Just when the green energy movement thinks they have it all worked out, along comes a snail-darteresque moment that throws a monkey wrench in green plans. These are the big fanboys in the panhandle, which I snapped a photo of near the Oklahoma- Texas border when I was doing USHCN site surveys in December. – Anthony
(From Bloomberg) — Iberdrola SA and E.ON AG’s turbine dreams for the windswept Texas Panhandle may be stymied by the mating rituals of the Lesser Prairie Chicken, a bird whose future could slow the pace of U.S. renewable energy growth.
Developers are scouring the sagebrush and grasslands of potential turbine sites for the ground-dwelling chickens, E.ON chief development officer Patrick Woodson said. Once plentiful in the southern high plains, the bird now has a high priority for listing under the Endangered Species Act, a move that will affect where as much as $11 billion in turbines can be built.
Federal protection for the chickens will hamper Texas’s plan to add 5,500 megawatts of wind power in the region by 2013, a 60 percent increase for the state. President Barack Obama wants to double all U.S. energy from renewable sources such as the wind and sun in three years to reduce dependence on imported oil and the greenhouse-gas emissions blamed for global warming.
“The windiest parts of some of these states seem to be the areas that still have bigger concentrations of prairie chickens,” Woodson said in an Aug. 13 interview. “We need to plan for a worst-case scenario, which would be a listing.”
There may be as few as 10,000 Lesser Prairie Chickens left in the U.S. from an estimated 3 million in the 18th century. Many are still found in the panhandle, Texas’s northern tip that also boasts the best prospects for wind power, said Heather Whitlaw, a biologist with the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department.
Electric-generating wind turbines inhibit the bird’s spring mating rituals, Whitlaw said on Aug. 11. Males jump, fight and show off bright yellow eye combs and reddish esophageal air sacks as they court females in an elaborate dance. The chickens have learned to avoid such mating displays around structures like turbine towers or utility poles where predators may perch.
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Ouch, listing under the ESA? That’s gonna hurt. Read the complete article here
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According to the Texas Parks and Wildlife Dept., the hunt is on for Lesser Prarie Chicken habitat.
The Texas Panhandle area supports a large proportion of the remaining populations of Lesser Prairie-Chickens, so we all have an important opportunity to ensure conservation of the grasslands that support this icon of the Southern High Plains. It is important that we all work together to conserve and manage this unique grassland species. One of the challenges facing biologists and managers is the need to collect accurate census data in order to address the questions and concerns of whether Lesser Prairie-Chickens should be listed as a threatened species across their range. With your help and reports of observations, we will be able to determine how many prairie-chickens we have in Texas.
If you see this bird please contact any of the following:
Texas Parks and Wildlife Dept.
(http://www.tpwd.state.tx.us/landwater/land/habitats/)
Heather Whitlaw
Box 42125, TTU
Lubbock, TX 79409-2125
Please provide details of the date, location and number of individuals seen. If possible include GPS coordinates. Did you happen to get a photograph or digital image? Your information is valuable and will help ensure the continued survival of this unique
grassland bird.
I’m sure WUWT readers would be glad to help.
h/t to Jeez
>>>Unfortunately some over 440 feet tall are within 800 yards
>>>of homes and we cannot get our pollies to force a buffer
>>>distance from residences to protect people from ultrasound,
>>>blade glint or shadow flicker, greenies care more about birds
>>>than people.
You forgot to mention ‘flying blades’. You don’t want to be living within a mile of these ‘wind-elecs’. Any energy system, by its very nature, contains a lot of energy.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4N4HQv-UyUo&feature=related
.
They are playing a game of chicken with America’s energy supplies.
Perfect on a bed of wild rice with a mild Chablis.
I don’t like to get that friendly with my chickens.
What appals me is the over-design.
Vertical windmills mount the generator vertically and avoid a lot of engineering as a result, and they’re gust-proof.
These things will fail and there will be no money to mend them. In ten years their tattered hulks will stand testimony to an age of Hubris.
