Further devastating evidence of the toll that onshore wind turbines take on local eagle populations has emerged in Tasmania. The local Wedge-tailed eagle is thought to be down to just 1,000 individuals, but over the last 12 years at least 270 birds have been killed or injured in the vicinity of wind farms. According to a recent paper in Australian Field Ornithology, a further 49 vulnerable White-bellied sea eagles have also been killed in this period.
The scale of depredation is shocking but it could be much worse than reported. According to author Gregory Pullen, information about eagle deaths is not readily available, “nor readily made available”. His calculations arise from a number of primary sources including annual reports. He suggests that unrecorded casualties are higher since most are recorded anecdotally and are not the result of systematic survey. The Tasmanian sub-species of the Wedge-tailed eagle is listed as endangered under both federal and state threatened species legislation.
Large birds of prey such as eagles are at particular risk from giant wind turbine blades revolving at speed since they rely on air currents for sustained flight. The Daily Sceptic has covered this developing story, noting that few activists, bird conservation groups and writers seem able to rouse themselves to complain when the natural flight path of raptors stands in the way of green progress. The Australian climate journalist Jo Nova has stood out from the unquestioning crowd, noting that in Tasmania the greens are destroying nature – again. “It’s not about the environment is it,” she said. She went on to add that there are plans to build up to 10 wind turbine parks across Tasmania – “and if one tower misses, the next will get them”.
It’s not really about the environment over in California either, where America’s national bird, the bald eagle, and many other raptors face mass slaughter in the local wind farm avian graveyards. This follows the state Democrat-controlled legislature’s recent decision to relax controls on wildlife protections to allow permits to kill previously fully protected species for renewable energy and infrastructure projects. However, evidence continues to emerge that the slaughter has been going on for years. Last year, NextEra, one of America’s largest utility companies, was fined $8 million after 150 eagles were killed at its wind farms across eight states. According to the Golden Gate Audubon Society, a wind farm complex in Altamont has been killing 75-100 golden eagles every year since the 1980s.
The animal slaughter does not stop at large birds of course. A number of scientific studies have point to the destruction of millions of bats and smaller birds every year by turbine blades capable of travelling at the tip at speeds approaching 150mph.
Alas, it is not as if the deaths of these wildlife green martyrs are helping to produce much worthwhile economic activity. In the U.K., the small number of jobs being produced by green technologies is starting to be noticed. Gary Smith, the leader of Britain’s largest trade union, recently said that communities along the North Sea can see wind farms, “but they can’t point to the jobs”. Possibly exaggerating to make his point, he added that much of the green work seems to be either London-based lobbying or clearing away the animal casualties of wind farm blades. “It’s usually a man in a rowing boat, sweeping up the dead birds,” he observed.
Green activists are increasingly being caught between a rock and a hard place on these impact issues. It is becoming obvious that many of the green technology solutions proposed to replace fossil fuels come with heavy environmental costs. Whether it be open cobalt mining with child labour, or digging up vast quantities of the Earth’s crust to help construct second-rate solutions such as windmills, the terrible impact is all too obvious. At the moment the typical stance seems to be that voiced by Audubon California Policy Director Mark Lynas, who said we need renewable energy resources, and he did not want to see the eagle deaths “being used to push against clean energy”.
Another area where ecology fights are breaking out is on the east coast of America, where whales are beaching on the shores of New Jersey and New York in alarming numbers. In the first half of this year over 40 whales have died in this way. Large areas of the local ocean are being turned into industrial wind parks, with particular concern arising over 24-hour sonar soundings. The veteran environment campaigner Michael Shellenberger has said the massive offshore works are wreaking environmental damage in previously pristine waters. “It’s the biggest environmental scandal in the world,” he charges.
The waters off the U.S. east coast are important feeding and breeding grounds for large mammals such as whales and dolphins, including the rare North Atlantic right whale. Shellenberger has recently produced a documentary called Thrown to the Wind which presents evidence of whales hit by ships, and high decibel sonar that is said to separate mothers from their calves, sending them into harm’s way. The film shows environmentalists checking the sonar which is said to measure 150 dBs at sea – equivalent to about 90 dBs on land. The noise is a relentless drum beat that is said to pound across the ocean throughout the day and night. On land, the sonar noise would be equivalent to a hairdryer. For humans, prolonged noise much above 70 dBs may start to damage hearing.
The film makes the point that serious pile-driving to secure the giant turbines to the sea floor has yet to start in earnest. Once built there is a danger that the huge back wash created by the giant blades will disturb and kill off plankton, destroying the food supply for the whales.
It must be noted that many interested parties dispute the claims currently being made about wildlife in the new oceanic industrial parks springing up with generous subsidies from the Biden Administration. Both sides can marshal their arguments and evidence. But at the moment, the deck is rigged in favour of the green lobby. Fracking for oil and gas was banned in the U.K. with Friends of the Earth presenting evidence of local earthquakes similar in force to someone falling off a chair. It is more than likely that multiple eagle deaths would be enough to stop the operation of any oil and gas installation. Seemingly, it will take more than a mere rowing boat full of protected but very dead birds to stop the new Green Barons.
Chris Morrison is the Daily Sceptic’s Environment Editor.
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Life in an arrid dust bowel is not conducive to human beings, they just don’t have a choice! Corrupt govanance and squandered western help has just exacerbated the already terrible situation, war and pestulance has done the rest.
