[HN Gopher] A simple paint job can save birds from wind turbines
___________________________________________________________________
A simple paint job can save birds from wind turbines
Author : CharlesW
Score : 114 points
Date : 2022-08-30 17:54 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.anthropocenemagazine.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.anthropocenemagazine.org)
| sohkamyung wrote:
| Unfortunately, a paint job may not save vultures from collisions
| [1]. I learned of this from Ed Yong's new book, "An Immense
| World".
|
| > Vultures have such large blind spots in their visual field that
| they cannot see objects directly in front of them when they fly.
| This discovery explains why vultures frequently collide with
| conspicuous structures such as wind turbines and power lines,
| despite having some of the sharpest eyes of any animal.
|
| [1] https://www.nature.com/articles/nature.2012.10214
| tonymet wrote:
| wind turbine bird deaths are vastly underestimated
| ravenstine wrote:
| As if windmills weren't enough of an eyesore already.
|
| The value of windmills (yes I know they're wind turbines but I
| don't care, I'm calling them windmills) is very limited. Most of
| the places I've seen with lots of windmills really should be
| nuclear powered instead, but politicians get a lot of brownie
| points for windmills. They can be a good thing for rural areas or
| places with limited infrastructure, but the whole windmill thing
| is beating around the bush when it comes to a practical solution
| that also doesn't engage the carbon cycle.
| AlexAndScripts wrote:
| In my opinion, they aren't an eyesore. I quite like them. I
| appreciate the engineering. But that's a matter of personal
| preference.
|
| I agree: Nuclear is better. Had we ignored the hippies and
| NIMBYs 40 years ago and just gotten on with it, we would have a
| whole lot less problems. Had we done the same 20, 10, 5 years
| ago things would be a lot better. If we got them to shut up and
| listen now we would have a long term solution.
|
| Unfortunately, with the way our governments are setup, large
| scale nuclear that is able to lower costs is simply not viable.
| Politicians look out for themselves, not long term national
| interest. The people have a visceral negative reaction that we
| aren't changing any time soon. Also, we can only really trust
| nuclear with certain countries. How many "civilian nuclear
| programs" have actually been for enrichment?
|
| In an ideal world, we would run everything on nuclear. But our
| world is messy and imperfect. Wind turbines are a improvement
| in coal/gas, at least until a certain point where the
| instability is no longer worth it.
|
| Those of us who care about energy security, climate change, and
| practicality need to advocate for nuclear. But its unlikely the
| pro-nuclear side will succeed. It has a fossil fuel lobby,
| renewable lobby, and an easily-scared, highly-emotional
| electorate to overcome.
|
| Renewable energy - wind, solar, etc - are imperfect, but
| they're also a lot easier to get built. There's no need to push
| against wind and solar when we should be advocating for
| nuclear.
| tomohawk wrote:
| It's not a matter of personal preference. They put these
| thing away from most people for a reason. If they put them in
| cities or suburbs, a lot of people would complain and put an
| end to them.
|
| Siting them in rural areas - who cares if some people in
| flyover country complain about the incessent noise or the
| ruined landscapes?
|
| Don't believe me about the noise? Get a tent and try camping
| under one for a few days.
|
| For someone living in the mountains, putting windmills atop
| all the mountains makes the views strictly worse. For someone
| visiting the mountains, it looks novel and sci-fi.
| eldaisfish wrote:
| why on earth would you camp under a wind turbine? And how?
| Most are on private land with access control.
|
| Besides, once you're more than a few hundred meters away,
| you can barely hear them. Don't believe me - please look up
| the sound power numbers of modern wind turbines and see how
| close you need to be to hear them.
| tomohawk wrote:
| A few hundred feet away you can hear them very clearly.
| They emit a lot of sound on low frequencies that travels
| right through walls. The sound is very disturbing to
| animals.
| ncmncm wrote:
| Nuclear is, in fact, not better.
|
| Nukes cost way more to operate, and phenomenally more to
| build, and take forever to build. I do not want to pay extra
| for somebody's nuke fetish. I want my carbon-neutral power
| cheap and plentiful, not dear and niggardly. So, give me
| wind, solar, tidal, geo. And, tear down dams to restore
| fisheries after enough of those are running. Maybe turn off
| remaining dams during smolting season.
