Insignificant on many levels. If we should care for that we should stop all fossil fuel consumption right now, stop eating meat, and most importantly, stop putting glass windows into our cute buildings.
Why are these questions always in wind turbine posts before anything els?
Folks who worry about this have an excellent outlet for their concerns: don’t have outdoor cats, and donate and work to spay and neuter feral outdoor cats. They are orders of magnitude more destructive to the bird population than wind turbines will ever be.
Looking at this source [0] they kill about as many birds in a year as we eat chickens in a week, i.e. ~1 million.
7 times as many are killed by cell towers, 80x as many by cars, and up to 1000x as many by cats. Maybe they should put cat ears on turbines and people would be fine with them.
Because ostensibly global warming and climate change is of far more existential threat than localized turbines. Wind power could possibly save all birds, at the cost of some birds. It’s similar to when a self driving car gets into an accident - all hand wringing and no looking at broader statistics.
> Why are these questions always in wind turbine posts before anything els?
Because it's better to worry about it and try to mitigate at the beginning, than wait until there is too much inertia, sunken costs, vested interests and institutional pushback. Some things become too hard to fix if you start wrong.
Why are these questions always in wind turbine posts before anything els?