The National Academy of Sciences was asked to opine on the impact of offshore wind farms on whales and the broader ocean environment. The request was made by some obscure agency called the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, which just further reinforces my view that you could cut the federal workforce in half and quadruple productivity. And even worse, the actual work was done by a division of a unit of a group of a sub-agency and so on. I assume the report was requested because it is pretty clear that just the construction of a wind farm off New Jersey and initial startup, is killing whales on the East Coast. I don’t think the Bureau realized into what a dreadful conundrum it was putting the whacko ideologues who pass for scientists these days. Oh my God, save the whales, save the Earth from burning up, save the whales, save the Earth from burning up. And if you look at the list of authors, you will see the usual academic and consulting suspects. Nary an independent voice among them.
I have posted several studies showing that in fact wind farms have very deleterious and significant impacts on the ocean environment and ecosystem, as they do on land, where they change wind patterns, temperatures and kill billions of creatures, large and small. These studies are undoubtedly known to the NAS but hilariously, if you have a dark sense of humor, the authors try to walk a middle ground and appease all segments of the whacked environmental and climate hysteria community. They say that yes there appear to be some effects, but maybe it is just climate change! Uhhh, no I don’t think that will fly, and neither will the seabirds hitting the turbine blades.
So of course, they suggest that further study is needed and given the pace at which the federal bureaucracy moves, there may be one or two whales left by the time they conclude that indeed, offshore wind farms are not good for ocean life, in addition to being extremely expensive and unreliable. In fact, the best thing the whales have going for them is that most wind power companies are pulling out of existing projects and refusing to do new ones because of the cost.
You can read a brief summary here and register for a free download of the 100 page report, which is interesting reading. (NAS Report)
The level of dishonesty of the renewable energy advocates is astonishing.
Just a simple example of the dishonesty comes from marc jacobson who claims that onshore wind turbines land use requirements only include the wind turbine tower, the towers base and the road to each tower. Jacobson and the other advocates intentionally ignore the loss of productivity of the remaining land – ie the claim that you can still farm or raise cattle under the wind blades. The intentional deception is ignoring the loss productivity of the land.