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Environmental Impacts of Wind Power

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Wind Power: Siting Environmental Impacts

Wind Power Carbon Footprint. Environmental Effects of Producing Magnets for Wind Turbines. Wind Power - Wildlife Deaths. Resources Page on Wind Farm Impacts and Issues. STT likes to think of itself as a one-stop-shop when it comes to fighting the wind industry, but there are plenty of others who are dedicated to helping communities and wind farm neighbours.

Resources Page on Wind Farm Impacts and Issues

In Australia, the stand out has always been Dr Sarah Laurie (above) and the Waubra Foundation which the good Doctor fronts. The Waubra Foundation website is probably the best resource for noise affected people that money can’t buy. STT recommends the Waubra Foundation for anyone either threatened by or suffering from incessant, turbine generated low-frequency noise and infrasound. Our Least Sustainable Energy Option. President Obama and a chorus of environmentalists, politicians, corporate executives and bureaucrats are perennially bullish on wind power as the bellwether of our “clean energy economy of the future.”

Our Least Sustainable Energy Option

In reality, wind energy may well be the least sustainable and least eco-friendly of all electricity options. Its shortcomings are legion, but the biggest ones can be grouped into eight categories. Land. Wind turbines are neither clean nor green and they provide zero global energy. The Global Wind Energy Council recently released its latest report, excitedly boasting that ‘the proliferation of wind energy into the global power market continues at a furious pace, after it was revealed that more than 54 gigawatts of clean renewable wind power was installed across the global market last year’. You may have got the impression from announcements like that, and from the obligatory pictures of wind turbines in any BBC story or airport advert about energy, that wind power is making a big contribution to world energy today. You would be wrong. Its contribution is still, after decades — nay centuries — of development, trivial to the point of irrelevance. Here’s a quiz; no conferring.

Climate Justice Warriors Protest Against Wind Power… Guest “I couldn’t make this schist up if I was trying” by David Middleton This Robert Bryce article in today’s Real Clear Energy feed is actually from last November… But it’s fracking hilarious!

Climate Justice Warriors Protest Against Wind Power…

Hawaii protests show why wind energy can’t save us from climate changeBY ROBERT BRYCE, OPINION CONTRIBUTOR — 11/13/19Since mid-October, some 128 people on the island of Oahu have been arrested while protesting a wind energy project being built near the small village of Kahuku. The project is planned to include eight turbines standing 568 feet high. Many of the arrests occurred after protesters blocked trucks carrying equipment to the site. The protests continued on Nov. 1, when about 30 anti-wind protesters occupied the office of Honolulu Mayor Kirk Caldwell for three hours.Of the many land-use conflicts that have erupted during the past decade over proposed renewable-energy projects, the protests at Kahuku are remarkable both for their duration and the number of people who have been arrested. Wind turbines traumatizing animals as well as people. The same wind turbines that are causing reports of severe health harms to people around the world appear to be having a similar or more severe impact on dogs and other animals.

Wind turbines traumatizing animals as well as people

This is especially troubling because dogs and other domesticated animals rely on humans for humane living conditions and they are unable to tell us when they are under distress from wind turbines. A couple typical examples are reported in the Hamilton (Australia) Spectator and the World Council for Nature website. BBC: Green Energy Boom Forcing Increased Production of a Potent Greenhouse Gas. Guest chuckle by Eric Worrall The BBC claims the potent greenhouse gas sulfur hexafluoride leaking from EU wind turbines and other renewable electricity infrastructure components produces the global warming equivalent of putting an extra million new cars on the road.

BBC: Green Energy Boom Forcing Increased Production of a Potent Greenhouse Gas

Climate change: Electrical industry’s ‘dirty secret’ boosts warmingBy Matt McGrathEnvironment correspondentIt’s the most powerful greenhouse gas known to humanity, and emissions have risen rapidly in recent years, the BBC has learned. Sulphur hexafluoride, or SF6, is widely used in the electrical industry to prevent short circuits and accidents. The Appalling Environmental Cost Of Wind Power. A new publication from the Global Warming Policy Foundation reviews the impact of wind energy on the environment and finds that it is already doing great harm to wildlife.

The Appalling Environmental Cost Of Wind Power

“The Impact of Wind Energy on Wildlife and the Environment” contains contributions from both researchers and campaigners, with a focus on birdlife. Professor Oliver Krüger describes his cutting-edge research, which has shown how birds of prey and ducks are being killed in their thousands in Germany. The risk to these species is so great that there is a possibility of whole populations being wiped out. Klaus Richarz, the former head of a major bird reserve in Germany, describes how windfarm operators are evading strict compliance with the rules, to the detriment of both birds and bats.

Witnesses say broken wind turbine caused several hundred acre fire. From KEPRTV by Megan Magensky Sunday, July 21st 2019 KLICKITAT COUNTY, Wash. — KLICKITAT COUNTY, Wash. — The Juniper Fire is now 40 percent contained, according to a press release.

Witnesses say broken wind turbine caused several hundred acre fire

The fire is mostly burning in the Pine Creek Drainage area south of Bickleton, WA. As of Sunday evening, the fire has burned 242 acres. 39 structures are threatened by the fire but no structures have burned. How Green Is My Industrial Wind Turbine? With an average lifespan of only fifteen years, running at max 30% output, an industrial windmill could spin until it falls apart and never generate as much energy as was invested in building it.

How Green Is My Industrial Wind Turbine?

