FMF - Friends of Minerals Forum, discussion and message board

[Peter Megaw]

Mark...sounds like you have a lot to make up for ...am I looking at Air or Ground Freight to clear your kharma? If you don't have enough Mexican stuff to cover your past lives, I also like secondary base metal oxides, sulfosalts and skarn silicates.

Checked out the bat mortality stats with respect to wind farms. Huge range of numbers for deaths...from "thousands" to "hundreds of thousands" to a max of 6 million. Seems there is disagreement on the pressure issue...still sounds like getting whacked by the blades still takes out a lot more than the pressure drop/emoblism mechanism. Interesting that teh USGS seems to have taken this subject up pretty avidly...glad to see the work being done...not sure how happy I am to see what ought to be a geologically oriented agency doing biology though.

Even taking the highest wind farm mortality numbers (for which a mitigation is actively being sought) though..bats are much more imperiled by White Nose Syndrome for which solutions do not seeem to be forthcoming.

For some reason birds get killed by windfarms at only 1/3rd the rate of bats. This is good because they have much greater foes: Cats get over 100 million birds per year! 130 million a year get zapped by powerlines and a staggering 100-1000 million (yep, a billion) die from flying into plate glass windows.

Bats seem to be smart enough to avoid all of those...smile!

NSS 9363

[Gail]

We installed a 60 foot tall, 16 foot bladed, wind turbine 10 kw, in September.
Not a single dead anything!

[Mark Ost]

Love the flying fox picture. I think it is the huge turbines that contribute the most to the problem. I have seen quite a few biologists in the survey. I have always wondered about that. Compared to some of your magnificent collections, I may be stuck in day care for two year olds in pugatory for quite some time, if I rely on my collection to get me out of hot water. This is a very common problem that many geologists have.

[Peter Megaw]

I am geologist too...but got lucky early on collecting while working in and around mines in Mexico

[Mark Ost]

Yes! I saw your presentation at Dallas on DVD. Very fine. I am a groundwater field geologist (read too dumb to be a project manager) so consider myself an all rounder having done everything from wells, direct push, catching critters in rivers, teaching at a community college, last week conducting side scan sonar surveys of a pier with two sunken ships. I was good at mineralogy but am not a specialist as so many of you are. Would like to retire in 2.5678345 years to attend to important things like mineral collecting and penance. Love the rig!

Ps. Where are the safety vests and hard hats??? Too much time with large corporations!

[Peter Megaw]

They are contractors...MY guys wear hardhats...the safety vests are windowdressing

[Mark Ost]

Spoken like a true man!