I gather that wind turbines are supposedly designed for an approximate operating life of about 25 years. It seems that a good percentage of wind turbines start to fail within a decade and by about fifteen years a high percentage of turbines have required rebuilding or have failed or even disintegrated.
I have noted an increasing number of articles and photographs on abandoned wind farms in both the USA and in Europe.
Is there a requirement anywhere that requires the wind farm operators / owners to contribute a statutory portion of their annual profits to a financial reserve that is independently administered?
A reserve that will be used to dismantle and clean up after the wind farm has ceased operations or the operators / owners have gone bankrupt, a highly likely scenario if and when the massive tax payer subsidies are eventually reduced or eliminated.
The sight and thought of a huge number of massive and deteriorating 250 foot high concrete towers topped by a hundred tonnes of scrap machinery and fan blades, spread for tens of kilometres across the country side, being left to the local land owners or local authorities to clean up, using their own or tax payer’s money after the operator’s executives have made off with all the profits is another rather nauseating scenario.
It will be added to the lists of those whose sheer greed and complete lack of any ethics or morality is so being so notably displayed by the current crop of big business executives and no doubt a considerable percentage of politicians and bureaucrats as well.
Meanwhile, in 2006 in Australia,
“FEDERAL Environment Minister Ian Campbell has won a concession from the developer of the Bald Hills wind farm in Victoria, with the company agreeing to move six turbines out of the potential flight path of the orange-bellied parrot.”
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,20867,20469660-421,00.html
We are beginning to see the sometimes irrational behavior of man interfering with planning & analysis. Here is another example, reported by World Nuclear News:
““Denmark trades power in the same Nord Pool, which has announced that from October the spot floor price for surplus power will drop from zero to minus EUR 20 cents/kWh. In other words, wind generators producing power in periods of low demand will have to pay the network to take it. Nord Pool said that “A negative price floor has been in demand for some time – especially from participants trading Elspot in the Danish bidding areas. … Curtailment of sales may give an imbalance cost for the affected seller and thus creates a willingness to pay in order to deliver power in the market.” This is likely to have a negative effect on the economics of wind power in the region, since a significant amount of Denmark’s wind power production is affected. ” WNN 1/4/09, Nord Pool 4/2/09.”
Fancy wind farms having to pay people to take their power. Is this a way that non-subsidised competitors are getting even? Think of the enormous future consequences for projects that can be started only because they are subsidised beyond reason.
Methinks that the lesser prairie chicken and the orang-bellied parrot are but symbols in this fight to claw back subsidies. Any comment, economic modellers?
If you’re upset with the multi-billion ton per year production of CO2 from coal plants, you can thank Jane Fonda and friends. Remember the movie “China Syndrome”? That and the hysteria triggered by the media coverage of Three Mile Island shut down the nuclear plant industry. As the US needed more electricity, as any growing economy does, this left no option but the coal option. Two other asides on Three Mile Island. A coal plant at the same location will emit more radiation than the nuke there now. And, more people died in the back seat of Ted Kennedy’s car than at TMI.
If you’re upset with what happened at the World Trade Center, the fact the buildings came down so quickly, you can thank the hysteria induced by the asbestos ban of the early 70’s.
see http://www.jamesphogan.com/bb/bulletin.php?id=107
How about the Challenger disaster?
From the same source:
While we’re on the shuttle disasters, you can blame the hysteria regarding freon and the ozone hole for contributing to all those loose tiles.
From http://www.space.com/missionlaunches/foam_tiles_030204.html
Of course there were warnings about this:
From http://www.nytimes.com/2003/02/04/us/loss-of-the-shuttle-the-problems-97-report-warned-of-foam-damaging-tiles.html?pagewanted=all
There are other outrages committed in the name of ‘protecting’ the earth. DDT bans come to mind.
But notice a pattern here? The same people making these demands for change are never around to accept responsibility for the consequences. And the consequences of earlier environmental demands are ignored when new and improved demands are made. No costs-benefits analysis. No hearing from the other side.
