This is just ridiculous
Story Here
Taken From Original Article:
"Making laps around the $1 billion-plus, mostly-taxpayer funded coliseum began at 6 a.m. and lasted two hours. The volunteers represented three conservation groups: Audubon Chapter of Minneapolis, Minnesota Citizens for the Protection of Migratory Birds, and Friends of Roberts Bird Sanctuary.
Their mission was to confirm the worst: To see if the stadium, with its 200,000 square feet of clear and reflective glass, is so indistinguishable to birds that the creatures crash into it like something out of an Alfred Hitchcock movie.
Welcome to the avian killing fields.
Among the casualties were 21 white-throated sparrows, nine ruby-throated hummingbirds, and one snow bunting, a.k.a., "snowflakes," an uncommon sighting for bird-watchers like Sharpsteen, who says he's never seen anything like this in downtown Minneapolis.
Over the course of the monitoring period, volunteers found 60 dead birds. Another 14 were discovered stunned, laying on the ground.
The findings, along with reports from maintenance staff and security guards, estimate that perhaps as many as 500 birds die annually as a result of the building."
I won't attach the images you can see them in the article
A local Minnesota Radio Station had an hilarious take on the birds and created their own "Awareness" advertisement for it
Link Here
Comments
I remember reading something about this during the construction of the stadium. A bird activist went to the owners/contractors pleading for them to put in a different, reflective window material in. They were all for it until they saw the roughly $28,000,000 price increase and essentially said those birds can go to hell. Don't know if that's all completely factual, but when I read it I actually lol'd.
I think they did put new material in but I guess it just isn't working
Time to purchase a lot of these beautiful decals.
Far fewer than I would have guessed. Glass-sided buildings are hell on birds.
I've never seen a snow bunting.
I think you can get one out of the dumpster in Minneapolis.
i laughed
Sliding glass doors are hell on people.
Indeed.
Would you like some coffee with your creamer?
Michael Scott, specifically.
Does someone here know anyone who is an expert in Bird Law? We may need to contact them.
(clears throat) we might have someone here
I heard that all Super Bowl stadiums use the same glass, which is why Eagles never go there.
Or, it explains what happened to the Falcons.
Blackout with the perfect set, and then...
watch it
I know the posts are in light-heartedness, but the story still makes me sad.
Just couldn't miss the chance for this...
via GIPHY
I do feel for the birds but it was just too perfect
I think Minneapolis just has dead bird problem in general when I was there for the Ryder Cup dead birds were all over the street, not just near the stadium, and a couple fell down and hit people walking in front of us.
The HokieBird would crash thru the glass, then find the architect and beat him senseless whilst singing "Enter Sandman."
Along a similar line, I read once that all the clean energy windmills were like Cuisinarts for birds, especially raptors, who pursued their prey down thru the blades.
The HokieBird would think he was being tackled, stiff-arm the windmill to the ground, and then do a victory dance over its body.
GO BIRD!
If a bird flies into any of the windmills in Ohio and dies, it was too stupid to live. That wind farm has the arms stay at the same constant slow speed regardless of wind speeds by rotating the blades.
Pretty sure windmills limit the rotation speed so the blade tips don't go supersonic and annoy the shit out of everyone with how loud they are.
Plus the turbines inside are likely optimized for a certain rotation speed. If you let it change with every gust, it'd probably wear through both the turbine and stress whatever capacitor/storage unit you're pumping it to.
Also, even if the motor/interior is turning at only 15mph or so, aren't the tips still pushing 150mph+?
Yes. My uncle is CEO of an energy company and has said on multiple occasions that while those 80 foot long blades look like they are spinning slowly, at the ends they are going well over 100 mph.
Can I be your long lost cousin?
They only spin like 6 times per minute but birds commonly get hit by them they aren't really looking up expecting to get dropped by a giant blade going 70mph
Smithsonian circa '13 sez several hundred thousand a year in the U.S. alone. And that is only one type of turbine, and I imagine excludes offshore turbines where the evidence swims with the fishes. The study they link predicts upwards of 1.4 million if the operable energy goals in 2013 were fully implemented.
I watched a pair of ducks hop off a corn field/wind farm while driving through north eastern Colorado. The hen made it through, the drake got karate chopped by a turbine blade with significant force don't think it ever got up...
In other breaking news, humans are bad for the environment
Eh. That said, it's a statistical certainty the planet and everything living on it is doomed. Could happen tomorrow. Will definitely happen in a few billion years, give or take.
So I'll put my money on the one species that offers the best chance at escaping Earth, assuming Douglas Adams wasn't a prophet.
It's an interesting philosophical thought experiment, along the lines of "would you go back in time and kill Hitler?":
If you could guarantee that at some point in our future, we will have the ability to travel to worlds beyond our Solar System and resuscitate any extinct species we wish on them, but it would require all our available resources and put current species at risk, would you do it?
This is getting a little deep for TKP, but I've always found the concept of "scientific progress at any cost" to be fascinating. Not something I approve of, but fascinating nonetheless.
In fact, there's an interesting philosophical musing regarding where the world's technology would be today if we hadn't beaten Hitler. The Nazis, at the cost of so many things (as we're all aware), were the epitome of that concept.
If we could put this in a separate non-TKP forum, I would. I like discussion of this nature. HOWEVER, there is nothing I could say about this without knowingly violating rules of the forum.
Agreed. That's why I edited that one about three times to make sure I wasn't accidentally implying anything beyond "it's an interesting thing to think about."
It is true that some of the greatest scientific/engineering minds of the 20th century were Germans, but the problem with this whole speculation on where the Nazi regime would have gone long-term is that their entire economic model was built on war. Industry was controlled by the state for the benefit of the military. If you really look at Hitler and his beliefs on the economy, he really thought it to be largely unimportant. I think that was because he honestly had no economic plan, and was an insane man who had nothing more on his mind than mass deception, manipulation, and destruction. The war economy model doesn't work when you run out of land to conquer. My opinion is the whole thing would have inevitably imploded on itself.
Calm down, John Hammond.
If you could guarantee that at some point in our future, we will have the ability to travel to worlds beyond our Solar System and resuscitate any extinct species we wish on them, but it would require all our available resources and put current species at risk, would you do it?
I guess I am missing something, this doesn't seem much of a quandary to me. why would I want to resuscitate any species at all? don't get me wrong, I have been working in wildlife conservation for a long time but I don't see how this would be beneficial to us as a space faring species. Now if you want to posit that I could commandeer any new inhabitable world no matter what current species inhabits it, but I would have to risk the existing human species on Earth, that would be a good moral question.
So you're saying I shouldn't have placed my bets on the dodo bird?
Sounds like a good food supply for feral cats, dogs and homeless people!
Chinese food supply in Minneapolis is at an all-time high.
ROR!
Headed to Minneapolis!
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