There is no NHS or pension fund for their old age so, having many children in a country with a high infant mortality rate is your only insurance that you will be cared for in your later years, all tragic but true!
If you where born in a western country then you have already hit the jackpot!
There are lots of countries with less rainfall than Somalia.
We all have choices, but of course how attractive the realistic options are varies enormously depending on where you live etc. We in England are benefiting from the choices of all those people who came before us, going back to the humans that left Africa whenever that was.
Those “choices” you refer to were the use of fossil fuels, but now those fuels are to be removed for political purposes and I reckon 90% of the public think that is entirely for the purposes of “saving the planet”. But fossil fuels empower people. They free people from a life of misery, which until we started using them was the default situation for the people of the world. You can see even today that the one billion who have no electricity and the other two billion with only enough to power a operate a fridge only start to come out of that medieval existence when they get access to coal oil and gas. But global politics tries to stop them doing so. ———The western world has become prosperous by using fossil fuels, and our life expectancy has doubled, but UN Sustainable Development politics insist we must stop doing that and instead use wind and sun. We can afford to dabble in such fanciful technologies, but already we see energy prices rise and living standards fall. I am afraid “saving the planet” does not come cheap, and that would not be so bad if it were really about the planet.
Indeed
The insistence of the climate change folk to not just ignore population changes as a contributing factor to ‘climate issues’ but to actively steer the discussions in the opposite direction is truly weird. It is quite possible that most ‘climate problems’ of current years are simply the impact of normal climate fluctuations (normal flooding, normal droughts) on higher population densities.
Correct, blaming this on climate change is totally destructive to the true causes that need immediate attention, not constant liberal hand waving towards the net zero monster!
Absolutely. Another factor which often seems to be ignored (and I am talking about the UK here) is the failure to update, or even maintain, drainage. New houses are built, for example, and the rainwater drainage is just tacked on to what already exists, similarly with sewage. Ditches and culverts are not cleared, rivers are not dredged. Hey presto, we get heavy rain followed by flooding and its the fault of ‘climate change’, nothing to do with penny pinching by developers and local authorities.
Spot on.
The current situation in Somalia, tragic though it undoubtedly is, is the future we are facing if we do not stop the Davos Deviants.
Judging from the graphic, the population of Somalia has been growing exponentially for about the last 70 years, ie, roughly since the former British Somaliland became an ‘independent’ recipient of so-called aid money. Consequently, the situation for humans there can’t be too tragic. Otherwise, they wouldn’t keep multiplying so fast.
Actually, it is the world’s poorest who have the highest birthrates. It is only when people become wealthier, with better education, affordable energy, contraception, proper sanitation and generally living more organised lives that birth rates fall to levels of the wealthy west. ————Poor people can only do that by the use of fossil fuels, but climate politics stops them doing that and instead fobs them off with some money and bribes for turbines, keeping them forever poor and birthrates high.
Someone wrote this letter, then travelled (by jet, obviously) to Somalia in order to find six children from fairly wealthy families(!) – they wouldn’t be in school otherwise, they’d have to work – who agreed to put their names onto it. One would hope that the families at least got decently paid for this disgusting publicity stunt by the very people who plan to make their lots a lot worse to combat their own, irrational fears about the weather in 100 years (as if they stood any chance of ever experiencing it).
Rather like the “unprecedented” floods in Pakistan ….. which weren’t unprecedented at all.
But they did affect more people since Pakistan’s population, which was 32.5 million in 1947, is now 240.5 million and growing. And most of these people are poor, are living a subsistence existence and have built their “houses” on flood plains.
And the Pakistani Government is doing nothing about the population explosion …. and won’t since they believe it is acceptable for a man to have four wives and keep them permanently pregnant.
Leaving the monogamy vs polygamy issue aside, why wouldn’t it? It’s normal for people to get children. The Sex is fun but kids suck so much! faction will eventually die out for the better. Contraception is just a self-imposed reproductional disadvantage and will have the usual evolutionary effects. And no, immigration laws won’t help against this, as 500,000 catankerous OAPs can’t defend any border against anyone.
Using standard GangGreenLogic™ and looking at the charts, it is quite clear that CO2 is causing the population of Somalia to increase.
Unsure of the mechanism. But that’s always the case with GangGreen SettledScience™.
Perhaps that’s why our own and kindly Beloved Leaders are so keen to import boat loads of them to Blighty. Alleviate Somali droughts and increase our own (rather paltry) CO2 output whilst maybe even reducing our occasional floods? What’s not to like?
On any claims, or articles or pronouncements about climate change from bureaucrats and the mainstream media, people need to realise that they have entered a FACT FREE ZONE. Almost nothing we hear is true and is mostly a tiny smidgeon of the truth elevated into a planetary emergency, but with NO EVIDENCE. In the real world there is no increase in the frequency or intensity of any type of weather events, so therefore claims of a “Climate Crisis” are a total fabrication for political purposes. It is very easy to insist that every single bit of extreme weather, every flood and every drought is caused by human activity, but it is impossible to disprove, which is why the proponents of climate change get away with their misinformation. When claims cannot be falsified, they are not science, and when everything that happens is claimed to be caused by our industrial activity then you are not indulging in science. Even the IPCC admit that they see no human signal in the data at this time ——-Did that information appear on BBC or SKY???? No, it certainly did not. All of the climate hysteria emanates from the UN IPCC, but it grows arms and legs like an Octopus on mainstream media. No wonder people glue themselves to the road.