“In the name of green energy, we’re sacrificing wildlife species. Because of the power mandates, we’re unable to enforce the take of that. I don’t think they have thought what that cost is to us as Californians and to the environment as a whole.”
Siyamak sits down with John Baker, retired Assistant Chief with California Fish and Wildlife Department. Today he’ll discuss the double standards he experienced while enforcing California’s environmental laws.
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The Unintended Consequences of California’s Green Energy | John Baker
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Bird and bat choppers are not a good idea.
If only it were just birds and bats. Just as important, maybe more so:
https://www.connaissancedesenergies.org/sites/default/files/pdf-actualites/csp2.366.pdf
Ask any alarmist why there seems to be fewer insects these days, guess what the response will be?
https://climate-wise.com/news-and-articles/how-will-climate-change-impact-insect-populations/#:~:text=Higher%20temperatures%20could%20decrease%20insect,predicted%20to%20follow%20this%20expansion.
Too many other links to post here, search “insects climate change”:
“About 64,600,000 results”
Fewer insects? My dream come true! As for bees- got a lot of bees on my 1 acre of garden, lawn, flowers, trees and shrubs because I’ve spent 20 years cultivating it to be diverse in species and it’s all mixed up. Birds love it and bees too- though, happily, I’ve seen few mosquitos or flies this summer. Lots of humminbirds too as my wife planted flowers they’re known to like. I love those hummingbirds. Only 1 species here in Woke-achusetts unlike the several in the American west.
I stopped reading that link when I saw “anthropogenic-induced climate change”.
Ask an alarmist what will happen to mosquitoes with climate change.
Now ask them what will happen to butterflies.
It seems we are standing in front of a south-bound train.
How can this green monster be derailed?
California may be the on the poster for green stupidity, but Uncle Sam is holding that poster and has a finger pointed to the temple.
I read today (WSJ) that 60% of the new debt on American people to fund the Inflation Reduction Act will go to foreign firms. Meanwhile a Cobalt mine in Idaho just suspended operations for a combination of all the well-known reasons.
Build new fossil fuel and nuclear generators and remove all wind and solar from the grid.
That should be the objective.
Wind and solar are not fit for purpose, and are a blight on the landscape.
Under the flag of “green” there is no room for wild life, child life, or an all smiles life. Just be sad that you get to experience the brownouts and the blackouts of a system designed for fewer and fewer humans, hint, hint, (see no child life). Just be sad that you get to share in this future of diminishing returns. Be sad. Be very sad. Utopia…
There’s no form of energy that doesn’t impact on the environment and wildlife.
Oil spills, coal mining bings, flooded valleys for hydro, windfarms killing wildlife, gas pipelines across land and sea beds, electricity transmission lines, uranium mines, lithium mines. and so on and so on.
So selling one form as clean cheap and efficient is just dishonest
The difference is that certain of the impacts are outsized AND COMPLETELY UNNECESSARY when you’re talking about wind and solar.
Coal, oil and gas (and nuclear) are NECESSARY for modern human civilization. Wind and solar are not.
Further, you CANNOT “get rid of” coal, oil, and gas as worse-than-useless wind and solar installations increase. You have to KEEP fossil fuel baseload and backup for worse-than-useless wind and solar, you have to KEEP coal, oil, and gas to manage the generation frequency aberrations of worse-than-useless wind and solar, and you have to KEEP coal, oil, and gas in order to serially manufacture the endless replacements for worse-than-useless wind and solar power generation facilities as their short life spans expire.
So with worse-than-useless wind and solar, NONE of the environmental “impacts” of existing energy sources are being materially reduced, we’re just ADDING LOTS OF ADDITIONAL impacts (including not only those from the worse-than-useless wind and solar power generation facilities but also from the EXTRA power lines needed to feed their haphazard power to the grid).
I’m not sure what point you were trying to make.
Random thoughts:
I ain’t no great fan of bats.
They are flying mice, with all the charming habits of same.
There is No Shortage of bats on this planet – by ‘head count’ 20% of ALL mammalian creatures on this Earth are = bats.
Here in the UK they are guarded/protected with insane jealousy – you dare not not even look at one without somebody calling you out on some wildly imagined/contrived eco-crime.
(Yet another aspect of CO₂ and Climate Change writ large = Junk Science meets Captain Kirk meets Rampant Paranoia)
I know from actual experience of a livestock farming, they are attracted to such places – even more so if the (natural) environment around you is wet/damp/forested/peat-bogs and or moorland
Thus ‘enters’ the one Good Thing about bats = their voracious appetite for the aerial critters that love those sorts of places. Cows attract flies and flies attract mozzies
e.g. Biting/stinging nuisance flies, blow-flies, mosquitoes and for Scotland: ‘midges’
That was seemingly how San Fran rid itself of its mozzie/malaria problem 100+ years ago = simply by installing a medium sized (250,000) colony of bats
Each bat, they reckoned and on each of its night-time sorties, was munching down/up about 700 mozzies. Per night.
For reasons I don’t think anyone yet understands, aerial nocturnal insect critters are attracted to ‘light’.
Back to The Farm, you Do Not leave the light on in any room of your house, during summer, and also with a window open, even just a few inches. Inside 30 minutes you’d not be able to breath in there, it will be crawling.
