By P Gosselin
Wind energy is an environmental destruction machine, warns veteran center-left columnist.
After the collapse of the Soviet Union and its communist block satellite countries in 1989, the West stood in awe, amazed by the environmental and economic wasteland left behind by the inefficient collective socialist system.
But since then, green radicals have taken over and it’s safe to say that the next generation, in about 2060, will also stand in amazement before a similar mass wreckage left behind by the “Green New Deal”.
The future generation will be asking: “What the hell were they thinking?”
Source: Windwahn
German journalist Georg Etscheit explains why in a commentary at Achgut.com here as Germany moves ahead at full speed with wind energy. Etscheit names 5 environmental reasons why wind energy is leading to a Communist-scale environmental disaster in his article: “Wind power and its devastating consequences for people and nature.”
“The ruthless way in which wind power is being pushed through in Germany is reminiscent of the brutal way in which the “concrete faction” wrecked many German cities in the post-war period. A wind madness inventory..,” comments Etscheit, calling Germany’s drive into wind energy “a run amok at the expense of people and nature.
Germany plans to add another 10,000 wind turbines in addition to its current 30,000, which means 2% of Germany’s land area will be completely destroyed and industrialized, according to Etscheit.
What follows are Etscheit’s 5 environmental reasons why Germany’s wind energy insanity is a major threat:
- Landscape will be blighted by the addition of 10,000 wind turbines, with a height of up to 250 meters. The natural biotope surrounding these turbines will be irreversibly ruined.
- Endangered bird, like the red kite, will lose their habitats. It’s estimated that an absolute collision rate of around 21 per year and wind turbine. “With 40,000 or more wind turbines planned in Germany, the million mark would soon be exceeded.”
- Bats and insects severely decimated. “Wind turbines also pose a significant threat to the 25 or so species of bat found in Germany…”. …”Wind turbines also have a significant impact on flying insects, as a study published in 2017 by the German Aerospace Center (DLR), Institute of Atmospheric Physics in Oberpfaffenhofen shows … an estimated five to six billion insects per day at all German wind turbines during the warm season (200 days from April to October).”
- Hazard also for marine fauna. Wind turbines have a negative impact from pressure and sound waves on some animal species with an extremely sensitive sense of hearing. The industrialization of the oceans could displace native marine mammals. “If more and more offshore wind farms are built, this will have an enormous impact on the harbor porpoise populations in the North and Baltic Seas,” reads a statement from the Society for the Rescue of Dolphins.
- Infrasound harming people. People near wind turbines often complain of “severe health complaints such as insomnia, dizziness, headaches, depression, tinnitus, hearing and vision problems and cardiac arrhythmia”, and experts warn this will increase dramatically, and turbine setback regulations in Germany are being watered down.
Etscheit argues for a moratorium on the construction of new turbines, but doesn’t see this happening in Germany, where officials are pressing on with the madness, “no matter the costs.”
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Georg Etscheit is an author and journalist based in Munich. He worked for the dpa agency for almost ten years, but since 2000 has preferred to write “freelance” on environmental issues as well as on business, gourmet food, opera and classical music for the Süddeutsche Zeitung, among others. He also writes for www.aufgegessen.info, the gastrosophical blog for free enjoyment that he co-founded, and a culinary column on Achgut.com.
The “red-green” (Social Democrat – Green Party) coalition successfully destroyed Germany’s economy “in 23 short years” using RE (Ruinous Energy). The US has a larger economy, so it’s taken longer to destroy the economy using the same anti-energy policy. President Carter (D) initiated the program in 1978, despite his appropriate favoring of coal by initiating the destruction of nuclear power generation.
The liberal/progressive membership has totally dominated the Democrat Party since 2012, so we were “catching up” to Germany “real quick” and finally arrived at parity with the 2023 Inflation Inflaming Act. Now we are as screwed as Germany. It takes a lot longer to build something than it does to tear it down, neither Germany nor the US will recover from their debacles “in 23 short years”.
Just as The Donald is our only option for recovery the German Alternative for Deutschland Party (AfD) is Germany’s only alternative.
In the US, we call them Watermelons. Green on the outside, Red on the inside.
And most of them are seedless.
And yet somehow find themselves repeatedly pregnant.
