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.
Save Long Beach Island (Save LBI), a New Jersey-based grassroots organization opposed to offshore wind development, issued a press release on January 6, 2026, claiming that offshore wind projects significantly underestimate noise-related harm to marine mammals, including whales and dolphins.
Save Long Beach Island (Save LBI), a New Jersey-based grassroots organization opposed to offshore wind development, issued a press release on January 6, 2026, claiming that offshore wind projects significantly underestimate noise-related harm to marine mammals, including whales and dolphins.
LONG BEACH ISLAND, NJ, January 6, 2026 — Save Long Beach Island, Inc. (Save LBI), a grassroots organization dedicated to sound energy policies and preserving our shore and ocean environment, has long contended that the high levels of noise generated during the surveying, construction, and operation phases of an offshore wind project have a detrimental effect on sea mammals — an assertion backed by previous scientific measurements and calculations.
Because hearing acuity plays a central role in the ability of a whale or dolphin to navigate its surroundings — especially during migration — elevated noise can cause serious harm, including impaired or permanent hearing loss, and behavioral disturbances that can also lead indirectly to harm and death.
For years, NOAA has ignored research presented by Save LBI and maintained there is no evidence that marine mammals are directly harmed by wind energy activities. This inaction prompted Save LBI to take two steps in November: (1) petition the U.S. Department of Commerce (DOC) and NOAA to overhaul the flawed methodology being used for calculating “Takes” — instances of fatality, serious harm, or behavioral disturbance to whales and other marine mammals — and (2) submit formal comments in response to the Regional Standards for Offshore Wind Project-Level Monitoring draft proposal released by NOAA’s Northeast Fisheries Science Center.
The Save LBI petition, which NOAA agreed to consider in late December, cites major scientific and mathematical errors in NOAA approved “Take estimation” methods and presents calculations that show significant harm and disturbance to whales and other mammals in the vicinity of offshore wind projects. The petition is available on SaveLBI.org.
Save LBI has also asked NOAA in a formal 11-page technical critique of its proposed monitoring standards to define and require a specific monitoring program that will either verify the assumptions and calculations in its Take estimation methods or, if not, revise those methods. Existing regulations require the agency to verify Take estimates, particularly under Endangered Species Act (ESA) regulations (50 CFR §402.14(i)(5), to do new take estimates based on measurements and animal observation and compare to those used for Biologic Opinion approvals, and if the new results exceed the prior, to re-initiate ESA consultation immediately. Toward that end, Save LBI has asked that any monitoring plan provide the data to verify (or not):
● The 10-decibel (dB) noise source reduction assumed from placing bubble curtains or similar systems around the pile driving operation, by measuring the noise level near the pile driver with the bubble curtains on and off
● The pile driving noise level versus distance numbers in the noise exposure modeling reports supporting project approval that were asked for in the BOEM “Recommendation Document for Offshore Wind Pile Driving Sound Exposure Modeling and Sound Field Measurement”
● The 30 dB and higher noise loss factors in the pile driving noise exposure modeling reports versus the 20 dB and lower factors that Save LBI has contended are valid and that show up in the recent sound field measurement study for the Vineyard Wind 1 project; since the elevated noise range and area increase exponentially with a lower dB noise loss factor, this discrepancy alone would result in a many-fold increase in the number of animal Takes
● That no permanent hearing loss will occur from the accumulated noise energy received by a whale passing by a pile driving activity or an operating wind complex, based on the noise versus distance measurements and observing the time it takes for a while to pass by; straightforward calculations by Save LBI show that such hearing loss will occur within 5 miles of pile driving and 2.25 miles of the perimeter of an operating wind complex, but the noise exposure modeling reports supporting project approval do not show that
● That the North Atlantic right whale’s migration will not be impaired or blocked by measuring the noise levels both within and outside the operating wind complex to find the distance where the noise level drops below the 120 dB whale disturbance level, and compare that distance to the width of any overlapping migration corridor
● That very little animal disturbance occurs at levels below 160 dB for pile driving and 120 dB for turbine operation as NOAA has contended by observing animal behavior at the distances corresponding to those noise levels
● That the elevated noise range from vessel surveying is small, as the approvals assumed versus the several miles that Save LBI calculated, by measuring the noise levels from the vessel for various sparker device energy inputs as was required in leases, but apparently never done, or if done, not publicly reported.
