Environmentalism is for the birds
Danny Lemieux on Feb 11 2011 at 1:16 am | Filed under: Uncategorized
As Kate over at smalldeadanimals likes to say, now is the time when we juxtapose:
First, a video (you need to watch this to the very end, but *** Caution***graphic imagery may be disturbing to some):
(h/t smalldeadanimals.com)
Then, compare this to the self-serving bloviations of a hard-Left legislator regarding the killing of predatory birds (raptors), in which he takes a position with which I actually agree:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/michael-markarian/legislation-to-ensure-bir_b_227340.html
I am an avid bird watcher. I am also an avid conservationist (not environmentalist, which I consider to be a religious cult). I simply cannot conceive how anybody claiming to be an environmentalist can be so blind to the blight created by wind energy farms. Not only are such farms economic boondoggles and environmental eyesores, but they spell absolute disaster for birds and bats.
According to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers website, anyone found “disturbing” a bald eagle can be assessed “a maximum penalty of a $100,000 fine and/or given a one-year jail sentence.”
Does that apply to wind farms as well?
Related posts:
- The destructive forces of green energy
- That Audi Superbowl commercial
- An outlook that’s for the birds
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26 Responses to “Environmentalism is for the birds”
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Well, the Left is evil. Wouldn’t you expect evil people to be doing more harm than good overall? Does it really matter what they say they are doing or helping. Evil people have all kinds of justifications and reasons for their “goals”, but they are evil simply because the consequences are always bad. To a point where they can no longer claim “ignorance” or “being mislead” or “idealism” as excuses for their actions.
This is basically a type called the two prong strategy.
1. Create an energy crisis by making us rely on foreign oil, then propose wind farms as a solution, which enriches the Left.
2. Create an endangered species crisis by killing birds, then use the endangered species issue to force restrictions or bans on nuclear/coal power, thus creating an energy crisis through reliance on foreign oil.
Get how that works? It’s not that hard.
One thing I’m afraid most people don’t understand is that **very little electricity is generated from oil in the US**…..the primary sources being coal, natural gas, nuclear, and hydro.
Yet many people believe that when the replace incandescent bulbs with CFLs, or put solar panels on their house, or support wind farms, that they are “reducing the need for imported oil.”
There is surely *some* effect on oil needs if electricity can be made cheaper, but it is an indirect effect…for example, homes in New England now heated with oil might switch to electricity if the price was right, and there are probably some industrial applications which could switch from oil to electricity. But the whole push of the Obama administraton isn’t to make electricity cheaper, it is to make it **more expensive**…and all the hyped green-ness about windmills and solar will do NOTHING to reduce oil needs and might even have an effect in the opposite direction.
Foster, they generate an emergency and then use it to expand their powers. That’s their SOP.
Foster, most people don’t understand how their micro wave, kitchen sink, or toilet works.
Them understanding how energy is produced, no way. That wasn’t covered in publicly paid for education. For intentional reasons.
I love birds and would have appreciated a warning before watching that. Now I have to get that picture out of my head.
The point of the video is excellent, but I really don’t like seeing animals being maimed.
Tonestaple:
Oh, Please. You got PLENTY of warning. You saw the dead birds being thrown at the Valley Girl, and you could easily see the bird flying in close to the rotating blades. What did you THINK might happen??
Do you have children? Would you WATCH them playing in traffic?
One thing no one has ever explained to me is how there is any net benefit to these wind farms. As soon as the wind stops blowing SOMETHING has to replace the power that the wind was generating, no?
We’re talking massive amounts of power generating capacity that needs to be kept on stand-by, no?
With massive amounts of battery power that can kick in IMMEDIATELY, no? Otherwise you’ll have dim-outs, brown-outs, etc. Which means you’ll have larger enterprises building standby power generation plants which run on what, oil?
Wind farms take up HUGE amounts of land, and deny it to pretty much any other use, not to mention migratory birds!! No, NO! mustn’t mention them!!
I’m not being sarcastic. I’d really like to know.
