It's easy to believe. The massive ecological destruction caused by the oil and gas industry is well documented. Whatever downsides there are to wind mills, pale in comparison to that.
Funny how people are suddenly concerned with other species when a wind turbine is placed near their home. But when an out-of-sight coal plant belches out tons of pollutants which affect thousands of species, that concern seems to vanish. Quaint.
Yeah, I'm just reading up on the subject. Apparently a badly placed wind farm can have knock-on effects on the whole food web. We quickly reach a "never do anything" impasse though.
Am I the only one that's kinda off put or frankly disgusted by the thought of ruining our nature by peppering it with giant wind turbines? At what point does it stop?
These things are awfully loud. I personally also find them ugly, bit to each their own on that. But the noise, i genuinely think it is probably unhealthy to live near Wind turbines.
Edit since I just remembered - I think they are also very disruptive for the ecosystem depending on where they are built.
Any windmill impact from changing wind patterns or reducing wind power is radically less than eg building homes (given we build millions of homes annually), or simply driving vehicles (of any sort, given the numbers of vehicles globally).
You could never build enough windmills to cause a problem. The only real environmental concerns are killing animals (insects?), and construction / manufacturing related.
"As for resource consumption and environmental impacts, the direct effects of wind turbines — killing birds and bats, sinking concrete foundations deep into wild lands — is bad enough. But out of sight and out of mind is the dirty pollution generated in Inner Mongolia by the mining of rare-earth metals for the magnets in the turbines. This generates toxic and radioactive waste on an epic scale, which is why the phrase ‘clean energy’ is such a sick joke and ministers should be ashamed every time it passes their lips."
Apparently about a dozen people a year are killed installing or maintaining wind turbines, however the post in question was referring to byproducts of refining the rare earths ultimately used for the magnets in the generators.
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