The Sham Wind-Power Crusade is Best Opposed on Local Battlefields
Today, the politics, policy debates, and propaganda that characterize the “Climate Change Wars” are playing out on the local level, including in East Hampton, New York.
Their local “Green New Deal” forces are mustering, now, to support the Offshore Wind Turbine project, the town’s contribution to saving the planet. But the planet does not need to be saved from global warming (now called “climate change” because “global warming” predictions kept failing).
East Hampton residents have been kept largely in the dark about the fatal drawbacks of wind power.
But East Hampton residents have been kept largely in the dark about the fatal drawbacks of wind power. Those who speak and write in favor of it most often are “greens” and the greens are ardent salesmen for an ideology. (At its philosophical base, that ideology is anti-industrial and anti-modern. See this and this.
A few considerations about wind power.
Wind turbines are grossly inefficient. The large, industrial ones characteristically produce 2.5 megawatts of power. But only when wind speed is optimal (between 8 and 25 mph). Most of the time, even in the best locations, it is not.
Therefore, today’s wind farms have a “capacity factor” of about one-third: that is, they average one-third of the output of their “nameplate” capacity (which is only reached if the wind blows at the right speed 24/7 every week of the year).
Obviously, when the wind isn’t blowing optimally, the electricity grid doesn’t provide the projected power. Today, fossil fuel plants can step in. Under the Green New Deal, fossil fuel plants would be eliminated. Then, to keep the lights on, we will need nuclear power plants, which older greens cut their teeth on opposing—and still do oppose.
After repeated blackouts in 2016, Australian regulatory agencies set caps on solar and wind generation.
The government of the state of South Australia set out to be a leader in renewable energy. The state has extensive, installed wind generation “capacity” (not the same as power production, as we noted). But after repeated blackouts in 2016, Australian regulatory agencies set caps on solar and wind generation, ensuring enough fossil-fuel backup to prevent the blackouts.
There are areas along the U.S. West Coast and Midwest with steady wind, but three-quarters of our contiguous 48 states have half the wind. True, offshore areas have higher wind potential, but are three times as expensive to develop. Not to mention added transmission costs.
The real drawback, vastly downplayed by the greens, is the land required for industrial wind turbines, placed far apart to avoid interfering with “wind capture area.” In a keynote address at an energy conference last year, Louisiana Attorney-General Jeff Landry pointed out that generating enough power for the Houston metropolitan area alone would require some 900 square miles of wind turbines—assuming operation at full capacity. That is 16 times the size of Washington, D.C.
Estimates of the cost of wind power are routinely grotesquely low-balled, including by the U.S. Energy Information Administration. These estimates assume a 30-year lifetime (but most wind turbines last 15 years and far less when placed offshore). The estimates ignore the cost of backup power and do not include the cost of transmission lines of the kind East Hampton is debating.
The real cost of wind power is seven times the cost of natural-gas-generated electric power.
A 2016 Utah University study showed that when you add in such costs, including the huge subsidies from government, the real cost of wind power is an appalling 43 cents per kilowatt-hour. For perspective: that is seven times the cost of natural-gas-generated electric power. Well, no one said that saving the planet would come cheap.
In fact, the methodology chiefly used to develop plans for New York State to become 50% “renewable” by 2030 (the same methodology used by the same scholars developing such plans for other states), is turning out to be seriously flawed (see “Are Studies of Penetrations of Wind Power Valid?” by Richard D. Patton). Plans based on this methodology are likely to fail badly and drive costs sky high. Experiences in Germany and South Australia suggest that is what will happen.
The Green New Deal foresees wind farms everywhere, but even environmentally-friendly communities like East Hampton resist them (or even just their transmission lines). One reason is that their grave environmental damage is now being understood.
How many birds do the turbines kill? Earlier estimates ran at perhaps 300,000 a year in the 48 states. The Audubon Society says that makes wind “the most threatening form of green energy.” Actually, other sources put the death tolls far higher.
Industrial wind turbines are now slaughtering bats, with at least four million killed since 2012. Bats are our primary natural defense in keeping mosquitos and crop-damaging insects in check.
