https://wattsupwiththat.com/2022/02/21/green-civil-war-clean-energy-vs-wilderness-preservation/
Guest essay by Eric Worrall
People who actually care about animals and trees are finally pushing back and winning, against the wholesale wilderness destruction renewable energy supporters are attempting to inflict on green spaces.
This push back has been a long time coming.
Some of the bigger conservation societies appear to support the destruction of nature, they claim it is necessary to serve a higher cause.
How much more green space destruction would be required, for China to go 100% renewable? For the world to go 100% renewable?
I’m not a fan of nuclear meltdowns, and I’m not mocking the very real harm the meltdowns did to people and nature. But even the very worst harm the nuclear industry has done to nature, does not come close to what would happen if the world seriously attempted to hit Net Zero using renewable energy.
Now that local wilderness groups have finally found their voice, in my opinion the renewable energy revolution is stuffed, at least in the West.
Only wholesale destruction of pretty much the entire wilderness could have supplied the vast mineral resources and land area renewable energy requires. Local conservation groups have finally decided to reject the destruction of everything they care about, even if the agents of destruction claim they want to save the world with green energy.
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To combat climate change, we need such minerals — a lot of them — and quickly.
Take for example, that electric vehicles (EVs) use 10 times more copper than internal combustion vehicles — 183 pounds versus 18-49 pounds. And a 2020 study predicted increased demand “for materials between 2015 and 2060 of 87,000% for EV batteries, 1000% for wind power, and 3000% for solar cells and photovoltaics.” Another study notes that “mineral demand for use in EVs and battery storage is a major force, growing at least thirty times to 2040. Lithium sees the fastest growth, with demand growing by over 40 times…followed by graphite, cobalt and nickel (around 20-25 times).”
All of this reflects a growing conflict between competing — though ultimately connected — environmental concerns. On the one hand, large, open-pit mines are a destructive force on the landscape and a substantial threat to wilderness and waters. On the other, the resources they provide are integral to mitigating climate change.
Protecting undeveloped, unimpaired landscapes is integral to mitigating the other great environmental crisis of our time — biodiversity collapse. Recent initiatives such as the Biden administration’s “America the Beautiful” plan are part of a global movement to conserve 30 percent of all lands and waters by 2030 — one crucial component of slowing ecological devastation. This necessitates not only leaving currently undeveloped areas as they are, but restoring many others and increasing connectivity and corridors between formally protected or otherwise intact places.
In other words, we need to be increasing, not diminishing, intact landscapes.
https://windmillskill.com/blog/windfarms-kill-10-20-times-more-previously-thought
Dr. Shawn Smallwood’s 2004 study, spanning four years, estimated that California’s Altamont Pass wind “farm” killed an average of 116 Golden Eagles annually. This adds up to 2,900 dead “goldies” since it was built 25 years ago. Altamont is the biggest sinkhole for the species, but not the only one, and industry-financed research claiming that California’s GE population is stable is but a white-wash.
Eagles are not the only victims. Smallwood also estimated that Altamont killed an average of 300 red-tailed hawks, 333 American kestrels and 380 burrowing owls annually – plus even more non-raptors, including 2,526 rock doves and 2,557 western meadowlarks. In 2012, breaking the European omerta on wind farm mortality, the Spanish Ornithological Society (SEO/Birdlife) reviewed actual carcass counts from 136 monitoring studies.
They concluded that Spain’s 18,000 wind turbines are killing 6-18 million birds and bats yearly. Extrapolating that and similar (little publicized) German and Swedish studies, 39,000 U.S. wind turbines would not be killing “only” 440,000 birds (USFWS, 2009) or “just” 573,000 birds and 888,000 bats (Smallwood, 2013), but 13-39 million birds and bats every year! However, this carnage is being covered up by self-serving and/or politically motivated government agencies, wind industry lobbyists, environmental groups and ornithologists, under a pile of misleading studies paid for with more taxpayer money.
