Bird Deaths Down 70 Percent After Painting Wind Turbine Blades (arstechnica.com) 95
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Something as simple as black paint could be the key to reducing the number of birds that are killed each year by wind turbines. According to a study conducted at a wind farm on the Norwegian archipelago of Smola, changing the color of a single blade on a turbine from white to black resulted in a 70-percent drop in the number of bird deaths. Previous laboratory studies have suggested that birds may not be very good at seeing obstructions while they're flying, and adding visual cues like different colored fan blades can increase birds' chances of spotting a rapidly rotating fan.
At the Smola wind farm, regular checks of four particular wind turbines -- each 70m tall with three 40m-long blades -- found six white-tailed eagle carcasses between 2006 and 2013. In total, the four turbines killed 18 birds that flew into the blades over those six years, along with five willow ptarmigans that are known to collide with the turbine towers rather than the blades. (Another four turbines selected as a control group were responsible for seven bird deaths, excluding willow ptarmigans, over the same timeframe.) And so, in 2013, each of the four turbines in the test group had a single blade painted black. In the three years that followed, only six birds were found dead due to striking their turbine blades. By comparison, 18 bird deaths were recorded by the four control wind turbines -- a 71.9-percent reduction in the annual fatality rate. Digging into the data a little more showed some variation on bird deaths depending upon the season. During spring and autumn, fewer bird deaths were recorded at the painted turbines. But in summer, bird deaths actually increased at the painted turbines, and the authors note that the small number of turbines in the study and its relatively short duration both merit longer-term replication studies, both at Smola and elsewhere. The study has been published in the journal Ecology and Evolution.
At the Smola wind farm, regular checks of four particular wind turbines -- each 70m tall with three 40m-long blades -- found six white-tailed eagle carcasses between 2006 and 2013. In total, the four turbines killed 18 birds that flew into the blades over those six years, along with five willow ptarmigans that are known to collide with the turbine towers rather than the blades. (Another four turbines selected as a control group were responsible for seven bird deaths, excluding willow ptarmigans, over the same timeframe.) And so, in 2013, each of the four turbines in the test group had a single blade painted black. In the three years that followed, only six birds were found dead due to striking their turbine blades. By comparison, 18 bird deaths were recorded by the four control wind turbines -- a 71.9-percent reduction in the annual fatality rate. Digging into the data a little more showed some variation on bird deaths depending upon the season. During spring and autumn, fewer bird deaths were recorded at the painted turbines. But in summer, bird deaths actually increased at the painted turbines, and the authors note that the small number of turbines in the study and its relatively short duration both merit longer-term replication studies, both at Smola and elsewhere. The study has been published in the journal Ecology and Evolution.
Cats thank you (Score:2, Funny)
Meow! Cats won't go hungry. Thank you.
Re:Cats thank you (Score:5, Funny)
Even better idea: attach cats to the turbine blades.
Re:Cats thank you (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Cats thank you (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Cats thank you (Score:4, Funny)
How do you get'em up there? Cat-a-pult???
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"Even better idea: attach cats to the turbine blades."
Each cat kills more birds than 8 to a dozen of these rotors.
The birds mentioned are about the blindest or stupidest that exist, they even fly right into phone-poles.
One might think they calculate the direction and flight-duration then close their eyes and start.
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And all these years I thought that 'bird-brained' was a complement....
Complement? (Score:2)
And all these years I thought that 'bird-brained' was a complement....
A complement to what?
I've always thought of it as more of a compliment, but YMMV.
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Each cat kills more birds than 8 to a dozen of these rotors.
No, that's nonsense. The cats that catch birds the most are the ones that live outside and need to hunt to eat
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'Each cat kills more birds than 8 to a dozen of these rotors.'
'No, that's nonsense. The cats that catch birds the most are the ones that live outside and need to hunt to eat'
You seem to be under the illusion that cats kill from hunger.
Cats kill up to 3.7B birds annually.
https://eu.usatoday.com/story/... [usatoday.com]
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Is this a joke? The article provides nothing to counter that some cats hunt for food. The study that came up with that number does some major extrapolation but it ends up with each cat living outside catching a bird every couple weeks. Turns out there are a lot of birds and a lot of cats
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Since your Google seems to be broken again...
"Wind turbines kill between 214,000 and 368,000 birds annually — a small fraction compared with the estimated 6.8 million fatalities from collisions with cell and radio towers and the 1.4 billion to 3.7 billion deaths from cats, according to the peer-reviewed study by two federal scientists and the environmental..."
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"Is this a joke? The article provides nothing to counter that some cats hunt for food. "
Nobody ever suggested that. But I have it on good authority, that my cat kills 1-2 birds per day and they are not missing a feather when she deposits them on my doorstep.