Sadly however, such facts that contradict the conventional-climate-wisdom of the day matter little in the ideological, groupthink echo charmer of the great global warming swindle/religion. 60 tonne Coking coal, Steel and cement wind turbine Because wind power fails when the wind stops blowing, 100% of its capacity has to be backed up 100% of the time by fossil fuels which run constantly in the background to balance the grid and prevent blackouts when wind power output collapses: The energy required for a helicopter to de-ice all the blades on a wind farm must outweigh any supposed saving in CO2 by a factor of 100 or more.

Twenty-One Bad Things About Wind Energy - and Three Reasons Why - Master Resource. Shredding Birds and Mincing Logic. Recently, Tony Abbott caused a stir with his entirely rational and reasonable observation that wind turbines are ugly — an opinion that further disturbed Fairfax opinion-page fixture Elizabeth Farelly, who countered that she likes ‘their whiteness and grandeur, and how they catch the morning light like so many celestial beings beamed across the landscape’.

Shredding Birds and Mincing Logic

The obvious response, once one has recovered from exposure to such fly-blown prose, is that, while beauty will always be in the eye of the beholder, the bottom-line cost of extracting volts from zephyrs presents an irredeemably ugly mess of red ink. Simply put, when the outrageously expensive hilltop turbines are judged against the cost of electricity from coal- and gas-fired power plants they make no economic sense whatsoever. Let’s have a look at one of the largest wind farms in the world, Roscoe in Texas. It is rated at 782MW, but its actual output is closer to 230MW. It cost $1 billion to construct. But it doesn’t end there. Sierra Club abandons environment to push industrial wind and solar. Germany’s Drive For Wind In Trouble. By Paul Homewood Standing beside a windswept junction near Germany’s Baltic coast, Thea Funk points at a stretch of land to the north.

Germany’s Drive For Wind In Trouble

“They want to build 12 turbines up there, each one 240 metres high. And down there there are plans to put up more, somewhere between six and eight,” she explains, gesturing to a field across the road. “We’re going to be encircled.” Nature-Wrecking Machines…Experts Warn Wind Turbines Slowing Wind Speeds, Causing More Warming! Experts are finding out wind turbines are not only an inefficient way to produce electricity, but that they are also wrecking the environment, natural habitats and even the climate. German meteorologist Dr. Karsten Brandt warns wind turbines are altering local climates. Image: Donnerwetter.de. Germany’s “Ticking Time Bombs”…Technical Experts Say Wind Turbines Posing “Significant Danger” To Environment! As much of Germany’s nearly 30,000 strong fleet of wind turbines approach 20 or more years in age, the list of catastrophic collapses is growing more rapidly. The turbines are now being viewed by technical experts as “ticking time bombs”. Wind turbine recently burned after being hit by lightning.

Image: Wasili Karbe, cropped from video here. According to a commentary by Daniel Wetzel of online German Daily ‘Die Welt’, the aging rickety wind turbines are poorly inspected and maintained and thus are now posing a huge risk. Over the past months alone there’s been a flurry of reports over wind turbines failing catastrophically and collapsing to the ground, e.g. see here, here and here. As the older turbines age, their components and electronic control systems are wearing out and beginning to gravely malfunction. In Germany industrial systems are required to regularly undergo technical inspections and approvals in order to ensure that they operate safely.

Hazard to ground water. It’s Easy Being Green. Bald eagles are a protected species. Killing them is a crime, and criminal prosecutions are not rare. But it’s a different story if you are a wind energy company. The Obama administration has just released a final rule that will allow 4,200 bald eagles to be killed by wind turbines a year without penalty: Under the new rule, wind companies and other power providers will not face a penalty if they kill or injure up to 4,200 bald eagles, nearly four times the current limit.

That limit is annual. Bearings: The Achilles Heel of Wind Turbines. Germany’s Wind Energy Mess: As Subsidies Expire, Thousands Of Turbines To Shut Down…Environmental Nightmare! As older turbines see subsidies expire, thousands are expected to be taken offline due to lack of profitability. Green nightmare: Wind park operators eye shipping thousands of tons of wind turbine litter to third world countries – and leaving their concrete rubbish in the ground. The Swiss national daily Baseler Zeitung here recently reported how Germany’s wind industry is facing a potential “abandonment”. Approvals tougher to get This is yet another blow to Germany’s Energiewende (transition to green energies).

A few days ago I reported here how the German solar industry had seen a monumental jobs-bloodbath and investments had been slashed to a tiny fraction of what they once had been. NOAA/NWS document: wind turbines affect weather radar, create false storm impressions. The beam blockage will hamper our abilities to detect thunderstorm circulations in Oneida/Madison Counties and hence tornado warnings could be delayed. It is important that we have good radar coverage in Oneida/Madison Counties because there is a local maximum in tornadoes in these areas since the Mohawk Valley will often skew winds to the southeast leading to increased atmospheric rotation.Thunderstorm or winter storm characteristics will be further masked or misinterpreted, reducing warning effectiveness in the vicinity of and down range of existing and future wind turbines.False signatures contaminating Doppler velocity data will further reduce forecasters’ situational awareness, especially during hazardous weather events.The beam blockage could also significantly hamper our ability to forecast and detect lake effect snow.

ECIU Wants To Double The Size Of Your Wind Turbines. The dirty secret of Britain's power madness: Polluting diesel generators built in secret by foreign companies to kick in when there's no wind for turbines - and other insane but true eco-scandals. “Massive Damage”…Large-Scale Engineering Debacle Threatens As North Sea Wind Turbine Breaks Apart! OSHA inspecting TPI Composites after receiving formal complaint.