Trivial Savings

Here, John Dabiri suggests vertical-axis wind turbines are much safer for birds and migratory bats:

Big [horizontal] turbine blades have long been blamed for bird and bat kills. U.S. Fish and Wildlife Agency officials are investigating what happened to six golden eagles found dead last month near a 3-year old wind farm near Tehachapi, Calif. The agency estimates windmills kill a half million birds a year, however the American Wind Energy Association, an industry group, disputes those figures. Dabiri says 30-foot vertical windmills are much less dangerous since they don't use propeller-like blades to capture wind, but rotating open-framed cylinders.
"These smaller windmills are below migratory levels for birds and bats," Dabiri said. "It can be a real game changer.

I don't mean to pick on Professor Dabiri, but horizontal windmills aren't really an existential threat to any species of animal. I realize minimizing the lethal effects of wind farms is important. But if "changing the game" in regards to animal deaths due to human activity is really a concern, maybe we should really change the game and ban windows on buildings. And then write building code that requires a soft layer of padding on the outside of every building.
Because while Dabiri brags about potentially saving 500,000 birds/bats a year...nearly 1 BILLION die from hitting buildings every year. And that's just in the United States. So for every bird killed by a wind mill...2,000 are killed by buildings.

But let's concentrate on the safety of wind turbines.


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