Essay by Eric Worrall
h/t Breitbart; Green energy projects may soon rival the kill rate of Japanese Whale “research” vessels, if claims of a connection are true.
Another dead whale washes up at Jersey Shore, drawing worried crowd
Updated: Feb. 15, 2023, 6:51 a.m.
Published: Feb. 13, 2023, 4:49 p.m.
By Steven Rodas | NJ Advance Media for NJ.comThe ninth dead whale to wash ashore on the New York-New Jersey coastline in recent months was reported Monday, officials with the Marine Mammal Stranding Center confirmed.
A crowd gathered as the whale floated about 100 yards offshore near Whiting Avenue Beach in Manasquan on Monday afternoon. As some onlookers stopped to take photos, police were seen cordoning off the area.
“We’re putting together a team with NOAA right now to respond,” Sheila Dean, director of the Marine Mammal Stranding Center, told NJ Advance Media on Monday afternoon.
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The center, as well as NOAA, have continued to state that offshore wind survey work in the area is not at fault for the whale deaths. Although some groups have called the series of strandings unprecedented, federal and state officials have yet to conclude that’s the case and continue to investigate the deaths.
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While some towns have called for a pause on offshore wind pre-construction, Donovan said Manasquan has not followed suit.
“As soon as someone can convince me offshore wind work is responsible for any of the whale deaths I’ll more than happy sign onboard,” Donovan said.
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Read more: https://www.nj.com/news/2023/02/another-dead-whale-washes-up-at-jersey-shore-drawing-worried-crowd.html
Its not just whales which may be suffering from the offshore wind industry. There are claims turbines continue to wreak havoc on the environment even after they are constructed, with evidence that EMF pollution from undersea electric cables devastates the ability of crabs to function normally – kind of like how moths are drawn to electric lights. Other sea creatures like sharks also sense electricity, so I wouldn’t be surprised if a whole range of sea creatures are being messed up by offshore wind, which have not yet shown up on the research radar.
I doubt greens are going to get too excited by this latest whale death, or all the other problems offshore wind appears to be causing.
The days when greens chained themselves to trees to stop timber cutting, or set out in boats to stop the despoilers of nature, those days are mostly gone.
Nowadays, in my opinion greens are more likely to be in league with the timber cutters and whale killers and destructive hydro projects, than working to oppose them. So long as the environmental destruction is performed to advance their green energy agenda, they don’t seem to care. Most Greens seem to just wave green energy projects through, no matter what the cost to the environment.
I love the smell of rotting whales in the morning.
Smells like –
offshore wind turbines.
I must dig out my whale oil lamps from the cellar. I knew they would come back into use once the Green Energy movement advanced their ideas far enough.
Can we ask the offshore wind industry to look at operating in South Georgia ?
That would be so much more environmentally sound, as the boiling vats for the slaughtered whales are still in place and the dead whales making landfall there would be so convenient for the rendering pots.
NB that is South Georgia South Atlantic, not the Eastern USA, although the way things are going, who knows?
Those dead whales are very valuable. They likely will be processed for animal food, and to provide fat for faux hamburgers
Why not convince us that intermittent wind turbines are responsible for reliable electricity production first?
reliable and cheap!
Unless they wash up it’s out of sight out of mind
The same goes for all so-called green stuff – even slave and child labour
Jeremy Clarkson had an exposé on the non-trivial problems of removing a dead seal from an Isle of Man beach IIRC
Whoa, NOAA, the Marine Mammal Protection Act of 1972 requires: Section 403, Strandings, and Section 404, Unusual Mortality Events, NOAA to investigate these events quickly and thoroughly. Wait for it. OK, don’t wait for it.
I’m sure that scientists from all over academia are rushing write up their applications for grants to study the effects of offshore wind turbine construction and operations on sea life.
They are no doubt just as interested in that as WHO is in continuing to investigate where and how COVID 19 originated.
“Nowadays, in my opinion greens are more likely to be in league with the timber cutters and whale killers and destructive hydro projects, than working to oppose them.”
Now, now- let’s not mix in timber cutters with whale killers and destructive hydro projects.
Greenpeace announced, from their $30 million cruising yacht, with 1850 hp diesel generator, it has not been proven infrasound kills whales.
It proposes a 10-year study to give BIDEN’s posse the time to build 30,000 MW of these monster bird/bat/lobster killers, to find out if the “unfounded allegations” are indeed true
Here is my latest take on highly subsidized, unreliable, variable wind
WIND AND SOLAR ARE MOLLY-CODDLED UP TO THEIR ARMPITS
https://www.windtaskforce.org/profiles/blogs/wind-and-solar-are-molly-coddled-up-to-their-armpits
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Grossly Excessive Financial Incentives
About 45 to 50% of the “wind, all-in LCOE” (levelized cost of energy) of wind turbine projects consists of various financial in incentives. I have the 20-y spreadsheets.
