Do wind turbines draw Pipistrelle Bats to their doom?
Conservationists are becoming increasingly concerned that wind turbines are wreaking havoc on the bat’s well-being. That villain: Wind turbines.
Conservationists are becoming increasingly concerned that wind turbines are wreaking havoc on the bat’s well-being. That villain: Wind turbines.
CFACT Senior Policy Analyst Paul Driessen explains the huge costs and inefficiencies of replacing fossil fuels with wind, solar, and biomass fuels.
CFACT energy policy advisor Marita Noon explains how people can stand up to Big Wind and fight against ugly wind farms that kill birds and bats, destroy landscapes, and require subsidies to operate.
The problem with regard to consistency get larger as we come to realize that whatever they support is permitted; whatever they oppose violates the Precautionary Principle. They support windmills; therefore there is no violation. They oppose fracking; therefore it violates the principle.... In the view of activists and regulators, regulations exist to delay, block or destroy things they oppose. The fact that regulatory actions may well cause prolonged energy deprivation, poverty, unemployment, disease, malnutrition or premature death is irrelevant to them.
Bob Johns, spokesman for the American Bird Conservancy ... confirmed ...[that] the Altamont operation alone has killed more than 2,000 golden eagles. But that’s not all. “Nationwide, the wind industry kills thousands of golden eagles without prosecution,” Johns said, “while any other American citizen even possessing eagle parts such as feathers would face huge fines and prison time.”
Bats are struck by blades traveling 100 to 200 mph at their tips or felled by “barotrauma,” sudden air pressure changes that explode their lungs, as explained in a 2008 Scientific American article “On a wing and low air: The surprising way wind turbines kill bats.”