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Your cat would be an outlier in that case (and likely the local bird population is very high). For a cat that lives inside and is fed, that's probably more common, but they make up a small minority of the cats included in the study
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Cat 1: Catch yer own frickin' birds, turbine boy...
Cat 2: Yawn!!
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One of the ARS commenters posted this ...
"I’m not sure the anti-renewables group will care much. While 300,000 sounds like a lot, the linked report from TheCornellLab in association with a several other organizations and agencies reported in 2014 that power line collisions lead to 25 million deaths, automobiles: 200 million, building windows: 599 million, and cats: 2.4 billion."
Re:Cats thank you (Score:5, Informative)
The issue isn't the number of birds, but the type of birds being killed.
Californian Condors.
Various kinds of Eagles.
Other protected raptors.
etc.
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If a bird of prey whose eyes can pick out a small white rabbit in the snow from a mile away flies straight into a giant whirling blade in the sky and breaks its neck I'm going to blame the bird.
Re:Cats thank you (Score:5, Insightful)
Large whirling blades are something animals are not used to in nature. Why do deer stand in the middle of the road instead of moving out of the way? They don't understand the dangers.
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Why do deer stand in the middle of the road instead of moving out of the way? They don't understand the dangers.
They've had a century to figure it out, though. The answer is that they're just really goddamned stupid. Ravens are smart. They get out of the road when a car's coming. (Or at least hop off to one side so they're easy to avoid.)
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The answer is that they're just really goddamned stupid.
The answer is that YOU'RE just really goddamned stupid.
https://www.scienceabc.com/nature/animals/why-do-deer-get-transfixed-by-car-headlights-and-freeze-in-place.html
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Your link doesn't contradict what I said at all. They keep staring into the light instead of saying to themselves "this thing that is blinding me might be dangerous", looking away, and running away. That's stupid AF.
They're also too stupid to realize that other deer get killed on the road, and then they stand around in the road. Which is fucking stupid.
Which brings us back to my original conclusion, deer are fucking stupid.
And so are you, whoever you are. Which I presume is why you post AC. You're just smar
Re: Cats thank you (Score:2)
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Large whirling blades are something animals are not used to in nature. Why do deer stand in the middle of the road instead of moving out of the way? They don't understand the dangers.
The deer can't see the car coming. It was just wandering around in the forest without the benefit of artificial lights. It has just been blinded out of nowhere and its startle reflex is causing it to freeze and hope that its natural camouflage keeps it out of danger until the danger passes as it can't see where to run. From the deer's perspective, there is nothing to "learn", either it works or it is dead. I suspect not enough deer get killed by cars for it to exert any significant selective pressure.
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Well, I've had two deer just sprint directly into my car from off the side of the road, and after the second one I have no sympathy anymore at all! These deer went out of their way to ram me at full speed.
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If a bird of prey whose eyes can pick out a small white rabbit in the snow from a mile away flies straight into a giant whirling blade in the sky and breaks its neck I'm going to blame the bird.
Hell yeah! It's the birds' own fault for not evolving to detect/avoid wind turbines. I mean they've had, like, decades to do it. How long do they need?
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So exactly when did humans evolve to avoid turbine blades? Because I am pretty sure 99.9% of humans would get the hell away from any large fast spiny thing instinctively, on the basis of if that hits me it's going to either hurt like hell or I will be dead.
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All forms of energy generation kill birds and other wildlife. Wind was about on par with nuclear for bird deaths but has been getting lower over the years.
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Re:Cats thank you (Score:4, Informative)
Can you post a citation for that? Your post implies that wind turbines are disproportionately killing those kinds of birds. That sounds concerning, but I'm not finding anything to corroborate that. I thought it was bats that were killed disproportionately, which the article in the summary confirms.
I found this article, but despite the alarming headline it really doesn't blame the turbines [wind-watch.org] and presents lots of speculation. At one point it even blames the researches for *not* citing anything about condors. Here's one that speculates it could be a problem for condors [scientificamerican.com] because most of these condors are bred in captivity then released. So they don't know to avoid them and they are close to where the breed-and-release programs are.
I didn't look up Eagles and Raptors, but it really looks like the only reason Californian Condors are of special concern is because they are basically on the brink of extinction and we are trying to save. Nothing to do with the turbines themselves.
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Re:Cats thank you (Score:4, Informative)
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The cats angle on this topic is highly relevant. For anyone deeply worried about bird deaths, check out the graphics by David MacCay on much larger sources of bird deaths: https://www.withouthotair.com/... [withouthotair.com]
I don't believe that cars ARE relevant in this discussion because the types of birds predominantly killed by wind turbines are not the typical type of birds that are killed by cats. Predatory birds are not typically killed by cats.
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Painting my cat did nothing but annoying him.
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But that's like saying "Why worry about people dying from car crashes when heart disease kills way more per year?"
If we can take some simple measures to prevent deaths, we might as well do it.
