Posted on 11/07/2018 1:49:53 PM PST by ameribbean expat
Take, for instance, a wind farm in the Western Ghats region of India, where a group of researchers from the Indian Institute of Science performed their study. In the area of the wind farm, raptors were around four times less common than in other areas. They kept dying to the turbines, which is not great for the raptors but good news for fan-throated lizards, the raptors’ prey.
In and around the wind farm, lizard populations exploded, completely unchecked by predation. So few of them were being eaten that they even lost almost all fear of danger. The researchers found they could approach the lizards without their running away. The lizards, in turn, reduced the population of their own prey species, causing a dramatic change in the ecosystem.
I’ve also read that these giant windmills kill bats in large numbers — bats eat huge numbers of insects — the bats use echolocation to avoid the blades, but the vacuum from their near-misses behind the blades burst their lungs and they are killed instantly.
I drive a truck for a living up and down the east coast and every time I drive through Massachusetts I see these gigantic wind turbines all over the place and they are NEVER moving! Ever ever, even on windy days. I don’t think I’ve ever seen one turbine ever rotating up there and how much do those things cost? I would imagine a fortune.
They are also a blight on the landscape.
The govt subsidized the wind farm industry on the front end but left them on their own for repairs and replacement parts. Europe subsidizes their wind farms on both ends.
The replacement parts are so expensive that the operators can’t afford to fix them when they go down.
Big ass yard ornaments.
If they could just eat the birds they kill and generate energy that way, enviros might have something worth talking about!
when I see statements like— “recent research suggests that rural free-ranging domestic cats in Wisconsin may be killing between 8 and 217 million birds each year.” I question the research, or the lack of research, and figure the author just made a SWAG.
It’s for Gaia, that butch. Er.
Why do liberals hate birds? Birds are beautiful.
Its actually kinda Purty, in a twisted way.
That said, I do not like the smell of burning coil windings!
Editors and writers and most readers have become more innumerate and less literate in the last 10 years than I can believe.
There is no such thing as “four times less”! It’s “ONE QUARTER AS MUCH”! When you INCREASE something, you get “times something”. When you reduce it you have a FRACTION remaining!
AARGH.
I we wonder why we lost the House!
Worst blight on the landscape ever! They are all over the western states, ruining our once-beautiful vistas everywhere you look.
It’s funny, liberals go absolutely bonkers about a few oil platforms ruining their vistas over the ocean, but they are fine with wind turbines as far as you can see. When this absurd power generation technology finally dies, there will be no money to remove these eyesores. Mining companies have to post bonds to restore the land once they are done mining — the same should be done for these damned machines! Make the owners pay up-front the costs of removing them when they are obsolete and dead.
Again, funny how mining companies have to do that, but not wind farm operators / owners.
8 - 217 is one heck of a range, isn’t it? In other words, “researches” don’t have a clue. I think this “cats killing birds” hysteria is all out of whack. Our two house cats are way too lazy to catch anything but the occasional bug.
Aren’t they also known as Condor quizenard? (Sorry I don’t know how to spell the fancy blender name).
I’m happy to have company on this particular soap box. Wind turbines are terrible things.
Something ironic about an endangered/protected avian specie being killed by green machine.
A nuclear plant has never killed a single bird
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