Save LBI President Bob Stern points out that “the decibel (dB) scale that measures noise level is logarithmic and that an incorrect 10 dB lower number underestimates the noise actually being received by the animal by 90%, so for the whale’s sake we humans need to get these dB numbers right”.
“The NOAA monitoring proposal also seeks to establish developer-defined plans in place of true standards, making it unlikely that any questionable assumptions that supported project approval will be culled out,” he added.
“It is heartening that NOAA leadership will consider our petition regarding our concerns with the underestimates of animal Takes,” Stern concluded. “We ask them to put forward a monitoring program in conjunction with that review that will either verify or disprove the concerns we have raised. If our concerns are verified, then NOAA should define and require the use of new mathematically and scientifically defensible methods for calculating marine mammal Takes.”
About Save LBI
Save LBI is a not-for-profit, non-partisan organization that has been active in ongoing litigation and other efforts to protect the coastal and marine environment from the senseless industrialization of our oceans. The organization is led by Beach Haven, N.J. resident Bob Stern, a Ph.D. scientist with experience in environmental planning and environmental law. He is a former manager of the U.S. Department of Energy office responsible for overseeing environmental reviews related to energy projects and of the Bureau of Air Quality Planning within the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection (NJDEP). For more information on Save LBI and its efforts, please SaveLBI.org
Over the last decade as offshore wind farms proliferated around the U.K., there has been a disturbing rise in coastline strandings of whales, dolphins and porpoises. Since the turn of the century, strandings have more than doubled and are now running at over 1,000 animals a year. The slaughter has been largely ignored by the mainstream media that runs with the agreed narrative that offshore wind is environmentally friendly and is the key to achieving Net Zero by 2050.
Over the last decade as offshore wind farms proliferated around the U.K., there has been a disturbing rise in coastline strandings of whales, dolphins and porpoises. Since the turn of the century, strandings have more than doubled and are now running at over 1,000 animals a year. The slaughter has been largely ignored by the mainstream media that runs with the agreed narrative that offshore wind is environmentally friendly and is the key to achieving Net Zero by 2050. In fact, wind turbines, whether on or off the shore, are a clear danger to many endangered species and concerns are mounting about their widespread and harmful effects on the natural world. Years ago, the great cause in environmentalism was to save the whales, but these concerns seem to have abated of late, while the slaughter of millions of onshore bats, along with the destruction of many types of large raptors, is simply ignored.
Andrew Montford of Net Zero Watch has updated his graph on the stranding of U.K. cetaceans and compared it to the rise of offshore wind capacity.
Both totals have soared in recent years. Is there a causal link? Perhaps not one that would inconvenience Net Zero fanatics, but Montford says the suggestion of a causal relationship “remains very strong”.
The Daily Sceptic has reported in the past about the mounting casualties of whales stranded off the north eastern coast of the United States in the wake of massive offshore windfarm construction. There have been around 300 fatalities in the last five years, and many suggest the extensive sonar soundings, pile driving and heavy concentrated vessel traffic is causing havoc with aquatic feeding, breeding and migration up and down the coast.
The latest U.K. stranding figures have been reported to Ascobans, a UN environmental conservation body for cetaceans in the NE Atlantic. Commenting on the “shocking” figures, the environmental writer and campaigner Jason Endfield called them “a wake-up call to those planning to further industrialise our seas in the name of renewable energy, and especially offshore wind farms”. In his view, it made no sense to increase ocean noise to levels that are “literally unbearable for marine mammals”.
The great cover-up of this environmental disaster continues with massive industrial parks being erected around the coasts of many countries. In the U.K., the incoming Labour government is committed to a massive expansion with the Mad Miliband spraying around billions of pounds in additional subsidies to boost an industry that would not exist in a free market.