| Gordonjcp wrote:
| I live in a country that hasn't got a lot of radioactive ores
| suitable for processing into fuel, but has got a lot of wind.
|
| Americans freak out about "hurricane season". You know what we
| call it in Scotland when we get four weeks of 140mph winds? We
| call that "January".
|
| Wind turbines work just great here, and they look amazing,
| especially the offshore ones.
| Symbiote wrote:
| You are comparing the highest gust speeds of Scottish storms
| to the sustained wind speeds of a Caribbean hurricane.
|
| A huge storm in Scotland might see sustained wind speeds of
| 80mph.
|
| A category 5 hurricane in the USA has sustained wind speeds
| of 160mph.
| eatsyourtacos wrote:
| >Americans freak out about "hurricane season".
|
| Maybe because if you live in the southeast it can be an
| absolutely devastating natural disaster? Which has already
| happened many times in the past and is guaranteed to happen
| in the future?
|
| >You know what we call it in Scotland when we get four weeks
| of 140mph winds? We call that "January".
|
| Well good for you. I don't know anything about the weather in
| Scotland but obviously if it's normal to get high wind for a
| few weeks in some places it's not anything like an actual
| hurricane. So perhaps you should stop being a smug dumbass
| comparing normal high winds in parts of your country to
| hurricanes which obliterate people and cities.
| oefnak wrote:
| The difference is that Europeans build houses from stone,
| since we heard the story of the 3 piglets when we were
| children.
| HPsquared wrote:
| Being highly visible is an advantage (politically): they give a
| strong impression of "look, we're doing something!". Plastic
| straw bans are a more extreme example, but the same effect.
| wmeredith wrote:
| You're going to need to provide a source for claiming that the
| value of wind power is "very limited".
|
| Land-based utility-scale wind is one of the lowest-priced
| energy sources available today, costing 1-2 cents per kilowatt-
| hour after the production tax credit[0]. Please note that
| governments still spend more subsidizing fossil fuel extraction
| and production than wind power generation. About double[1][2].
|
| 0. https://www.energy.gov/eere/wind/advantages-and-
| challenges-w...
|
| 1. https://news.climate.columbia.edu/2018/03/16/how-much-do-
| ren...
|
| 2. https://www.iea.org/topics/energy-subsidies
| HonestOp001 wrote:
| Please delineate in your comment that this is for the world.
| Not for the United States or other western countries. Those
| governments listed in the report have to quell their
| population to avoid an uprising.
|
| Wind power's limits: 1. Not a base load provider 2. Requires
| an energy ready base load provider 3. Is dependent on an
| energy source that is not providing steady inputs 4. Has
| larger footprints than nuclear plants 5. Blot the natural
| landscape
| montalbano wrote:
| > Not for the United States or other western countries.
|
| Incorrect - An obvious counterexample is the UK.
|
| _Wind power contributed 24.8% of UK electricity supplied
| in 2020, having surpassed coal in 2016 and nuclear in
| 2018._
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wind_power_in_the_United_Ki
| n...
| unethical_ban wrote:
| Right now, the Texas power grid is generating more than 9GW
| from wind power alone.
|
| Now, do I think we should have nuclear in the mix? Sure. Do
| I ignore the ERCOT dashboard because it doesn't fit my
| narrative? No.
|
| And trust me, there is plenty of land still to look at that
| _doesn 't_ have windmills on them. I'm not offended when I
| drive through west Texas.
| mint2 wrote:
| You know what else are eyesores? Vast expanses of monoculture
| crops, vast expanses of asphalt and urban sprawl, and vast
| fields of oil derricks.
|
| And those all come with additionally extremely harmful impacts.
| While turbines are unquestionably a net good they are a new and
| thus unfamiliar thing.
|
| yeah I understand with most new things or any change it makes a
| lot of people uncomfortable despite completely overlooking
| similar or worse offenders that are more familiar. A
| reactionary antipathy to change is fairly common.
| [deleted]
| wmeredith wrote:
| With wind power killing 20,000 birds a year, and fossil fuel
| extraction killing 14,000,000 in the same time period... does it
| matter? I mean, paint the turbines or whatever, but it's hard to
| care about sweeping the porch when the house is on fire.
|
| The source for those numbers is linked in the article itself:
| https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S09601...
