By David Wojick
The Feds have admitted that offshore wind development can cause the death of whales and other marine mammals, but they refuse actually to assess that threat for any wind facilities. So I here outline what such a study should look like. This sort of study is what they are afraid to do because it would give numbers to the deaths that are likely to occur, species by species.
First off, here is the Feds’ own description of some of the known deadly threats. In this case, the offshore wind activity is driving the monster piles that support the turbine towers, but there are others. The Feds say this in the Draft Environmental Impact Statement for the proposed Empire Wind project off of New York and New Jersey:
“It is possible that pile driving could displace animals into areas with lower habitat quality or higher risk of vessel collision or fisheries interaction. Multiple construction activities within the same calendar year could potentially affect migration, foraging, calving, and individual fitness. The magnitude of impacts would depend upon the locations, duration, and timing of concurrent construction. Such impacts could be long term, of high intensity, and of high exposure level. Generally, the more frequently an individual’s normal behaviors are disrupted or the longer the duration of the disruption, the greater the potential for biologically significant consequences to individual fitness. The potential for biologically significant effects is expected to increase with the number of pile-driving events to which an individual is exposed.”
Empire Wind DEIS v.1, Page 3.15-14, PDF page 372
The federal agencies, in this case, are the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) and NOAA Fisheries (NFMS), who jointly prepare the DEIS. Other agencies also have responsibilities for marine mammals.
My focus here is displacement leading to a higher risk of vessel collision or fisheries interaction, as mentioned in the first DEIS sentence above. This is the obvious case where a whale or other critter is driven by excessive noise into a high-traffic ship lane and killed or into a net, tangled, and drowned. Many proposed wind facilities are located where this is a reasonably likely occurrence.
It is important that the first step in my study design is already being done in great detail. What I describe is a straightforward extension of the present method. For every wind project activity that produces excessive underwater noise, NMFS estimates the number of critters, by species, that will experience unsafe noise levels.
They call this experience of unsafe noise a harassment. For some projects, the number of predicted harassments is hundreds for whales and thousands for smaller protected mammals like dolphins and seals.
How the number of harassments is estimated is pretty technical, but the basic idea is simple enough. First, figure how the excessive noise will be distributed in the ocean. Then given the estimated population density of critters within that noise distribution, calculate the number of animals hit with excessive noise.
As the quote above makes clear, harassment can cause deadly behavior. The Feds do not address this issue, which is simply the likely death rate of harassment. So here is an outline of how it could be done.
Step 1: Harassment
Get or estimate data on critter densities and unsafe noise distributions, both over time. Estimate the number and distribution of likely harassment. This a already being done.
Step 2: Avoidance due to harassment
Given critter density and noise distribution, both over time, derive critter density changes due to noise. The animals will likely flee the unsafe noises and move to adjacent areas, increasing the population density of these.
Step 3: Threat densities
Get or estimate threat densities and distributions over time. Threat densities include things like ship traffic numbers, perhaps by vessel type and speed, net locations, etc. Detailed ship traffic data is available for some sites.
Step 4: Death increases
Derive increases in deadly threat exposure due to avoidance. An increased critter density in a high-threat area implies an increased likelihood of mortality.
Step 5: Refinement
Factor in adverse effects accompanying avoidance, such as deafness, panic, etc.
That is the study outline. If they can estimate harassment numbers by species, they can readily go on to estimate the deadly consequences of harassment using the same density-based methods. This can also be done for migration, foraging, and the other obvious impacts listed in the DEIS quote above.
The research question is simple: What is the mortality rate of harassment for a given offshore wind project?
The Feds must answer that mortality rate question before a project’s environmental impact assessment is complete. They should also assess multiple projects, as discussed in the DEIS quote above.
Author
David Wojick, Ph.D. is an independent analyst working at the intersection of science, technology and policy. For origins see http://www.stemed.info/engineer_tackles_confusion.html For over 100 prior articles for CFACT see http://www.cfact.org/author/david-wojick-ph-d/ Available for confidential research and consulting.
“It is possible that pile driving could displace animals into areas with lower habitat quality or higher risk of vessel collision or fisheries interaction. Multiple construction activities within the same calendar year could potentially affect migration, foraging, calving, and individual fitness…”
And it is possible that it won’t. It sets my teeth to vibrate when the climate alarmists march for political authoritarianism on might be, could be, possibly suppositions. I would be a hypocrite if I did not find it just as annoying when those who understand that the climate has always been changing fight back using the same “Socio/Political” techniques. Go do the study and get back to us with data. Save the possibilities until you can be sure.
Bill – I understand the point you are making, and somewhat agree. But if I may be so bold as to assist Dr. Wojick, the “…might be, could be, possibly suppositions…” are his hypothesis, and the study he proposes “might” begin to answer the question of whether or not offshore wind turbine activity is negatively affecting marine mammal populations.
