A horrible disaster has been reported in southern California; apparently a massive windspill has occurred and the destruction looks to be immense. This report is one of the first:
Yes, there are now kites in the air. And yes the WSA (Weathervane Society of America) is rushing to the site with all the farm fowl inspired roof art that they have in their arsenal. But why Governor Schwarzenegger hasn’t dispatched the hot air balloons…NOBODY KNOWS.
Hopefully California will be able to deal with this disaster and clean up the horrific mess.
What’s that? This is absurd and you can’t spill wind? And even if you could it wouldn’t cause horrible environmental damage? Then WHY THE HELL ARE WE DRILLING FOR OIL IN ENVIRONMENTALLY SENSITIVE LOCATIONS!?!?!?!?!?!?!
Well, Corey, you are of course absolutely right, but I have lived at the Baltic for 12 years and seen one traditional goose/swan roost site after the other being lost to wind farms. Apparently, farmers preferably sold those fields to the wind companies that held the highest concentrations of swans and geese as a means to get rid of them – as you can still farm beneath the wind farms.
Therefore, regarding wind energy as an alternative energy source isn’t something I feel overly comfortable about, and I sometimes feel we are “driving out the devil with the aid of satan” as we say in German.
@Jochen: Proper siting is definitely an issue.
@Corey: exactly, and sadly, I have yet to see a wind farm propperly sited.
And another diary on DKos by the same guy, taking George Will to task for saying wind kills more birds than the oil spill.
http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2010/5/3/860898/-On-George-Will-and-Hideous-Bird-Murder…
I know this isn’t what you are saying, Jochen; I just find this link interesting as well.
Not being a birder I don’t quite understand the hub bub re: siting these windmills. All the geese and swans I have ever come in contact with seem to be pretty damn adaptable to a variety of changing conditions. Admittedly I don’t know how picky they are about nesting. Although I have watched a couple of swans raise their young in a pond 50 feet from a busy roadway in a suburban neighborhood. (Cory, 213 just past the Eddyville bridge)I have also seen written that the windmills are a danger to flying birds. The ones I have seen are turning so slowly that the only birds in danger would have to be blind, half dead or the unluckiest birds alive. I don’t support destroying wetlands or environmentally sensitive areas, but we need a safe affordable source of energy and wind is abundant and free. In closing I would submit that cats are a far greater threat to birds than wind farms, should we kill ’em all?
I am seriously (well except for that bit at the last) curious as to why this is a problem.
@ Corey: yes, yes, I mean, no, no, whatever. I CERTAINLY wasn’t saying, meaning to say, or even thinking that!
Heck, no.
Basically I was thinking or meaning to say that the most sensitive thing to do is to use less energy by, say, switch off the darned air conditioning in all the malls in the world, so a) we will save BIG energy and b) Americans can stop wearing white tennis socks to their sandals in summer.
🙂
And yeah, that is a neat link!
Is this guy, George Will, really down-playing the Gulf disaster?
What a twig!
Yes, I need to work on my vocabulary.
Part of the problem of wind is the reliance on the massive tri-propped turbines that slice up birds instead of more efficient and bird-friendly vertical shaft generators. But major corporate interests have jumped into the wind game selling the idea that the only wind turbines worth having are the tri-propped varieties so here we are.
The bottom line is that industrial scale anything has detrimental impacts on wildlife. A far better solution is to use the land we already have to site wind and solar instead of siting these farms in important habitat like mountain ridges and inter coastal waterways, but that would require not only a change in our NIMBY attitudes, but also a decentralization of the power grid which corporate energy interests consider anathema. And since they have the money, they have the politicians…
Jochen, how would you say “driving out the devil with the aid of satan” in German? Also, aren’t Europeans the ones who wear socks and sandals? You’ve got my stereotypes all mixed up.
It’s simple, Mike. Americans wear white socks with their tennis shoes and Germans wear black socks with their sandals and we all look foolish together. 🙂
@Karl: While there are issues with roosting/nesting/feeding waterfowl (fully wild ones instead of the feral Canada Geese you are used to) the big issue, so far as I understand it, is with migrating birds, many of which move at night and can’t see the blades spinning (and some do spin very rapidly).
Also, birds tend to follow the same migratory routes each year. Imagine if one day you were driving down 213 and went around a corner and suddenly a giant windmill was in the middle of the road!
