Let’s see, they put up windmills to save the planet, then end up killing off endangered species, then have to limit the turbines to half days. FAIL
The Indiana bat is an endangered species and is protected by the federal Endangered Species Act.
Full story here
And it doesn’t seem to be limited to problems in Pennsylvania. Here’s a report about a wind farm in Canada:
Within 3/4 of a mile from the shores of Cape Vincent there already is an operational 86 turbine wind power plant on Wolfe Island, Canada. The Wolfe Island post construction bat mortality report determined that an estimated 1720 bats are killed per turbine per year. Cape Vincent can expect the same numbers because of similar habitat and shared species with Wolfe Island.
Probably helps to check the map first before building:
ACCIONA TURBINE AREAS
h/t to WUWT reader “bladeshearerJack Maloney”
That bat seems to be saying “Heh”!
How many bats does a conventional power station kill each night if any?
Great gobs of guano, Batman, the eco-facists are killing your brethern!
I wonder how much their environmental impact statement says about bats. I’ll bet a little ultrasonic sonar beeper would keep them away with a little research… or even a model (Sarc).
Love it, love it, love it. Commie idiots fighting other Commie idiots to a standstill. That’s our only hope, since the non-Communists (if any still exist) have abandoned the fight.
So roughly 5 bats per turbine each night, say 400 -450 bats each night. Can a population sustain such losses?
So are they going to idle in the daytime to protect birds too?
So CO2 reduces the population to critical levels, and the solution to CO2 pollution finishes ’em off. Good idea.
They could scare the bats away from the windmills at night by putting an array of 1000 watt light bulbs on each blade, interspaced with loudspeakers broadcasting Bill McKibben’s Parrots at 120dB.
Anyone notice the sudden and unexplained ramp-up of global warming hysteria in the news?
Discovery is running a story on how animals are getting smaller because of warming. Can you imagine how big the dinosaurs COULD have been?
At least we’ll have more bugs.
Would be interesting to pull together a kill tally comparing bird/bat kills from wind farms vs. oil spills. People understandably freak over oil-soaked birds but the same folks are pulling a Ferris Bueller when it comes to wind-powered slaughter. Yes, let’s save the environment by thrashing it! This is the Big Green legacy?
I’m gona go super synical with this one. The Marxist know about the danger to bats, but plane on putting up the windmills anyway and tearing down the coal plants. When the coal plants are all gone they will start a drive to save the bat, by tearing doen the windmills, but by that time everyone will be to cold and hungry to put up a resistence. Once man has been returned to the paleolythic, the Marxist can bring about their great Communist utopia.
Bats used to fly over my house every evening in the summer. A windmill farm was set up about 50 miles away from my house. Now the bats have totally disappeared. Might be a coincidence. Might not be.
Re what Sandy says:
October 18, 2011 at 5:11 pm
“So roughly 5 bats per turbine each night, say 400 -450 bats each night. Can a population sustain such losses?”
Exactly! Then there was that estimate by the Audobon folks of 400,000+ birds including some Golden Eagles killed at that N. Cal. site out near Sacramento that has been blogged about here. Probably the tip of the iceberg globally, considering the off-shore sites, etc.
Meant to say that it’s nigh impossible to count corpses at the off-shore sites.
Just look at that evil thing! Give it half a chance and it’ll sink its fangs into your throat and suck your blood. Set up more wind turbines as soon as possible, or we’re doomed.
So who wants to publish a peer-reviewed study showing the rise of malaria as a direct result of windmills killing mosquito-eaters?
Me thinks they have discovered a way to feed the overpopulous of the world. Fan Kill just isn’t as catchy as Road Kill. But I am sad for the bats. We have kept bat houses in the yard for 15 years. Great little mosquito munchers, Humm maybe this is what Mann is researching with his mosquito vectors, His paper has lead to the death of the primary population control how ironic.
“Wind turbines make bat lungs explode”:
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn14593
It worse than that. Windmills kill and estimated 400,000 birds each year, but there are almost no consequences for the wind farm owners. When the feds do step in, they work cooperatively with the wind farm operators to mitigate the situation. Its all very collaborative — government/industry partnership kind of thing.
Compare this to the incident involving 7 North Dakota oil exploration companies that have been charged with felonies after 28 dead birds were discovered near several oil containment pits. The owners of the oil companies face up 14 years in *prison* and millions of dollars in fines. No government/industry partnership here.
http://news.yahoo.com/oil-companies-charged-nd-migratory-bird-deaths-213924170.html
On any day of the week, at any major wind farm, you could find 28 dead birds. Why the double standard?
Turn off wind turbines at night? Next thing you know they’ll want to turn off the solar power at night and then… oh wait…
Let them figure it out.
Jeff D says (October 18, 2011 at 5:37 pm): “Great little mosquito munchers, Humm maybe this is what Mann is researching with his mosquito vectors, His paper has lead to the death of the primary population control how ironic.”
