Wind Power
For reasons still not clear to scientists, eagles are vulnerable to collisions with wind turbines, and in some areas such collisions can be a major source of the bird’s mortality.
Wind turbines only last for ‘half as long as previously thought’, according to a new study. But even in their short lifespans, those turbines can do a lot of damage.
Wind farms are devastating populations of rare birds and bats across the world, driving some to the point of extinction. Most environmentalists just don’t want to know. Because they’re so desperate to believe in renewable energy, they’re in a state of denial.
But the evidence suggests that, this century at least, renewables pose a far greater threat to wildlife than climate change.
-Clive Hambler 
Because wind farms tend to be built on uplands, where there are good thermals, they kill a disproportionate number of raptors. In Australia, the Tasmanian wedge-tailed eagle is threatened with global extinction by wind farms.
In north America, wind farms are killing tens of thousands of raptors including golden eagles and America’s national bird, the bald eagle.
"I will do anything that is basically covered by the law to reduce Berkshire's tax rate," Buffet told an audience in Omaha, Nebraska recently. "For example, on wind energy, we get a tax credit if we build a lot of wind farms. That's the only reason to build them. They don't make sense without the tax credit."
Liberal, Government, Incompetence, Oops, Energy
Some coal and gas power stations in Britain were paid double the price of exchange-traded electricity to help plug a gap left by a drop in wind generation on Monday...
Britain is set to end the use of coal within three years and make power generation free of fossil fuel by 2035. But for now it falls back on high-emission coal when wind drops or demand increases. Wind generation on Monday was meeting just 6% of total demand, National Grid data show, while gas contributed 55% and coal 2%.
Environmentalist, Incompetence, Oops, Energy
Nearly half of Texas' installed wind power generation capacity has been offline because of frozen wind turbines in West Texas, according to Texas grid operators.
Wind farms across the state generate up to a combined 25,100 megawatts of energy. But unusually moist winter conditions in West Texas brought on by the weekend's freezing rain and historically low temperatures have iced many of those wind turbines to a halt.
As of Sunday morning, those iced turbines comprise 12,000 megawatts of Texas' installed wind generation capacity...
The frozen turbines come as low temperatures strain the state's power grid and force operators to call for immediate statewide conservation efforts, like unplugging non-essential appliances, turning down residential heaters and minimize use of electric lighting.
A wind turbine’s blades can be longer than a Boeing 747 wing, so at the end of their lifespan they can’t just be hauled away. First, you need to saw through the lissome fiberglass using a diamond-encrusted industrial saw to create three pieces small enough to be strapped to a tractor-trailer.
The municipal landfill in Casper, Wyoming, is the final resting place of 870 blades whose days making renewable energy have come to end... Tens of thousands of aging blades are coming down from steel towers around the world and most have nowhere to go but landfills.
Environmentalist, Liberal, Government, Incompetence, Energy, Waste
New York state spent millions on a lauded wind project several years ago, but most of the turbines now stand idle as officials wait to repair malfunctioning parts.
The New York State Thruway Authority — the governing body of a major toll highway that runs across the state — has taken part in New York’s attempts to transition to renewable energy. From 2013 to 2015, the authority built five wind turbines along the thruway in the western corner of the state.
However, the project did not go as planned. Of the five turbines that are dotted across the thruway from Eden, New York to the Pennsylvania state line, four aren’t even spinning.
Environmentalist, Liberal, Narrative, Oops, Energy
Large numbers of migratory bats are killed every year at wind energy facilities. However, population-level impacts are unknown as we lack basic demographic information about these species. We investigated whether fatalities at wind turbines could impact population viability of migratory bats, focusing on the hoary bat (Lasiurus cinereus), the species most frequently killed by turbines in North America.
Using expert elicitation and population projection models, we show that mortality from wind turbines may drastically reduce population size and increase the risk of extinction.
The Patrick administration’s $113 million New Bedford marine terminal, built as a Cape Wind construction staging area, has become a taxpayer-funded boondoggle now that the controversial offshore wind farm project is virtually dead in the water... “There’s a lot of things I would have done with $113 million that would have had an impact across the commonwealth. There’s no turning back the clock. We can’t get the money back. Now we’re left with an asset that we’re charged with making the most of.”
