Buildings, vehicles, power lines kill hundreds of millions of birds each year.
The following is from:
reddit.com/r/energy 24 days ago
hmatveev
“”Do wind turbines really kill a lot of birds? I did some calculations
Hey guys, I’ve been seeing a lot of talk about wind turbines being “bird killers” lately, especially after Trump called them “graveyards for birds” (lol). So I decided to do some digging and math to see what’s really going on.
Here’s what I found:
In the US, wind turbines kill about 500,000 birds a year. Sounds like a lot, right?
BUT… cats kill between 1.4 to 3.7 BILLION birds annually. That’s billion with a B!
When you do the math, wind turbines are responsible for less than 0.01% of human-related bird deaths. That’s basically nothing!
I mean, come on. Are we really gonna freak out about wind turbines when our fluffy little murder machines at home are doing WAY more damage? 😹
But wait, there’s more! The wind industry isn’t just sitting on their hands. They’re actually trying to make things better:
Some genius figured out that painting one blade black reduces bird deaths by 72% over 10 years. How cool is that?
There’s this AI system called IdentiFlight that can spot birds and shut down turbines. It cuts bird deaths by 85%!
Another system called SKARV adjusts blade speed and might prevent 80% of collisions.
Plus, the new turbines are like 60% bigger, more efficient, and quieter than the ones from 10 years ago. So we’re moving in the right direction.
TL;DR: Wind turbines killing birds is way overblown. Your cat is probably a bigger threat to birds than all the wind farms in America combined.
What do you guys think? Any bird experts want to chime in? Or cat owners feeling a bit guilty right now? 😅””