Pierre Gosselin has found a new study showing bats really don’t want to be around wind turbines. The effect is so strong there are 20 times as many bats around normal comparable sites compared to sites with wind turbines.
I can’t imagine why bats with sensitive acoustic gear don’t like giant infrasonic blades, spinning at 200km per hour and carving a two acre sweep with every turn.
But when a turbine moves into the area, Bat-real-estate values must plummet:
The result of the study demonstrates a large effect on bat habitat use at wind turbines sites compared to control sites. Bat activity was 20 times higher at control sites compared to wind turbine sites, which suggests that habitat loss is an important impact to consider in wind farm planning.
…
What about the insects?
Since these are insect-eating bats, the next obvious question is whether mosquitoes are 20 times as common around wind turbines, or whether they hate the turbines too.
Has anyone even looked at this? Think of the possibilities: Are wind farms mosquito repellent, or will wind farms help spread dengue fever?
Apparently this was one of the first studies to look closely at the impact of wind farms on insectivorous bats in tropical hotspots. If so, we built some 350,000 wind turbines, then — then, we thought we might check to see if it affected bats?
Where. were. the environmentalists?
And doesn’t anyone care about mosquitoes…
REFERENCE
Millon et al (2018) Wind turbines impact bat activity, leading to high losses of habitat use in a biodiversity hotspot, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecoleng.2017.12.024
As a person that hasn’t been there I tend to think of bats in Australia in terms of the flying Fox and large fruit eating species. I have wondered if those large bat species are in the area of windmills and is so what impact they have had on them. You aren’t going to miss the carnage if a flock of those things ran into a wind farm.
90
About 3000 flying foxes moved into our town mid December and settled into the recreational park right in the centre.
These filthy disease carrying natives are protected by law and will disappear when winter comes around. They have a problem up Singleton way where they are permanent residence and have destroyed all the trees where they roost.
This is the first time in living memory that they have settled in our town park and the only explanation is that the wind farms round about have changed their roosting habit.
130
According to Save The Eagles International an organisation dedicated to exposing the threat windfarms are to birds and avian’s worldwide, an article from 2012 highlights the death toll of birds/bats per turbine per year in Spain compared to earlier estimates in the industry http://savetheeaglesinternational.org/releases/spanish-wind-farms-kill-6-to-18-million-birds-bats-a-year.html
A warning to readers the links contain actual images and video of birds that have been killed by turbines, discretion advised.
90
It is my understanding the over pressure from just flying close to the blades can kill small species.
When I was an instructor at SOMED down at Ft. Sam Houston TX we were asked to train some ROTC types in basic first aid. To make it worth our while they laid on a Huey and we would rappel in to their camp out at Camp Bolus. The chopper would land, we would conduct our training, then ride it back and it would set us down right on the parade ground at Ft. Sam right close to home. This was done in the late afternoon and evening after our regular duty hours at the school house. So when your rappelling or jumping out of a Huey the doors are back and you ride belted in with your legs outside. It was about a 30 mile ride or so out and we were all sitting there enjoying the view and nice ride in the cooling air when I suddenly noticed that occasionally some little brown thing go tumbling by every once in a while. Finally figured out they were bats blasted out of control by the rotor wash. We all drew our heads back in.
130
An article in Scientific American 2008 On a Wing and Low Air: The Surprising Way Wind Turbines Kill Bats describes how the sudden change in air pressure kills bats,
“If bats have a lungful of air as they fly through the air-pressure change, there’s nowhere for the air to go,” Baerwald explains. “The small blood vessels around the lungs burst and fill the lungs with fluid and blood.”
Out of curiosity when riding in the Huey did you guys sit on your helmets?
80
Wore them. But they don’t protect your face or any other body parts out in the slips stream. Your sitting sideways to the direction of flight with your legs dangling over the edge of the deck belted in. For rappel your already rigged with the rappel rope properly threaded through the locking carabiner attached to your Swiss seat. The tailing end of the rope is neatly coiled in a sandbag sitting on the deck beside you. The standing, or attached end of the rope is locked in to a cable loop anchored to the pad eyes in the deck of the chopper. As you approach the rappel point the belt is removed and you step down on top of the skid being sure to turn the correct way so the rappel rope is not wrapped around you. Your right hand is locking the rope in the small of your back. Once the helicopter hovers and you get the command from the rappel master you use your left hand to pull the bag off the deck hard enough so it falls down outside the skid. You release the lock with your right hand enough to slide down so your in a “L” position with your feet on the side of the skid. Then you push off throwing out the right hand allowing the rope to slide between your gloved thumb and fingers. If your experienced you just fly down that rope and only brake once right before your at the ground. It happens very fast with experienced people. I always loved that stuff. Your no more alive than when your doing something like that.
70
For a young man it sounds like an amazing experience RAH, I was referencing the movie Apocalypse Now (h/t MudCrab #1.2.1.1.2 :)) where this happens in the dawn Air Cavalry scene, perhaps it was done in combat only?
20
… maybe you’d consider it if you were being shot at with small arms fire … from the ground. In that case, helmets didn’t matter. Helicopters aren’t bullet proof.
10
Just one of many. I was an operator on US Army Special Forces “A” teams for 8 1/2 years. SOMED was the Special Operations Medical course, the longest (32 weeks) portion of the SF medic course which was also attended by some Sr. SEAL Corpsmen, Sr. Ranger medics, and some PJs (Air Force Pararescue). I ended up as one of the five SF medics there as instructors when US Army Special Operations Command made me get off teams and go train. In retrospect they were right. It was time for both me and my family to have a break. I had spent all of my time on teams specializing in High Alpine and cold weather operations focused on the European theater. That is not to say I didn’t end up serving in places in Africa and the Middle East when tasked to. When Desert Strom I was instructing down there are Ft. Sam to give you an idea of the time frame. That little jaunt and rappel was just a nice diversion from the school house just as it was when we jumped along with our students to maintain our Jump status and Airborne proficiency.
20
Sophacles the only time I was ever shot at in a helicopter is when we were leaving Lebanon having completed our mission at the end of April 1984. The Arab that shot at us was one dumb sucker since we were flying in a Marine CH-46 that had M2 .50 cal machine guns out each side with Marine gunners with itchy trigger fingers. We all had itchy trigger fingers by then because that was the most frustrating 4 months of my military career. One tends to get pissed when they go through a period where they get shelled, mortared, rocketed and sniped at and don’t get much of a chance to shoot back. None of use on the two A teams or the B team on that MTT were injured by enemy action.(There is no more helpless feeling than one will have when they receive incoming artillery fire) That chopper took us out to a Marine Assault ship (They look kind of like a mini aircraft carrier. Think it was the USS Iwo Jima though I wouldn’t swear to that.) where we transferred to another chopper, a CH 53 that took us to Larnaca, Cyprus where we had 4 days of heavy partying and ogling the topless girls at the beach before we got on a civilian airliner to take us home.
20
… some parents do have them 🙂
Darwin’s cure is both good and permanent …
10
“Your no more alive than when your doing something like that”
Most people dont get that. They call people who do risky things idiots or Darwin Award candidates, and then retreat back to not doing much of anything.
20
The real Darwin’s Award Candidates are the ones who don’t think their actions through. They’re “immortal” and never consider consequences … and all actions have consequences of some sort, ranging from insignificant to fatal.
However, those who do think things right through have a high level of fun and satisfaction.
