Environmental observations renewable energy

Craig Kelly

WIND FARMS v. WILDLIFE - The shocking environmental cost of renewable energy.

Following article published in UK Spectator by Clive Hambler, a lecturer in biological and human sciences at Oxford university who specialises in species extinction........

Wind turbines only last for ‘half as long as previously thought’, according to a new study.

But even in their short lifespans, those turbines can do a lot of damage.

Wind farms are devastating populations of rare birds and bats across the world, driving some to the point of extinction.

Most environmentalists just don’t want to know. Because they’re so desperate to believe in renewable energy, they’re in a state of denial.

But the evidence suggests that, this century at least, renewables pose a far greater threat to wildlife than climate change.

Though I started out neutral on renewable energy, I’ve since seen the havoc wreaked on wildlife by wind power, hydro power, biofuels and tidal barrages.

The environmentalists who support such projects do so for ideological reasons. What few of them have in their heads, though, is the consolation of science.

Environmentalists are urging us to adopt technologies that are hastening this process. Among the most destructive of these is wind power.

In Australia, the Tasmanian wedge-tailed eagle is threatened with global extinction by wind farms.

In north America, wind farms are killing tens of thousands of raptors including golden eagles and America’s national bird, the bald eagle.

In Spain, the Egyptian vulture is threatened, as too is the Griffon vulture — 400 of which were killed in one year at Navarra alone.

Norwegian wind farms kill over ten white-tailed eagles per year and the population of Smøla has been severely impacted by turbines built against the opposition of ornithologists.

Bats are what is known as K-selected species: they reproduce very slowly, live a long time and are easy to wipe out.

This is why they are so heavily protected by so many conventions and regulations: the biggest threats to their survival are made by us.

And the worst threat of all right now is wind turbines.

A recent study in Germany by the Leibniz Institute for Zoo and Wildlife Research showed that bats killed by German turbines may have come from places 1,000 or more miles away.

This would suggest that German turbines — which an earlier study claims kill more than 200,000 bats a year — may be depressing populations across the entire northeastern portion of Europe.

Some studies in the US have put the death toll as high as 70 bats per installed megawatt per year: with 40,000 MW of turbines currently installed in the US and Canada. This would give an annual death toll of up to three -million.

Why is the public not more aware of this carnage?

First, because the wind industry (with the shameful complicity of some ornithological organisations) has gone to great trouble to cover it up — to the extent of burying the corpses of victims.

Second, because the ongoing obsession with climate change means that many environmentalists are turning a blind eye to the ecological costs of renewable energy.

What they clearly don’t appreciate — for they know next to nothing about biology — is that most of the species they claim are threatened by ‘climate change’ have already survived 10 to 20 ice ages, and sea-level rises far more dramatic than any we have experienced in recent millennia or expect in the next few centuries.

Climate change won’t drive those species to extinction; well-meaning environmentalists might.