US gov't greenlights the slaughter of BALD EAGLES on windfarms!

reply to post by jude11


Ignore the real story at all costs if you can spread the hate. That's the real motto around here.

acacko
All you tree huggers whined you wanted "green"energy.
Well, you got it. Are you happy now?

No there isn't enough green energy. This article is nothing more than a hit piece on windmills.

reply to post by Bob Sholtz


And Benjamin Franklin wanted to make the turkey the national bird. What would we be eating on thanksgiving if he had gotten his way. Bald eagle with stuffing and mashed potatoes.
Oh and even though they are still protected they are no longer endangered.
I see them all the time and I live in an east coast city. A CITY. They can live on top of apartment buildings.

There are hazards everywhere for these birds.
A few years back we lost one from the Norfolk botanical gardens which is next door to Norfolk International airport. The gardens maintains an eagle cam during breeding season that can be viewed online.


hamptonroads.com...

www.wvec.com...

The male kept returning to the nest even after the babies had been moved where they could be cared for.

reply to post by Echtelion



Well now the Green folks are as bad as the DDT makers? Its all about the Green. These wind devices are very, very poor producers of electricity.

Why not just put a giant mesh dome on them? Easy fix, birds just bounce off the mesh instead of getting chopped to pieces. Took me like 30 seconds to come up with the idea, so-called smarter people like engineers can't come up with something that?

So has anyone noticed that it's impossible to please a Liberal? If they weren't building the farms, the Libs would be up in arms about how we weren't working towards "green" energy. Now they get their windmills, and they are killing eagles...

We are having the same problem where I live, but our "feel-bad liberal animal of choice" is the "Attwater's Prairie Chicken." The prairie chicken, much like the Dodo, is a large flightless bird that is scared of anything that moves. The government came in, did a study, and found that the shadows of the windmills was literally scaring these birds to DEATH.

I have personally never seen a prairie chicken, although I have lived in their habitat all of my life. The feel good lib movement has-to stop.

jrod
Has anyone tried to paint something intimidating and put some LEDs on the blades so the birds can see them?

Seems like a simple solution that might discourage birds from flying into the turbines.

Sounds like a great idea! Unfortunately though, the government will want to take on the task of making that happen, which will cost the American people a billion dollars in taxes. If it cost $600,000 to put together a website for obamacare, can you imagine what it would cost to have some light emitting diodes placed on all those turbines? Don’t get me wrong, I think we need to protect the eagles, but we don’t need the government to do it. And you know as well as I do, that is what will happen…

TKDRL
Why not just put a giant mesh dome on them? Easy fix, birds just bounce off the mesh instead of getting chopped to pieces. Took me like 30 seconds to come up with the idea, so-called smarter people like engineers can't come up with something that?

edit on Mon, 09 Dec 2013 09:43:43 -0600 by TKDRL because: (no reason given)

I've thought about that too...but it creates new problems. If it's a tight mesh, you might end up looking like the front grill of a family roadster out on vacation before long. I'm going to guess those pops actually would generate propulsion and likely are designed to counter the very problem (seeing those spin FAST in Oklahoma and Texas is incredible at times). If they carry the power I imagine they do for size? Suction to something close and behind them may get....terminal. Slow and hard tho. worse...

It also adds something to disrupt airflow and I guess that matters. I've seen shows about how they design the farms..and I don't mean to equipment. The placement is apparently a complex process to account for and avoid the currents they each generate, from feeding into the next and robbing efficiency.

--

I have a serious idea..but the animal rights people consider harassment of animals as bad or worse than killing them, go figure...so it would never be allowed, but I'll bet it would work

Birds hate loud noises..hate them. It's why farmers use BIrd Bombs (or have) to manage fields. Those are 12 gauge rounds that shoot a small noise making charge (Very loud one) out a distance before blowing. By design, to be over a field..and scare all the birds off.

Well..... How about placing a couple BIG propane tanks in the wind farms and running propane lines out to each tower? It's a very easy concept. You can't very well stock fireworks in enough number to deploy at random times and duplicate the bird bomb result, so MAKE some.

It's very easy to make a cast iron pot of sorts that you can then charge with a measured amount of propane. An mini-electro igniter and whammo...BANG. Each time. BANG BANG BANG... at random intervals from all over the windfarm.

See how popular a bird hangout that patch of ground ..or any for a few miles around...are after that? If people are close by to be bothered? Then quite literally, the wind farm is too close and needs moved anyway ...and future ones need zoning out to PREVENT anyone from moving within xx thousands of yards from one, IMO.

Problem solved....but it would harass them to save them..so I'm sure it would never be allowed.

reply to post by Wrabbit2000


Here is what I was thinking. Ignore the crappy modelling lol. A simple cage skeleton like that, stretch a fine mesh like mosquito netting tightly around it.



Your idea is a neat one, but maybe better to just use some kind of compressed air system. I am sure they would rather be harassed then mince meat.

acacko
All you tree huggers whined you wanted "green"energy.
Well, you got it. Are you happy now?