00
Out of curiosity when riding in the Huey did you guys sit on your helmets?
(Resists…)
(Resists…)
(takes bait)
“How come all you guys sit on your helmets?”
30
One must assume that the exercise was not so realistic that they had guys with carbines firing at them from below.
40
AK47’s … 7.62mm calibre.
00
Good explanation Yonnie.
The same thing, probably not quite as extreme, happens to people subjected to VLF pulsing from windmills.
Pulsing is also a problem for rail drivers and heavy trucks.
20
Kinky Keith
I drive a heavy truck and haven’t noticed that. The physical hazards that concern me are blood clots due to the amount of time sitting, fatigue, and hearing loss. Big trucks are noisy and having been around firearms since I was a kid and things like riding in those choppers hasn’t helped the hearing either. I count myself lucky that I still hear as well as I do and don’t need hearing aids.
30
Hi RAH,
Over here we have some heavy mining equipment that uses wheels about 6 ft in diameter and is used to move coal from the bottom of open cut mines up to ground level.
It’s a hard slog.
Similarly there are coal movements by rail that use up to 4 heavy diesel locos hooked together.
These are extreme situations but I am hoping that your driving doesn’t come anywhere near the examples I’ve given.
The problem is that government and employers don’t want people in the high risk coal situations to be aware that their heart lung difficulties are possibly related to their job.
Windmills are likewise the subject of misdirection to lead the public to believe they are harmless.
VLF pulsing from windmills at about the same frequency as our heart rate is not healthy for humans,as many have sadly found.
As you say, there are other problems with driving on the road which thankfully can be managed by exercise breaks.
All the best.
KK
10
Interesting.
When you think that the weight of the helicopter has to be countered by the mass of air being pushed downwards; that’s a lot of air travelling very fast.
You wouldn’t want to be a bat just above the blades.
I wonder what the relative rotation rates of helicopter blades and wind turbines would be.
KK
40
Helicopter = much faster ….not called “choppers” for nothing ….
( poor bats )
30
That makes sense. They do make a rapid chopping sound in flight, which is where I’d assumed the nickname came from; we’ve had quite a few of them over in recent days attending the fire behind Mt Cathedral.
32
What’s your problem, ol’ red thumb? Oh, I get it, you don’t like me! 😉
21
The Iroquois military helicopters had quite long twin blade rotors. With a bit of a load on, the required blade pitch and the tips exceeding the speed of sound, (going supersonic) they made a very distinctive noise.
10
It was always the leading edge of the rotary wing as it came towards you.
(Annie, Red Thumbers don’t like anybody. That’s why they red thumb, They’re the blog equivalent of blood-sucking insects—mosquitoes. I think if they ever posted, (shock! horror!) they would sound just like mozzies too …)
30
I wonder what the relative rotation rates of helicopter blades and wind turbines would be. KK,
Helicopters,
Hughes MD530F: 213 m/s (490 rpm, 4.15 m)
Bell 206: 210 m/s (394 rpm, 5.08 m)
Sikorsky UH-60L: 221 m/s (258 rpm, 8.18 m)
Get the tip speed and find the rotation after this :
minimum tip speed 216 km/h = 60 m/s
maximum tip speed 648 km/h = 180 m/s
pick a diameter, my guess 8 m , perimeter of 8 * 3.1416 = 25.1328
freq = V/ perimeter
freq = 180 / 25.2 = 7.14 hertz or 428.4 rpm
So in case the rotor has a diameter longer than 8 m it is highly recommended to turn at LESS than 428 rpm
Wind Turbine blade tip speed calculations,
A 2.5 MW wind turbine has a diameter of 100 m. Therefore, the blade tip traces a circumference of 100 m times pi = 314.159 m / revolution. Using 16 revolutions per minute from the Summerhaven example, the calculations are:
16 revolutions per minute x 314.159 m = 5026.55 m per minute
5026 m per minute x 60 minutes per hour = 301,593 m per hour
301,593 m per hour / 1,000 m per km = 302 km/h!
This tip speed is close to what I was told by windplant operators of 200 mph (320 kph)
40
It’s hard to imagine a 100m diameter for a blade assembly.
But back to the main point.
Helicopters run at about 300 rpm with two to four blades and wind subsidy gatherers go at 16 rpm with three blades.
Helicopters will therefore pulse at 10 to 20 beats per second and turbines at about 0.8 beats/sec.
Helicopters are therefore a bit safer to be around than wind turbines. Low frequency pulsing is not a good environment.
50
Hi Keith, I work nights and over recent months I have encountered wind turbine blades in transit. On each occasion they have required police escorts and needed to stop traffic as they needed to access the wrong side of the road to make their way through intersections so a diameter of 100 meters is definitely believable.
50
Kinky Keith
“Obvious when you know about it, but that never crossed my mind.
I’ve always felt that helicopters were a bit more dangerous than fixed wing.”
They’re a blast man! Don’t pass up the opportunity if you can get a ride with a competent pilot at the controls! I loved them though there were a couple times flying low level through the Alps or Rockies at night in a Huey they scared me. Unpredictable up and down drafts you know and things sometimes things got a little dicey in a heavily loaded Huey. Once we got the UH-60 Black Hawks though it was a whole different ball game. A Huey is like a VW bug and a Black Hawk like a Ferrari when it comes to power. just plain awesome machines.
20
To add to the complexity, the rotor tip travelling forward has the aircraft’s forward speed added to it while the other has it’s speed reduced. As the aircraft gains forward speed the downwind rotary wing would stall and that would be nasty. This is why they persevere with unstable designs like the Osprey to overcome this speed restriction.
20
Obvious when you know about it, but that never crossed my mind.
I’ve always felt that helicopters were a bit more dangerous than fixed wing.
10
You’ve always been a bit right but transitioning aircraft such as the Harrier or Osprey introduce different but greater issues. The US marines called the Harrier the widow-maker when they first got them.
From the LA Times:
I’m reluctant to call Pom pilots better but I don’t recall the same problems in the RAF. But it was a pommy pilot Eric “Winkle” Brown who first landed a jet on a carrier and the Yanks couldn’t land a Corsair on deck ’til the poms showed them how.
Peace! to our US friends. The US was awesome once they hit their straps in the Pacific. The USS Johnston was amazin’.
30
Hanrahan
“I’m reluctant to call Pom pilots better but I don’t recall the same problems in the RAF. But it was a pommy pilot Eric “Winkle” Brown who first landed a jet on a carrier and the Yanks couldn’t land a Corsair on deck ’til the poms showed them how.”
Actually the US Navy wouldn’t let them having deemed the F4U too difficult to land on carriers until the British Navy pilots on their carriers that were going to join the fleet figured out how to do it safely. But then again the reason why those Brit Navy pilots were flying Corsairs in the first place and were equipped almost exclusively with US Naval aircraft for operations in the Pacific was because they didn’t have decent aircraft of their own for such operations. The Sea Fire was a fantastic aircraft in the sky but since it was just a Spitfire with some modifications it’s airframe was not designed to take the pounding of repeated carrier landings. So the Brits got the Corsair and worked out the best way to make it work in carrier operations and once they did the US Navy started using them though there were never as many in use on the carriers as there were the F6F Hellcat which BTW put down more Japanese aircraft than any type from any country during WW II.
30
Yonniestone: don’t forget Einstein’s relativity!.