No, no, don’t you see? It’s a capitalist plot to sell more wind turbines! When the bats are gone, we’ll be overrun (overflown?) by mosquitoes. With chemical control too controversial, we’ll have to fight the proliferating bugs with…more wind turbines! Much smaller, of course, but the turbine companies will make it up on volume.
Where are the massive fines on the turbine owners — a la those for oil-soaked birds — to go along with the reduction in night-time operations?
Bird and bat kills have been so numerous on Wolfe Island that the wind turbine operator hired a couple of folks to drive around in pick-up trucks to collect the carcasses. How’s that for “green jobs!” (sarc) The number of fatalities should settle down after a few years of operation, however… once the population is decimated. I’m sure the operator will attribute the decline in kills to measures they’ve taken to mitigate the toll.
It’s a bit weird that you get such pleasure out of something as banal as a turbine operating at half capacity. You’re clearly very bitter about something, but I have a hard time seeing what.
TheGoodLocust says:
October 18, 2011 at 5:37 pm
But malaria deaths are dropping.
http://www.voanews.com/english/news/africa/WHO-Malaria-Deaths-Drop-20-Percent-Since-2000-132047473.html
Let’s seem, what’s causing the drop in malaria cases? Is it increased global warming? Nah. Won’t work for the press release.
Increased CO2 in the atmosphere? Nah. That can’t be good.
More windmills? Yeah, that’ll play well!
Quick, get me that grant application! Dang, I wish I’d thought of this before those stimulous funds dried up.
“Within 3/4 of a mile from the shores of Cape Vincent there already is an operational 86 turbine wind power plant on Wolfe Island, Canada. The Wolfe Island post construction bat mortality report determined that an estimated 1720 bats are killed per turbine per year. ”
That’s over 147,000 bats a year at the Canadian wind farm!
I find this hard to believe but just want to note that the Canadian media will front page reports of dozens of ducks dying in a tar sands pool, but the slaughter at wind farms, nothing.
Batman was afraid of bats (at least, in the last movie) so maybe this is his revenge.
I wonder how much they are being compensated for not being able to run at night.
One can never be too cynical in matters involving money.
This really isn’t as funny as Antony makes out. Given the number of wind turbines required to power even are reasonable amount of electricity need, the impact on bids and bats would be devastating. The ecological impact of killing large numbers of birds could be very costly.
The ‘Kill a sparrow campaign’ was one of the first actions taken in the Great Leap Forward from 1958. Sparrows and other birds were killed in huge numbers, resulting in the near-extinction of the birds in China.
By 1960 it began to dawn on the Chinese that sparrows ate a large amount of insects, as well as grains. With no birds to predate them, locust and other pest populations exploded, with locust swarms appearing all over China. Now, killing all the birds did not directly cause the 30 million starvation deaths in the Great Chinese Famine, this was mostly politics, widespread deforestation and central planning. BUT the ecological imbalances most certainly exacerbated to collapse of farming.
It would have made a great satellite photo, in 1960 the locusts were so thick they blotted out the sky; settling across the fields and moving like a blanket from one end of China to the other.
Who knew there was a Chiropteran solution to the windmill problem.
Jim
Well…hmmm. Let’s see how this scenario might play out. Increase in windmills decimates bat populations, bats are no longer able to keep the mosquito populations in check, huge swarms of mosquitoes spread a new virus that is a side effect of genetically modified crops, and there you have it, the zombie apocalypse! OMG! It’s worse than we thought!
This was not unforseen. But, we the great unwashed can’t possibly know the future, right? I SAID, “RIGHT”!?
If the Tigers had a few more bats they might be playing the Cards tonight…I blame the Wind Turbines.
I just love little bats. They are a fantastic little animal. If the odd bat gets hurt because of human activity then too bad for the bat. If however, we erect giant blenders because of a the green religion, they waste money, crap up the scenery, and kill little bats then I say take the turbines down. They were stupid to begin with and now they are stupider because they hurt little fuzzy bats needlessly.
There are numerous instances of similar unintended consequences occurring and whether it is good or bad depends on your point of view. Most here, and I am one of them, feel this story is bad because it suits our purpose – to rid the world of wind generators, at least until they are more cost-effective and don’t destroy the environment. In this instance it is doubly ironic that we have these flying fauna mincers because the Greens wish them to save the same fauna.
Australia is inundated with cane toads to fix the problem of the cane beetle – the cure is worse than the disease.
A current story in Oz is the poisoning of mice and rabbits on Macquarie Island which are, apparently, causing bird deaths. In 2 years over 2000 birds have perished either directly from the baits or secondarily from eating baited vermin.
This post got me to thinking.
About ten years ago, I had the pleasure of witnessing the bats at the Congress Stree Bridge in Austin Texas.
