Having given up on “wind turbines kill birds”, Climate deniers have moved on to “Wind turbines kill whales”, which is pretty ironic for people who really couldn’t give a damn about birds, or whales, for that matter, or the science that shows what the real threat to all species really is.
Check out this Nimitz Class cherry pick from tobacco, climate, and whatever-you-got denier Steve Milloy:
ATLANTIC CITY, N.J. — A young humpback whale that washed up on an Atlantic City beach on Saturday had evidence of a head injury, a large hematoma located just behind the blow hole, an official from the Marine Mammal Stranding Center said Monday.
“The only thing we suspect may have happened is that it was hit by a large boat,” said Sheila Dean, executive director of the Brigantine-based center. “There was a big hematoma.”
With environmental and citizens groups calling for a federal investigation into whether sonar mapping related to future wind turbine projects off the coast may have played a role in four recent humpback whale deaths in New Jersey, Dean said it was premature to conclude about a cause of death.Others noted that the National Marine Fishery Service has designated an unusual mortality event for humpback whales based on an increase in mortality that began in 2016, before any wind energy activity.
Dean said samples from the whale were being tested “to see what else might be going on.” She said the whale was partially decomposed, which might affect how much could be determined.Danielle Brown, lead researcher for Gotham Whale, a whale advocacy and educational group, said there has been an observed increase in whale deaths for at least six years.
”This is not something that just happened in 2022 or 2023,” said Brown, a Ph.D. candidate at Rutgers University’s Department of Ecology, Evolution and Natural Resources. Brown said the primary cause of whale deaths has come when they collide with ships or get entangled in fishing gear. Brown said that the number of whales in the area has increased over the past decade as they follow schools of menhaden for food. ”So it does make sense that an increase in whales in the area would lead to an increase in strandings.”
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The groups, including citizen groups Project our Coast and Defend Brigantine Beach, cited six whale deaths, including two in New York, in what they described as an “unprecedented wave of whale deaths.”
Whales, most often endangered right whales, have been used as a rallying cry for conservative and fossil fuel industry aligned groups fighting offshore wind projects.
The groups that gathered on the beach in Atlantic City on Monday dismissed any connection to those interests, and said they only took donations from individuals. Protect Our Coast NJ raises donations for the Ocean Environment Legal Defense Fund through its Facebook group and a webpage. The fund is administered by the Caesar Rodney Institute, a Delaware-based group that originated as a conservative nonprofit, but now bills itself as nonpartisan.
Hornick said the institute has no role in the group’s activities beyond holding its funds.
The Heartland Institute, a national libertarian think tank, recently filed comments with the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management against an offshore wind project in Virginia, “to protect the endangered North Atlantic right whale.”
The Heartland Institute has been closely aligned with fossil fuel and conservative groups in the past, including Exxon Mobil the Mercer family and Koch Industries, though it no longer discloses its funding sources, according to DeSmog, which tracks climate denial efforts.
If mapping sonar is a problem, then why isn’t naval sonar? Sonar pulses at 235 Db certainly are a problem. There is a reason submarines turn off sonar when divers are in the water.
Yeah, mapping sonar has been an issue for ocean life (particularly mammals) for a long time. Funny how Milloy&company never worried about all the mapping the offshore drilling industry has done for decades.
Climate-denying delayalists have not given up on the dead bird thing; it appears in things I read almost every day. If there were such a thing as irony I’d say it was ironic that I’m also accused of being a hypocrite in endless tu quoque arguments, often as part of the bird argument (where, by the way, the decades-long eagle study I read here comes in handy).