| tomxor wrote:
| Absolute fatalities are not a useful comparison, in fact they
| are meaningless without the context of the proportion of each
| source of power. The same study provides adjusted numbers per
| GWh in the abstract:
|
| 0.3 to 0.4 fatalities per GWh for Wind farms and nuclear power
|
| 5.2 fatalities per GWh for fossil fueled power stations
|
| i.e Wind and Nuclear cause between 5.8% and 7.7% fatalities per
| GWh compared that of fossil fuels.
| ncmncm wrote:
| Yes, numbers that mean something, and may be compared with
| other meaningful numbers, is a necessity for useful
| reporting.
|
| There was a very dumb Two Bit da Vinci vid recently on
| YouTube about a big advance in dehumidifier tech. It had lots
| of numbers, but none of the meaningful numbers. The
| meaningful numbers they did not say were that it captured
| moisture 2.4x cheaper than current methods, but still 60x
| more expensive (in kWh/L) than desalination.
|
| There is a hell of a lot of basement dehumidification going
| on, so switching to the new method will be very valuable. But
| it won't supply drinking water.
|
| In other news, desalination is astonishingly cheap nowadays.
| It just needs cheap, opportunistic power, and could be built
| out everywhere. Inland, aquifers that are a little too salty
| for irrigation could be put into use.
| nickff wrote:
| If you want a proposal to succeed, it is usually better to
| address concerns from others, rather than to dismiss them.
| Dismissing concerns not only alienates the people bringing them
| forward, but also makes bystanders see you (and the proposal)
| as inflexible and rigid.
| colordrops wrote:
| The concern wasn't dismissed. It was put into contrast with a
| much greater concern that is often overlooked.
| worik wrote:
| > it is usually better to address concerns from others,
| rather than to dismiss them
|
| It is often better....
|
| Many ideas are designed to be refuted. The refutation spreads
| the ideas. It is part of the strategy. A "mind worm" (to coin
| a phrase) only needs to be repeated and it will do its job.
| Refuting it is repeating it.
|
| So dismiss the speaker, attack the speaker's credentials and
| motivations ignoring the ideas. argumentum ad hominem, whilst
| rhetorically invalid, is the best tactic in those
| circumstances.
| ALittleLight wrote:
| I'm imagining two conversations
|
| A: We should use more windmills.
|
| B: No, those kill too many birds.
|
| A: You don't know what you're talking about, you have no
| credentials, and you are just motivated to stop renewables!
|
| A': We can paint the rotors to avoid killing birds.
|
| A' seems like a much better response even if A is accurate.
| Maybe you need to be A if you can't be A', but if you
| can...
| anon_123g987 wrote:
| > A "mind worm" (to coin a phrase)
|
| It's called a "meme" (in its original definition by Richard
| Dawkins). And this kind of forcing a rebuttal is
| "trolling". Dismissing this trolling is phrased as "Don't
| feed the troll!".
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meme
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_troll
| trgn wrote:
| And this particular example of trolling, is "concern
| trolling".
| arcticbull wrote:
| Cats kill 2,400,000,000 birds per year in the United States
| alone. [1]
|
| Wind power is 0.008% of that total.
|
| I strongly suspect that there are better ways to spend the
| time and money to reduce avian mortality like neutering a few
| thousand cats.
|
| [1] https://abcbirds.org/program/cats-indoors/cats-and-birds/
| jwond wrote:
| I think the solution is clear: we should start painting the
| cats
| KennyBlanken wrote:
| DoneWithAllThat wrote:
| On the other hand, all too often the thinking goes:
|
| - Something must be done
|
| - This is something
|
| - Therefore this must be done
|
| Some ideas are just bad.
| ncmncm wrote:
| And, some ideas are good, and very, very cheap. There is no
| reason to avoid implementing those.
|
| Building out wind saves birds from petroleum pollution. A
| bit of paint saves more. Why not?
| Supermancho wrote:
| Next you get people who don't like the patterns or think
| there are better patterns. It's not a bit of paint for
| existing blades. It's appreciable weight added to the
| blades, to repaint.
|
| Everyone in the US can easily identify the wind turbines,
| because of the uniformity. The uniformity and simplicity
| has inherent value in large projects (including large
| volume). White to dissipate heat or black to save birds
| (let the bats die either way?). It's not surprising that
| prolonging the state of the current environment may
| require short-term sacrifices.