I'm sure killing all predators would also help bird deaths, but that's a bit more controversial
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Are cats scavengers? I thought they will not eat it if they didn't kill it themselves. Perhaps you should say the vultures will thank the turbines. Or maybe get hit themselves... perhaps hyenas ought to be imported?
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My cats certainly eat canned cat food, and they didn't kill that. They'll also sneak off with fish at markets.
I wouldn't call them scavengers, but they are definitely opportunistic.
human scavengers (Score:2)
Most of the food at McDonald's has been dead for weeks, except perhaps the "fresh" salad.
Are cats scavengers? (Score:2)
Are cats scavengers? I thought they will not eat it if they didn't kill it themselves.
That's not really the question. Domestic cats do extensive ecological damage [wikipedia.org]. There is a distinction between what cats kill, and what cats eat. The fact that domestic cats kill large amounts of wildlife, far more than wind turbines, is the relevant fact at hand; whether they eat what they kill is, to the prey and to this discussion, irrelevant.
We can, of course, discuss the fact that wind turbines and cats kill different ranges of species.
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Skip the windmill and strap a piece of buttered bread to the cat's back. The dueling irresistible forces trying to turn the cats feet and the buttered side of the bread towards the floor could generate gigawatts.
Caution, approach the cat with caution, he'll be pissed...
Sample too small (Score:5, Informative)
The sample is so low, it's nearly unusable.
4 turbines, 18 killed birds over 6 years - that's below statistical noise. What's also missing is the amount of birds in the area. If there were 18 birds and all were killed, that's a 100% fatality rate. If there are 18,000 birds and 18 were killed, that's 0.1% fatality rate.
The study is flawed. The fix could incidentally work, but not because of the study.
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From the summary:
the authors note that the small number of turbines in the study and its relatively short duration both merit longer-term replication studies, both at Smola and elsewhere.
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The sample is so low, it's nearly unusable.
Exactly- a sample that low for something like this is meaningless.
And without statistical context (the number of birds in the area, etc etc) it's even more meaningless.
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It's worse than that.
There are four "control" turbines and four "impact" turbines, and the first problem is the choice of turbines. They're four adjacent pairs, where in each pair one turbine is "control" and one is "impact". Two of the "control" turbines are at the end of their row, and none of the "impact" turbines. That does not look like a good control to me.
Then when we look at the summary figures, the "before" period is actually 7.5 years and the "after" is 3.5 years. During the "before" period there
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We know that wind turbines are exceptionally lethal to big birds across the world, 18 deaths may not be much in this sample, but for areas with high prevalences in an endangered species could be devastating to the population.
At the Altamont Wind Resource Area alone, more than 2,000 Golden Eagles have been killed by the wind turbines but what's worse, is that the only ones doing the counting are the consultants hired by "big wind" so the problem is probably far worse.
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The flaw is in your analysis of the study.... small sample size does NOT effect data in the way you claim, in fact medical trials often start out with sample sizes exactly this small. You only need larger sample size when you are trying to determine other if other factors are involved... if you ha
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At least 2.5 times better than this one, in fact, which only had a total of 8 turbines between control and impact groups, and had more differences between them than just the headline one of painting one blade.
I don't know what you mean by this. The death rate on the controls went up from 0.23 deaths per turb
Re:Sample too small (Score:4, Informative)
Actually that's 18 birds killed in the *control turbine* group during the treatment period. The total number of observed bird deaths (excluding willow ptarmigans) was 42.
Control Before Treatment: 7
Control After Treatment: 18
Treatment Before Treatment: 11
Treatment After Treatment: 6
According the authors' analysis the result was *statistically* significant at p = 0.023 level. It might not be *practically* significant.
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Toured one of these facilities in Washington state. Turns out, the building we were getting the tour in on the top of the hill killed more birds then the windmills. It was made of a lot of glass and the birds would fly into the building.
Fixing a non-problem (Score:5, Informative)
18 birds over 7 years is far, far less than the average outdoor cat manages. So spay/neuter a cat for each wind turbine you install and we're laughing in terms of bird numbers.
The whole "turbines kill birds" thing is just a made up excuse to keep on with fossil fuels. These numbers show clearly that turbines are not a problem in any meaningful way.
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I'm in the party of "Stupid birds fly their peanut-sized brains into giant obvious spinning blades that can be seen from miles away and removes itself from the gene pool"
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Yep, less than one bird per turbine per year, hardly matches the idea of a constant rain of bird corpses that anti-environmentalists like to concern-troll us with. A regular glass door at my dad's old office had a much greater death toll than that.
Also: Birds die where they live. (Score:2)
Yep, less than one bird per turbine per year, hardly matches the idea of a constant rain of bird corpses that anti-environmentalists like to concern-troll us with. A regular glass door at my dad's old office had a much greater death toll than that.