Wildlife expert Jim Wiegand has documented how areas searched under wind turbines are still confined to 200-foot radiuses, even though modern monster turbines catapult 80% of bird and bat carcasses much further. Windfarm owners, operating under voluntary (!) USFWS guidelines, commission studies that search much-too-small areas, look only once every 30-90 days, ensuring that scavengers remove most carcasses, and ignore wounded birds that happen to be found within search perimeters.
These research protocols are designed to guarantee extremely low mortality statistics, hiding the true death tolls – and the USFWS seems inclined to let the deception continue. In addition, bird mortality data are now considered to be the property of wind farm owners, which means the public no longer has a right to know. Nevertheless, news has leaked that eagles are being hacked to death all across America. This is hardly surprising, as raptors are attracted to wind turbines. They perch on them to rest or scan for prey. They come because turbines are often built in habitats that have abundant food (live or carrion) and good winds for gliding.
Birds perceive areas traveled by spinning blades as open space, unaware that blade tips are moving at up to 180 mph. Many are focused on prey. These factors make wind turbines “ecological death traps,” wherever they are located.
By 2030, the United States plans to produce 20% of its electricity from wind. That’s nearly six times as much as today, from three or four times as many turbines, striking more flying creatures due to their bigger size (even the mendacious study predicting 1.4 million bird kills recognizes this). Using the higher but still underestimated level of mortality published by Smallwood in 2013, by 2030 our wind turbines would be killing over 3 million birds and 5 million bats annually.
But this is shy of reality by a factor of ten, because 90% of casualties land outside the search perimeter and are not counted. We are thus really talking about an unsustainable death toll of 30 million birds and 50 million bats a year – and more still if we factor in other hide-the-mortality tricks documented by STEI. This carnage includes protected species that cars and cats rarely kill: eagles, hawks, falcons, owls, condors, whooping cranes, geese, bats and many others. The raptor slaughter will cause rodent populations to soar. Butchery of bats, already being decimated by White Nose Syndrome, will hammer agriculture and forestry.
The U.S. Geological Survey says the value of pest-control services to US agriculture provided by bats ranges from $3.7 billion to as much as $53 billion yearly. These chiropters also control forest pests and serve as pollinators. A Swedish study documents their attraction from as far as nine miles away to insects that swarm around wind turbines. Hence the slaughter.
The main reason to be doing this to our birds and environment is to save the planet..........from a completely FAKE climate crisis.
Trillions of dollars are there for the taking from different government subsidies, funding, tax reductions and funding of biased studies that distort the truth.
The government doesn't pay for scientists to study NON problems.
More information about the affects in the energy markets in this thread:
https://www.marketforum.com/forum/topic/78168/
Everything you ever wanted to know about the fake climate crisis......and more:
Climate Reality discussions
15 responses |
Started by metmike - April 15, 2019, 4:10 p.m.
https://www.marketforum.com/forum/topic/27864/
The planet is greening up from beneficial CO2(the building block for all life) NOT dying from a fake climate crisis.
Fake beer crisis/Death by GREENING!
11 responses |
Started by metmike - May 11, 2021, 2:31 p.m.
https://www.marketforum.com/forum/topic/69258/
If they told us the truth.......about the REAL environmental destruction going on.........it couldn't be used to obliterate fossil fuels (the lifeblood of all developed country economies) or to accomplish the political agenda.
The real environmental crisis's/insects dying-dead zones-aquifers drying up-plastics in the ocean-landfills/trash-over consumption of natural resources(metmike is a PRACTICING environmentalist): April 2019
https://www.marketforum.com/forum/topic/27498/
https://www.marketforum.com/forum/topic/66441/#66447
KillingCoal:
https://www.marketforum.com/forum/topic/78168/
How we generate electricity
Started by madmechanic - Aug. 7, 2021, 2:17 p.m.
https://www.marketforum.com/forum/topic/73293/
Wind/ solar/batteries
16 responses |
https://www.marketforum.com/forum/topic/69028/