Global warming, climate change, all these things are just a dream come true for politicians. I deal with evidence and not with frightening computer models because the seeker after truth does not put his faith in any consensus. The road to the truth is long and hard, but this is the road we must follow. People who describe the unprecedented comfort and ease of modern life as a climate disaster, in my opinion have no idea what a real problem is.
The push for solar energy is carving a path of destruction through the Thar Desert in India’s Rajasthan, where native species maintain a delicate balance of life now being sacrificed to an absurd and futile climate agenda.
The push for solar energy is carving a path of destruction through the Thar Desert in India’s Rajasthan, where native species maintain a delicate balance of life now being sacrificed to an absurd and futile climate agenda.
This is an act of ecological vandalism that pretends moral superiority while destroying the natural world it supposedly reveres. If nature is the god of the climate obsessed, then their version of saving the planet is blasphemy.
Situated in the northwest of the subcontinent, Rajasthan is India’s largest state, covering more than 10% of the country’s land area. It hosts a habitat that has evolved over millennia to support a unique web of life and is considered a national treasure.
Yet, the government allows its despoilment by solar installations at a staggering scale. The solar blight already afflicts more than 200 square miles. More than 2.6 million trees have been cleared across four districts to make way for the sprawl. To meet India’s distant “green” energy targets, an additional 14,000 square miles of habitat – nearly the size of Switzerland – could be cleared.
The consequences have been devastating. Ponds that once attracted migrating pelicans are now covered with solar panels. Eyewitness accounts report that pelicans often are injured when mistaking the gleaming panels for a body of water at night. Other birds affected include the great Indian bustard, sand grouse, pintail, wigeon, pochard, teal, swan, imperial sand grouse, rain quail, florican, robin, starling and more.
Wildlife expert Mridul Vaibhav says, “Numerous species such as wild pigs, langurs, black deer, desert cats, desert foxes, Indian gazelle, and the great Indian deer are struggling to survive.”
Activists say authorities are handing over ecologically sensitive zones – catchment areas, foothills and surrounding landscapes – to developers in a reckless rush to install solar infrastructure. Bulldozers and other heavy machinery flatten terrain, damage riverbeds and reshape entire watersheds without a second thought.
To clean and cool solar panels, operators use about 10.5 million gallons of water every week — just in four districts. That’s enough to meet the weekly drinking needs of 300,000 people. In a place where water scarcity has at times threatened survival, this redirection of water to a non-agricultural, non-residential activity is both absurd and unethical.
There’s another human cost to this so-called energy transition. Farmers in places like Nursar village were sold the dream of solar prosperity. They gave up their land — 90% of it in some cases — to solar companies promising easy money.
One farm named Ganpat found himself with his solar payout exhausted within five years and the fields his cattle once grazed taken over by solar panels. Fodder must be purchased, and family members without jobs have migrated to cities in search of work.
These people are not climate warriors but the collateral damage of virtue-signaling elites and grifters profiting from government subsidies.
Although solar demands much from the ecosystems and people, its offers little in return because solar panels have extremely low energy density compared to coal, natural gas or nuclear fuel.
To match the output of a nuclear plant a solar facility needs to have more than triple the installed capacity. Why? Because solar plants produce electricity less than a quarter of the time of a nuclear plant. Clouds, sunset, dust storms and snowfall shut down the panels, while a nuclear plant runs almost continuously.
Further, the land needed for a solar facility can range from 45 to 75 square miles. For perspective, the entire island of Manhattan is just 34 square miles. A nuclear site needs less than two square miles. The comparison isn’t even close. Yet green bureaucrats want solar to dominate India’s grid as a response to a fabricated climate emergency.
Is this progress? Is it truly “green” to destroy a desert ecosystem for no benefit? Is it just to impoverish farmers to produce relatively paltry amounts of electricity?
You don’t need to oppose solar altogether to ask these questions. But you do need honesty, courage and common sense, which are in short supply among the environmental elite.
Vijay Jayaraj is a Science and Research Associate at the CO2 Coalition, Fairfax, Virginia. He holds an M.S. in environmental sciences from the University of East Anglia and a postgraduate degree in energy management from Robert Gordon University, both in the U.K., and a bachelor’s in engineering from Anna University, India.
Offshore wind harvesters are supposed to be one of the answers to the “climate crisis.” It seems unlikely to me. We know and have discussed one of the major weaknesses of this generation mechanism, its unpredictability. In a rational world, that alone would discount it as the go-to for any modern civilisation. Its characteristics are such that the mugs installing it aren’t the ones making it; nor will they/can they ever be.
Offshore wind harvesters are supposed to be one of the answers to the “climate crisis.” It seems unlikely to me. We know and have discussed one of the major weaknesses of this generation mechanism, its unpredictability. In a rational world, that alone would discount it as the go-to for any modern civilisation. Its characteristics are such that the mugs installing it aren’t the ones making it; nor will they/can they ever be.
If the offshore wind harvesters have anything going for them, it is that they emit (almost) no carbon dioxide in the operational phase.
If anyone can think of another advantage of offshore wind, do enlighten me. (I may have a few to share below.)
To place on the other side of the scale, we have quite a list of potential negative impacts. Not all of these are environmental, and many of them are of minor importance. Nevertheless, I thought it might be worthwhile to sketch out some of the potential impacts of a “typical” North Sea wind harvester deployment. The headings are in part garnered from the environment statement for the Norfolk Boreas wind development. They apply just as well up and down the North Sea, differing only in the specifics.
1. Effects on wave and tidal velocity. The main potential effect is on sediment transport south to north, affecting, ultimately, rates of coastal erosion. In principle, the effect of obstacles in the water column is to slow the passing water, and therefore reduce sediment transport. Probably a minor effect in general, in particular as the turbines are now so large that they are hundreds of metres apart, preventing this effect at one interacting with the same effect at its neighbours.
2. Disturbed sediment in the construction phase, in assembling the uprights or burying the cables.
A. This may include toxins which are re-entrained and could end up anywhere. (E.g., arsenic.) Likely to be a minor issue.