Smug, quasi-environmentalists keep refusing to admit that vast arrays of machines could have any impact on:
A) Scenery (just lie and call it “beautiful” while CO2 keeps rising, yet you’ll claim Big Wind is solving AGW)
B) Wildlife (bird, bat & insect deaths, proportional to numbers of 180 MPH blades in their flight paths)
C) Soundscapes (infrasound and other rural irritant noises you call NIMBYism)
D) Depression over all the new industrialization (for actual environmentalists, that is)
It looks like my reply to your recent comment on a 2013 article here was blocked by the owner of this blog, but I’ll try to post this link of what America’s open space will look like by 2050 if wind (and solar) sprawl isn’t largely replaced by nuclear power. You’ll probably be giddy over this map!
https://kleinmanenergy.upenn.edu/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/Fig-2-JEsse-Event-2-1536×950.png (Enough ugly sprawl to make America fully clean and green?)
I recall from earlier debates it was revealed you have a financial stake in Big Wind, but you only apply such motives to those embedded in Big Oil & Gas (wind power’s deep allies; fracked gas for backup power, etc.).
Hey, you’re back!
Can you give us an example of wind turbine noises bothering wildlife? I’m sure you have lots.
4 sentences & a frag, 15 lies not counting the multiple lies packed into some single words. A lot even for False, it seems, or maybe my memory is lying, too.
Unless you’ve never studied development maps or driven through the countryside, you know damned well I’m not lying about the vast visual scale of wind projects, but you’re so obsessed with them as being “clean” energy that you won’t spend any time considering their visceral impact on nature.
Since you seem woke (or at least anti-capitalist) in other forums, maybe the views of native Americans will sink in a bit:
Room For a (Sacred) View? American Indian Tribes Confront Visual Desecration Caused by Wind Energy Projects https://digitalcommons.law.ou.edu/ailr/vol38/iss2/1/
Occasionally I ride past a large wind farm & my heart soars every time. The fact that yours doesn’t is the symptom of a mental illness which you exhibit in various ways every time you comment. Please get it treated.
All indigenous people’s land should be completely sovereign territory that includes their sacred lands. It’s been shown that indigenous control is a major climate solution, sequestering carbon & preserving biodiversity. Renewable energy does the same, while taking up less land than fossil fuels & not contaminating land for geologic ages.
One of the many ways your disease manifests is that you cherry pick your way through reality, choosing which facts to believe & which ones to reject simply because they don’t support the conclusions your biases drive you to—biases, btw, caused by the disease. Fossil & fissile fuels do thousands of times more, worse, & longer-lasting damage, especially to indigenous people & lands.
Improvements in RE tech mean even less land is taken up.
https://www.yaleclimateconnections.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/08/083018_new_wind_turbine.jpg
On the rolling hills of Altamont Pass, east of San Francisco, one of the country’s oldest wind farms has produced power for more than 30 years.
Almost 1,500 old turbines were taken down in recent years. Only 82 new ones were installed in their place, but they produce about the same amount of electricity. [with a larger capacity factor and lower kick-in speed so they’re more likely to be available when they’re needed. But even the new ones are small compared to cutting edge turbines so further reductions are inevitable.
“Wind power is getting more efficient. And that means it’s becoming more affordable.”
August 30, 2018 Yale Climate Connections
Eliminating capitalism & the oligarchy from the decision-making process—even eliminating the oligarchy by using the tax system to make mbillionaires, trillionaires, & hundred thousandaires illegal—would eliminate bad siting decisions. All of our energy can be provided by rooftop solar, offshore wind, geothermal, tidal, & existing & micro hydro, supplemented by solar & wind on fuel wastelands, helping those lands to recover.
There’s a big difference between an eyesore for a selfish “nature lover” and something that damages habitat (which a real environmentalist cares about). Birds and forest critters and bugs don’t care about wind turbines and billboards that might bother you. You can’t see the PM2.5 from combustion that affects the health of every creature with lungs.
The Chinese have actually added artificial nests to power pylons in Hainan, which so far have had a 70% occupancy rate. The birds thrive and enjoy nests that are snake- and rodent-free.
Gigantic, sprawling wind turbines forcing blatant physical intrusions on nature can’t possibly be harming ANYTHING according to this biased blog. You’re like the people who say CO2 only grows plants, or birds nesting on offshore oil platforms proves they’re green. You just can’t admit it because you’re only superficial environmentalists.