Consider the tip speed of the rotor as the aircraft comes toward you. The point when the tip of the forward travelling blade is at right angles to the body of the aircraft is when it is at maximum relative velocity. That’s relative to the observer.
So add the aircraft’s forward flight speed to those rotor tip calculations. (it’s not rocket science so you don’t need to worry about the speed of light, just the speed of sound at c. 340m/sec :-))
It was always the leading edge of the rotary wing as it came towards you.
The military versions had longer blades then the civilian versions.
20
Sorry for being late to this party, but life had some other plans for me.
I do not know if it still exists, or even where anyone would find it if it does exist, but back in, I think the early 70’s (or maybe late 60’s) some eggheads wanted to find out what happened to a helicopter rotor as it was in flight. A high-speed camera was mounted on the hub of the rotor, focused on and looking down the length of the rotor. A well-trained pilot was then asked to go out and do some standard (non-extreme) maneuvers in the helicopter: just normal climbs, descents, turns, hover, etc etc etc.
I saw the film during a safety training. It was incredible! You cannot and will not believe what the rotor goes through in the course of “normal” flight. I had never had the ‘swing-wing’ bug, but after watching that video, I decided I would stick with stiff-wing only!
Please find this, if you can; it is educational for everyone!!
Thanks,
Vlad
20
Vlad
Is this the video you were talking about?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FlP7zSBcbuI
20
How RAH,
Thanks so much for finding that. What you posted is not the exact video I saw (this one looks to be 21st Century, and I do not think the MI-8 was in production in the late 60’s/early 70’s). The one I saw was about 5 – 6 minutes long, B&W, and the background was blurry throughout. This MI-8 appears to be in hover, but I could be wrong.
When a helicopter is in various normal flight regimes, there are harmonic waves that travel down and up the rotor, anywhere from a few centimetres to almost a metre in length, and at certain times, they will interfere constructively, and you would swear that the rotor is going to shatter into shards of fibreglass and metal. I understood the fatigue factor on rotors after watching that.
I did not take the time to look through the other videos on the side (again, life has decided that I should be doing other things, besides perusing our lovely hostess’ website and blog), but I promise I will spend more time looking through ‘similar videos’ within the near future.
I KNEW someone could find something along the lines of what I was describing; my hat is off to you, RAH! THANK YOU!!!!
Vlad
20
I read and commented on No Tricks Zone (NTZ) about the bats.
Tamworth has had an ongoing problem with flying foxes in their tens of thousands (believe it or not they are a protected species) So I suggested (sarcastically) that maybe they should install a few wind turbines to reduce their numbers. perhaps providing a useful purpose for turbines.
As an aside flying foxes carry the Hendra Virus which is deadly to Horses and Humans alike apart from their stink and droppings.
30
Charters Towers has been living with them for decades,
But something has changed. When I was a boy our house faced west and every evening we saw thousands fly out of the mangroves on the other side of the river overhead into the setting sun, to wherever they were going. In spite of their multitude I could climb the neighbour’s mango tree and have a feed of perfectly ripe fruit. Few were spoiled by bats. Today no fruit survives their teeth and they have abandoned the swamps for city living.
20
According to various reports, several hundreds of thousands of birds are killed each and every year by wind farms yet only a fraction of that number on average are killed by significant oil spills, given such oil spills don’t happen each year. Sometimes oil companies are fined very heavily. How come wind farm owners aren’t fined collectively in proportion to that paid by oil companies, which would amount to something like billions of dollars per year?
251
Another of the unintended consequences of Greenthink.Yep be politically correct (Incorrect with ridiculously dilute renewables in terms of usable energy) ignore
real environmental concerns for bird and bat species that are being either chopped up or physiologically killed by infrasound.What gets me is the sheer hypocrisy
of Greenies who care “for the environment”and at the same time turn a bind eye to ecological disasters like this.
Cheers Mike Reed
180
Who cares about a few birds and bats dying in wind turbines?
Have you bothered to find out how many birds are killed on our roads, by feral cats, flying into buildings, or by the coal industry, by way of comparison, before swallowing this ludicrous narrative?
17
Is thet Irish huma dere Moikle?
21
I always feel bad when I hit an animal, any animal, driving. I figure anyone with a conscience would but I guess that leaves you out based on your comment.
20
So how many do the “Coal Industry” kill, Craig? You obviously have the statistics right at your fingertips …
20
I thought it was a proven fact that “bugs” are attracted to white materials, therefore white wind turbines will be covered in food for bats and birds which are then possibly killed by the blades.
30
Style, actually. A different, more suitable type of wind using generator is actually needed. There are other more efficient generators, turbine styles. Those were low cost designs, made not so cheaply. Not the best design, and not researched. Just design and thrown up. And not by greens, but ” power” companies who think green as in dollars. To modify, the consumer, will, pay again.
10
It just proves that wildlife is far more adaptable than any Green/Leftist.
40
Maybe if the Green/Leftists evolved with wings they’d have more empathy for our avian friends?
Second thoughts this may have occurred due to the large percentage of Fright Bats in their ranks.
40
From Krekel and Zerrahn, 2017
From Millon et al., 2018
New Caledonia is a large Pacific Island, but just 50km wide. Wikipedia on its environment.
So a wind farm in New Caledonia establishes at least an 8km no-fly zone for bats, in an island with micro-climates. You could easily drive species into extinction. If other species (flora or fauna) rely on the bats, they could also be made extinct. On the other hand, diesel generators (the most effective form of power generation for small, remote populations) might create some real pollution, but not large no-fly zones.
100
If they did a study on humans I bet they’d come up with a similar answer. Nobody wants to live near a giant windmill.
150
And with giant windmills in mind – tomorrow Batty Weatherill, with his “SA Ugly Wind Turbine Crucifixes”, is striving to be re-elected for another 4 years.
And he is a fair chance of being re-elected – ouch!!! for SA – economically speaking.
And Meatloaf’s hit song “A Bat out of Hell” is so relevant to Batty Weatherill’s political doctrine – the first half of verse one:
“The sirens are screaming, and the fires are howling,
Way down in the valley tonight,
There’s a man in the shadows with a gun in his eye,
And a blade shining oh so bright”.
10
I saw Meatloaf perform here in Newcastle towards the end of his career.
All the best to S.A. Hoping they see the light.
20
A neighbour across the road from me has just had a bunch of PV panels screwed onto his roof. He has engineering machinery in his basement and three-phase power to the house for that machinery. I wonder if he’s got battery storage too … 🙂
I now need to find out all the bad stuff about PVs. I’m going to tell him they’re like car windscreens and have to be cleaned after every rain, so he’ll need a good ladder, brush and sqeegee. (If you saw the diesel soot and rubber dust that rain washes out of the local atmosphere, that mightn’t be a hard one to sell him on … 🙂 ).
I’ll be asking him if we’ll get to see flashy whirling light shows during the frequent electrical storms we get … if it snows he’ll have to wipe all the snow off but that’s not going to get any traction: it only snows in Auckland about once every ten years and it’s melted after about an hour.
So tell me about everything bad you know and can find out about them, please! Lifetime, disposal, toxins, efficiencies and solar angle etc etc. Everything!
It’s wind up time.
10
We have little micro bats in our area, odd little critters only the size of a finch type bird. They fold up well and get into knooks and crannies, and live in the roof of my wifes craft cottage /woman cave.
Meh, bats and mosquities. Not the popular photogenic diversity like polar bears and penguins. Really, whats a bit of collateral damage when you are saving the the plant?