B. The disturbed sediment may have an impact on benthic communities. In soft substrates these will be wormy things (polychaetes, among which the most familiar may be rag- and lug- worms). For Boreas, and other developments, there is the risk of interacting with an “important” worm called Sabellaria spinulosa, which uses sediment grains to produce a tube for shelter (you may be familiar with the calcareous tubes of a similar species, the keelworm, which often decorates washed-up mussel shells, etc.). The point for Sabellaria is that it has no means to move once settled, and is therefore vulnerable to being buried. Another minor issue, especially if care is taken.
3. EMF. Naturally, all the lovely juice has to be squirted ashore, and that means electromagnetic fields. Burying the cables takes care of some of the problem before it starts. For Boreas there will be two HVDC cables 120 m apart, and there will be another two 120 m apart 250 m away for the “sister project” Vanguard. Because EMF falls off with the square of the distance, Boreas is pleased to note that its effect will be highly localised. Of course, it will be highly localised in long parallel lines 120 – 250 m apart. Boreas also says that “no direct evidence of impacts to invertebrates from undersea cable EMFs exists.” This was presumably written before there was such evidence, which there is now, although it is not very well defined. Boreas predicts a negligible impact here – but I’m not so sure. Here’s what Heriot-Watt said four years back:
“Brown crabs can’t resist the electromagnetic pull of underwater power cables and it’s changing their behaviour, marine scientists say.”
We also have the problem of EMF affecting skates and rays, which use magnetic fields to navigate, hunt, detect congeners, etc. There is some evidence of these fish not doing well in proximity to undersea power cables. Could the parallel cables form a barrier to dispersal? Boreas doesn’t think so. Then, they aren’t quite sure what an elasmobranch is. I spotted three different spellings of this in the space of two paragraphs of the ES [392, 393 of Chapter 11 (revised) if you’d like to check.]
4. Getting in the way of fishing. For Boreas, plaice and sole fishers will be excluded from 700-odd square kilometres. They’ll be able to make up the difference outside the exclusion zone. [Plaice was known to be overfished well over a century ago. Is there a hidden silver lining in this cloud?]
5. The effect of piling noise on marine mammals. The risk of permanent auditory injury, or in other words, striking the victim deaf, dumb, and (in effect) blind.
There is “embedded mitigation” against this trouble in Boreas’s case – the choice of installing fewer, but larger, turbines to the same overall capacity. Sure, this means there will be fewer piles driven in. But the cynic in me says this choice had little to do with the banging headaches that our cetacean friends are likely to end up with.
The next “embedded mitigation” is “soft-starts” to the banging, thereby, it is hoped, scaring the harbour porpoises (the most abundant cetacean in the neighbourhood) out of damaging range. See also Mark’s piece on whales, and comments below.
6. Birds.
A. Displacement. Some birds just will not enter the footprint of a wind harvesting facility (e.g., red-throated divers). They are therefore displaced from foraging areas. Other birds go straight through, if they survive the trip. The displacement has an energetic cost, and can cause birds to starve (see also C. below).
B. Collision risk. This is what applies to the less timid birds, for example the little gull that I have a very soft spot for, the kittiwake. Boreas says its “worst case” on kittiwake swats is 200 being downed a year, with confidence limits. I have no faith in such numbers, or of the modelling exercises that produce them.
And it’s not just the regular users of the airspace that are at risk: there are also the birds on migration. Swans, geese, things like that, things that aren’t very manoeuvrable and have the unfortunate idea that it’s good fun to fly at night.
For Boreas, the “embedded mitigation” includes fewer, larger turbines! Why not have one, the size of the moon?
C. Barrier effects. Birds like the red-throated diver now have to make a laborious circuit around an enormous footprint in order to make any progress towards wherever they were trying to get to. There is a large energetic cost to these diversions.
7. Shipping and navigation. The deployment of all this paraphernalia leads to an increased risk of allision, and in order to avoid such, requires a degree of circumnavigation of the hazard.
8. Aviation and radar. The turbines, with a tip that reaches 350 m, are a hazard for all the jellycopters whizzing to and fro, bringing people to the wind-collecting arrays and taking them home again. [Boreas intends to make 2 helicopter transits daily, as well as ship movements.] The whirling blades create radar clutter, which may confuse fliers.
9. Any effect on local climate? I don’t see this mentioned in Boreas’s ES, but we know that extracting energy from the wind partly stills it. On the face of it, this is likely to result in a minor warming effect on the surface of the sea – but who knows? [I haven’t tried to look it up.]
So there we have it – a list of possible drawbacks of installing giant whirly things in the North Sea. Note that this is entirely separate to their usefulness as generators. Nor does it say anything about the cost of such electricity as is delivered. Absent subsidies, it is doubtful whether the likes of Boreas would be viable. In other words, no-one would build such a development and then try to sell electricity into an open market. No mention has been made of the materials required to build these rotating colossi, the concrete in their foundations, etc.
There is also the non-trivial issue of cumulative impacts. Each one of these deployments has an impact on its own; together, all of them have an additive effect. Of course, when it comes to displacement, whether of sensitive birds, or fishing boats, the effect can be more than additive. When it comes to the hearty kittiwake flying through the whizzing blades, maybe it is less than additive: you can only die once.
Here you can find the document library for Boreas’s planning application. There are two thousand documents in all; the document library (pdf) is over a hundred pages long.
The SNP has signed off on the world’s largest offshore wind farm in what conservationists are calling “a very dark day for seabirds”. The Mail has the story.
Ministers confirmed that the giant Berwick Bank project off the south east coast of Scotland – which will contain up to 307 turbines – has been given the go-ahead.
Developers SSE Renewables, claim that, if it is fully delivered, then it “would become the world’s largest offshore wind farm”.
Conservation groups raised concerns about the danger that the development will kill tens of thousands of puffins, kittiewakes and gannets, including globally important colonies at Bass Rock.
It comes just days after Donald Trump attacked the spread of “windmills” during his visit to Scotland, saying they were “ruining” countries in Europe. …
The development will feature up to 307 turbines and have two connection points to the grid – one in Dunbar, East Lothian and another in Blyth, Northumberland.
But the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds and partner conservation groups condemned the decision to approve the development.
Anne McCall, director of RSPB Scotland, said: “This is a very dark day for seabirds. It is a terrible decision on a really bad development.
“Berwick Bank would be catastrophic for Scotland’s globally important seabirds which are already facing alarming declines. In addition, its impacts are so damaging they will make the relative impacts of other wind farms significantly higher.