Environmentalist, Liberal, Narrative, Oops, Energy
Marine environmental experts blame offshore wind turbines for the deaths of three minke whales that washed up on British beaches, The Times reported Monday.
Wildlife experts claim that the noise generated by wind turbines affected the sonar that whales use to navigate, causing them to beach themselves. There are several commercial offshore wind farms close to where the whales beached themselves.
Environmentalist, Oops, Energy
One of the biggest wind energy projects under development in the U.S. got closer Thursday to securing a federal permit to kill a limited number of eagles without penalty... A five-year permit would allow up to 14 golden eagle deaths a year during operation... The permit would allow as many as two bald eagles per year to be killed.
Though I started out neutral on renewable energy, I've since seen the havoc wreaked on wildlife by wind power, hydro power, biofuels and tidal barrages.
The environmentalists who support such projects do so for ideological reasons.
What few of them have in their heads, though, is the consolation of science.
Liberal, Incompetence, Financial, Funny, Oops, Energy
Germany’s legislature voted Friday to sharply cut back on subsidies and other financial incentives supporting green energy due to the strain wind and solar power placed on the country’s electricity grid... Germany’s wind and solar power systems have provided too much power at unpredictable times, which damaged the power grid and made the system vulnerable to blackouts. Grid operators paid companies $548 million to shutter turbines to fix the problem... Germany will get rid of 6,000 megawatts of wind power by 2019.
Democrat, Environmentalist, Hypocrisy, Liberal, Obama, Oops
The Obama administration is revising a federal rule that allows wind-energy companies to operate high-speed turbines for up to 30 years, even if means killing or injuring thousands of federally protected bald and golden eagles. Under the plan announced Wednesday, companies could kill or injure up to 4,200 bald eagles a year without penalty -- nearly four times the current limit.
Environmentalist, Liberal, Incompetence, Financial, Narrative, Oops, Energy, Academia, Waste
Lake Land College recently announced plans to tear down broken wind turbines on campus, after the school got $987,697.20 in taxpayer support for wind power. The turbines were funded by a $2.5 million grant from the U.S. Department of Labor, but the turbines lasted for less than four years and were incredibly costly to maintain. “Since the installation in 2012, the college has spent $240,000 in parts and labor to maintain the turbines,” Kelly Allee, Director of Public Relations at Lake Land College, told The Daily Caller News Foundation.
The American Bird Conservancy filed suit in federal court over 30-year permits allowing wind energy operations to kill eagles.
On June 19, 2014, the American Bird Conservancy filed suit over DOI regulations that allow wind energy companies to obtain permits to kill eagles without prosecution over a 30-year period.
Environmentalist, Liberal, Financial, Oops, Energy
Electricity prices are soaring in states generating the most wind power, U.S. Energy Information Administration data show. Although U.S. electricity prices rose less than 3 percent from 2008-2013, the 10 states with the highest percentage of wind power generation experienced average electricity price increases of more than 20 percent.
Environmentalist, Oops, Energy
Wind turbines killed at least 600,000 -- and possibly as many as 900,000 -- bats in the United States in 2012, researchers say. Writing in the journal BioScience, the researchers said they used sophisticated statistical techniques to infer the probable number of bat deaths at wind energy facilities from the number of dead bats found at 21 locations.
Eagle chopped in half by wind turbine
Killing Eagles: Havorn Hakket Wind Farm
Eagle chopped in half by wind turbine - Knud PedersenEnvironmentalist, Liberal, Funny, Oops
There had been only eight recorded sightings of the white-throated needletail in the UK since 1846. So when one popped up again on British shores this week, twitchers were understandably excited... But instead of being treated to a wildlife spectacle they were left with a horror show when it flew into a wind turbine and was killed.
Environmentalist, Science, Oops, Energy
Wind farm noise causes “clear and significant” damage to people’s sleep and mental health, according to the first full peer-reviewed scientific study of the problem. The findings provide the clearest evidence yet to support long-standing complaints from people living near turbines that the sound from their rotating blades disrupts sleep patterns and causes stress-related conditions.
