Posted on 09/30/2014 5:57:16 AM PDT by Tolerance Sucks Rocks
NEW YORK — Environmentalists worship solar energy and wind power as Earth-friendly answers to their ecological prayers. Tortoises, bats, butterflies, and bald eagles beg to differ.
Perhaps because solar panels and industrial wind farms lack emissions, they seem “clean.” Despite their pristine appearance, however, these “green” electricity sources hammer Mother Nature — often fatally.
Consider the Ivanpah Solar Electric Generating System in California’s Mojave Desert. As Carolyn Lochhead wrote in September 7’s San Francisco Chronicle, Ivanpah occupies 3,500 previously untouched federal acres. It features 300,000 mirrors that focus sunlight on three 40-story towers of power. Inside, 900-degree temperatures yield steam, propel turbines, and generate electricity for 140,000 homes.
Ivanpah’s environmental toll is stunning:
• BrightSource Energy, the project’s owner, could have rehabilitated a brownfield, an abandoned commercial site, or a decommissioned military base. Instead, BrightSource developed 5.5 square miles of virgin desert.
• Lochhead reports that “scientists now say desert soils contain vast stores of carbon that are unleashed by construction of solar facilities.”
• Tortoises native to that area became refugees once BrightSource relocated them en masse.
• Kit fox dens were flattened during construction.
• Monarch butterflies and birds should avoid Ivanpah at all costs. Those who traverse its highly concentrated sunbeams often ignite. Center for Biological Diversity ecologist K. Shawn Smallwood, Ph.D. told the California Energy Commission last July that Ivanpah will roast an estimated 28,380 birds annually.
Ivanpah cost $2.2 billion, including a $1.6 billion federal loan. For its next trick, BrightSource envisions a bigger installation near Joshua Tree National Park — within a migratory path for protected peregrine falcons, golden eagles, and some 100 other bird species.
Meanwhile, environmentalists call wind power as benign as summer breeze. In fact, wind farms have become avian killing fields. The U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service reports that “wind turbines may kill a half a million birds a year.” Wind blows away another 600,000 bats annually, primarily through lung hemorrhaging. While these “flying vampires” look scary, most are insectivores and vegetarians. Bats actually serve mankind by pollinating crops and devouring mosquitoes. Fewer bats mean more mosquitoes. Swell.
USF&WS also explains: “Eagles appear to be particularly susceptible. Large numbers of golden eagles have been killed by wind turbines in the western states,” as have smaller numbers of bald eagles. Team Obama —which could not care less about America’s beautiful, majestic national symbol — almost never prosecutes wind companies for violating the Bald and Golden Eagle Protection Act. Even worse, Obama is granting wind-farm operators 30-year federal eagle-killing permits, to continue their mayhem — all in the name of “clean” energy.
Long before they are installed — which, itself, consumes open fields — windmills abuse the Earth.
To evaluate any energy technology, “we must remember that it’s a process, starting with mining the materials necessary for the machines,” Alex Epstein notes in his forthcoming Penguin book, The Moral Case for Fossil Fuels. Epstein observes that windmill manufacturing requires “hazardous substances like hydrofluoric acid in order to get usable rare earth elements.”
The Daily Mail’s Simon Parry toured Baotou, China, a source of neodymium, the main ingredient in wind turbines’ electromagnets. He discovered “a five-mile wide ‘tailing’ lake. It has killed farmland for miles around, made thousands of people ill, and put one of China’s key waterways in jeopardy.”
Parry added: “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.” As he continued, “For hours after our visit, my stomach lurched and my head throbbed. We were there for only one hour, but those who live in…Dalahai, and other villages around, breathe in the same poison every day.”
Environmentalists should stop hallucinating about “sustainable” power sources that unleash puppies and rainbows at no cost to air, water, habitat, and wildlife. “Clean energy” hurts nature. Those who believe otherwise live in Fantasyland.
The only reliable “earth friendly” energy is hydro electric.
Instead of upgrading and repowering the existing dams in this country we’re tearing them out at an alarming rate.
Wasn't there something to do with Tortoises as part of the governments excuse for trying to run Bundy off is ranch? I guess when tortoises thrive around cattle that must be stopped. When some lib cohort of bammy & crew wants a pet project, tortoises are shoved out of the way.
Which goes to show that the enviro opposition to energy development is just an excuse.
The left opposes energy production because it allows “commoners” to live comfortable lives.
Bttt.
Windmills are a sacrament for the enviro-wackos. Thou shalt not criticize them!
Why is it these “green energy” project seem to be exempt from all the environmental scrutiny given to every other large scale development? Environmentalists who seek every means possible to block projects least some toad, minnow, insect or bird might conceivably be injured or molested in some way seem oblivious to wind farms being bird blenders, solar farms disrupting virgin desert or the batteries for electric cars being made with materials so toxic they can only be made in China where environmental regulations are almost nonexistent?
This seems to be just another example of how some people in this administration can be faced with the truth & not recognize it or are able to just completely ignore it.
This wis what the USA will look like when the subsidy money runs out and the companies declare bankruptcy.
That has been fact checked and debunked a zillion times, but it sounds good.
Common sense tells you that the steel has great recycled value. Common sense also tells you that the spot picked to erect a windmill will also be a good spot to erect a replacement windmill.
OTOH, the steel casing in oil wells never gets recycled. Its cemented in place. How many tons of steel are there in each and every oil well that has been drilled since 1860. In Texas, US, and the world.
Anyhow, the above article about solar power has been upstaged. In recent days, Arizona Public Service Co has announced that they are going deep in roof top solar. Solar City is not happy about this.
OTOH, Oklahoma Gas and Electric was able to get the republican government to levy a $50/mo sun tax anybody with roof top solar
***”abandoned wind farms”
That has been fact checked and debunked a zillion times,***
Really?
http://www.garvindirect.com/2012/08/14000-abandoned-wind-turbines-in-usa.html
http://www.mediaust.com.au/Blog_Detail.asp?blog_item_id=116
Skim down to the wind farm article:
http://kaunewsbriefs.blogspot.com/2011_08_17_archive.html
Then you give me links, which I follow.
Mr Garvins mentions Kamaoa. So I google search it. You should too. So what you find out is that those old, small, 1980s windmills were replaced with the new big GEs.
Then he mentions San Gorgonio so I google and its the same song second verse.
Then he mentions Tehachapi so I google and its the same song third verse
Garvin is full of it and so are you.
That's unfortunate. I'm for all-of-the-above on the free market when it comes to energy, with no penalties OR tax breaks or subsidies. But that will never happen, as long as the corporate scum can bend the law to their favor.
***Garvin is full of it and so are you. ***
Oh really? The company I worked for has lots of wind powered generators down in Texas. When the subsidies die so will the industry.
As we say in the power plant business....”HIDE AND WATCH!”
COAL RULES!
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