Shocking new statistical evidence has emerged that suggests the golden eagle could be on a wind turbine-induced glide path to extinction in the United States. Eagle deaths due to wind turbines in the western US were increasing by around 9% a year from 2013 to 2020, but this annual increase leapt to 13% from 2020 to 2024, a jump of 49% in the annual increase in death rate. Bird maps are said to show that the relative abundance of golden eagles across much of their western range has declined and areas where declines occurred, “align with areas where the most turbines have been constructed”. There are fewer than 40,000 golden eagles in the US and the recent acceleration of wind infrastructure “could have a significant negative impact on the golden eagle population”.
This data and associated conclusions have been published in a new Elsevier paper written by a group of American wildlife conservation scientists. They used a Bayesian collision risk model and inputted widely available data such as the eBird abundance maps. The Bayesian model is widely used in collision risk assessment and uses objective observations and relevant information. For obvious Net Zero reasons there is little research on wind turbine wildlife carnage, although it is known that millions of bats and birds, along with a huge insect tonnage, are crunched by ever larger and more numerous wind blades. Large birds such as eagles that hunt moving prey and rely on wind currents to fly are particularly at risk and the scientists estimate that 80,000 raptors (of all kinds) are killed by wind turbines across the US every year.
The discovery by the wildlife scientists of a recent statistical jump in golden eagle mortality is particularly disturbing. As the graph below shows, the average number of estimated deaths had risen from 110 in 2013 to 270 last year.
The scientists note that golden eagles are particularly vulnerable to mortality from wind turbines since their predatory nature places them at more danger than scavenging birds. The eagles are a slow-reproducing species and it is noted that even low levels of additional mortality due to wind turbines may have a “significant” effect on overall populations.
The danger is only likely to get worse, even if Net Zero mania in the US starts to tail off in the new Trumpian political environment. Writing recently in CFACT, David Wojick says that the threat to the eagles is “potentially enormous”. Current wind power-generating capacity is 160,000 MW, but there is a queue of interconnection applications amounting to an additional 230,000 MW. Much of this, the researchers note, is within the western range of the golden eagle.
The number of turbines is showing a significant increase but the rising rate of eagle mortality is also due to the massive growth in the areas swept by increasingly large blades. With blades now being produced that are as high as the Eiffel Tower, this increases significantly the wildlife killing zones. The scientists measure this as “hazardous volume” and state that it rose by 198% from 2013 to 2024 in the higher risk areas and 119% in the lower risk zones. This translates to an increase of the potential killing zone during this period from 17.3 km3 to 47 km3. During this time, the number of turbines increased by 26% but the hazardous volume rose much more, by 171%. This figure alone would seem to explain the concerning recent jump in estimated fatalities.
Is it fair to suggest that the golden eagle might be on a wind turbine-induced glide path to extinction in its western US habitat, and potentially other areas of the world that are blighted by massive nature-destroying turbines? The answer is yes, the threat is real, it is undoubtedly growing, and it is ignored by mainstream media and political discourse. Many governing elites are fixated by the idea that windmills can power a modern society, providing clean energy and delivering a more ‘sustainable’ world. But it is becoming clearer by the day that wind turbines have a devastating effect on the natural world, killing significant fauna that could eventually threaten the survival of many species.
Few are more adapt at turning a blind eye to ecological destruction than the local Hesse Green Minister Priska Hinz, who stated recently: “Wind energy makes a decisive contribution to the energy transition and the preservation of nature. It is the only way to preserve forest and important ecosystems.” Possibly the cynical laughter would not have been so great if she had not made the comments defending the destruction of forest in Germany to erect a number of 240 metre high wind turbines. What could have been a dirty little secret instead attracted worldwide headlines since the clearing involving the destruction of a reported 120,000 trees in the forest of Reinhardswald, the setting for the fairy tales of the Brothers Grimm. Worse, the turbines were due to be erected around the Sababurg ‘Sleeping Beauty’ castle.
Pierre Gosselin, who runs the German-based science site No Tricks Zone, was unimpressed, noting of green energy: “It’s not cost-free, it’s full of corrupt and unresponsive politicians who no longer care about democracy, and it certainly doesn’t make the environment better. It’s a nasty juggernaut of waste, fraud, corruption and ecological degradation – with dead birds, turbine vibration sickness, strobe dizziness and landscape pollution.”
Chris Morrison is the Daily Sceptic’s Environment Editor.
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I think a fair few people were worried personally about the “virus”, others were worried about the impact it might have on the vulnerable and/or health services, and either way were “happy” to have a “lockdown” for a short period, hoping that would as it were “flatten the curve” and enable things to return to normal. My gut feel is that after the first month or so, many fewer people were worried about either of the things I have mentioned but were stuck in some kind of rut where they couldn’t bring themselves to rebel or speak against “lockdowns” for fear of being fined, thought of as granny killers etc. This was helped by the weather and furlough payments.
