affordable" could also be taken as "doable". Which broadens the scope largely but misses the main problem: sustainability. This take is not just not helpful but, i would argue, actively harmful to the debate.
By definition, sustainability is a waste management, that allows recycling rates of 90% or higher. CO2 is just one of our waste products we totally didnt care about.
I get where you're coming from but in 2024, solar is the cheapest source of power on earth, and wind is second-cheapest. Economics and survival are aligned for once, we just gotta actually build the new system and deprecate the old
To be fair, though: wind power is cheap as dirt, which is why we're building it out like crazy basically everywhere with real estate for the turbines. Which is also why it's being opposed with weird canards like "But Birds!" and not practical arguments about power grid management.
> "what is a reliable, clean and affordable energy source?"
"Clean" and "affordable" map immediately and obviously onto wind and solar; what then happens is people engage in a lot of wrangling around "reliable" to push nuclear, requiring bending both "clean" and "affordable" quite a bit and running into an invisible other criteria of "quick to deploy" and "politically acceptable".
It's mislieading to use "politically acceptable" like "quick to deploy". What's "politically acceptable" is something we shape with every word we say and which differs accross countries.
Speaking of countries, I could reduce this answer to one word, which refutes every single point you make: France.
Well, "quick to deploy" is absolutely essential. "Politically acceptable" is a red herring.
But the OP's question is loaded too. We don't need "reliable" right now. Fossil fuel can cover the reliability gap on the short term perfectly well. Until the question becomes "well, we replaced all the peak consumption with renewables, now what?", asking for reliability is status-quo propaganda.
Not sure I understand the objection. The research this article is about compared Wind vs Oil/Coal effects on birds. The title seems in line with the findings of the research.
> I find the question "what is a reliable, clean and affordable energy source?" much more relevant and productive.
Seems to me like examining externalities of different energy sources is a part of the nuance of this question. Feels like you're being a bit of a hater.
Your framing implies that the answer must be a single source, which is nonsense. The best answer is almost certainly a portfolio of multiple sources that allows for dramatically more innovation.
I mean, the title is in response to the specific, observed phenomenon of people in oil/gas/coal producing areas arguing for environmental restrictions on solar/wind/nuclear, but not arguing the same for oil/gas/coal.
In the context of "what is a reliable, clean and affordable energy source?", we need to address that whatever we pick will necessarily hurt somebody's bottom line, and they will dig in and fight tooth and nail to prevent that happening, even if their livelihood is at the expense of the species. So rationally addressing a bad faith argument against many options that answer your question is, I think, worthwhile.
Birds have sensitive lungs, Canary in a coal mine comes to mind.
... birds respiratory system being so sensitive, it is vitally important that the bird's breath fresh, pure air. Toxins or pollutants in the air can quickly become a major source of problem and even death for the bird: https://cdn.ymaws.com/petsitters.org/resource/resmgr/virtual...
Air Pollution Kills 10 Million People a Year[1]. Air pollution must impact birds a lot more than humans.
Note that there has been a concerted effort to discredit windmills by the oil-and-gas industry to portray them as meat grinders for birds with the same photographs and handy boilerplate text distributed to various "special interest groups" (read: astroturfers) all over the globe to try to stave off the inevitable. And all of this is perfectly legal. They did the same with whales.
The problem is that they're not wrong, turbines and even solar towers wipe out vast bird and bat populations. Obama had to pass a last minute law approving the numerous deaths of bald eagle populations unfortunately. Water desalination projects leave behind dead zones of salt in the water that wipe out fish populations. Another example is recycling centers grinding up the plastic and releasing a scary amount of microplastics into the environment. I think we need a little bit of self introspection when it comes to environmentalism. When our green tech isn't so green we need to "do better" and make it healthier for the environment. I don't think we should ever stop trying to figure out how to make it less harmful. Hiding our collective heads in the sand and saying, "Look it is green so it can't be causing the same problems," is going to put us into an echo chamber where we can do no wrong. And, in the end justify doing damage we'll regret later. We all live on this planet together we should be good shepherds of it.
