We went straight from “inland hurricanes” to “raging wildfires”
If trump was honest we wouldn’t be in this situation period. 
It just gave him more time to lie. CNN’s fact checker Daniel Dale counted over 150 lies told by Trump during the debate which far outpaced the previous debate.
The splitting image of Violet Beauregarde.
Clearly both ends of his alimentary canal were in competition to see which end could eject more sheisse. Spoiler alert: there are no winners in this race to… I mean from… the bottom.
I always like to ask how many birds die due to pollution from coal plants. I’ve yet to get an answer from anyone who seems super- concerned about bird being killed by windmills. Seems like it’s less about the birds dying and more about the windmills.
Lots. Lots and Lots.
The avian and wildlife costs of fossil fuels and nuclear power
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/1943815X.2012.746993
The paper provides two examples: one relates to a calculation of avian fatalities across wind electricity, fossil-fueled, and nuclear power systems in the entire United States. It estimates that wind farms are responsible for roughly 0.27 avian fatalities per gigawatt-hour (GWh) of electricity while nuclear power plants involve 0.6 fatalities per GWh and fossil- fueled power stations are responsible for about 9.4 fatalities per GWh. Within the uncertainties of the data used, the estimate means that wind farm-related avian fatalities equated to approximately 46,000 birds in the United States in 2009, but nuclear power plants killed about 460,000 and fossil-fueled power plants 24 million.
Still this paper has some limitations.
Put another way, lumping estimates from different species, locations, and time periods do not capture temporal differences relating to migration patterns or spatial differences concerning migratory corridors. A study with a larger sample size that focused on a greater number of species across more locations, including migration routes and other important areas, over a longer period of time and encompassing the entire part of the fuel cycle for different electricity systems would be useful and expedient. Moreover, these findings are not a license for wind turbines to kill birds, for wind farms to be sited recklessly, or for research to cease on better designs that make wind energy less destructive to wildlife and its habitat. Although wind turbines have fewer fatalities per GWh than other sources, they still have negative externalities and are not completely benign.
from the paper:
Although wind turbines have fewer fatalities per GWh than other sources, they still have negative externalities and are not completely benign.
consumption always has it’s price. in this case, i’ll be satisfied if we don’t flood the planet with melted glaciers, and kick a gigantic and possibly permanent hole in the world’s ecosystem.
Theoretically, the problem is
“Migratory birds, as species, are defined by their migration patterns. The birds follow the routes with the strongest winds, which is where the wind towers are usually placed. If bird mortality is increased just a tiny bit, the population may crash.”
But migratory patterns are defined by moving from one established habitat to another established habitat-- and climate change will tend to degrade both habitats, so lessening the danger of bird strikes does nothing for the health of the species you’re theoretically fretting over.
aha! but my windmills have wheels so that we can both follow the shifting winds and maximize bird death!
also, yeah: it sounds like there are some simple measures that help mitigate migration mortality. there was somewhere… some studies that painting windmills helps a lot.
really, though, shouldn’t we just turn them off during migration season? ( i jest )
I don’t think he was physically capable of going off like he usually does. One of the worst things for him that might have happened in that debate is to get seriously winded or pass out after a freak out. The man is just off Covid.
If anything kept him on task and slightly in control it was that. Fear of being seen as weak in public. And not some careful strategy to come off better, or appeal to whoever.
We live in the midst of one of North America’s busiest migratory bird pathways, particularly when it comes to seabirds and waterfowl. We’re also smack dab in the middle of one of the most important breeding zones for Atlantic seabirds. So this sort of thing is a pretty big issue, and we’ve got a badly needed offshore wind farm proposal that’s been getting NIMBY’d for 30 years.
Bird strikes and disrupting migration paths are bad. Knocking out breeding sites is worse. The former might impact a population by some percentage, the latter knocks out an entire generation (or 10).
The big culprits on that front are waterfront development, human damage to nesting sites, and these days erosion driven by climate change. Even the worst case scenarios I’ve seen for a wind farm in the area pale in comparison to the average storm season here.
Without action on climate change there won’t be anywhere for these animals to breed before too long.
At least one small study shows a major reduction in collisions when one blade is painted black.
https://www.audubon.org/news/can-painting-wind-turbine-blades-black-really-save-birds
To keep things in perspective, though, feral and domestic cats kill more birds by several orders of magnitude.
For some reason I read this to “Drop it like it’s hot”
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