By P Gosselin on 4. February 2022
Germany’s government has not only taken a wrecking ball to the nation in terms of COVID, but also to its biodiversity in its self-deluded bid to protect the climate.
Clearing of 2000 hectares in one of the last undisturbed forests has begun as State of Hesse issues the construction approval for massive industrial wind park. Image: https://rettet-den-reinhardswald.de/.
“Grimm’s fairy tale forest”
About a year ago we reported on disturbing plans by the government of the German state of Hesse to clear 20 million square meters of 1000-year old “fairy tale” forest in one of Germany’s most idyllic, fairy tale-like forests: the Reinhardswald located in the hilly region west of the city of Göttingen.
The Reinhardswald is known as the “treasure house of European forests” or the “Grimm’s fairy tale forest”.
A total of about 2000 hectares ( 20 million m²) of the thousand-year-old Reinhardswald was designated for destruction by the state in order to clear the way for a massive wind power plant development.
Conservatives, Greens ram project through
Tragically, that battle to stop the destructive project has been dealt a severe blow as the construction of access roads began 2 days ago. The massive resistance of the affected citizens was ignored by the Hesse state government, which ironically is governed by a coalition of the CDU conservatives and environmentalist Greens. Updates posted here.
https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=1062576924473665
Press release
What follows is the press release from environmental protection group Aktionsbündnis Märchenland:
The Reinhardswald never had a chance. Not in Hesse. Not in this power structure, in whose ‘care’ the state-owned, widely known Reinhardswald is now to be cleared, chopped up, concreted over, built on – treated like any other industrial area along any motorway. Only a few kilometers away — in North Rhine-Westphalia and in Lower Saxony — the Reinhardswald would have been safe as a historically old, large-scale forest site worthy of protection, particularly significant in terms of biodiversity. But not in Hesse.
Conservation group Aktionsbündnis Märchenland is stunned by the granted approval – but not surprised. From the very beginning, this project in the Reinhardswald forest district was rammed through in a manner of an overlord against all protests from municipalities, groups, initiatives, associations and, in any case, over the heads of the people affected, as a prestige project of the Hessian state government.
For years, the project developers have been able to rely on the political and technical support from Wiesbaden – right up to the approval process. The Regional Council of Kassel, which is bound by directives, only needed to implement them.
The largest wind turbine project in Hesse, with over 14 kilometres of new and upgraded roads capable of carrying heavy loads, is now to be built in the valuable eco-system of the forest, which is also the heart of a demonstrably historically old forest site with a history of over 1000 years going back to Medieval times.
The last of Germany’s undisturbed landscapes
The area is the largest contiguous forest area in Hessen in a virtually uninhabited, undisturbed and therefore in itself an extremely valuable natural area. It’s beauty serves as a recreational area of outstanding importance [1] in the midst of a landscape that is partly classified as cultural-historical and of the highest value. Even according to Hessian Environment Minister Priska Hinz (Greens), it is one of the most scenic regions in Germany [2],
The Reinnhardswald is a landscape that has not yet been industrially influenced and which belongs to those of which the Federal Agency for Nature Conservation describes as: “Landscapes that appear close to nature without technical influences that must be preserved.” [3]
“Shockingly wrong” ruling
The decision to grant construction permission in the Reinhardswald forest, which is known far beyond the state and even federal borders, is considered by the Action Alliance group to be shockingly wrong, exclusively politically motivated and, moreover, highly endangering confidence in the implementation of the transition to green energies.
The Action Alliance declares: “We are already announcing that we will document all events in the Reinhardswald and make them public, as well as all existing expert reports and expert authority statements. In addition, we are already asking all supporters who take photographs and film to contact us so that we can coordinate the work if necessary. The clearing began immediately today as over one hundred-year-old beech trees have already fallen.
In addition, we will use our possibilities to support the already announced lawsuits of environmental associations and possibly municipalities.
Donations can be made via our homepage at: https://rettet-den-reinhardswald.de/spenden-dein-beitag…/.