90
‘saving the plant’ is exactly what I thought when I read about the wind turbines deterring bats – maybe they could site them near fruit farms to keep those pesky flying foxes away (hardly anything works apparently) – I wonder if that’s been tried?
51
Ignore the red. It’s a green.
40
If you want to save the planet here’s how you do it .
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-03-16/how-many-children-should-you-have-if-you-care-about-the-planet/9543768
10
We’ve found those tiny bats too, live ones in piles of bricks (how they found their way in is still a mystery) and some dead/dying ones in the carport…maybe had some disease?
31
Watched a documentary on Micro Bats, filming them in slow motion their wings create tiny air currents that bounce off cave walls stirring up dust increasing the risk of airborne disease, the air currents are called Micro-Waves.
40
” … And doesn’t anyone care about mosquitoes… ”
LOL said in jest of course, but mosquitoes do prefer still air. “Conventional” on-the-ground buildings are “bluff bodies” and will have flat spots of still or very slowly rotating air in most conditions. These are where the mozzies will congregate. By choice (because they sense the CO2 exhaled by animals or air-handling systems associated with the structures) or necessity (they can’t easily evade advection).
50
Perhaps research could attract some multi million dollar debt/funding into using ultrasonic insect repelling electronic devices similar to the ones which can be purchased from hardware stores and supermarkets?
It would need to be recovered by a tax to pay the bank interest-only loan.
40
Let it not be said that the greens have it in for mosquitoes. The net result of all this will be more and smarter mosquitoes. The mosquitoes will soon learn that around every windmill is a bat-free-feeding zone. A food source (people repairing the windmills) is abundant and one of their main predators is absent. Talk about a win-win situation.
60
And it must be said that in the event of wind speeds causing turbine blades tips to be moving at some mind boggling speed, what would mosquito’s or even large insects the size of a sparrow be doing there in all that turbulence and hot air? Wouldn’t they wait until there is no wind to make their debut flights?
00
Complain! Complain! Complain!
That’s all mosquitos seem to do!
Back in 1960 Dr Douglas Dalziel Perrin (who worked at the John Curtin School of Medical Research at ANU in Canberra, until his death in 1991) made this observation:
“A mosquito was heard to complain
That a chemist had poisoned his brain
The cause of his sorrow
Was paradichloro
Diphenyltrichloroethane.”
First it was DDT, now it is windmills! Will the mosquito carping never cease?
90
🙂
True alliteration.
00
I love that limerick!
21
Hi Kevin,
I assume from the summary at the end that the first reference about “life satisfaction” is also about bats?
Did the reference mention the reason for the 4km radius.
There are two possibilities for bats, the first being that they might fly into them.
The second is the heavy pulsing of the atmosphere.
Neither effect is good for bats and the only good news coming out of this analysis is that humans can’t fly.
It seems that the human race has finally achieved “peak stupidity” in creating a solution to a nonexistent pollution problem and achieved extra marks for making the solution worse in every way than the original “problem”.
Wind turbines involve serious pollution issues, greatly increased cost for electricity, intermittency of supply, damage to wildlife, both airborne and ground based as well as the health effects on people.
The issue of damage to human health has been put out of sight for ” the good of the environment “.
What a weird world we live in.
90
There was some “expert” on the ABC yesterday talking about windchoppers and defending how many birds they kill by saying that compared to vehicles the amount of birds that killed by wind turbines was minimal ,not sure how you can compare the two .
Also they’re experimenting with adding a sound that will deter birds .
42
Bizarre stuff, but then, it is 2018.
50
Why not? Those things already make sounds that repel humans.
30
So the next time an oil spill kills relatively fewer birds than the wind farms they better keep their cameras off or else their hypocrisy will be revealed yet again. Of course the left can’t help being stupid so they will show oily dead birds and not dead birds butchered by blades. Since hundreds of thousands of birds are being butchered to death each year by wind farms all over the world, I wonder what the left will say if someone got the same amount of birds and channeled them against a single wind mill. Would the left react differently?
51
Peter the MSM will never show footage of the downside from renewable energy ,things like birds or bats being fried or chopped to bits is just the cost we have to bear to save the planet , even if they have to kill every animal on the planet to do so .
61
Also every human, except themselves of course.
31
Funny how “Savetheeagles” reckons each turbine is killing 3 birds a day but they can’t seem to find any piles of dead birds to take pictures of, huh?
It’s almost as if they are just making that up to con people…
25
Plenty of pictures of birds and bats killed by wind turbines.
Now find us one picture of a bird killed by a coal fire power plant.
The numbers would wide would be…..
Wind turbines: millions.. Coal fired power stations: NIL
31
The Yellow Bellied Parrot is completely extinct in many areas they once inhabited precisely because of wind turbines, solar panels, renewable energy, the climate change environmentalism (so called), and so on….
The old thimble under a pea trick has been used so that while everyone was hypnotised by the suggestion that renewable energy and so forth would save the earth, at that very moment in time, the very last remnants of life, like forest and river ecosystems and much more were surgically removed from the face of the planet and can never be replaced.
One day if there is future, they will look back and see with great clarity that it was precisely when the climate change pseudo environmentalism came into being, then that was the exact time when most of the last remaining ecosystems on earth were destroyed, by war, accelerated pollution, herbicide, insecticide, deforestation and so on..It was also the time when so called greens allowed the government of the day to make it illegal to protest against logging and so on.
There was also suggested to them that extinction has not happened if even so much as as a single one of a species remains, so it is perfectly OK to destroy all forests if an Orange Bellied Parrot can be kept in a cage or a test tube somewhere. The idea that extinction is incremental never occurs to them once they have been hypnotised.
The idea that bats fly around wind turbines and that the climate will change are the reason that the extinction of the very last fragments that remain on this planet are now disappearing at an accelerating rate, at much faster rate than ever before in history…
The accelerated extinction is directly correlated with the advent of the climate change environmental programming/hypnosis/propaganda on a vast scale..
70
In other words, while everyone’s attention was shifted towards the spinning hypnosis causing objects in the distance, what remained of the ecosystem was undergoing the process of being turned into a temporary mono-culture or being destroyed outright.
50
Well there’s an interesting project for biology students. Measure insect density before and after the wind turbine is installed.
I suspect the bugs end up splattered on the leading edges of the turbines as they do on gliders and light aircraft.
70
Funny if the loss of bats and increase in insects contribute to accelerated leading edge erosion on the blades, faced with either appeasing Gaia or the shareholders….oh the humanity!
60
Here in Brazil we are experiencing outbreaks of Yellow Fever, dengue, chicungunya and chupacabra–this last most closely identified with politicians as vectors. All we need now is for the same retrograde tech that turned Puerto Rico back into a dark slum to kill off our allies in the competition with deadly epidemics. Who was that woman writer who argued that anti-industrial altruism was in fact the worship of death itself?
40
Another array is planned for Nundle/Hanging Rock near Tamworth.A public meeting took place to ascertain attitudes towards the project.A mix of proponents(greeeens) opponents and the brain dead ambivalent.
100
A very moving video about a whole variety of issues related to wind subsidy farms.
6 mins.
https://youtu.be/zr3z_7iQ35s
52
It’s amazing to see such large wind farms in some countries. Not only do they cause so many problems and are so ugly, in each country they could all be replaced by one or two suitably sized nuclear reactors occupying a tiny fraction of the space. The world has gone mad.