|
| This is Parkinson's Law (bikeshedding) in action, imo.
| Maursault wrote:
| > This is Parkinson's Law (bikeshedding) in action, imo.
|
| Common mistake, bikeshedding is the Law of Triviality,
| which is distinct from but often confused with
| Parkinson's Law.
| LeifCarrotson wrote:
| Conversely, the thinking can go:
|
| - You're proposing to change something
|
| - That change might cause some harm
|
| - Therefore this must not be done
|
| It's a trolley problem, where you could do something, and
| might kill a few birds, or do nothing and stand by while
| nearly a thousand times more perish.
| froh wrote:
| the concerns on wind energy are blown up artificially.
|
| specific example from Germany is "the dangers of infrasound",
| which led to a highly restrictive anti wind energy
| "protective distance requirement" of 10 x height ("10H rule")
| in Bavaria.
|
| And then someone figured the underlying study was off by
| three orders of magnitude, i.e. 1000x off.
|
| yet the disinformation has sunk into the heads and wind
| energy now has an irrational and steep uphill battle.
| ok_dad wrote:
| It's basically a misinformation Cold War by vested
| interests.
| immmmmm wrote:
| i can't find the papers now but it's also very well
| organized disinformation campaigns.
|
| "The New Climate War" by M. Mann talks of this too.
| aeternum wrote:
| Yes but you also must make sure that addressing the concern
| does not create other larger issues.
|
| The paint job might make the windmills more visible to humans
| and make people not want them on their land or within
| eyesight. This could lead to fewer being built and more
| dependence on fossil fuels which ultimately kill more birds.
| harha wrote:
| > make people not want them on their land or within
| eyesight
|
| I think that's already the case. Better paint one black
| before someone has the idea to put ads on them, the only
| thing that could make them even less pleasant to have
| around
| Someone wrote:
| I think it also could lead to lower life expectancy of the
| blades. Darker paint tends to lead to higher temperatures.
|
| And warmer blades might be less stiff, decreasing
| efficiency, and with it increasing birds killed/GWh (but
| that's not even guessing from my side; I don't know whether
| stiffness would be affected, and I don't know whether it
| would affect efficiency, or in what direction)
| dshpala wrote:
| Some might see such dismissals (of "useless" proposals) as a
| marker of a focus and honesty, and thus give the author of
| the competing proposal more attention.
| nickff wrote:
| I think that dismissals may improve one's standing within
| an 'in-group', at the cost of further hardening the
| opposition (by an 'out-group'). I generally see dismissals
| as indicators of arrogance, and signs that the author may
| not have thought through all the implications of their
| proposal.
| dudus wrote:
| At some point you are just playing into the filibuster games.
| wmeredith wrote:
| I am totally on the same page with you in most cases. Having
| said that, I've got doubts about the sincerity of people
| arguing against renewable power for environmental reasons.
| It's hard to take it seriously.
| ncmncm wrote:
| You can take bird deaths seriously without reducing build-
| out of renewables. The blades are painted all over,
| regardless. It doesn't cost appreciably more to put a
| stripe on.
| HeyLaughingBoy wrote:
| Perhaps not, but if the stripe makes them more visible to
| the people living nearby, then they may not want the
| turbines there at all.
| sgustard wrote:
| There are lots of things visible from my house that I
| don't want to look at. Power lines, poles, buildings,
| cars and roads come to mind. I believe if you own a
| thousand acres you get to look at what you want,
| otherwise it's not up to you?
| crooked-v wrote:
| It reminds me deeply of the various people who will use 'it
| doesn't have enough affordable housing' to argue against
| any housing development in general.
| ok_dad wrote:
| It's just a tactic those people use to force rational
| actors to become irrational. We should just ignore those
| who would throw the baby out with the bath water, when it
| comes to environmental "concerns" like this.
| mech987 wrote:
| That 20,000 number is off by at least an order of magnitude
| just for US bird wind turbine deaths. Turbine construction has
| been accelerating, so the 2013 numbers cited below are low.
|
| https://abcbirds.org/blog21/wind-turbine-mortality/
| InitialLastName wrote:
| Even off by an order of magnitude, it's still 2 OOM below
| GP's rate for fossil fuels.
| marcodiego wrote:
| The ultimate metric would be "killings per megawatt hour".
