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
Roger Carr (00:58:27) : said
“kim (06:43:06) : “The real damage is the weakened winds distal to the windmills; they create regional climate change and damage directly proportional to the amount of energy stolen from the wind, and worth far more.”
Could you let me have more detail, perhaps a link, kim, so that I may gain an understanding of this? (My email is RogerCarr AT datacodsl.com)”
Roger if you get sent further information or have some of your own I would like to hear of it as it is something I am interested in.
The Uk is going to be relying considerably on wind farms as they have failed to plan for our energy future.
I live a hundred yards ‘inshore’ and we are expecting large wind farms a few miles offshore. On shore or off shore, there must be some effect on the climate. Whether it is very local or very trivial, removing wind ‘at source’ is going to have a number of as yet unquantified ramifications.
tonyb
TonyB,
I think the idea that windfarms will steal the wind and change the climate is so bogus. It just shows how desperate the anti-development crowd is. What we see revealed is an anti-human movement going on here; NOT a pro-environmental movement. They use “holy lying” like the cults.
Grant
windfarms …create regional climate change…
TonyB (09:40:12) : So far I have only this 2004 story, Tony. I am pursuing it, and hoping kim may have more, as well.
Grant Hodges (17:21:40) of course may well be correct; but I would still like to know.
Tony and Roger, sorry I don’t have more, but conjecture from theory.
Grant, I suspect you project. What we see revealed here is a bizarre sensitivity to motive. Because of losses of efficiency, and of energy transformation, the value of the energy taken out of the wind can never be as great as the value of the energy left in the wind.
Now granted, there is a very great amount of energy in the wind, and even ‘significant’ amounts taken from it pale in comparison to the amount within it. You cannot argue that it has no effect, and the valuing of that effect is key. Obviously, the various actors in the play value it differently.
An interesting example, but not directly climate related, is to consider what would happen to the fertility of the Amazon basin, which gets much of its mineral nutrients from Saharan dust blown across the Atlantic, if a wind farm were built in the mountain gap leading to the Boedele Depression, whence comes that dust. The ecosystem that is the Amazon rain forest would die from wind farms half way across the world. Don’t presume that the effects of windfarms are benign or merely local.
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Roger and Kim
Thanks for the comments. This is a fascinating area that seems very under researched. Who wants to prepare the grant application form?
Seriously, if anyone comes across anything more concrete, this would be a worthwhile thread.
Living by the sea as I do I can see two obvious possible effects.
As far as leisure pursuits go this could affect sailing, and more indirectly surfing, through reducing waves. This latter is particularly intriguing as waves are a much underused source of renewable energy.
Perhaps abstracting sufficient wind to power a battery of wind turbines will only have a marginal effect ‘down wind’ but it would be nice to know before they become too prevalent.
tonyb
Grant Hodges
I am all for offshore wind farms as a far better (and more reliable) alternative to onshore wind farms. Many things have unexpected consequences though, and it would be good to see these examined BEFORE off shore farms become common place, not after.
As far as on shore goes, I see them as a blind alley as in the UK circumstances I can’t see how trashing the countryside saves the environment, especially when the down time is so considerable.
I’m all for wave power, but our development of this resource is around twenty years behind that of wind.
tonyb
“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”
The enemy of my enemy is my friend. I am now deeply concerned about the mating rituals of these important chickens. The mood must be preserved in the Prairie.
Now, let’s see. Where can the government put their little wind fan thingies?