Reader Richard Lyman submits this story from AP and the “What we all knew but Washington would never admit because it stinks to high heaven department“.
It is about how certain green interests get a pass on Endangered Species Act laws everyone else would get prosecuted on, but these greens get a pass based solely on their ideology. No, we aren’t talking about the recent IRS scandal where conservative groups are targeted, though it bears a striking resemblance to that story.
CONVERSE COUNTY, Wyo. (AP) — It happens about once a month here, on the barren foothills of one of America’s green-energy boomtowns: A soaring golden eagle slams into a wind farm’s spinning turbine and falls, mangled and lifeless, to the ground.
Killing these iconic birds is not just an irreplaceable loss for a vulnerable species. It’s also a federal crime, a charge that the Obama administration has used to prosecute oil companies when birds drown in their waste pits, and power companies when birds are electrocuted by their power lines.
But the administration has never fined or prosecuted a wind-energy company, even those that flout the law repeatedly. Instead, the government is shielding the industry from liability and helping keep the scope of the deaths secret.
Source: http://entertainment.verizon.com/news/read.php?id=19636464&ps=1018&srce=news_class&action=1&lang=en&_LT=UNLC_NKNWU00L1_UNEWS
Richard opines:
It is fascinating how the fossil fuel based industries are held financially accountable for bird deaths (even from electrocutions!) but wind farms get a free pass. It would appear that if standards were applied evenly across the board, the fines to wind powered electricity generating facilities for bird slaughter would exceed the subsidies they receive for construction and operation.
It could really be a win/win for the government: a mechanism for perpetual funding. As a small town elected official, I am amazed that none of our Washington bureaucrats have seized upon this golden opportunity. Of course, the Audubon Society may take a different view.
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http://nofrakkingconsensus.com/2009/08/21/how-much-is-a-birds-life-worth-part-1/
Ouch! hardly an impeachable offense, but just another black eye for an administration that is out of eyes to blacken.
Broadly speaking, there are two types of environmental groups.
1. Those who value nature, habitat, animals, views, mountains, etc. — call them conservationists.
2. Big Money environmentalists, whose interests are mostly pollution, and especially climate change. The Sierra Club was already very well endowed with $, even before Aubrey McClendon (then CEO of Chesapeake Energy) gave then $25 million for their campaign to end coal use.
Wind energy is backed by the second type of environmental group. The environmentalist groups with lots of money for politics has just bested the the environmental groups with far less money for politics and politicians.
That is how we came to a place where in the name of saving the planet (from climate change) we kill off wildlife — eagles and raptors in this case, California Condors in an earlier post (these are the rarest birds in the US), and perhaps even the iconic Whooping Cranes, who after 70 years of attempts to bring them back, still number less than 300 in the wild.
The Endangered Species Act? The environmental community really DOES care about the act, and the animals whose numbers are preserved, except when they don’t, when the monied environmentalists run roughshod over the conservation minded environmentalists. The Sierra Club has blood on its greedy hands.
Mining companies with heap-leach cyanide ponds have been hit with huge fines for decades when a duck lands in a pond and dies. The expenses they’ve endured have been astounding, and I’ve seen here in northern Nevada what lengths they’ve had to go to avoid being fined.
Why are wind farms any different?
Here in Canada Syncrude in Alberta agreed to pay $3 million in penalties after 1,600 ducks died on one of its tailings ponds during a storm a few years ago.
We lost a few ducks (thousands of which are shot by hunters every weekend) and by the press coverage this received, you’d think they were on the verge of extinction!
For those who do not recognize Aubrey McClendon and Chesapeake: They are heavily invested in natural gas.
Is there no writ of mandamus in America?
As Gov. Christie was interviewed on the rebuilt Boardwalk the commentator remarked how he is now a GW believer. Yet the Boardwalk was rebuilt, as though Sandy were a hundred year storm. And the moderator, et al, see no irony in this. It is a confession of orthodoxy of a meaningless tenet–I’m OK, you’re OK. A confession of guilt, of original sin, which leads to absolution from all sin thereafter. A get out of jail free card. –AGF
You would think that the National Audubon Society would be screaming bloody murder about this. But no, instead, they play the numbers game, pointing out that:
Feral and domestic cats
kill
Hundreds of millions [source 1=”AWEA” language=”:”][/source]
Power lines
kill
130 million — 174 million [source 1=”AWEA” language=”:”][/source]
Windows (residential and commercial)
kill
100 million — 1 billion [source 1=”TreeHugger” language=”:”][/source]
Pesticides
kill
70 million [source 1=”AWEA” language=”:”][/source]
Automobiles
kill
60 million — 80 million [source 1=”AWEA” language=”:”][/source]
Lighted communication towers
kill
40 million — 50 million [source 1=”AWEA” language=”:”][/source]
While wind turbines
only kill
10,000 — 40,000 [source 1=”ABC” language=”:”][/source]
Of course, they are fully onboard with the Climatist ideology, so think wind turbines are super.
Audubon is REALLY out of touch if they think that only 10 to 40 K birds are killed by wind turbines.
Their fellow environmentalists — this is a direct quote from the AP article we are commenting on here — say this:
“More than 573,000 birds are killed by the country’s wind farms each year, including 83,000 hunting birds such as hawks, falcons and eagles, according to an estimate published in March in the peer-reviewed Wildlife Society Bulletin.”
Perhaps Audubon, even though one of the less monied conservation groups, is in the bag as well.
Had to double-check,as I thought this was about the USSR surpressing info.Oh wait.It’s the USSA.