And, yes, outdoor and feral cats should all be removed from the outdoors…
@Karl: This is an interesting comment that I will gladly respond to.
It is vital to differentiate between species and populations. Not all geese and swans are the same, and while many are adaptable and flexible about their ecosystem – like the Canada Geese you see at golf courses or the Mute Swans that will breed next to highways – , other species are not.
To give you an example, Greater White-fronted Geese and Tundra Bean Geese will often keep a distance of 300 m (300 yards) or more to a wind mill. And as wind mills have to be spread out not to interfere with each other (air currents), you can see that just a handful can easily “destroy” vast expanses of roosting sites. However, you might still see a small flock of local Mute Swans feed right under the same blades that scared the Arctic migrants away.
And the speed of the blades is often vastly underestimated as the wind mills are so huge. Even in light winds, the tips of the blades can reach speeds of more than 100 miles per hour (depending also on the length of the blades).
Seriously: Let’s say you had a windmill with blades 30 metres long, giving the circle they describe a diametre of roughly 60 metres and thus a circumfence of around 375 m. Let’s presume it takes one blade 10 seconds to complete the circle (and that’s not a big issue and actually rather slow, they can spin much faster), the tip will travel at a speed of 375 m per 10 seconds = 37,5 m / second = 135 kilometres per hour = 80 miles an hour.
Okay, now picture yourself on a three-lane highway on foot during rush hour, jumping from lane to lane while cars come at you with 80 miles an hour.
🙂
And birds tend to underestimate their speed just like we do.
And about the cats: yes, many more birds get killed by cats than by wind mills. But then again, not every bird is the same and the killing of a single Bald Eagle or a Golden Eagle by a wind mill may be more difficult for the population to compensate (smaller population size, different – slower – reproduction strategy) than the loss of a few American Robins by cats (and I don’t think a cat has ever killed a Golden Eagle 🙂 ).
Both issues are bad for birds, yet we just cannot compare then with each other: different species involved, different ecological background.
I hope I have given you a small introduction to the background of wind mills and birds. It is an issue with a huge amount of research put into, particularly as nature conservation bodies generally would like to see a substitute for fossil fuels, yet it is still a very complex.
Thanks again for commenting!!!
🙂
@ Mike: it’s “Den Teufel mit dem Beelzebub austreiben”. Maybe it is better translated as “Exorcise the devil with/using satan”. Basically it means “fighting fire with fire”, only that the latter can make sense while the former only refers to measures deemed to be only negative in their effect or getting you from one trouble right into the next.
And about the socks and sandals:
No we don’t – which is why I didn’t in Ann Arbor – which is why my feet were constantly cold in summer because of the air conditioning in malls and movie theatres etc – which is why I had a bad cold throughout the summer – which is why I also started wearing socks to sandals.
🙂
And Nate’s got one thing right: white socks are for sports and sports only. Men in Germany generally wear black socks, but never ever in sandals.
If it is war enough for sandals, it’s warm enough to not wear socks.
If you need to wear socks, wear them in shoes.
Adult men will usually wear neither sandals nor shorts to work (so we are all naked 😉 ), only in their spare time.
Man, are we really discussing fashion here?
Dang!!!
Let’s get back to the birds!
🙂 🙂
According to the Sierra Club – the planned expansion of the Tehachapi Pass Wind Resource Area will result in the deaths of approximately 50,000 birds each year, including more than 6,500 raptors (10 times the number estimated to be killed in the Altamont Pass). As for Oklahoma – bye, bye lesser prairie chicken.
I have a small windmill and solar panels next to my lodge to produce 40% of the energy we consume. I am doing what I can to use renewable energy sources and everybody should do it too! The wind mill has not touched a bird in almost two years of use. Every middle income american family should invest in renewable energy sources but they are all waiting for positive investment payback.. Stop looking for a payback and look at the cost of not investing in renewable energy sources!
I appreciate all the feed back on my question. Since writing it I have seen a projection that while some 50,000 birds may be killed by the wind mills, that amounts to about 10 per windmill per year. Maybe that’s why when my wife visited a wind farm while in California, there were not piles of birds under each windmill. I DO agree that if the nesting areas of birds that are not adaptable are ruined there should be changes made there. Of course in the case of farmers gaining plantable acreage, there is going to be conflict. “my kids dinner is more important than your geese”. Maybe the farmers need to be paid to not use that land as we in the U.S. now pay farmers to not grow crops which are in abundance.