Links:
[1] http://www.rpkshe.de/lrp2000/bestand/a_7/a7_63/k23a7_63.htm
[2] https://www.forstpraxis.de/he_naturpark_reinhardswald_sl/
[3] https://www.bfn.de/…/BfNErneuerbareEnergienReport2019…
Please spread the word! The Reinhardswald needs your help!
–
THE DISPUTE https://bit.ly/rdrinfobeitrag
14+ KM ROAD CONSTRUCTION http://bit.ly/rdr14kmstrasse
50-60 (TOTAL 140) TURBINES http://bit.ly/rdr140
LEVERAGING SPECIES PROTECTION http://bit.ly/rdrartenschutz
PARTICIPATE http://bit.ly/rdrmitmachen
PETITION 1 https://bit.ly/petition1regenwald
PETITION 2 https://bit.ly/petition2changeorg
Now these greens are getting their first, bitter taste of their tactics being used against them.
For years our work in the mining industry was hampered time after time by green groups who did not like mining.
Now we have green groups who do not like green groups!
Tough titties, that.
Geoff S
It staggers me at the depths the Greens will plunge in the destruction of the environment in their efforts to achieve their Green dystopia!!! They are so arrogant that their hypocrisy eludes them!!!
It annoys me when they try to cover renewable energy specific subsidies for profit by claiming that fossil fuels are subsidised, and therefore mines, ignoring that the alleged subsidies are in fact fuel tax rebates for diesel and petrol used off road for whatever purposes, the fuel tax is a road user levy.
And fuel tax rebate and other tax deductions for expenses incurred in earning taxable profits are available to all businesses, even wind and solar energy.
You are confusing the morons with facts.
An Australian Greens advocate for wind turbines and solar, former Greens Leader Bob Brown, complained loudly when planning approval was given by the State Government for a wind business turbines to be installed on a mountain near his home in Tasmania.
Not in his backyard.
Which is exactly the same reason there will never be wind turbines off the coast of Martha’s Vineyard.
You guys have NO IDEA how much this pisses me off.
They will pay for it…. in unforeseen ways.
My heart is breaking (and I am angry, too).
This. Is an ABOMINATION.
It’s more than an abomination. It is direct proof that the “Greens” don’t really give a flying f- -rt in space about the planet at all, or about anything that lives on it. The county I live in is so loaded with forest preserves that you can find fine fishing everywhere, wildflowers that in some cases are rarities, birds, reptiles, amphibians, and insects that you’ll never see in cities — basically, I wouldn’t live anywhere else.
These BOZOS have no respect for the planet or anything in the natural world. This just proves that they want to destroy it and put concrete over everything they see. They are disgusting!
Yes!
And I’ll go further. Given that ultimate reason for this vile behavior is to put money into the pockets of the “renewables” scammers — they are wicked.
Another example of Looney lefty world-wide say one thing and do another.
In your admirable haste to bash the Left you seem to have conveniently forgotten about the CDU conservatives, who didn’t lift a finger to prevent this from happening.
Greenies in Germany are notorious for blocking all sorts of civil engineering projects because someone found a bug.
How many bugs and other ecological mini worlds is this project going to destroy?
Let alone your peaceful Sunday walk in the forest will now be accompanied by rhythmic whooshing noises, and the occasional dead bird landing at your feet…lovely.
Greens eating Greens. Reminds me of Soylent Green.
I’d laugh if it wasn’t so sad.
Very sad. 😥
NUCLEAR, NUCLEAR, NUCLEAR, the only way to generate enough power and still have beautiful things and places.
I know, lets cover Yellowstone Park with Geothermal wells. Crazy.
You wish to tap into a huge caldera.Sounds like a suicidal mission!
You don’t tap the caldera, the temperatures there are hot enough to melt your pipes.
You tap the hot rocks that are around the caldera.
