In the U.S., recent annual estimates of bird deaths due to:
Cats = 2.4 billion bird deaths
Collisions from building glass = 600 million bird deaths
Land wind turbines = <200,000 bird deaths
Some politicians claim wind turbines “kill all the birds.”
But… they’re not really worried about birds. Rather, they prefer we stick with oil & gas over renewable #energy.
https://www.statista.com/chart/amp/15195/wind-turbines-are-not-killing-fields-for-birds/ #climatechange
Wind Turbines Are Not Killing Fields for Birds
This chart shows the annual estimated bird mortality for selected anthropogenic causes in the U.S.Sarah Feldman (Statista)
This entry was edited (9 months ago)
Writers of Wrongs
in reply to Sheril Kirshenbaum • • •(And I believe they're soft on cats.)
GeriAQuin
in reply to Sheril Kirshenbaum • • •Sheril Kirshenbaum
in reply to GeriAQuin • • •Marc
in reply to Sheril Kirshenbaum • • •"Many additional human-caused threats to birds, both direct (causing immediate injury/death) and indirect (causing delayed negative effects to health or productivity) are not on this list because the extent of their impact is either not currently well researched or easily quantified. For instance, habitat loss is thought to pose by far the greatest threat to birds, both directly and indirectly, however, its overall impact on bird populations is very difficult to directly assess."
Ariaflame
in reply to Sheril Kirshenbaum • • •Rachel Greenham
in reply to Sheril Kirshenbaum • • •Rhombus Ticks
in reply to Sheril Kirshenbaum • • •Troll
in reply to Sheril Kirshenbaum • • •:blahaj: Why Not Zoidberg? 🦑
in reply to Sheril Kirshenbaum • • •waysideollie
in reply to Sheril Kirshenbaum • • •ludiusvox
in reply to Sheril Kirshenbaum • • •Matt Johnson
in reply to Sheril Kirshenbaum • • •Trish Murphy
in reply to Sheril Kirshenbaum • • •Leo Ré Jorge
in reply to Sheril Kirshenbaum • • •Xymon
in reply to Sheril Kirshenbaum • • •I’m not clear on the details, but if there is any relationship between the amount of energy produced, and the number of birds killed, a little cat discomfort seems a small price to pay for massive increase in power output… 🤔
Do we attach them to the propeller or the hub? 😇
Sheril Kirshenbaum
in reply to Sheril Kirshenbaum • • •Popping on the visualization (also linked above) bc there were a few questions about the data.
This chart displays the US Fish & Wildlife estimates of annual bird mortality in the U.S. from several human causes. /2
Svend Waldorff
in reply to Sheril Kirshenbaum • • •Would be nice if there are numbers to back me up or prove me wrong.
PJT North
in reply to Sheril Kirshenbaum • • •Gatekeeper
in reply to Sheril Kirshenbaum • • •Bob Tregilus :tux:📷:copyleft:
in reply to Sheril Kirshenbaum • • •Yup, and "Audubon strongly supports wind energy that is sited and operated properly to avoid, minimize, and mitigate effectively for the impacts on birds, other wildlife, and the places they need now and in the future. To that end, we support the development of wind energy to achieve 100% clean electricity." https://www.audubon.org/news/wind-power-and-birds
Also, awhile ago Benjamin Sovacool did a lot of work contextualizing bird kills per GWh generated across various technologies. https://grist.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/contextualizing-avian-mortality.pdf
Wind Power and Birds
National Audubon Society (Audubon)Darrin West
in reply to Sheril Kirshenbaum • • •AmonTheMetalHead
in reply to Sheril Kirshenbaum • • •👁️🫧⤴️
in reply to Sheril Kirshenbaum • • •So frustrating that a meta analysis from a decade ago that was mostly guess work and approximation is still being sited as an accurate rate of cat caused bird deaths. They even state in the appendix that while most bird deaths are attributed to feral cats "no empirically driven estimate of un-owned cat abundance exists for the contiguous U.S."