I suspected it wouldn’t take me long to find something doom-like about Texas bat populations and climate, and sure enough…
http://www.usatoday.com/weather/drought/story/2011-10-04/texas-drought-bat-colonies/50658450/1
But then I also remembered reading this today, about Texas’ great success with windpower.
http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/10/18/us-utilities-texas-wind-idUSTRE79H5ZL20111018
Hmmmm….
From the article: “determined that an estimated 1720 bats are killed per turbine per year. ”
If an estimate is given with no background on how that estimate was determined, it is a meaningless number; a fabrication. I’ll wait until there is something real.
The bat population down around Pincher Creek Alberta has been hit hard too. Many years ago, local CTV broadcast about the demise of them, and that the University of Alberta was looking into it,….then very silent…not a peep, but lose a few ducks on a tails pond…..
cwj – yeah, it’s a little too much like Hansen’s modeling techniques.
Still, if they’re really whacking thousands of bats, you’d have enough bat bits on the ground to go out, sweep up, and weigh, so it ought to be possible to get a real-world number.
Moemo says:
October 18, 2011 at 6:42 pm
Moemo,
For my 6:46 pm post, I first googled in Google News: Austin bats
As a long time Tigers fan (1968 was the best year ever), twasn’t pretty.
stevo says:
“It’s a bit weird that you get such pleasure out of something as banal as a turbine operating at half capacity. You’re clearly very bitter about something, but I have a hard time seeing what.”
This may be lost on stevo, but I’m pretty bitter about it:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9srPoOU6_Z4 [Only 30 seconds long]
Multiply it by millions per year, and there is a major wildlife slaughter going on.
My declining bat population in the rookery attic has to do with late cold spring weather, late birthing, and early fall night-time temps. We have no turbines in the area. But if we did, the already cold-reduced bat population would be decimated.
Federal officials investigate eagle deaths at DWP wind farm
August 03, 2011
http://articles.latimes.com/2011/aug/03/local/la-me-wind-eagles-20110803
California cuisinarts, now Pennsylvania bat blenders.
Doug Hoffman was trying to raise awareness of this over a year ago. The first half of this article is birds but later in the article he talks about bats:
http://theresilientearth.com/?q=content/wind-power-green-and-deadly
I taught a couple of ecology classes not long ago. One assignment required students to research how humans caused damage to the environment. One of my ace students chose to contrast wildlife deaths by wind generators against wildlife deaths by automobile. In the area where they overlap, birds and bats, she found single digits for wind generators vs hundreds of thousands for automobiles. It’s on the internet, you can look it up.
If they found one dead bat under one wind generator, I wonder how many they would find on the highway.
If you are into saving bats, google: Austin Texas bats
The silver lining is that wind turbine do not kill bats when there is no wind. /sarc
According to studies, the bats do not even need to be struck by the turbine blade. Simply passing through the rotor tip vortex of a passing blade tip is enough to rupture their lungs and kill them.
Wasnt an environmental assessment required before the windmills were constructed? They dont ever seem to miss those other rare critters
I will stand up for the intrinsic value of bats. A friend of mine has been studying bats for about fifty years now. Through my friend, I have been immersed in everything batty. Bats are quite wonderful and also very varied. The little ones that we see here in the US are a tad boring in the larger bat world.
Also, bats have great instrumental value. They navigate using sonar, or something similar to sonar. They have been very valuable in sonar research. They are very valuable in studying how a living creature creates a dynamic “image” or “model” of its environment. I might have been present at the first surgical operation to place a sophisticated probe in the brain of a healthy bat back in the mid 1970s. The research was immensely successful.
If there can be a genuine tragedy that results from human destruction of an animal population, this is it. Too bad that bats don’t have the look of playful puppies. Too bad that there is no Snail Darter crowd to lobby for bats.
People might think that this “unintended consequences” blunder by the Green windmill lobby is just a bump in the road. It is not. It will prove as destructive to coalitions among Greens as an issue like abortion has proved to be for Republicans.
I will invite someone else to speak for birds.
I think we may all not be asking the right question. Just how many mosquitos are killed every day by the windmill blades? It must be in the millions! Maybe this is why malaria is on the downswing?
Is anyone counting mosquito carcasses (carcii?)? That would be a good job for the greens…keep them busy looking for tiny pieces of exploded insects…
Jim
Ack, what is even worse are the large numbers of endangered birds being killed and yet not a single peep from the people whose job it is to protect those species. I think it is because that if they admit that wind power isn’t the panacea it has been played up to be, it causes a crack in the foundation of their world view. If wind power isn’t really “green” they will they have to question the notion of large scale electric vehicles. If wind AND coal power must be taken off the grid, how will we drive? Of course that could play into an even more cynical view where they don’t want us to have individual transportation for the masses and only the very rich would have rural land and motor vehicles.
It’s not about bats. it’s about money.
