Jousting at wind turbines

The fear about birds deaths being generated by wind turbines with their huge blades spinning to create clean energy for the nation is just a lot of empty air.
As the push for safe, clean, non-terror supporting emergent energy sources grows so does apprehension among bird lovers.
I respect the sentiment of wanting to protect winged creatures, and not just birds but also butterflies.
It appears there will be some wildlife conflicts with the admittedly imposing towers. I acknowledge that there will be some bird kills.
And it seems the effect of the vibrations caused by the turbines is even more serious for bats — researchers have noted die-offs in the mammals that never came into contact with the generators. The vibrations were fatal to bats by the animals just flying into the vicinity of the tower.
But to talk about wind turbines as if they will be the main threat to life for birds, a kind of plague on winged wildlife, makes it seem like the worriers are missing some obvious truths.
Probably ever major human undertaking has a negative impact on birds and other kinds of wildlife — impacts that most people are quite willing to turn a blind eye on.
There are reasons in today's society to want to push the panic button in terms of protecting wildlife. Look at the recent report from the Audubon Society that said steep declines have been seen in even the most common birds.
A survey of birds by the nature-watchers had found a "nosedive" in their populations over the last 40 years, as much as 80 percent for some species.
Audubon complied a list of 20 common birds in decline, each of which have seen a 54 percent or greater population loss.
Virginia birds listed as in decline were the Northern Bobwhite, the Loggerhead Shrike, Eastern Meadowlark, the Field Sparrow, the Rusty Blackbird and the American Black Duck.
Audubon laid the blame for these plummeting numbers at the feet of habitat destruction perpetrated by people. There was no mention of wind turbines as being the problem.
And looking at the matter objectively as possible, it's hard to believe even with a proliferation of wind turbines that death-by-blade would even approach the other ways we kill off birds.
Don't believe it? Do what I did and Google the phrase "what kills birds?" 
As reliable at the Internet is, the results varied wildly on some numbers of bird fatalities and their causes.
Several results, though, cited a study by Daniel Klem of Muhlenberg College that found windows in our homes, commercial buildings and skyscrapers are much riskier for birds than anything else we do.
Birds flying into the glass die by the hundreds of millions a year, the much-cited study found. The actual number could be from 100 million to close to a billion bird deaths a year.
"Millions of houses and buildings, with their billions of windows, pose a significant threat to birds," as information posted by avian enthusiast David Sibley at http://www.sibleyguides.com/mortality.htm put it. "Birds see the natural habitat mirrored in the glass and fly directly into the window, causing injury and, in 50 percent or more of the cases, death."
But we have created many other ways to kill birds, and while no single cause approaches the number of window strikes, there are hundreds of millions more bird deaths caused by our technology a year, according to figures bandied about the Internet.
Just house cats unleashed on the wild might cause 100 million birds to die a year, though some estimates put it at closer to 500 million.
Collisions with cars and trucks cause an estimated 50 to 100 million bird deaths; pesticides could kill another 67 million; collisions with communication towers could take out four to 10 million a year and collisions with electric lines 174 million.
Nobody knows how many birds deaths that habitat clearing may be responsible for.
In stark contrast, Sibley quotes statistics that wind turbines only kill 33,000 a year. That's less than 100 a day.
Compared to other bird kills, that of wind turbines seems almost statistically insignificant.
True, planners should take precautions to keep the technology from increasing those numbers by carefully considering where they place the turbines.
But I take a dim view of the idea that more wind turbines is Armageddon for birds.
There are plenty of other human behaviors that need correcting with the idea of sparing birds before wind turbines.
Those people objecting to clean energy and trying to stop wind turbine projects for the sake of birds are jousting at windmills. 
They could stop every turbine in existence and humans would still be killing birds in the billions.