Anyone think that behind the scenes of all the apparent" Green stupid vs, BANANA stupid vs, OIL stupid..

Is all being directed from one source ? Order through Chaos wins again, and the people keep thinking it all is "human nature".

It doesn't matter. We have a steadily more tyrannical government. When the government has enough power, it stops caring about things like the environment. Look at China or the former USSR. Right now, our government wants green energy like windmills, so that is what we are going to get despite whatever costs my accrue.

And I'm not going to say that other methods are better or worse, only different. The point if the hypocrisy. We are being forced to subsidize one preferred method as green and environmentally friendly when it really isn't. It just has different costs.

I know, Rah Rah USA and all, but I was under the impression that due to them being protected for so long the Bald Eagle is making a very strong come-back. They were removed from the endangered and threatened list in 2007. There is a place in Alaska I believe where they've become downright pestilential.

But, resume with your regularly scheduled Obama hates America stuff.

buster2010

acacko
All you tree huggers whined you wanted "green"energy.
Well, you got it. Are you happy now?

No there isn't enough green energy. This article is nothing more than a hit piece on windmills.

Then what about my article that actually links to an abstract of scholarly research on the subject of bats and wind turbine deaths. Here's a few more:

www.sciencedirect.com...
lib.dr.iastate.edu...
onlinelibrary.wiley.com...;jsessionid=8515DEB8F8D57FD6BE3E2F962283F0FB.f03t01?deniedAccessCustomisedMessage=& userIsAuthenticated=false
www.sciencedirect.com...
www.sciencedirect.com...

The fact is that wind turbines do kill birds and bats at extremely high numbers, especially bats. As of today, we have multiple species of bats within the US that are threatened with extinction between the dynamic duo of wind turbines and white nose syndrome. This is extremely seriously as bats are actually a very important facet of any ecosystem in terms of curbing nighttime insect populations. Lose the bats and you will see farmers having to use even more insecticides on their crops.

There are things that can be done to help prevent some of the bat deaths as the primary cause is barotrauma. One is slowing down the speed of the blades, especially during peak migratory/breeding seasons. However, the need to make wind energy "successful" and profitable so far has made it so that this minor change in effectiveness for a short time of the year at night isn't being done as it impacts their bottom line.

I am all for alternative energy sources. However, wind turbines are leaving too big of an ecological footprint as it stands and the companies that operate them are behaving like any other company would--turning a blind eye for profits. Kind of hypocritical there.

reply to post by Malynn


That's OK. They're also shooting snowy owls at JFK airport, too.

I understand the dangers and damages caused when a bird gets caught in a plane engine, but why are we shooting them rather than netting them? Are snowy owls that numerous at any one time that we couldn't do it?

There is no such thing as green energy. The only green in energy is money..
Solar panels and wind turbines are made by the same multimillion dollor corporations that most people on this website hate with a passion. Exxon oil bad, GE turbines good.
The same General Electric that makes those green turbines also makes more than half of the 5000hp diesel locomotives on the railroads. They will be making money with or without green energy. Maybe all the tax money thats going into subsidising the building of these monster windmills should go into the research of real clean energy.

reply to post by Hoosierdaddy71


Now might be a good time to point out that those same subsidies likely helped GE realize tax money from the US government while it avoided all its own domestic tax liability.

The US may have the highest corporate tax rate in the world, but if you are one of the cronies, you can be paid to play rather than having to pay to play.

reply to post by Echtelion


I vote we blow up 5 windmills per bird killed. Could you imagine there faces if somebody blew up a windmill over the death of our beautiful bird?

www.youtube.com...

ketsuko
reply to post by Hoosierdaddy71

 

Now might be a good time to point out that those same subsidies likely helped GE realize tax money from the US government while it avoided all its own domestic tax liability.

The US may have the highest corporate tax rate in the world, but if you are one of the cronies, you can be paid to play rather than having to pay to play.

Lol. Yup, that was kind of what I was getting at. Obama has dumped a lot of money into companies that went bankrupt soon after bleeding millions of tax dollars away.

reply to post by Hoosierdaddy71


The fact that these companies that are behind the various types of alternative "green" energy are also the same companies that also sell ecologically noxious products just points to that measure of profitability as being what is behind it. These companies respond to market demands. If enough of the market demands non-petroleum or non-dam based energy, then it becomes profitable to expand into that part of the market.

Really, there is nothing that we can do that would eliminate our ecological footprint. One can't even walk through an old growth forest without doing a little damage and the same goes for a deer. However, just because that is the case (whatever we do will have an environmental impact), it doesn't mean that we should all fall into whatever is cheapest without regard of its potential noxiousness. The way that we currently do business does not typically account for environmental ethics to be considered and instead, focuses on the bottom line. A company will behave ethically if it is more profitable to do so. What we really need to do is change our thinking from a single bottom line to a triple bottom line to examine the effects of any business decision on all stakeholders, whether it be people or a bat or bird.