And of course, someone else would be required to repeat the study and achieve the same or similar results – something that has NEVER been done with anthropogenic CO2 and temperature BTW – before we can begin to say more strongly, that offshore wind projects are very likely negatively affecting marine mammal populations.
If you actually read the permitting study, you’d see that the author is lying about what it actually said and concluded.
Thanks for the DIRECT reference to the language in the permitting study he is lying about. I call BS.
“Go do the study”
So you think Dr. Wojick should do such a study on pile driving, etc.? I think the burden of proof of no potential damage belongs to those doing the construction and the government- not those who challenge that the study hasn’t been done.
That possibility language is from the DEIS, not me. I am sure the harassment mortality exists. I first made this point 10 months ago.
See https://www.cfact.org/2022/09/27/how-to-kill-whales-with-offshore-wind/
Now I can quantify the risk.
You are sure because you want it to be true and you are just making up stuff exactly like the warmunists just make up stuff. We are supposed to be better than that here at WUWT.
BS Duane.
I’m sorry, but the precautionary principle that ALL environmentalists subscribe to negates your position. You see, it is incumbent on all human activity to prove beforehand that no damage or degradation to the environment occur from ANY activity that is unnatural. That is the basis of all environmental protection laws.
The permitting study addressed the acoustic effects. Pile driving is not what you think it is, with loud heavy hammering. That was 20th century tech. Today nearly all pile driving is done with vibratory machines that make little noise.
Besides, the very same piles are used to build offshore oil rigs – so do you want to ban all offshore oil production? Sheesh!
Lets just ignore all the site evaluation noise, just look here, Duane says, don’t look behind the curtain. BS Duane.
The difference is, we undoubtedly need oil and gas to exist as a technological civilization.
The bird choppers they want to build in huge numbers out in the ocean are a ridiculous and dangerous and expensive fake solution to a made-up problem.
They are a destructive waste of money and we do not need them.
Besides, just one wind farm involves more piles than every offshore oil rig ever built.
Correct. Two wrongs don’t make a right, and two stupids don’t make a smart – they just make dumber and dumberer.
Pile driving is done with vibratory drivers that do not operate within the hearing range of whales. Zero impact on marine life.
What, are these same yahoos demanding that all offshore oil production cease because of their beloved whales? There are vastly more environmental impacts from offshore oil production than from offshore wind.
Hypocrite much?
I call BS. I mean every one of your posts in this string is BS, but “vastly more environmental impacts from offshore oil”? Given the massive number of bird choppers to be installed along the eastern US seaboard and all the transmission lines, etc. for a pitiful amount of unreliable “energy” produced compared to the massive amount of “ENERGY” from each oil or gas offshore platform, there is no comparison that could prove your “vastly” BS.
The whole point I want to make is that neither the government nor the rent seeking crony capitalists are funding ANY studies about the effects of site investigation or system installation and completion for offshore wind.
Or the effects of bird choppers on the number of birds chopped, both on shore and off.
Or the effects of any and all solar installation.
The libs control where the funds for studies are spent, and NONE are being spent to study the negative of GREEN, or, for that matter, where it is better to spend the trillions spent of GREEN, new useless ruinables or just mitigation whatever changes the changing climate produce, like raising a seawall 3 inches in the next 3 decades, or changing the seeds planted for a variety planted currently 100 miles south (or north when it starts to get colder), or put in AC where you didn’t used to need it 100 miles north of the OLD AC line, or add heat where you didn’t used to need it 100 miles SOUTH of the old line when is gets colder.
Your BS is BS Duane.
Sorry Duane – BS on that one. There have been studies done in other countries that show even vibratory pile-driving is within hearing range of whales and dolphins – they react negatively to it. A couple of studies have recommended air-bubble curtains to mask the noise while pile-driving to protect them.
“Save the possibilities until you can be sure“.
I fully agree.
Then let’s start with the temperature predictions of the IPCC. Temperature redictions for the end of this century range from an increase on 1.5C to 8C; sea level rise predictions for the end of this century range from 50cm to a few meters.
It sounds to me, like offshore wind is a whale of a problem.
that needs heavy subsidies from you & me
If they could only recover oil from the dead whales and use it to lubricate the wind turbines. win/win
If I was financially well off and could afford a home on the coast and I as an individual wanted to construct a dozen or so windmills a mile or so offshore do you think I would be able to get a permit to construct this? The answer is probably with great certainty a resounding “No”. But if I am a CEO with lobbying donations to government officials and I wanted to construct a windmill farm of a few hundred windmills off the same coast I probably would be allowed to construct them.
