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
Tim Clark (08:05:48) :
wes george (00:52:49) :
Prairie chickens are excellent fliers, highly wary of movement, and spook easily. In my experience in Nebraska, the actual numbers are vastly underestimated.
For example, the American flying squirrel is a listed specie. In Arkansas there is a $500.00 penalty for cutting a tree down that contains a nesting site. The Ark. Game and Fish estimated, allegedly from field counts, that on average there was roughly one nesting pair/100acres.
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Sir Tim! You can have as many American flying squirrel species as you want in Arkansas – as long as you promise to move them from NW Georgia as soon as possible. They regularly and routinely infest attics and garages over here, so much that suburban exterminators are called more frequently for squirrel, possum, and raccoon problems than for rats.
Threatened? BS.
All that’s needed to assure survival of the bird is repetition that they taste good. People will raise them, whether indoors or outdoors.
And on behalf of the males of the Lesser Prairie Chicken, I suggest adding to the list of names to be changed.
Dave Wendt (22:46:14)
But all those flywheels will change the spin of the Earth.
Oh, wait, New Scientist has already claimed that one.
>>>Denmark trades power in the same Nord Pool
And remember that Denmark has never used any of the wind energy it has produced (it is too variable to be useful). Instead, it exports it to Scandinavia, who can mix it with hydro power.
http://incoteco.com/upload/CIEN.158.2.66.pdf
This report is worth a read, as it has some interesting data and insights.
.
Steve Reed (00:12:46) :
The wind industry is in a very ironic position. It’s not financially viable on its own and thus requires the government to compel consumers to buy its product. The justification for forcing the public to buy the overpriced product is environmentalism. But then it turns out that the greens are killing off wind power about as fast as they’re building it up. It’s a bit like the dog becoming dependent on the ticks….
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I’m coining a new word here: “Environy”
I see richcar has already posted this link…
From the regulator of power in Texas. Note that if Texas was a country, it would be considered the 6th largest producer of wind power in the world.
Click here for Press Release
Using 2006 data, ERCOT has determined that 8.7% of the installed wind capability can be counted as dependable capacity during the peak demand period for the next year. Conventional generation must be available to provide the remaining capacity needed to meet forecast load and reserve requirements.
My emphasis.
Which means, for every mW of power that wind generates, you also need to build 0.91 mW of conventional power generation (coal, gas or nuclear). Or you could build 11.5 mW of wind capacity, to ensure 1 mW of power.
So, you could build 12 wind power plants;
or 1 wind and 1 conventional plant;
or 1 conventional plant.
And generate the same power, when needed.
Personally I wait with anticipation at the first good Columbia Basin ice event that
will coat the Windmills with Ice-having experienced this over the years in aircraft from Piper Senecas to DC7’s,it will happen, and at the point where
the power is most needed.
BTW most of these events occurred in the 50’s,60’s&70’s-during the last cold PDO…
Robert Wood (10:16:11) :
Dave Wendt (22:46:14)
But all those flywheels will change the spin of the Earth.
Oh, wait, New Scientist has already claimed that one.
Hey, flywheels are great stabilizers. Maybe, if we just build enough of them, we can get rid of that pesky planetary wobble that’s rumored to be causing all those ice ages, or at least counter the 2.5 cm of polar drift, that the disappearing ice caused by AGW is causing, Come on, it MIGHT work!
bill (07:02:40) :
Utility transmission and distribution lines (kill between) 130 to 174 million bird deaths a year in the U.S.
Collisions with automobiles and trucks result in the deaths of between 60 and 80 million birds annually in the U.S.
(Buildings kill) between 100 million and a staggering 1 billion deaths annually.4
Elecommunication towers in the U.S. currently exceeds 77,000.. (These kill) 40 to 50 million birds per year.
Agricultural pesticides … kill 67 million birds per year.
Cats .. (in Wisconsin alone) kill between 8 and 217 million birds each year. The most reasonable estimates indicate that 39 million birds are killed in the state each year.”11
Together, human infrastructure and industrial activities are responsible for one to four million bird deaths per day!
— Also, from your reply:
“One television transmitter tower in Eau Claire, WI, was responsible for the deaths of over 1,000 birds on each of 24 consecutive nights. A “record 30,000 birds were estimated killed on one night” at this same tower.7 In Kansas, 10,000 birds were killed in one night by a telecommunications tower.8 ”
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Well, when asked “How long do birds live?” the most common answer varies a little, and depends on how many eggs are laid in each nest each year for each population of bird. For England, Europe, and the US, the following is accepted:
“So, the answer to our question is that most adult small birds in temperate regions such as ours live for between 1¼ and 1½ years, but that only about 10-20% of young reach adulthood. Big birds, seabirds and tropical birds can live much longer. ”
Basically – 80% of ALL birds die every year. Naturally die. Every year. If these birds DIDN’T die every year, the earth would shortly become over-populated with birds, many of which are migratory, and the net change in weight each season would soom tip the earth’s axis and cause massive flooding of the Greenland ice caps and ….
Seriously, your numbers from those sources alone “prove” that man’s PASSIVE (not moving!) structures – where birds are occasionally known to rest and nest and perch every now and then – kill between 406 million and 1.592 billion birds per year. Do you actually believe those different researchers? Do you consider that they may have some biases that render the net result “:somewhat exaggerated”?