Enter the fray: Windmills and muppet Human Aviators
Windmills being placed where few people normally live (just like livestock farms) and also = remote places often also Natural Habitat for nocturnal aviators like mozzies and midges.
For whatever reason (virtue signalling I deeply suspect) it is always necessary to affix a Really Bright Light, usually red) atop these constructions. Supposedly to inform human aviators of the upcoming peril.
Like bollox it is and in This Day and Age????!!!!
Is it not possible to put a Smart Phone App atop those things and switch the light off?
Easily 90% of the carnage would be avoided by that one simple measure
With it being the only ‘light’ for miles around, the insects are attracted in clouds/swarms/droves.
The insects are mashed to buggery by the blades (one tonne per windmill per year) quite destroying their aerodynamics and power production. It don’t do the windmill any good either.
And the bats follow them in, getting similarly mashed.
So their crumpled corpses litter the floor underneath and ‘Eagles’, NOT with their legendary eyes but less legendary noses can ‘detect’ the rotting stink and home in to pick up the free lunch.
More insects (Blow Flies or ‘bluebottles’) also detect the stink and arrive to lays eggs in the rotting eagle (and other) corpses and so a whole new generation of flying things pops up to entice yet more bats.
But also through the daytime, songbirds (sparrow, thrush, robin and other finches) who are also partial to generous free lunches of dazed, confused, unconsious and mashed insect.
Which in turn, attracts ever more raptors.
If anyone wanted an example of Tipping Point Positive Feedback Eco Catastrophe – yer average windmill is it….
Repeat:Is it not possible to put a Smart Phone App atop those things and switch the light off?
Easily 90% of the carnage would be avoided by that one simple measure.
For once I actually got the gist of what you were on about, and agree with most.
Insects and bats are attracted to lights. I bet nobody has ever done any research on what colour is most attractive to either if them.
“I bet nobody has ever done any research on what colour is most attractive to either if them.”
Doesn’t mater if they have, Civil Aviation Authority legislation requires that:
https://www.caa.co.uk/commercial-industry/airspace/event-and-obstacle-notification/lighting-and-marking-of-obstacles/
Lighting/marking requirements and recommendations for wind turbines are detailed in CAP 764: Policy and Guidelines on Wind Turbines.
They seem to have a fascination with those ultra violet bug zappers, why not put an enormous one at Al Gore’s house(s)? Without the zapper element, obviously. The bugs shouldn’t trouble him at all.
What would this app do Peta? It sounds like you anticipate some centralized radar to detect planes’ location and a mobile phone network to communicate that to a phone up on the windmill that somehow controls the light.
Either you would like to send a periodic signal to suppress the light when radar does not see a plane near the windmill below a certain altitude, or perhaps you want to send a signal to turn it on when there is an aircraft detected and turn it off when the danger has passed?
In the first case, at least it would be fail-safe for communications failures, but the whole idea is to guard against the risk that the aircraft is flying too low (“below the radar”). If the aircraft can’t be detected by radar how would you know to stop suppressing the signal in time?
Likewise in the latter case, the light would not be switched on if the plane is too low to be detected. It would also never switch on if the signal were sent but the mobile phone network has failed for any reason.
Unless every windmill is fitted with its own radar, it doesn’t seem like your idea can work. (And if every windmill gets its own radar, you don’t need the smart phone in the system).
Here’s an idea to eliminate 100% of the problem. Tear down all the bird/bat/insect shredders.
I didn’t know they have lights on wind turbines at night. But we need to keep them on to prevent UFOs from crashing into them. 🙂
Retired officer? Too bad people prefer to keep their careers than do the right thing.
Good talk though.
I watched since you recommended. Not a lot of takeaways to be honest. He made good points on many topics, in line with those made many times here. I’d be happy to hear that a large audience viewed it.
Where he was weak was in his discussion of how to do green energy better. Putting cylindrical wind turbines on freeway median strips made me think of the windmill powered car.
That wind is the result of cars and trucks needing to push air out of the way. In other words, the energy comes from the cars and trucks. If more work is done by the air due to more turbines, that increases the air resistance for the vehicles.
As a way to power signs and traffic signals on rural roads it’s fine, but in a certain way it’s a bit like his comment that student protesters demanded that hunters only get their meat at the supermarket so that no animals need to be killed. He can see the absurdity of a naive suggestion in an area of his expertise but is not immune from his own magical thinking.
Whether those cylindrical pinwheels can efficiently extract kinetic energy from the wind, I am not sure. Intuitively I suspect that there’s not enough surface area blocking the airflow as a ratio to the bearing friction losses and the amount of material needed. I could be way off base on that. However, an observation I trust more than my engineering intuition is that the market isn’t embracing the technology.
Rachel Carson was the “Patron Saint” of the environmental movement because of her book “Silent Spring”. She said DDT was killing too many insects and moving up the food chain to kill raptors such as Bald Eagles.
Now Pinwheels are doing the same thing.
Where are the Enviros and the Save the Whales people?
“Going Green” is doing more actual damage than she ever imagined.
Why are they “silent”?
Maybe because it has never been about saving the raptors or the whales. It is and always has been about destroying free market capitalism and eliminating human flourishing.