Biden’s Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) proposes to build a huge amount of floating offshore wind in the Gulf of Maine. As required by law, it has published for public comment a draft Environmental Assessment of the area designated for this monster project. But insanely, there is no assessment of the project, just of the area without the project. I am not making this up.
This place is properly called the Wind Energy Area (WEA) because that is where the wind energy will come from. BOEM says they plan to issue eight leases initially with a monster development potential of 15,000 MW. Given that 15 MW is the biggest turbine available that amounts to 1,000 or more huge turbines. A second phase might add another thousand of so.
The potential adverse impact of this offshore wind project on whales is enormous. In fact, the Gulf of Maine is designated as critical habitat under the Endangered Species Act for the desperately endangered North Atlantic Right Whale. Clearly, caution is called for.
The draft Environmental Assessment simply ignores this enormous threat. BOEM says these potentially horrendous impacts will only be considered on a lease by lease basis and then only when specific development plans have been submitted. So, for now, it is “Damn the whales, full speed ahead.”
Here is BOEM’s incredible statement, a single sentence: “The analysis did not consider construction and operation of any commercial wind power facilities within the Gulf of Maine WEA, the latter of which would be evaluated as part of a separate National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) process if a lessee submits a Construction and Operations Plan (COP).”
It seems not to have occurred to BOEM that a careful impact assessment under NEPA is essential before any leases are offered. A proper assessment might conclude that some of these leases should not be let. Or it might call for restrictions on development of some leases. These leases are likely to sell altogether for several billion dollars and the buyers expect to get their money’s worth. It will be too late to impose major restrictions.
Moreover, there needs to be a cumulative impact assessment of the entire multi-lease project according to the Endangered Species Act. Given the critical habitat designation for Right Whales, this project may not be legal, and that determination must be made before the leases are let.
The key concept in NEPA assessment is that impacts are reasonably likely, and at least the 15,000 MW ones are certainly that. This assessment must come before the agency decision, which means letting the leases.
The details of construction are unlikely to change the impact assessment very much. While there are many competing floating wind designs, they are all basically the same. A turbine tower sits on a floater that is anchored to the sea floor by mooring lines. The shape and construction of the floaters is the primary variable and that is minor compared to the adverse impact of a thousand of them.
BOEM has the decision logic backward. Careful adverse impact assessment under NEPA and species protection plans under the Endangered Species Act must precede and guide the activity of leasing sites for floating wind development.
Public comments are due by July 22, 2024, and can be made here:
https://www.regulations.gov/document/BOEM-2024-0030-0001
The draft Gulf of Maine WEA Environmental Assessment and numerous related documents are here: https://www.boem.gov/renewable-energy/state-activities/maine/gulf-maine
Note that there will be two virtual public meetings on the draft EA on July 8 and 10. Information and registration are available at the above link.
I urge people to comment. Save the whales from offshore wind.
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RFK jr political ad:
Encouraging.
Very. Heartland and CFACT (with me) have been pushing this for two years and the truth is slowly taking hold.
Interesting background. A polar bear hide and a #5 foot trap.
Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha!
Excellent observation. Especially the #5 foot trap.
Kinda small for a PBear more like a Mt Goat, trap look like an old “jump trap”.
The traps have some writing on the wall above them…
News flash, it will drastically affect commercial fisherman as well.
We need an Endangered Fishermen Act. If only they were a separate species. Oh wait.
enviros don’t want fishing, farming or forestry
“It seems not to have occurred to BOEM that a careful impact assessment under NEPA is essential before any leases are offered.”
Could it be – on a sane planet at least – that such an assessment might prove fatal to a proposed project? And if it did so would any money have changed hands in the meantime? Speculating that [some] money was paid for a lease up front, then a clean bill of health seems assured.
“public meetings “ in the UK serve as a pressure relief valve. And that’s exactly what they and petitions are for. Then.it’s business as usual.
