As for house cats, they don’t kill big, rare, threatened birds. What house cats kill are small, common birds, like sparrows, robins and jays. What kills big, threatened, and endangered birds—birds that could go extinct—like hawks, eagles, owls, and condors, are wind turbines.
In fact, wind turbines are the most serious new threat to important bird species to emerge in decades. The rapidly spinning turbines act like an apex predator which big birds never evolved to deal with.
Solar farms have similarly large ecological impacts. Building a solar farm is a lot like building any other kind of farm. You have to clear the whole area of wildlife.
In order to build one of the biggest solar farms in California the developers hired biologists to pull threatened desert tortoises from their burrows, put them on the back of pickup trucks, transport them, and cage them in pens where many ended up dying.
As we were learning of these impacts, it gradually dawned on me that there was no amount of technological innovation that could solve the fundamental problem with renewables.
But these are all green kills, so that is ok. Its just like Victoria dumping its sewage in the ocean; its clean, green, organic, Suzuki sewage. Its why I don’t eat fish from BC – its sewage fish.
Meanwhile we had the 2nd coldest February ever. And it will be -29C tonight. Isn’t global warming nice?
most of those birds wouldn’t exist had we not planted millions of trees yielding fruit and habitate all over the prairies ….maybe they are the invaders
And Rachel Notley, premier of Alberta, recently gushed that her government will build a ginormous solar field in northern Alberta to power some government buildings. Hopefully, the new government coming in after this spring’s election will trash that really stupid plan.
Hopefully a new government will move the NDP members of the legislature into buildings exclusively powered by solar panels. Failing that, they turn the electric heat and light off whenever solar and wind are off. No sun, no wind, no electricity for the NDP.
Related – a post on Linkedin https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/winds-winter-discontent-curtis-sheptycki/
A calculation of how much battery storage Alberta would need if they went 100% renewable.
“But it’s high time that those of us who appointed ourselves Earth’s guardians should take a second look at the science, and start questioning the impacts of our actions.”
No, just kill yourselves!
“environmentalists” like Suzuki hate the environment
but they love their jet setting tours, their mansions by the beach, and their NGO laundered free money from billionaire globalists
“Renewables” are THE most environmentally disgusting forms of energy production. They’re inefficient to begin with, are intermittent, lack storage, require cumbersome distribution networks, and SPOIL the hell out of our beautiful natural landscapes. They should have been REJECTED from day one. But for political and economic lobbying. But for the happy horseshit public relations saturation that have made all the truly STUPID average citizens “believe” in “renewable” forms of energy.
Technological Innovation.
There are two types of technological innovation.
1. True breakthroughs in science and technology that reap massive benefits: For example; Fracking, Horizontal Drilling, or ever more detailed exploration techniques that find additional reserves of fossil fuels. And of course … E=mc2
or
2. Pixie dust, bullshitty, anti-science, feel-good, Unicorn “innovation” that hasn’t REALLY advanced in any significant way. For example; Elon Musk’s electric car and “battery breakthrough”. Same basic thing as a 1906 electric car, or a golf cart. Oh! but his car has disappearing door handles to reduce ‘drag’ by 0.001% at the average around town speed of 35mph. Wow! Doesn’t that just make everyone want to ditch 100+ years of incredible progress in making ICE autos true things of beauty and cleanliness in 2019!
The problem lies with … the people. And education. And propaganda. And weak mindedness. Most citizens are just really DUMB, and live their lives like Sleeping Beauty … just waiting and hoping and wishing for some Prince riding a Unicorn (‘genius’ Elon Musk, for eg.) to give them a magic kiss that rescues them from allllllll the world’s problems. Yeayyyy !!! We can’t WAIT to ride on CA’s “high speed train” … why it’s gonna be JUST LIKE “Doc’s” SUPERTRAIN in Back to the Future-3. Neato.
“weak mindedness”
encouraged, fostered, promoted and rewarded by the edjukashun cystem.
all at the behest of the elites.
as it has been since at least written language showed up, ie WHO controls WHAT is written and thus what can be read and shared. and even WHO is allowed to even *learn* to write and read.
all courtesy the elites for hundreds of generations.
And in North America (and that includes Canada) 40 percent of the corn crop goes for the production of energy negative corn-sourced ethanol.