Wind turbines have a finite life span. The investment firms that bought the turbines should jump at the opportunity to say “hey. . . our investments were made upon the concept of 24 hour operation but now, due to the bureaucrats and their bats, we’re forced to halve our production. We’ll just have to charge more for the power generated from these things. So, the operational costs go down because of bat time, the price per KW goes up for political reasons, with the end result being a better profit margin by several percent.
Oh. .. and the rate payers and tax payers are once again on the hook.
I remember reading that bats are the most successful mammals if your measure is diversity of species with more than 800 species.
Taking a trip to Burney, CA on Monday, we went by Hatchet Mtn. where dozens of the big whirlagigs were spinning. They were also hauling in more of the contraptions, and the main stem comes trucked in pieces (flange bolt pattern). The largest one had a WIDE LOAD followed by a CHP escort, as it forced oncoming traffic off the road. All the parts had SIEMENS on them.
Anyone know why the scale of these things is so large?
For years I’ve morph the anti-Bush lie into “Al Gore lied, eagles die.”
Back then we didn’t know about the bat-slaughter.
For PETA and their ilk to ignore the WindPower Holocaust
is akin to feminists ignoring the vast Islamic subjugations of women.
In every such case, the leftist core has priority
over the particular shell/front/cause it hides behind.
The Wolfe Island wind farm referred to will over a 20 year operating life kill 3 million bats. Assuming there are any bats left to kill.
Multiple that by the number of operating wind farms and we are looking at a very large ecological problem. 20% of all mamalian species are bats.
I thought the destruction of perhaps half the the virgin rainforest in SE Asia to grow biofuels was the worst piece of Green eco-lunacy, but this is potentially worse.
18 Oct: CBC: Wind turbine plant faces labour, market challenges
Officials with DSTN, a subsidiary of Daewoo Shipbuilding and Marine Engineering, appeared before a legislature committee on Tuesday…
Murray said even experienced welders have had problems around the type of specialized arc welding required to make the circular tower units.
“Learning that technique has caused many problems,” he told the committee.
“We had a lot of repairs we had to do and are still doing. Repairs are getting down but that just slowed the process.”…
Gaining access to certain markets has also been a challenge, Murray said, adding the plant is all but shut out of the Quebec market, where rules stipulate 60 per cent local content for wind energy projects…
http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/nova-scotia/story/2011/10/18/ns-daewoo-turbine-issues.html
Don’t windmills need environmental report before being built.
Or is the just for the “little people”?
This story should inspire REVERSE monkeywrenching. Instead of simply following the three Ss (shoot, shovel, and shutup), add the next step of planting the ESA-“protected” carcass. Creatively.
18 Oct: Observer Canada: POINT OF VIEW: Turbines created ill wind for green energy Liberals
Opponents of industrial wind turbine farms in rural Ontario believe they sent a message to Premier Dalton McGuinty on election day.
Now, they’re waiting to see if he listened.
The Liberal leader came within a hair of returning to Queen’s Park with a third straight majority, but fell short thanks to the loss of several rural ridings in which there was vocal opposition to the wind farms promoted by Ontario’s Green Energy Act…
Grassroots opponents to industrial wind projects who watched massive turbines rise in farm fields around rural Ontario, and didn’t like what they saw, decided to flex their political muscles during the fall election.
They’ve been getting at least part of the credit for the Liberals loss of several rural seats…
http://www.theobserver.ca/ArticleDisplay.aspx?e=3337855
19 Oct: Age Australia: David Wroe: Power bills tipped to lift as tax row rolls on
For the first time yesterday, the Coalition vowed to scrap the $10 billion green fund as quickly as possible, arguing that green technology investment should come from the private sector and was no place for government…
http://www.theage.com.au/national/power-bills-tipped-to-lift-as-tax-row-rolls-on-20111018-1lyrb.html
——————————————————————————–
19 Oct: Grantham Journal UK: Villagers oppose wind turbine plans
CARLTON Scroop and Normanton Cliffe Parish Council members are united in their opposition to two wind turbines, which are proposed to be built on a village farm.
Parish council chairman David Balfe said over 60 villagers attended a meeting on Monday to discuss the plans, which will face South Kesteven District Council’s planning committee on November 15…
The main objections noted to the 39.6 metre high turbines, which are planned for a farm off Main Street, Carlton Scroop, is the prominent location.
Other issues include the amount of noise and the interruption to bat migration.
Coun Balfe added: “We have been supported very well by other villages that have encountered the same problems.”…
http://www.granthamjournal.co.uk/community/community-news/villagers_oppose_wind_turbine_plans_1_3163590
Okay, I thought that bat mortality report from Wolfe Island was a bit fishy. According to the report itself (found here: http://www.transalta.com/facilities/plants-operation/wolfe-island/post-construction-monitoring), the mortality rate per bat during the 6 month reporting period was 21.84 bats per turbine, much lower than the over 1700 cited in the link.
“A total of 111 carcasses of four bat species were collected during the Reporting Period.
