By Paul Homewood
Michael Shellenberger’s new documentary on the spate of whale deaths off the US East Coast, and its connection to offshore wind farm development, “Thrown To The Wind”, has now been released on YouTube:
Comments are closed.
 | Phillip Bratby on ‘Green’ renewable… |
 | vickimh234 on Labour To Keep Strategic Reser… |
| vickimh234 on Labour To Keep Strategic Reser… |
| vickimh234 on Labour To Keep Strategic Reser… |
 | Phoenix44 on Labour To Keep Strategic Reser… |
| Phoenix44 on Labour To Keep Strategic Reser… |
| Phoenix44 on Labour To Keep Strategic Reser… |
 | bnice2000 on Global Heating Will Increase P… |
| vickimh234 on How Wet Was The Spring? |
| vickimh234 on Labour’s Green Obsession… |
NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT 
There appears to be a lot of unexplained harm to marine life created by the wind farms. The harm to bird life is rather more obvious.
Those of us who actually do care about our Natural World will have been dismayed by the report – “Pod of whales washes up on Yorkshire beach in ‘mass stranding” 24th Dec. 2020.
What many readers, and viewers, will have missed is the gargantuan array of giant industrial wind turbines, bristling on the horizon. Westermost Rough has 35 Turbines and Humber Gateway has 73.
The incident was also reported by the BBC, and on their website, clearly showing the turbines. However, within an hour or so, the turbines were mysteriously removed from subsequent pictures. Another sinister attempt at cover-up by the wind industry.
The North Sea has the world’s biggest concentration of offshore wind turbines, and there is ample and growing evidence that their acoustic pollution can interfere with whale communication and navigation.
So much for ‘Saving’ the Planet!
I understand that it is not just whales that are affected by the noise and vibrations from wind turbines.But obviously the harm to whales gets most attention.
They survived Whaling, but they won’t survive wind energy:
340 – That’s the number of critically endangered North Atlantic right whales that are in existence. That’s all.
Their very existence is threatened by habitat destruction off the East Coast, by offshore wind farms planned to be built in their breeding and foraging areas. Stop offshore wind energy to save the North Atlantic right whale.
Tragic Details here —
https://saverightwhales.org/
Yes, NOAA estimates (and authorizes) the number of marine mammals by species that will be exposed to excessive noise levels by each offshore wind activity. For a given case there may be a few hundred whales but thousands of dolphins, porpoises and seals.
But in mass these critters are to a whale like a mouse to a cow, so if they die they get quickly consumed, leaving no evidence.
Where’s Greenpeace when you need them?
~Ahem~
The recorded sound is from a device sending pulses that penetrate the sea bed. The echo returns from the different strata below are being recorded to produce an area 3D data set. From that, the necessary information for the turbine foundations are extracted.
The video links this survey activity with whale deaths. It would be interesting to also know how much noise an operational wind farm puts into the seawater.
What would be the effect if all the vibrations from these Windmills synchronised ?
2hmp
A resonance event would likely be detectable by geophones onshore!
Why has this not been done?
The precautionary principle out the window eh?
Amazed they didn’t use Barber’s Adagio as the soundtrack.
Many (all?) of the surveys alluded to have MMOs (Marine Mammal Observers) and many have PAM – (Passive Acoustic Monitoring). This is a significant asset wrt cetaceans and records are kept – why has this not been referenced?
The sweeping accusations of collusion between government agencies, NGOs and the wind industry (AMCS) with an inference that cover ups are in train is classic paranoid campaigner stuff. Showing (claiming even) detail collusion that’s had material impact on operations seems to be beyond the scope of this piece of theatre.
The evidence is imho very sparse and anecdotal. the post mortem outcomes aren’t afaics referenced.
We could though, put in place (more) acoustic monitoring – the tech is available to evidence acoustic problems and either mitigate or stop development altogether using actual evidence .
I am not a fan of offshore wind or wind turbines in general (understatement) – but not referencing a proper collection of evidence beyond emotive sound bites and anecdotery is a farce. If the activism effort actually has a web site where all the evidence is collated and archived – they are keeping it well hidden.
It should be noted that wind industry have ramped down their use of Passive Acoustic Monitoring as it’s a significant cost targeted by middle managers and the budgets in the industry are under pressure. I also suspect that executives are afraid of the unknown …
Declaration of interest – I have been involved in marine acoustics for some decades (as long as Rob Rand) and while I wouldn’t absolutely rule out noise being a factor I know that we can measure the noise and don’t see this being done in a systematic and responsible way. Overwrought and emotional pieces like this don’t do much for my cynical mindset that this is more about ideology than whales….
On/Off Shore wind turbines
Manufactured – China
Owned – Foreign
Subsidy – Taxpayer
Efficiency – Problematic
Youtube thinks awkward questions are hate speech…