| ben_bai wrote:
| It doesn't matter. Both are orders of magnitude less than cats.
|
| "We estimate that free-ranging domestic cats kill 1.3-4.0
| billion birds and 6.3-22.3 billion mammals annually" from "The
| impact of free-ranging domestic cats on wildlife of the United
| States" (2013)
| onion2k wrote:
| Cats tend to kill small garden birds though, which are very
| common. Wind turbines take out eagles. I don't think a
| domestic cat could kill an Eagle. Although one of my cats
| thinks he could, and might be tempted to have a go.
| havelhovel wrote:
| Since you didn't name the species, it's hard to say whether
| they're common or not, or verify that their populations
| remain stable while an ever increasing number of cats are
| given an unrestricted license to kill anything that moves
| if it happens to be small enough.
|
| Relevant: "Cat owners failed to perceive the magnitude of
| their cats' impacts on wildlife and were not influenced by
| ecological information"
|
| https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/ece3.1553
| Errsher wrote:
| They do not just kill "common" birds, they have led to the
| extinction of several bird species. Keep your cats indoors.
| acchow wrote:
| > Keep your cats indoors
|
| Are cats not naturally supposed to be outside?
| simondotau wrote:
| They are (in nearly every country) a foreign invasive
| species, so "naturally" they shouldn't be there at all.
| oefnak wrote:
| Aren't all animals?
| havelhovel wrote:
| There's nothing natural about a domesticated species
| being spread around the world and allowed to roam free
| while simultaneously receiving care and protection from
| humans.
| ncmncm wrote:
| Apex predators are surprisingly important, far out of
| proportion to their numbers.
|
| Efforts to protect them have similarly outsized effect.
| m463 wrote:
| so statistically speaking, yes - because many domestic cats
| live near small gardens.
|
| But there are lots of ground-nesting birds that have been
| decimated by cats.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Introduced_mammals_on_seabird
| _...
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cat_predation_on_wildlife
|
| I found the cognitive dissonance comment interesting:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cat_predation_on_wildlife#Cat
| _...
| gumby wrote:
| Raptors are more likely to take the houscat than the other
| way around.
| orionion wrote:
| Mammals such as rats and mice... which can carry many
| diseases including hantavirus, leptospirosis, lymphocytic
| choriomeningitis (LCMV), Tularemia and Salmonella...
| Errsher wrote:
| It sounds like the implication here is that it's acceptable
| to use an invasive species to deal with pest problems.
| There are alternatives to dealing with pests that don't
| involve decimating bird populations.
| dsr_ wrote:
| The other way around: the domestication of the cat helped
| deal with pest problems.
|
| Here's a question: suppose next year we mandate all cats
| are indoors unless they work on farms, and all cats
| allowed outdoors are sterilized. What happens to the
| small bird and mammal populations ten years later?
| colechristensen wrote:
| It's even more the other way around, the native cat
| species basically domesticated itself finding hanging
| around humans for our density of vermin to prey on to be
| more advantageous than living in the wild. We didn't go
| stealing cute kitties from the wild because they looked
| nice, we started taking care of the vermin eaters that
| migrated into our cities, especially the ones that had
| adapted themselves to be cuter and nicer to us.
|
| We are not separate from the evolutionary process and
| several species have effectively domesticated _us_ in
| order to survive better. Our civilization has created new
| habitats and we don't need to pretend that it doesn't
| exist.
|
| You want to help your local bird populations? Plant oak
| trees.
| klyrs wrote:
| Why oak, and/or what region does this advice apply to?
| colechristensen wrote:
| Advice applies to anywhere which has native oak species.
|
| Oak trees serve as host to a particularly large number of
| species, many of them feed on the tree and serve as food
| for others year round along with acorns as food and
| species that feed on acorns as food. Oaks are keystone
| species as they have a particularly large positive impact
| on the local ecosystem.
|
| Lots of birds eat mostly insects and only sometimes
| seeds, oak trees provide year round supplies of insects
| for birds to eat, in a wider variety and number than most
| other trees.
| colechristensen wrote:
| In many many places domestic cats aren't much of an
| invasive species. In north and South America, Europe,
| Asia, and Africa there are similar cat species of similar
| size that take up a similar niche which were recently
| extinct (at least locally) many of which are closely
| enough related to housecats that they can interbreed.
