Wild Turbines. (1 Viewer)

glenayers1951 · Jun 28, 2019

I know people will say they are producing clean energy but I think they are an eyesore and blot on the landscape. Not only do they spoil the look of the countryside but they are noisey and interfare with the flietpath of migrating birds and also young inexperienced swans fly into them and are killed. This government needs to put a stop to all these contraptions springing up all over the country.

glenayers1951 · Jun 28, 2019

glenayers1951 said:
I know people will say they are producing clean energy but I think they are an eyesore and blot on the landscape. Not only do they spoil the look of the countryside but they are noisey and interfare with the flietpath of migrating birds and also young inexperienced swans fly into them and are killed. This government needs to put a stop to all these contraptions springing up all over the country.

Wind Turbines sorry.

Sangahyando · Jun 28, 2019

glenayers1951 said:
This government needs to put a stop to all these contraptions springing up all over the country.

I tend toagree with you regarding the aesthetics and the risk they present to wildlife, but which government and which country are you referring to?

kb57 · Jun 28, 2019

Sangahyando said:
I tend toagree with you regarding the aesthetics and the risk they present to wildlife, but which government and which country are you referring to?

Assuming the OP means England, the government has more or less killed off new onshore wind developments with changes in feed-in-tariffs. Offshore is a different matter, where economies of scale mean they are still viable.

I disagree with the aesthetics, which is a subjective matter, and don't think for example that the flat agricultural desert of parts of Lincolnshire is necessarily harmed by their presence. I do agree that their individual and cumulative effect on bird populations can be cause for concern (including, and perhaps especially, offshore and coastal sites...). Other forms of renewable energy such as solar power (also recently killed off in England), hydro and (perhaps) wave energy have to be part of the mix, as well as energy-from-waste and nuclear. But there is no 'do-nothing' option...

(light touch paper and retire...|:S|)

Nutcracker · Jun 28, 2019

There really ought to be more wind turbines put into existing industrial estates - every factory in the country ought to have a set of them on their roof. In that situation, the aesthetics don't matter.

Jack Dawe · Jun 28, 2019

Having seen a Griffon Vulture succumb to a conventional wind turbine I find it impossible to condone them, especially when they are strung out along a migration front, as they are around Tarifa in Spain. But what do people think about these bladeless turbines? Assuming the puff on the video is correct, these must surely be more nature-friendly?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eW4AzDpjcsI

katastrofa · Jun 28, 2019

Wind turbines kill less birds per MWh than fossil fuels: http://large.stanford.edu/courses/2016/ph240/white1/

Of course, design and placement matter.

glenayers1951 · Jul 3, 2019

I went vegan two years ago and agree with what you are saying.

jmepler · Jul 3, 2019

katastrofa said:
Wind turbines kill less birds per MWh than fossil fuels: http://large.stanford.edu/courses/2016/ph240/white1/

I'm afraid that you have misread the linked study (possibly because it is misleading). They have given the wind turbine mortality in deaths per megawatt (MW), and the fossil fuel mortality in deaths per gigawatt (GW).

Using the same units, wind turbines kill 4120 birds per GW vs 5.18 birds per GW for fossil fuels. Nearly 800 times the kill rate for the same amount of energy.

katastrofa · Jul 3, 2019

Which study? In https://www.researchgate.net/public...enefits_of_wind_energy_A_2009_update/download all deaths in Table 1 are per GWh.

jmepler · Jul 3, 2019

katastrofa said:
Which study? In https://www.researchgate.net/public...enefits_of_wind_energy_A_2009_update/download all deaths in Table 1 are per GWh.

I was referring to this link:http://large.stanford.edu/courses/2016/ph240/white1/

They quote mortality rates from two different sources. In table 1 they list US Mortality from wind power as 4.12 deaths per MW. In the section titled Other Energy Sources they list it as 0.269 deaths per GWh. 4.12/MWh is 15,300 times higher than 0.269/GWh, quite the discrepancy. I am assuming that table 1 should have been per MWh as they are talking about energy.

The paper by Sovacool appears to have so much cherry-picked data, I wouldn't trust anything in it.

Either some very sloppy work, or someone falsifying data to fit their agenda. I can't say which.