To the fore in blowing smoke over the issue is Greenpeace USA’s senior oceans campaigner Arlo Hemphill who claims there is “no evidence whatsoever” connecting wind turbines to whale deaths. “It’s just a cynical disinformation campaign,” says another Greenpeace spokesman. The mainstream media often goes along with this narrative as shown by recent tweets from Agence France-Presse reporter Manon Jacob. He dismissed the focus on wind farms as a red herring “when offshore wind remains thus far marginal in the U.S. and scientific evidence of large marine mammal deaths is lacking”. This is the same Jacob who wrote a recent ‘fact check’ of the Daily Sceptic that was so bad and misleading it should feature in future journalism schools as an example of how not to criticise well-sourced material.
The investigative science journalist Jo Nova has a different take on the matter: “Researchers have known since at least 2013 that pile drivers were permanently deafening porpoises, leaving them presumably to die miserable deaths wandering blindly through dark or murky seas. Where were all the professors of marine science, paid by the public to know these things, and where was the BBC?” Spread the word, she continued. Fifty years ago, environmentalists would have raised hell about a thousand dead whales and dolphins. Now they are part of the cover-up. “They don’t want to draw attention to the blubber on the beach in case people start asking hard questions,” she observed.
There are however some signs that the ‘nothing to see here, guv’ line is starting to crack. A recent essay in Watts Up With That? suggested that an impact statement from the U.S. Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) had finally acknowledged the harm caused by offshore wind farms. Examining leases off the New Jersey and New York coast covering over 488,000 acres, the BOEM hints that these developments are not entirely benign “despite being repeatedly framed as environmentally friendly solutions to the climate crisis”. Marine mammals, sea turtles, birds and fish could suffer due to noise, habitat displacement and changes in migration patterns, it is said. Even bats, says WUWT?, which are not typically associated with offshore environments, could be affected.
The essay noted that this latest BOEM work may signal a more cautious approach, “perhaps influenced by increasing legal challenges, public backlash, and even emerging scientific research indicating that wind turbines are not as harmless as once believed”.
Chris Morrison is the Daily Sceptic’s Environment Editor.
The noise produced from building the farms, especially pile-driving the turbines into the ocean floor, has been shown to affect aquatic life, according to federal regulators, who implemented a “soft start” approach before construction to drive away species.
The US government granted the dolphins a license to kill whales, porpoises and dolphins and it’s doing so at an astonishing rate.
Dozens of whale carcasses have washed-up along the Atlantic coast in the last few months, joining dozens of porpoises and dolphins that met the same fate.
More than 500,000 Americans have united in a concerted attempt to shutdown this subsidy-soaked industry – an industry apparently determined to wipe out all manner of marine mammals, including the last members of endangered whale species. And which does so with absolute impunity, thanks to the ‘Incidental Harassment Authorization’. Literally a licence to kill an unlimited number of whales, porpoises and dolphins during the construction and operation of offshore wind farms.
The carcasses are washing up with such frequency that the wind industry is now able to claim, with some justification, that it’s responsible for an uptick in ecotourism, albeit that the charismatic megafauna in question is well and truly dead. Not all (dead) whale watchers are keen on the experience, however. Indeed, Patrick Moore, one of the co-founders of Greenpeace, reckons – even if the government has given it green light – there is no justification for the wanton slaughter.
Four whales die in 4 days: Wind farms creating ‘death zone’ at sea says ex-Greenpeace boss New York Post Josh Miller and Franklin Raff 8 May 2023
Drilling foundations for offshore wind turbines and sound pulses used to prepare for the 900-foot towers has created a “death zone” for whales, according to former Greenpeace chief, Patrick Moore.
Patrick Moore, a co-founder of Greenpeace and its ex-president in Canada, believes the acoustic systems used by vessels surveying the ocean floor harm the marine mammals’ sense of hearing – risking their crucial ability to navigate, and leading to more dead whales washing up onshore.
His intervention comes after four minke whale corpses were discovered between Thursday and Sunday in New York and New England, one of them on Friday in Moriches Bay, close to Westhampton, Long Island.
