Okay, I know some friends and they insisted that windmills are systematically dicing the world’s bird population.
Now, this didn’t seem quite right to me, because of all the dead birds I’ve encountered, they seem much more prone to breaking their birdbrain necks on my front window glass. Admittedly, I’m not allowed around windmills ever since that one horrific day in Spring of '04…
But I digress.
So, I sniffed around a bit. Found this:
http://www.awea.org/faq/sagrillo/swbirds.html
Which seemed to reflect my amateur observations: that worrying about windmills killing birds wasn’t q-u-i-t-e as crazy as worrying about Lightning Sharks killing them, but was close, and certainly didn’t seem to reflect a desire to halt mass bird killings as much as get rid of windmills.
Now this Executive Summary:
http://www.energy.ca.gov/reports/500-04-052/500-04-052_00_EXEC_SUM.PDF
seems to indicate bird mortality is greater, maybe by an order or two of magnitude.
Even at THOSE rates (and I’m frankly not certain which numbers possess greater potential for accuracy, here), still, simply arranging for a worldwide virus that would stop human destruction of bird habitats would probably be tremendously simpler way of saving birds than, say, getting rid of windmills.
This is not to say I don’t support windmills that AVOID bird-heights, or Major Bird Corridors (such as Altamont – makes a person wonder if there was ANY environmental impact statement filed) or putting horns on the tips of the blades or whatever to basically keep the birds away.
But I’d appreciate a little perspective on this, if anyone’s got some.