Tuesday, July 10, 2007

Bird Kill



The National Academy of Sciences has posted an Environmental Impacts of Wind-Energy Projects report. The report found that [wind turbines had] "no evidence of significant impacts on bird populations." In particular, the report sets bird kills in context by examining the relative harm to birds by common man made environmental and ecological impacts. That data can be found here.

In a nutshell, wind turbines have led to the untimely deaths of approximately 20,000-38,000 birds, compared to the roughly 100,000,000-900,000,000 birds killed by hitting buildings. (Note the extra zeros). This just shows just how patently nonsensical, irrational, and politicized the notion of windmills killing birds was from the get go. (By the way, for the purposes of the chart in this entry, I had to cheat and change the 28,000 value for turbines to 280,000 just to get that sliver blue line to appear in the chart, relative to the scale of 500,000,000 for building birdkill.)