Posted on 09/03/2023 7:08:37 AM PDT by george76
In a less than 24-hour span this weekend, two more dead whales have been discovered off the northern Atlantic coast of the U.S., and pro-cetacean activists are blaming Joe Biden’s offshore wind initiative.
One whale washed up on Rockaway Beach in New York, while the other was filmed floating off of Chatham, Mass.
While the connection between whale fatalities and offshore wind power development hasn’t been rigorously studied, some environmentalists believe that loud sonar mapping, high boat traffic, and other disturbances to whales’ natural habitat are contributing to the surge in deaths.
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New England Fishermen’s Stewardship Association (NEFSA) said the string of whale deaths — 69 documented since last December — correlates with unprecedented development of offshore wind power installations in the Atlantic Ocean.
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“When there is an unprecedented amount of deaths in a short period of time, the first thing we do is look for what has changed in the natural habitat/environment,” NEFSA wrote in their post. “Whales and other marine animals began washing ashore in alarmingly high numbers only since, and only where, offshore wind seismic blasting is occurring.”
David Shanker, the New Jersey Spokesman for the Save Right Whales, has been tracking whale deaths since late 2022.
Like the fishermen, he also believes offshore wind is to blame for the high number of whale fatalities.
“Since sonar blasting for offshore wind turbine developments began in December 2022, 68 dead whales have washed ashore. That’s in just 38 weeks, meaning nearly two whales have been confirmed dead every week,” Shanker said.
“At what point are we going to realize it’s not an ‘Unusual Mortality Event’ it’s much worse—it’s an inconvenient and unplanned specicide happening as a byproduct of rapid and irresponsible offshore wind turbine development,” he said. “If the government doesn’t put the brakes on these projects, how long will the 350 remaining critically endangered North Atlantic Right Whales (NARW) be able to hold out? Will our children and grandchildren be learning about our current government’s mistakes in in their textbooks in five years or 10?”
Biden has made industrial scale offshore wind a major priority of his administration’s energy policy.
Last week, Biden’s Department of Interior touted the accelerated approval of a fourth major wind project located off of Point Judith, Rhode Island.
Biden has set an ambitious goal of achieving 30 GW of offshore wind by 2030 – and I am more confident than ever that we will meet it. Together with industry, labor and partners from coast to coast, we are building an entirely new industry off the east and west and Gulf coasts,” said Interior Secretary Deb Haaland.
“The Interior Department is committed to the Biden-Harris administration’s all-of-government approach to the clean energy future and delivering clean, reliable renewable energy to help respond to the climate crisis, lower energy costs, and create good-paying union jobs across the manufacturing, shipbuilding and construction sectors,” Haaland said.
Currently, there are only two utility-scale offshore wind installations operating — one off of Virginia and another off of Rhode Island. However, several more are meandering through the permit approval process.
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In Maine, Gov. Janet Mills signed legislation this year that supporters believe will kickstart offshore wind development in the Gulf of Maine.
NEFSA, which represents several lobstering and commercial fishing interests, wants that project paused so an environmental review can be conducted to determine whether the wind turbines will disrupt fishing operations in the Gulf.
Last month, they released a scientific review of studies which, they said, were sufficient to cause concern that building and operating wind turbines could have “population-scale” effects on commercially important species, including lobster and haddock.
I guess whales’ lives don’t matter anymore to the left.
Stinking climate change freaks and their goofy ideas killing the planet, not saving it.
They are criminals.
You have to break a few eggs to make a Virtue Grandstand.
This is PRICELESS.
There is one group of Greenie Weenies pushing wind power down our throats and a group of Greenie Weenies saying wind farms kill whales, AND yet another group of Greenie Weenies complaining about pollution from windmill waste in Sweetwater Tx.
Conclusion, GREENIE WEENIES are NEVER happy.
I agree.
Alternate power is going to have consequences. Want to eliminate coal fired energy? Fine. But the cost will be people and animals dying. People from freezing to death and birds dying by flying into spinning turbines, for example.
Whales are dumb... Especially North Atlantic Right Whales... They called them ‘Right’ Whales because they were the easiest to hunt. They tend to swim towards you, rather than away from you.
It’s amazing that there are any North Atlantic Right Whales left.... Only a few hundred, or so. There are thousands of Right Whales left in other areas of the planet, but those areas aren’t used for fishing as much as the Atlantic is.
Very old and outlawed technique, but it works.
Whey would this be any different with the Wind turbines. We are talking about high current high voltage. Fish are susceptible injury by electricity.
A wind far can kill all the eagles it wants. But you even have a single feather from on that you found on the ground and your life is going to be miserable for the next several months. (Fines and possible jail.)
A friend back in the seventies converted his house to run off a single wind generator. I asked him the downsides. (He’d converted everything to 12V and gas.) He said, “Every week I have to go out and pick up a bushel basket of dead birds. I’ve converted my pantry to an industrial waste dump and those batteries have to be replaced every few years. Oh, and the neighbors hate the sound.”
but the Environmentalists have no trouble killing millions of trees
The Issue is never the Issue.
Each windmill has to be drilled 300 feet into the rockbed.
NC will need about 1200, IIRC, and once those die out, they are left standing. There is no recycling and they continue their killing, destruction of the environment and are outright eyesores. AND they require OIL or GAS to FUNCTION and to be built. They don’t tell you that, do they?
OR you can have ONE 1/2 mile station off the coast, visible to very few.
Exactly. The environmentalists want energy without consequences, which isn’t realistic. The left want to support their green investments, which aren’t green or even ‘greener’. The right wants cheap reliable energy which doesn’t rely on unstable foreign governments, and is diverse enough to withstand catastrophe.
If people were just told the truth, we could have civil discussions, and the media wasn’t so controlled, Americans could figure it out.
“Save the trees, save the bees, save the whales, save those snails.” - George Carlin
I was thinking about this the other day. Here in Washington state, the big fight is over noise from F-18’s training at Whidbey Island and the impact of that noise on the whales in Puget Sound.
So if their argument is that noise waves emitted hundreds of feet in the air is detrimental to whales, then why wouldn’t noise and vibration from offshore wind turbines do the the same?
I don’t by the jet noise argument, but direct noise and vibration that translates to the seafloor seems like a legitimate argument.
I am always reminded of the guy who blew around me in OKC forty eight years ago. On his car he had a large plastic whale and a big sign...”SAVE THE WHALES! BOYCOTT JAPANESE PRODUCTS!”
The car he was driving was a Japanese made Datsun.
Wonder what he would say about whales being killed by SAVE THE EARTH types.
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