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62 comments on Pelamis: A Shot in the Dark?

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Laurence Aurbach on June 2, 2006 - 9:52am

In this thread that discusses the bird kill issue, I offer citations that find each wind turbine is responsible for 2 bird deaths per year on average. That's 0.003% of the total number of human-caused bird deaths -- not even considering biggest factor of all, loss of natural habitat.

In addition to ThatsItImOut's points, it's worth mentioning that the newer, bigger turbines with larger, slower-spinning blades are much easier for birds to avoid and pose less of a danger than the models of 20-30 years ago.

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jokuhl on June 2, 2006 - 10:14am

This won't do much to assuage the concerns for Raptors, but Cats and Cars are a couple of our best forms of bird-killing.

Cats are said to take upwards of 10 million birds a year, don't know what the auto estimates are.

http://www.ctaudubon.org/conserv/nature/cats.htm

also:

Cats kill hundreds of millions of birds annually in the United States, said Jimm Edgar of the Mount Diablo Audubon Society, citing an article in Birders World titled "Cats -- they're soft and cuddly. They're America's favorite pets. They're also natural-born killers."

"Domestic cat attacks ... (have) contributed catastrophically to the decimation of certain avian species, especially some of our most beloved songbirds in North America," the article asserts. The American Bird Conservancy concurs with the hundreds-of-millions figure.

Dairne Ryan of Fix Our Ferals, another cat rescue group, challenges it. "You can find studies that counter that," she said. "We would all like to see better statistics, but feral cats defy statistics."

Many birds are killed not by feral cats but by pet cats whose owners let them outside in the morning and bring them in at night, Ryan said.

http://www.contracostatimes.com/mld/cctimes/living/science/14465894.htm?source=rss&channel=cctim es_science

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solar1 on June 2, 2006 - 4:50pm

Besides cats killing birds, our tall buildings kill them very efficiently. They try to fly thru the glass windows that reflect the natural outside environment. Our cars mow them down all the time on our roads. Cars also kill lots of other animals that we just leave to rot by the side of the road. We have hunters that think it is great sport to shoot them (including eagles). We build subdivisions in their breeding areas so we can enjoy nature.

Compared to all this, windmills are an absolute pleasure. We worry about a couple of birds and ignore our wholsale destruction of them.

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