On Tue, 27 Apr 2010 10:52:36 -0700, "Bill McKee"
wrote:

The enviros were ecstatic about windmills
here for awhile. But now they want to limit them because of the bird
deaths.

Let's see a cite for that claim.

The plain fact is that every time somebody's against wind turbines,
usually for irrational and hypocritical esthetic reasons, they
suddenly become concerned with bird mortality. Ask any one of them to
show some evidence of previous concern, and all you'll get is
doubletalk.

Major problem is they are build in grazing land. So lots of ground
squirrels that the Golden Eagles and other raptors like for dinner.

So what? The birds have for the most part thrived while learning to
avoid all manner of equipment. They do pretty well with turbines as
well. The few problems that do occur have mostly been the result of
siting turbines in migratory flight paths.

Here are some numbers: about 500 times as many birds are killed by
house cats than by wind turbines. Turbines account for but a few
one-thousands of one percent of total bird mortality in the US.
Figures like those have been readily available for a long time.


http://skepticblog.org/2010/01/07/wi...-of-the-skies/
http://www.fws.gov/birds/mortality-fact-sheet.pdf
http://www.treehugger.com/files/2006...n_misconce.php

"The number of birds killed by wind turbines is also negligible when
compared to the number that die as a result of other human activities
such as traffic, hunting, electric power transmission and high-rise
buildings, the introduction of feral and roaming domestic cats,[8] and
especially the environmental impacts of using non-clean power sources.
For example, in the UK, where there are several hundred turbines,
about one bird is killed per turbine per year; 10 million per year are
killed by cars alone.[33] In the United States, turbines kill 70,000
birds per year, compared to 80,000 killed by aircraft,[34] 57 million
killed by cars, 97.5 million killed by collisions with plate
glass,[35] and hundreds of millions killed by cats.[8] An article in
Nature stated that each wind turbine kills an average of 4.27 birds
per year.[36]"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environ...nd_power#Birds


Wayne