Green, probably the most misused word evah…
Oh, I don’t know. “Green” has many meanings in English, including naive, immature, ignorant, …
Money
I want to see “green energy”, in Australia electricity suppliers have been offering to supply it for a surcharge, so how do their customers identify green energy?
The charge is printed in bright green on their bills?
I thought green energy was cheaper. Shouldn’t they offer a discount for green energy?
If “green energy” is cheaper, why do utilities only buy it when forced to by corrupt politicians? Green energy is always supplied by cronies of those pols.
It’s actually quite correct. Definition of Green, adjective:
If you say that someone is green, you mean that they have had very little experience of life or a particular job.
He was a young fellow, very green, very immature.
Synonyms: inexperienced, new, innocent, raw More Synonyms of green
Greenhorn. See Dangerous Catch.
I have heard about this before and it still seems like an inexcusable mistake. “Stupid is as stupid does” is an apt description of those involved making this happen.
There is no cure for stupid.
The new unit for measuring area, if you want to impress your audience with big numbers, is square meters. More impressive than hectares or square kilometres. A fire in Australia was recently described by the MSM as destroying 30000 square meters of bushland That’s 0.03 square kilometres or 3 hectares. Pfft.
Why don’t they just use good old fashioned Acres instead, at 2.47 to the Hectare the bigger numbers are far more impressive!!! Scaremongers & sensationalists love big numbers!!!
I would like to know how many trees they are going to cut down and how many eco crucifixes they are going to erect. I read in Scotland they recently cut down 18 million trees to make way for a wind farm but they never said how many windmills. I think figures like those have a greater impact when considering the ecoloons policy of destroying the environment in order to save it.
You are right, Notanacedemic, that they cut down lots of trees here but nearly all of them were commercial blocks which were due to be harvested shortly anyway.
Not that I am agreeing with having the birdchoppers, but lets get the facts right.
The picture at the top of this paper is wrong – it infers that the Government in Hesse has a brain.
I get your point but if they plant windmills after the harvest instead of trees there will be no trees to harvest in 25 or 30 years just the rusting remains of windmills and the colossal chunks of concrete just below the surface will make sure trees don’t grow there for a very long time.
Would you believe that they are now planting new baby trees in the same places? I suppose the bird choppers will be worn out before the new trees are tall enough to obstruct the wind, and with any luck the bird chopper idea will be obsolete by then and they won’t be replaced.
Perhaps they are hoping that by the time the bird choppers are worn out the trees will be tall enough to hide the rusty eyesores.
Many birds nest in trees. Would someone like to connect the dots.
I will connect the dots. They don’t want the expense or bad publicity from cleaning up all the bird carcasses. If they aren’t born, they can’t fly into the blades. Brilliant!
You have to destroy the planet in order to save it…
This can be a tricky question, as you first have to define a tree, particularly minimum size and which species count as a ‘tree’. If we use a 10cm (4-inch) diameter cutoff we can make some estimates, but the species involved, site type, and disturbance regime (or lack there of) will greatly influence the result. Young forests can have thousands of stems per hectare (e.g. 2m spacing = 2500 stems/ha), mature first growth forests tend to self-thin through inter-tree competition to something less than 1000 stems/ha with relatively even diameters. “Old growth” forests, depending on the species type, can develop a more diverse structure with intermixed young and old trees, gaps where an older tree recently died, denser sections where new growth has recaptured the openings, etc. Some “old growth” is a tangled mess of different sizes and can be quite dense (1500 to 3000+/ha), others are more park like and can be a very low density of stems (e.g. 250/ha) with very large crowns shading out other growth. If we use an estimate of 500 stems/ha then they would be removing roughly a 1 million 10cm or larger trees over the 2000 hectares. Change our size cutoff to 2.5 cm (1 inch) diameter and the number could increase by 5 times or more depending on species, site type, and disturbance history (e.g. livestock pasturing).
So roughly 1 million trees for 50 bird choppers (see Climate believer) and the ecoloons think thats a good deal. Madness.