‘The liberal/progressive membership has totally dominated the Democrat Party since 2012, …’
I think you’re off by 100 years, or so. The Democrats have ‘progressed’ (pun intended) through Wilsonian progressivism and FDR’s fascism to arrive at today’s full control of just about every institution in the US. The only thing different about the Democrats pursuant to Obama, is that they are no longer pretending to NOT be socialists.
I think that sums it up nicely.
I’m a Missouri native. This was a blue dog democrat state from FDR (or earlier) until the first Clinton administration.
A blue dog democrat still put God, family and country first. Progressives were a minority in the party until the democrats turned their backs on working people, religious people and families.
That’s very bad news for Germany since AfD has been so thoroughly smeared that nobody is likely to dare mention supporting them for fear of being cancelled.
Carter destroyed Commercial Nuclear power.
In the UK, Lib/Lab/Con are rapidly destroying the econmy with their Climate Change Act and Net Zero by 2050 target. Reform UK is the only party campaigning against this insanity. But our two-party system means that things will only get worse after the election on July 4th. We are doomed.
The Cameron/Clegg coalition gave us a choice between the FPTP and a form of proportional representation which was rejected.
To quote an old saying. You made your bed now you must lie on it
When you consider how abysmal the ‘Conservative’ government has been, it almost doesn’t seem possible for Labour to make it worse. But you know they will.
Net Zero by 2050. Twenty-six years to finish eradicating manufacturing in the cradle of the Industrial Revolution.
So sad.
The blades of the turbine have life span of ca. 20 years. I saw on the TV a grave yard of large piles of the blades because they can not be recycled. A lot of them had weather damage.
Such is the case when a generation source dependent on favorable weather to properly generate power finds itself in storm conditions and is unable to operate until the storm passes and the resulting damaged parts are repaired or replaced, often weeks down the calendar
They usually won’t show something like that on any mainstream media.
Try 5 to 10 years
I saw a similar report a while back and the guy running the land fill said the blades were 8 to 12 years old – they were supposed to last 20 years though.
Mainshaft bearing life is typically a fraction of that.
Welcome to the plan for Scotland
Any UK readers should carefully read this
https://labour.org.uk/missions/clean-energy/
Because six weeks from now, this is what they will be faced with. In summary, the plan is to get to net zero in electricity generation by 2030. In that year they intend to have
35 GW onshore (up from about 13.5GW today)
60 GW offshore (up from about 16.5GW today)
50 GW solar (up from about 15GW today)
_________
145 GW total
_________
By 2030 peak demand will have risen somewhat because of the ongoing conversion to EVs and heat pumps, not to mention the demands of computing. It is now about 45 GW. May be 55-60 in 2030.
So what is going to happen one cold, calm early evening in December or January 2030? Solar will have vanished by 4pm. Wind will be at the low for the year. We know what this is from gridwatch.
2023 lowest day 0.071 GW
2024 lowest day ytd 0.16 GW.
Somewhere under 5% of installed faceplate. So out of the 95 GW of wind in 2030, assuming it can be built and commissioned in the next six years, its reasonable to expect a day with it delivering less than 5 GW. Several days in a row with less than 10GW.
There is a gap. Its something like a 40GW gap after you allow for nuclear and bio. It will not be filled by interconnect, because there’s not enough transmission capacity, and anyway, Europe will not have that kind of spare generation available with a wide area blocking high.
The Labour Party has no idea. But they are pressing on and publicising regardless – as the link cited above shows.
It is not just Germany that has gone mad.
Oh, and by the way, on top of this, they intend producing 10GW per year of green hydrogen. Those North Sea windmills are going to have to work real hard.
At the moment in the Australian east coast NEM…
Coal and gas are 82% of supply, hydro 13%
Wind and solar are only 5%
No wonder they are going to try to keep Eraring Coal up and running for a few more years
But they desperately need to get some more new dispatchable supply from somewhere.. soon !!
IMO, new COAL is the obvious choice since it will set things up for another 40-50 years.
ps.. “renewables giant” South Australia is using 92% GAS..
…. and importing nearly 1/3 of its demand from Victorian brown coal.
renewables midget.. more like it. !!
What will it take to make politicians wake to the fact that…
…. THIS RENEWABLES CRAP JUST DOESN’T WORK !
“net zero in electricity generation by 2030”
I’d like to set up a betting pool on that- I’ll offer a million to one odds it won’t happen. Every green on the planet will put all their wealth into it. I’ll be richer than Elon Musk.
There are two possibilities here.
