Tag: wind turbines

Great Bay Wind Project: May Be Biggest Man-Made Killer of Bald Eagles Ever

Published on by sunshinehours13 Comments

I hate writing about these stories, but people should know whats going on.

“(Washington, D.C., March 28, 2014) American Bird Conservancy, one of the nation’s leading bird conservation organizations, is calling for a detailed reanalysis of a proposed wind power facility in Maryland that could prove to be the single most deadly project for bald eagles in the Americas. The Great Bay Wind Project is proposed to be located in Somerset County, Maryland, near the Eastern Shore of the Chesapeake Bay. “

http://www.abcbirds.org/newsandreports/releases/140328.html

 

The sub headline is: “Proposed Project Outside Washington, DC May Be Biggest Man-Made Killer of Bald Eagles Ever”

Shouldn’t it be: “Washington, DC May Be Biggest Man-Made Killer of Bald Eagles Ever”

Wind Farms have a license to kill.

 

(h/t Small Dead Animals – Best Canadian Blog)

Royal Society for the Prevention of Birds.

Published on by sunshinehours12 Comments

James Delingpole has a good article on the corruption of  The National Trust and the Royal Society for the Protection Prevention of Birds.

“There’s a problem here and it’s so glaring it’s a wonder that the authors of the report were able to write this section without burying their heads in shame and wishing the earth would swallow them up as punishment for their intellectual dishonesty and positively Gorean levels of hypocrisy. The fact that they were capable of doing so speaks volumes as to just how out of touch with reality environmentalists like the ones who have taken over the RSPB hierarchy have become.

That problem – *exasperated sigh* – is this: if the RSPB is really concerned about the potential disturbance to wildlife of a few noisy lorries and drill rigs (which, let’s not forget, are only up for a short period, after which they are replaced by a silent extraction device called a Christmas tree), how come it’s so cheerfully complacent about the epic numbers of rare birds and protected bats which are sliced and diced (or, in the case of bats, barotraumatised – i.e. made to implode) by the industrial wind turbines which the RSPB not only champions but from which it benefits financially.

Yes that’s right. The RSPB – supposed guardians of Britain’s birdlife – makes hundreds of thousands of pounds in partnership with the wind industry, despite the fact that wind turbines around the world kill as many as 22 million birds every year, including rare and protected species such as America’s national bird the Bald Eagle, Whooping Cranes and Hen Harriers.

And how many birds does the fracking industry kill each year? Well, put it this way: the number is an awful lot closer to zero than it is to 22 million.”

http://www.breitbart.com/Breitbart-London/2014/03/15/National-Trust-And-RSPB-mislead-over-fracking

 

Wind turbine fatalities approach a level of concern in a raptor population

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A paper in the Journal For Nature Conservatism points out that the level of Red Kite deaths at wind turbines in German is very high. They estimate 308 deaths in 2012 out of 9972 individual Red Kites.

With the projected increase in wind turbines, and the fact it is young breeding pairs being killed, the whole population may be threatened.

“Mortality from collisions with increasing numbers of wind turbines is a potential hazard to raptor populations, but the actual effects on a population scale have rarely been studied based on field data. We estimated annual collision numbers for Red Kites Milvus milvus in the German federal state of Brandenburg (29,483 km2). A hierarchical model considering carcass persistence rate, searcher efficiency and the probability that a killed animal falls into a searched area was applied to results of carcass searches at 617 turbines. Collision risk varied significantly with season. The model estimated 308 (95% CrI 159–488) Red Kite fatalities at 3044 turbines operating during 2012, representing 3.1% of the estimated post-breeding population of 9972 individuals. Using the potential biological removal (PBR) method, mortality thresholds of 4.0% were obtained for migratory Red Kite populations. This level of mortality may be reached when turbine numbers increase within a few years. Since wind turbine collisions may affect Red Kites throughout the global range, a more detailed assessment of the actual impacts on populations is needed, especially because the PBR does not account for the predominance of adult birds among the collision victims.”

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)