The Hoary Bat (54 fatalities), Eastern Red Bat (21 fatalities), and Silver-haired Bat (19 fatalities), are classified as long-distance migratory tree bats and comprised 84.7% of all bat fatalities. The majority of bat mortality occurred between the end of July and mid-September, peaking during late August. Correcting for searcher efficiency, scavenger and other removal rates, and percent area searched, the 111 recovered carcasses represent an estimated bat mortality for the Reporting Period of 21.84 bats/turbine (9.50 bats/MW).”
People have no sense of the scale of energy consumption in the US. For example, if you turned off power every single residential unit in the country .. every single one of them … you would reduce energy consumption by only about 30%. In order for a turbine to actually amount to anything it has to be huge. Otherwise the power it generates wouldn’t be enough for the grid to even notice, it’s isn’t even noise.
The main problem with wind, though, is that it is fickle. You can’t rely on the power being generated right now being the same as power being generated 15 minutes from now. So if the wind drops and you lose a hundred megawatts of power you have to scramble to find a hundred megawatts to make it up. Coal and nuclear can not be throttled up/down that quickly. What ends up happening is that you have to keep the coal plants operating anyway in case the wind drops suddenly. So lets say you are generating a bunch of power in the middle of the night in California when demand is low and your coal plants are still running, too. Or when you do need the power like on a bitter cold New England winter night, the air might be perfectly still. You can’t ship power from California to New England.
David Suzuki (spit) did his doctoral thesis on fruit-fly reproduction and now it is found-out that Suzuki is a shill for the industry that is killing the number one predator of fruit-flies? Coincidence? I think not. sarc/
Split Atoms, Not Bats
“John M says:
October 18, 2011 at 6:14 pm
But malaria deaths are dropping.
http://www.voanews.com/english/news/africa/WHO-Malaria-Deaths-Drop-20-Percent-Since-2000-132047473.html”
Sounds like Big Oil funded denier science to me. I’m pretty sure we can find a hockey stick showing the unprecedented rise in malaria cases as long as we plug a few positive feedbacks into the computer models.
Loosely related to this topic; I will not mention bats.
I had the pleasure of seeing the (soon to be) new cloud undulatus asperatus in person today. That was a wild experience. I haven’t looked at clouds in awe like that since I was a wee lad looking for shapes. Nature is awe inspiring.
That led me to think, though, when I read this post that the pattern on the bottom of those clouds looked like a wake pattern, like windmills were screwing up a cloud (not suggesting it, just noting it). Has anyone ever tried to see the undulatus family from the top? Are they wavy there also? Sorry to sidetrack, but I just wondered what Anthony could tell me about these clouds. It was really something I’ll probably never forget.
@ John Trigge
We need to find a way to persuade the cane toads to fly into the wind-turbines.
It’s bats. Just plain bats.
ECOZEALOT: “You’ll have to pry our windmills from our cold dead landscapes.”
(with apologies to Charlton)
Is there a ‘green energy’ project that will kill delta smelt?
It’s an assault on battery, who will be charged?
Not FAIL.
LIE.
Algore and Bill Nye the Lying Guy didn’t make a mistake. They made $#!^ up. No doubt Algore was emboldened by his “Inconvenient Truth” experience, wherein he got an Oscar and a Nobel Prize for making $#!^ up. He is a confirmed liar. That said, the question is:
If Media Matters sent Bill Nye to post here under an assumed name, and
if this “W. Sanford” acted as a sock puppet for the Team while pretending to be 75% skeptic / 25% warmist, and
if “W. Sanford” revealed to you in that he was a secret pal of Algore’s and had convinced him to invite you to tour the 14,000 sq foot Gore mansion, and recieve a 45 minute prospectus on Generation Investment’s Carbon Credits from the fat man himself…
Would you go?
Buildings and structures kill far more birds and bats than turbines; so do cats. Why isn’t Fish and Wildlife driving around with its wrecking ball demolishing buildings and cell towers, capturing stray kitties?
Well, it’s an endangered bat; jail the CEO of the wind park operator and tear the turbines down.
“estimated 1720 bats are killed per turbine per year”
86 windmills? thats not far short of 150,000 in total
No wonder they’re endangered.
Yep, that’s exactly what I was thinking.
When I was a kid long before the current era of of rabies, we used to go down to a swampy bit of woods at dusk and watch the bats do amazing aerobatics feasting on the summer bugs, mostly mosquitoes. They would just gobble up gazillions of them continuously. Bats are pretty amazing. We would toss up a pebble to see if we could fool them and a bat would fly around it many times before darting off looking for something else. Very impressive.
A dead bat means lots of live mosquitoes (and other insects). Congratulations to the eco-lunatics. We really need more mosquitoes.
Yes, the reports from all over the country are wrong, you’re right. You two guys go back to sleep. We’ll wake you up when there is a pal-reviewed paper.
