Next time someone talks about wind energy as a means to save the planet tell them about the following:
Time Magazine’s ‘Hero of the Environment’ Michael Shellenberger exposed wind/solar power claims in 2019, explaining that “renewables can’t save the planet.” "I came to understand the environmental implications of the physics of energy. In order to produce significant amounts of electricity from weak energy flows, you just have to spread them over enormous areas. In other words, the trouble with renewables isn’t fundamentally technical—it’s natural. Dealing with energy sources that are inherently unreliable, and require large amounts of land, comes at a high economic cost,” Shellenberger wrote.
Shellenberger continued: "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."
He added: "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."
Time Magazine’s ‘Hero of the Environment’ Michael Shellenberger exposed wind/solar power claims in 2019, explaining that “renewables can’t save the planet.” "I came to understand the environmental implications of the physics of energy. In order to produce significant amounts of electricity from weak energy flows, you just have to spread them over enormous areas. In other words, the trouble with renewables isn’t fundamentally technical—it’s natural. Dealing with energy sources that are inherently unreliable, and require large amounts of land, comes at a high economic cost,” Shellenberger wrote.
Shellenberger continued: "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."
He added: "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."
Cat vs bird of prey - no contest...
ReplyDeleteThere are a number of other videos like that online. I'm especially fond of one showing some Asian hunters using an eagle to take down a wolf.
It's just so insane to think that a pussycat poses any threat whatever to the rare birds being slaughtered by wind turbines.