Tuesday, September 20, 2011

Real vs. Fake Issues

According to McKay, wind turbines are causing a social issue or aesthetic issue. People claim that wind turbines are killing too many birds, but in reality turbines kill about 30,000 birds/year, where traffic kills 1,000,000 birds/year in Denmark. Furthermore, 55 million birds/year are killed by cats alone. A shocking number! In fact, Kuwait has a total of 363 species of birds, but only 1 has been introduced by humans. 101 species are rare or accidental and 8 of them are globally threatened [1]. Thus, it is safe to say  the number of birds killed by wind turbines in Kuwait can be almost negligible.

Is this a real reason to avoid wind turbines? No, considering the statistics based on the death of birds by wind turbines, it seems realistic that wind turbines could be installed. The real reason to be hesitant of wind power would be price or property issues (neighbors and aesthetics).

However, I think Kuwait should focus their attention on solar power and PV farms due to the amount of sun and lack of rain. As seen by our red stack green stack analysis, wind power does not make up much for production, so arguing about wind turbines should not be an issue. I think if Kuwait installed a lot of PV farms, there would be much improvement in energy production as opposed to wind power.







[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_birds_of_Kuwait

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