Category: wind turbines

83,000 Raptor Fatalities at Wind Farms in USA in 2012

Published on by sunshinehours124 Comments

This is just awful. The Wildlife Society estimates 83,000 raptor fatalities at wind farms in the USA for 2012.

“I used national averages from hundreds of carcass placement trials intended to characterize scavenger removal and searcher detection rates, and I relied on patterns of carcass distance from wind turbines to develop an adjustment for variation in maximum search radius around wind turbines mounted on various tower heights. Adjusted fatality rates correlated inversely with wind-turbine size for all raptors as a group across the United States, and for all birds as a group within the Altamont Pass Wind Resource Area, California. I estimated 888,000 bat and 573,000 bird fatalities/year (including 83,000 raptor fatalities) at 51,630 megawatt (MW) of installed wind-energy capacity in the United States in 2012.”

 

Finally! One Bird Slaughterer Brought To Justice

Published on by sunshinehours114 Comments

FINALLY!

“WASHINGTON (AP) — A major U.S. power company has pleaded guilty to killing eagles and other birds at two Wyoming wind farms and agreed to pay $1 million as part of the first enforcement of environmental laws protecting birds against wind energy facilities.

Until the settlement announced Friday with Duke Energy Corp. and its renewable energy arm, not a single wind energy company had been prosecuted for a death of an eagle or other protected bird — even though each death is a violation of federal law, unless a company has a federal permit. Not a single wind energy facility has obtained a permit.

The Charlotte, N.C.-based company pleaded guilty to killing 14 eagles and 149 other birds at its Top of the World and Campbell Hill wind farms outside Casper, Wyo. All the deaths, which included golden eagles, hawks, blackbirds, wrens and sparrows, occurred from 2009 to 2013.

“Wind energy is not green if it is killing hundreds of thousands of birds,” said George Fenwick, president of the American Bird Conservancy, which supports properly sited wind farms. “The unfortunate reality is that the flagrant violations of the law seen in this case are widespread.””

 

(h/t Tom Nelson)

 

 

 

U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Says Killing Eagles is OK!

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“SAN FRANCISCO, Sept. 27 (UPI) —
A Solano County, Calif., wind farm would be the first renewable energy project in the nation allowed to kill eagles under a federal plan, a U.S. agency said.
Under the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service proposal, outlined in a draft environmental report released Thursday, the Shiloh IV Wind Project would be issued a golden eagle take permit for its 3,500-acre plant in the Montezuma Hills, the San Francisco Chronicle reported.
The plan would allow the company’s 50 wind turbines to kill as many as five golden eagles in a five-year period in exchange for measures to protect the birds, including retrofitting 133 power poles to prevent electrocutions, the Chronicle said.
“The bottom line is a permit will help preserve eagles,” said Scott Flaherty, the deputy assistant regional director of external affairs for the Fish and Wildlife Service.”

http://www.breitbart.com/system/wire/upiUPI-20130927-131354-9098

Paraphrasing … They had to kill the Eagles to save them, *

It is a pretty sick world where an agency tasked with preserving Eagles is goving out permits to kill Eagles and turning a blind eye to the Eagles already being electrocuted.

Shilo IV is rated at 102.5 MW , which means it may average 25MW.

 

Did you know you can buy a 100MW gas generator for around 30 million.

 

 

 

Greenies : Crush the Poor in Germany

Published on by sunshinehours11 Comment

Electricity is now a luxury good in Germany thanks to evil greenies.

“more than 300,000 households a year are seeing their power shut off because of unpaid bills.”

“renewable energy subsidies redistribute money from the poor to the more affluent, like when someone living in small rental apartment subsidizes a homeowner’s roof-mounted solar panels through his electricity bill.”

“Experts believe that because of the more challenging conditions, the power offshore wind turbines generate will be consistently two to three times as expensive as on land.”

“If the government sticks to its plans, the price of electricity will literally explode in the coming years. According to a current study for the federal government, electricity will cost up to 40 cents a kilowatt-hour by 2020, a 40-percent increase over today’s prices.”

 

http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/high-costs-and-errors-of-german-transition-to-renewable-energy-a-920288-2.html

(h/t P Gosselin)

 

If some evil mastermind had planned to bring down the western economies so that China could grow wealthy, the greenie master plan combined with the evil IPCC could not have done a better job.

Wind Turbines: 39,000,000 Dead Birds and Bats Per Year in USA

Published on by sunshinehours17 Comments

Environmentalists are Evil.

“As Paul Driessen, Mark Duchamp and others have concluded, based on careful bird and bat mortality studies in Spain and Germany, it is highly likely that the 40,000 US wind turbines are killing between 13 and 39 million birds and bats every year – including hundreds of bald and golden eagles, thousands of hawks, falcons, owls and other raptors, and dozens of extremely rare whooping cranes!”

See more at: http://www.masterresource.org/2013/09/hiding-avian-mortality-altamont-pass

 

And when some greenie says that cats kill more birds, ask them how many Raptors “Fluffy” manages to kill.

(h/t Tom Nelson)

 

 

 

 

Good News! Onshore Wind Turbines Will Slaughter Birds For Only 12 – 15 Years!

Published on by sunshinehours11 Comment

Good News. Wind Turbines will wear out a lot quicker than previously estimated. Which means the slaughtering of Eagles and other birds will be more expensive.

“The Renewable Energy Foundation today published a new study, The Performance of Wind Farms in the United Kingdom and Denmark, showing that the economic life of onshore wind turbines is between 10 and 15 years, not the 20 to 25 years projected by the wind industry itself, and used for government projections.

The work has been conducted by one of the UK’s leading energy & environmental economists, Professor Gordon Hughes of the University of Edinburgh, and has been anonymously peer-reviewed. This groundbreaking study applies rigorous statistical analysis to years of actual wind farm performance data from wind farms in both the UK and in Denmark.

The results show that after allowing for variations in wind speed and site characteristics the average load factor [performance] of wind farms declines substantially as they get older, probably due to wear and tear. By 10 years of age the contribution of an average UK wind farm to meeting electricity demand has declined by a third.

This decline in performance means that it is rarely economic to operate wind farms for more than 12 to 15 years. After this period they must be replaced with new machines, a finding that has profound consequences for investors and government alike.”

(h/t The Hockey Schtick)

Wind turbine collapses in high wind

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Would you want your hospital reliant on wind turbines that can’t handle 50mph gusts?

“A 35-metre turbine has collapsed near Holsworthy leaving the tower lying on the ground. The turbine at East Ash Farm in Bradworthy was erected in 2010 by Dulas Ltd. Dulas confirmed this morning that an “incident” had occurred with the turbine and said the situation is currently being investigated”

 

Windfarms – Licence To Kill Eagles

Published on by sunshinehours14 Comments

“MINNEAPOLIS (AP) — Federal officials have decided to let a proposed southeastern Minnesota wind farm pursue a permit that would allow for accidental deaths and injuries of bald eagles.

The worst-case scenario is that eight to 15 bald eagles per year would die as a result of the 48-turbine project New Era Wind Farm near Red Wing, the Fish and Wildlife Service said in a letter to state regulators Wednesday. Hundreds of thousands of birds die each year while flying through wind farms nationwide.

I highlighted the term worst-case scenario for the obvious reason it is a bald faced lie. A 2x larger wind farm in Ontario killed 1900 birds and bats in a 6 month period.

Wind Farms are an environmentalist / AGW cult approved mass bird slaughtering mechanism.

They should be ashamed. But they are liars and con men. And licensed to kill.