Here in Wokeachusetts- they skip the public meetings and have Zoom events instead- allowing everyone 3 minutes to talk- then of course, they ignore whatever the public has to say.
Let’s go, Brandon!
The Science Is Clear: Offshore Wind Isn’t What’s Killing Whales
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/whales-are-dying-but-not-from-offshore-wind/?utm_campaign=socialflow&utm_medium=social&utm_source=reddit
the current scientific consensus
Oh do give it a rest.
Love how they can come to a “consensus”, without actually doing any studies.
but… but… but… but…
from that site
I guess THE science doesn’t need any dam studies!
This “consensus” came together almost as quickly as the infamous laptop Russian disinformation letter. Coincidence much?
Fauci said he was “The Science”.
The whales probably died of Covid.
Amazing how fast scientific consensus can form these days, isn’t it?
I guess that’s another result of the democratic science we are all experiencing, since all scientists now cast votes on what they believe is true in the latest academic publishing.
“The Science Is Clear: Offshore Wind Isn’t What’s Killing Whales”
_____________________________________________________
RFK Jr thinks off shore wind farms are killing the whales:
Off shore wind farms produce energy at five times the
cost of onshore wind farms and exterminate the whales
Besides that, reddit and Scientific American are left wing mouth pieces.
UNScientific UNAmerican. Fixed it.
As usual there is no mention if harassment induced deaths, which is the central issue. So they ignore the issue which is SOP for greens.
See my https://www.cfact.org/2022/09/27/how-to-kill-whales-with-offshore-wind/ which is going on two years now with lots of comments by lots of people to NOAA and BOEM pointing this issue out.
If you throw a firecracker at a dog and it runs into the street, is hit and killed, the car killed the dog but the firecracker caused the death. The many thousands of NOAA authorized acoustic harassments are like firecrackers, leading to increased ship strikes and entanglements. Not one word about this issue in the SA article or NOAA and BOEM statements.
Silence is golden to the greens.
The US Navy was already convicted of harrassing migrating whales with it’s SONAR operations.
A federal court on 14 September 2015 approved the settlement of two cases brought by environmental groups that challenged the Navy’s training and testing activities off the coasts of southern California and Hawaii. The settlement comes in the wake of the court’s decision earlier this year that found the Navy’s exercises in these areas were illegally harming numerous populations of whales, dolphins, seals, and sea lions.
The decision is being celebrated by conservationists and cetacean experts who have long sparred with the Navy and the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS), the federal agency charged with protecting marine mammals, over the sonar tests. “By agreeing to this settlement, the Navy acknowledges that it doesn’t need to train in every square inch of the ocean and that it can take reasonable steps to reduce the deadly toll of its activities,” said David Henkin, an attorney in the Honolulu office of Earthjustice, one of the environmental organizations that challenged the Navy’s latest round of sonar training and testing, in a statement.
Sounds like the Navy simply did not have the NMFS authorization for their harassment. The wind projects do. The Virginia project alone is authorized to harass almost 80,000 critters mostly dolphins. But NMFS refuses to admit that harassment can cause deadly behavior.
from there
Hey Mr. PSO, how about I slip you $10,000 to blur your vision?
Since China benefits from CO2 scams like this, it’s probably more like $100,000, brokered by someone on behalf of the now-lacking-mental-capacity “Big Guy” (who still gets his 10%).
Go away, stinking troll.
‘BOEM says they plan to issue eight leases initially with a monster development potential of 15,000 MW.’
Let’s assume there were sufficient subsidies to make the offshore installation of gas-fired combined cycle combustion turbines, including facilities to receive and re-gasify LNG, economic. Does anyone think BOEM would even consider issuing a permit for such a project? Would their consideration change if someone pointed out that the gas project would require only 30-40 CCGTs vs 1000 wind turbines? The questions answer themselves.
BOEM makes clear that they are doing this to stop climate change they think us caused by fossil fueled electricity. Hopefully Trump will win and shut down this offshore wind abomination.