There just isn’t any room for people according to some in the environmental movement. No coal. No nukes. No natural gas. Now, apparently, no wind power.
Sigh.
If I were the windmill people, the moment the prairie chicken’s name was raised, my breed and release program would have begun. For literally “chicken feed”, the Texas countryside can be flooded with miserable prairie chickens. There are inexpensive ways to fight back against enviro loons, when one considers the relative cost of the projects they are blocking. Animals like Mexican wolves breed quickly and need not be a development roadblock . . . if you like animals, and have alittle imagination. The enviro wackos see these animals as freebie keys to blocking development. It would be cheaper to raise a bunch of whatever is being touted at the moment than see billion dollar projects scotched.
Fits right in with the basic agenda.
“Study Warns of ‘Energy Sprawl’
A paper published by the Nature Conservancy predicts that by 2030 U.S. energy production will occupy a land area larger than Minnesota, according to a New York Times blog, in large part because of the pursuit of domestic clean energy”. http://www.dtnprogressivefarmer.com/dtnag/common/link.do?symbolicName=/ag/blogs/template1&blogHandle=ethanol&blogEntryId=8a82c0bc231572590123579090740347&showCommentsOverride=false
And a plan from EPA:
“The EPA is drafting a rule to calculate the land-use effects of biofuels as part of ensuring the emission reductions that biofuels must meet versus gasoline emissions. CARB adopted its own standard earlier this year. The EPA and CARB rely on econometric modeling, but each uses different formulas and assigns different direct and indirect emission calculations to different fuels. Biofuel backers dispute the rationale, but it is unlikely arguments over indirect land-use change will just go away.
“Yes, we know there’s a lot of uncertainty, but we also know you cannot take one-third of the U.S. corn crop and say there is no impact — zero,” Tyner said. ”
http://www.dtnprogressivefarmer.com/dtnag/common/link.do?symbolicName=/free/news/template1&paneContentId=5&paneParentId=70104&product=/ag/news/topstories&vendorReference=b88006fa-b53c-4980-88e5-e3a4e3a4d33e
Problem is also that these 5500 MegW’s of energy are “nameplate” ratings – reduce that a “on-line” factor of around 19 – 23 pert based on German, Denmark, and Spanish experience with their wind mills.
And those countries rely on base load generation from French nuclear reactors.
The reality is that electricity systems are demand driven systems. Not enough supply (when the wind isn’t blowing) and the system or parts of it go down or are shut down. Too much supply (when the wind is blowing) is lost.
Wind power is useless for mains electricity suppply. Although it may have a role where demand can be regulated to meet supply such as desalination.
Passive solar is a much more promising technology because storage of power as heat is viable.
Grant Hodges (03:39:36) :
The problem is that Prairie Chickens need prairies. Without shortgrass prairies it doesn’t matter however many you raise and release, they will go extinct all the same.
anna v (22:49:51) :
Blinking pore, went ‘poof’ overnight. Single pixel.
SWPC no count.
All My Rotations.
Days of our Pores.
As the Sun Turns.
“Electric-generating wind turbines inhibit the bird’s spring mating rituals, Whitlaw said on Aug. 11. Males jump, fight and show off bright yellow eye combs and reddish esophageal air sacks as they court females in an elaborate dance. The chickens have learned to avoid such mating displays around structures like turbine towers or utility poles where predators may perch.”
Have you ever noticed how some new construction has some strange effect on the wildlife that sounds plausible, but is made up out of thin air? The spotted owl comes to mind. Somehow the spotted owls became an experts at dendrochronology and could only live in old growth forests where the trees had many rings. Logged over areas with lots of new growth some just wasn’t suitable.
One has to wonder what technique was used to find that a wind turbine interrupted the mating dance of the prairie chicken and how this was verified. I don’t think there are going to be many hawks sitting on the wind turbines watching for prey.
