Wind farms vs wildlife

The shocking environmental cost of renewable energy

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.

I’m a lecturer in biological and human sciences at Oxford university. I trained as a zoologist, I’ve worked as an environmental consultant — conducting impact assessments on projects like the Folkestone-to-London rail link — and I now teach ecology and conservation. 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.

My speciality is species extinction. When I was a child, my father used to tell me about all the animals he’d seen growing up in Kent — the grass snakes, the lime hawk moths — and what shocked me when we went looking for them was how few there were left. Species extinction is a serious issue: around the world we’re losing up to 40 a day. Yet environmentalists are urging us to adopt technologies that are hastening this process. Among the most destructive of these is wind power.

Every year in Spain alone — according to research by the conservation group SEO/Birdlife — between 6 and 18 million birds and bats are killed by wind farms. They kill roughly twice as many bats as birds. This breaks down as approximately 110–330 birds per turbine per year and 200–670 bats per year. And these figures may be conservative if you compare them to statistics published in December 2002 by the California Energy Commission: ‘In a summary of avian impacts at wind turbines by Benner et al (1993) bird deaths per turbine per year were as high as 309 in Germany and 895 in Sweden.’

A mate of mine who's an ornithologist goes gathering data about the amount of birds killed by wind farms. It's a huge problem - but believe it or not the development of new sites largely depends on the estimated kill ratio and of which particular species. Not that that makes wind farms any better.

Space Bandit wrote:
Oi!



sanctumzone.co.uk/forum/The-Community-Ch...s-news.html?start=40

Now how do I copy and move a thread?

oioioi wrote:
Eh?

TBH I think this whole new news thing is confusing and unnecessary and rather than solve anything is going to inadvertently stifle discussion.

dogsmilk wrote:
It needs tweaking!

I'm on it.

Oi!



sanctumzone.co.uk/forum/The-Community-Ch...s-news.html?start=40

Now how do I copy and move a thread?

oioioi wrote:
In all honesty, I read the new rules and call me thick if you will, but I don’t get them quite frankly...

If it helps, feel free to delete this post once the matter is clarified.

Doesn't matter now, it's now a sub-category in Todays News as it was leading to much confusion.

fifewindfarms.org.uk/toxic-impacts-from-wind-turbines/

Theres some hefty environmental impact...but its OK cos its in china.

‘In China, the true cost of Britain’s clean, green wind power experiment: Pollution on a disastrous scale‘, which states; “This vast, hissing cauldron of chemicals is the dumping ground for seven million tons a year of mined rare earth after it has been doused in acid and chemicals and processed through red-hot furnaces to extract its components.”

A local resident, next to the toxic lake created through the neodymium extraction process is quoted; “Anything we planted just withered, then our animals started to sicken and die.’

The report then goes on to claim; ‘People too began to suffer. Dalahai villagers say their teeth began to fall out, their hair turned white at unusually young ages, and they suffered from severe skin and respiratory diseases. Children were born with soft bones and cancer rates rocketed.’

Extracting neodymium involves pumping acid down boreholes to dissolve and retrieve the minerals, then other acids, chemicals and high heat are used to further process the material, which in turn creates toxic waste which is dumped in large lakes of toxic sludge. The dumping of the toxic materials in this manner has resulted in seepage into the surrounding fields and water supplies and noxious air emissions have killed trees, crops, cattle, polluted lakes and streams, and given local people respiratory and intestinal problems, osteoporosis and cancer. [...]