Here is a break down of why the data is essentially intentional misinformation from the NIH
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9794845/
Outdoor domestic cats and wildlife: How to overrate and misinterpret field data
PubMed Central (PMC)ludiusvox
in reply to Sheril Kirshenbaum • • •Number6 :syncthing:
in reply to Sheril Kirshenbaum • • •Humans have removed most predators from our landscapes allowing small birds to flourish in a way they would not naturally be able. Despite the cat predation, we don't see any small birds in danger of extinction.
Cats pose no danger for condors, and condors are unlikely to be flying into glass buildings. So we would want to know what kind of birds are flying into the wind turbines. If condors ... that's a problem. If seagulls ... not so much.
Oggie
in reply to Sheril Kirshenbaum • • •The thing is (and I'm not going to even attempt to engage with the numbers as a lot of replies are, since I don't have the backing), it's never been about the 'reality', just the perception.
Saying 'This kills birds', they're hoping for a visceral emotional reaction, like when it was discovered that 'cute baby seal in oil' got a stronger reaction than 'billions of animals dead'.
Of course, I -personally- hate birds viscerally, but I support keeping them alive. Away from me.
Sheril Kirshenbaum
in reply to Sheril Kirshenbaum • • •It shouldn’t need to be said, but given some comments, let me be clear: This is not a post about harming cats.
The point is that special interests have been framing the narrative around renewables in ways that aren’t evidence based to influence public opinion away from supporting wind turbines & other technologies.
But we need to decrease our dependence on fossil fuels to address #ClimateChange. /3
Michael Gemar
in reply to Sheril Kirshenbaum • • •Sal Sarhangi :verified:
in reply to Sheril Kirshenbaum • • •ludiusvox
in reply to Sheril Kirshenbaum • • •Edgarg2708
in reply to Sheril Kirshenbaum • • •Quisiera disfrutar de los paisajes de tú hermoso País!
Será posible?
Ondřej Surý
in reply to Sheril Kirshenbaum • • •Nazani
in reply to Sheril Kirshenbaum • • •HonestHypocrite
in reply to Sheril Kirshenbaum • • •I made this chart in 2019 and included error bars where available to might help with some questions.
from 10/08/2019 and this tweet https://twitter.com/honesthypocrite/status/1181673095637155846
#Bird #deaths annually by hazard. #Cats kill 10,000 times more birds than #wind #turbines. Even oil pits (!) kill three times as many. Improved visualization inspired by @1a story today using @Tableau and data from https://www.fws.gov/library/collections/threats-birds
Threats to Birds | U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service
FWS.gov(ﾉ◕ヮ◕)ﾉ*:･ﾟ✧*:･ﾟ✧
in reply to Sheril Kirshenbaum • • •Darren
in reply to Sheril Kirshenbaum • • •Jake Beamer
in reply to Sheril Kirshenbaum • • •kapowaz
in reply to Sheril Kirshenbaum • • •Speckdäne
in reply to Sheril Kirshenbaum • • •Nicole Parsons
in reply to Sheril Kirshenbaum • • •Ondřej Surý
in reply to Sheril Kirshenbaum • • •Eric
in reply to Sheril Kirshenbaum • • •C.S.Strowbridge
in reply to Sheril Kirshenbaum • • •𝐑𝐞𝐛𝐞𝐜𝐜𝐚 𝐅𝐢𝐧𝐧 🏳️⚧️ 🇺🇦
in reply to Sheril Kirshenbaum • • •Now, as much as I love cats, hear me out: Your precious kitties surely aren't being blamed, and your subjective experiences aren't relevant to the discussion at hand.
Lola
in reply to Sheril Kirshenbaum • • •Lola
in reply to Sheril Kirshenbaum • • •Fierce, Lord Pankake
in reply to Sheril Kirshenbaum • • •Does the average home fed cat kill 40 birds per year? I doubt that. That does sound a hell of a lot. Some percentage of cats are indoor ones, so that would push up the figure for outdoor cats even more.