Bill, interesting points.
The Brits invested huge amounts in building wind farms on totally pie-in-the-sky projections regarding windmill electrical production capacities. They also shelved a large number of conventional power generation projects, assuming that their wind mill farms would suffice.
Britain is not accustomed to a cold climate the way that we are here in the upper-Midwest. They should have called us for advice, as we could have told them that, when it gets very cold and electrical power demand is very high, the wind usually stops blowing.
Now they face major shortfalls in power generation over the next decade or so.
Ooops!
Danny:
I don’t know how voltage sensitive digital circuits are. But I DO know that we have built digital circuits into just about everything. Stop lights, air traffic control systems, GROUND traffic control… I hate to think what will happen when home surveillance systems start doing whatever cockamamie things self-styled James Bond techies have programmed them to do. Seriously, I’ve been spending a lot of time visiting hospitals, and doctor’s offices lately, and just about everything is digitized. What happens when all that stops working, or starts generating erroneous data?
I’m sure everyone reading this could give an example.
What happens when all that stops working, or starts generating erroneous data?
Why would it all stop working?
Y,
We all have digital alarm clocks that think that there is such a time as 12:00 AM, which, I assure you, there is not. 12:00 PM, Yes. 12:00 AM, no.
I do not trust te people who design such things to worry about voltage drops, and their consequences.
From Environmental Impacts of Wind-Energy Projects, published by the National Academies Press:
Having said the above, we provide here estimates summarized by Erickson et al. (2005) and estimates reported by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS 2002a). Those sources emphasize the uncertainty in the estimates, but the numbers are so large that they are not obscured even by the uncertainty. Collisions with buildings kill 97 to 976 million birds annually; collisions with high-tension lines kill at least 130 million birds, perhaps more than 1 billion; collisions with communications towers kill between 4 and 5 million based on “conservative estimates,” but could be as high as 50 million; cars may kill 80 million birds per year; and collisions with wind turbines killed an estimated 20,000 to 37,000 birds per year in 2003, with all but 9,200 of those deaths occurring in California. Toxic chemicals, including pesticides, kill more than 72 million birds each year, while domestic cats are estimated to kill hundreds of millions of songbirds and other species each year. Erickson et al. (2005) estimate that total cumulative bird mortality in the United States “may easily approach 1 billion birds per year.”
Clearly, bird deaths caused by wind turbines are a minute fraction of the total anthropogenic bird deaths—less than 0.003% in 2003 based on the estimates of Erickson et al. (2005).
http://books.nap.edu/openbook.php?record_id=11935&page=72
Bob the issue of intermittent wind energy is at least in part mitigated by having wind farms over large areas, so that when there is little or no wind in Area A, there is wind in Area B. You are correct that wind turbines will never have the energy utilization percentages of a nuclear or fossil power plant, because the wind – even in TX- doesn’t blow all the time. This needs to be figured into the design.
I am satisfied wind energy customer for the last 7 years for my household electricity,
Bob:
Wind farms take up HUGE amounts of land, and deny it to pretty much any other use, not to mention migratory birds!! No, NO! mustn’t mention them!!
From Optimizing Large Wind Farms:
The energy a large wind farm can produce, he and his coworkers discovered, depends less on horizontal winds and more on entraining strong winds from higher in the atmosphere. A 100-meter turbine in a large wind farm must harness energy drawn from the atmospheric boundary layer thousands of feet up.
In the right configuration, lots of turbines essentially change the roughness of the land — much in the same way that trees do — and create turbulence. Turbulence, in this case, isn’t a bad thing. It mixes the air and helps to pull down kinetic energy from above.
Using as example 5 megawatt-rated machines and some reasonable economic figures, Meneveau calculates that the optimal spacing between turbines should be about 15 rotor diameters instead of the currently prevalent figure of 7 rotor diameters.
For a 100 meter turbine, this would be spacing of 15*100= 1,500 meters between turbines. That is plenty of space. Note this is not current spacing.
