An attempt to stimulate discussion about whether or not wind turbines could kill off all endangered whooping cranes in only five years, as some environmentalists suggest.
Guest post by Caleb Shaw
I am having trouble getting to the bottom of a serious issue, (or a serious issue for a bird lover like myself.) It may well be that wind turbines are killing endangered birds, and may lead to the extinction of the California Condor and the Whooping Crane.
Because wind turbines involve a great deal of capital, (not merely the big-bucks of fat-cats, but also and especially the political capital surrounding the save-the-world idea of Global Warming,) the bullying of media-warping power politics seems to be involved. You can’t get a straight answer to a simple question.
All I want to know is whether or not the population of whooping crane has fallen by over a hundred, since wind turbines were erected in their flyways.
I think it may well have happened, but because the government would get bad press if such was “a fact,” the facts get muddled. The government is on record as saying wind turbines are good, and has invested huge amounts of taxpayer’s money in erecting them. They will downplay bad news. One way to downplay is to change the way of counting whooping cranes. For 61 years an aerial count was used. Now a new “hierarchical distance sampling” is used, and gives a number with an absurd degree of uncertainty. .
What is the degree of uncertainty? “Plus or minus 61 whooping cranes.” That could be as much as a half of the total population. It is a failure to give an honest questioner an honest answer.
261 would not be good news, but would indicate the population was at least holding steady, however, if you subtract 61 from the positive direction and go 61 in the other direction, you have 139 whooping cranes, which is an environmental disaster.
It also would be a political inconvenience, and a business inconvenience to all fat cats who have invested huge amounts of money into the enormous, towering, and very ugly turbines.
However I always thought true environmentalists didn’t care about what was inconvenient for politicians, and inconvenient for fat cats, and instead cared about what was inconvenient for whooping cranes.
When you can’t even get the data that matters, not even from the Environmental Protection Agency, it starts to look like environmentalists have been bought out by, and have sold out to, fat cats and politicians. I always thought that was the one thing that environmentalists never, ever would do.
I figured environmentalists needed to be warned. Therefore I left the following comment, (actually a sort of letter-to-the-editor,) at the environmentalist website Wind Turbine Syndrome, on the post: http://www.windturbinesyndrome.com/2012/the-free-flying-whooping-crane-population-will-be-lost-within-5-years-avian-wildlife-expert/#comment-20922
“I have linked to your story in a post at my obscure website: http://sunriseswansong.wordpress.com/2013/04/13/for-the-birds/
I have also left links to your post when I comment at other websites.
The problem is that environmentalists have overused the sympathy of the public, because some less-than-altruistic environmentalists have raised the alarm, but have done so for reasons that involve political and even business interests. By allowing such people to infiltrate our ranks we have dug a grave for ourselves, because we are now like the little boy who cried wolf. When we raise the alarm, the public rolls their eyes and doesn’t listen.
An example of such a false alarm may well be the “snail darter,” which is a small fish which lives in a California delta. Because California’s climate has included both copious rainfalls and withering droughts, the delta has varied hugely, and the little fish has evolved to cope with tremendous variations. However the environmentalists involved made it sound like the slightest bit of irrigation in America’s richest farmland, (which has the longest growing season,) could wipe the obscure minnow out, by reducing the water in the delta.
While there are good arguments on both sides, the uproar made environmentalists look bad for two reasons. First, it made them look like they cared more for a few hundred minnows than feeding hundreds of thousands of Americans. Second, it made them look like liars, when it turned out that particular minnow had survived horrific historic droughts when the delta was practically dry. Once environmentalists have been made to look bad in this manner, the public is slow to forgive the stain on their reputation.
The whooping crane population was down to around 21 in 1941. It was only due to the work of altruistic environmentalists, who worked hand in hand with Washington DC, that the population bounced back to over 200. It is a triumph, and shows environmentalism at its best.
We need to return to that goodness, but we cannot do so with people who abuse environmentalism in our ranks. We are like a beautiful garden, but our ranks contain some rank weeds.
Some of our members are merely young, and need the guidance of older and wiser members. However others are rather obviously more interested in money, quick profits, and power politics than anything that has to do with keeping nature in balance, and beautiful creatures alive.
None of us much likes to be disagreeable, but we had better disagree with these people, who are actually fakes and phonies. In the most polite manner possible, we need to bring up the truth and demand the facts, and confront them. They are corrupting a beautiful thing, and if we don’t stand up for what environmentalism stands for, we are standing by as a sewer pipe pollutes a beautiful river, but in this case the river is environmentalism itself.
Rabid enviros have gone too far for too long in our lives. I’m sick of the emotional blackmail, the green tape and the costs associated with the existence of these extreme groups.
If a few species go extinct but help people open their eyes to what’s going on, so be it.
In the UK planning permission (required for all building operations on land other than “minor operations” within the curtilage of an existing dwelling) should be refused if the works impact on the habitat of any endangered species.
