Glass windows, cats & wind turbines kill thousands of birds, too

brave cat?

Yes, oil spills kill wildlife.

So does glass windows, cats & wind turbines... apparently all over the world.

From Jan 2005: Wind turbines taking toll on birds of prey - By John Ritter, USA TODAY

"ALTAMONT PASS, Calif. — The big turbines that stretch for miles along these rolling, grassy hills have churned out clean, renewable electricity for two decades in one of the nation's first big wind-power projects.

But for just as long, massive fiberglass blades on the more than 4,000 windmills have been chopping up tens of thousands of birds that fly into them, including golden eagles, red-tailed hawks, burrowing owls and other raptors."

From May 2008 a Canadian blogger asks which is more important "500 dead ducks vs 30,000 dead birds"?

"Why do 500 ducks killed by the oil industry cause such an outrage and the death of thousands of birds and bats killed by wind turbines have no impact on the public.

Is it because the ducks were killed by the oil industry?

If the environmentalists are outraged over the duck kill they should be outraged over the thousands of birds and bats killed by wind turbines."

April 2010 another Canadian asks is 1 dead bald eagle in Norfolk county from wind turbines too many? "One healthy eagle out of a total of only nine nesting pairs in Norfolk County may be unsustainable. This wind facility has been operating only a year. Thousands more turbines are proposed along the north shore of Lake Erie and the number of deaths can only increase. Why are we experimenting with an endangered species?"

Italy is losing birds of prey to wind farms using outdated technology: "A much safer and more efficient alternative to those guillotine-like propeller turbines which mangle wildlife, the vertical shaft turbine, is already available. Producing twice the energy, they have a smaller profile and no spinning blades. Birds and bats are not at risk with this design.

So why aren’t vertical-shaft turbines the industry norm?

The biggest obstacle to switching to this superior technology is greed. There is a lot of money at stake for the manufacturers of the archaic and lethal prop-style turbines. When there are large investments involved, business people can turn a blind eye to ethical or moral considerations."

From 2006 Europe bird groups are concerned about eagles "Wind farm turbine blades are killing a key population of Europe's largest bird of prey, UK wildlife campaigners warn - Britain`s Royal Society for the Protection of Birds says a wind farm off the Norwegian coast has reduced the population of Europe`s largest eagle. The society says only one white-tailed eagle is expected to fledge from the site on the bird`s former stronghold of Smola islands."

This 2004 blog thinks deaths from turbines are A-OK compared to other bird deaths: "Summary of bird loss due to collisions.
400,000,000 by collisions with buildings and windows
85,000,000 by collisions with power lines.
70,000,000 by collisions with vehicles
20,000,000 by collisions with TV and radio towers
45,000 by collisions with the 15,000 wind turbines
If we eventually had a million turbines, they would account for only 1.5% of all the casualties that birds now undergo to live with we humans. Just for comparison, the Audubon Society estimates that about 100,000,00 birds are killed by house cats each year. "

SO I'VE GOT IT NOW.... REALLY, we need to get rid of the old wind turbines, CATS and WINDOWS to save birds!!

From May 2010 at HotAir's green room "Even those who say that wind farms don’t really put a dent in the bird population point out that domestic cats kill as many as “hundreds of millions of birds” every year. That’s why, beginning this week, Bill Maher and I will be kicking off a grassroots movement pushing Congress to introduce the American Defelinization Act of 2010. These cats must be found and eliminated. And don’t start crying to me now, cat lovers. (I have three cats myself.) It’s for the good of the birds.

Sadly, that’s not going to solve the problem either. A 2006 report from NPR estimates that glass windows in buildings – particularly high rise skyscrapers – kill as many as one billion birds per year, which accounts for roughly 5% of the total bird population. That number sounds a bit high to me, but even if the real total is only ten percent of that, we’re losing 100 million birds annually to glass panes. We must move immediately to eliminate glass windows from all buildings. Of course, that’s going to make the offices quite a bit harder to heat in the winter, so we’re probably going to be needing more … ummmm… oil….

We don’t want to see oil spills, either from drilling or shipping, so we constantly work to improve the technology and reduce the risks. And we will no doubt learn from this sad event and continue to improve safety precautions and procedures. But we don’t throw the baby bird out with the bath water, either. Let’s see… Exxon Valdez was in 1989. This spill is in 2010. If oil exploration, production and shipping continues with major accidents at that rate, it could cost us roughly a half a million birds every twenty years. How many will wind farms, windows and cats rack up in that time?

The sad fact is that birds and technology don’t mix very well. That doesn’t mean that we turn our backs on technology and return to cave dwelling. And let’s face it here… you birds really only have yourselves to blame."