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If no financial incentives were available, Owners would have to sell their electricity at almost 2 times the price, c/kWh, they now receive, which would be very bad PR for wind.
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THE FINANCIAL INCENTIVES ARE THE REASON MANY $BILLIONS OF $DOLLARS ARE MADE AVAILABLE BY RICH PEOPLE WHO ARE PROFITING FROM LUCRATIVE TAX-SHELTERS, SUCH AS WARREN BUFFETT, WHILE LEGALLY SCREWING ALL OTHERS, ALL IN THE NAME OF SLOGAN “SAVING THE PLANET”
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Wind Output is Variable Almost 100% of the Time
I looked at the hour-to-hour wind output in New England (ISO-NE website) for an entire year, 8766 hours. I was bleary eyed.
I found there ALWAYS was some wind output. It was NEVER zero.
Wind output is variable almost 100% of the time
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Counteracting Variable Wind Output
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What makes wind a grid disturber, or very expensive, or very uneconomical (take your pick) is the VARIABLE output, because OTHER generators (likely gas-fired power plants) HAVE to counteract, on a less than minute-by-minute basis, the variable wind outputs, UP TO NEAR ZERO wind output, 24/7/365, year after year.
There is an exception to that rule. In the case where those projects would interfere with their vacation homes aesthetics matter
From the article: “The center, as well as NOAA, have continued to state that offshore wind survey work in the area is not at fault for the whale deaths.”
Now, how would they know this at this time? The answer is they do not know this. They don’t have enough information to make these statements, so they are in effect, lying to the public.
Much of the ‘science’ of catastrophic global warming relies on the concept that correlation equals causation.,,, If CO2 percentage goes up and something bad also goes up, therefore CO2 caused the bad thing. This is particularly true, if the media finds a scary name for the bad thing: Atmospheric River, Bomb Cyclone, Polar Vortex, etc. Oooh,,,scary!
So the same holds true for dead whales and offshore wind turbine surveys. There just needs to be a scarier name for the survey. Maybe ‘Acoustic Dreadnaught’?
FLOG, its not the wind surveys, its the seismic surveys to determine anchor points for the wind turbines. Whales can hear ocean noises 200 miles away so a stick of dynamite for a seismic survey a mile away is destructive. With their depth sensing destroyed, to avoid the abyss, they stay close to the surface where their eyes sense light, and they head for surf-shore noises with their little remaining hearing, where they starve in the shallow waters or the pain in their “ears” drives them onto the beach.
All those whales could have been harvested, instead greentards are killing them in the name of their religion.
Whales and other marine mammals like dolphins and orcas have always been known to die in droves and wash ashore due to disease. Just like every other animal and plant on Earth including humans.
What is the supposed mechanism from wind turbine surveys that would hurt a whale? Sonar? Every damned fishing boat in the world is equipped with sonars (i.e. fish finders and depth sounders), so it is impossible to blame that on offshore wind.
As for EMF that is a myth that won’t die away, despite being debunked thousands of times. There is no EMF from power transmission lines that could possibly affect marine life or any other life. Every power line in every electrified community in the world has multiple lines with tens to hundreds of thousands of volts passing through them to supply, well, everything and everyone … whether up high in the air on a transmission tower, or underground. Not a single credible link between that and any other illness known to man or the environment has ever been demonstrated.
Really, WUWT ought to be much better than that when it comes to science and engineering and industrial reality. This post is malthusian garbage.
” Not a single credible link between that and any other illness known to man or the environment has ever been demonstrated.” Since when did credible links become a requirement in the energy propaganda wars? I’ll take it as holding enviros to their own standards. — And note that the fact that populations die from disease is not a proof that these 9 whales died over a period of months (apparently starting about the time of sonar tests) of the same unevidenced disease.
Volts don’t pass through anything. Amps or Coulombs do. What is the difference in energy input of industrial bottom mapping sonar vs. fish-finding sonar vs. driving pilings?
I’m unsure if there is a connection, but there is a large acoustic impedance contrast between ocean water on one hand and tissue, or air filled voids, on the other. I have felt real pain over this contrast when my fingers rested on the end of a timber and someone struck the other end with a hammer.
I am with you. I do not understand how whales are killed by wind turbines. The turbine blades do not go in the water all the whales have to do is avoid the enormous steel towers that hold the things up. I assume that whales have ways of detecting obstacles and avoiding them. It should not be like birds slamming into windows.
Every time one of the blades passes the pillar supporting the turbine, wind being pushed by the blade is slammed into the pillar. This produces a very high energy acoustic blast at very low frequencies. For humans, at frequencies humans can hear, that acoustic sound level produces great pain and, often, immediate and permanent hearing loss. These infrasound pulses can be measured, and often enough have been measured, with the right equipment. Equipment designed for frequencies a human can hear, which is what is specified in almost all sound level legislation and regulation, cannot detect those low frequency ‘sounds’.