Well according to what I could find out they eventually want to build 50 windy turdbines of 5.6MW each, over an area of 2000 hectares, about 5000 acres.
The first phase will cost the lives of around 120,000 trees (and everything else living in them probably) on 800 hectares.
For some corrupt reason they want to build where there’s no wind, why would you do that?
And sadly, a natural gas electric plant only takes up 350-700 acres.
A square mile plus for a gas electric plant? Even that sounds unusually large; sounds more like a coal plant.
Nuclear could reliably generate 8 times that amount of electricity on just 12 acres irrespective of the whims of weather
Last one I designed landed on 40 acres, 850 MW
Why build them where there is no wind? Perhaps they’ve realised they don’t really work so they’ll just put them anywhere, virtue signalling.
Turdbines. I like that, made me laugh
Why do you do that???
To mine Subsidies!!!
Even more impressive would be to express the area in “barns” (1E-28 m^2, a unit used in nuclear physics). And for “carbon emissions”, forget tonnes: Avogadro’s number (6.02E23) times the mass of carbon dioxide released (in grams) divided by 44.
measure in Planck lengths- equal to 1.616255(18)×10−35 m
:-}
they’ll next go to square centimeters
According to Wikipedia the Reinhardswald Forest is only about 200 km2. That’s the equivalent to a rectangle of 10 x 20 km. That’s a pretty small forest. You could drive around its perimeter in less than an hour. They are clearing 10% of it. Hard to believe there is not privately held land of equal area in the region that could not be purchased or leased. My guess is they want the forest land because they won’t have to pay for it. Can you say “Crony Capitalism”?
I don’t think it’s actually quite that simple. Looking at maps for the area, I think it’s spread out over a much wider area with clearings and larger clear patches between.
And the above 20,000,000 square meters is 20 square kilometers or 7.7 square miles. First thing I did after seeing the figure.
7.4 acres fr those of us not conversant in the globalist set of units = 30k sq m. 20 mm sq m = 5000 acres, neither of these parcels anything to pfft at if destroyed for a green cause
It will be interesting to see just how many people go to the woods and protest. I bet there won’t be any at all.
More and many Greens would come if the trees would fall for coal mining…
Or if Elon Musk was building something.
Or a parking lot….
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2595abcvh2M&ab_channel=JoniMitchell
“Big Yellow Taxi” written and performed by Joni Mitchell (published on youtube)
They took all the trees and put ’em in a tree museum.
Then, they charged the people a dollar and half just to see ’em.
Treeprotecting the Green way (Hambacher Forst/surface mining)
You’re probably right, andy.
I’m U.S. and could be missing important details of the local politics, but it seems to me the greens that normally would be chaining themselves to the trees are the ones that are pushing this project through.
Absolute madness. If CO2 is supposed to be the boogieman, more trees should be planted, not knocking them down, especially for the sake of an inefficient power source. Good to see greens eating greens though.
“Good to see greens eating greens though.”
Isn’t that a form of environmental cannibalism???
and, many of the trees will be defective so no good for timber- there is a decent biomass industry in Germany- so I bet much of the wood will go to biomass- which of course the greens hate- the same irony I throw at greens here in New England who love solar and wind “farms”- on mostly forest land- and which also has much of the wood going to biomass
Coincidently see how many Uni’s use wood chip for heating the Aula’s – oh wait, they are empty because COVID. What a train-wreck!
Actually professional foresters and normal forest management, for which Germany is famous, do not like this old-growth stuff. It was the Greens who foisted that on administrations. Well managed forests, without turbines are quite delightful!
Actions like this undermine the whole concept of “sustainability”. Mark Carney, are you taking note?
I can’t wait for Griff’s take on this – should be fun watching his head explode whilst he tries to defend destroying a 1000-year-old forest in the name of environmentalism
Griff will tell you they are saving the planet killing one forest at a time 🙂
Redge, I clearly remember being told in comments right here (a couple years ago) that they NEVER cut down forests for “renewables”. So, obviously, this isn’t being done, right?
