Study Finds Reduction in Turbine Bat Kills - Green Inc. Blog - NYTimes.com

I have nothing against bats (the flying variety not the baseball kind), but I do have problems with many of the studies that find bird deaths around wind turbines. If pollution is bad (which I would assume it is), how many animals (birds, bats, skunks, people, or whatever) are dying from other sources of power generation? The problem is that they don't just fall at the base of the gas pump and hence are not measured. So much for true comparisons.

Study Finds Reduction in Turbine Bat Kills - Green Inc. Blog - NYTimes.com:

". Twenty-one dead bats were found when turbines were fully operational, while 11 were found when turbines were turned off during low-wind phases....

The bat-saving measure came with a cost. Given the wind farm’s generating capacity, that one percent could theoretically translate to as much as 1,000 megawatt hours per year.

Using the going rate of $70.00 to $90.00 per megawatt hour of wind energy, that’s a potential $70,000 to $90,000 annual hit to the bottom line."

BTW this is also an example of how framing (context) matters. For instance. What if the following were the headline? "Would you pay $9,000 to save a single bat?"