Dry ice · Jul 7, 2019

katastrofa said:
Birds and other wild animals are disappearing because we destroy their natural habitat. By far, the main reason of this destruction is animal agriculture; thus, the first essential step for all bird lovers: go vegan!

With roughly 2/3rds of their reserves dependent on grazing animals I don’t think the RSPB would entirely be in agreement:

‘However – this doesn't mean stopping eating meat altogether! Cattle grazing is extremely important for maintaining many areas of wildlife rich habitat but it's often very difficult to distinguish between environmentally friendly, extensive systems and intensive cereal-feed based systems. When buying beef, try to buy meat which has been reared outside on a natural diet. The Pasture for Life marque is one example of this, guaranteeing meat raised exclusively on pasture. Look out for meat from 'Conservation Grazing' schemes when you shop.
Read more at https://www.rspb.org.uk/our-work/ou...and-nature/food-choices/#dU6QCTIwQ7SGDs82.99’

With the majority of British butterflies favouring rough pasture I doubt Butterfly Conservation would agree either

This English Nature paper might be of interest

katastrofa · Jul 7, 2019

Conservation use of grazing is a tiny proportion of all animal agriculture.

Inside the Milk Machine: How Modern Dairy Works

"No longer using the time-consuming grazing process, grain-fed cows could be kept indoors."

"Their cows only occasionally graze. They are fed the corn and alfalfa grown on the farm, which frees the farm ‘from paying grain prices. The Ooms feel pressure to be big, which changes ‘their operation. Eric Oom, a heavyset man with close-cropped strawberry-blond hair, whose father, Adrianus, began the farm, finds keeping track of nutrients a drag. “If you let cows graze, you are not sure how much they are eating. If you stall-feed them you know exactly,” he says."

Jack Dawe · Jul 7, 2019

How is that relevant to the thread topic?

katastrofa · Jul 7, 2019

It's not.

elkcub · Jul 7, 2019

katastrofa said:
Which study? In https://www.researchgate.net/public...enefits_of_wind_energy_A_2009_update/download all deaths in Table 1 are per GWh.

Reading from pg. 22 it would appear that the huge adverse effect of fossil fuels is due to the presumed consequences "global warming," which results from CO2 generation. Absent that, the effect would be 0.20 fatalities per GWh compared to .269 for wind energy and .416 for nuclear.

...Pg. 22
Finally, while perhaps the most difficult to quantify, climate change is already threatening the survival of millions of birds around the world. About 80% of the North American duck population, for example, breeds in the prairie potholes of the northern Great Plains. Climatologists expect that temperature increases of 1 C could decimate duck populations by about 25% if rainfall remains constant [29]. A more disturbing study conducted by Thomas et al. [30] concluded that climate change was the single greatest long-term threat to birds and other avian wildlife. Looking at the mid-range scenarios in climate change expected by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Thomas et al. projected that 15-37% of all species of birds will be committed to extinction by 2050. These numbers, too, can be quantified into 4.98 deaths per GWh. Adding the avian deaths from coal mining, plant operation, acid rain, mercury, and climate change together result in a total of 5.18 fatalities per GWh.

On pg. 23, in the Conclusion, the authors recognize one of the study's limitations being:

... highly uncertain deaths attributed to climate change that may be prevented if future greenhouse gas emissions are significantly reduced.

In my opinion, the paper is highly convoluted and definitely not persuasive.
Ed

katastrofa · Jul 9, 2019

jmepler said:
I was referring to this link:http://large.stanford.edu/courses/2016/ph240/white1/

They quote mortality rates from two different sources. In table 1 they list US Mortality from wind power as 4.12 deaths per MW. In the section titled Other Energy Sources they list it as 0.269 deaths per GWh. 4.12/MWh is 15,300 times higher than 0.269/GWh, quite the discrepancy. I am assuming that table 1 should have been per MWh as they are talking about energy.