It is definitely the case that people thought it would be a couple of weeks at home, and many welcomed it as two weeks off work. Few anticipated what lockdowns would become.
The fear itself was amplified from nervousness to panic by the lockdowns themselves.
It was the extreme response of governments that led people to think: my god, if governments around the world are doing this, this disease must be incredibly dangerous.
Also, being locked up and glued to the TV and Internet, people became obsessed and were terrorised by the news and the government that had to justify locking everyone up.
The day before lockdowns, some people were frightened, some people were nervous, most people were just getting on with life. Once lockdown started, that’s when the real fear kicked in.
I never really picked up much of a sense of fear, neither from people out and about nor from colleagues, friends, family and acquaintances. Mainly resignation or a sense that it was all necessary to protect granny. But it’s not a representative sample.
I think a powerful element was the ‘daily body count’ which, as we learned later could have been a number produced by a squirrel running across a calculator pad, but when the MSM was so doom focussed, it set the tone in which the politicians could have a free run without interference from scrutiny. Everything from the opposition benches was all about further, faster, with no actual reference to anything that would improve anything, like Hancocks 100,000 tests per day, and the Turkish PPE Saga. Everything was couched in jeopardy, uncertainty and doubt. A lot of people can see this was all ‘nudged’, but the majority still think it was for real.
Maybe I am projecting my own indifference onto everyone I was in contact with, but I never got the impression that people were that worried.
For me the moment it triggered my concern was the footage of army lorries trundling into Lombardy full of coffins. Deep in my psyche, are the memories of watching Terry Nation’s TV series ‘Survivors’ in 1975, when a (guess what) virus accidentally released by a Chinese Scientist goes on to kill 99.98% of the global population, and the Survivors struggle to survive. I was at an impressionable age, and Lucy Fleming was very pretty.
There was footage of China building gigantic hospitals in two weeks, and like I say the whole message was far from the typical Britishness of ‘Keep calm and carry on’. Covid very quickly lost that initial ‘wtf is this?’, but I do find that many sceptics rewrite their initial reactions and play it all down, as if they never got fooled by any of it, when I suspect many were for a time.
I was getting multiple complaints on a forum I was subscribed to for saying it was all overblown doom mongering when China locked down Wuhan. It was not a popular opinion.
I enjoyed the first two series of Survivors when they were broadcast but missed the third series due to being otherwise occupied in getting to know the future Mrs SoR. Somehow when they released the series on DVD I only bought the first two series which then languished on my shelves until just recently when my daughter bought me a second-hand set of the third series.
I’ve now re-watched the first two series at one episode a week and am just about to start on the third series – so no spoilers please!
It was concerning for a very short time for me, until I did some research. But yes I think there is some truth in what you are saying.
Lucy Fleming, yes.
My initial reaction was that I was immensely glad that the broken tooth which had been giving me hell since February courtesy due to NHS procedures involved when getting an appointment with a private dentist¹ was finally pulled on the very day before government Covimania broke out. By that time, the MSM were already running in full CoviPanic® mode. A final delay for the procedure occurred because the dentist had just come back from a holiday in Italy and took a few days off because he felt unwell. The significance of this should be obvious to anyone who lived through the Horrible Events In Italy™ reporting. Needless to say, I absolutely didn’t care if only to f***ing tooth got pulled.
I admit that I was scared of the virus due to all I had read about it after Covimania had broken out. OTOH, I was aware that Horrible Events In Italy™ was a headline phenomenon with no significance in the real world as this was plainy obvious from the published statistics about COVID. I was scared nevertheless because humans aren’t really rational beings. OTOH, the idea that I could hide in my cupboard from an airborne virus which was likely everywhere around me was obviously ridiculous. Hence, I pulled myself together and decided on “Carry on and chance it” as only realistic option. COVID fear then quickly faded.
¹ I was insisting on oral sedation. This meant I had to get one of those ultra-prohibited benzodiazepin pills. A very special NHS form was needed for private doctors to prescribe these. And the only very special guy authorized to hand out this very special special form had just gone on holiday for a fortnight when I initially contacted a dentist.
Securing a black market supply of pretty much any prohibited common recreational drug had certainly been a lot easier.
You know you’re probably right.
Proof of it that every measure thereafter: confinements, masks, jabs, spacing etc.. had to be forced and coerced.
Without it being forced they would have fallen by the wayside almost immediately.
Perhaps the main fear all along was of the state and its enforcers (and the inner Gestapo officers of many a private citizen who were only to happy to act as unofficial police).