I've had 14 cats in my life, none have killed that number per year. I would have known.
StephaneHuart
in reply to Sheril Kirshenbaum • • •Something that seems ( to me ) partly relevant to that issue:
There was a study recently in the EU regarding the main causes of the bird population collapse, and, even worse than cats, the use of pesticides in intensive agriculture appeared to be the main problem.
But yeah, lets blame windpower, it's so much easier than talking about people beloved pet or, worse, tackle a very real problem: the way our food production is set up.. :/
https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2216573120
felixsteininger
in reply to Sheril Kirshenbaum • • •NoctisEqui 🇺🇦🇵🇸🇪🇹
in reply to Sheril Kirshenbaum • • •fana_fi_tajalli
in reply to Sheril Kirshenbaum • • •Barbara
in reply to Sheril Kirshenbaum • • •MHowell
in reply to Sheril Kirshenbaum • • •How Much Do Cats Actually Kill: Handy Infographic by @oatmeal
https://theoatmeal.com/comics/cats_actually_kill
How much do cats actually kill? [Infographic] - The Oatmeal
The OatmealBernd Paysan R.I.P Natenom 🕯️
in reply to Sheril Kirshenbaum • • •Cars should be mentioned. Somewhere between 100 and 300 million bird deaths (US only).
https://www.fws.gov/story/threats-birds-collisions-road-vehicles
Threats to Birds: Collisions-Road Vehicles | U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service
FWS.govSamhain Night
in reply to Sheril Kirshenbaum • • •clown motel receptionist
in reply to Sheril Kirshenbaum • • •Barry Goldman
in reply to Sheril Kirshenbaum • • •from cats. 6 per person per year? say ~10 to 20 per family. or... how many of this is from feral cats. how may families have >1 cat? anyway... once a month. hmm... anyway.. how many birds are there?
oh this is about turbines.
carry on...
Nazo
in reply to Sheril Kirshenbaum • • •On the one hand, I almost kind of wish someone would evaluate just how many die due to oil-related reasons (including the sheer mess that oil spills create all across the environment...)
On the other hand, it's actually kind of bad to do as much as you did because, as you say, it was never really about that. The fact is it was a bad faith statement from the very start. I'm not even sure their claim should be so directly and accurately addressed as it was BS from the start.
Walt Crawford
in reply to Sheril Kirshenbaum • • •Steve Cromwell
in reply to Sheril Kirshenbaum • • •The whole bird story started simply because Trump thought turbines would lower the property values of one of his golf courses. In the end he had to pay Scotland $290,000.
From The Washington Post:
MattT ✅
in reply to Sheril Kirshenbaum • • •Tom Cotton
in reply to Sheril Kirshenbaum • • •Tom 🇨🇦
in reply to Sheril Kirshenbaum • • •cha0tic
in reply to Sheril Kirshenbaum • • •Jennifer White
in reply to Sheril Kirshenbaum • • •Chris Carr
in reply to Sheril Kirshenbaum • • •Everyday Freethought
in reply to Sheril Kirshenbaum • • •טליה (לשון את) 🎗️
in reply to Sheril Kirshenbaum • • •Art - US Expat in Spain
in reply to Sheril Kirshenbaum • • •Adam Williams
in reply to Sheril Kirshenbaum • • •Agora
in reply to Sheril Kirshenbaum • • •Phil Parker Critchley
in reply to Sheril Kirshenbaum • • •Every. Single. Word!
If ever there was a need for a multi-boost function, this toot is where it starts! I may have to un-boost and re-boost every hour, on the hour, just to make sure it's seen as much as possible.
Shantell Powell
in reply to Sheril Kirshenbaum • • •iquanyin
in reply to Sheril Kirshenbaum • • •freiheitsgrad
in reply to Sheril Kirshenbaum • • •