130
True but the immoral like their virtue signals big, carbon footprints must be small not technological ones…./sarc. (just in case)
71
Yeah but Fukushima, because all nuclear plants are built by the sea in a known earthquake zone.
30
Yes they were silly to build them there, almost as silly as building them in top of an active volcano.
20
Mosquitos are pretty crap food and bats are highly unlikely to be affecting their populations- although research is scant. Mosquitos are not the only disease vectors that bats might feed on so who knows, they might be important locally.
This is from http://www.mosquito.org/page/faq
100
So bats make no impact in reducing mosquito numbers and also are disease carriers so who cares if the bird choppers become bat choppers as well ? No harm done .
30
How anthropocentric
20
See now I thought you would have said something like this .
“I have had so many requests from my legions of fans to post more blogs. No really, there are a surprising number of people out there that read and re read my pastes… I mean posts … and check in to see if I have added anything new.
So today’s, and possibly this year’s, new post should satisfy those fans. Basically it is this link about scientific theories.
Yep, this is another placeholder in case I need to move someone on from their argument by distraction. You know the one where they write, “it is only a theory”. Amazingly, people still try to slip that one into an argument. They are often the same people who distract with, “it is only a model”, without understanding that their lives would soon come to an end without models.”
31
I know we are talking about bats and birds here but what about all the animals that live on the ground under or close bye these monstrosities.
I know this report is from the UK but it must surely apply here as well to our local fauna.
Wind turbines cause chronic stress in badgers.
https://research-repository.st-andrews.ac.uk/bitstream/handle/10023/9208/Agnew_WindTurbines_JWD_AAM.pdf?sequence=1
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It’s not just birds and animals that are suffering from the monsters – humans living near them suffer from VLF noise created as the blades pass the support column.
The government climate change department rolled out some tame doctors and professors the say that it didn’t happen when it does.
100
Who cares?
We chase all the wildlife off to grow food, what’s the problem with chasing it off to generate electricity?
Wind turbines aren’t even close to being the leading man-made cause of bird and bat deaths. They’re having as lend of you with this fake news.
27
Poor CT, preaching the AGW mantra as always.
Don’t you have any thoughts of your own ??
31
“Who cares?”
CERTAINLY not the so called inner-city greenie environMENTALISTS…. like you, CT.
20
Ha, in US we grow more of some wildlife with our food production. There were more white tail deer found in Indiana during the last two “deer census” than were found during the first one in 1898! And why wouldn’t there be with fields of corn and other produce for them to feed on? During the winter you see them out in the harvested corn fields eating what was missed. I hear coyotes frequently and see one or two every once in a while these days.
I see Red Fox and their tracks pretty frequently. And Canadian Geese are so prolific now that they are a real problem. Now huge flocks of them fly over during the times of migration. So many that their droppings pollute ponds hurting the numbers of several native species of fish. We’ve even been visited by a Pileated Woodpecker a few times. These are things I never or rarely heard or saw when I was a kid despite doing quite a bit of hunting back in the 60’s and 70’s.
In Indiana it is in fact bat species that lead the endangered list. But that won’t stop them from building more wind farms.
https://www.fws.gov/midwest/Endangered/lists/indiana-cty.html
10
Joanne, I think you’ve got your numbers slightly wrong–it’s not 19 out of every 20 bats. Since 97% is the green community’s magic number, it’s 97 out of every 100 bats.
71
All those papers by green ‘environmentalists’ about species
going extinct, corals, fish, poli bears, bu neri a mention by green selectivists of the birds,and bats chomped by wind turbines or frizzled
by solar panels. It’s not easy pretendin’ to be green…
https://docs.wind-watch.org/ProblemWithWind.pdf
Those 100-150 foot wind turbine blades sweeping an acre of air sure
destroy a lot of bats and birds A 2002 study in Spain estimates that
11,200 birds of prey, 360,000 bats and 300,000 small birds are killed
each year by wind turbines.(P 4.)
…That was 2002 – more wind farms now.
50
19 out of 20 = 95%. Consider the 2% difference a mere rounding error—it happens in
naturethe Guardian all the time.00
Presented without comment:
https://www.windpowerengineering.com/business-news-projects/risky-business-mitigating-threats-onshore-wind-projects-portfolios/
20
And this…
http://www.krqe.com/news/new-mexico/land-commissioner-asks-for-money-after-wind-farm-shuts-down/998879426
10
Wind turbine lightning damage:
http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/0309524X15624615
20
Didn’t consider it before but now that you mention it.
That is one hellova big steel pole.
20
Umm, the abstract requires some serious translation. Before such translation can be attempted, there has to be serious analysis:
Lightning? Complex? Massive electrical charge as a huge surfeit of electrons? Aggressive?
We-e-ll, it’s certainly damaging when it discharges, but aggressive? It’s only behaviour —it’s not even a concern but a property—is to make the shortest path to ground. That’s it. Once understood, safe procedures to protect against harm from that property is straight forward. That mad American Ben Franklin demonstrated that clearly over two hundred and fifty years ago. It’s nice to see this paper is catching up with him.
But I do wonder about it’s “aggression” being a “main cause for insurance agencies” which is a new thought: I was under the impression insurance agencies just wanted as much money as they could siphon out of us for a mere gamble, a roll of the celestial dice, as it were, for as little as possible in return. Maybe the “ aggression” comes from the insurance agencies actually having to pay out for lightning damage? (Shock, horror! Can lightning be banned?)
The “dimension of structure” can only mean “height” so why not use that word? Lightning does tend to be attracted to the highest objects around: it creates a shorter path for the main current stroke to meet that so desirable ground.
I do wonder about “and his anger”. If that is an invocation or nod towards a deity then it always should be “ His anger,” ie: suitably capitalized as usually required by convention (97%). How odd. Maybe this is a peer-reviewed religious dialogue—a sky-entific paper, rather than a scientific one? Which divinity school did it come from?
As for the “effect of heights capturing the farthest lightning” I have to wonder about the poor wight’s education. After all, everyone knows the lightning leader follows the paths of ionisation in the atmosphere left by the spray of nuclear debris caused by cosmic ray collisions with atmospheric molecules, using all it can as it makes for the closest ground potential as soon as it can, with the main strokes being the ground to origin strokes once the path has been established. All the height does is raise the ground potential, physically, making the cosmic ray paths shorter. Capture? No, nothing so sophisticated is an initial opinion.
Or is it? The “number or return strokes injected ” tends to imply the vertical support behaving like a transmission line with a characteristic impedance which, with unterminated or open circuit ends, cause impedance mis-matches along with their characteristic ensuing chaos as seen by “ reflections at the top, at the bottom, and at the junction of the blades with the static base of the turbine.” Yep, the support and the turbine are a transmission line. Purportedly.
But, I hear you say, turbine blades are made of fibreglass, an insulator, a non-conductor. Given the voltages and currents present in any lightning strike, that property may be substantially overwhelmed. I didn’t read any further than the abstract to determine that possibility. Perhaps the non-conducting material used in the blades is for this very reason: to minimize those dastardly “ reflections” and prevent the “main cause for insurance agencies” from further damaging the turbine.
I did like this point: “Despite the protection in place in wind turbines, statistics show that they are inefficient, because they are placed in locations where repair is difficult and expensive.” Purely delightful. We know all that as it is so obviously reflected in the cost of the power they generate and they are often in need of repair (gearbox bearings lasting less than five years, frequent and random fires, etc).