I think so. Look at how most people as soon as they were “allowed” went back to doing things that had been deemed dangerous the week before. I know people are often dim, but if you were really scared you wouldn’t believe the government when they told you it was safe all of a sudden.
Of course many were scared, and some still are.
The threat of a £10,000 fine does focus the mind.
Yeah OK. £10,000 would have been the fine for organising a large event.
I am on first name terms with our chemist (pharmacist as they have poshly been retitled) and as this crime of the century was putting it’s boots on I remember chatting with him in the shop. He had been called to attend some talks about the coming Apocalypse and clearly nothing had got in the way of the doom mongers giving said talks. The chemist had been told that thousands were going to get sick and thousands would end up in hospital and as no treatments were available those becoming too sick “would be sent home to die” – his exact words.
After that fateful March lockdown I became ever vigilant and on daily lookout for the expected funeral motorcades. For some reason they just did not appear. By about the second week I knew something wasn’t right and my hours and hours of Sceptic research began. I was certainly not feared of any “virus” and ignored lockdown, largely carrying on as before where possible.
Those who realised we were being lied to either through instinct or research or both as in my case were never feared of any of the shit show that was unfolding. Fear was the lot of those who couldn’t keep their faces away from the telebox or the crummy newspapers. I well remember the toilet paper fuss but I genuinely couldn’t get my head round it.
The empty streets and town centres were slightly frightening but in a sort of John Wyndham Day of the Triffids’ way. Yes, there was very much a science fiction feel to those early days but fear?
Absolutely NO.
The toilet paper shortage was created by the media.
Early March 2020 there were endless photos of empty shelves in the media, but whenever I went to supermarkets the shelves were filled with toilet paper as normal.
Eventually, of course, the photos of empty shelves induced panic buying.
I saw Arnold Schwarzenegger coming out of our local Aldi carrying an enormous pack of toilet rolls on his shoulder. ‘Hey Arnie! Where did you find those?’, I asked.
‘Aisle B, back’.
I gave you the -1: what an awful joke! But thanks for the laugh!
At this point would it be appropriate to refer me to the DS article about plagiarism?
I saw this one as an edited photograph of The Terminator with the caption added – but I can’t remember where.
Aisle B, back. Groan. I am still laughing!
The toilet paper shortage was created by the media.
Early March 2020 there were endless photos of empty shelves in the media, but whenever I went to supermarkets the shelves were filled with toilet paper as normal.
By that time, they even admitted that they were doing a copycat of a well-known hoax on US 1970s TV where some popular guy had announced an imminent toilet paper shortage for piss taking. People then duly rushed into supermarkets and emptied the shelves and it took over a month for things to get back to normal.
OTOH, it wasn’t solely panic buying. During this period, toilet paper could be sold on E-Bay for much more than its supermarket prices and this caused gangs of gypsies to go to supermarkets to buy everything they could carry for later resale (per-person limits for # of toilet paper packs one may buy are completely useless when a large ‘extended family’ goes shopping as inidividuals). I know this because I’ve observed them in operation a few times.
I won’t be able to survive much past the zombie apocalypse once the tinned and packaged food runs out, due to non-existent hunting skills ( too emotionally attached to kill small furries too, though I could perhaps clobber a fish if my life depended on it ), but mostly I don’t think I’d survive long once the loo roll all runs out. There is no way I’m going full-on primal ( or even medieval, tbh ) with my toilet hygiene.
Just putting that out there.. But when you stop and think about it, people must’ve really stank for most of human history. There’s a lot to be grateful for nowadays and I for one am extremely grateful for the personal hygiene revolution.
But how did our ancestors live in a world without these basic products…? I mean, women didn’t even have tampons but nor did they have Vanish!!
More to the point, could you clobber a zombie? This is important as we wouldn’t want them to be well-fed. I imagine there’s a distinct lack of nutritional value in most other people’s brains.
All-purpose cloth and running water will do, although that’s somewhat uncomfortable. And many people do still really stink nowadays. We’re all just routinely drilled into ignoring our sense of smell. For some reason, this has stopped working for me about twenty years ago.
It was the accusations of selfish food hoarding that got my goat. You could be quarantined for a fortnight with zero notice or planning, and they tried to say it was wrong to keep a stock of food in the house? Were parents supposed to starve their children for a fortnight?
A distant relative couple (actually, in-laws of a cousin) really went to town over the lockdown. They’re considerably older than me and, I guess, frail. He had a boiler suit which he would wear to go to the supermarket for shopping; he would take it off and keep it hanging in the garage. He would wash the products he bought with a disinfectant solution and keep most of it in a fridge in the garage. This went on for months until they could get supermarket home deliveries – and the washing of products and storing in the garage went on for a year or more.
Some people were definitely scared of the bug.