New evidence indicates that millions of bats are being slaughtered every year by wind turbines. This astonishing figure of wildlife massacre arises from a reasonable extrapolation of casualty numbers collected by a group of German zoologists. Their data cover a number of years, and more specifically a recent two-month detailed survey at a wind farm near Berlin. Germany has nearly 30,000 onshore wind turbines, and the researchers suggested their findings translated to 200,000 bat fatalities every year in that country alone. Land-based wind turbines are common across many parts of the world, and a total figure running into millions is possible.
The researchers note that the annual German losses of bats will “cause a decline of populations of high collision-risk species”. They warn that this population decline “could manifest rapidly”, since mostly females and juvenile bats get killed by turbines. Bats have low reproductive rates and may not be able to compensate quickly for the casualties, they note.
The paper is of considerable interest and the full methodology of the field work, along with considerations about turbine age and operational curtailments, are shown here. The researchers took data going back 20 years from the national carcass repository in Germany and from a detailed 2021 two-month search of the ground near three turbines west of Berlin. It was estimated that nearly 300 bats died during the 2021 field survey, and this equated to 55 casualties per megawatt generated.
These are shocking figures. Bat ‘migrations’ were occurring at the time of the field survey, but such movement is common in bat populations. The UK has 14 GW of installed onshore wind capacity, or 14,000 MW. A multiplication of 55 casualties per MW produces 770,000 bat deaths. Of course all this installed capacity is unlikely to be in continual use, and periods of low bat movement and hibernation will lower the death toll considerably. But promoters of green energy need to be specific about the annual bat carnage they are prepared to accept – 50,000 deaths, 100,000, 200,000? The U.K. Government’s own in-house green activist unit, the Committee for Climate Change, is recommending that Britain should more than double its onshore wind capacity to 29 GW by the end of the decade.
Bat conservation protections are common across the U.K. and building developments are sometimes halted to accommodate their habitats. But far less robust measures seem to be in place for any ‘green’ projects. The Bat Conservation Trust (BCT) notes there has been evidence of bat collisions with wind turbines for 20 years, but it supports the development of wind power. It supports “mitigation” measures that are known to be “successful in reducing the impacts of wind turbines on bats”. It would be useful if the BTC could put an actual figure on an acceptable death toll.
Bats species are thought to make up a third of U.K. mammal fauna and occur in most lowland habitats across the U.K. But wind turbines present a danger to many flying animals in various habitats. Earlier this year, a group of American ecologists discovered “distinct patterns of population – and subpopulation level – vulnerability for a wider variety of bird species found dead at renewable energy facilities”. Their paper examined numerous wind and solar facilities in California and found birds at greatest risk were raptors such as golden eagles, kites and owls. These birds are often all-year residents around wind farms, where they require open skies to catch wind currents. For their part, the wind turbines generate enormous air fluctuations, while massive blade tips travel at over 150 mph.
As is often the case, animal charities appear conflicted between the promotion of ‘green’ energy and protecting the lives of bats and birds. In the U.K., Andrew Dodd from the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB) said we clearly needed more offshore wind turbines, “and the RSPB supported that”. But favourable spots in the North Sea are starting to fill up and, said Dodd, “we have to avoid development in the most sensitive areas”.
Dodd made his comments in a BBC report surrounding the permission for the giant Hornsea Three development, an area frequently visited by kittiwakes. These birds are at particular risk, since they have been spotted trying to slalom their way through such fields springing up in the North Sea. The energy secretary at the time, Alok Sharma, is said to have acknowledged that wildlife would be harmed by Hornsea Three, but granted consent on the ‘balance of benefits’. The cynical might note that the same ‘balance of benefits’ argument was curiously absent from the recent onshore gas fracking ban – reliable and secure energy supplies, against the risk of earth tremors equivalent to someone falling off a chair.
Journalist James Delingpole has been a long-time environmental critic of wind farms: “If you really hate nature, you’ll love wind farms. Not only do they destroy the landscape, blight views, increase flooding but… they kill rare birds and bats on an industrial scale.”
Chris Morrison is the Daily Sceptic’s Environment Editor.
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I blogged a story today about the misinformation about ivermectin coming out of Oklahoma last weekend. I hope no one minds if I give the link here: https://gdspoliticalanimal.blogspot.com/2021/09/misinformation-about-ivermectin.html
Also covered, entertainingly, on Toby Young’s and James Delingpole’s podcast today.
The more coverage, the better.
So much for “fake news” and “factcheckers”, eh?
