[Gare]

> If wind would supply a more desirable 40% of (current) power demand, there would be three to four million tonnes of waste per year.

For comparison, New York City produces 14 million tons of waste per year. Doesn't seem as dramatic when put in context.

[lovecg]

It’s like that scare mongering about wind turbines killing hundreds of thousands of birds per year. It’s laughable when compared with billions of birds that _cats_ kill.

Any discussion of this topic is ripe with emotionally charged misstatements, I’m careful about taking anything at face value anymore.

[internetter]

Cats kill between 1.3 and 4.0 billion birds a year: https://dariuszzdziebk.wpenginepowered.com/wp-content/upload...

— Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute & U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service

From https://climate.mit.edu/ask-mit/do-wind-turbines-kill-birds

- Wind turbines kill something around a million birds every year

- Power lines kill something around 25 times that

- And "A 2012 study found that wind projects kill 0.269 birds per gigawatt-hour of electricity produced, compared to 5.18 birds killed per gigawatt-hour of electricity from fossil fuel projects"

[lovecg]

Well one thing that occurred to me is this argument could hold water if the wind turbines somehow drastically differ in the kinds of birds they kill. E.g. if they kill a million of some rare species that’s not killed by anything else that could be different. But I haven’t seen any data on that.

[nkurz]

I think it's talked about fairly often. Wind turbines kill many more raptors (eagles and hawks) than cats do. Here's some data: https://cowboystatedaily.com/2023/02/19/number-of-eagles-kil...