BP kills a few birds in an oil spill and they get sued for millions.
Go figure....
Yeah, what happened with that BP oil spill? I thought the spill was going to destroy the Gulf Coast for the next 30 years. I'm sure there's significant cleanup still going on, but where did all the dire predictions turn out?
Meanwhile, you'd think if there really were half a million bird carcasses per year rotting at the bases of wind towers, the anti-wind-power folks would would have scads of pictures by now. Bird bodies wouldn't be hard to find, just go to the towers then look around for carcasses within a few hundred feet of the base. Given inexpensive modern pic/vid technologies, it wouldn't even be that hard/costly to set up automated monitoring.
Yet there are almost no such pictures or vids. Why? Well, frankly those estimates are fabricated. In fact, there is very little hard data, and in fact, few actual carcasses have ever been found, even when searched for by the most dedicated anti-wind advocates. Despite what we read on the internet, it just doesn't hold up to even the simplest examination.
A more interesting figure would be the number of birds killed by cars each year. I believe it's a lot higher than even the worse estimate for the wind machines. And cars also kill thousands of people every year, which wind machines don't. Anybody proposing to ban cars?
The economic arguments against wind machines are much more potent than anything having to do with birds. The argument based on bird collisions is what's known as a "canard", if you'll excuse the weak pun. :)
And BTW, full-disclosure: I'm a bird watcher and bird lover from way back, and if there were really good data to support wind-power bird kills, I'm sure the various bird-related publications and sites would be all over it. So far, it's mighty flimsy.
Back on thread topic, I imagine the effect on radar is indeed significant. They say there's software to compensate... but I'm skeptical.