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 threadKevin RussellMar 3, 2023

@tyx @bascule

No, sorry, its just nonsense, (politely) made up by the oil industry. And its been KNOWN it is BS for more than decade

Power Lines: Between 12 and 64 million killed birds a year

Cats kill more than one billion birds each year

https://www.usnews.com/news/blogs/data-mine/2014/08/22/pecking-order-energys-toll-on-birds

Show threadtyxMar 4, 2023

@kevinrns @bascule Yup, I've seen these figures too, maybe even reposted. But you need to normalize raw counts per power line length, cats population etc.
I'm not against wind energy (despite working on bats and environmental risks assessment, for more than a decade. WT barotrauma on migration is a thing for bats and countermeasures are costly and complex). I'm just saying that you can not generalize *this* report as an ultimate argument.

Free-ranging feral/domestic cats are disaster and biosafety hazard and should be strictly prohibited everywhere. We shouldn't say that unless something is better than cats - it's fine.

Show threadnemo 🐦 🟦 🐳 🃏 🥚Mar 4, 2023
@tyx @kevinrns @bascule Every scientific study into the effect of domestic cats on bird populations found: Zero effect.
Moggies catch dying and diseased birds or fledglings that have fallen.
Urban environments (where moggies are) are deserts for birds. Bird mortality is proportional to human density, not cat density.
*Every* study looking for a link between domestic cats and bird deaths found no link.
Every single one.
Show threadJohn BrophyMar 4, 2023
@nemo20000 @tyx I've never seen someone speak with such confidence about something they know nothing about. I'm sure you like cats, but there are plenty of published studies showing they're a disaster for birds.
Show threadnemo 🐦 🟦 🐳 🃏 🥚

@jk001 @tyx Then cite some that show a link between OWNED cats and bird population decline.

I’ve cited half a dozen that found NO LINK WHATSOEVER.

Ball in your court.

Mar 5, 2023 at 5:45pmWeb
Show threadJohn BrophyMar 5, 2023

@nemo20000 @tyx After the most meagre of searches...

https://www.academia.edu/download/48108870/j.biocon.2009.09.01320160816-12727-m6v5yo.pdf

And, yes, it's domestic cats.

If you want to argue, go collect some data yourself and rebut these researchers rather than spout nonsense online.

Show threadnemo 🐦 🟦 🐳 🃏 🥚Mar 5, 2023

@jk001 @tyx I get a 404.

Do read the half dozen papers I’ve already cited.

Show threadnemo 🐦 🟦 🐳 🃏 🥚Mar 5, 2023

@jk001 @tyx I’m aware that the conflation of “domestic cat” with “felis catus” is causing some confusion.

To clarify, by “domestic cat” I do mean house cats – owned, fed pets. I do not mean feral cats.