The optimal place for wind turbines in the US is the Great Plains. There is a lot of space in the Great Plains. With such spacing as outlined above, I hardly see how a wind farm in the Great Plains “denies other use of the land.”
Link for Optimizing Large Wind Farms:
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/11/101123174322.htm
I am pro-wind, pro-oil, pro-coal, and pro-nuclear.
I still wanna know what y’all gonna do when the wind stops blowing.
I still wanna know what y’all gonna do when the wind stops blowing.
Read my first paragraph.
Gringo:
That would be the part where you said:
Bob the issue of intermittent wind energy is at least in part mitigated by having wind farms over large areas, so that when there is little or no wind in Area A, there is wind in Area B?
So, you are suggesting that we blanket even larger areas of the country to wind farms.
As for your being a “satisfied wind energy customer for the last 7 years for my household electricity…” So, you were completely off the grid for all of those 7 years? If you were, then I congratulate you — with no sarcasm.
Gringo, I don’t know where you live but I suspect that it is in the warmer part of the country. Here, up North, our winter weather is marked by periods of snow and elevated (relatively speaking) temperatures when weather fronts move through, followed by extended periods of bitter chill and zero wind. It’s during those “quiet” times when we really need the power.
I tried to read your first link regarding avian deaths from wind farms but it looks as if I am going to have to purchase the publication to be able to read it to its conclusion (which I may still do). I accept that avian deaths occur from many man-made sources. Here in Chicagoland, many song birds die by crashing into lit buildings while migrating at night. It’s a problem that many people are trying to address. The gist of the available pages in your linked article, however, appeared to be that the repercussions of windfarms on birds and bats were still largely unknown when it was published and that wind farms constituted a minute source of energy production. I would also like to point out that the damage done by wind farms is incremental to all the other causes of avian death you cited.
Since publication, there has been a vaste expansion of wind farms here in the Midwest. Your enthusiasm for wind energy not withstanding, I and many others see them as a blight on the landscape.
One of the main concerns about wind farms is that, by necessity, they have to be located in places where high winds are the norm, such as in the Bay Area’s Altamont Pass, where wind speeds increase as they funnel through geographical bottlenecks, or in the Texas panhandle, where straight-line winds blow steady. However, these high-wind areas serve as highways for migrating birds, especially raptors. Thus, the incentive is to place wind farms in areas where they will do maximum harm to wildlife. From what I have been able to read, they are most likely to affect raptors (eagles, hawks, falcons, owls) that use wind currents to soar (like the one in the video) and which sit on top of the food chain. Because they are on top of the food chain, they are much more rare and reproduce much more slowly than smaller birds. Thus, the impact of windmills on raptors and the food chain is disproportionally high.
On the economics of the issue, I don’t know enough about the particulars to do anything but raise questions: I know that one big issue is power transmission costs. The economics of wind power are marginal at best (as the European experience has shown). I don’t know of any wind farm today that exists without massive subsidies. Are those subsidiesto support operating costs or the initial capital investments?
Plus, in the U.S., wind farms are generally located in rural, desolate areas to capture wind energy, whereby they benefit from low land values and avoid NIMBY backlashes. However, that means the power generated must be transported over large distances, thereby requiring expensive transmission infrastructures and “bleeding” energy over distances, further increasing their cost/benefit ratios. In Europe, where distances are much shorter, I have seen windmill farms ringing cities and, from what I understand, they still can’t support themselves economically.
Were power transmission costs one of the reasons that T. Boone Pickens backed out of his massive wind-energy project for the Texas Panhandle? It would be interesting to know. I know that he cited “lack of available capital” and falling gas prices as the reason, but suspect that wasn’t the whole story.
I’m happy for you that you are happy with your wind power. However, I remain skeptical.
Danny Lamieux:
Gringo, I don’t know where you live but I suspect that it is in the warmer part of the country.