The four-day run of death began in Eastham, on Cape Cod, Mass., on Thursday, with a second minke found at York, Maine, on Friday, and the final corpse at Gloucester, Mass. on Sunday.
At least 36 “large” whales have washed up along the East Coast since Dec. 1, according to data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
It tracks the deaths of “large” species in the Atlantic including minke, humpback, bowhead, fin, sei, sperm and blue North Atlantic right whales.
The toll of whale deaths includes 16 humpbacks thus far in 2023, seven of them found along the New Jersey shore.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration declared an “unusual mortality event” among humpbacks in January 2016.
This year’s mortalities are on pace to shatter 2017’s tally of 34, federal data shows.
The overall scale of whale deaths could be even worse: NOAA does not have a public tracker for toothed whales, such as narwhals and beluga whales.
Republican lawmakers in New Jersey said last week they wanted a 60-day moratorium on offshore wind farm development to investigate any possible link to the rash of carcasses.
Massive offshore wind turbines up to 900-feet tall have been given the go-ahead off both New York and New Jersey, as part of moves to increase renewable energy production.
In New York, cable-laying for the South Fork Wind Farm, about 35 miles east of Montauk Point began in March while in New Jersey, large areas off the Jersey Shore are zoned for turbines.
Moore voiced support for the Republicans’ concern, saying that survey work – which uses acoustic pulses to scan the seabed ahead of drilling for the turbines – is risky for whales.
“The effect of the high-intensity acoustic pulses is unknown, and the excavations are muddying waters for what will be years on end,” Moore said. “It is not reasonable to say there is no possibility of a causal relationship.”
Whales and other endangered species impacted by the acoustic pulses could be guided to their demise, with possible strandings in shallow water, striking vessels or getting entangled in fishing gear, Moore said.
“They tend to migrate south in the winter and north in the summer on certain pathways, just like birds,” he continued. “And it in this case, they appear to be swimming back into a death zone.”
Offshore wind vessels typically use high-resolution geophysical (HRG) surveys during siting efforts, utilizing a “suite of active sound sources” to obtain images of the seafloor and other geophysical features.
Two offshore wind farms are currently operating in US waters. Block Island Wind Farm off Rhode Island, which has five turbines, has been online since late 2016. The Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind Project, which has two turbines off Virginia Beach, has been fully operational since fall 2020.
New Jersey state Sen. Anthony Bucco, R-Boonton, noted that the feds started tracking the spate of dead humpbacks along the East Coast since 2016 – the same year Rhode Island’s Block Island Wind Farm went operational.
“There’s too much of a coincidence here to ignore, and we continue to rapidly push forward,” Bucco told The Post. “This activity off our coast is only going to dramatically increase as they begin pile-driving and installing these wind turbines. So if this is having an effect on our marine mammals now, it could be catastrophic when that work begins.”
Greenpeace has long distanced itself from Moore, accusing the 75-year-old Canadian of lobbying for polluters and exaggerating his role. It said in 2010: “Although Mr. Moore played a significant role in Greenpeace Canada for several years, he did not found Greenpeace.”
Moore insists Greenpeace only disavowed him when he came out in favor of nuclear energy in a Washington Post op-ed in April 2006.
“Greenpeace has betrayed the mission of its founders,” Moore said. “They are protecting [windmills] instead of wild whales.” New York Post
Conservative watchdogs highlight ‘alarming’ surge in whale deaths as wind farms grow off NY, NJ coasts New York Post Josh Christenson 23 April 2023
Conservative watchdog groups ran a guerrilla-style ad campaign on the Jersey Shore for Earth Day, drawing attention to a surge in whale deaths amid the growth of offshore wind farms.
Beachgoers in Atlantic City on Saturday looked on as a single-propeller plane carried a message waving from a banner — “SAVE-WHALES-STOP-WINDMILLS.ORG” — and drivers heading out of town saw a billboard with the same message and a picture of a dead whale washed ashore.
The Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow and the Heartland Institute sponsored the ads to highlight the potential threat that wind turbine development poses to whales, dolphins and other aquatic life.
