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”
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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.
@ur momisugly 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?