Both short and long term damage from high level very low frequencies have been studied and documented at least since NASA started trying to put satellites into orbit. Rocket engines also produce high level very low frequencies, as does other industrial machinery.
It has been several decades since the discovery was made that frequent exposure to these very low acoustical frequencies causes abnormal connective tissue growth in humans and (at least most) other animals. This leads to a rather wide range of bodily malfunctions. Consistent replications of the abnormal tissue growth and resulting bodily damage has been shown in laboratory studies.
To a large extent, just as hearing loss from music or shop machinery that is too loud increases slowly over time rather than producing the immediately noticeable damage that very high level sounds do, infrasound damage usually tends to be gradual – and irreversible.
This is not a popular subject for grant administrators, and perhaps most researchers, so there are many unanswered questions such as exactly what levels are required to produce permanent damage or why different people experience different symptoms or, perhaps, why whales are dying.
“Whales and other marine mammals like dolphins and orcas have always been known to die in droves and wash ashore due to disease.”
Indeed. Though we should not just assume that disease is the cause this time before a comprehensive scientific investigation – i.e. one which considers all the possibilities – has been carried out. The observed coincidence in time and space between excess whale-deaths and offshore windfarm-building suggests at least the possibility that the windfarms are the principal cause of the deaths in this case and that possibility needs to be investigated, objectively and impartially, along with all the others.
“What is the supposed mechanism from wind turbine surveys that would hurt a whale?”
We can only speculate at this stage. Ideally, a forensic scientific investigation would proceed by eliminating possible causes one by one until only one remains. We would not actually need to suppose any particular mechanism in order to determine whether or not the windfarm activity was the principal cause. And if we found that it was, then would be the time to determine the specific mechanism by which it caused the observed whale-deaths – again, by eliminating possibilities.
“Sonar? Every damned fishing boat in the world is equipped with sonars (i.e. fish finders and depth sounders), so it is impossible to blame that on offshore wind.”
Let’s not pre-empt the science by jumping to conclusions. The kind of ‘sonar’ that the windfarm installers would use to generate seismic waves in the seabed to test its consistency and suitability for supporting the towers may be orders of magnitude more shocking and disruptive to the whales’ sensitive nervous systems than the kind of sonar that boats use for depth-soundings and fish-detection.
“As for EMF that is a myth that won’t die away, despite being debunked thousands of times. There is no EMF from power transmission lines that could possibly affect marine life or any other life.”
Why do you say that? Many marine species, such as sharks for instance, are sensitive to the electrical activity of the nervous systems of other creatures (which is one of their methods for detecting live prey). How much more sensitive might they be to the electrical activity in windfarms’ power-lines?
It was the Balloons wot dunit.
In a role reversal, the new “Save the Whales” bumper stickers will be on the large trucks and SUVs and not on the EVs and Priuses. /sarc
Can someone drag the dead whales close to the Obama seaside mansion complex? He deserves it most.
There goes that neighborhood.
AGAIN!
Now, let’s not get racial here. All that the Obama’s moving into the area did was make the stench of dirty money more “diverse.”
That neighborhood went long before the Obamas took up residence there.
The Kennedys set the standards – remember Chappaquiddick?
Check out the garbage article in USA Today. Whales? What whales?
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2023/02/11/whale-deaths-and-windmills/11178432002/
sean hayes , noaa’s head of protected and endangered species has called offshore wind the greatest threat to whale survival . his reports are kept quiet and not released to the public except thru FOIA requests . it should be obvious that whales live in a world of sound , not light , and are 100’s of times more sensitive to sound than humans . the acoustic explosion necessary for exploring for and building turbines is massive . the widespread propagation of low frequency sound is also massively intrusive in whale navigation , communication and feeding . only someone in denial can ignore these effects . it’s crazy to go full speed ahead when so little is known . once the turbine building is widespread it will be too late , at least for the right whales whose protected area is slated for one of the first big wind “ farms “
Perhaps ‘crazy’ depends on one’s point of view. Are you making money from the activity or not.
“As soon as someone can convince me offshore wind work is responsible for any of the whale deaths I’ll more than happy sign onboard,” Donovan said.
typical skeptic argument.
its not true unless i believe it.
youll have to convince me because im never wrong.
It is easier to see something in someone else when it is who you are.
When was the last time you were wrong?
Well, offshore oil has been using deep seismic since the 1970s in the North Sea, and offshore wind has been (expensively) harvesting off shore wind around GB for several years, and we haven’t seen any increase in marine mammal deaths so far as I know.
Could it be that either
1, no-one bothered much if they saw a dead whale, or
2, there are more whales around now and these dead ones are just old ones whose time has come?
Maybe post mortems might be in order to see if there is a common cause of death.
These particular whales are almost extinct and going fast. The deaths seem to be contemporary with the wind turbine sitting studies. Certainly some kind of investigation seem desirable. Maybe the deaths are nothing humans could possibly control but without adequate investigation it is impossible to say.