Hope and Trump are unlikely partners.
When it comes to drilling for oil in the Gulf of Mexico, no level of protection for the whales is too extreme.
On the other hand when it comes to wind in the Gulf of Maine, it’s “whales? what whales?”.
By breaking up the assessments into small ones for each lease, they get to ignore the much larger impact of the entire project.
Assessment for lease area 1 summation: There is an impact, but it is small so it won’t impact the whales much.
Assessment for lease area 2 summation: There is an impact, but it is small so it won’t impact the whales much.
Assessment for lease area 3 summation: And so on.
Yes, exactly, and that is why Heartland and CFACT are suing BOEM and NOAA, calling for cumulative impact assessment.
The whales were driven into near extinction for their oil Now
they face the same fate, again over energy. The very definition of insanity
is repeating itself.
The Administration would likely be more concerned if they were Left Whales. 😉
Indeed, never forget it was the oil industry that saved the whales!
oil industry that saved the whales!
Funny timing, I was just watching something about that last night.
Oil saved the whales, now trying to get rid of oil is endangering them again. Seems just a touch ironic.
Hm. 🤔 Now where did I hear that before…. somewhere on this thread…… 😉. Great minds! 🙂
RFK Jr ate some dog meat in Asia and a parasite invaded his brain….requiring an operation. He was on morphine for over a decade….once known as a womanizer…is supposedly a demrat but he seems to want to screw the election up for some reason because he has no chance of election. Those Kennedys are real characters.
Nope and nope. And nope some more.
RFK Jr ate a goat in Patagonia. He says he likely got the parasite in Asia so none of that is related. The Democrats blocked RFK Jr from running so he became an independent candidate.
Other than having all your facts wrong, the rest of your post is true.
They just outlawed opiates without a prescription to protect the tobacco and alcohol industries.
It gave the same effect as alcohol without the drunkenness and hangover and was more pleasant than tobacco so people were switching. There were opium bars in all the major cities back then.
The addiction potential is about the same for all three.
Glen Beck reported the RFK Jr stuff on national radio….he said RFK Jr readily admits his past. ….another flaw is of course his terrible voice ….even worse than Joke Biden.
OT:
For people who monitor the UK electricity grid.
This needs to be posted so here goes.
The website
https://gridwatch.templar.co.uk/
which I have been using for several years to download UK grid data has gone zombie.
It has not updated since 5/31/2024, when Excelon changed how it reports its data.
I now download data directly from the official web site:
https://bmrs.elexon.co.uk/
In comparing the data from these two websites, the first website has recurring erratic data results absent in the data from the official website, and its data, although very similar in aggregate to the official website, is never precisely the same per 5 minute intervals. Don’t know why.
In contradistinction, this website:
https://gridwatch.co.uk/
has data which exactly mirrors the official website, but, unfortunately, does not provide a download mechanism.
So, now downloading directly from elexon. Not too difficult if you know python and sqlite3.
BTW, everybody says to use Sheffield U for the solar data, but the solar data from Excelon is pretty similar to the data from gridwatch.templar.co.uk, which says it used Sheffield data. Still looking to see why they seem to be shifted by an hour. LikeIy I messed up the timezones somewhere.
Anyhow, nothing like having the data.
No matter.
They tell me the Gulf of Maine is rapidly warming, and the lobster industry there is going to collapse, soon.
Boiling?
There’s a push to get things done before Trump takes over in January. Does that apply here?
If anyone in “government” gave a fuck about aquatic mammals this would not be happening.
“A turbine tower sits on a floater that is anchored to the sea floor by mooring lines.”
hmmm… I wonder if whales swim at night- and how well can they see at night? I wonder if any might crash into those mooring lines?
More bad government, when your leaders are marching you off a cliff stop and go the other way.
The BOEM’s ignoring the legally required environmental assessments before leasing in the Gulf of Main is consistent with their violation of required assessments in the Gulf of Mexico.