Before you launch into the strange canard of “anyone who opposes wind energy blight can only be a global warming denier,” describe in detail each of these wind power landscapes & seascapes, lecturing us old-school, non-woke, scenery-respecting environmentalists on their “beautiful” attributes vs. the natural scenery they invaded.
https://google.com/search?tbm=isch&q=wind+farm+mountain (pick your favorite industrial mountaintop)
https://google.com/search?tbm=isch&q=wind+farm+ocean (so much for the ocean’s semi-infinite, peaceful horizons)
Keep in mind that the world is nearing 400,000 of these giant bird & bat killers while CO2 keeps rising, and soulless RE100 cult leader Mark Jacobson yearns for “3.8 million of them.” You can feel the deep respect for natural aesthetics in his soul! America now has over 73,000 wind turbines and protests of onshore sites are very common, with offshore drawing ire as well, e.g. Ocean City, MD and other coastal communities.
Where will vast numbers of new turbines be “properly sited” without obliterating what’s left of nature in wind zones? See: http://tinyurl.com/2050windsprawlmap
I’m not a global warming denier in the slightest, so save your strawman arguments on that. Step back for a minute to recall the days when environmentalists didn’t sell out to any major industrial developments, which they now do with Big Wind all the time. Ski lifts on mountains are analogous to mini wind turbines, and were often fought. Do you find no irony in that, or is CO2 the only real threat to quality of life now?
My solution? In addition to serious global birth control (poor people aren’t eco-saints), we need a lot more nuclear power, like the unfortunately cancelled NuScale Idaho/Utah SMR project. Bleak wind energy sprawl shouldn’t be getting 17x the subsidies of nuclear, making its cost seem artificially low, not to mention its uncountable aesthetic costs.
https://www.google.com/search?q=site%3Ahttps%3A%2F%2Ffalseprogress.home.blog%2F+wind+turbines
Denying delayalist. Liar. Projectile hypocrite. Superficial selfish psychotic psychopathic SISS sufferer (pSychologically Induced Stupidity Syndrome). White supremacist… I don’t think I even have to explain any of those or link them to particular debunkments for almost everyone here to get it.
Just 1 illustration of the scale of the falsehoods False Hood posts every time:
https://miro.medium.com/max/698/1*HTXwVTHLfUYpkgXbGdcvCw.jpeg
https://cleantechnica.com/2012/08/03/oil-gas-over-13-times-more-in-historical-subsidies-than-clean-energy/
Actually, corn ethanol is not renewable, just a money- and energy-laundering scam for oil, so nukes have gotten 50 times the subsidies renewables have, & fossil fuels 100 times more ($7 trillion a year subsidies, plus $6 trillion a year in externalities). And trying to increase nukes to any significant part of the world’s energy will inevitably vastly increase the number and damage of disasters, revealing the already-staggering amount of insurance & other externalities. (Nukes are now ~5% of world energy; they’re less than half of renewables’ supply of both electricity & total energy, even without the vanished clothesline paradox energy.)
Please seek psychotherapy.
As usual, you never honestly address the aesthetic blight of these gigantic machines, sidestepping that issue and changing the subject to public opinion that’s often cherry-picked or tangential. But the rural public has seen too many ugly machines popping up and won’t stand for it. “Clean energy” propaganda is failing to push through a lot of wind projects and wind zealots are losing to aesthetic values, thankfully. Solar faces the same resistance and needs to stay off open space.
“Across America, clean energy plants are being banned faster than they’re being built”
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/investigations/2024/02/04/us-counties-ban-renewable-energy-plants/71841063007/
You’re stuck on the strawman that most people who oppose industrial sprawl are “for” fossil fuels. When one is born into a fossil fuel economy, it’s the default normal. It doesn’t mean we “like” air pollution. Before wind power sprawl became so widespread, I was (and still am) against coal strip mining and sprawling oil & gas drilling sites, but those are far less visible now than wind turbines, and they don’t cause overt bird & bat deaths (on top of every other cause).