It is becoming more and more obvious that this is not about Covid but more about control of the masses. This is a crisis that they will not relinquish. Everything they are doing is about moving the goalposts to retain control. First it was we need the Ro to be below 1 or the cases to be less than 100 per day. Then it was the elderly and most at risk that need the jab. Then it was the over 65s. Then it was the over 50s. Then it was the 18 to 49 year olds. Now it’s the 12 to 15 year olds (soon it will be the 2 to 11 year olds). Then it’s we need 70% fully vaxxed. Then 80%. Then 85% to avoid a lockdown. Soon it will 90%…then it will be we need everyone to have a booster, then the next booster, then the next…all the while they will impose even more authoritative restrictions after each announcement.
And this was all done right in front of everyone’s faces and the majority of people follow along complying at each decree. I wonder when those people will finally figure out that they have been bamboozled. I’m afraid it may take a few years and by then it may be too late.
Why?
If you have to ask that, I suggest getting an education.
And yet there was a sizeable minority, myself included, who saw this coming since near the beginning of the “pandemic”, predicted what was to come (while being branded conspiracy theorists), and see what is in store unless sufficient numbers resist the pressure to conform to the rapidly evolving “new normal”. The more people we can awaken out of their trance, the stronger we become. Resistance is not futile.
I wish that you were right, but, with 80+% of the population (here and abroad) in the Homo Non Sapiens new species, I have my doubts.
Home Domesticus (CattleKind)
Scott Morrison flies on Father’s day in Australia, when everyone else is locked down and can’t see their family, on a private jet so that he can see his kids. If you can’t see it now then there is no help for you.
Agenda 21 and 30. It’s there for all to Google.
Boiling Fog?
“Vaxport plans are a form of discrimination”
It’s jolly well apartheid. Thirty years after the end of apartheid in South Africa, it is remarkable and disturbing that the English “government” are planning something similar. If the government and so-called opposition support this, it will forever be a stain on their parties and the country.
We should boycott every institution and business that tries to impose such discriminatory passes, just like we did against South Africa.
Hate to say it, but it would probably be effective to use BLM tactics here in San Francisco by picketing the restaurants complying with our apartheid law to make the proprietors and their patrons uncomfortable
(Probably just what TPTB want though …)
Have AIDS & assorted medical papers checking booths outside the picketed premises may help
Have a weighing scales and a tape measure and ask people not to go in based on BMI
Call yourself the Health Mutaween.
Yes and that includes the double jabbed too. This, as the bastard liar Iraqi once said, is not British; we should all stand together on this and tell Boris to fuck off. The hospitality and other large crowd venues will soon get the message and take on the government. Once this takes hold it’ll be near impossible to roll back.
Kim Jong Johnson to warn that we must all live for the NHS, you mean.
Fucking great fat communist fraud never ever learns.
He’s just Jeremy Corbyn with blond hair.
And even less principles.
Fewer, sorry.
A pedant
I hear that there’s a shortage of nightclub bouncers – good luck with he passports.
It is going to be back to the glory days of illegal raves!!! I imagine the youngsters who have stood up to this naked coercion and bullying are already planning their events; good on them!!!
No need to imagine. I’ve heard a few are actually planning them! Back in the day these events were mobilised without the aid of tech and mobile phones. It can still be done. Time to revert back to those days.
Why is almost every single mention of the vaccine accompanied by a close-up of a needle and an arm, or the two people involved? (Both masked, of course.) This frequently happens on this website, as well as those clamouring for the jabs. On the BBC website especially, you can play bingo with this. I know a picture paints a thousand words, but do they think we don’t know what an injection looks like? Just like masks have become the ubiquitous symbol of obedience. I don’t think close-ups of hypodermic syringes do much to persuade the reluctant needle-phobics to roll their sleeves up. I also think that using the word “jab” all the time is scary enough. Obviously “injection” is too long a word for Saint Boris to say.
Should probably have a picture of a sportsman clutching his chest…
In the social media age you need an image in your article to get clicks, no pics no clicks you might say (or not many at least). It helps if the image is fairly indicative of what your article is about, hence the needles etc.
You’re right though in that I think people are (not surprisingly) instinctively afraid of having needles jabbed in their arms, hence the need for incentives even for those who don’t suspect the jabs may harm them. Also hence the need to silence the pro-science people, because the powers that be are terrified that public opinion might suddenly turn against their evil plot to subjugate everyone.
As for the use of the word jab it is curious in light of that instinct, what’s more I noticed myself how Johnson used the word jab almost aggressively with relish in one announcement. I took this to be a psychological tactic designed to emphasize our subjugation more than anything. He was enjoying the feeling of power that came with knowing that huge numbers of people who don’t need the jab are submitting to it hoping that they will be allowed to go back to life as normal.