|
| One of the reasons to worry about domestic cats in some
| areas of the British isles is not to protect birds and
| the like, but to protect the closely related extant cat
| species that is getting its genetics replaced too much
| with housecat genetics. This wild cat used to have very
| broad ranges which disappeared.
|
| Islands with no cat species don't have this consideration
| of course.
|
| Bird populations in places that should have and used to
| have catlike predators are and should be fine for the
| most part. Predators tend to help the population dynamics
| and health of prey species. Some people are just really
| uncomfortable with predation.
| Errsher wrote:
| I don't know the specific numbers, and I've only just
| seen one or two studies (would appreciate an alternative
| numbers) - but if a three 3 billion bird reduction is
| almost a third of the total population in birds in North
| America since 1970s, and cats are killing at least 1.3
| billion per year... I guess that's "fine for the most
| part"?
|
| https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.aaw1313
|
| The predation of cats is also unnaturally controlled as
| they are domesticated; people view them as pets primarily
| and thus prevent them from being killed (their predators
| are also heavily controlled - wolves, coyotes, etc). I
| don't see how you could compare that niche to previously
| extinct, naturally local species.
| lstodd wrote:
| > I don't know the specific numbers, and I've only just
| seen one or two studies
|
| You might as well cut you comment at this point.
| Errsher wrote:
| One or two studies is more than the "zero" amount of data
| that's been provided by anyone else at this point. I look
| forward to you sharing more specific numbers that counter
| the numbers I've provided.
| karmakaze wrote:
| > Within the uncertainties of the data used, the estimate means
| that wind farms killed approximately 20,000 birds in the United
| States in 2009 but nuclear plants killed about 330,000 and
| fossil fueled power plants more than 14 million.
|
| This falls along the lines of planting trees for CO2. Sure I
| could do it and feel good but maybe there's a more effective
| way to go about it. I wouldn't tell anyone not to plant trees
| though.
| linuxftw wrote:
| Not all birds are equal. I believe the turbines are making a
| sizable dent in birds of prey, whereas the 14m is probably a
| variety of birds.
| akozak wrote:
| Ask anyone deep in the wind or RE development industry! It does
| matter, because policymakers (at least in the US) have decided
| it matters though law, regulation, and treaty. It doesn't
| ultimately matter (practically) if policy doesn't conform to
| your moral calculus. *even if it is a sensible calculus
| suprjami wrote:
| It does, because we could apparently reduce that 20k down to
| 6k, which lets us scale wind power up even more while looking
| after the planet even better.
|
| We need to reduce our negative impact on the earth as much as
| possible. So a simple action which results in a 70% harm
| reduction is a huge win!
| est31 wrote:
| We could, but it might drive up prices of wind turbines a
| little bit. It's only a little you would say, but there are
| also other proposals to e.g. do away with forever chemicals
| in some components of wind turbines. If you follow all of
| them, eventually wind turbines cease to be cheaper than
| conventional energy.
| acchow wrote:
| > With wind power killing 20,000 birds a year, and fossil fuel
| extraction killing 14,000,000 in the same time period... does
| it matter?
|
| That depends. Do we need to increase wind power production
| 1000x to replace fossil fuels? Or 100x?
| AmericanChopper wrote:
| Air pollution supposedly kills 2,000,000 people a year. Nuclear
| energy has killed far less than that in its entire history.
| Debates around this topic tend to have no basis in rationality
| at all, and many of the most vocal "environmentalists" are
| really just extreme anti-consumerist or anti-capitalist.
|
| Talk to somebody from the anti-wind lobby of environmentalists
| and you'll likely discover their preferred solution is that we
| simply stop using energy for things like heating, or watching
| tv, or using our computers...
| driggs wrote:
| Given that wind turbines are universally(?) white, I've always
| assumed it is to minimize heat absorption. If so, painting 1/3 of
| the blades black would increase heating of the painted blade,
| especially in lower latitudes (this study was done at high
| latitude in Norway). What's the side effect?
|
| Also, this strategy will obviously have zero impact on bat
| deaths, given that a white blade and a black blade are identical
| to echolocation at night. Curtailment of turbines in low wind
| condition - which is when bats are able to fly, and when turbines
| produce the least amount of energy - is the proven way to
| minimize bat deaths. But wind farms want to maximize energy
| production (profit), so are not fond of curtailment as a
| strategy.
