"Birds, bats at high risk on Red Oak"

From The Recorder (Va.), March 2:

A study conducted at Highland New Wind Development's site on Allegheny Mountain last fall found a higher rate of nocturnal migration on Red Oak Knob and Tamarack than at sites where other such studies have been conducted.

Sunday, about 75 people turned out for a seminar at The Highland Center when speakers addressed the proposed Highland New Wind Development utility and its potential effects, notably that birds and bats may be in even more danger than previously surmised if the projects is built here.

Wildlife biologist and consultant Dan Boone reviewed the avian study by ABR Inc., the firm hired by HNWD to take a look at migration numbers on the project site. That study shows a higher number of birds and bats are flying through the site than at any other he's seen, Boone said.

"I had always been a proponent of wind energy," he said. After he was hired to study avian effects for a project in Maryland, however, Boone came across a thin report on the utility and, "I couldn't believe how bad the science was," he said. It spurred Boone into becoming an activist and policy analyst opposing wind development in the East.

Boone says despite the fact that the best wind potential lies in the West, the major population centers are in the East, contributing to the drive to develop wind energy in the Mid-Atlantic region, which draws 24 percent of the nation's electric load. "And Highland and Bath are two of the best sites in Virginia for wind," he says, although this area also has some of the most sensitive environmental areas where turbines carry a high potential to be detrimental to wildlife, local economies, and residents.

Boone said the wind industry often argues turbines only kill about two bats each, and that cats kill far more birds. Those arguments, however, do not hold water, he says. For one thing, the kinds of birds killed by cats are common back yard birds, not forest and migratory birds affected by wind utilities.

Bat populations can be seriously and critically affected by wind projects, particularly if the number of facilities proposed in the East are built, creating an overall cumulative effect on their migratory patterns and survival. ...

Golden eagles, a federally protected species, are at risk, too, especially because their Appalachian populations are very small, Boone said.

... In Tucker County, W.Va., at the wind utility on Backbone Mountain, studies concluded some 4,000 bats were killed in one 2003 season -- the highest ever recorded.

Nearly all wildlife impact studies at wind plants to date, Boone notes, have involved the kind of terrain that's different from the forested ridge tops of this region.

Boone explained scientists don't really know yet why bats tend to be attracted to wind turbines -- some surmise it has to do with the low-frequency noise and vibration. But in the Allegheny Mountains, he said, there is a stronger, tighter migration path -- birds and bats use the mountain front as a focused freeway for migrating north and south, and therefore there will always be more of them in a smaller area along this area. ...

Rick Lambert of Monterey, owner of Highland Adventures and active caver, agreed there were serious concerns.

"I have to tell you I was initially for this wind project until I was asked to look at the bat reports for Highland and Pendleton," he said.

After reviewing the studies conducted by HNWD and Liberty Gap, however, Lambert said he found too many errors and inconsistencies. "We really need more research," he said.

Lambert said there are actually four endangered bat species in the area -- the Indiana bat, the Virginia big-eared bat, the gray bat, and the small-footed bat. All of them, he said, are likely to be in Highland County caves, too. Some have been documented here, but Lambert said not all privately-owned caves have been explored or seen at the right times during migration to document the bat populations. He believes there are bound to be far more of these endangered bats in both counties.

tags:  wind power, wind energy, wind farms, wind turbines, environment, environmentalism

Freudian typo

"Our forefathers fought for the right to fee speech." [emphasis added]

-- New York Times, "Six Animal Rights Advocates Are Convicted of Terrorism," Mar. 3

tags:  animal rights, anarchism, ecoanarchism

Plug-in folly

To the Editor, New York Times:

Where does Nicholas Kristof ("100-M.P.G. Cars: It's a Start," Feb. 5) think the electricity for plug-in cars will come from? The cars themselves may run more cleanly, but the electricity will likely come from plants burning more coal -- hardly a cleaner alternative.

tags:  environment, environmentalism

turbines noisy as very low-flying aircraft

'At the opening of Black Law windfarm in South Lanarkshire yesterday, Nicol Stephen, deputy first minister and one of the project's biggest proponents, admitted that standing under one of the site's 42 turbines was as noisy as being beneath the path of a "very low-flying aircraft".'

The Herald (U.K.), January 13, 2006

tags:  wind power, wind energy, wind farms, environment, environmentalism

Cape Wind will have little, if any, benefit

To the Editor, New York Times:

The editorial of Feb. 28 ("Sneak Attack on Cape Wind") mentions "serious effort[s] to deal with global warming and oil dependency." Unfortunately, the Cape Wind project, like all grid-connected wind power projects, is not such a "serious effort."

The power output projected by the developers does not translate into a corresponding reduction of other sources. In fact, the output from wind turbines is so intermittent and variable that other plants must be kept burning to be able to balance them.

Denmark, Germany, and Spain have not reduced their greenhouse gas or other emissions nor their use of other fuels despite massive installation of wind power (along with the necessary overbuilding of supporting infrastructure).

tags:  wind power, wind energy, wind farms

Windfo revival meetups

At the Sutton School on Monday (Feb. 27), starting at 6:30, Clean Air Vermont, a group that appears to have been conjured just for this meeting, probably born in the bowels of VPIRG like that other "volunteer driven group" Clean Power Vermont -- anyway, said group has called a meeting to restore the Suttonites to the true faith of industrial sprawl and centralized power. (I don't know when -- or why -- VPIRG got into this business; it is completely antithetical to their usual concerns.)

Then on Tuesday (Feb. 28) down in Montpelier, from 7 to 10 p.m. at the Unitarian Universalist Church, Vermont's Building for Social Responsibility is putting their face into the same wind. This one actually promises to be a discussion to sort out the pros and cons of commerical wind power development on Vermont's ridgelines. We'll see.

There is currently 1 small operating wind power facility in Vermont and 9 big ones in the pipeline. These projects will affect 58 of the state's 251 towns.

A statement from Vermonters with Vision (and potential petition) is as follows:

We oppose the construction of industrial wind power turbines on Vermont's ridgelines.

1. The energy benefits are minimal.
   
2. The addition of noise, light, and visual pollution is unacceptable.
   
3. The negative impact to the land and to wildlife is significant.
   
4. The harm to Vermont's rural character far outweighs vaguely promised pay-offs to affected towns and individuals.

For expansion of these statements, see www.rosenlake.net/vwv.

tags:  wind power, wind energy, Vermont, environment, environmentalism

12 easy steps to fascism

From a good piece by Jenni Russell in today's Guardian (U.K.):

[T]he normal rules of customer service had been suspended and replaced by something alarming: an assumption, by those in uniform, that a member of the public who questions them can now be treated as a potential threat.

This change in the relationship between people and officials can only be explained as a result of the new illiberal atmosphere in which we are living. Just consider what happened at the Labour party conference. Everyone noticed the case of Walter Wolfgang, but 425 other people were also stopped under the terrorism act. ... People were being targeted not for terrorism, but for political dissent.

Dangerously for all of us, the fear of terrorism is legitimising intimidating behaviour by petty officials and agents of the state. It has become an excuse for bullying people when they step out of obedient lines.

... I fear that many of us are failing to see the danger we are now in, precisely because we have grown up in a largely benign state. We still trust in the good sense and reasonableness of its agents, and the rest of officialdom. We don't understand that that has been sustained only by the existence of our legal rights, and by a respect for our freedom of action. We don't see the lesson of every society: that if you do not place constraints on official power, its instinct is to grow. Our tolerant world is disappearing, and it is only when many more of us start running up against that reality that we will realise what we have lost.

tags:  anarchism, anarchosyndicalism