There are more bird lovers in East Hampton than bat lovers, but those who understand the environment know the critical role of bats. And here we are talking about a worsening threat to human health and welfare as well. Industrial wind turbines are now slaughtering bats, with at least four million killed since 2012.
That could make life a lot less healthy and a lot less comfortable. Bats are our primary natural defense in keeping mosquitos and crop-damaging insects in check. One bat can gobble down a thousand mosquitos and other insects an hour. That is 6,000 per night.
Turbines can be 20 stories high with three blades, each 200 feet long. They are clustered by the hundreds. Fish and wildlife specialists are staggered by the heaps of dead bats found at industrial wind turbine sites in the eastern United States. A bat does not have to be hit by a turbine blade; about half die of barotrauma—the pressure change near a spinning blade that bursts the blood vessels in the bat’s lungs.
An organization called Save the Eagles suggests that the loss of millions of bats has resulted in billions more of mosquitoes. Indeed, mosquito populations have increased up to tenfold in the past 50 years. For now, the chief causes are urbanization and reduced use of insecticides (the latter cause is also a homage to “green” science). But if wind power ever manages to become “significant” bat slaughter will soar and we might face a Stephen King insect horror story.
Not the least of the problems with wind turbines is their appalling noise, akin to that of a helicopter. Of course, East Hampton’s wind power, for example, at first will come from far offshore. That makes it even more extremely expensive, but, for now, puts at least some of the problems out to sea. But, across the world, governments have received tens of thousands of complaints about noise from local residents—and have no way to address them.
As wind turbines have proliferated in parts of Europe, serious accidents have increased with 192 deaths over the past decade from massive failures of turbine blades. Countries are now requiring the vast, sprawling “wind farms” to locate several miles from human habitations.
In Germany this year, the Greens lamented that the drive toward wind power had almost collapsed because national government subsidies were ending and the power industry was swamped with legal challenges by environmental groups. The two chief types of lawsuits were over bird and bat deaths, and noise.
One excellent article in “Watts Up with That” concludes:
“Many Americans think wind energy is cheap, eco-friendly and wonderful. But that’s because few are ever exposed to the real human, animal, scenic and environmental costs. Green New Deal supporters are counting on people to remain in the dark about these serious problems …”
Residents in East Hampton, New York and other communities north and south of Long Island Sound in the U.S. or any other impacted community should grasp that to judge the wisdom of wind power we must look beyond our own town and region. And beyond the present. Wind power’s high-pressure salesmen take advantage of these very early days of wind power, when many problems (the land required, back-up fossil-fuel plants, bird and bat slaughter) are out of sight. How many of us ever will see the turbines somewhere in the Atlantic near Martha’s Vineyard? And wind power companies are taking steps, including more care in the placement of wind farms, to save birds. Seeking ideal conditions like this is still possible with wind providing less than two percent of electric power.
And yet, the entire rationale for East Hampton wind power, and accepting the significantly higher costs, is that East Hampton leads New York State, the country, and the world in the great crusade to rescue the earth. This has meaning only if wind power becomes far more widespread regionally, nationally, globally. And when it does, its huge problems will no longer be lost at sea. They will be in everyone’s “backyard.”
Given what “success” of the wind power movement would mean in terms of energy costs, aesthetics of the landscape, endless energy shortages and blackouts, and unavoidable mass slaughter of birds and bats, the green dream of pervasive turbine farms may meet insurmountable resistance. (We must hope that it does.)
Such resistance will keep wind-farm generated power to a small fraction of power generated. But then, the rationale for East Hampton’s great “progressive” sacrifice for planet Earth will lose meaning. Our expensive, intermittent, new wind-power system, however, will still be with us.
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For many facts and perspective, I have relied on work of Dr. Jay Lehr, senior policy analyst for the Ottawa-based International Climate Science Coalition. An excellent source for genuine science on the subject is The Mythology of Global Warming by Bruce Bunker, Ph.D. (Moonshine Cove, 2018).
About the Author: Walter Donway
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