A list of UK endangered species is at:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_endangered_species_of_the_British_Isles
No reference to cranes or condors, seemingly – don’t think it’s warm enough up here at 51N upwards – but for any other UK species the solution would be to apply for them to go on the list…
This is why many people have left Green organizations. The ranks have become filled with people who have a different agenda. Most members just jump on board with what they are told without ever looking into it themselves. I’m sorry it took you this long to start thinking for yourself. However, now you can help the rest of us who care about the enviroment, but don’t want to be misguided by the corruption in the Green movement.
There are about 600 whooping cranes left in the world with the only sustaining group being the approximately 300 that split their time between Aransas reserve, near Rockport Texas and Canada. The numbers slowly build up with historic unnatural deaths being primarily lack of food, primarily blue crabs (due to drought), flying into electric high lines & fences and humans shooting them. There have been 81 unaccounted deaths since 1951. I go by Aransas once each year on the way to Rockport, which is a resort town.
With the advent of windmill generators, the possibility exists that there could be a few whoopers killed but it would be well known since a dead whooper makes the headlines of small town newspapers. They are big and easy to identify.
“As usual, they assume nature so poorly equipped her creations that they can’t adapt. That’s some ballsy certainty.”
Careful Mr. Watts. This is exactly the kind of statement I’d have sneered at a few years ago when I was a true AGW believer. I continue to sneer at the idea that we can rely on good ‘ol mother nature, or God, or anything else you might have in mind to protect us. The earth’s natural history is littered with catastrophe’s and extinction events. They’ll most certainly happen again for whatever reasons.
Nature does not care.
@pokerguy: wrong thread, surely? Try under “Wild claim from University of East Anglia”.
And we wouldn’t have been around all this while if mother nature didn’t have something going for us – eg the essentially logarithmic nature of Co2 to averaged surface temperature increases (the lawyers even have a name for it: “the presumption of continuance” that a recurring human phenomenon will continue its normal course until the contrary is shown).
“…261 would not be good news.”
Where did the 261 come from? Is this from another source? Or is it a P.O.O.M.A.?
When I lived in Texas in the 1970’s, the plight of the whooping crane was a very big deal. In the comments of this article I read that there are now only about 300 of these birds using the Aransas NWR.
Since the 70’s, we have spent literally millions of dollars to give them protected homes, and thousands of hours either trying to get these reticent beings to mate or in trying to count them. How many dollars per bird have have we spent? How many decades do we have to nurse these critters to get them to multiply? With all the work for this bird over the last half-century, I don’t think it is the fault of humans that these birds cannot seem to multiply.
Nature may have already dealt a verdict on the longevity of this beautiful bird.
RIP.
Cranes and herons were hunted almost to extinction due to the popularity of their plumage. Species have been recovering since hunting them was banned. Loss of wetland habitat is also a factor.
Along with wind turbines killing cranes, etc., bats and raptors are casualties and the numbers are significant.
On the one hand the Fed’s and States and some private groups work to help these animals and on the other hand they issue take permits for the legal killing inflicted by their beloved wind project boondoggles and some so-called environmental groups turn a blind eye to the carnage.
To Ryan:
You wrote: “800+ ppm will pretty much guarantee their extinction, yes?”
In the first place, what makes you think birds can’t stand 800 ppm CO2?
Their distant ancestors, dinosaurs, stood 2000 ppm quite well. The
CO2 levels of the Eocene (50 million years ago) were 1500-1000
ppm, and the ancestors of today’s birds OBVIOUSLY survived. I don’t
know when whooping cranes evolved, but there’s no a priori
reason to think that a small increase in CO2 partial pressure will
kill them off. A recent spate of papers questioning the sensitivity of the
global temperature to CO2 also casts doubt on the extreme temperature
rise scenarios that are the stock-in-trade of climate alarmists.
In the second place, it’s doubtful that burning fossil fuels will raise the
CO2 level that high. The oceans absorb quite a bit, and working
oceanographers believe the oceans are very far from being saturated
in their ability to absorb CO2.
I have visions of EPA envirocrats required to resume those aerial bird counts from ultralights flown through the wind farms . . . shouldn’t be a problem if they aren’t dangerous to winged critters . . .
The crane family has been around since at least the Eocene, but probably earlier. The Gruidae are quite an ancient lineage.
pokerguy says (May 13, 2013 at 9:47 am): “Nature does not care.”
But Gaia most certainly DOES! That’s why she spent so much time and effort giving birth to the human species, so we can protect her from some of those nasty catastrophes (e.g. asteroids) that muck up all her plans!
Unfortunately, she did her job a little TOO well: We, her creations, are so keen on protecting her that we worry about threats that don’t even exist, distracting us from the real problems.
