Reply #2: perfect cynicism

[greenman3610]

using environmental law to destroy the environment.
This rep is a dem, by the way.

for perspective, the dangers to birds from buildings, house cats, and West Nile
outweigh wind by thousands of times:

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2007/05/04/MNG9SPKPT31.DTL

In the United States in 2003, wind generators accounted for only three-thousandths of 1 percent of bird killings -- no more than 37,000 birds. That same year, possibly as many as a billion birds died in collisions with buildings, and electrical power lines may have accounted for more than a billion more deaths, the report said. And domestic cats were responsible for the demise of an estimated hundreds of millions of songbirds and other species every year.
That aside, the report expressed concern about possible impacts from wind turbines on local bird populations, especially peregrine falcons and other raptors that are attracted to windy areas where the generators are likely to exist, and called for additional study. Raptors "are lower in abundance than many other bird species, have symbolic and emotional value to many Americans, and are protected by federal and state laws," the report noted.
The scientists' biggest concern was reserved for bats.
Recent analysis of bat kills amidst wind stations in the middle Atlantic states revealed more victims than were expected. The species impact could be significant partly because of an unrelated "decline in the populations of several species of bats in the eastern United States," the report said.
In the eastern United States, up to 41 bats are killed annually for every megawatt of wind energy generated along forested ridge tops, the report said. In Midwestern and Western states, the number is lower, no more than 9 dead bats per megawatt.
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http://www.treehugger.com/files/2007/05/cats_more_letha.php

It takes 30-plus turbines to reach a kill rate of one bird per year, according to a recent report by the U.S. National Academy of Sciences on the environmental impacts of wind-energy projects, based on 14 studies they felt superlative. A number of caveats were attached to the figure, however, including the acknowledgment that rates can vary by site and that endangered species such as the bald eagle are particularly worth avoiding.

However you look at it, though, birds in the United States seem to die in turbine blades at a rate no higher than 40,000 a year. Deaths by dastardly domestic felines, on the other hand, number in the "hundreds of millions."

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http://www.technologyreview.com/Energy/18167/
Uncertainty surrounding wind power's impact on wildlife--particularly the potential for deadly collisions between birds and turbines--has tarnished its image and even delayed some wind farms. Indeed, the first large offshore wind farm proposed for U.S. waters--the Cape Wind project in Massachusetts's Nantucket Sound--has been held up in part by concerns that its 130 turbines could kill thousands of seabirds annually. Now a simple infrared collision-detection system developed by Denmark's National Environmental Research Institute is helping clear the air.

The Thermal Animal Detection System (TADS) is essentially a heat-activated infrared video camera that watches a wind turbine around the clock, recording deadly collisions much as a security camera captures crimes. The first results, released this winter as part of a comprehensive $15 million study of Denmark's large offshore wind farms, show seabirds to be remarkably adept at avoiding offshore installations. "There had been suggestions that enormous numbers of birds would be killed," says Robert Furness, a seabird specialist at the University of Glasgow, who chaired the study's scientific advisory panel. "There's a greater feeling now among European politicians that marine wind farms are not going to be a major ecological problem, and therefore going ahead with construction is not going to raise lots of political difficulties."