“This one wind farm is going to make it really challenging to accelerate renewable projects across Scottish seas. We are incredibly concerned that Scottish Government have granted consent for a project which could catapult some of Scotland’s most-loved seabird species towards extinction.”
The National Trust for Scotland said the news was “deeply disappointing”, fearing there will be “significant harm” caused to seabird colonies at the nearby St Abb’s Head National Nature Reserve. …
The approval comes after the SNP Government unveiled a new target of having up to 40GW of offshore wind capacity by 2040, which is a significant ramping up from the existing target of 8-11GW by 2030.
Based on current average operating capacities it would mean an increase from around 1,000 turbines in five years’ time to 5,000 within 15 years.
Evidence continues to grow that onshore wind turbines are causing heavy ecological carnage, with increasing concern focused on the removal of a vast tonnage of insect life. For obvious political, Net Zero reasons, insect decimation is not a well-funded research area, but work in Germany in 2016 put the loss across the country at 1,200 tonnes a year. Recently, the Heartland Institute extrapolated the individual annual insect loss worldwide at 13,640,000,000,000 (13.64 quadrillion) insects, and of course it can be noted that the figures are nearly a decade out of date.
Evidence continues to grow that onshore wind turbines are causing heavy ecological carnage, with increasing concern focused on the removal of a vast tonnage of insect life. For obvious political, Net Zero reasons, insect decimation is not well-funded research area but work in Germany in 2016 put the loss across the country at 1,200 tonnes a year. Recently, the Heartland Institute extrapolated the individual annual insect loss worldwide at 13,640,000,000,000 (13.64 quadrillion) insects, and of course it can be noted that the figures are nearly a decade out of date. Other scientific work has reported that flying insects destroyed include bees, flying beetles and butterflies. Curiously, the many institutions apparently concerned with wildlife stay silent on the slaughter. For its part, the UK Natural History Museum (NHM) offers a Build Your Own Wind Turbine kit. Fun for all the family and if the kiddies are lucky, they might get to whack a passing fly or a couple of moths.
The German work estimated insect losses at 40 million per turbine during the plant-growing season. Commenting on the findings, the mathematician and evolutionary ecologist Professor Christian Voigt felt it was necessary to evaluate if these fatalities added to the decline of insect populations, “and potentially the extinction of species”. In a 2022 paper, Voigt reported that turbines can change the nearby microclimate, while vibrational noise may reduce earthworm abundance with likely cascading effects on soil quality and vegetation. In addition, he noted findings that wind turbine facilities led to displacement of nesting and wintering birds.
Recent work from researchers at the University of Wyoming suggests that moths, butterflies, beetles, flies and true bugs may be the most vulnerable to the giant revolving blades. Wind turbines create vortices, sucking in wildlife and causing problems for both bats and large birds such as eagles. “The vast amount of avian and insect deaths at the hands of wind turbines is disastrous in and of itself, from a conservation and ecological standpoint,” states Heartland.
Insect loss and extinctions are of course very popular in the Net Zero fear-mongering business. In 2022, the NHM ran with an improbable tale that flying insects in the UK had declined by 60% in just 20 years. Too good of course for national treasure Sir David Attenborough to pass up and he repeated the scare during his BBC Wild Isles series, a green agitprop co-production with the World Wildlife Fund and the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds. The evidence proved to be anecdotal and mostly arose from ‘citizen scientists’ counting bugs on car number plates. Missing from the research was a note that vehicle registrations have tripled in the UK since 1970, while cars have largely changed shape from angular boxes to aerodynamic wedges that sweep insects out of the way.
Despite these obvious flaws in the story, the NHM claimed the astonishing loss was caused by rising temperatures and fragmented habitats. The tiny temperature rises over the last 20 years are hardly likely to affect insects that much, while slightly longer growing seasons in the northern hemisphere and a recent 14% ‘greening’ of the Earth due to higher levels of carbon dioxide are almost certain to have been extremely beneficial.
It is becoming increasingly obvious that the conservation of wildlife is little more than an after-thought when it comes to pushing the Net Zero fantasy world of unreliable, expensive renewable energy. Almost invariably those crying loudest about insect decline are those pushing hardest for green energy boondoggles such as wind turbines. Yet it is known that turbines attract insects with their colour, lights and ambient heat. More attracted insects lead to more bats and birds which lead to more avian casualties, which lead to more ground animals scavenging, which in turn attracts larger raptors that cannot escape the turbine-generated wind currents. And so, the 150-mph revolving skyscraper-high blades set up their own circular killing fields.
The loss of insects is particularly disastrous since they are decomposers, crop pollinators and a crucial basis of the entire food chain. In April 2023, the Royal Entomological Society welcomed the opportunity to respond to a UK Government department on the issue of insect decline and food security. There was plenty to say on climate change of course and some interesting observations on the boom-and-bust nature of insect populations, but not a peep on the dead, wide areas of countryside created by wind turbines.
It might not worry the establishment insect brigade, but the colliding critters can be a big problem for turbine operators. Professor Voigt noted that insect remains collected during low wind periods disrupt airflow and can halve power generation during high wind periods. These days cleaning this muck off turbine blades is big business. Based in Glasgow, Balmore Wind Services offers a specialist rope access service for the difficult biomatter cleaning required by insects and bird fouling. One thing is certain, concludes Heartland: “Wind turbines undoubtedly cause massive avian and insect deaths on a yearly basis.”
With all the learned societies and institutions continuing to turn a blind eye, it is hard to see who will step forward to draw attention to this developing ecological disaster. Who will be the first to suggest that the proper place for a windmill is in a museum?
Chris Morrison is the Daily Sceptic’sEnvironment Editor.
National Audubon has done some terrific work over the last 100+ years but more recently, since the turn of the century (20th to 21st), they have succumbed to the lure of climbing on the Climatism bandwagon – diluting their message and muddying their reputation. Worse yet, their current messaging and fundraising uses a toxic mix of Climatism and rabid Environmentalism – which I call Enviro-Climatism, a word I use to clarify that this movement includes the worst aspects of the present-day environmental movements and the wild apoplectic versions of the climate scare.
