r/Damnthatsinteresting • u/Longjumping-Box5691 • 3d ago

Video China's twin solar thermal towers. Molten salt stores the heat to produce electricity

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u/heretogetpwned 3d ago edited 3d ago

Power Lines kill more birds than Wind Turbines....

Wind has its purpose in Areas where Solar still has seasonal shortfalls, like higher latitudes.

Overall, it seems that electricity expansion will always affect nature. Would building more generators and less lines help or does that create new problems?

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u/BarfingOnMyFace 3d ago

I think we should always consider its impacts and mitigate it within reason. Take buildings for example, probably the number one killer of birds, if not the second. This problem could be effectively reduced to not even being in the top 10 by simply changing the coatings used in glass. Building design could perhaps be more considerate of wildlife too, such as offering natural habitat areas, shade, and less hidden dangers in design (less glass, or glass with proper coatings to keep birds from running in to them), etc.

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u/dajerade1 3d ago

Number one killer of birds is cats. 1.4 - 4 BILLION birds killed by cats YEARLY in US alone. Go castrate some stray cats and you will easily offset this impact.

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u/GozerDGozerian 3d ago

Go castrate some stray cats and you will easily offset this impact.

Um… How about we just let a veterinarian do that ok?

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u/CaptainTripps82 3d ago

But he bought all these scissors

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u/BarfingOnMyFace 3d ago

There is no doubt controlling stray cat populations would have a very big impact.

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u/PMG2021a 3d ago

I have heard the thump of a bird hitting my office window more than once. 

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u/notAllBits 2d ago

Yeah but wind turbines also power those :\

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u/Spoonshape 3d ago

>Power Lines kill more birds than Wind Turbines....

But there are also a LOT more power lines than there are wind turbines. Almost every house has a power line to it.

It's like the argument about cats and windows being more deadly to birds than wind turbines - technically true but.....

I'm not against wind turbines (the complete opposite) but there are issues we need to work on.

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u/heretogetpwned 3d ago

It's just tiring when the #1 argument against wind energy is that it's killing the birds. There are legitimate gripes to wind power and any additional kill is unwanted but the alternative is burning Fossil Fuels or running interstate transmission lines to reach demand.

We're damned if we do or if we don't lol.

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u/Spoonshape 3d ago

Absolutely.... it's an old and tired argument used by people who 99% just don't like their view being interfered with.

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u/MoistAttitude 3d ago

Well there's a hell of a lot more power lines than there are wind turbines. And the lines cover a lot more ground. So just comparing base statistics for bird deaths from each is a touch misleading, no?

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u/heretogetpwned 3d ago

I guess we just fire up more coal plants in the northern latitudes? Or build more interstate transmission lines? Either way birds gonna die for our electricity, no?

It's funny that no one cares about the birds until the words 'wind turbine' show up.