*sigh* Pesky humans. She was sooooo close to evolving a technological dinosaur civilization…
The fools who preach a fossil free world is the way to better world don’t care Wind Turbines kill millions of birds including Whopping Cranes. They are on a mission from God to save the world. They don’t care the alternatives to Fossil Fuel are worse by any measure. They require tons of rare earth that creates toxic waste in the surrounding areas which is harmful to the environment and human health. They pollute the environment with toxic waste during their manufacture. They are inefficient and costly providing only a fraction of the energy fossil fuel does. Wind Turbines kill millions of birds, require large land masses to operate scaring once natural habitats and are harmful to human health. Ditto with solar panels if deployed in mass may even cause more global warming not less. Plants used for biofuel like corn and palm trees grow on fertile land once used for food crops and in the case of palm trees virgin forests are chopped down and poor Africans are forcibly removed from their land so rich neocoloniest green corporations can profit. Thanks for alerting people to the inconvenient truth that the so called cure for AGW is worse than the imagined disease.
Green kills – whooping cranes, condors, eagles – and people.
Green is mass murder abd animal cruelty, and the greenies are the mass murderers and animal abusers of our time.
If it were within my power to do it, I would personally physically force every environmental extremist organization on the planet to bear the cost of tearing down these killer machines and paying the home heating and electric bills of people who can’t afford them because of carbon taxes, renewable energy mandates and restrictions on fossil fuel supply and use; and I would personally physically force them to pay for developing fossil fuel resources and building energy infrastructure in all countries where people now have to burn shit to cook their food.
Of course it is not within my power to do these things, but I’d sure like to see someone do them.
“The problem is that environmentalists have overused the sympathy of the public, because some less-than-altruistic environmentalists have raised the alarm, but have done so for reasons that involve political and even business interests. By allowing such people to infiltrate our ranks we have dug a grave for ourselves, because we are now like the little boy who cried wolf.”
In the 80’s I was a signed up Greenpeace supporter (ie I paid them a annual subscription). I come from the generation that argued for paper and glass recycling before it was fashionable.The era when the National Union of Seamen stopped the british government dumping nuclear waste into the Irish Sea.
However, so many who call them selves environmentalists these days have got so wound up about the CO2 they just can not accept that it was wrong, at best exaggerated. They are now the ones ‘in denial’.
The biggest danger is that in five or ten years time no one will take the slightest bit on notice whatever they say. Even when they try to highlight real and dangerous industrial pollution, they will not have an ounce of credibility left.
They need to waken up quickly but all the evidence is they are intent of driving straight into a brick wall on this one.
peopleneedpower says: “They require tons of rare earth that creates toxic waste in the surrounding areas which is harmful to the environment and human health. They pollute the environment with toxic waste during their manufacture. ”
NO. Wind turbines do none of that, industrialists do. It does not matter that they are making turbines, cars or plastic dolls, they pollute because it’s cheap and they pollute in countries that don’t have laws that prevent it.
It’s the same as it always was, where ever it was happening. It’s GREED that pollutes, not wind nor nukes nor coal. It’s greed.
Nothing new under the sun.
Green is mass murder abd animal cruelty, and the greenies are the mass murderers and animal abusers of our time.
————
Your blaming the children when its their socialist parents that raised these psychopaths..
We have a heavy frost warning here in New Hampshire tonight, so I have to run around covering seedlings with hay. I’d much rather read all the the comments, but that will have to wait until after dark.
To briefly return to the subject of disappearing whooping cranes:
Wikipedia, (for what it’s worth,) states, “As of 2011, there are an estimated 437 birds in the wild and more than 165 in captivity.[2][3]” and “The United States Fish and Wildlife Service confirmed that 266 Whooping Cranes made the migration to Aransas National Wildlife Refuge in 2007.[15]”
The above article I linked to states, “This year, after they migrated to the Aransas Wildlife Refuge, only 192 were counted. More than 100 of these birds disappeared in a year’s time.”
Did a hundred cranes disappear? Or is that statement balderdash?
Nice turn of phrases, but recommended editing to read:
“We were like a beautiful garden, but our ranks are now overgrown by rank weeds.”
Environmentalism is off the rails.. Far to many nut jobs and power / money hungry psychopaths in their ranks for anything good to come from anything they touch.. I thought there was supposed to be a separation of church and state in a free society..
Again and again, socialism all jazzed up with mystic garbage creates nothing but suffering and war.. Always in the name of some abstract ideal.. Always to save some thing that never belonged to them anyways.. Angry people feeding on their hate of their chosen scapegoat..
Politics 101.. Fill them up.. Wind them up.. Jump out front and enjoy the ride..
A sobering thought. The book “Mysteries of migration” cites a kill of thousands of birds when they collided with a static TV trasmitter in their migration route. The risks posed by thousands of moving blades are obvious.
I wonder how many of those who are adamant about needing wind turbines to combat the coming catastrophic anthropogenic global warming, will be willing to accept the connection between the threatened whooping crane population and the increasing prevalence of human whooping cough.
@Jay –
You’re right but I would add the socialist CRL “educators”.
The inhumanity of collectivism extends even to animals.
I do not live too far from the site of the International Crane Foundation. Using ultralight aircraft they train and release about 6 Whooping Cranes every year into the wild. They cranes need to be trained to migrate to they’re winter nesting sites. What a tragedy it would be if all their (mostly volunteer) efforts were for naught.
If you find yourself in central Wisc. it’s well worth a visit: http://www.savingcranes.org/