Heck, just try to get approval for a single windmill on your OWN property – that obstructs the ocean view of those that don’t own beachfront property, but do live on the rise of the adjacent land.***
***Of course, I do support such development restrictions. Like you say, I just wish they also applied to those with huge lobbying budgets!
not to mention the seismic blasting
Yes, which has been killing whales since 2016.
See my https://www.cfact.org/2023/01/23/evidence-says-offshore-wind-development-is-killing-lots-of-whales/
In NW Europe there are thousands of acres of uneconomic offshore wind farms polluting the sea and some of them have been there for over a decade, but I don’t recall any increase in reports of dead or injured whales, dolphins or porpoises. Ditto for offshore oil installations worldwide.
Are those areas known for whale, dolphin, or porpoise activity?
Yes.
I tried to edit this but it wouldn’t work so reply to Scarecrow is :- Yes, harbour porpoise, bottlenose dolphin, humpback, orca, etc. The waters over the NW European continental shelf are good fishing grounds and very busy shipping lanes as well.
Years ago a bottlenose inhabited the water near the Forth Bridge and used to play in the bow waves of the many ships navigating in the area. It became known as Donny the Dolphin and was a firm favourite among the tourist trip boats. Then it appeared with a baby so the name changed to Donna. Then it was filmed killing a porpoise and fell from favour a bit.
Thanks. I was unaware that Dolphins killed Porpoises.
Do they do it ‘on porpois’
No, just for the halibut.
Minke whales are more common but a very small number of Humpback whales and Orca’s have been spotted in the North Sea. Really it’s a bit too shallow for the bigger whales.
Not talking about just the N. Sea, lots of activity out to the west and NW as well.
The currents off of New England are what gives the fisheries off shore their life.
The book COD: A Biography of the Fish that Changed the World–by Mark Kurlanskyis a great reference to what is at stake here. These towers are being built in the middleof an immense resource and will damage it irreparably. For example tuna caught offof New England bring the highest prices in the world even though the tuna catch in the
pacific is much higher. Simply, it’s the currents. The Martha’s Vineyard fish derby in
September happens because of the fish migration that happens at that time. The
tuna catch 100 miles out off the canyons in June is the same.
This off shore wind power project needs
to stop. Period. The greens behind this off shore wind project are being exposed as to what they really are, a bunch of radical nut jobs. In this same area they are stopping LNG from
being shipped but are green lighting this? Unreal.
I absolutely agree that offshore wind needs to be stopped everywhere ‘cos it is ridiculously useless as a power source.
The whales might not be killed by this construction but they are likely to be disturbed. As the feds said, ““It is possible that pile driving could displace animals into areas with lower habitat quality or higher risk of vessel collision or fisheries interaction.” How much of a disturbance is acceptable? To determine such disturbance it’ll take years of research- not just counting dead whales on the beach.
There have been some reports but dolphins compared to whales are like mice compared to cows. 350# versus 15 tons. These smaller animals are likely consumed quickly upon death. There are relatively few whales because they were hunted out back in the days of sail. They would not have sent whalers to west Greenland if they had local whales.
Interesting report, but the Green Wackos are OK with chopping up Bald Eagles onshore, what’s to slow them down offshore? They even issue “Taking Permits” specifying the number of eagles, falcons, etc that any given wind farm can “take”.
Over at Judith’s a few years ago in essay True Cost of Wind I redid the EIA onshore wind LCOE estimate to correct several egregious mistakes. Result: CCGT $58/MWh versus wind at &146/MWh. About 2.5x. EIA says offshore wind is ~3x onshore, so 7.5x CCGT. Is financial insanity, never mind permanent harm to the marine environment.
DEIS — I thought for a moment it was the ESG wokidiots!
And then it turned out to be on their behalf.
We have such a perverse culture now that “ what if” or “is possible” is no longer the standard starting point for scientific investigation anymore. And if your favorite critter gets in the way of the narrative , we’ll then so much for “ save the whales”
Big oil saved the whales from extinction, big green killing them again.
Just as legitimate inquiry into for example“ gender issues or guy rights propagated through our culture; it has now also led to mainstreaming the idea for example that it is ok to cut off a teenagers body parts. That is not a perfect analogy I know but that shows how crazy these people are.
Sorry -certainly not guy rights!
They are the ones killing whales, of course they are not going to do a study on why it is happening. How stupid are people, sweet bleeding Jeebus.
Shouldn’t environment impact studies have been done before any of these monstrosities were constructed?
The first big ticket pile driving has just began. We have had way over 100,000 authorized harassments of marine mammals to date from seismic sonar site mapping. It started in2016 and the humpback death rate suddenly tripled.
Anthony W., with his citizen funded surface stations project shone a bright light on the Dark Side’s T° fiddling enterprise and brought considerable discipline, oversight and constraint to this foot-loose, global warming manufacturing enterprise.
