A bit of additional research gives us all the numbers required to make our own calculations. We quickly find that the tip of a typical wind turbine blade moves at a speed ranging from 100 to 300 km/h. The calculations involved are trivial, so anyone can do them themselves.
Unsurprisingly, wind blades sweeping through the air at speeds up to 300 km/h kill birds and bats. A quick search gives us the answer to how many such animals die on average per turbine, namely 5 birds and 12 bats every year.
When we combine this with the fact that it takes about 3000 wind turbines to replace one conventional power plant, we get an annual kill rate of 36000 bats and 15000 birds for each power plant replaced by wind power. Adding to this, that there are thousands of conventional power plants in the world, we get an annual kill rate in the 10s of millions if we were to replace them all with wind.
This "research" took me less than an hour, yet my passionate friend were too busy for this, despite taking a positive stand in favor of wind.
If this had been a one off example, I would have dismissed it as something unusual. A moment of thoughtless passion perhaps. But I have vegan friends who are just as passionately in favor of wind turbines. And I've wasted much time talking climate politics with supposedly well informed and clever individuals.
It turns out that the norm is to ignore data, even when data is plentiful and easy to process. Instead of multiplying two numbers together to get an answer, people go with "expert opinion". Highly educated or low educated, they all reach for authority rather than a calculator.
Being of the opposite inclination, I find this refusal to do independent thinking astonishing. The first thing I do when confronted with an idea is to check its validity. Only if my calculations and quick "research" fail to throw cold water on an idea am I prepared to go along with it. Yet, the norm is to do no independent fact checking, and simply go with whatever feels right.
From this, I can only draw the conclusion that most of us are doomed. At best, we'll get through life without being stripped of our possessions and liberties. At worst, we'll end up slaughtered in some mindless war. Willfully ignorant, we'll let ourselves become useful idiots for the establishment who know no limit to their greed and lust for power.
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