Now that’s only the abstract. After that, I couldn’t be bothered with rest of it. It’s started to develop the flavour of a hoax :-). It may not be a hoax, but that’s how it “tastes” so there’s no point in translating such an imbecilic composition. I give it three out ten. Go to the bottom of the class.
Why three? Well, it has punctuation, which is more or less accurate and it is sort of English. It pays heed to some of the properties of lightning. It did declare them—as in wind turbines—“inefficient” so that attracted a bonus mark which was confirmed by the hint towards unreliability in their needing repair.
10
While not on topic it’s close , South Australia or if you prefer “Dumbfukistan” are pleased to announce their new bird fryer when built will also supply the new bigger (ludicrous size) battery .
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-03-16/worlds-biggest-battery-to-be-built-near-port-augusta/9554416
31
The World’s First Wind Farm …
Towards 2000 captured the birth of modern renewable wind power in 1981.
On opening day, the wind didn’t blow …
http://www.abc.net.au/science/articles/2015/07/30/4282474.htm
40
Looks like the bats are in for a long retreat
“MIT report: it will take 400 years to transform to ‘clean’ energy”
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2018/03/15/mit-report-it-will-take-400-years-to-transform-to-clean-energy/
10
Support for
yewe of little faith“Tesla gets lost at elementary school || There was no driver in the car. https://t.co/4VeuEVp5YV $TSLA ”
http://www.smalldeadanimals.com/2018/03/i-for-one-welco-21.html
I’d better include myself
20
14 Mar: E&E News: Pruitt’s climate clash was declared dead. There’s a Plan B
by Robin Bravender
In December, top aides to the president huddled in the White House with some of Scott Pruitt’s closest staffers.
The message conveyed by the White House: The EPA administrator’s idea to hold a public debate on mainstream climate science wasn’t going to happen, according to a person who attended the meeting.
But that might not be the case. Despite reports from E&E News in December that Pruitt’s plan for a “red team” was “on hold,” followed by a New York Times report last week that Trump chief of staff John Kelly considered the idea “dead,” EPA officials have continued to suggest otherwise.
Asked yesterday whether the White House had killed his “red team” plans, Pruitt told Bloomberg, “It’s very important that I think the American people have a transparent, objective discussion about this issue.
“The vehicle by which we achieve that is something yet to be determined,” he added.
That came after Pruitt disputed an E&E News story in January that the White House had told his agency not to go forward with the red team climate science debate.
“That’s untrue,” Pruitt told Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.) at a Senate hearing. “It’s under consideration, senator.”
So did the White House kill Pruitt’s red team idea for good? Not exactly, according to sources familiar with the meeting.
***Option B: Take public comments on petitions asking EPA to revisit the Obama administration’s endangerment finding, the agency’s underlying authority to regulate greenhouse gases in cars, power plants and other sources. That would allow EPA to determine “where the arguments are supporting and rejecting the science,” said the person at the meeting…
Moving on the petitions to look at the endangerment finding might be a win-win for Pruitt and White House staffers.
The petitions fall within EPA’s jurisdiction, and acting on them could appease some conservatives who are pushing the administration to upend the Obama-era finding.
Pruitt and his top aides haven’t ruled out revisiting the determination, although many on the right and left contend that unraveling it would be a massive undertaking that could expose the administration to legal vulnerabilities.
“I think it’s extremely unlikely that they will try to reverse the endangerment finding,” said Jeff Holmstead, an industry attorney at Bracewell LLP who was EPA air chief during the George W. Bush administration. “It would be an extremely heavy lift and could easily be put back in place by the next administration.”
Taking comment on the petitions would be much easier. A group of homeowners filed one petition the day of Trump’s inauguration. Another petition was filed last February by the Competitive Enterprise Institute and board members of the Science and Environmental Policy Project (Greenwire, April 10, 2017).
To open a public debate, the agency could simply issue a notice asking for public comment on the petition. The move wouldn’t create any obligation for EPA to take regulatory action, and it could score the administration some political points on the right.
“We would be happy if the EPA took our petition and the other petitions for reopening or reconsidering the endangerment finding and if they decided to consider those petitions in a public way,” said Myron Ebell, director of the Center for Energy and Environment at the Competitive Enterprise Institute. Ebell led Trump’s EPA transition team.
“Essentially, a red team could be a part of that process, a red team analysis of current climate science could be part of that process, and that would then allow them to make a better-informed decision about whether reopening the endangerment finding is a good idea or not,” Ebell added…
Conservatives may push for more.
“CEI’s petition is a good petition, but just opening it up for comments I don’t think is enough,” said H. Sterling Burnett, a research fellow at the Heartland Institute, which has pushed for the unraveling of the endangerment finding. Burnett said such a move might constitute an “opening salvo” in a process to roll back the finding. “You start somewhere, and if the comments come in strong enough, you move forward with a bigger project.”
Taking comment on the petitions would open the floodgates to anyone who wanted to participate.
***”They’re going to get an earful from the legitimate scientific community,” said David Doniger, director of the climate and clean energy program at the Natural Resources Defense Council.
Doniger called an attack on the endangerment finding a “fool’s errand.” If EPA attempts to do so, he said, “they’ll get blown away if they do this both in the court of public opinion and in the court of appeals in Washington.” If EPA ultimately seeks to undo the finding, it would have to issue a new regulation, which would certainly be challenged in court.
Taking comment on the petitions and issuing a new rule to undo the finding could potentially take years, and some see it as a way for the administration to effectively punt on the issue. EPA could accept comment on the petitions and then let the issue languish. The petitioners could take EPA to court, contending that the agency’s inaction constitutes an “unreasonable delay,” but lawyers say that would be a tough case to make…
If EPA opens comments on the endangerment finding, it would be a “paper process” that won’t get much attention, Doniger said.
“It’s just dog whistling to the climate deniers,” he said. “It’s not going to be a high-profile thing.”
https://www.eenews.net/stories/1060076249?platform=hootsuite
40
One of the early hurdles Adani had to overcome was the black throated finch, a pretty bird I kept as a boy. It seems the last refuge for this bird is where they intend to dig the coal.
Why is it a mine cannot upset a finch or skink in a geographically area but wind farms can displace wildlife over thousands of acres?
Don’t get me wrong, Adani must duplicate the finch habitat outside their fence, it can be done and I assume this was one of their conditions but wind farms cannot ameliorate their effect on all living things around them and are never expected to.
100
Oh for an edit function.
60
between spellink, grammaring and tiepos I only get about 20% of posts rite time once
20
Ironic if it was a Canary instead……
10
“It seems the last refuge for this bird is where they intend to dig the coal.”
http://www.blackthroatedfinch.com/
“This year’s black-throated finch (BTF) waterhole count will be held on Saturday the 21st and Sunday 22nd October 2017 at various locations in the Townsville region. Once again the Black-throated Finch Recovery Team (BTFRT) is looking for volunteers for these two days to watch waterholes and count finches coming into …”
“The northern subspecies can be found on Cape York Peninsula and west to the Gulf of Carpentaria.”
It seems the anti-Adani groups are playing loose with the facts, as one would expect.
61
Andy I just seen hundreds of them honest .
00
Who’s surprised? But I’m in Townsville and haven’t seen one since a boy. I assume the ones I kept had been caught locally. Same as the red beak. They were once common.