TX
On the economics of the issue, I don’t know enough about the particulars to do anything but raise questions: I know that one big issue is power transmission costs….Plus, in the U.S., wind farms are generally located in rural, desolate areas to capture wind energy, whereby they benefit from low land values and avoid NIMBY backlashes. However, that means the power generated must be transported over large distances, thereby requiring expensive transmission infrastructures and “bleeding” energy over distances, further increasing their cost/benefit ratios.
You are correct that transmission lines are indeed a big issue regarding wind energy. Because wind energy sites are located far from the urban areas that consume the most energy, there needs to be an upgrade in transmission lines. Here are some links regarding upgrading transmission lines in TX
http://www.seco.cpa.state.tx.us/re_wind-transmission.htm Deescribes legal steps circa 2006 to deal with transmission lines issues.
http://www.ercot.com/news/press_releases/2010/nr-12-30-10 Current look at TX
They won’t upgrade until somebody’s palms have been greased with lucre. That seems to be the “setup” these days between what people need and the power of government.
Yes. 12:00 AM, no.
12 AM is midnight is it not. Why would it not exist?
You saw the dead birds being thrown at the Valley Girl, and you could easily see the bird flying in close to the rotating blades. What did you THINK might happen??
I wasn’t expecting it either. But then I started the vid in the middle. Perspective is hard to get in a video. Especially at long range. I wasn’t really sure how far away the bird was vs the turbines.
Danny Lamieux
Here, up North, our winter weather is marked by periods of snow and elevated (relatively speaking) temperatures when weather fronts move through, followed by extended periods of bitter chill and zero wind. It’s during those “quiet” times when we really need the power.
That is an issue, which in part is mitigated by drawing from wind energy from a large area, to average things out- see my comment #14.
During the recent cold spell in TX [coldest since 1983 in many areas], it appears that wind energy was performing when other sources of electrical energy were partially shut down from the bad weather. Granted, this does not directly address your above concern, which deals with the low wind conditions after a storm, but it shows that reliability of electricity supply and bad weather is an issue that cuts both ways.
· Wind energy played a major role in keeping the blackouts from becoming more severe. Between 5 and 7 A.M. this morning (the peak of the electricity shortage) wind was providing between 3,500 and 4,000 MW, roughly the amount it had been forecast and scheduled to provide. That is about 7% of the state’s total electricity demand at that time, or enough for about 3 million average homes.
· Cold and icy conditions caused unexpected equipment failures at power plants, taking up to 50 fossil-fired power plants totaling 7,000 MW of capacity offline.
· The cold temperatures caused electric heating demand to exceed the demand expected for this time of year. Many fossil and nuclear power plants take planned outages during non-summer months for maintenance, since electric demand is usually lower during these periods than in the summer.
· The cold temperatures led to very high demand for natural gas for heating purposes, which may have strained the ability of the natural gas pipeline and distribution system to meet both these heating needs and the need to supply natural gas power plants (Texas obtains about half of its electricity by burning natural gas, and gas power plants account for about 70% of the state’s generating capacity).
http://www.awea.org/rn_release_02-02-11.cfm Background on TX blackouts. Source for the above quote.
http://www.awea.org/rn_release_02-04-11.cfm ” Wind Energy Helps Save Day as Fossil Fuel Plants Falter and Electricity Demand Surges Across Plains Due to Winter Storm:” Information on wind energy in the Midwest & TX during the storm.
Danny Lamieux:
I would also like to point out that the damage done by wind farms is incremental to all the other causes of avian death you cited.
Avian deaths by wind farms would be incremental to multiples of 0.003% of total bird deaths, the multiples reflecting increases in wind energy from time of study to present. At the same time, bird deaths from other encounters with mankind would have increased, due to more construction etc.
The Central Valley in California, one of the best agricultural producing areas in the world, is turning into wasteland as irrigation waters are denied it due to concern about preserving a salamander, which is apparently worth more than the millions of people who can be fed by Central Valley agricultural production. I speak this as someone who dedicated a year of my life to eco-activism.
There is a balance, somewhere.
Balance can only be achieved by balanced individuals, Gringo. Not cult obsessed zealots, fanatics, and extremists. Which is who is driving most of environmentalist laws right now.