RSPB Objects to Shetland Wind Farm

<...a similar argument about the Severn Barrage to a retired Chemical Engineer.... said "Stuff the wildlife, let's just generate more power"...wasn't interested in.......the resultant loss of biodiversity and its impact...should consume less power...>

Perhaps that's why this individual has been retired?

According to David McKay, "Sustainable Energy- Without the Hot Air", in Denmark, 30,000 birds are killed each year by wind turbines, while 1,00,000 each year die as a result of collision with cars, In England, the annual bird loss due to cats is on the order of 55,000,000 (don't let Del see this!)

Bird strikes are the silliest reason going for fighting wind energy- the real reason one should oppose wind energy is because of the damage to the land- a turbine farm is pretty useless for much of anything else. Some authorities attribute as much as 1/3 of the increase in greenhouse gases to land use issues- cutting down trees to make way for our farms and cities and such.

And the Germans have demonstrated that too much reliance on wind energy will result in an unstable grid...

Wow a 333:1 ratio! I am way behind on my vehicle and cant come even close to the cat numbers.

The land around a wind farm is not actually useless. Around here they just farm right around the towers just like they do with the large power line towers. There is little land wasted by our farming practices here. I have seen some wind farms with a less than a 40 foot diameter circle patch of un tilled land around the towers. To set up a tower and generator does take up an acre or two for part of a season. But then they get paid for that seasonal loss.

After the system is installed farmers get right up close and personal to the towers while working their fields and at worst there is a single lane dirt path leading up to the tower base. But most towers now are situated along normal field boundary or transition lines so there is very little unused land. The power lines from the towers are underground so there is not even an overhead line system to deal with in the field.

I don't know the farming practices of other places in the world but here we use every square foot as effectively as possible. Wind towers are not a bother to our farmers. They love having a fraction of an acre of field that produces the same annual revenue as several acres of good crops!

The issue in the UK is that most of the "good" wind areas are also in areas of outstanding natural beauty or SSSIs, rather than farm land. The power lines are usually overhead. And the farms and fields here are rather smaller than those in the States. I'm glad to hear that you've been ab;e to integrate the technology into the working landscape.

Looking at a nearby wind farm, I notice that the 600kW turbines rotate quite slowly, even in a strong wind.

If a bird hits that, it is too stupid to survive in the wild!

Farmers graze their cattle right up to the base of the towers. Where they are cultivating, they can again go to the base of the tower.

Many of the locals wish they could also have a wind farm on their property, as they see only advantages.

I have yet to see convincing evidence for a bird strike problem.

If you want to argue against it, by all means do so on visual grounds, but bird strike is a fake issue. Noise also seems minimal in the modern machines, although it was a problem with some of the earlier ones.

Like all alternative energy sources (except hydro), there is a limit to how much of the grid can be supplied this way without instability.

Thanks sceptic.

I thought this was interesting that there is now some apparantly scientific information supporting the bird strike argument. Always good to debate the point I think!