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People who oppose wind farms often claim wind turbine blades kill large numbers of birds, often referring to them as "bird choppers". And claims of dangers to iconic or rare birds, especially raptors, have attracted a lot of attention.
Wind turbine blades do indeed kill birds and bats, but their contribution to total bird deaths is extremely low, as these three studies show.
A 2009 study using US and European data on bird deaths estimated the number of birds killed per unit of power generated by wind, fossil fuel and nuclear power systems.
It concluded, "Wind farms and nuclear power stations are responsible each for between 0.3 and 0.4 fatalities per gigawatt-hour (GWh) of electricity while fossil-fuelled power stations are responsible for about 5.2 fatalities per GWh."
That's nearly 15 times more. From this, the author estimated that wind farms killed approximately seven thousand birds in the United States in 2006 but nuclear plants killed about 327,000 and fossil-fuelled power plants 14.5 million.
In other words, for every one bird killed by a wind turbine, nuclear and fossil fuel powered plants killed 2,118 birds.
(Score: 2) by Gaaark on Friday June 16 2017, @10:57PM (3 children)
"nuclear and fossil fuel powered plants killed 2,118 birds."
Nuclear plants don't kill birds: people running nuclear plants kill birds.... with guns!
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 16 2017, @11:36PM (1 child)
Based on a sample size of one, chicken coops are responsible for an average of about 0.5 fatalities per chicken capacity per year, or a lifetime average of around 2 fatalities per chicken.
We're working on a selective breeding program to develop a population of house sparrows with chicken-coop-avoidance instinct, but these things take time. Time and ammo.
(Score: 1) by Ethanol-fueled on Friday June 16 2017, @11:47PM
Human fatalities? I believe it, those coops are full of mean motherfuckers and they can and will rip a young human or small animal to shreds.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by JoeMerchant on Saturday June 17 2017, @02:17AM
And they've got nothing on airports, especially since the "Sully" event.
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