Have all laws been thrown out by B.Hussein? And windmills and solar panels are non-polluting? WOW. I really what to know the processes to make them,and what materials they are using.
I’d love to see the Feral or Domestic cat which can take on a bird of Prey such as Bald Eagle or better yet, a Golden Eagle!
Agenda trumps integrity….and reality.
The inefficiency of windmills as reliable mass power source seems to be offset by their effectiveness as an environmental hazard.
RE:Bruce Cobb says:
May 14, 2013 at 8:38 am
The National Audubon Society should be ashamed of itself for playing that numbers game.
How many golden eagles do feral cats eat? Likely it is the other way around: The eagles eat the cats.
The members of that society need to remove the leaders, and do it fast.
The wind farm developers, construction companies, and operators, are all subject to the National Environmental Protection Act, Migratory Bird Treaty Act, Eagle Protection Acts, and Endangered Species Act. These laws require environmental assessments of projects, eagle protection plans that should both specify periods when construction is prohibited and require “take permits” that allow specified and limited killing or injuring of protected birds and mammals such as protected bat species. Moreover, violations are punishable both civilly and criminally.
I believe that DOI, BLM, US Fish and Wildlife, US Forest Service, and DOJ, all of whom have enforcement responsibility, are deliberately failing to enforce these laws against parties who build and operate wind farms and individual turbines. This malfeasance is inexcusable. If “green energy” producers are exempted by administrative fiat, these laws should be repealed. Selective enforcement denies equal protection under the law to those against whom the laws are strictly enforced.
This is another case in which Obama and his minions are above laws that can prevent his futile and useless energy programs from being implemented. Outrageous.
Brian Williams: ” governor chris christie who told us, among other things, he’s a climate change believer as he struggles now to rebuild, reform and restore 127 miles of precious new jersey coastline.”
http://www.nbcnews.com/video/rock-center/51849600#51849600 [bottom]
The question is not whether wind or oil services kill birds – or even people. Sh*t happens when you do stuff. The question is whether we handle the situation appropriately – not really even equally.
Avoidable collateral damange is what we want to penalize. Waste pits for oil projects like the tarsands are treated as avoidable hazards with good management; bird deaths in them result in fines. Deaths from nighttime flights into tankage lighted for safety purposes are not due to an avoidable hazard, and so do not result in fines.
We may not like bird choppers, but we also don’t like other aspects of our human lifestyle without banishing the whole she-bang. Except for the Erhlichs of the world, that is.
Once a non-bird-chopper wind turbine is in the field, the Audubon Society will be all over the wind industry. Until then their limited though annoying power is better focused on areas of avoidable hazards.
I think once the influential environmentalists/MSM get a wind of this you can kiss goodbye to wind farms
You would think that the National Audubon Society would be screaming bloody murder about this. But no, instead, they play the numbers game, pointing out that: …
I would like to see a species breakdown for each cause. I seriously doubt that cats and windows are serious threats to raptors, especially eagle-sized raptors.
I like to hope that there’s someone, somewhere, counting all the turbine kills the authorities don’t want to mention – a birdy forum somewhere, perhaps, with members who also write frequent, publishable letters to their local papers. Let honesty and openness prevail.
Mind you, for the verminous city pigeons around here, I’d happily put up a turbine myself and try for the record.
I submitted the same article, glad to see it up. I am guessing Richard beat me in submitting it. My question was:
If during WWI an interruptor could be put on machine guns so that bullets could be fired through a propeller, why can’t a phase matching mechanism be placed on wind turbines to allow large birds to pass through? I know that putting a hard brake on a wind turbine is bad for all sorts of internals, but how about monitoring the bird flight, and matching the turbine so that the birds pass through the gaps between blades? This wouldn’t be the same as bring the entire system to a halt. In addition to phase matching the blade might need to slow down to reduce turbulence, but a soft brake once per month at a farm probably wouldn’t harm the overall farm.
At the end of the (very long) article Duke outlines steps they are taking to reduce the number of kills. While those steps work for eagles, not all would matter for migratory birds (cranes mentioned a day or two ago).
Duster said, “ I seriously doubt that cats and windows are serious threats to raptors, especially eagle-sized raptors.”
Here in Georgia, we have hawks all over the place. It is fascinating to see them flying high, circling while looking for food. It is impressive to see a hawk making his diving flight through thick pine trees to grab the unsuspecting mouse that will become the hawk’s lunch. My point is that hawks just don’t fly into power lines, windows, get eaten by cats, etc. I suspect that eagles are much the same.
The problem is that windmill blades are constantly moving, and for some reason the eagle is not able to compensate for these hazards during their flight. Heck, power lines are resting platforms for smaller birds, and predators like hawks and eagles hang around those sites for potential meals.
Leo Morgan,
Yes, the US has a writ of mandamus.
However, the courts have also declared prosecutorial discretion to be absolute. There is no mechanism by which a decision to or not to prosecute a particular potential crime can be reviewed.
Chad,
“If during WWI an interruptor could be put on machine guns so that bullets could be fired through a propeller, why can’t a phase matching mechanism be placed on wind turbines to allow large birds to pass through?”
Even if this were possible, it might not be enough to prevent bird kills. There is evidence at least with bats that as many of 90% of bat kills at wind farms are the result of decompression injuries caused by passing through the low pressure zone in the wake of the blades rather than physical contact. I wouldn’t think birds, even large birds like raptors would fare much better than the bats against the sudden change in pressure.
http://www.cell.com/current-biology/retrieve/pii/S0960982208007513