The National Audubon Society is a foundational conservation organization in the United States: “The National Audubon Society launched in 1905, on the heels of American conservationism and a growing movement to protect birds. As with many efforts to conserve nature, women led the way: The first Audubon Society was organized by two Boston environmentalists, Harriet Hemenway and Minna B. Hall, in response to the widespread slaughter of waterbirds, the gorgeous feathers of which were used to make women’s hats.” [ source ] Yes, that’s right, birds were being slaughtered all over the world to feed the fad of fancy-feathered women’s hats – some even having whole birds on them!
National Audubon has done some terrific work over the last 100+ years but more recently, since the turn of the century (20th to 21st), they have succumbed to the lure of climbing on the Climatism bandwagon – diluting their message and muddying their reputation. Worse yet, their current messaging and fundraising uses a toxic mix of Climatism and rabid Environmentalism – which I call Enviro-Climatism, a word I use to clarify that this movement includes the worst aspects of the present-day environmental movements and the wild apoplectic versions of the climate scare.
I have donated money to Audubon in the past and thus am on their fund-raising mailing list. Every day I get yet another plea for money based on some mostly-false scary claim about the fate of birds like these pulled from the last ten days or so:
“Birds are suffering from the impacts of climate change. Will you help?
It’s nothing short of a crisis, which means we don’t have a moment to waste in protecting them for generations to come. In fact, two-thirds of North American bird species, including familiar songbirds like American Goldfinches, are at increasing risk of extinction because of climate change.”
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For birds like the Piping Plover, more frequent and intense weather events like storms and hurricanes are existential threats.
Climate change is putting birds at serious risk.
These beloved songbirds could disappear from two-thirds of their present breeding range.
Extreme weather like heat waves and storms endanger young birds.
We’ve already lost 3 billion birds in the span of a human lifetime.
—
“Birds like the Piping Plover are not yet safe from potential extinction and we need ongoing support from generous people like you to protect them.
The Piping Plover is a species at serious risk: Although the breeding population is increasing, the Great Lakes population is still just a fraction of what it once was. Habitat loss and degradation contribute to its decline, as does disturbance from people, pets, and wildlife near their nests. And it’s one of the two-thirds of North American species at increasing risk of extinction from climate change.”
But, we’re not willing to let the birds we love go extinct.
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With their brilliant colors, bouncy flight, and musical call notes, American Goldfinches are summer favorites in open habitats across much of North America. But if climate change continues unchecked, they could disappear from two-thirds of their present breeding range.
In the midst of this code-red climate emergency—and as their very survival is threatened—birds rely on your support now more than ever. Two-thirds of North American birds are at increasing risk of extinction from climate change including beloved songbirds like American Goldfinches and vulnerable shorebirds like Piping Plovers.
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Had enough? I have, and more…. Let me try and set a bit of this straight:
The American Goldfinch
This lovely little bird is a common sight at backyard birdfeeders across most of North America. The males are a brilliant yellow when in full-breeding plumage. I see them every Spring as they arrive in the U.S. Northeast and watch as they take on their breeding fancy dress colors.
“This species has an extremely large range, and hence does not approach the thresholds for Vulnerable under the range size criterion. …. The population trend appears to be increasing, and hence the species does not approach the thresholds for Vulnerable under the population trend criterion …. The population size is extremely large, and hence does not approach the thresholds for Vulnerable under the population size criterion…. For these reasons the species is evaluated as Least Concern.”
They are not Vulnerable at all for any reason.
National Audubon uses this non-existent threat as a scare tactic to get donations out of the anxious, the “little old ladies with too much money” (I have a relative I am thinking of, who is a sucker for begging junk mail), and true bird-lovers for whom National Audubon was once a respected source of information.
The latest IUCN Red List assessment lists the Piping Plover as ‘Near Threatened” – that is, not actually threatened with possible extinction, but might be so soon – “A near-threatened species is a species which has been categorized as “Near Threatened” (NT) by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) as that may be vulnerable to endangerment in the near future, but it does not currently qualify for the threatened status.” [ source ] “Near Threatened” is one of the three “Lower Risk” categories in the IUCN Red List hierarchy.
“This species has a small population which has declined significantly since the 1950s. However, there have been overall population increases since 1991 and the species’s population is thought to currently be growing at a slow rate. The population increase is however largely the result of intensive conservation management and thus it is likely that positive trends would reverse again if conservation action were to stop. Due to its high conservation dependence and the risk of future declines following any stochastic event, the species warrants listing as Near Threatened.”
The Piping Plover faces a number of threats.. They breed in the dunes along the seashores and lakeshores – and waterfront development and the intrusions caused by humans and their pets (dogs and cats) interfere with nesting and endanger brooding chicks. This sign has Piping Plovers as the right-hand image.
Increasing populations of the small falcon, the Merlin, a winning species, whose primary prey is other birds, are listed as a threat in Virginia.
Any disturbance of beaches during breeding season can disrupt Pipers, including conservation efforts, like beach replenishment, nest surveillance and beach-grass planting.
But, the bottom line for Piping Plovers is that while their breeding areas can benefit from some protections, they are not particularly at risk and certainly not in crisis.
In fact, two-thirds of North American bird species…are at increasing risk of extinction because of climate change.
All of these types of claims have some basis in fact, but, as you would suspect, are alarmist spins produced by advocacy organizations. Most of the data comes from a report called “State of the Birds 2022”, “The 2022 U.S. State of the Birds report was produced by a consortium of government agencies, private organizations, and bird initiatives led by NABCI (North American Bird Conservation Initiative).”
There is no doubt that as land-use changes and local weather conditions change, cities are built, farms and ranches expand and, on the other hand, as much agricultural land is abandoned and reverts to transitional forests or grasslands, the populations of birds that inhabit these ecological niches will change. There are winners and losers, some individual species and types of birds have expanding populations and some have shrinking populations.
In the latest State of the Birds , the NABCI offers this overall picture:
In this we see that waterbirds of all kinds are booming. Western Forest Birds are long-term steady. Eastern Forest Birds, Shorebirds and Grassland Birds populations have leveled out and stabilized in the last decade. And, a number of birds types declining, some very steeply. Note that in keeping with Enviro-Climatism memes, NABCI has labelled some species “Tipping Point species”.