Also: Birds die where they live. The area around a wind turbine is usually prime hunting territory for raptors: Grassland or cropland with no trees and the like for small animals to hide under. So some of the bird deaths are not caused by turbine strikes, but
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The average outdoor cat doesn't kill white-tailed eagles.
And if it does, I hope it isn't in my neighborhood.
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The case to keep on using fossil fuels is science and economics.
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Why did they paint a single blade black? Why not all blades? Then you can compare with non-painted turbines and have a more direct comparison.
Painting a single blade black is like installing an air bag in a single seat of a car and complaining that it's only lowered fatalities by 25% instead of 100%.
There's morans [andrewscampbell.com] everywhere.
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Why did they paint a single blade black? Why not all blades? Then you can compare with non-painted turbines and have a more direct comparison.
Painting a single blade black is like installing an air bag in a single seat of a car and complaining that it's only lowered fatalities by 25% instead of 100%.
There's morans [andrewscampbell.com] everywhere.
Presumably because while birds have somewhat different visual systems than the mammalian one you're used to, we both see contrast better than we do a homogeneous surface. Our visual systems respond much more to edges and contrast changes, particularly off-axis. A vaguely whitish region moving in the sky isn't something birds would typically need to have bothered about—probably a cloud? That same region alternating white/black would seem to be a much more compelling visual stimulus, and I would gues
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I think it is on purpose. With a single black blade, it breaks symmetry, potentially making movement more noticeable.
I didn't study bird visual perception but I guess those who conducted the experiment did.
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Painting a single blade black is like installing an air bag in a single seat of a car and complaining that it's only lowered fatalities by 25% instead of 100%.
The originally did install just one air bag, only for the driver, because the big problem was drivers hitting their heads on steering wheels. The first vehicle with a standard driver-side airbag was the 1986 S-Class, which also had pyrotechnic pretensioners.* The first vehicle with standard passenger airbag was the 1987 Porsche 944 Turbo, but it had a much shorter distance between the passenger and the dashboard.
* I think the airbag was optional on the 1981-1985 S-Class. My 1982 certainly doesn't have one.
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Because the alternating black and white blades are far more visible than just black blades.
Plot twist (Score:3)
Yeah but (Score:3)
How do we keep the birds from contracting Windmill Cancer?
Someone should look into that very strongly.
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Make the blades transparent, so the birds get killed instantly and painlessly, and don't have to go through agonizing years of chemo.
Re: Yeah but (Score:2)
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Make the blades transparent, so the birds get killed instantly and painlessly, and don't have to go through agonizing years of chemo.
The blades should probably be electrified too.
Psh, meaningless study (Score:2)
Everyone already knows Birds Aren't Real [birdsarentreal.com]!!!
</sardonic>
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Everyone already knows Birds Aren't Real [birdsarentreal.com]!!!
</sardonic>
Exactly. In fact, the wind turbines are all part of the plan. You see, the replacement drone birds can be programmed with the location of the wind turbines so they can avoid them. This lets the turbines take out any stray birds that have managed to avoid the government culls.
Whistles on the blade tips? (Score:1)
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I don't think making audible noise continuously is going to be a popular solution.
Candy canes (Score:2)
Paint them like candy canes so they look like barber poles. Then the birds should stay clear. The eagles are already bald.
Poor collection methods (Score:2)
The carcass collection methods seems unsuited to a thorough investigation of this important problem. Carcasses could be removed by other predators between checks, and birds could be hit by a turbine and thrown outside of the collection area. Also there is no method provided to determine which turbine the birds are being struck by, painted or standard. However a simple change to the experimental design would solve these problems and remove the experimental uncertainties introduced by the collection methodolo
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I very much doubt the killed bird is able to be thrown the distance between the turbines. You seem to be using cartoon physics. From what I have heard even getting hit by the blade is unlikely, what kills birds is the sudden low pressure behind the blade.
They should paint more often (Score:2)
Bird Deaths Down 70 Percent After Painting Wind Turbine Blades
Do birds die less after painting other things too? So if I got some birds to paint my house would they live longer too?
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Dumb birds (Score:2)
willow ptarmigans that are known to collide with the turbine towers rather than the blades
So what do they do with trees?
Running into blades I can understand. But how does a bird not see something that is standing still?
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White (Score:2)
It may be less about seeing a rotating fan than it appears as a nebulous dark moving patch of a something about to attack. Zebra stripes are suspected of providing a similar thing as flies fly by it, making them not want to stick around.
Why the hell are these white anyway? Less heat stress daily cycle?
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The construction material is near-white so white paint looks better as paint loss is less visible. I've always wondered if they should be more visible, also why they are not required to put aircraft warning beacons on the ends of the blade (or perhaps on a pole that extends up past the height of the blades).
Great news if true. Not let's do even better (Score:1)