Over the last decade as offshore wind farms proliferated around the U.K., there has been a disturbing rise in coastline strandings of whales, dolphins and porpoises. Since the turn of the century, strandings have more than doubled and are now running at over 1,000 animals a year. The slaughter has been largely ignored by the mainstream media that runs with the agreed narrative that offshore wind is environmentally friendly and is the key to achieving Net Zero by 2050. In fact, wind turbines, whether on or off the shore, are a clear danger to many endangered species and concerns are mounting about their widespread and harmful effects on the natural world. Years ago, the great cause in environmentalism was to save the whales, but these concerns seem to have abated of late, while the slaughter of millions of onshore bats, along with the destruction of many types of large raptors, is simply ignored.
Andrew Montford of Net Zero Watch has updated his graph on the stranding of U.K. cetaceans and compared it to the rise of offshore wind capacity.
Both totals have soared in recent years. Is there a causal link? Perhaps not one that would inconvenience Net Zero fanatics, but Montford says the suggestion of a causal relationship “remains very strong”.
The Daily Sceptic has reported in the past about the mounting casualties of whales stranded off the north eastern coast of the United States in the wake of massive offshore windfarm construction. There have been around 300 fatalities in the last five years, and many suggest the extensive sonar soundings, pile driving and heavy concentrated vessel traffic is causing havoc with aquatic feeding, breeding and migration up and down the coast.
The latest U.K. stranding figures have been reported to Ascobans, a UN environmental conservation body for cetaceans in the NE Atlantic. Commenting on the “shocking” figures, the environmental writer and campaigner Jason Endfield called them “a wake-up call to those planning to further industrialise our seas in the name of renewable energy, and especially offshore wind farms”. In his view, it made no sense to increase ocean noise to levels that are “literally unbearable for marine mammals”.
The great cover-up of this environmental disaster continues with massive industrial parks being erected around the coasts of many countries. In the U.K., the incoming Labour government is committed to a massive expansion with the Mad Miliband spraying around billions of pounds in additional subsidies to boost an industry that would not exist in a free market.
To the fore in blowing smoke over the issue is Greenpeace USA’s senior oceans campaigner Arlo Hemphill who claims there is “no evidence whatsoever” connecting wind turbines to whale deaths. “It’s just a cynical disinformation campaign,” says another Greenpeace spokesman. The mainstream media often goes along with this narrative as shown by recent tweets from Agence France-Presse reporter Manon Jacob. He dismissed the focus on wind farms as a red herring “when offshore wind remains thus far marginal in the U.S. and scientific evidence of large marine mammal deaths is lacking”. This is the same Jacob who wrote a recent ‘fact check’ of the Daily Sceptic that was so bad and misleading it should feature in future journalism schools as an example of how not to criticise well-sourced material.
The investigative science journalist Jo Nova has a different take on the matter: “Researchers have known since at least 2013 that pile drivers were permanently deafening porpoises, leaving them presumably to die miserable deaths wandering blindly through dark or murky seas. Where were all the professors of marine science, paid by the public to know these things, and where was the BBC?” Spread the word, she continued. Fifty years ago, environmentalists would have raised hell about a thousand dead whales and dolphins. Now they are part of the cover-up. “They don’t want to draw attention to the blubber on the beach in case people start asking hard questions,” she observed.
There are however some signs that the ‘nothing to see here, guv’ line is starting to crack. A recent essay in Watts Up With That? suggested that an impact statement from the U.S. Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) had finally acknowledged the harm caused by offshore wind farms. Examining leases off the New Jersey and New York coast covering over 488,000 acres, the BOEM hints that these developments are not entirely benign “despite being repeatedly framed as environmentally friendly solutions to the climate crisis”. Marine mammals, sea turtles, birds and fish could suffer due to noise, habitat displacement and changes in migration patterns, it is said. Even bats, says WUWT?, which are not typically associated with offshore environments, could be affected.
The essay noted that this latest BOEM work may signal a more cautious approach, “perhaps influenced by increasing legal challenges, public backlash, and even emerging scientific research indicating that wind turbines are not as harmless as once believed”.
Chris Morrison is the Daily Sceptic’s Environment Editor.
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Those proclaiming to save the planet are the ones destroying nature the most. Always the way with socialists and their divine faith in authority.
I agree. I’ve commented for a while that often what is trumpeted as ‘environmentally friendly’ is often environmentally harmful. Say that to a climate zealot though and you can see them mentally sticking their fingers in their ears.
It’s worse their entire brain explodes and they just accuse the bird munching critic of being Hitler.
They destroy ecology on land. The Bird Choppers mangle some 500 birds p.a. per turbine it is estimated. Oceanic impact will the same. Ecology being destroyed, fauna disturbed and killed. All to save Gaia from the fictictious plant food-causes climate-theology. We as a society, are both stupid and corrupt.
Not to mention what the very large blocks of concrete that anchors them are doing to the land in terms of water drainage. As I’ve mentioned here before, part of a Lancashire village flooded a few years ago (it never had before). It was initially blamed on “global warming” until they discovered that the wind farm on the hill above had changed the water course, diverting it from channeling into the river on one side of the hill to channeling down a straight road and into the village on the other side.
I actually think most people are confused, distracted and highly trusting rather than stupid and corrupt.
No, they are simply stupid. Look how many took Death Jabs, it takes a heck of a level of stupidity to do that.
Perhaps someone should ask His Hypocritical Majesty of Windsor about the destruction of marine mammals by the windmills he is making a fortune out of, courtesy of British taxpayers.
Yet another outstanding article. Thank you.
‘Fifty years ago, environmentalists would have raised hell about a thousand dead whales and dolphins. Now they are part of the cover-up.’
Why?
Follow the money.
China pours money into lobbying via organisations like The Peoples Forum, a source of funding for many left of centre, including environmental, organisations.
That is why China’s fishing fleet plunders the world’s oceans without any of the protests once seen against, for example, Japanese whaling ships.
“[China] says its distant-water fishing fleet numbers roughly 2,600,” Ian Urbina, an investigative reporter and member of the High Seas Initiative Leadership Council at The Aspen Institute, pointed out in a Yale School of the Environment report.
“But other research, such as this study by the Overseas Development Institute, puts this number closer to 17,000,” he said in 2020.
Why this matters: In 2022, the East Asia Forum reported that “Chinese fishing fleets have trespassed into the waters of over 90 countries and depleted fish stocks.”
Two tier policing of the world’s oceans…..
In 100 years time, if there are still humans around? will they look back and say what a good idea it was to cover the surface of the planet with windmills and solar panels, or will they look back and rue the madness that lead to this ludicrous folly that very nearly wrecked the planet and killed many of it’s plants and animals?
As they negotiate their way round the huge junkyards of scrapped EVs, Windmills and Solar Panels that we failed to re-cycle will they say oh well never mind it had to be done to save the planet or will they wonder if there was something funny in the water that sent us all mad enough to engage in this planet wrecking folly?
The planet wrecking folly option.
Wall-E?
Ruling the planet, eh sorry I mean saving it, means Dolphins Whales Fish Birds Bats and any other creature that gets in the way may become casualties of war——The war on YOU?
You go back a few decades and it was all about the whales. They would give Norway and Japan a hard time. And you could understand it given their intelligence and the remarkable nature and complexity of their communication. Satan doesn’t care for whales and dolphins at all. He dislikes their frankness and carefree nature and he wants the seas depopulated except for monsters just like the land.
I wonder if the first peak has something to do with the exploration and seismic testing prior to the first windmills being put up?
Thanks Chris for keeping on the case and us informed.