Wind Farms Disrupting Radar, Scientists Say

Wind farms, along with solar power and other alternative energy sources, are supposed to produce the energy of tomorrow. Evidence indicates that their countless whirring fan blades produce something else: "blank spots" that distort radar readings.

Now government agencies that depend on radar -- such as the Department of Defense and the National Weather Service -- are spending millions in a scramble to preserve their detection capabilities. A four-star Air Force general recently spelled out the problem to Dave Beloite, the director of the Department of Defense’s Energy Siting Clearinghouse.

"Look there’s a radar here -- one of our network of Homeland surveillance radars -- and [if you build this wind farm] you essentially are going to put my eyes out in the Northwestern corner of the United States,” Beloite related during a web conference in April.

Spinning wind turbines make it hard to detect incoming planes. To avoid that problem, military officials have blocked wind farm construction near their radars -- and in some cases later allowed them after politicians protested.

Shepherd’s Flat, a wind farm under construction in Oregon, was initially held up by a government notice that the farm would “seriously impair the ability of the (DoD) to detect, monitor and safely conduct air operations."

“The Department of Defense's earlier decision threatened to drop a bomb on job creation in Central Oregon,” democratic Senator Ron Wyden noted in a press release.

Beloite told FoxNews.com that the project was given the green light by the military only after scientists at MIT’s Lincoln Laboratory assured the Department of Defense “that there were algorithms and processors they could design for not too much money that would mitigate the problem.”

Ummm. No. Just google ‘windmill bird deaths’ and you will get many pro and con stories. Just a brief reading gives 10,000 to 40,000 bird deaths per year in the U.S. alone. Turbines exist in other countries as well. One facility in Wolfe Island off the shores of Kingston, Ont., Canada, has 86 turbines. Each wind turbine averages 14 bird kills per year and 29 bat kills. That amounts to 1032 birds killed per year and 2540 bats killed.
Millions of birds die each year by unnatural causes, so the number of 40,000 in the U.S. pales by comparison. I don’t know what the deaths worldwide are. But just because the national number is much lower does not mean that it is non-existent or unimportant.
Perhaps 400,000 is a worldwide number?

Dave Belote, cited in the article, is misrepresenting the effectiveness of the Scan-Step technology now being field tested at the Shepherds Flat wind project. By 2008, 39% of our long range radar was negatively impacted by wind turbines. We have twice the capacity of wind now installed and the problem is NOT resolved. Meanwhile, our taxes are picking up the bill to degrade our radar resolution in the name of the green dream. That little ‘blank spot’ Belote refers to in on the radar map is big enough to fly a space shuttle through.

> Millions of birds die each year by unnatural causes, so the number of 40,000 in the U.S. pales by comparison. I don’t know what the deaths worldwide are. But just because the national number is much lower does not mean that it is non-existent or unimportant.

I apologize if I seemed to be saying that bird deaths due to wind machines are "non-existent or unimportant". As one who, during my time as a wildlife rehabilitator, hand-raised a score or more injured/orphaned birds for weeks or months each until they are ready to be released, I know that every single one of those lives are God-given and precious.

Wind power at small scales has been around for centuries, and any American farmer will tell you that prior to FDR's Big-Government New Deal REA, a lot of America's rural heartland relied on wind power. I personally think that while modern small-scale wind power is both practical and worthwhile, the large-scale projects tend to be troublesome boondoggles.

Anyway, my point before was that bird kills are not a good means for advocating against large-scale wind power.

The number of birds actually killed by wind machines is a) mostly unknown, due to lack of data, and b) a lot smaller than the figures usually fabricated by the anti-wind-power advocates. In that information vacuum, people with agendas make data up. I have seen figures taken from a small study done on some turbines that were (unfortunately) sited directly on a major migration path, and multiplied by the estimated number of turbines in the world, as if they all were in such paths. That's silly at best, and a better description is "fraudulent".

> Perhaps 400,000 is a worldwide number?

It could be. As above, I don't know the real numbers any better than those who fabricate them; I believe it's lower than often cited, because no one is able to show the carcasses, and if birds were being knocked out of the sky at the cited rates, there would be piles of them on every wind farm.

Your mention of bat kills is interesting. I personally like bats a lot, and hadn't thought wind machines posed a significant danger to them, given that they are known to be able to fly through rotating electric fan blades and so on. I'll look into that, and thank you for the thought.

US Fish and Wildlife Service estimates annual mortality due to wind turbines at 440,000 birds. See http://www.pwrc.usgs.gov/pif/pubs/McAllenProc/articles/PIF09_Anthropogenic%20Impacts/Manville_PIF09.pdf .

Bat mortality is significantly higher thanks to the poor siting of wind turbines and reckless operating procedures (during peak migration periods). Turbines are adding to the devastation already underway from white nose syndrome.

We're long past the point of trying to stop wind projects using bird/bat mortality. The public is too confused by available information — as clearly shown in your post. Still, the industry knows better but refuses to accept responsibility and our wildlife agencies (State and Local) are unwilling to stand up for fear they will lose their jobs. The question now is how much mortality will take place before the industry succumbs to the more obvious weakness — the fact that the wind cannot survive without billions paid out in federal subsidies and existing state mandates that enable developers to demand (and get) higher prices for a low-value energy.

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.