The campaign comes after a ProPublica report last week found that federal regulators in the Biden administration have downplayed environmental risks to greenlight “an unprecedented expansion for offshore wind” projects — including tax incentives through the president’s Inflation Reduction Act for renewable energy developers.
Steve Milloy, a senior fellow at the Energy and Environment Legal Institute who sits on Heartland’s board of directors, told The Post that the ad campaign reveals how “Orwellian” government action on the environment has become.
“As the Biden administration is literally permitting the offshore wind industry to kill endangered whales under the guise of ‘saving the planet,’ Earth Day has gone 180 degrees from where it started and has become truly Orwellian,” Milloy said.
“It’s gone from ‘Save the Whales’ to ‘Kill the Whales.’ And the green groups that have promoted Earth Day for 53 years are totally okay with this agenda.”
Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow president Craig Rucker said the push to build the wind farms comes “despite growing evidence that whales are being impacted by the preliminary sonar blasting being conducted to site windmills, as well as scores of the marine mammals washing up dead on beaches.”
“’Damn the whales, full speed ahead’ seems to be the official policy of the Biden administration when it comes to the construction of offshore wind,” Rucker said in a statement. “The White House seems to remain unfazed and fixated on implementing its reckless ‘net zero’ energy agenda.”
“Let’s hope some court steps in to, at a minimum, place an injunction against any continued offshore wind energy development until proper environmental studies can be conducted,” he added.
The noise produced from building the farms, especially pile-driving the turbines into the ocean floor, has been shown to affect aquatic life, according to federal regulators, who implemented a “soft start” approach before construction to drive away species.
The ProPublica report states that in the next 10 years, more than 3,000 turbines will be built and nearly 10,000 miles of cable will be laid on 2.4 million acres of the ocean managed by the federal government.
The construction would involve scores of ships traveling at high speeds and crisscrossing known whale habitats, increasing the chances of marine mammals being fatally struck.
Developers like Atlantic Shores Offshore Wind, which has been approved to start wind farms off the coast of New York and New Jersey, receive special authorization from the National Marine Fisheries Service to potentially injure or kill the whales as long as mitigation protocols and reporting procedures are followed.
The noise produced from building the farms, especially pile-driving the turbines into the ocean floor, has been shown to affect aquatic life, according to federal regulators, who implemented a “soft start” approach before construction to drive away species.
The ProPublica report states that in the next 10 years, more than 3,000 turbines will be built and nearly 10,000 miles of cable will be laid on 2.4 million acres of the ocean managed by the federal government.
The construction would involve scores of ships traveling at high speeds and crisscrossing known whale habitats, increasing the chances of marine mammals being fatally struck.
Developers like Atlantic Shores Offshore Wind, which has been approved to start wind farms off the coast of New York and New Jersey, receive special authorization from the National Marine Fisheries Service to potentially injure or kill the whales as long as mitigation protocols and reporting procedures are followed.
Feds admit offshore wind can kill whales! CFACT David Wojick 27 April 2023
Despite public proclamations of innocence, it turns out BOEM and NOAA clearly acknowledge the deadly threat of offshore wind development to marine mammals. Not surprisingly they do it in documents that are subject to judicial review, lest they be caught fibbing.
Of course these admissions are well hidden, buried in the depths of thousand page documents, but they are there to be found. These are the Draft Environmental Impact Statements (DEIS) that precede each offshore wind project. They are jointly prepared by BOEM and NOAA.
The key is that the overall project EIS includes the EIS for NOAA’s harassment authorizations for the construction of that project. In fact you can find this language by searching the DEIS for the word “harassment”. I am told that this is standard language which varies little from project to project.
The standard language says just what we have been saying! Harassment is likely to lead to dangerous behavior, including increased likelihood of deadly ship strikes and entanglements. It also says, as we have, that having multiple projects increases these risks.
Here is a good example of admitting that harassment is can cause harm. I could not have said it better.