> The problem is that they're not wrong, turbines and even solar towers wipe out vast bird and bat populations.
> Obama had to pass a last minute law approving the numerous deaths of bald eagle populations unfortunately.
316K Eagles vs 150 confirmed deaths due to windmills over a decade.
So yes, they're wrong. And amplifying this sort of thing is exactly what those campaigns hope for, so you're doing their work for them. You're in good company, Donald Trump did the exact same thing (and made up a number to go with it rather than to claim 'vast' numbers).
Does it mean that any numbers of Bald Eagles killed by windmills is acceptable? No, of course it doesn't. But either we have a different idea when we hear the word 'vast' or 'vast' is exaggerated.
Readit News
Global warning is coming for birds too. Global warming poses an "existential threat for two thirds of North American bird species" [1] and obviously a similar proportion of bird species around the globe.
1. https://www.audubon.org/climate/survivalbydegrees
https://phys.org/news/2017-12-scientists-survivors-thomas-co...
You won't see anti-wind advocates talking about curfews or outright banning them though.
I'm genuinely confused how they would even be part of this conversation.
They're still impressive little killers, but that's important to keep in mind.
> Birds of prey in Africa experiencing population collapse, study finds > new research used road surveys to find that nearly 90% of the 42 raptor species studied had experienced declines, with more than two-thirds showing evidence of being globally threatened.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2024/jan/04/birds-of...
If the people involved in this conversation actually cared about birds, they wouldn't be worried about either. They'd be worried about cats. Cats kill about 20-55% of the entire US bird population every single year. Somewhere between 1.3B and 4B birds per year in the US alone. [1] And an order of magnitude more small mammals (6.3B - 22.3B).
It's several orders of magnitude more than turbines and oil-and-gas drilling combined.
Studies put the number of birds killed by wind turbines in the US at 140K-690K. That's 0.0035% to 0.05% of the birds killed by cats. It would literally be a rounding error nobody would ever notice if all the wind turbines came down.
I honestly can't believe we're still having this conversation in the context of wind power. Put some UV stickers or black paint on them and move on. [3]
[1] https://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms2380
[2] https://www.denverpost.com/2019/09/20/bird-population-decrea...
[3] https://group.vattenfall.com/press-and-media/newsroom/2022/b...
Dead Comment
Dead Comment
1. Solar panels are toxic, require more energy to produce than they generate, and can't be recycled.
2. EV's are worse for the environment than ICE vehicles.
3. Lithium mining is worse than oil/gas drilling.
4. Solar/wind prices are skyrocketing and everyone is abandoning solar/wind.
5. Solar/wind can't work because they're too intermittent.
6. Climate change isn't real OR climate change is real but natural and unstoppable OR climate change is helpful to the planet (these opposing beliefs are often repeated back to back)
1. Yes, solar panel production is not particularly good for the environment but not any more so than many other common industrial processes and the panels themselves are perfectly safe. Yes that used to be true decades ago, but not anymore. For many years now solar panels generate more energy than they took to make after just a few years operation. Yes, but the fact that they are not particularly recyclable doesn't matter at all because we are never going to run out of sand.
2. Yes, EV's can have larger carbon footprints that ICE vehicles in the few areas where almost all electricity is from coal. But outside of that specific case EVs are always at least slightly better, typically by 20-30%.
3. Yes, it can be argued that lithium mining is worse than oil/gas drilling but it's not clear cut and would only be worse for the local environment if at all. The effect on climate of oil and gas drilling is always going to be far far worse.
4. No, Solar/wind prices are clearly falling and more solar/wind gets installed every year.
5. Yes, solar/wind are intermittent, so they can't be used alone, but work great when paired with investment in longer transmission lines, grid storage and non-intermittent carbon free sources.
For point 6 I can only say that people are will be less likely to make blanket denials if you tell them the truth in a non-judgemental way, respect their intelligence, and are forthcoming with the problems and challenges of addressing climate change.
PDF link to a study comparing different installation countries: https://www.ise.fraunhofer.de/content/dam/ise/de/documents/p...
