Backcountry Notes

Wind farms -- coming to a scenic vista near you!In Coal Power -- Why Everything You Flatlanders Think You Know Is Wrong, I made the following statement: "Alternative-energy proposals for generation of electricity, by comparison, involve such environmentally-unsound measures as erecting windmill generators along Appalachian ridgelines which are migration routes for songbirds, raptors, and Monarch butterflies." Such rash claims have earned me a reputation as some kind of flat-earther reactionary in matters ecological. So how about some facts, if those matter.

From today's Wall Street Journal, an article by Robert Bryce, author of "Gusher of Lies: The Dangerous Delusions of 'Energy Independence'" (PublicAffairs, 2008):

A July 2008 study of the wind farm at Altamont Pass, Calif., estimated that its turbines kill an average of 80 golden eagles per year. The study, funded by the Alameda County Community Development Agency, also estimated that about 10,000 birds—nearly all protected by the migratory bird act—are being whacked every year at Altamont. . . .

Michael Fry of the American Bird Conservancy estimates that U.S. wind turbines kill between 75,000 and 275,000 birds per year. . . .

By 2030, environmental and lobby groups are pushing for the U.S. to be producing 20% of its electricity from wind. Meeting that goal, according to the Department of Energy, will require the U.S. to have about 300,000 megawatts of wind capacity, a 12-fold increase over 2008 levels. If that target is achieved, we can expect some 300,000 birds, at the least, to be killed by wind turbines each year.

Windmills Are Killing Our Birds. Yet the wind energy industry is never prosecuted for killing Federally-protected migratory birds, although traditional energy producers are prosecuted on a regular basis.

This is from an e-mail from a friend who has a long track record of conservationism:

If I thought Appalachian ridgeline turbines were an alternative to fossil fuel use I would be in favor of them. My analysis indicates that it would take a string of turbines from Harpers Ferry to Mount Rogers to produce the same power as Dominion's Wise plant during the peak demand month of August. Unfortunately the level of much of the debate reduces the issue to mountain-top removal versus wind "mills." Offshore and in the deserts makes more sense energy wise and perhaps environmentally. Development on forested Appalachian ridges is simply a tax shelter and a scheme to capture subsidies - in my view.

That would be some 500 miles of wind turbines. 

What is happening currently with alternative energy is a boondoggle, a fiasco, a travesty -- but it is all very politically correct, so none of that matters.