“Ve have to destroy the environment in order to save it”.
In 1984 the BBC broadcast a series of 20 programmes called Deutsch Direkt. The purpose of the programmes was to help people learn the German language. Programme 14 starts of by looking at a protest by Greens against the destruction of trees by Acid Rain (Saurer Regen). At 13.00 the presenter moves onto the threat to Germany’s forests from building new roads. A voice says’ “The Germans love their beautiful, green forests.” No doubt a 2022 version of Deutsch Direkt would feature Greens destroying massive areas of woodland in Hessen.
I will actually be visiting the Reinhardswald later this year. Just in time, by the look of it.
Just look at all the destruction the climate change lies of Michael Mann and Phil Jones have caused.
All this destruction is based on their dishonest, distorted global temperature record, which fools people into believing CO2 is dangerous, and is overheating the Earth to the point of destroying human civilization.
Frightened people do stupid things, like cuttting down thousand-year-old forests.
I love this quote, “highly endangering confidence in the implementation of the transition to green energies”. If they hadn’t already figured out that the “transition to green energies” was in the hands of idiots, just wait until the power goes out for a couple of weeks in mid-Winter a few years from now. Those old-growth forest can yet power a few chimneys for a bit longer, I suppose…
though I’m a “professional forester”- I don’t like seeing documented “old growth” being cut for any reason- not all old forests are old growth- which should mean very old with little evidence of past harvesting or human caused disturbance
regarding this property- I doubt they’re going to clear cut the entire property- but it should be left as is
The giant turbines each have a building site with major paths in for heavy cranes. So a huge amount of clearing on top of just the turbine footprint. That is a huge amount of wood – likely sold for chipper (schnipsel) burners at Uni’s, official buildings etc… End result is practically a tank practice firing zone! And these are usually marked off-limits just like the turbine sites!
The Greenie ideology is a completely evil and destructive one which believes that the ends (“saving the planet”) justifies the means.
This situation in Germany is going to take much more than comments. Those who are sincerely devastated with watching this happen need our help. The wind industry must be stopped.
If climate change alarmism is the rationale for this destruction, then we need to find a way to expose the deception. Reiner Fuellmich and Viviane Fischer have created a model for exposing criminal syndicates and their tactics. Their model needs to be used as both an educational tool and a way for whistleblowers within the wind industry to provide testimony for a case that could finally stop this madness.
Michael Moore’s expose’ on this matter was silenced…if he has no voice you can bet you don’t
But they are not saving the planet at all. They are destroying it. It’s a shame that they can’t be given the treatment an engineer might get — hoist with his own Petard.
Whaaaat? Too snarky? Sorry, this whole thing has utterly annoyed me.
Use direct action to make it much too expensive
Libs really do have S— for brains!!
Back in the 80s when I argued that German forests were not going to be destroyed any time soon, I didn’t account for the same loons shedding false tears about acid rain wanting to cut down the same trees 40 years later to put up windmills—for the same goal—stop burning fossil fuels to collapse Western civilization.
A little off topic, and I am not a forester, but the link will take you to a video about a foundation in Missouri and how they manage a large forested area. Compared to this WUWT article of destruction to this video should give us hope.
https://ladfoundation.org/pioneer-forest/pioneer-forest-primer/
Perfect photo for this topic. They are actually putting a suicide vest on their brain and on the life of that forest. Only better photo would be a suicide vest on those that approved this unrepairable un recoverable disaster. Why not jus Nuke it?
It is hard to believe that one can place 50 6MW wind turbines on a mere 5,000 acres and not have them interfere with one another.
“We have to destroy the environment to save the environment!” House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.
Clearly Germany has received their orders and are obeying like good little socialist peons.
Ugh. That made me shudder. “Just obeying orders… .”
Yea, did not work out so well for Germans as a whole the last time they tried that defense.