I’m not sure there aren’t professional netters thought. We have been feeding a flock of nutmeg mannikins for years, well over fifty of them. They just vanished a month ago. They aren’t native and may not be protected but they were our friends at breakfast.
51
14 Mar: Bloomberg: EPA Chief Signals Showdown With California on Fuel Emission Standards
By Jennifer A Dlouhy, Ryan Beene, and John Lippert; With assistance by Christopher Flavelle, and Jamie Butters
Separately, Pruitt brushed away reports that White House officials have killed his plans for a “red team, blue team” debate examining the scientific research on climate change. “Don’t believe everything you read,” he said.
“It’s very important that I think the American people have a transparent, objective discussion about this issue,” Pruitt said. “The vehicle by which we achieve that is something yet to be determined.”
Pruitt said he wouldn’t prejudge what that review would mean for the EPA’s landmark 2009 conclusion that greenhouse gases endanger human health and welfare. Some conservatives argue the Trump administration’s regulatory rollbacks are in jeopardy if the EPA doesn’t strip that so-called “endangerment finding” from the books.
Pruitt repeated his assertion that there are open questions about the extent to which humans contribute to climate change, and he questioned the ability to “look forward 80 plus years” and predict the ideal global average surface temperature in 2100…
The U.S. Global Change Research Program, which includes staff from the EPA and every major federal science agency, said in a report last November that the global average surface air temperature has increased by 1.8 degrees Fahrenheit since 1900, making it “the warmest in the history of modern civilization.”
Those researchers called it “extremely likely that human activity” is the cause, warned the trend will continue unless greenhouse gas are reduced and emphasized “there is no convincing alternative explanation supported by the extent of the observational evidence.”
Pruitt downplayed the EPA’s role in that assessment, noting it was the product of several government agencies. It’s not a matter of whether those scientific warnings are “right or wrong,” Pruitt said, but “making sure that all voices are heard in the process, because there are people that disagree with that.”
Government-sponsored scientific research on climate change and other environmental issues needs to be open for public scrutiny, with its conclusions subject to “robust analysis,” Pruitt said.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-03-13/epa-chief-signals-showdown-with-california-on-tailpipe-standards
20
behind paywall:
15 Mar: UK Times: Emily Gosden: Wind turbines are wearing too fast at the world’s largest offshore farm
Hundreds of offshore wind turbines in UK waters need emergency repairs after they started eroding within a few years of being installed.
Owners of the 175-turbine London Array wind farm off Kent, the biggest offshore farm in the world, and the 108-turbine West of Duddon Sands wind farm off Cumbria have applied to the Marine Management Organisation for permission to carry out urgent repairs.
The London Array was completed in 2013 and West of Duddon Sands a year later. Both use a type of turbine made by Siemens Gamesa, which has admitted that the leading edge of the blades — the part that slices through the air when the turbine turns — is being eroded much faster than expected on some of the machines. A spokesman said that various factors including the “wind speed, the rotor configuration, the amount of rain, a nd even the size of raindrops” were thought to be behind the problem…
More than 1,600 turbines operate in UK waters, but critics have long questioned how reliable they will prove in the harsh conditions offshore. If the issue with the Siemens Gamesa turbines proves symptomatic of a wider problem, it could undermine the economics of building wind farms…
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/london-array-offshore-wind-turbines-near-kent-wearing-too-fast-qdv76g7cm
20
A rather more important environmental impact study I suspect not done. We have all heard about the chaotic nature of climate – the butterfly wing in the Amazon causing a cyclone half a world away. Well winds are one of the most important aspect of climate since they move heat around the globe and bring water vapour from over the ocean to land where it can fall as rain. So what is the impact on weather when we take a few gigawatts of energy out of the wind system in the main wind corridors (ie: substantially slow down the winds). That’s an awful lot of butterfly wing flaps. I strongly suspect its a very long way from trivial but since that does not suit the environmental narrative it’s no doubt being swept under the carpet. So is climate change (if any) caused by global warming or global warmists.
50
***not another “cold snap”!
15 Mar: Daily Mail: Rachel Millard: ***Cold snap next week ‘puts Britain at the mercy of Russian gas giants’ as reserves in Europe reach record lows
Plunging temperatures on Sunday and Monday is likely to hike demand for gas across Europe and Britain
A report by analysts S&P Platts warned Russia may be only option for European nations needing more gas
Gas reserves across continent are at record lows after cold spells and the closure of British storage facilities
Figures suggest only a small amount of UK gas comes from Russia directly, but many pipelines start in Russia
But the report said: ‘Gas demand is set to rise again from the end of the week across north-western Europe, bringing potential large-scale gas withdrawals back into play and prompting a likely increase in nominations for Russian gas imports.
‘Given the surge in demand, Russian gas supplies are considered the only swing source of gas under current conditions. Domestic production and other import sources are effectively maxed out.’…
The UK imports around 44 per cent of its gas from Europe and Norway. In turn, Europe imports around 35 per cent of its gas from Russia.
Experts say the UK would struggle to balance its own supplies if there were not enough available on the continent. And they warn that the only nation capable of increasing supplies in times of high demand is Russia…
The UK has become far more reliant on imports in recent years due to the dwindling supply of gas from the North Sea and the closure last year of the Rough storage facility, which at its peak accounted for 70 per cent of the UK’s gas storage…
Tim Roache, of the GMB union, said: ‘There is a real danger here. We need a serious strategy and investment in UK energy to make sure we can stand on our own two feet.’…
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-5502965/Cold-snap-Britain-mercy-Russian-gas-giants.html
15 Mar: Reuters: UK cut in Russia gas imports would be political gesture: Russian energy minister
by Denis Pinchuk
“Every country has the right to choose its own energy policy… Any decision (by Britain to cut Russian gas imports would be) politically motivated and not aimed at developing competition on the European (gas) market,” Alexander Novak told reporters…
Gas exports to Britain represent only 10 percent of Gazprom’s total exports to western Europe. Germany remains its biggest buyer in Europe, taking a third of overall Russian gas exports…
15 Mar: UKSpectatorBlog: Thanks to the anti-fracking lobby, Britain can’t avoid Russian gas
by Ross Clark
Anyone surveying the wind turbines and solar panels sprouting across the British countryside could be forgiven for thinking that we are rapidly building self-sufficiency in energy – and clean energy at that. But it isn’t true. By far the bigger story is the decline in North Sea oil and gas production, which has taken up back to a level of energy-dependence last seen in the mid 1970s. As recently as 1999, the UK was producing 20 per cent more energy than it consumed. But the last year we enjoyed energy self-dependence was in 2003. By 2015, a net 38 per cent of energy consumed here was imported…
As for gas, which accounts for just under 40 per cent of total energy consumed in Britain, 43 per cent currently comes from UK production, 44 per cent comes from European pipelines (of which a third is ultimately supplied by Russia). The remaining 13 per cent is imported in the form of liquified natural gas (LNG) – either from Qatar, the US or, since of this year, the Yamal LNG project in Russia’s Arctic…READ ON
https://blogs.spectator.co.uk/2018/03/thanks-to-the-anti-fracking-lobby-britain-depends-on-russias-gas/
a drop in the ocean:
US gas cargo turns towards UK as Russia spat intensifies
Financial Times-13 hours ago
The first tanker of liquefied natural gas to depart a new facility on the US east coast has changed course mid-Atlantic and is heading for the UK, the day after questions were raised in Westminster about rising UK imports of Russian LNG…
30
15 Mar: WeatherChannel: A Fourth March Nor’easter is Possible Next Week, One of Two Snowmakers Closing Out Winter in the West, Midwest and East
By Chris Dolce
Two weather systems will spread snow and ice from the West to the Midwest and East into next week.