The sources for the data for this (and previous reports) are explained as: “This report describes population change for 259 species of North American birds summarized from 5 surveys: the North American Breeding Bird Survey (BBS, 176 species, Sauer et al., 2020), the Christmas Bird Count (CBC, 60 species, Meehan et al., 2020), the Waterfowl Breeding Population and Habitat Survey (WBPHS, 14 species, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, 2021), the American Woodcock Signing-ground Survey (SGS, 1 species, Seamans and Rau, 2021), and International Shorebird Surveys (ISS, 9 species, Smith and Smith, 2022).”…
The bird counts may all suffer from the same problems recently found in monarch butterfly counts, which I explain in this essay: “Modern Scientific Controversies 2024: The Monarch Wars — Part 1”, to wit; the counts are performed by volunteers who count at specified locations on pre-determined days, year after year. Neither the butterflies or the birds are informed of the locations and dates in advance and may miss their appointments or simply pass by at another time or another location.
There are conflicting reports on some of these trends. For instance, the category “Sea Ducks”: in the NABCI report, it says: “Sea ducks face elevated threats from climate change, including effects on food resources, altered predator communities, and rapid changes to breeding habitats.” And show a sharp declining trend of “30%”.
“Three billion birds lost 1 in 4 breeding birds have been lost from the United States and Canada in the past 50 years.”? [ State of the Birds 2022, page 4 ]
“In the United States alone, there are 60 million to 100 million free-ranging, unowned cats. These are non-native predators that, even using conservative estimates, kill 1.3–4 billion birds and 6.3–22.3 billion mammals each year in the U.S. alone (Loss et al. 2013, Nature Communications).”
This does not include the number of birds killed by 58 million owned pet cats allowed to roam free at least part of the day. In the 50 years covered by the NABCI claim, cats would account for between 65 and 200 Billion birds killed (by feral cats) and untold billions more by pet cats.
The reports of “3 billion birds lost”, repeated in Audubon fund-raising, pales by comparison.
These are staggering numbers, yet there is very little real pressure from National Audubon or NACBI , nothing in the The State of the Birds report, calling for laws and regulations to prevent this rampant slaughter. The topic is somewhat toxic for National Audubon as illustrated by the 2013 kurfluffle over a Ted Williams Op-Ed in a non-Audubon publication, resulting in an official apology from Williams.. A search of the National Audubon’s magazine reveals that Audubon took a strong stand on cats in 2013 thru about 2015:
“So let’s be clear: Audubon’s long-standing view, strongly supported by the best available science and laid out in a resolution by our board of directors, is that cats – particularly feral cats – are a leading cause of bird deaths. Audubon strongly believes that cats belong indoors. That’s safer for them and for birds.”
After 2015, their magazine is silent about the cat issue, until recently, with two articles in the Spring 2024 issue in support of keeping pet cats indoors [ here and here ], but no lobbying campaigns for legislation or regulations.
Bottom Lines:
National Audubon is among the many advocacy organizations that are using exaggerated and, in some cases, outright false claims of crisis and disaster to extract money from the gullible and from the caring.
I find it extremely offensive. In the case of National Audubon, they could make perfectly reasonable requests for money for the support of their good, helpful, and useful projects and programs. They do have programs that actually improve the situation for various birds, such as protecting wildlands and breeding sites.
# # # # #
Author’s Comment:
Please take note that this Opinion piece applies to National Audubon, and not to the many affiliated regional and local Audubon clubs and groups, which generally all do great work, educating children and adults about birds and helping to maintain safe places for the birds to live and breed.
Of course, National Audubon is not the only advocacy groups to use fear as a motivator in fund raising, it is just the one that appears in my email stream regularly with outrageous misleading claims.
If you are a bird lover, support your local Audubon chapter and bring fund-raising the abuses of National Audubon the attention of your local people.
And, keep your cat indoors – or at least prevent it from free-roaming.
There are growing fears that one of India’s iconic large birds, the great Indian bustard, is about to go extinct due to the growth of electric transmission lines in its home area of the Thar desert. Prioritising wind and solar power has led to a growth of transmission lines with the effect that the numbers of birds could have dropped to 150.
There are growing fears that one of India’s iconic large birds, the great Indian bustard, is about to go extinct due to the growth of electric transmission lines in its home area of the Thar desert. Prioritising wind and solar power has led to a growth of transmission lines with the effect that the numbers of birds could have dropped to 150.
This is just the latest evidence that industrialising large areas of wildlife habitat is causing worrying losses to the population of large raptors and birds, bats and whales. Last October, the Daily Scepticreported that wind farms in Tasmania have reduced the population of the endangered local wedge-tailed eagle to around 1,000 individuals. Large numbers of whales have beached along the U.S. east coast in recent years as offshore wind farm industrialisation has disrupted the migration, mating and feeding habits of some of the most endangered whale species in the world.
In 2021, a paper produced by the Wildlife Institute of India warned that the great Indian bustard was at “imminent risk of extinction due to power line mortality”. Mortality was said to be “positively related” to the number of wires. Many other large birds were said to be at risk, and the researchers found that around 50 birds die annually per kilometre of power lines in the Thar desert due to collision and electrocution.
According to the Wildlife Institute of India, over 100,000 birds of diverse species are killed each year as a result of electrocution from transmission lines connecting wind and solar to the grid. In 2022, two Spanish ecologists confirmed that electrocution on power pylons was a major cause of bird mortality worldwide, including for some severely endangered species. They noted that power lines were “not bio-diversity-friendly”. Prerna Singh Bindra, a wildlife conservationist and former member of the National Board for Wildlife, comments:
In recent years, the death blow to the great Indian bustard has come from unexpected quarters – the expanse of wind farms and power transmission lines that criss-cross its last remaining habitats… The question that needs to be asked is, how green is renewable energy when it leads to the extinction of a critically endangered species?
Of course that last question is the one question that will not be asked. Indeed on past evidence it will be studiously avoided and helpful messengers in the mainstream media will be easily persuaded that deaths are due to other factors such as ‘climate change’.
Bird and bat protection societies around the world are invariably in favour of green ‘sustainable’ wind and solar power, and they turn an almost blind eye to the mass slaughter by making mealy-mouthed safety suggestions. But of course the fact is that large raptors such as eagles and bustards rely on wind currents, as do gigantic wind turbines, and the two meet far too often. Worldwide, bustards are at particular risk from power cables due to the birds’ heavy weight, large wing span and limited manoeuvring ability.