All across Ontario and into Quebec, marginal land (wildlife habitat) is being cleared for cropland. The three drivers are:
(a) the subsidized/mandated ethanol market
(b) the supply managed dairy sector
(c) the availability of credit-on-demand
“All across Ontario and into Quebec, marginal land (wildlife habitat) is being cleared for cropland. The three drivers are:
(a) the subsidized/mandated ethanol market
(b) the supply managed dairy sector
(c) the availability of credit-on-demand”
Crony capitalism at work in Canada…….
Growing corn to make ethanol is an obscenity.
DJT wants to increase ethanol in gasoline to 15%…..
The author ignores the virtually unlimited liability cost of conventional nuclear AND the ginormous cost of decommissioning plants.
Newer fission powered options that don’t have those issues do exist but most are barely at a commercial scale.
If you set aside the miniscule risk of AGW NG and Clean coal are both safe and cheap and the best mid-term option until nuclear can replace them. And if anaerobic loop processes that get energy out of organic fuel (read Ng and coal) become commercialized then than mid-term interval becomes a millennium or two (or three).
The author is still very naive about the issue despite the thousands of words he has written.
bord gulk, until you do a cost/energy ratio study, your post is no better than what you state the author of the article is.
I’m commenting on an article- not writing one.
The math is out there – go look for yourself.
The National Audubon Society and the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds(RSPB)is so caught up in this Global Warming/Climate Change Hoax their in favor of these Bird Maiming things
There is oil, gas, and coal aplenty. No need for renewables.
Hydro and nuclear are currently the only reality-based future energy sources once fossil fuels become too expensive. Nuclear is certainly the cleanest and safest and depending on the level of state intervention, the cheapest. Unreliables are a sick joke and have sucked-in millions of non-critical thinking drones.
Exactly. That might take us forward for quite some time. Proven untapped gas reserves are in the hundreds of years, so we have a way to go with that source. More sources being discovered all the time. I do not know about oil reserves.
I found the following sentence rather interesting.
“Despite what you’ve heard, there is no “battery revolution” on the way, for well-understood technical and economic reasons.”
Automobile manufactures discovered that a hundred years ago.
Proven oil reserves are 90 years. Even though the amount of oil we burn every year increases, so does the amount we discover and the reserves stay at 90 years.
Coal is at 500 years and gas is more than that.
We will never run out. In time, real, actual, superior sources of energy will be discovered/developed and fossils will be replaced while there’s still lots left. Think back to the beginning of the 20th century, and how many changes and improvements there have been. We have no idea what lies ahead for the next century.
Natural variability is waaaaay underestimated. Criminally so for purpose. Just ask any Liberal. Meanwhile Calgary’s looking at a Friday low temp of -29C and southwest AB’s gonna get hammered with 20cm of snow. Yep, Gore nailed it. Truth is this winter’s been VERY inconvenient.
The unwelcome truth is that wind and solar are absolutely useless forms of electricity production until they can mimic baseload power like hydro, coal, natgas and nuclear. I doesn’t matter how cheaply panels and towers can be produced or that once built they use “free” fuel if they cannot be relied upon to produce power 24/7/365.
I favor transitioning from coal (once the units have reached the end of their productive life) to natgas and then to small, modular nuclear power when it is available at a reasonable cost. These are practical, affordable “no regret” solutions that can be implemented over a leisurely time period because ,despite what you hear from The End is Nigh brigade, warming is mild and most likely a net benefit until the end of the 21st century.
He’s not really a reformed environmentalist. He still thinks the planet needs saving from fossil fuels. But I guess we should be grateful that he’s at least recognized the obvious idiocy of wind and solar.
oh, and on the topic of ‘settled science’?
the ginormous trillions of barrels and cubic meters of nat gas are NOT biological in origin.
true, swamp gas from decomposition does exist. but that is a fart bubble compared to the qtys 1,000s of feet under the top soil and below the ocean bed.
skill testing Q of the day; how the FCUK could that amount wind up in the same remote locale?
skill test Q #2: if methane comes from dinosaur guts, does that mean there are/were dinosaurs
on friggin NEPTUNE? hmmmm?
https://www.universetoday.com/21584/atmosphere-of-neptune/
look for the ‘trace amounts of METHANE’ phrase.
p.s. greenies refuse to so much as acknowledge this ‘brontosaurus in the room’ Q let alone answer it.