Bats are, indeed, killed by wind turbines. According to a recent Canadian study involving post mortem examination of the bats, the turbines alter air pressure in a manner that causes bat lungs to explode. Because no one has taken a census of these bat populations, we aren’t able to put the numbers here into perspective. Do wind turbines represent a nominal or major threat to these populations? We have no idea.
I wrote a recent blog post on this issue pointing out that ExxonMobil was recently fined $7K per dead bird (after they landed in wastewater pools). If the same standards were to be applied to windfarms, they’d all be bankrupt. Why is one kind of energy producer legally prosecuted for bird deaths but not others? Is this a looming liability that should discourage any sane business person from touching wind power with a ten-foot-pole?
My blog post is here:
http://nofrakkingconsensus.blogspot.com/2009/08/how-much-is-birds-life-worth-part-1.html
Cheers!
One of the two secret expenses are the cost of a gathering grid and loss of power. A generator creates all it’s power in a single plant and is tied to a distribution grid. A wind farm is about gathering from a string of a hundred generators and shipping the electric elsewhere. The power loss of resistance is 10% per 60 miles. So if the farm is 200 miles from a city, we loose 2/3rds of the electricity.
It does take wildlife and wildlife disruption to generate an emotional argument. Animals make a good political shield.
It will be interesting to see how this plays out. Environmental groups have been using the declining number of prairies chickens and sage grouse as a bludgeon ( Endangered Species Act) to have cattle removed from public land throughout the west.
Permits for power lines and fences have been refused due to the possibility raptors could use the perch to prey on the game birds.
Sage hen at least can fly faster than shotgun pellets…I can attest to this!
I am proud that recently my government, the peruvian government, has rejected offered investments for the installation of this “1st.world” non-sense, as we really have plenty of cheaper energy sources.
Other countries which have accepted these “gifts” (w.bribes for sure included) have seen its energy bills increased by 25% for inmediately subsidizing these “clean energy” generators.
I don’t get it. Birds in general deal with wind-blown branches all the time. Windmills shouldn’t be an issue for them.
Prairie chickens like other poultry fowl, do not fly very high off the ground at all. I doubt they could get on top of a Winnebago, let alone to the rotors of a power-generating windmill.
Steve Schaper (11:50:30) :
I don’t get it
What it is for sure, that these mills will kill the american eagle, which flies high.
People, these are not airplane propellers. I live in windcharger country. They are all over the place. I wish they had brown towers and green blades for aesthetics, but anyway.
I’d guess that the blade tips move at 20-30 mph based upon observation and car speed at the same difference. Certainly no more than twice that. Possibly 10-12 rpm.
And they are nearly always in motion.
When will real environmentalists realize that they have been duped by the AGW activists to supporting something against their own best interests and that they have become so fixated on alleged global warming that they don’t see some real issues?
The BBC published an awakening article today:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8223611.stm
“Hijacked by climate change?”
Pamela Gray:
Bats use echolocation for avoiding obstacles. Unfortunately evolution has only provided them with echolocation to find obstacles in front of them, not ones coming in from the side at 200 mph. Further bats seem to be very sensitive to abrupt pressure changes and are apparently often killed without even coming into physical contact with the blades.
Toto (12:33:42) : So you just felt hijacked by this tale of hijacking? Don’t you realize it is the same story told from other side. It is the same malthusian/green/gaia creed!
What is for sure is that your once admired “civilization” is declining rapidly.
If they were polar bears and not prairie chickens, this would be a world-class news story.
What we need is pictures of little prairie chicken chicks to set this off. Be sure not to photograph and hawks or predators hunting the birds and be sure to also get ‘before’ and ‘after’ photos of the prairie chickens documenting their encounters with the turbines.
Steve Schaper (12:12:49) :
10-12 rpm and 20-30 mph tip speed equals to a rotor diameter of 47 to 84 feet. Clearly you are living next to the world’s smallest wind generators.
Well, one German environmental minister once said:
“Wind turbines will be seen as the cathedrals of our time”.
He did not know how right he was. Just like the cathedrals of medieval times, they dominate their environment, have no economic function, but are monuments to the religious faith of their rich and powerful builders, and paid for by the peasants.
KLA (13:24:08) :
Well, one German environmental minister once said:
It is good that you mention that country which during last winter almost froze up because russians cut the flow of natural gas. They, thanks to green policies, have now to beg, to implore for energy. Quite a different case is that of France which has nuclear power energy plants.
Which “way” will you choose?, the way to be poor or the way to be rich?
The main weakpoint with the operational life of a wind turbine is the gear-box. Gear Boxes fail after about 5 years. They are like the transmisson of a semi. There is no technical substitute (electronic/electrical) for the mechanical gearbox, since they must be the main component of transferring the extremely high torque, slow rotation speed of the spinning wind turbine to the 60 hertz grid requirements. This fact more or less limits maximum nameplate capacity of wind turbines.
Douglas Taylor (13:49:57) :
This fact more or less limits maximum nameplate capacity of wind turbines
Which makes them a silly choice. Just compare the quantity of movable parts relative to power between a wind “farm” and a hydro power plant. 4, 6 to ten thousand?