The second storm system could evolve into the fourth Nor’easter since March 2 next week…
Spring officially arrives Tuesday, but winter will continue to hold on strong as more snow and ice spread from the West to the Plains, Midwest and possibly the Northeast into early next week. This could potentially include the fourth nor’easter this month…
Here’s what to expect from these two new systems.
System 1: Snow, Ice in West and Midwest
System No. 2: West, Midwest Snow, Then Another Nor’easter?…
How Much Snow?
One thing is for certain: the Mountain West will see accumulations topping a foot in the higher elevations through this weekend. California’s Sierra Nevada will pick up several feet of snow.
Parts of the northern Plains, including the Dakotas, could also see at least six inches or more of snow through this weekend…
https://weather.com/storms/winter/news/2018-03-14-snow-ice-west-midwest-east-mid-march
15 Mar: SMH: The temperature is rising … and so is the death toll
By Professor Hilary Bambrick
(Professor Hilary Bambrick is a member of the Climate Council and heads the School of Public Health and Social Work at QUT)
I’ve investigated the impact of climate change driven extreme weather on public health for 20 years.
The research shows the links between the two couldn’t be clearer – extreme weather events such as severe heatwaves, bushfires and supercharged storms are placing Australian lives at risk…
Severe heatwaves are silent killers, causing more deaths since the 1890s than all of Australia’s bushfires, cyclones, earthquakes, floods and severe storms combined.
Over the past decade, severe heatwaves around Australia have resulted in deaths and an increased number of hospital admissions for heart attack, stroke, respiratory illness, diabetes and kidney disease.
Older people, young children, and those with chronic health conditions are at high risk, but so are outdoor workers and our emergency responders…
Of course, we’re used to extreme weather in Australia, so much so that it is embedded in our cultural identity…
But climate change is making these events more and more deadly, and we can’t afford to be complacent.
So what do we do to protect ourselves and our loved ones from extreme heat and other events?…
Without rapid effective action to reduce carbon emissions we’re locking ourselves into a future of worsening, out of control extremes.
Ultimately, to protect Australians from worsening extreme weather events and to do our fair share in the global effort to tackle climate change, we have to cut our greenhouse gas pollution levels quickly and deeply…
https://www.smh.com.au/environment/climate-change/the-temperature-is-rising-and-so-is-the-death-toll-20180315-p4z4gs.html
10
***seems like it was just yesterday that only CAGW sceptics mentioned there was a problem with “unreliables” “when the sun isn’t shining or the weather is calm” aka “the wind doesn’t blow”.
now it’s in almost every article you read in the CAGW-infested -invested FakeNewsMSM:
15 Mar: Bloomberg: Czech Tycoon Earmarks $1.2 Billion to Buy Europe’s Old Coal
By Ladka Mortkowitz Bauerova
Sometimes one man’s trash can be another man’s gold.
Czech energy magnate Pavel Tykac is ready to spend 1 billion euros ($1.2 billion) of his own cash on aging coal and gas-fired power plants across Europe. He’s betting the dirty generators will be needed for decades to supplement the green power that’s taking a bigger role at utilities from Germany to Britain.
“The media bubble around clean energy doesn’t reflect reality,” said Alan Svoboda, an executive director of Seven Energy, the utility and lignite miner owned by Tykac. “Our fundamental assumption is that these conventional assets will be needed in the near future to balance the grids.”…
But as solar and wind power flood Europe’s grid, Tykac and his team reckon fossil-fuel plants are still needed to make up the shortfall in generation ***when the sun isn’t shining or the weather is calm…READ ON
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-03-15/czech-tycoon-earmarks-1-2-billion-to-buy-europe-s-old-coal
40
That’s where the smart money is Pat and if I could get some of that pie I would .
40
A couple of years ago Singleton knocked down trees in the middle of town and Premier Baird put in a million dollars to eradicate the state’s plague.
https://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/news/nsw/bat-removal-project-means-cutting-down-park-trees-after-water-noise-fails/news-story/1b99509b93ee22b2cbec1bce669503e0
In February 2017 there was a monstrous heatwave which apparently wiped our thousands.
20
Substitute Panda’s for bats and see what kind of reaction you get . I am surprised the USA doesn’t
have an anti- animal racist activist group . Maybe CNN and Madcow could start one .
50
I doubt it would make a difference to the warped mindset of the left and much of the rest of the people who are in a state of slumber. Human sacrifices perhaps but then the left probably would welcome it.
10
I don’t know about that. I wouldn’t be surprised to find out they’re rounding up virgins to throw into a volcano somewhere to appease the climate change Gods.
10
Much depends on context, (politicks.)
The fate of the yellow-bellied sap-sucker
or the Californian leaf-nosed bat may have
greater significance if they’re adjacent to a
proposed fossil-fuel mining or fracking site
than if they are not.
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Only 19 out of 20 bats?
Just a tad short of a 97% consensus on this particular issue
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“19 out of 20 bats hates Wind Turbines” Must mean that one out of twenty bats are dead.
10
Got to use my grill for the first time this year. I miss grilling during the winter and the Sirloins came out perfect. A baked potato and a salad of baby spinach and raddichio lettuce, black and green olives, avocado, and cherry tomatoes balanced out the meal. No room for desert. Temp was 44 F. Then I covered the grill back up because we have freezing rain coming in tonight. Jo Bastardi showed that the analog of March 18-21, 1958 is essentially identical to the weather pattern we have now. The Nor Easter back then set a new all time snow fall record for eastern Pennsylvania with Morgantown getting 56″ of snow fall in that period. So though it may be past Meteorological Spring for us, old man winter is no where near done with us yet and I’m still in for a ration of winter driving. There is a good chance we will see 3-4″ of snow early next week here. A nice long run down to Casa Grande, AZ or Laredo, TX would be nice for this truck driver right now but I don’t see that happening.
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Jo asks a good question and possibly I can offer some real world evidence that says the insects may not like the ultrasonic noise that the bats don’t like.
I didn’t realize this until I came back to this post just now bui I have a large window in the back of my garage and it used to be filled with spider webs constantly and I was finding insects trying to get out through the window after having probably come in through the door when it was open. There were many of them on a windy day because the prevailing wind blows against the front of the garage. The spiders loved the free lunch and I doubt they would have been there if the insects weren’t there.
Then my wife bought a gadget that emits ultrasound and put it on the window sill. Once it was plugged in and the window was cleaned up there have been no more than two or three spiders hardy enough to put a web up in that window in probably 10 or 15 years and the insects go somewhere else too. I was a skeptic about this but after seeing the result I became a believer. Nothing is more convincing than success.
So it may well be that the insects the bats were eating don’t like the same ultrasonic noise the bats don’t like. It would need to be proven of course. So far so good, right. 🙂
Now comes the science in this. For the purpose of doing that research I’m willing to offer my services to the Australian government. It should take no more than $30,000,000 US to do a proper job and make a report on the result. It’s cheap at 10 times the price considering all the money
wastedspent on climate change research. 😉30
PS:
It has kept the rodents out of the garage too.
20