Only rotating buildings and flying cats do that. All the stationary buildings and terrestrial cats do not. I have seen the odd bat get inside a building but most times they escape. I have never seen a cat kill a bat, birds yes, bats never. But neither stationary buildings nor terrestrial predators can hold a candle to Windmill Cuisinarts. 🙂
It’s amazing how cold and callous the Windmill defenders are when these dead animal stories pop up. I think they know that it is their Achilles heel. Although they themselves have sold their own souls to the religion of eco-socialism, they fear that the ‘uneducated’ masses with their souls still intact, will not like to hear about these bloody sacrifices to their religion.
The article making a claim of 1720 dead bats per turbine per year is wrong. The report it references states an average of 20 bats per turbine per year are killed, which makes it 1720 bats per year for 86 turbines. It’s on page 3 of the executive summary:
http://www.scribd.com/doc/47638969/Wolfe-Island-Wind-Post-Construction-Avian-Bat-Mortality-MonitoringReport-2011-01-24
Taken from the document cited in the linked blog post, The Wolf Island Plant document on bat and bird kills, the number of average deaths per turbine is almost 2 orders of magnitude lower than what you quote here. Using the actual estimate of 20 bats per year per turbine, multiplied by 86 turbines, you get 1720 bats per year from the whole plant, not the astronomically high numbers suggested above. Please adjust your post accordingly, because as it stands, you give out completely incorrect numbers.
In the end, after the slaughter of millions, (eco-)socialism just looks stupid, throws up its arms and exclaim: But we meant well.
Let me get this right…wind turbines run mostly at night, when electricity demand is at it’s lowest. Now we have to shut them down to protect the bat. That makes their output cost about 100% higher than it is now.
Uh-oh.
The ultimate stupidity is that the authorities will close down wind turbines at night for bats but not for Humans who are having their sleep destroyed and their health harmed.
Thank you for pointing out the typo, I have amend it.
There are many factors involved in collecting the bat kill data. Things such as scavengers removing the carcasses, tall grass may make it difficult to spot the carcasses etc. The information in these reports is only an estimate. It has been speculated that the bat fatality rate for Wolfe Island could be much higher maybe as high as 10,000 bat deaths per year.
The Point is that the bat population is declining at a rapid rate large numbers of bats are being killed by wind turbines.
The number of bat deaths is higher than any fatality rates seen in this species in the past. The turbine bat kills seem to have been accepted, virtually ignored by most people. What is the threshold that is considered unacceptable? How many bats need to die for people to take notice and decide that it is unacceptable? 1720 bat deaths at one 86-turbine project per year apparently was not enough to garner much attention but 1720 per turbine per year has made a few people sit up and pay attention. Whatever the number is, it is unacceptable
Anonymous person who actually read the cited document says:
October 19, 2011 at 2:54 am
You are correct, but 1720 bats killed is still 1720 too high! Not to mention, the bird kill and destruction of acres land to build the turbines…
By the way, a message I repeat frequently for all of our “green” visitors…
Please stop ALL USE OF PETROLEUM PRODUCTS or ENERGY DERIVED FROM FOSSIL FUELS. TODAY. NOW! I can provide a list of such products and energy sources if you need them. Thank you for your cooperation (we wouldn’t want you all to be hypocrites, after all…).
Bats are very cool animals. We have a nature center not far from us that has dozens of bat houses with thousands of bats. You can stand right in the middle of hundreds, thousands, of bats pouring out of these things and not a single one will hit you. Then you can enjoy a giant dogfight in the sky as the bats feed.
I know we have several living in our attic, one escaped through our in ceiling fan one night (still not sure how he did that). The cat managed to catch him until I could toss a box on him. Not a great way to be awakened at 3 in the morning, but they are very entertaining on summer evenings in the back yard.
I drive by those PA mills on occasion and most of them are idle. They are never idle in being an eyesore on a very picturesque landscape however.
One more thing about bats is that they are already of grave concern due to White-Nose Syndrome so I’m not surprised that they would halt night time operations. The cause is a fungus that thrives in cold environments, so there’s no pinning this on AGW. This link gives some good info on it, including a map showing its geographic extent. I know that Illinois has closed all caves that are under state jurisdiction, and imagine other states are taking action as well.
http://www.fws.gov/WhiteNoseSyndrome/
@Anonymous person who actually read the cited document says: October 19, 2011 at 2:54 am
So the number of bats actually killed compared to the number allegedly killed is pretty much in the same proportion as the amount of useable and useful electricity produced by the turbines compared to the nameplate rating of the turbine.
And 20 bats killed per turbine and enormously increased electricity bills are both good things?
Have I got that right?
\sarc
Shouldn’t somebody be prosecuted for this? Isn’t there some federal law being violated? Was there an environmental impact study done on the effects of the turbines on the Indiana bat? How about impact upon migratory birds?