The New York Timesrecently reported that electrocution isn’t the main thing killing birds along power lines. It was relaying the findings of a paper that said bullet fragments had been found in a number of dead birds lying under lines in four western states. Four hundred whales have been washed up on the eastern U.S. coastline since 2016, including nearly two dozen in the three months to February 2023.There is “no evidence” to support claims that industrial noise has impeded the whales ability to navigate and communicate, notes the New Scientist. The bulk of the strandings may have been caused by “changing ocean currents related to climate change”. Deafening rock-concert-grade sonar noise bouncing around hundreds of miles of ocean, constant pile-driving, massive ocean building works and heavy shipping movements have, of course, nothing to do with it – move along please, nothing to see here.
Nothing it seems must get in the way of the green industrial revolution. In California, the Democrat state Government recently relaxed controls on wildlife protections to allow permits to kill previously fully protected species for renewable energy and infrastructure projects.
Nothing is sacred and protected from the slaughter – even America’s national bird, the bald eagle. A typical green reaction came from the Audubon California Policy Director Mark Lynas who said we need renewable energy resources, and he did not want to see the eagle deaths “being used to push against clean energy”.
In addition to the large bird kill, wind turbines are estimated to chomp millions of bats around the world every year. Any concern for the depredation of wildlife, whether on or offshore has tended to focus on these huge blots on the land- and seascapes. But according to the International Energy Authority, achieving Net Zero means building 80 million kilometres of new and refurbished power lines within 17 years, equivalent to wrapping the Earth 2,000 times with new electricity grid capacity.
All these high voltage cables will be needed to benefit from the intermittent power produced by vast numbers of new wind turbines. To achieve Net Zero, the countryside will need to be blanketed with turbines and ubiquitous cables strung to bring the power to distant urban areas. Of course, as it becomes clearer by the day, Net Zero will not be achieved since the breezes and sunbeams are unreliable, so full stand-by gas turbines will have to be maintained.
It is possible that some other cheap and reliable back-up fuel will be discovered or invented in the next few years – and pigs might fly, although that would not be advisable across much of the future countryside.
Chris Morrison is the Daily Sceptic’sEnvironment Editor.
It seems intuitive that forests would provide better habitat for forest-dwelling wildlife than farms. Yet, in one of the longest-running studies of tropical wildlife populations in the world, Stanford researchers found that over 18 years, smaller farms with varying crop types – interspersed with patches or ribbons of forest – sustain many forest-dependent bird populations in Costa Rica, even as populations decline in forests.
It seems intuitive that forests would provide better habitat for forest-dwelling wildlife than farms. Yet, in one of the longest-running studies of tropical wildlife populations in the world, Stanford researchers found that over 18 years, smaller farms with varying crop types – interspersed with patches or ribbons of forest – sustain many forest-dependent bird populations in Costa Rica, even as populations decline in forests.
In a paper published Sept. 4 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Nicholas Hendershot and colleagues compared trends in specific bird populations across three landscape types in Costa Rica: forests, diversified farms, and intensive agriculture. The steepest declines were found in forests, then in intensive agriculture (and the species succeeding in intensive agriculture were often invasive). But on diversified farms, a significant subset of bird species typically found in forests, including some of conservation concern, actually increased over time.
“Birds are kind of a proxy we use to track the health of ecosystems. And the birds we’re seeing today aren’t the same as we saw 18 to 20 years ago. This paper really documents this pattern,” said Hendershot, a postdoctoral fellow at the time of this research in Stanford’s Department of Biology in the School of Humanities and Sciences (H&S), the Stanford Center for Conservation Biology (CCB), and the Stanford-based Natural Capital Project (NatCap).
Food security at stake
While this research implies that diversified farming could be key for biodiversity, the relationship goes both ways: biodiversity is key for food security. In this case, that means having a variety of types of birds feeding on insects and helping to pollinate crops.
“Identity does seem to matter a lot for pest control and other ecosystem services birds provide. These species are not interchangeable,” said Hendershot.
“We need a constant stream of pollinators servicing farms. About three-quarters of the world’s crops require pollinators to some extent, and that 75% is our most nutritious food – think of all the vitamins and minerals packed into fruits, nuts, and veggies,” explained Gretchen Daily, faculty director of NatCap and CCB, Bing Professor of Environmental Science in H&S, and a senior author on the paper. “We need a constant stream of birds, bats, and other wildlife to help control pests: they suppress the vast majority naturally. And we need to start building flood protection, water purification, carbon storage, and many other vital benefits back into agricultural landscapes, way beyond what can be achieved in protected areas alone.”
Daily also noted that, in terms of food production, diversified farms are not necessarily lower yielding than intensive agriculture. “This is a recent assumption that is being overturned,” she said.
Beyond protected areas
It has become increasingly apparent around the world that while protected areas remain critical, they are too few and far between to provide the ecosystem services people and nature need to thrive. Working landscapes are crucial now for preserving biodiversity and its benefits. “People, including scientists, had the idea that farmland would not support a meaningful amount of biodiversity,” said Daily. In this case, not only are diversified farms themselves providing habitat, they connect otherwise fragmented forested areas.
Over time, Hendershot said, “I have moved away from the ‘fortress conservation’ model, which focused more on creating protected areas separate from human activities, and see more and more how much potential there is outside of forests. The forests are key – we need them, of course. But in addition to that, I’m always surprised by how important how you manage a farm is for biodiversity.”
“We believe the findings of our research are new to science, but in a sense, it merely confirms what Indigenous communities around the world have already known for a long time, which is that humans can and should have reciprocal relationships with the rest of the local ecological community they are part of,” said Tadashi Fukami, a professor of biology in H&S and of Earth system science in the Stanford Doerr School of Sustainability and a co-author of the paper.
Incentivizing farmers
In the 1980s and 90s, deforestation was occurring in Costa Rica at the fastest rate ever seen on a country scale. Then, they turned it around – becoming a renowned model of success. By setting up the world’s first countrywide payment for ecosystem services (PES) program, Costa Rica reversed this trend: today, forests cover almost 60% of its land, up from 40% in 1987.