Environmentalist, Liberal, Oops, Energy
An estimated 1,700 to 4,700 birds are killed each year in the 50-square-mile Altamont Pass Wind Resource Area, and of those fatalities, between 880 and 1,300 are federally protected raptors, such as burrowing owls, red-tailed hawks and golden eagles, according to a study released last year by the California Energy Commission.
“Uncle Vincenzo,” implored the businessman, Angelo Salvatore, using a term of affection for the alleged head of Sicily’s Gimbellina crime family, 79-year-old Vincenzo Funari. According to a transcript of their wiretapped conversation, Salvatore continued, “for the love of our sons, renewable energy is important. . . . it’s a business we can live on.” And for quite awhile, Italian prosecutors say, they did.
Environmentalist, Liberal, Oops, Energy
ALTAMONT PASS, Calif. — The big turbines that stretch for miles along these rolling, grassy hills have churned out clean, renewable electricity for two decades in one of the nation's first big wind-power projects. But for just as long, massive fiberglass blades on the more than 4,000 windmills have been chopping up tens of thousands of birds that fly into them, including golden eagles, red-tailed hawks, burrowing owls and other raptors.
Environmentalist, Liberal, Oops, Energy
Yet there is one group of energy producers that are not being prosecuted for killing birds: wind-power companies. And wind-powered turbines are killing a vast number of birds every year.
Environmentalist, Obama, Oops, Energy
California's attempts to switch to green energy have inadvertently put the survival of the state’s golden eagles at risk. Scores of the protected birds have been dying each year after colliding with the blades of about 5,000 wind turbines.
Environmentalist, Government, Incompetence, Oops
A new analysis of wind energy supplied to the UK National Grid in recent years has shown that wind farms produce significantly less electricity than had been thought, and that they cause more problems for the Grid than had been believed.
Installing Windmills
to Protect the Environment
Democrat, Environmentalist, Liberal, Government, Incompetence, Oops, Waste
Sen. Mark Udall is pleading for an extension for billions in subsidies to prop up the wind industry, a fight to protect tax credits utilized by Warren Buffett and one of the Colorado Democrat’s top donors... Warren Buffett, who has invested billions into wind farms, said recently that the industry is not viable without government assistance.
In 1998, Norway commissioned a study of wind power in Denmark and concluded that it has "serious environmental effects, insufficient production, and high production costs."
Denmark (population 5.3 million) has over 6,000 turbines that produced electricity equal to 19% of what the country used in 2002. Yet no conventional power plant has been shut down. Because of the intermittency and variability of the wind, conventional power plants must be kept running at full capacity to meet the actual demand for electricity. Most cannot simply be turned on and off as the wind dies and rises, and the quick ramping up and down of those that can be would actually increase their output of pollution and carbon dioxide (the primary "greenhouse" gas).
So when the wind is blowing just right for the turbines, the power they generate is usually a surplus and sold to other countries at an extremely discounted price, or the turbines are simply shut off.
-Eric Rosenbloom
Estimates for bird deaths by wind turbine run from 100,000 a year (the National Research Council) to 300,000 (American Bird Conservancy). Bloomberg News puts the toll at 573,000 birds in 2012.
At the high end of the estimates, that's well more than 1,000 birds chopped to death each day... That's a lot of birds losing their lives. But let a few loons or terns get soaked in oil, and the cameras begin to roll, as do the tears. -Kerry Jackson
Eco-warriors at Greenpeace are still claiming wind energy prices have fallen by 50% despite promising the Advertising Standards Authority they would no longer do so... Following an upheld complaint, Greenpeace told the Advertising Standards Authority last month it would no longer make the claim.
But a video featuring Emma Thompson holding a giant “50% off” sign next to an offshore wind farm is still being shown on the Greenpeace Facebook page.
-Guido Fawkes
History will not judge kindly all the greens who stood by while birds were slaughtered in the name of saving the environment. -Eric Worrall