Correct. At Nurnberg, Natural Law, i.e., the law written from conception on the conscience of every healthy, moral, human being, was the prevailing principle — otherwise, most of those fiends would have gotten off scot free.
“Just following orders” remains a popular defense, despite what happened then. We don’t learn.
Yep, USG employees are using as we speak to dodge responsibility for a multitude of crimes.
Hesse is where the Hessians came from. https://www.mountvernon.org/library/digitalhistory/digital-encyclopedia/article/hessians/
They were Brutal mercenaries who fought against our founders
Fifty years from now, after they’ve realized their gigantic wind farm was a failure, perhaps they will tear down the windmills and give the land back to nature. Two hundred years after that, maybe it will look like the forest again. I wonder how many people, or rather how few, will get rich from this.
The image is of Emanuel Kant’s Omni-pulverizer. Kant, in fact an anti – philosopher, is taught in the Halls of Universities transatlantic – wide. A lot of severe mental illness results.
It was Heinrich Heine with Religion and Philosophy in Germany ,
https://archive.org/details/religionandphilo011616mbp
who, as a great poet, saw Kant’s intention. Later many have acknowledged Kant, such as Nietzsche, Arendt, and H*itler’s first move in Paris was to have Heine’s grave removed. Heine in 1834 wrote in that Fragment, that what would come in Germany would make the then recent French Terror look like a coffee – house chat. That was a 100 years before.
The reason is the Romantic Movement of Kant with his Critiques :
The leftist gambits are triggering whole national populations to lurch from one mass hysteria to another, causing lots of damage. Normal people watch in horror as the west has abandoned actual science—the science of data and open dissenting perspectives to the use of religious tactics, mullahs have nothing on the new priesthood of “expert” opinion. And yet, so called “normal” people vote for this hogwash.
Note again the correctness of Jordan Peterson, in making the statements about theories that explain everything explaining nothing, and that ‘the environment’ being everything includes nothing. This must be the perfect example demonstrating that people are capable of holding the doublethink in their brains that cutting down a forest to build windmills saves environment. It can only do that when ‘the environment’ becomes nothing, and indicates again that Peterson does indeed understand climate scientists’ and environmentalists’ brains.
Although I’m not supportive of the concept that correlation equals causation, in the case of concern for the environment growing at the same rate as people move away from the environment and into cities, it seems obvious.
None of the trees in that picture look very old, let alone 1,000 years.
Something cleared that forest not all that long ago.
Germany is lost, hopelessly lost.
What is it with Big Green snuffing trees to make magic green energy?
https://www.climatedepot.com/2021/12/23/new-york-city-chain-saws-down-1000-trees-to-raise-park-8-10-feet-to-address-panic-over-3mm-sea-level-rise-protesters-watched-in-horror/
Very simple: they genuinely hate this planet and will willingly do whatever it takes to destroy it, because they can’t control anything it does… and they know it.
The plans I can find for this development are for 32 hectares, not 2,000 – with the access roads being allowed to regrow after construction…
According to GE, which makes the things, a gigawatt of wind generation capacity requires 50000 acres, or about 50 acres/megawatt. Other data I can find on land requirements for wind is about in the same range or higher (more land-intensive) If the planned project is for 50 turbines of 5.6MW each, that would be 280MW in 5000 acres, or about 18 acres/MW. Sounds optimistic.
But even if we accept the 280MW number, remember that the average output of a wind turbine won’t be better than about 50% of capacity, or a 140MW average. Not very impressive, compared with a 1GW gas plant or a 1 or 2 GW nuclear plant.
GE Power also states the land requirement for a 1GW gas combined-cycle plant at 13 acres.
https://www.ge.com/news/reports/talking-about-generation-this-mix-of-technologies-can-lower-the-power-industrys-carbon-0
“ the average output of a wind turbine won’t be better than about 50% of capacity”
I thought it was more like 30 percent at best, and, of course, zero percent much of the time and often at the worst time.