Posted on 06/27/2012 9:55:25 PM PDT by george76
A lack of transparency by top Obama administration officials has prompted an environmental group to sue the Interior Department to determine whether wind power projects are killing large numbers of bats and birds.
The American Bird Conservancy (ABC) filed the lawsuit Tuesday in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia accusing the government of intentionally withholding the information and refusing to comply with requests for certain documents under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA).
“It’s ridiculous that Americans have to sue in order to find out what their government is saying to wind companies about our wildlife,”
...
Barack Obama pledged to make his administration the most transparent in history
...
The wind development projects are located in Arizona, California, Florida, Minnesota, Nebraska, Nevada, New Mexico, North Dakota, South Dakota, and Texas. The group says there are more than 2,000 locations in the U.S. where birds are vulnerable to the impacts of wind energy development.
(Excerpt) Read more at humanevents.com ...
Clue: it's tiny.
Even if you ignore the fact that most birds die gruesome deaths in the wild -- and they all die eventually, right? -- the fact is that birds die by the millions from collisions with cars and trucks, from flying into building walls and windows, from poisoning, and other man-made dangers.
Yet the relatively small number who die from being whacked out of the sky by a wind-machine prop is used to claim wind power is bad.
Large scale wind-power is a boondoggle all by itself, without the help of dead birds.
I like small-scale wind power. Home- and farm-size. Where it's appropriate and makes economic sense.
By and large, the big wind farms are not economically sustainable. Having them pushed on us by Big Gubmint is a travesty.
Socialism is OKAY until THEY get hurt by it.
Socialism ALWAYS gets around to HURTING those they “Love?”.
Socialism, the face of Humanism/Gaea/Paganism, is a Self-righteous whore.
Those that politically dally with her will find themselves only useful idiots.
Indignation is rising against her.
Isa 47:10 For thou hast trusted in thy wickedness: thou hast said, None seeth me. Thy wisdom and thy knowledge, it hath perverted thee; and thou hast said in thine heart, I am, and none else beside me.
Isa 47:11 Therefore shall evil come upon thee; thou shalt not know from whence it riseth: and mischief shall fall upon thee; thou shalt not be able to put it off: and desolation shall come upon thee suddenly, which thou shalt not know.
Tens of thousands of migratory and local birds have been killed in windpower valleys according to recent news stories from out west. This includes eagles, ospreys and other protected species. I understand that some wind farms in Hawaii are also involved in this killing, or have gone into disuse for several reasons.
It is not the just the number of birds that are being killed, but specifically which species which cannot afford to suffer serious losses.
Windpower is such a tiny fart in the energy grid that if it disappeared tomorrow, nobody would notice.
I agree that it is a boondoggle in the way it is being done, and many wind farms have gone into ruin, financially and physically.
But there is a serious price being paid by our aviary friends and it should be looked into to see what is wrong with existing windpower farms and whether anything can be done to correct it.
Win or lose, the government will wind up paying the attorneys’ fees of this group, which will turn out to be heavily staffed by lawyers in the first place.
More often than not, the government will also tank its own case deliberately in order to lose so that the environuts get a windfall court settlement that has to be paid by Congress.
It’s a scam.
I lived in Germany for a number of years, and they continually had these wind power documentaries which would detail out every piece and part of their success. So the crew met up with the one and only maintenance guy to a “wind farm” (probably twelve of the windmills in a 20 acre area). It was early morning and they all got out of their cars...with the maintenance guy opening his trunk and getting a plastic bag.
So the camera crew asked what the bag was for. The maintenance guy reached down and picked up the first bird and showed them. So they circled the whole “farm”, and he probably picked up a dozen birds. He said he came out to the farm five days a week, and for most of the year....it was a dozen birds that he picked up daily.
His theory...remember, he’s the maintenance, not a science guy, was that the blades attracted birds and they didn’t pay attention....to get whacked by the oncoming blade. So you can figure well over a thousand birds a year at this one “farm” were killed. In the region I lived at....there were at least one hundred of these “farms”. It might take a hundred years, but I’m guessing that science will have to invent some way to keep the birds at bay, or you might see this whole mess shut down by the end of the century because of declining bird populations.
Maybe some kind of sonic repellant? The sounds of owls, hawks, and other predators on the birds?
Dude, have you ever heard those things at work ?
On the other hand, I could use some sonic repellant around the house when wifey gets on a roll......
Got a penny for poor little Robin, he’s walkin’ walkin’ walkin’ to Missouri.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZrkZepql0Dc
Or change the technology. Find a way to reduce the windmill’s profile on the landscape. They’re ugly and imposing.
That said, I'm also a realist about large populations. Recent estimates are that there are about 10-20 BILLION birds in the U.S. Get your mind around the fact that a sizable percentage of them die every year (think the average lifespan of a bird). Bird populations are declining generally due to MUCH larger causes, many man-made, but many natural. And everything dies someday. Wind farm kills are just not a significant contributing factor to the general decline in avian populations in the U.S. or worldwide.
Yes, certain endangered species are more affected if they're in the area of a windfarm and their migratory paths run into the farms. But overall, this statement:
...well over a thousand birds a year at this one “farm” were killed. In the region I lived at....there were at least one hundred of these “farms”.Sorry to sound crass, but although 100,000 birds annually sounds like a lot, it is not a large percentage, population-wise. Do you know how many birds die each year in that same area, from other man-made and natural causes? What's the population, and the average lifetime in the wild? Do any of the anti-wind folks bother to put the kills in perspective, compared to the general population declines?
Other than the occasional endangered migratory kill (which I am not minimizing), the impact of windfarms on regular species is essentially negligible. The only reason it's an issue is because it's visible and people notice it, and feel bad about dead birds. They ignore the much larger picture of how many birds die each year OTHER THAN the windfarms.
Now remember, I'm not a fan of dead birds either. And I'm certainly not defending the large-scale windfarms. They're awful boondoggles. But let's at least get some perspective about this "windfarms kill birds" issue.
The feds tried to bring charges against seven oil companies in North Dakota, after an extensive 'survey' of the state's 6000+ oil well sites and drilling locations came up with 28 dead birds. They wanted to impose a penalty of $15,000.00 PER BIRD, even though no cause of death had been determined. They also wanted people to serve six months in jail over the carcasses they found.
Considering some 2000 wind generation locations, and the reputation windmills have for killing birds, I'd imagine it just might be possible to find an equal or greater number of dead birds which died from blunt force trauma from windmill blades. Yet no attempt at prosecution has been made, and when confronted with a question about the windmills toll on birds at the presser announcing the intended prosecution of oil companies the man refused to respond.
If the enviros wanted wind power (still, with the addition of solar <1% of our total power supply), let them comply with the same laws the other energy industries must.
Save the birds, I say, over those evil-looking wind spinners!
Agreed.
The main thing the Big-Wind and Big-Solar proponents don't like to face is that those sources are not suitable to large-scale concentrated "farms". The problems of energy storage and transmission are formidable, not to mention the varying output. Hydro (and someday geothermal) are the "natural" sources that make sense in large-scale operation.
Personally I think farm-size and home-size solar and wind installations are just dandy, if you're out in the boonies like I am, and either have to, or want to, maintain a level of independence from The Grid.
I have no problem with that, in fact it appeals to me. Geothermal loops can save a lot on a small scale, too.
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