Of course no one should ever think that the biologists have their own agenda:
http://www.awb.org/articles/environment/the_fur_should_fly_over_lynx_hoax.htm
Saw a spotted owl once. It was stuck in my boss’s radiator.
Point is: No matter where you go somebody can find a species to stop all progress.
Green Energy is doomed.
Look at the Dinosaurs: They went extinct when all that Fossilized Green Energy was produced.
The entire issue is becoming mute. Many are still operating under the assumption that electricity consumption will grow at historic levels. However we are in for a long term reduction in living standards and along with this will be a permanent drop in all forms of energy consumption. Many projects – alternative and conventional – will fall by the wayside over the next few years.
The left invented “endangered species” and they invented their use to stop projects they didn’t approve of. In a delightful turn about, they are now blindsided when projects they favor falter because of one of their own tactics.
In truth, the left doesn’t know what it wants, except it is constantly yearning for a secular utopia, where resources are not finite, where hard choices do not have to be made and where everything is based only on good intentions. And worse, not only can they not bring themselves to be honest with the rest of us, I can only conclude they cannot be honest with themselves.
When the left scolds us that instead of conventional energy we could use a little bit of the vast barren desert to build “non polluting” and “renewable” solar power plants, and yet quickly finds reasons to oppose the building of those plants when they are actually proposed, what did they really want all along? Not renewable power, now solar power! They wanted NO power! Indeed, when the left tells us that the earth would just be better off if humanity had never come alone, they really mean it. Such self-loathing foolishness. Indeed, such dangerous foolishness.
Philip_B is right, we have in Spain around 17.000MW eolic installed base while we get in a normal day no more than 20% of that. See here (https://demanda.ree.es/eolica.html) for real-time data of eolic contribution to the spanish grid. The backup is not the nuclear but the hydro infraestructure built many years ago, when the stupid alarmism on global warming did not exist (was it global cooling? :-)) Of course greenies say eolic is up to 40% of the total needs but that is cherry-picking, choosing carefully windy days near the equinox. There were days at the summer solstice where eolic contribution to the grid was 0 (no kidding, check the calendar on the link for late June 2009)
best
Official government and Greenstrife/Fiends of the Earth reaction to the toll on birdlife of their ghastly “wind farms” is to ignore it or to claim that the ornithologists and bird watchers are exagerating the problem. Of course none of them live anywhere near the damned things and so don’t have to put up with the noise from them or the bird carcasses.
imapopulist (05:12:38) :
“The entire issue is becoming mute” or moot even!
Regards
Aren’t Bats a severely protected species in Old Blighty? I have heard that if they are in your belfries, you have to move! How many bats are being processed by these giant Cuisinarts? Seems bats would be particularly vulnerable to them. Wouldn’t the owners of these enormous rotating knives be subject to huge fines for every dead bat?
Bat pie anyone?
There is always trade-offs with anything in life – There is no free lunch. Take your choice – chickens or wind power.
The problem is that Prairie Chickens need prairies. Without shortgrass prairies it doesn’t matter however many you raise and release, they will go extinct all the same.
Richard 23:14:32
I report a similar experience. Here’s the picture, he’s a large condor, repeatedly sticking his dripping beak into the rotting carcass of the alarmist paradigm.
Claude Harvey 00:32:26 & 00:44:42
Worth saying twice; particularly about the poor energy density of solar and wind ultimately mandating a large physical footprint. And how erratic and undependable wind it; solar, at least, tends to peak on hot sunny summer days, peak load time for the utilities.
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A very good business within a few years: A lot of scrap.
Also, Claude, @ur momisugly just past the witching hour; I’ve got your Magic Flywheel comin’ right up. I’ve long thought that when the government reaches the point where it can no longer pay for the drugs to treat obesity, diabetes, hypertension and atherosclerotic heart disease, it will tell us to ‘Work for Food’, and we’ll all cheerfully trundle on to the workroom treadmills to refresh the grid and recreate ourselves. Look, it’s worth a good meal at the end! And free, from the government and good for all of us. Who could ask for anything more?
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