However, for your convenience, I used google to search for "are solar panels net energy positive" and found this as the 2nd link:
https://www.solarmelon.com/faqs/solar-panels-use-energy-manu...
This contains a link to at least one peer-reviewed paper:
https://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/es3038824
I can almost guarantee that a similar process will elicit similar answers for every other point in the GP's list.
If something is killing birds, even a lot of birds, but in a place where those birds are abundant and whatever is killing them will just lower lower their equilibrium population a bit rather than set it on a decline or lower it so far that they might die out in the area then there generally isn't a lot of concern over it.
Hence activities in places with species of birds that have low population or are threatened or endangered tend to draw more concern than activities in places where that isn't the case even if the latter kills way more total birds.
We're a few billion exceptions to the rules walking around, very few people want to give up their fun. I've had this conversation with gun owners, oversized truck owners, people interested in public transit it always comes down to something they want everybody else to have to do but not them.
We're not going to give up our toys til we're dead.
edit: forgot to add the link ( which was reposted to HN earlier today) https://slatestarcodex.com/2019/06/03/repost-epistemic-learn...
"Our data about US were so poor that we needed to add data from other continents"
> cats kill 1.3–4 billion birds each year in the U.S.
"But we still ended somehow with this bold and likeable value made with a mix of pure air, foreign data and statistical spice"
Another case of turd data polished to gold by the magic of science. People will repeat it for decades online.
I know that is both an idealistic and hyperbolic take on things. The bigger point is that when people say "affordable", they often really mean "profitable". But we cannot afford not to fix the problems.
By definition, sustainability is a waste management, that allows recycling rates of 90% or higher. CO2 is just one of our waste products we totally didnt care about.
"Clean" and "affordable" map immediately and obviously onto wind and solar; what then happens is people engage in a lot of wrangling around "reliable" to push nuclear, requiring bending both "clean" and "affordable" quite a bit and running into an invisible other criteria of "quick to deploy" and "politically acceptable".
Speaking of countries, I could reduce this answer to one word, which refutes every single point you make: France.
But the OP's question is loaded too. We don't need "reliable" right now. Fossil fuel can cover the reliability gap on the short term perfectly well. Until the question becomes "well, we replaced all the peak consumption with renewables, now what?", asking for reliability is status-quo propaganda.
> I find the question "what is a reliable, clean and affordable energy source?" much more relevant and productive.
Seems to me like examining externalities of different energy sources is a part of the nuance of this question. Feels like you're being a bit of a hater.
Dead Comment
Deleted Comment
In the context of "what is a reliable, clean and affordable energy source?", we need to address that whatever we pick will necessarily hurt somebody's bottom line, and they will dig in and fight tooth and nail to prevent that happening, even if their livelihood is at the expense of the species. So rationally addressing a bad faith argument against many options that answer your question is, I think, worthwhile.
... birds respiratory system being so sensitive, it is vitally important that the bird's breath fresh, pure air. Toxins or pollutants in the air can quickly become a major source of problem and even death for the bird: https://cdn.ymaws.com/petsitters.org/resource/resmgr/virtual...
Air Pollution Kills 10 Million People a Year[1]. Air pollution must impact birds a lot more than humans.
[1]https://www.nytimes.com/2022/07/08/opinion/environment/air-p...
316K Eagles vs 150 confirmed deaths due to windmills over a decade.
So yes, they're wrong. And amplifying this sort of thing is exactly what those campaigns hope for, so you're doing their work for them. You're in good company, Donald Trump did the exact same thing (and made up a number to go with it rather than to claim 'vast' numbers).
Does it mean that any numbers of Bald Eagles killed by windmills is acceptable? No, of course it doesn't. But either we have a different idea when we hear the word 'vast' or 'vast' is exaggerated.
edit: here is an article to back this up:
https://www.newsweek.com/fact-check-are-thousands-bald-eagle...
You're regurgitating pure propaganda put out by a multi-trillion-dollar industry that is orders of magnitude worse in every way.
"Americans execute record number of prisoners" -- Joseph Goebbels.