They can’t call it an injection because it isn’t one – not really – I’m happiest with Clot shot or Kill shot – because chances are that is what it is
Another day, another raft of lunacy from the dictatorial Johnson regime. If you honestly think I am going to pay additional taxes to fund your malfeasance and cruel mismanagement of this country over the past 18 months, you can just get lost.
Two intelligent Oxford educated people discuss why the government is bringing in restrictions, one of whom – Toby Young – imagines that it is because the government wants to protect the NHS against a possible surge in infections. Neither mentions the vaccine passport as the gateway to the introduction of digital ID. It is well documented that TY doesn’t go along with how his mate James Delingpole sees things but what this tells me is that there are a raft, a huge raft of well educated people out there, who see all these things and yet still refuse to believe the quite frankly evil intention of the authorities in limiting our freedoms permanently. It is this myopia that is the problem. The educated middle classes, especially those living out in the leafy shires, are still quite comfortably insulated from any real pain or any real awakening moment. It is just a bit of a bore. Silly old Boris etc. Very unBritish etc. What I observed at the Trafalgar Square rally this summer was really the more hardened types, the ones who think the most outlandish things and the ones the government will simply ignore and not the more measured tones we need to give the movement credibility. The more these people – JHB and TY – skirt around the issues, proclaiming their ‘disappointment’, the more the movement to resist fails.
Indeed, you cannot resist evil if you refuse to perceive it.
And you certainly won’t perceive it if life – (aka Life-lite®) – is still relatively peachy and there are avocados in Waitrose and Test Match Special is on in the background…
I think Toby thinks that Boris and his other Conservative chums are a) good chaps and b) in charge of policy. Whereas there in fact merely puppets being operated by the real holders of global power.
I wholeheartedly agree and have personal experience.
My ex-boss, a multi millionaire, said to me just a week ago ‘bring on the passports and the regular jabs’. He thinks that the passports will help prevent criminals travelling and to help track them down ffs.
He, in his late 60s was jabbed before his turn when only the over 80s were targeted, no doubt through his network of friends one of whom is his quack; this he told me so he can get back to flying especially to his overseas apartments; we’ll that didn’t quite work out did it?
When I expressed my concerns he said, in a condescending fashion, “your an intelligent man” etc and ridiculed the idea of a cabal of the elite etc. Right back at ye mate. No, he’s far to comfy in his big house to contemplate he’s made a massive mistake with his health but I did forward the previous Delingpole podcast with the ex-hedge fund guy explaining about the imminent crash’s of the banking system and the move to crypto in an effort to appeal to something close to his heart, his fortune. Since then, crickets. Hopefully we’ll remain good friends.
I’ve decided not to even go there with my friends who are vaccinated and comfortable because I can imagine the rather condescending attitude as if I’ve totally ‘lost it’. I can even see it myself, for god’s sake, because I never thought for one minute that I would enter my later years worried about the future and seeing a very disturbing move towards a totalitarian state. I think it may help to come up with a list, a verifiable list, of things that can be used in any discussion to state how things are and defend your position without giving the impression you have gone mad. I very much doubt your ex-boss has ever listened to Mike Yeadon or Reiner Fuellmich or any of the many creditable scientists and doctors speaking out and as you imply, probably wouldn’t want to anyway. Once you are in that level of denial, you are highly unlikely to seek out reasons to dissolve your opinion.
There are unfortunately a LOT of people in that level of denial. I feel on a daily basis that I am developing some kind of schizoid personality – I come here, read the views of like minded people, share my own, and then I have to mix IRL with neighbours, family and friends all of whom are total covidians [covidiots – take your pick!] and where I have learned you dare not voice even an iota of scepticism or risk being ostracised. If I tried to give them even so much as a single clue of what is really coming down the tracks for them it would just be too much for them – they couldn’t take it on.
Some people are too old to take the red-pill, they don’t want to see the world as it really is.
I think they know full well where this is headed and what is coming but there is likely some kind of unspoken agreement that they cannot say it publicly or risk getting cancelled, and so they are prepared to go “this far and no further” in their weak condemnation of it and don’t touch the bits of it which would mire them in controversy, like Ivermectin being a treatment and the vaccine deaths and ADE – the vaccines in general. I’m not saying it is right – I’m saying I think that is what is happening. So far the people who have been the best and most honest critics have been Laurence Fox, Neil Oliver and oddly enough, Carol McGiffen interviewed one evening on GB news by Dan Wootton.
