We Don’t Need No Stinking Giant Fans

I remember when these experts were too unfashionable for respectable print: Wind farms causing thousands of bats to die of collapsed lungs annually in Alberta.

18 Replies to “We Don’t Need No Stinking Giant Fans”

If I could dynamite every single one of those G** D****** monstrosities I would.
They are a worthless, yet extremely expensive blight on the landscape

If I could read the National Post article linked I would. But not if I have to buy a subscription.

Hey, who cares about those flying rats? We’re looking out for the polar bears. Sacrifices must be made for the greater good.

I don’t have a subscription and can open it without problem.

I just read it, Tooner. I don’t think you need one. But if you do, you owe me a coffee.

“flying rats”
I’m not real fond of snakes either but I leave them alone and they return the favour.

so they’ll shut down these inefficient pieces of junk to save bats, next they just put up inoperable structures to look good and collect tax subsidies and do nothing else

It all boils down to who is doing the killing. If it is the monstrous fans killing tens of thousands birds and bats, or the solar panel farms are spontaneously combusting birds in the sky it is for the great good of the Gaia worshipers. If it is the evil oil company’s tailings ponds killing a couple of hundred it is a major environmental catastrophic.
The duplicity is astounding.
Follow the money and you will find a snake oil salesmen.

I’d bet the farm that many,if not all of the “alternative energy” companies are arm’s length investments of Big Oil or other non-green corporations.
Diversification has been the policy of the Bigs for over forty years,and I very much doubt Oil or any other multinational, Big Food,Big Pharma,Big Power, Big Insurance, Big Chems, etc., have missed this particular investment opportunity.
Environmentalists seem to believe there are only two players, the awful Big Oil,and the good guys, Big Alternative Energy,and never the twain shall meet.
If some enterprising Reporter would take the task on, I have no doubt they’d find out exactly what I’ve suggested above, but that might be too un-politically correct for the tender psyches of the green masses.

Quite right, Don. The oil companies have understood for 30 years that renwewables pose no threat whatsoever to their business model, and the gas companies understand that renewables mean more gas burnt for electricity, not less. Which is why the real target of the big fossil fuel companies for those same 30 years has been nuclear. It can displace oil and gas, where the renewables cannot.

Occasionally links to NP articles allow me to read them, but more often than not I get 2-4seconds before a large pop-up invites me to sign in or buy a subscription. When I decline, it defaults to a front page of teasers for various articles and if I click on any of them I get the pop-up invitation again.
I survive.

Dreading whatever debt will I incur by asking you to explain how I came to be in your debt for a coffee, I refrain from asking.

Indeed the latest one to be built in southwestern Ontario is owned and operated by Suncor.
The largest solar farm in Canada, located in the same area is owned and operated by Suncor.

At least as far as gas and oil are concerned, the “big energy” companies like Exxon and Chevron are likely uninterested or at least neutral about Nukes. They make their money in the transportation and petrochemical sectors, so electrical power profits don’t mean much to them. In fact, if electricity were cheap, they’d do lots more with it in their plants.
“Big Coal” on the other hand probably does have a vested interest in delaying the use of new, low-risk nuke plants.
But back to the subject at hand… if the existing fossil fuel energy companies were killing even 1% of the bats that these windfarms do (just in raw numbers, not in kills per megawatt), all the environmental groups would do a million-treehugger march on the Capitol to get it stopped ASAP. The hypocrisy is simply staggering.

I see the future…..in a few years animal rights groups will begin to panic because the bat population has declined to dangerous levels but will the windmill industry be blamed, not likely, it will be be man made industrial practices and man made global warming.

Thank god it’s not mallards dying in a tailings pond … that would be completely unacceptable.

Liberals always say that Conservatives are in bed with big business, but it’s usually the Liberals. Wind and solar are the greatest example of riding roughshod over the average citizen and siphoning money out of their pockets and into the accounts of big business. In addition to the bats and birds and health concerns, looking at all of the rusting turbines in S. Cal. I wonder who pays to remove these things in 20 years when subsidies expire and the turbines are past their useful life? The estimates I have heard as to the cost of removal of tower and turbine, not the foundation, is staggering.

“… I wonder who pays to remove these things in 20 years when subsidies expire and the turbines are past their useful life? …”
It won’t cost anything because they won’t remove them. The companies that got the subsidies will dissolve and the turbines will be left to rust and crumble.

18 Replies to “We Don’t Need No Stinking Giant Fans”

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