The RSPB, wind farms and a change of direction
By Paul Homewood
Andrew Montford on the RSPB and wind farms:
LAST month the House of Lords Environment Committee heard evidence about the effects of offshore windfarms on the marine environment. The hearing was notable for revealing signs of concern from the RSPB about the devastation that is potentially going to be unleashed on the North Sea, a crime in which they have been complicit because of their silence up until now. Perhaps, after all these years, they are getting close to confronting the evidence of the harm their support for windfarms has done to birds.
The North Sea, RSPB policy officer Helen Quayle told the committee, is ‘littered with cabling from energy infrastructure’, going on to explain that this is a big problem for sandeels, a keystone species which is a staple food for many birds and other fish.
Now she tells us.
It seems that the society’s view is that the North Sea faces ‘an irreversible loss of wildlife’ as a result of offshore wind farm developments, overfishing and (inevitably) climate change.
Full post here.
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NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT 
Did someone finally notice what the P in RSPB stood for?
Persecute?
Profiteering [from] ?
If the RSPB were a government department, a Freedom of Information request might readily have revealed how wind farm interests had ‘acquired’ the charity’s acquiescence to projects which, plainly, run counter to their own ethos. As it stands, we can only presume how many shekels they may have trousered by seemingly turning a blind eye at installations which devastate avian habitat. In my own experience of trying to oppose a cliff top wind farm scheme on a main migratory flight route of whooper swans and tufted ducks from Iceland to Scotland and Northern European woodcock, with equally serious impacts on native hawks and harriers, the RSPB went completely missing in action. I would strongly advise anyone with a serious interest in the protection of bird and wildlife habitat to support local projects that aren’t bought and paid for by the renewables lobby.
As long term members we flagged this up with the environmental officer at RSPB HQ at Sandy 15 yrs ago, who said wind farms caused no harm to birds & they helped stop Global Warming !!
Then he told me to listen to Al Gore’s Inconvenient Truth & not be a denier, at that point we stopped being members & managed to get at least 30 other people to leave RSPB,
RSPB were/are more interested in sponsorship cash from ‘green energy’ cowboys than the protection of birds.
Now sponsorship cash is drying up maybe they are changing their tune.
It was about that time that we gave up our membership, and I told them in no uncertain terms why we were canceling our membership.
We likewise, after being members since 1957. I still have a collection of their then quarterly ‘Bird Notes’ – a serious, informative and much looked-forward to publication. Back then, their Council and VP listings were a veritable ‘who’s who’ of the great and good. Cover illustrations were beautiful paintings by C F Tunnicliffe, RA (who was also a VP) – as were Peter Scott, Eric Hosking, Anthony Buxton, etc., etc.
Those were the days!
It now either supports or won’t criticise cat ownership and wind farms and recognises the climate emergency as the greatest threat to wildlife.
I’m with Lord Beefy!
It seems obvious to me that employing large scale wind farms is irrational given any set of premises.
If power generation emitting too much carbon dioxide is the alpha and omega of your decision making, you wouldn’t pick wind farms over nuclear power.
If reliability was your bag then wind farms would come last or second last after solar.
If cost was the main issue then you would pick the cheapest form of generation, not wind that cannot survive without subsidies.
If you wanted to save biodiversity you would not be building large numbers of structures that almost seem designed to swat birds out of the sky.
If you were worried about maintaining grid frequency you would hardly choose wind.
So whatever your priorities are, wind just cannot cut it. What is appreciated by contributors here, but not it seems in the wider country, is that the more wind you add to the system the worse its problems get, i.e. the greater the fraction of generation that comes from wind, the less reliable the grid is and the more expensive the electricity is and the more birds are killed. *_*
Thanks, vert succinct