Ontario geenrates 1% of its energy from biomass and wind. (Warning, extreme bias in favour of wind)
http://www.uoguelph.ca/~whulet/OGN/Vol1Issue1/Glen_Estill.htm
The gas portion is rising. As the home of the CANDU reaction which can burn a variety of fuel, obviously Ontario could be 100% powered by nuclear sources any time they choose to do so.
The conclusion at the link above is that massive wind programmes could supply all thje power needed if they could just overcome that pesky problem of storage … and stand-by power and the grid capacity and the capital cost and, oh yeah, tripling the cost of the power. Well that’s all right then, isn’t it. Let’s do it tomorrow.
/sarc
Several have made comments suggesting if the turbines are shut down at night, power production will be only 50%.
Not so.
The best business models for wind turbines I’ve seen count on the ability to generate power one day in three. Thus, shutting the turbines down at night to save the bats would reduce the best estimate of power generation to 16.7%.
So, a business that is most assuredly not green, produces extremely high priced electricity very intermittantly, survives only because of govt subsidies and rate payers surcharges (other people’s money), and requires backup power capacity to operate in cold spinning mode (using power but generating none) is a rational response to the unproven theory of anthropogenic CO2 driven global warming?
I think not.
Blade says:
October 19, 2011 at 1:35 am
It’s amazing how cold and callous the Windmill defenders are when these dead animal stories pop up. I think they know that it is their Achilles heel. Although they themselves have sold their own souls to the religion of eco-socialism, they fear that the ‘uneducated’ masses with their souls still intact, will not like to hear about these bloody sacrifices to their religion.
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That was worth repeating. I am reminded of the birds that (unfortunately) tried to land in an oil sands treatment pond. A few hundred birds…this was to have been a wake-up call to shut down the oil sands. Now wind turbines kill a measly 1,720 bats per year.
I lived in a 120 year old house that loved to let bats in. A neighbors butterfly net did the trick. Even when captured I found them remarkably non-aggressive. Although one time I let a bat out around 3:00 am and it didn’t want to venture off my front porch. Believing in vampires I knew it would be sorry when the sun came up, so I went back to bed. A few hours later I heard the paperboy cry out, obviously startled by the bat as he dropped off my paper at my front door. Haha, such a little creature can scare the best of us into a girly scream. Too bad it wasn’t a cuddly polar bear, like the one in the Suzuki commercial that travels all the way from the North Pole to hug the guy who buys an electric car.
Think of the possibilities Hollywood: Erect windmills to keep away the vampires!!!!
Well now I know how I’m getting rid of the damn bat around and in my house. I didn’t notice any reference, but is there a certain size windmill I should use?
From the article…
“Within 3/4 of a mile from the shores of Cape Vincent there already is an operational 86 turbine wind power plant on Wolfe Island, Canada. The Wolfe Island post construction bat mortality report determined that an estimated 1720 bats are killed per year. Cape Vincent can expect the same numbers because of similar habitat and shared species with Wolfe Island.
Aubertine’s land is slated for transmission lines to facilitate St. Lawrence winds 53 turbine project.”
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I wonder what would happen if a proposed natural gas facility suggested that an estimated 1,720 birds would die each year per installation?
I have a solution…..reopen Solyndra, move the entire operation, and have their new task change to (DBT) Daylight Bat Training so these bats can fly during the day….that way not only can we see them and have immediate shut down capabilities but they will be able to “see”(using their new daylight solar radar as trained by Solyndra) the spinning Windmill blades.
It will create new jobs under Obama’s jobs bill, not only for the training and the moving vans for Solyndra move from California but for those that will now have to be hired to clean Bat guano off of the blades…..
Brilliant!!!!
Falstaff says:
October 19, 2011 at 12:17 am
Buildings and structures kill far more birds and bats than turbines; so do cats. Why isn’t Fish and Wildlife driving around with its wrecking ball demolishing buildings and cell towers, capturing stray kitties?
Have you ever in your life seen or even heard a report of a bat flying into a building or fixed structure and killing itself? If not, by what other mechanism do buildings and structures inflict mortality on bats? We used to use a tennis racket on the ones who got into the house when I was a kid, but it was always a matter of a lot of swings and more luck than brains if you did manage to hit it. Nowadays, if one gets in, I just open the sliding door to the deck and they usually exit in fairly short order.
It seems that wind farm operators fear enforcement of Endangered Species Act much more than enforcement of specific law designed to protect virtually all birds, especially eagles. How can this be?
There are 3 US laws that protect eagles: the Bald and Golden Eagle Protection Act; the Migratory Bird Treaty Act; and the Lacey Act. Violators of these laws are subject to both civil and criminal penalties for “taking” (includes killing, injuring, harassing, etc protected birds. Regulations per the BGEPA, require environmental assessments of projects the pose potential harm to eagles and development of eagle management plans that protect eagles from injury or death. A 4th law, the Endangered Species Act only protects listed species, but there are some raptor and vulture species that are listed, meaning that both the animals and their critical habitat are protected and regulated per the ESA.
