Newsman downplays Gulf oil spill bird deaths

Date:   5/2/2010 12:23:57 PM ( 14 y ago)

This Sunday morning on ABC News, newsman George Will boldly states that "wind farms kill a LOT more birds than this oil spill will", referring to the Gulf of Mexico oil spill of 2010 when the Horizon oil platform exploded and sunk, rendering the blowout preventer useless to shut the flow of oil from the undersea well.

Wind farms kill about 40,000 birds a year. That number is dropping as we learn about windfarm design and placement and their relation to bird kills. The Altamont Windfarm is the worst offender, and none like it will be built again.

How many birds will this oil spill in the Gulf kill? We don't know yet, but the area is certainly bird central with it's ideal marshy conditions. It could be 1 million, easily. And that is just the birds...

Compared to the Exxon Valdez spill? Estimates of bird kills from that range from "100,000" to "500,000 and still growing".

But wind farms run all year every year, and ocean oil spills, from tankers and oil rigs, occur maybe once every 10 years. Still, 10 years of wind farm bird kills will amount to 400,000 birds, and oil spills in that same time frame would be about 500,000 birds. Or, maybe the same...

But "ocean oil spills" are not the only source of "fossil fuel related bird deaths". Coal fired power plants kill many birds directly. End use pollution kills birds and people.

For perspective, glass windows kill 1 million songbirds every year. Bird deaths from cars and trucks, whether electric powered or gasoline, are also high.

My point is that George Will was being ridiculous in saying that wind farms are worse than oil, which is the point he was trying to make I think.

And it doesn't really matter if A or B is killing more birds - if A is, the B should not add to it. George was sounding pretty silly in his efforts to downplay this oil spill. There is too much environmental upheaval these days to just sweep another million gallons of oil under the rug.

I can't wait to see the first catastrophic wind spill, because I cannot imagine what it will look like.




 

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