Scenario 1: the Labour party actually thinks that a net zero electricity grid is possible by 2030. In this case, we are going to be governed by lunatics.
Scenario 2: the Labour party knows that a net zero grid is impossible by 2030 but is lying about it. In this case, the Labour party will look like fools in 2030 when this insane target doesn’t happen.
In either case, the Labour party will be shown to be mad or incompetent. This makes the promise of a net zero grid look utterly deranged. There is no upside to this for the Labour party which makes me wonder what on Earth they are doing.
The real problem is that, because the main parties are all committed to this nonsense, no new CCGT plants have been started in the last 15 years, and most of the existing fleet is coming towards the end of its design life.
So we probably will be at close to net-zero by 2030, because all the thermal plants will have broken down, and it’ll be far too late to replace them.
Worrying.
Net zero electricity! Buy your stock in candles and oil lamps and wasboards now!
The Labor party does not care.
1) voters have very short memories.
2) By 2030 the transformation will be so complete that there will be no turning around
total control. No new vehicles, no new houses, no real news, no counter speech.
They, the Government, will know who you are, where your are, what you think.
There will be no economy and no freedom.
The best way to know that CO2 is not your enemy is to look at the so called solutions. These always involve less freedom of movement, speech, what you eat.
But alcohol consumption will always be allowed but beer and ale may be banned after they get rid of beef cattle.
If you want a clue just watch “The Last Enemy” series aired in 2009.
Unfortunately Ed Miliband is the person most responsible for this Labour policy (and also for the UK’s Climate Change Act) and he is a dyed in the wool believer (idiot) in wind energy. Unfortunately Starmer seems to be content to leave these things to Miliband. Miliband unbelievably has quite a lot of support from Labour members – remember he was once also leader of the party.
I’d say that Labour is acting entirely rationally. They are paying lip service to the current state religion famously proselytised by your king and are pushing forward toward the totalitarian society that suits their worldview. Why abandon the Trojan Horse when the Trojans still think it’s a gift? Far too many of your fellow countrymen still piously believe in the Climastrology cult. In a democracy you get what you deserve.
Policy will evolve with public opinion and Labour will pay little or no price for failure since the ‘Conservatives’ didn’t offer any more rational alternative. ‘Regrettable temporary delays’ in implementing the impossible mandates will surely be blamed on some malign force. It may evolve to we must wait for the fusion-powered green hydrogen that is just around the corner.
Sorry I have no words of comfort.
Make sure to vote the bastards out this time
Re the ongoing conversion to heat pumps, I wonder if they have read the report published by the Energy and Utilities Alliance (EUA) which analysed almost 23m UK homes and found “limiting factors to installing heat pumps in 12m” of them, the most common of which was lack of available space to be able to install a heat pump.
The EUA have also said the cost of the heat pump and other necessary changes, such as larger radiators, put the conversion beyond the reach of many people even if they were able to get a Government grant towards it.
Re heat pumps, I wonder if they have read the report from the Energy & Utilities Alliance (EUA) which analysed almost 23m homes in the UK and found “limiting factors” to installing a heat pump in 12m of them, one of the most common being lack of available space to be able to install a heat pump.
The EUA have also said that the cost of the heat pump and the need for other changes such as larger radiators or underfloor heating or adding an immersion tank puts the conversion beyond the reach of many even if they are able to get a government grant.
That 600,000 installations a year from 2028 is still an impossibility.
If we install enough heat pumps, might not it cool off outside?
Don’t give them any more brain dead ideas…
The Labour party’s statement on energy policy is utterly delusional. How can anybody take this tripe seriously?
“Labour’s plan will lower bills because renewables are far cheaper than gas.
Great British Energy is part of Labour’s Green Prosperity Plan to create 650,000 good jobs, cut bills by £300 on average and deliver real energy security”.
…and there are fairies at the bottom of my garden.
“It is not just Germany that has gone mad.”
This is true. The leaders of the whole Western world has gone nuts over CO2.
Meanwhile: There is no evidence CO2 is anything other than a benign gas, essential for life on Earth, which means there is no reason to regulate or curtail CO2.
Climate Change Propaganda is what drives all this insanity.
They could build another 1million onshore and offshore Wind turbines but, on a freezing, still, Winters evening the output will be the same.
Yes, infinity times zero equals zero.
Airstrip One Oceania is supposed to have come about after a global nuclear war in Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four. I imagine however that a collapsed economy resulting from the full-scale implementation of Net Zero will work as an alternative to war.