“I’m sure the conditions on this train carriage will improve”
Toby YoungGold 1941
I threw up a little in my mouth while reading the fawning fantasy over our “constitution” in the Spectator.
The reality is that we have nothing of the sort. We have customs and habits, which are of as much use as Ministerial promises when push comes to shove.
As a lawyer, of course Barrett loves being able to bill his clients for finding obscure points of precedence which judges may or may not choose to listen to. If they don’t, then never mind, off to appeals, and dig a little deeper.
The argument that it is good that decent man men and women resign from the judiciary in order to give their views freely is literally insane. In principle, yes, I see the point. In practice, it tilts the balance further towards the ever encroaching Common Purpose infestation who simply feign neutrality.
We’re heading for a moral victory in the courts, which is the consolation of losers.
Someone once said that in Britain we have a “Good Chaps” constitution whereas the US has a “Bad Dudes” constitution. Meaning that in Britain our equivalents of the founding fathers set on our constitutional arrangements on the basis that the Establishment were and would continue to be “good chaps” whereas the Americans took a much dimmer view of human nature and designed their system on the assumption that the people who assumed and retained power were most likely to be “bad dudes” sooner or later.
Hence all the checks and balances in the US system and the relative lack of power the President has over domestic politics.
While the US clearly has its problems, what with a senile President put there as a puppet by a crime syndicate who stole an election on behalf of their CCP sponsors – and the failure of the US Supreme Court to enforce the US constitution shows that it is little more than an old piece of paper locked in a dusty museum cabinet – at least the US states still have considerable autonomy over their own affairs as seen by the varying approaches to lockdown in the likes of North Dakota, Florida and Texas.
In the UK there is really nothing to protect us from becoming a totalitarian state, given the control the authorities have over the media, the lack of political oppostion and the huge centralisation of power in Westminster.
The US founding fathers clearly had a much more realistic view of human nature than their British equivalents.
I read the Spectator article about the Supreme Court, the writer wrote:
That did make me wonder a little what planet the writer was living on. Still he did seem to have a point that perhaps the judiciary is not completely lost to politics. Maybe we should not give up hope on legal avenues just yet.
Legal avenues seem to be the only thing we might still have in our favour. Yes, the writer has a fair amount of cognitive dissonance going on re the BBC. It is a highly interesting yet disturbing phenomenon to witness how so many have faith in institutions that pump put what I see as 24/7 propaganda and yet others might see as ‘the news’.
Legal avenues and passive resistance as others are suggesting here, creating a parallel society is the way to go. This way we will build resilience to coming grocery shortages etc.
Legal avenues will be ineffective – establishment are all cowed by government to not challenge what is happening.
You may be right, but I think legal avenues should be explored as much as possible anyway, because even if a court case ultimately loses it can still generate publicity and you may force admission of some points along the way. Also the sheer effort of defending the indefensible will have some psychological effect on the tyrants.
“which is arguably why it is such an important and valued institution”
I “argue” it is nothing of the kind, proven many many times over, admitted to be biased by more than a few ex BBC “names”….and the rules that govern the BBC are not invoked, new DG is a AGW/CC clown, took part in the “as the science is settled, impartiality can be abandoned” summit – and despite a massive amount of evidence to the contrary, with an equally large body of multi discipline scientists sticking to the empirical facts and steering clear of the politics, the BBC is now a fake AGW/CC/CO2 propaganda outfit.
they don’t even bother to try hiding or disguising their bias any more – it is naked and openly biased and there are agendas all over their programming much of which, including their sports coverage (as they usually manage to cram a good few agendas in there too), I can no longer be bothered to watch.
Is RoundUp just becoming a promo for the Telegraph and Spectator?
A distinct lack of real meat currently.
It’s gone downhill since Michael Curzon took it over from Toby.
Sorry Michael but those are just the facts.
Well, what a surprise:
https://www.theregister.com/2021/09/06/accenture_gets_another_5m_nhs/
JHB said to Toby we should get out on the street to protest against vax passports. Where the F has she been over the last year and a half? What’s the matter with these people. I give up.Stupid woman.
Can’t those on this side stop pretending that the government is trying to help? This is about the imposition of Authoritarianism. Possibly worse.
There’s good news and there’s bad news: the good news is my ‘business cards’ arrived today. The bad news (for the globalists, their lackeys and collaborators) is that there’s a *real* hunger out there for an alternative narrative. The ‘hits’ on my website today have been huge… simply after handing out a few cards to willing (mask-free) pissed off employees and members of the public. Old school meets hi-tech. The truth will always succeed over the lies. FIGHT. BACK. BETTER. https://www.LCAHub.org/