The oversized global economy is a manifestation of fossil fuels, and you’re pretending it can continue without them. I favor realistic math. Even low-sprawl nuclear power will have a hard time maintaining the economy’s bloat. Sprawl and human hubris have always been the main drivers of environmental problems; people need to stop constantly forcing nature into smaller pockets. Recall the wisdom of E. F. Schumacher.
“In addition to serious global birth control (poor people aren’t eco-saints), we need a lot more nuclear power, like the unfortunately cancelled NuScale Idaho/Utah SMR project.”
Ok, so you’re a racist, got that. If only those brown people would stop
having babies. Michael Moore much?
and, oh yeah, we need more nuclear power like the one that got cancelled.
Are you going to put up the money? It got cancelled because investors bailed.
It’s a little bit like “if we had some eggs we could have ham and eggs, if we had some ham”.
A solution that can’t be built is not a solution. Moreover, a solution that can’t
be deployed in a relevant time frame is also not a solution.
Elsewhere here you assert that strip mining, fracking, oil drilling and mountain top removal
have no impact on wildlife. Really? You’re going to stick with that?
Sure, call me a “racist” for simply describing who’s having the most babies. If Mormons were churning out those gross totals, I’d go after them, too. The planet has a math problem. Limited room for people and their sprawling chattel.
I made a post linking wokeness and wind-pushers for their “all or nothing” attitudes:
https://falseprogress.home.blog/2021/11/14/woke-wind-energy-no-justice-or-peace-for-natural-scenery-wildlife-and-rural-people/ (defacing cities or the countryside comes easily for zealots)
Again, I’m no champion of what (white/Asian) capitalism has done to nature, with wind energy sprawl being the latest example. You just choose to believe that one form of industrialization is nobler than another because smoke doesn’t usually come from its oil-built structures.
so you offer no solutions, just your racial resentment and general hatred for humanity. Got it.
Fear of nuclear is tied to older plant designs and false direct association with nuclear weapons (much faster energy release). Technology improves over time, as in SMRs and molten salt reactors to prevent thermal runaway. Nuclear would get far more subsidies if wind preachers hadn’t pushed so hard for the PTC.
Climatologist James Hansen is among those who thinks it’s dangerous to use quasi-renewables as the focus instead of nuclear. He’s done the scale math and sees why you can’t run big economies on fickle energy. Wind is extremely inefficient, space-wise, so people lie about its “footprint” being only the tower bases; ANWR “2,000 acres” style propaganda, irony lost.
See video describing why people deny climate change per their “hero stories.” ‘The Heretics’ author Will Storr on talking climate change with Lord Monckton:
For likely the same reason, you think you’re a Green hero, supposedly fighting Big Oil (which builds & backs up Big Wind), willing to ignore growing landscape-change (industrial blight) and a growing trail of dead birds & bats (whatabouty house cats don’t kill bats or larger birds in wilder areas).
I offer the rational math of nuclear power, but I think we’ll crash by mid century because there are too many people and peak oil (shale’s last stand) is near. Homelessness is a strong sign, as is global warming and all the rest. You and many others have trouble comprehending Earth’s finitude and you sure don’t respect its natural aesthetics. Same deal with Elon Musk’s near-space satellite barrage.
The fact that you spin overpopulation-acknowledgment into “racism” shows you’re a computer-screen environmentalist. I like to save untrammeled physical nature from all types of people. John Muir also had that quaint pursuit. Picture wind turbines all over Hetch Hetchy’s cliff tops (air dams vs. water dams). Would you care about that valley either way?
You offer no solutions except for the mathematical folly of a “green” world spoiled by giant machines that will fail once their oil-based construction & maintenance energy peaks. Surely you know how fracked gas backs up wind when breezes die? That’s just for the final product, not all the mining, fabrication, transport and assembly. Diesel is instrumental for the windustry.