You misread the data. Table 1 in http://large.stanford.edu/courses/2016/ph240/white1/ contains annual mortality per unit of power (check the source). You can convert it to the same units in "Other energy sources" by dividing by 365*24 (number of hours in a year) and multiplying by 1,000 (to convert the number of deaths per MWh into number of deaths per GWh). In this way you get 0.47 deaths per GWh, which is comparable to nuclear energy and much lower than fossil fuels, and the same order of magnitude as the other number quoted there (0.269 deaths per GWh). The first source (https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0006320713003522) says that estimating this number is hard (they quote a spread "between 140,000 and 328,000"). Still, even with such large uncertainty, it's much less than for fossil fuels.

Placing wind turbines away from avian migration routes will also help...

The paper by Sovacool appears to have so much cherry-picked data, I wouldn't trust anything in it.

Can you be more specific?

katastrofa · Jul 9, 2019

elkcub said:
Reading from pg. 22 it would appear that the huge adverse effect of fossil fuels is due to the presumed consequences "global warming," which results from CO2 generation. Absent that, the effect would be 0.20 fatalities per GWh compared to .269 for wind energy and .416 for nuclear.

Leaving the whether "presumed" qualifier can be defended in 2019, I agree that the study seems to mix current and anticipated deaths, which is dodgy.

However, as a broad prediction, I agree with its author that fossil fuel burning has the potential to kill more birds globally than the local impact of wind turbines (assuming we don't place them across migration routes).

There are other problems with wind energy related to how it affects the wind flow, but that's another issue.

jmepler · Jul 10, 2019

katastrofa said:
You misread the data. Table 1 in http://large.stanford.edu/courses/2016/ph240/white1/ contains annual mortality per unit of power (check the source). You can convert it to the same units in "Other energy sources" by dividing by 365*24 (number of hours in a year) and multiplying by 1,000 (to convert the number of deaths per MWh into number of deaths per GWh). In this way you get 0.47 deaths per GWh, which is comparable to nuclear energy and much lower than fossil fuels, and the same order of magnitude as the other number quoted there (0.269 deaths per GWh). The first source (https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0006320713003522) says that estimating this number is hard (they quote a spread "between 140,000 and 328,000"). Still, even with such large uncertainty, it's much less than for fossil fuels.

That would only be true if the wind turbines were operating at 100% capacity 24 hours a day, year round. At a typical 25% of rated capacity for a terrestrial site, you would be killing four times the quoted birds for a given power output.

katastrofa said:
Can you be more specific?

In calculating deaths from fossil fuel energy production he considers the entire process, from coal mining to potential global warming and everything in between. And he selects a worst case and then assumes that for the entire industry. The same with nuclear energy. With wind turbines, he only considers direct kills.

Lots of good examples and discussion here and here. Sovacool actually joins in on the discussion, and he doesn't really help his case (in my opinion). To his credit, he does admit to being wrong on a number of facts (once it was pointed out to him). But, in one of the discussions, he makes the following quote: So I blur the line more than most; some of it is considered “research,” some is considered “advocacy and service.” He may see it as two different things, but his "advocacy" is being quoted and re-quoted as legitimate research. In my opinion, a scientist who is blurring the lines to advance an agenda has lost all credibility.

elkcub · Jul 10, 2019

...But, in one of the discussions, he makes the following quote: So I blur the line more than most; some of it is considered “research,” some is considered “advocacy and service.” He may see it as two different things, but his "advocacy" is being quoted and re-quoted as legitimate research. In my opinion, a scientist who is blurring the lines to advance an agenda* has lost all credibility.

At the end of the Atomic Insights discussion he signs off as:

Benjamin Sovacool
Associate Professor of Law
Vermont Law School

So I'm not sure he has legitimate credibility as a scientist in the first place. His arguments are long and convoluted and sound much more like a lawyer's than a scientist's.

*His agenda is this:

...A final secondary conclusion is that if there is a real “bird killer,” it is neither wind energy nor nuclear power but coal and fossil fuels, especially if you factor in climate change. As I state in the conclusion, again, “fossil-fueled facilities are about 17 times more dangerous to birds on a per GWh basis than wind and nuclear power stations.”

And as I pointed out in post #16, absent the CO2 -> climate change hypothesis, the fossil fuel results would be 0.20 fatalities per GWh compared to .269 for wind energy and .416 for nuclear. According to his own numbers, therefore, the argument against "fossil-fueled facilities" depends entirely on the validity of his CO2/climate-change prediction.

Ed

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