Posted on 11/11/2016 8:00:48 PM PST by Lorianne
Offshore wind power is taking off in Europe, but we’re still coming to grips with the environmental impacts of sticking gigantic steel towers in the oceans. One effect of these clean energy behemoths, however, seems indisputable: sediment plumes.
Captured by the Operational Land Imager on NASA and the USGS’ Landsat 8 satellite, these striking images show us what looks like a bunch of jet skiers zipping across the North Sea in mathematically precise formation. In reality, these are vast wakes and plumes of suspended sediment generated by three enormous offshore wind farms.
(Excerpt) Read more at gizmodo.com ...
But they are supposed to help the environment...
Save The World—Ban Sediment Plumes!
Require all wind farms to have large diffuser farms surrounding them.
How many sea turtles are swimming off to sea instead of to their breeding grounds?
Bald eagles and Golden eagles chopped up by windmills, move along nothing to see here. Two Bald eagles caught in a storm drain, front page news.
CO2 bubblers can clean that right up
Sediment plume tax!
So, the vibrations from the generators roils the water and suspend fine sediment in it. Any zoologist will tell you that the suspended sediment will foul the gills of fish and clog up any molluscs.
I predict this will lead to a marine “desert” that disrupts the entire ecosystem of the North Sea.
Where’s my grant money?
But that’s not important. What is important is they make you feel good.
Everyone knows that sound travels faster and louder in water; thus the sound created by vibration will create an aquaculture desert as fish avoid the area.
Even the U.S. Navy had to cancel tests of its new sonar system since it interfered with the communication of killer whales while in their mateing area. Also, the sediment plume will kill off the coral shelf buildup resulting from glow-BULL warming; thus the coral dies off, even before it can get established.
Where is my grant money for further 10 year study ? (my kid needs college tuition, a hot car, and pay for his books)..NOT !
All means of producing power have some sort of impact, this seems like kind that has lots of negatives and very few positives.
Ah! those pesky un-intended consequences. they can be such a pain in the rear.
Somehow the super-tough EPA forgot to require environmental impact statements for wind farms. Some forms of energy production are more equal than others.
I would like to blame those towers for the problem but “it aint” the problem. The disturbance from the blades at the surface of the ocean is minimal but they do chop up birds with great efficiency. Any sediment from the windmill is from disturbance in the seafloor currents by the base of the tower and in reality is minimal. The problem with wind farms is the fact they are economically a negative payback. They only exist via massive subsidies from the government.
The sediment those wind farms cause is inconsequential as compared to a North Sea Storm. I have been in many of them. It is awe inspiring and frightening. We had a wave break over our helideck that was 115 feet above the water level. I thought I had bought the farm that day. This was just a few months after the Alexander Kielland went down. 113 died that day. Some were my friends.
This is a disaster in the making.
By 2019 sediment plumes will pile up so tall, Miami will be under water.
Roughly 75 billion people globally will be displaced.
Mountain tops will come under stress, as humans cling to the tops of them. This will cause some mountains to sink up to 18 feet, providing this doesn’t last too long, and more than that if it does.
Birds will get confused because they use water vapors to keep their eyes in tip top shape.
Lipstick makers will discontinue about 3/4ths of their lines out of respect for those who become homeless, and can’t store more then 217 tubes of various colors and textures.
To see the full report...
Oh never mind. Enjoy!
111 square miles of sea floor taken up to produce a nameplate capacity of 1434 megawatts. In actual production, likely only a fifth of that.
Two conventional or nuclear units would produce 1800 to 2200 megawatts, reliably, 24/7/365 in 111 ACRES.
I was involved in surveys related to scour problems on jackup legs in the Gulf of Khambat back in ‘94-’95. The ebb stream there reached 8-9 knots, and the seabed scoured away all the way down to the spud cans.
The only solution that the best minds could come up with was the old standby - mattresses. They had to monitored and laid over sometimes, but usually lasted through the drilling programme.
Several million years from now a sedimentologist will go nuts trying to figure out that shale formation.
Wanted to reflexively retort, "no corals in the North Sea," but then did a little online research. Yes, there are!
Regards,
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