“It is possible that pile driving could displace animals into areas with lower habitat quality or higher risk of vessel collision or fisheries interaction. Multiple construction activities within the same calendar year could potentially affect migration, foraging, calving, and individual fitness. The magnitude of impacts would depend upon the locations, duration, and timing of concurrent construction. Such impacts could be long term, of high intensity, and of high exposure level. Generally, the more frequently an individual’s normal behaviors are disrupted or the longer the duration of the disruption, the greater the potential for biologically significant consequences to individual fitness. The potential for biologically significant effects is expected to increase with the number of pile-driving events to which an individual is exposed.”
This warning is about risks created by pile driving but all forms of acoustic harassment fit this description. NOAA harassment authorizations are based on the estimated number of critters that will be exposed to unsafe sound levels. The source of the dangerous sounds is irrelevant. What matters most is the volume. Sound is a pressure wave; the louder the sound the greater the physical pressure on the hearing system. Pain and physical damage are possible.
In fact the infamous sonar surveying sounds, implicated in the whale deaths to date, can be much louder that the incredibly loud pile driving. Driving the enormous piles for the proposed wind projects is estimated to create sounds around 190 decibels, which is painfully loud in humans.
But some sonar equipment deliberately emits sounds over 200 decibels. Decibels is a log scale so this is not just 5% greater than 190; it is much greater.
Thus it makes no sense that NOAA claims sonar surveys have no significant impact and so do not fall under NEPA, while pile driving does. This is especially true when, as just happened, a dozen different projects are given simultaneous authorization to acoustically harass large numbers of whales.
What is important is that NOAA and a BOEM are clearly stating that the acoustic threats we have been warning about and suspecting are real. The telling correlations between sonar blasting and increased whale deaths cannot be waived away.
Correlation is not causation, but correlation between cause and predicted effect is very strong evidence that the cause is effective. NOAA and BOEM’s repeated insistence that there is no evidence offshore wind development is killing whales is clearly contradicted by their own Environmental Impact Statements.
Greenpeace launched its “Save the Whales” campaign on April 27, 1975. But in the ensuing years, Greenpeace has gone full Orwell. Greenpeace is no longer interested in saving the whales. It may actually be aiding and abetting the Biden administration and the offshore wind industry in killing whales supposedly to
“save the planet.”
Greenpeace launched its “Save the Whales” campaign on April 27, 1975.
But in the ensuing years, Greenpeace has gone full Orwell.
Greenpeace is no longer interested in saving the whales. It may actually be aiding and abetting the Biden administration and the offshore wind industry in killing whales supposedly to “save the planet.”
“Damn the whales, full speed ahead” seems to be the offshore wind policy of Biden’s NOAA. They now propose to approve yet another site survey, just 10 miles off Atlantic City.
Take a look at the graph by Jersey Shore protector and activist Mike Dean tweeted.
The graph shows a dramatic rise in whale deaths, closely correlated with the rise in vessels conducting survey operations off the coast of New York and New Jersey, as construction of massive wind farms ramps up.
CFACT will be the first to tell you, as we have so many times, that correlation does not prove causation. We’ll leave that kind of spurious conclusion-jumping to the Left.
What correlation does do is demand investigation and flag us to proceed with caution.
The heartbreaking sight of massive whales washing up dead on our coasts has concerned people everywhere asking, “why?”
Yet, our government watchdog agencies have turned a blind eye.
“Damn the whales, full speed ahead” seems to be the offshore wind policy of Biden’s NOAA. They now propose to approve yet another site survey, just 10 miles off Atlantic City.
The site is a big one because the offshore wind project is huge. Phase 1 is a whopping 1,500 MW, which means over 100 monster turbine towers. The survey area is around 1,500,000 acres or an incredible 2,300 square miles…
NOAA (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration) predicts the number of adverse impacts by species, but here are the staggering numbers by category:
42 Whales
2,534 Dolphins
142 Porpoises
1,472 Seals
Total = 4,190 adversely impacted marine mammals.
The Biden Administration has directed government agencies to go all-in on climate. Now they are ignoring their duty to protect wildlife and unspoiled spaces. Their Faustian bargain won’t even bring us reliable energy. It certainly won’t meaningfully alter the temperature of the Earth.
What do we learn from the survey vessel/whale death correlation?
Stop offshore wind development until we investigate and learn.
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