Because of the success of surfstations, Anthony can be credited with the need for the fiddlers to jettison brash 5 to 7°C warming by 2100 and try to sell the horrors of 2 or maybe 3°C by that time. Unable to cook T° to fit their meme, they even moved the goalposts for humankind’s ‘discernible’ effect on T from 1950 to 1850 (we’re even hearing 1750 as the datum these days) so they can bankroll recovery from the LIA, the coldest period endured since the end off the Glacial Maximum over 10,000yrs ago. They are forced to keep cooling the past to make the slope ever upward.
David, we need citizen funded projects to also undertake competing studies to discipline and constrain the official neglect of the whales and the Lysenkoist hyping of the status of the polar bears which are doing fine. We could appoint Susan Crockford, Jim Steel, Patrick Moore, or others like them to manage surveys and counts. You have a ready made protocol to go ahead with such work on the status of whales
This guy is at it again, spreading stupid disinformation.
The government has not admitted that any sonar studies in support of offshore wind, or any other marine structures like oil rigs or cable laying projects, kills whales. Read the damned permit, it says exactly the opposite, that zero whale deaths are anticipated due to a combination of factors, such as:
1) the sonar frequencies used are outside the hearing range of whales and other marine mammals
2) the power levels used are well below any possible injury to whales
3) It’s a damned temporary short term study, for godsakes in highly limited sectors of thd ocean not a long term wide ranging condition
4) the teams performing the studies are required to carefully ensure a study area is clear of any marine mammals before pinging, and to continuously monitor for any marine mammal intrusions and halt the pinging as long as they remain within range of the sensors.
Their PREMISE is wrong, so there is NO NEED for the wind farms..PERIOD!
Wrong Duane. Vibratory pile-driving at 20-40 Hz is outside the human hearing range that starts at 50 Hz, but it’s within the frequency range of Whales which can go as low as 16 Hz.
The very first thing that ‘jumped’ into my head, was that the similarity to all the “harrassment” Gruesome is doing, is causing huge numbers of California ‘fish’ to relocate.
Interesting how hydroelectric projects are so limited by possible environmental impacts but all the lefties favorite projects get the green light even with known impacts. Proves saving the environment is not the object but only their favorite agenda.
These Greens are not the activists of old, these Greens are in it for the money.
This issue of sound levels unwater or in air from wind turbine construction or wind turbine operations and its impact on people or animals is very complicated. Where I agree with Dr. Wojick is that there is great resistance to quantifying these issue, and admitting mistakes on the part of the developers and, surprisingly, the public agencies involved. I have been told by persons working in one agency dedicated to the protection and conservation of living natural resources is they have been told not to push back on wind development — in other words there is the usual corrupt politics and log rolling involved. No one wishes to look for answers that could become inconvenient to sausage-making and palm greasing. There is deliberate obfuscation in evidence, biases apparent, and conflicts of interest, so there is little reason to believe what one is told.
Here are a few things to ponder. First, the scariest of sound levels (260dB) from pile driving need to be taken with a grain of sea-salt. It turns out that these are estimates, extrapolated to very small distances from the piling from measurements made farther away. More credible of source sound level values are likely 230dB. Now this sounds terribly bad to someone familiar with sound levels in factories or near jets or rockets etc. However, the reference level (Zero dB) underwater is different from that in air (1 micropascal versus 20 micropascals) and this leads to about 26dB difference. Moreover the great difference in acoustic impedance between air and water means the energy density in each situation is enormously different. Driving big piles is probably not possible with more quiet vibratory equipment. I don’t know about the efficacy of air-bubble curtains. However, I know that it takes a huge amount of energy delivered to a piling to drive it to needed depth — well in excess of a few Gj of work and much more for the sorts of foundations that 10-12 MW turbines need. This is bound to be noisy.
My main concern is that operational noise, which is nearly constant with wind turbines, will lead through behavioral influences to animals being forced into unsafe territory, or will reduce useful feeding grounds to lower the associated carrying capacity. There is evidence of such for some big game animals on land and no reason to believe otherwise for sea mammals. This is precisely where people are struggling to avoid any research on the topic. They want their subsidies and now.
Ignored most of the time is any numerical consideration of noise intensity but the few references I’ve seen are of very intense sound levels. The levels are especially high at very low and infrasonic frequencies. These levels are, in fact so high, that a human would suffer immediate and likely permanent hearing loss from sound blasts at these levels within the human auditory frequency range. It is also known that the very low frequencies involved in the explosions for sonar imaging of seabed imaging and that from pile driving are transmitted long distances through the ocean, often with little or no attenuation.
It is well established that whales use very low frequencies for communication, thus these very low frequencies are within their auditory range. Permanent hearing loss is logically very likely. Also not a logical step too far is that such hearing loss is likely to lead to death sooner or later.