Tony “Abolish ICE” Arcieri🌹🦀Mar 3, 2023

A new study about seabirds and offshore wind turbines may surprise you.

A two-year, €3 million study of seabirds at an offshore wind farm off Scotland combined radar data with cameras to identify the species of seabird and create a three-dimensional image of birds’ flight patterns and how they avoid offshore wind turbines’ rotor blades.

The study’s findings: Not a single collision between a bird and a rotor blade was recorded.

https://electrek.co/2023/03/02/seabirds-and-offshore-wind-turbines-vattenfall/

A new study about seabirds and offshore wind turbines may surprise you

Swedish power giant Vattenfall did a two-year, €3 million study of seabirds at an offshore wind farm off Scotland – here’s what it found.

Electrek
Show threadKevin RussellMar 3, 2023

@bascule

But hooray hurrah for the Report. Everyone should bookmark the toot, open and bookmark the article, remember central facts, so when someone with tiny hands, or is leaking shoe polish from their scalp says wind generation kills birds, you can correct them.

Show threadtyxMar 3, 2023

@kevinrns @bascule Sorry for objecting, but be careful with generalizations. Report says that medium-to-large size birds do not collide under daylight conditions*, nothing about small migrating birds. Anyway I'd really happy to see this report as a peer-reviewed paper.

*they mention IR camera, but I've found little discussion of it's use after skimming the paper.

Show threadAndy McKayMar 4, 2023

@tyx @kevinrns @bascule And it can only be applied to seabirds that exist in the study area.

We know from North American land-based studies that there are completely different risk profiles for birds in other countries.

Show threadAndy McKayMar 4, 2023

@tyx @kevinrns @bascule "The movements of herring gulls, gannets, kittiwakes, and great black-backed gulls were studied in detail from April to October, when bird activity is at its height. (This study only looked at four bird species...)

i.e. No albatross, petrel, prion or cormorant species.

There are 360 species of seabirds with around 30% of those threatened with extinction.

A study looking at 1% of the available species needs to be treated with caution.

Show threadKevin RussellMar 4, 2023

@KorimakoEcology @tyx @bascule

No, the point is that reducing EVERY OTHER energy system and increasing wind will save hundreds of millions of birds, importantly if we stop drop and roll oil production exploration delivery systems, which kill, observationally, thousands of times more birds.

So talking about wind, not as a demonstrable way to save birds, is not productive, to the goal of saving birds.

Bird lovers, by the billion of bird lives, love wind, thats all I'm saying. Build 1000s.

Show threadtyxMar 4, 2023
@kevinrns @KorimakoEcology @bascule Sorry, I'm not into US energy politics, but in Europe most fossil fuels generation is gas and coal. Not oil. It's bad due to carbon footprint, air pollution, ash dumps, tundra degradation etc. but not killing birds directly on large scale (climate change is an issue, ofc). Skiming through US EIA site gives me an impression, that in the US it looks similar. Did I miss something?
Show threadJanneMar 4, 2023

@tyx In Sovacool, B 2013 Coal caused 9 million out of the 14 million of the fossile bird deaths. Gas was there too. The particulates, poisoning, destruction of habitat etc.

Hard to imagine Europe is much better on this front, and Coal burning kills people, too.

Nowhere near the numbers of pesticide, window or feral cat killers, but largest cause after them overall.

Show threadtyx

@janvenetor About coal - totally agree (see my comment in this thread, haven't seen yours before posting).

Just read Sovacool 2013 not very thoroughly, but enough to get main reasoning and numbers.There is not that much about gas. Oil is another thing, way more harmful, I've seen just enough of spills and open drilling fluid pools during fieldwork.

Mar 4, 2023 at 5:34amWeb