Compliance with these laws and implementing regulations is time consuming and quite expensive. In addition, NEPA and similar state laws apply and compliance is required for all wind farms. NYMBYs and environmental organizations have citizens suit rights and can intervene in environmental assessment procedures for wind farms.
The US Fish and Wildlife Service of DOI is the designated regulatory and enforcement agency for the bird protection laws. It is ironic that wind farm developers and operators can “take” protected birds in complete disregard of bird protection laws. Have wind farm developers and operators made the proper analysis of the jeopardy that wind projects pose to birds in project environmental assessments? Have they prepared and obtained approval from USF&WS of eagle management plans? Have they received “take” permits to kill them? Is USF&WS authorized to in effect waive compliance with the myriad of laws and rules intended to protect virtually all birds?
To date why has USF&WS limited its enforcement of the Migratory Bird Treaty Act to oil and gas projects? Where are the environmentalists screaming for USF&WS to protect birds from the giant cuisinarts in the sky?
For starters Ken Salazar, Secretary of Interior should be impeached for flagrant dereliction of duty. Then USF&WS should be purged.
A bit off topic but relevant to wind power;
“Wind power is not like riding your bike to work and leaving your car in the driveway. It’s like
riding your bike to work and having someone follow in your car. When you get tired of
pedaling (70% of the time in this analogy) you ride in the car the rest of the way.”
To see a handy synopsis of 7 Wind Turbine Myths – click on the link below;
http://windconcernsontario.files.wordpress.com/2011/07/7_wind_turbine_myths.pdf
I don’t follow. If it generates power one day in three, having the windmill shut down in the evening of the one day out of three that you are generating power means you have lost 50% of your power for that three day period.
If the wind happened to be blowing only at night on that one day, you have lost 100% of it.
The wind lobby has it’s excuses:
“DWP officials acknowledged that at least six golden eagles have been struck dead by wind turbine blades at the two-year-old Kern County facility, about 100 miles north of Los Angeles, which was designed to contribute to the city’s renewable energy goal of 35% by 2020.
Although the total deaths at Pine Tree pale in comparison with the 67 golden eagles that die each year in Northern California’s Altamont Pass Wind Resource Area, the annual death rate per turbine is three times higher at the DWP facility. The Altamont Pass facility has 5,000 wind turbines — 55 times as many as Pine Tree.
Nationwide, about 440,000 birds are killed at wind farms each year, according to the Wildlife
Service. The American Wind Energy Assn., an industry lobbying group, points out that far more birds are killed by collisions with radio towers, tall buildings, airplanes and vehicles, and encounters with household cats.
Attorney Allan Marks, who specializes in renewable energy projects, called the Pine Tree deaths “an isolated case. If their golden eagle mortality rate is above average, it means the industry as a whole is in compliance.” ”
Household cats kill golden eagles?
Well now we know where that previous commenter got his talking points …
…. From Big Wind! Oh the irony!
And what a weird way of making a point. [A] kills less birds and bats than [B + C + D + E + F + G + …].
Perhaps a new tab on your site is in order. Call it “AGW Ironies”.
Stories like this one, as well as the legal battle between the California neighbors, one of which had solar panels, the other Redwood trees. If I remember correctly, the solar panel guy sued the Redwood guy to cut down his trees.
Apparently the bats are being killed by pressure changes around the windmills affecting their lungs.
Which suggests that those found dead in the immediate vicinity of the windmills may be a small proportion of those harmed and eventually killed by the windmills.
A review of the sources of avian mortality provides some insiights. Buildings are responsible for about 55,000 times more avian fatalities than wind turbines. (US Forrest Service, Gen. Tech. Rep., PSW-GTR-191.2005).
Wind turbines are sited in exactly the same wind corridors favored by birds. Why would it be a surprize that there is a conflict between bird and machine here?
The biggest wind problem this Country has is in the Congress of the United Stats and at 1600 Pennselvania Avenue. Get rid of this, when you vote November 2012, problem solved.
This problem does not only rest on one person but many people whom belong to elected positions in the town of Cape Vincent. Which apparently control the fate of our beautifully landscaped town. Being an avid bird hunter I showed a special interest in the bird study that was conducted by the wind turbine companies. I had two conversations with the gentleman doing the study. He was about 22yrs old an he told me he had just graduated from college. He was here for a one month bird study….basically he was here to count birds. On both occasions I had inquired about bird numbers an species. His counts were so low I started to think maybe he was just sleeping in his truck. Three one day five another. On the second meeting I was shocked to hear him ask me an others on better locations to sit an count from. I had to regretfully inform him that I was to sure when Michigans migration periods were but he was here at the totally wrong time of year for Northern NY to count local an migratory species. Not to mention him being half loaded at the bar spilling his guts to some other locals. Sad! Send a college kid from Michigan to Northern NY to totally screw up a crucial bird study.