"Those swirling blades have been known to kill migratory bats"
My first thought when I heard this sentence was "bats migrate?" I guess you learn something new everyday! Yes this may have just been common sense but I willingly admit that I had no clue bats migrated. That being said, when the topic of wind turbines comes up the usual problems that people discuss are the effects that they have on migratory birds, bats are not issues that immediately come to mind but this does absolutely make sense. One turbine can kill several dozen bats in a year and when you take into consideration the sheer number of turbines throughout the entire United States this number can add up and effect the overall population of some of these species. Towards the end of the podcast someone brings up the idea of echolocation. In the very beginning of this discussion I had this same thought. I remember when I was young, doing a presentation on Flying Foxes, and learning that the saying "blind as a bat" really just means that bats use sonar to be their sight. I am just curious as to how bats run into these large structures if they should technically be able to sense them using echolocation.
I think that the simple solution that they came up with, to slow the blades down when the wind is low, could potentially help the situation. However, I think that it is hard to accurately guess when the bats will be migrating and therefore difficult to control the speed of the turbines effectively. They say that because bats are small animals that they will not fly when it is "too windy" but again, I think that is a difficult thing to judge.
The last thing in this podcast that fully surprised me was that they can die without actually hitting the turbine! The low pressure area near the tip of each blade can cause a vortex which causes the air in their lungs to expand rapidly and can cause fatal damage! Mind. Blown.
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