🚀 go-pugleaf

On Tue, 08 Sep 2009 11:34:26 +1000, Ron House
<rhouse@smartchat.net.au> wrote:

>John M. wrote:
>> On Sep 7, 9:19 am, Ron House <rho...@smartchat.net.au> wrote:
>
>>> http://peacelegacy.org/articles/wind-farms-do-they-kill-birds
>> 
>> A very thoughtful piece, Ron, even though you rate increased animal
>> suffering much higher than loss of biodiversity, and you are to be
>> commended for taking the trouble to think the windfarm problem
>> through.
>
>Thanks John. To some extent, biodiversity is yet another human-centred 
>thing, but real individual lives lived by sentient beings, that is 
>in-the-small concrete reality. Just a week or so ago a bird deliberately 
>flew down from its tree and warned me of a deadly snake I was about to 
>tread on, thus saving my life. It did that because I feed it in harsh 
>winters, I ask after her babies, I involve myself in their community. 
>And she remembers. I am 'one of the gang'. My wife has also had her life 
>saved similarly and we have had snakes repelled from our house often. 
>Photos here:
>
>http://wingedhearts.org/minnie-miner-saves-me-from-snake
>
>Due to what I have learned about the wisdom, intelligence, care, and 
>other higher qualities of birds coming from my personal involvement, I 
>have to treat individual birds as separate, invaluable lives, not to be 
>subsumed into 'bulk' considerations like diversity.
>
>> The answer has always been small is beautiful, and small turbines on
>> the roof, perhaps with solar panels additionally, has always appealed
>> to me. But the needed materials to manufacture these may be the crunch
>> that stops this solution. A new design of windmill with rare-earth
>> elements used in magnets on the tips of the rotors and fixed coils for
>> electrical generation and collection will likely founder because of
>> the shortage of materials. They're not called rare-earth for nothing.
>> Similar problems can be encountered for the latest super-efficient
>> designs for battery storage of electricity and likely will exist for
>> solar panels.
>
>Good point. I don't give up on technology though. The impractical has a 
>way of becoming practical.
>
>> Meanwhile my local Golden Eagles have gone the same way my local
>> Bonelli's Eagles did eight years ago. It took just two years from the
>> installation of a mountain ridge string of 12 "aeolien" above our
>> village in Languedoc-Roussillon before they disappeared. How long I
>> wonder before I see my last local Short-toed Eagle?
>
>That is shocking. You must feel so frustrated watching this destruction. 
>The pointlessness of it is the worst part. Wind is set up to minimise 
>fossil fuel usage, and then 40% more fossil fuel is used in nutty 
>schemes to bury ('sequester') CO2 (which is plant food, and thus 
>indirectly animal and human food, not pollution). I saw a target of 20% 
>wind mentioned somewhere a few days ago. Big Coal is laughing all the 
>way to the bank. Promote the global warming hoax, sell 40% more coal to 
>80% of the previous market, and end up about 15% ahead of the game. And 
>of course they know the 20% figure is itself fantasy.
>
>I believe humans need to admit something clearly to themselves: saving 
>on fossil fuel is a human-centred activity. No animal 'cares' whether 
>coal and oil is left in the ground. We humans care because we want some 
>still there for a rainy century sometime. But it doesn't benefit any 
>other creature on Earth. They are benefited by the CO2 plant food; they 
>are benefited by burning fossil fuel. What are we humans thinking? - 
>depriving them of the plant food and killing them with wind farms in the 
>bargain. What is in it for wildlife - indeed, for the rest of the planet 
>apart from ourselves?


Some time ago Dr Malcolm Ogilvie of Scottish Natural Heritage
suggested ridiculously low figures for bird strikes at wind turbines -
something like one in seven years if I remember correctly.  He
referred to something being on the Internet about it, but declined to
identify the website.  IIRC John supported his stance.

In my view many birds will be killed by wind turbines and the true
number will never be known as predators will remove corpses 

I believe the Climate Realists article.