The country currently aims to double the amount of protected forest in just a few years. In its existing PES program, any landowner can receive money for reforesting even small parts of their land. Now, the government is also working toward a new PES program to incentivize farmers to adopt best management practices.
This study will help inform Costa Rican policymakers in understanding the benefits provided over time by different farming practices. Said Daily, “We need to recognize the vital work many farmers are doing that supports biodiversity.”
Nicholas Hendershot was a postdoctoral researcher with the Center for Conservation Biology at Stanford and is now a forest ecologist with The Nature Conservancy-California. Gretchen Daily is also a senior fellow in the Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment. Other co-authors on the paper are Alejandra Echeverri, a senior scientist at the Natural Capital Project, Luke Frishkoff of the University of Texas at Arlington, and prominent Costa Rican ornithologist Jim Zook.
Hendershot’s work was supported by the Gerhard Casper and John P. Morgridge Stanford Graduate Fellowship, the OTS Emerging Challenges in Tropical Science Fellowship, and the Winslow Foundation. Funding for data collection from 1999-2017 was generously provided to Daily by the LuEsther T. Mertz Charitable Trust, the Moore Family Foundation, and the Winslow Foundation.
America’s national bird, the bald eagle, along with golden eagles and other raptors, face mass slaughter in California’s wind farm avian graveyards following the State Democrat-controlled legislature’s decision to relax controls on wildlife protections.
America’s national bird, the bald eagle, along with golden eagles and other raptors, face mass slaughter in California’s wind farm avian graveyards following the State Democrat-controlled legislature’s decision to relax controls on wildlife protections. Signed into law last month, with little protest, Senate Bill 147 (SB 147) allows permits to kill previously fully protected species for renewable energy and infrastructure projects. The move comes as the Federal Biden Administration pushes ahead with ambitious plans to increase renewable energy harnessed from both onshore and offshore giant turbines.
Local lawyer Cox Castle explained that before SB 147, no authorisation existed for the slaughter of 37 fully protected native species, except for scientific research. This meant, they continued, that the presence of protected birds on a renewable energy development could stop the project in its tracks. “SB 147 creates more certainty for renewable energy and certain other project developers because it establishes a permitting process for these species,” it notes. Cox Castle also observes that the protected species list has been “updated” with the removal of the American peregrine falcon and the brown pelican.
Of course, the avian destruction has been going on for years, with giant turbine blades posing serious hazards to large birds such as eagles that rely on air currents for sustained flight. NextEra Energy is one of America’s largest utility companies, and last year it was fined $8 million after 150 eagles were killed at its wind farms across eight states. Almost all the deaths occurred when the eagles were hit by turbine blades. Because carcasses are not always found, officials told the court that the number killed was likely to have been higher.
It might be America’s national bird, displayed everywhere on coins, flags and official documents, but few activists seem to be able to rouse themselves to complain when the natural flight path of the bald eagle stands in the way of green progress. Audubon California claims its mission is to restore and conserve natural ecosystems, focusing on birds, other wildlife and their habitats for the benefit of humanity and the earth’s biological diversity. But Policy Director Mark Lynes said he did not want to see eagle deaths “being used to push against clean energy”. Our position is that we need renewable energy resources, “but we also know that they can be sited and adequately mitigated so that we’re not causing declines in wildlife populations”. In addition, during the same interview, Lynes confirmed the scale of the slaughter of the golden eagle, noting that a wind farm complex in Altamont had been killing 75-100 golden eagles every year since the 1980s, according to the Golden Gate Audubon Society.
In total there are thought to be about 300,000 bald eagles in the United States but less than 30,000 golden eagles, mostly to be found in the West. Extermination on the scale recently identified from wind farms is likely to have a noticeable effect on future numbers. Needless to say, the destruction of wildlife by wind turbines is almost completely ignored by mainstream media, a situation unlikely to occur if, for instance, oil and gas companies were responsible for such carnage.
As the Daily Sceptic has reported in the past, it is not just large birds of prey that are at risk from onshore wind farms. Recent scientific work suggested that millions of bats across the world are killed every year by turbine blades. A recent German field study identified 55 casualties per megawatt generated. Britain currently has 14,000 megawatts of onshore capacity, although actual generation is less. Political pressure to boost this onshore capacity is growing and it would be helpful if a figure on the accepted bat butcher’s bill could be produced. For its part, the Bat Conservation Trust takes a sympathetic line noting that there has been evidence of bat collision with wind turbines for 20 years, but it supports the development of wind power. Sympathetic towards the highly subsidised wind energy business, it would seem, rather than the unfortunate bats.
Meanwhile, off the eastern coast of the United States whales continue to beach in unusually high numbers. The latest fatality was a humpback that was washed ashore on the New Jersey coast, bringing the total to around 300 fatalities in the last five years. Many suggest the deaths have been caused by massive offshore construction of wind turbine parks, with extensive sonar soundings and pile-driving causing havoc with aquatic feeding, breeding and migration up and down the coast. “This alarming number of deaths is unprecedented in the last century,” said Cindy Zipf, Executive Director of Ocean Clean Action, adding, “the only unique factor from previous years is the excessive scope, scale and magnitude of offshore wind powerplant activity in the area.”
The veteran environmentalist Michael Shellenberger has weighed in on official denials that the massive offshore building works are wreaking environmental damage. “They’re lying,” he charged, and he called the issue around the industrialisation in previously pristine waters, “the biggest environmental scandal in the world”.
Chris Morrison isthe Daily Sceptic’sEnvironment Editor.
Adam Hart is yet another of the young breed of journalists who would rather just write stuff because it fits their worldview, rather than actually do a bit of research.
As Ian points out, night herons have been a common sight for years in Britain.
For instance, Coward’s 1926 bird book has this listing:
Then there’s Witherby 1945:
Adam Hart is yet another of the young breed of journalists who would rather just write stuff because it fits their worldview, rather than actually do a bit of research.
This is clearly shown when he repeats the tired old lie that puffins are dying out because of climate change. A bit of research would have told him that puffins are actually thriving off the Pembrokeshire coast, and are only in decline elsewhere because of industrial sand eel fishing in the North Sea.
I wonder what Christopher Booker would have made of this latest puerile rubbish!
