The environmental cost of wind and solar in NetZero
By Duggan Flanakin |December 14th, 2022|General Information|164 Comments
Cats, the BBC tells us, kill more birds than wind turbines. And they are right.
But unlike cats, notes British journalist Matt Ridley, all over the world, the largest and rarest eagles and vultures are dying in significant numbers as a result of wind turbines. — wedge-tailed eagles in Australia, Verreaux’s eagles in South Africa, sea eagles in Norway, and bald and golden eagles in the United States.
Ridley notes that a32-turbine wind power station in Spain kills a vulture every three days – decimating rare populations of griffon, cincerous, bearded, and Egyptian vultures. In California’s Altamont Pass wind turbines kill over 1,000 birds of prey each year. A Norwegian wind power station has reduced the number of sea eagle territories on the island of Smola from thirteen to just five – making local extinction a real possibility.
A 2018 study in India’s Western Ghats found that wind farms in biodiversity-rich areas can have far deeper ecological consequences. Wind farms reduce the number and activity of predatory birds, the study found, and this in turn increases the density, as well as the behavior and physiology of vertebrates like lizards.
https://www.cfact.org/2022/12/14/the-environmental-cost-of-wind-and-solar-in-netzero/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=the-environmental-cost-of-wind-and-solar-in-netzero