They’re going to be mighty unhappy with that “conversion.” Nobody is buying the heat pumps and EVs.
Michel,
I have tried to inform my local Labour candidate, one ‘Ben’. He appears not to understand that if the sun doesn’t shine [like at night] and the wind doesn’t blow [once or more every winter] the country needs batteries – a lot of batteries. And those batteries do not actually produce power, but need to have been charged ahead of time [and not self-combust like the San Diego one [ https://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/news/public-safety/story/2024-05-18/battery-fire-at-storage-facility-in-otay-mesa-keeps-reigniting ].
Medium term – I buy a couple of candles every time I shop – and tell the folk there that there is a high risk of black-outs.
I have also tried to inform my sitting MP one ‘Chris’, but I just get bumph from the Whitehall warriors in return.
Nothing to choose between them – no apparent concept of the dangers of their policies [or, in fairness, the policies their parties [are they separate??] are actively espousing at this election].
Auto
“The future generation will be asking: “What the hell were they thinking?””
we’re gonna save the planet!
led by Germany with its long history of metaphysical idealism which fits perfectly with saving the planet
Your (hopefully) future generation will rightfully conclude that the Enlightenment conflict between Lockean individualism and Rousseauian collectivism was eventually resolved in favor of the latter, assisted in no small way by ‘German metaphysical idealism’.
I sometimes enjoy reading some idealism of all varieties the way I might read a comic book- just for fun. But I don’t take it seriously. I’m a realist- having spent 50 years working in forests where reality rules.
What else can you expect when barbarians, I mean socialists/fascists, are allowed power? By their very nature, these barbarians believe in unicorn farts are a power source. Providing a high-energy economy via nuclear, natural gas and coal power plants is anathema to these barbarians. Their ideal society is 99% peasants huddling in their hovels while the barbarians luxuriate in their palatial mansions.
“…an estimated five to six billion insects per day at all German wind turbines during the warm season.”
I hope they find a way to harvest all these chopped up insects. They may need them to prevent starvation if they ever attain Net Zero.
Western governments keep upping the ante in their race to see who can impose the most economically and environmentally destructive polices the fastest. The US has somewhat of a fighting chance to at least impede US policy re: this lunacy if Trump gets elected, but he will need help from congress. He also needs to select someone other than Burgum for VP who thinks we need to install CCS.
Another interesting article – https://www.energate-messenger.com/news/244355/offshore-wind-power-ig-metall-concerned-about-working-conditions-at-sea
So what if they have to kill off most living creatures. After all, saving the environment is worth it!
6. Every watt produced by the bird killers ends up as heat. Every watt produced removes a watt of KE from the atmosphere reducing evaporative cooling and advection.
That is something I have always wondered about. How is the world’s weather system affected when wind energy (kinetic energy) is removed from the system at a significant level?
I believe you answered that question Paul B. Thank you.
At what point in the future can we sue GE and Siemens for the havoc they unleashed on the environment similar to today’s lawsuits against Big Oil?
One issue that bothers me considerably is the fact that even if we take down every last wind turbine, we would be left with concrete footings that are 18 feet squares that no company could afford to remove. They will be with us to the end of time as a reminder of the stupidity of man. Or at least the Green Man!
What a waste!
We could blow them up to leave cairns as monuments to the folly of man. Now there’s a gren job-creation scheme!…
We can build tiny houses on them. Or yurts. I have a feeling there are more yurts on our future as housing becomes more and more unaffordable.
Responsible land management, ain’t it?
Outside the Tropics, people only spend about 5 percent of their time outdoors anyway.
They mostly go from heated houses and apartments to heated transportation to jobs in heated buildings, and back again most of the year.
“Wind Dreams” Why wind power will always be niche” by Roger Pielke Jr. on May 06, 2024
https://rogerpielkejr.substack.com/p/wind-dreams
The impact of infrasound and audible sound on humans leads to setback regulations. There are no setback regulations for the fauna. Is there really no significant impact on other animals and insects? I speculate some predators gets an easy lunch because their prey didn’t hear them coming over the noise of the wind generators. Is that kind of disruption covered in environmental assessments?
I imagine with all the raptors being killed, an overabundance of rodents will be in our future.
Only government is so inept/evil to continue down this path. What they are doing is criminal.
Climate Industrial Complex to Robber Barons of Industry, “Hold my beer.”