| actually_a_dog wrote:
| A lot of things are painted white because titanium dioxide is a
| super cheap, white pigment.
| exmadscientist wrote:
| Is carbon black not a super cheap, black pigment?
| daniel-cussen wrote:
| Echo-reflective surfaces.
|
| Plus I agree bats have worth, but these guys carry crazy
| amounts of diseases like _cough cough_ Covid-19 _cough_.
| o_1 wrote:
| Oh i forgot we blamed rats for the plague too, bats
| definitely caused covid we can't be wrong twice.
| unethical_ban wrote:
| Not really, and they are great pest control.
|
| In South Texas we have bat colonies under freeway overpasses,
| and trust me, bats are not a source of disease concern here
| beyond "don't mess with them even if injured".
| upofadown wrote:
| The blades are made of composite materials that involve some
| sort of epoxy binder. So heat would be important to avoid.
| Composite aircraft are white for that reason.
| ncmncm wrote:
| It would have been helpful to see if painting a stripe, or the
| leading or trailing edges would suffice or work better.
|
| I had gathered that somebody tried wires sticking out of the
| trailing edges, to help warn away bats, successfully. It would be
| good to get a lot more deployment and experimentation out.
| lstodd wrote:
| Yeah, well, imagine all the induced epilepsy attacks.
| Dig1t wrote:
| Honestly I think natural selection will take care of this
| problem. Just let the birds kill themselves, eventually they will
| learn to stay away from the giant whirling death blades.
|
| Most birds are afraid of humans and other animals because of this
| exact mechanism.
|
| We should just worry about making these things as aesthetically
| appealing to humans and as efficient as possible.
| mey wrote:
| Natural selection works on a timescale that is longer than you
| are imagining. It is entirely possible for an ecosystem to be
| radically altered before there is a chance for adaptation by
| existing species.
|
| There is no reason not to take ecology into the consideration
| of any project. Just another trade off.
| MaxBarraclough wrote:
| I suggest the link be changed to point directly to the open
| access paper ( https://dx.doi.org/10.1002/ece3.6592 ). The linked
| article adds nothing and, as Symbiote's comment points out,
| doesn't even include an image.
| Traubenfuchs wrote:
| 1) Why is this article sabotaging itself by not showing the
| picture provided in the original paper?
|
| 2) Just like many other low effort high impact discoveries, we
| will never ever see this used on a significant amount of wind
| turbines, which is very depressing.
| wiredfool wrote:
| > It was not effective at all for willow ptarmigan, ground birds
| which tend to run into the turbines' base rather than its blades.
|
| That certainly says more about ptarmigans than turbines.
| Symbiote wrote:
| There's a picture in the original paper, _Paint it black:
| Efficacy of increased wind turbine rotor blade visibility to
| reduce avian fatalities_ : https://doi.org/10.1002/ece3.6592
|
| (And with a name like Jens Astrom, he should be researching
| hydropower.)
| mellavora wrote:
| hint: A is the Swedish word for a stream/small river.
|
| translating strom is left as an exercise for the curious.
| simonebrunozzi wrote:
| Spoiler alert!
|
| ...
|
| I'd have guessed strom = stream. Seems like I'm right, more
| or less.
| diydsp wrote:
| based on German, yes it is a stream, but not necessarily of
| water...
| Ma8ee wrote:
| Not only _stream_ but _current_.
| brnt wrote:
| There are two rivers (creeks?) called Aa in the Netherlands.
| We don't have Aa or A in our dictonairy but now I wonder if
| there's a shared root somewhere.
| Beltalowda wrote:
| There are far more than two, and according to [1] it is
| indeed related via the proto-Germanic "ahwo" for stream or
| river.
|
| [1]: https://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aa_(waternaam)
| Symbiote wrote:
| Wiktionary is usually good with words like this:
| https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Reconstruction:Proto-
| Germanic...
|
| And it thinks "a" is an archaic Dutch word meaning stream:
| https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/a#Dutch
| kerblang wrote:
| > It was not effective at all for willow ptarmigan, ground birds
| which tend to run into the turbines' base rather than its blades
|
| What is wrong with these birds
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2022-08-30 23:00 UTC)