Bats are just another creature being tormented or slaughtered by the wind industry as sets about ‘saving’ the planet.
Courtesy of 40-70m long blades with their outer tips travelling at over 350 km/h, rare and endangered bat species are being wiped off the face of the earth at an astonishing rate. It’s not just direct collisions – the low-pressure zone created around the blade path is enough to burst the blood vessels in their little lungs, with fatal results.
In Canada, three species are taking the brunt: eastern red, silver and hoary bats are being slaughtered in their millions, every year.
So, finding excuses for the pointless slaughter of millions upon millions of birds and bats, across the globe is just another day at the office.
Those that actually care about the environment, and what’s in it, take an altogether different view.
Wind turbines lead to decline in bat population Calgary News Quinn Keenan 11 May 2023
Flying Bat in Forest; Shutterstock ID 624093986; Purchase Order: –
Canada’s three migratory bats are now officially recognized as endangered species.
The eastern red, silver and hoary bats have seen a significant drop in numbers.
Collisions with wind turbines have played a major role in the population decline.
“Wind energy is booming in Alberta as elsewhere and bats and wind turbines don’t get along very well. The wind turbines kill a lot of bats. In fact in Alberta it kills more bats than it does birds,” said University of Calgary professor of biological sciences Dr. Robert Barclay.
Wind turbines are a common sight in southern Alberta, taking advantage of the region’s windy conditions.
Bats don’t need to hit a turbine to be killed by one, just getting close can be deadly.
Dr. Cori Lausen, director of bat conservation for the Wildlife Conservation Society Canada, said “all they really have to do is get close to these blades and that’s a low pressure zone and that literally causes the blood vessels in their lungs to explode. Sort of like a scuba diver coming up too quickly.”
Between 500,000 and a million bats are killed each year by wind turbines across Canada and the United States.
But because migratory bats travel at night and typically not in large groups, tracking the number of bats in any one region or how many are killed by turbines is challenging.
“It’s funny when I get asked questions about how many bats there are,” said Dr. Lausen. “We have a hard time counting trees, and they don’t move. So it’s been very difficult to estimate bat populations.”
Bats play an essential role in pest control, pollinating plants and dispersing seeds. Fewer bats forces farmers to use more pesticides, which also harms bat populations.
According to experts slowing down turbines in low wind conditions especially at night can help save the bats.
Dr. Barclay said “When the wind speeds are low, shut down the turbines, and see how many fewer bats you kill. In experiments we did with several Alberta companies, (we saw) 50 per cent less fatalities of bats.”
Bats that hibernate are facing their own challenges.
An outbreak of white nose syndrome across North America has killed significant numbers of bats in hibernation roosts.
Three bat species at risk of becoming endangered as wind turbines take heavy toll on wildlife The Globe and Mail Ivan Semeniuk and Wendy Stueck 11 May 2023
Wind turbines – towering emblems of the shift toward renewable energy – have been cited as a primary reason why three of Canada’s native bats species are in existential peril.
The Committee on the Status of Endangered Wildlife in Canada, an independent body that reports to the federal government, recommended on Wednesday that the three species be listed as endangered.
Such a designation would represent the highest level of risk under Canadian law – a fact made all the more striking because it is the first time any of those species have been assessed by the committee.
“There’s lots of indication that all three have been precipitously declining,” said Stephen Petersen, director of conservation and research at Winnipeg’s Assiniboine Park Zoo, who co-chairs the committee’s work on terrestrial mammals.
Among the causes that the committee identified as contributors to the bats’ decreasing numbers, “the mortality at wind farms seems to be the top threat,” he said.
The recommendation for listing the species was issued following the committee’s semi-annual meeting, which concluded last week in Regina.
Included in the recommendation are the hoary bat, the silver-haired bat and the eastern red bat. All are high-flying migratory species that spend their winters in the southern United States or Mexico. The first two range across Canada during the summer, except in the Arctic, while the third mainly occurs in the central and eastern parts of the country.
During their migration, the bats encounter an array of human-made structures along their flight paths, both in the U.S. and Canada, including the swiftly whirling blades of wind turbines.
Studies based on counts of bat carcasses near wind turbines have shown that the toll can be heavy when multiplied across all the units that are currently operating. With each turbine killing on the order of 10 bats per year, the impact works out to tens of thousands of individual animals removed from the population annually in Canada alone.
In 2019, an Ontario government-led study used the trend in bat deaths at wind turbines in that province to demonstrate that populations of all three species, as well as the big brown bat, have declined significantly.
The study, which was part of the supporting evidence for the committee’s recommendation, ruled out the possibility that bats are learning to avoid the structures.
“We’re unintentionally harvesting them out of the air space every year,” said Christina Davy, a conservation scientist who was lead author on the study and who is now based at Carleton University in Ottawa.
The effect is compounded by habitat loss, pesticides in the food chain and other threats that bats must cope with.
“The good news is that we have tools to reduce the mortality from wind turbines,” Dr. Davy added. “They’re not ones the industry loves, but they work.”
Those tools include shutting turbines down during periods of low wind when bats are likely to be flying but the energy return is low, as well as during the peak of the fall migration season.
The toll of wind turbines on bats is “one of the best-kept secrets – in a bad way,” said Cori Lausen, director of bat conservation with Wildlife Conservation Society Canada.
WCSC and other groups have been warning of the danger posed to bats by wind turbines for years, but the warnings seemed to have little impact, she said.
Because bats can live for decades and tend to have only one pup per year, high losses because of wind turbines have an enduring effect that is difficult to reverse.
“They have no way to bounce back from that kind of mortality rate,” Dr. Lausen said.
The measured pace of Canada’s species law means that the committee’s recommendation will not be formally submitted until later this year. If Ottawa agrees with the recommendation and lists the three species as endangered, the designation will apply only on federal land. Such an outcome is unlikely to have a meaningful impact on bats unless it is supported by provincial regulators who oversee the wind industry.
“The provinces need to step up and recognize that these three species have a very dire outlook if something isn’t done soon,” Dr. Lausen said.
Dr. Petersen said that the committee’s recommendation can serve as a wake-up call that draws more attention to the issue.
“I’m hoping that even though this is not great news, it’ll spur some action,” he said. The Globe and Mail
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