Daniel Andrews’ wind farm plan will add to bird deaths
Herald Sun
Terry McCrann
25 July 2016
LAST week Premier Daniel Andrews made a very big deal of launching a new wind farm near Dundonnell in Victoria’s southwest.
It was going to create 300 direct (and, ahem, indirect) jobs in construction and a massive — well, all of — “up to” 16 jobs when operational. Best of all, it was going to generate enough electricity to “power” 140,000 homes.
That is, of course, when the wind is blowing. For as South Australians have been — very expensively — discovering of recent months, when the wind don’t blow the power don’t flow.
But when the opposite happens, when the wind does blow, the turbines are not just generating power, they are slaughtering birds.
What the Premier “forgot” to mention last week, is that the Dundonnell wind farm has not yet received the approval it is required to get under the federal EPBC (Environmental Protection and Biodiversity Conservation) Act.
And if the federal process works, not a single turbine will ever start slaughtering birds at Dundonnell. Our “Premier Birdkiller” can huff and he can puff all he likes, but unless and until he gets that federal OK, the birds around Dundonnell will live on.
The (state-based) environmental effects study which gave the project the green light was a joke. Birds in general will be cut down by the turbines. They do end up turning occasionally; indeed when they really get going they can be very efficient bird killers.
But at Dundonnell there are a variety of specific species which fit right under the EPBC remit. The EES was claimed as “recommending conditions to minimise potential impacts on wildlife, such as reducing overall turbine numbers and buffer zones around wetlands”.
The government claimed and gullible media lapped up: it would “accommodate brolga breeding and flocking habits”. Presumably Andrews is planning to institute a “safe birds” campaign, to inform brolgas where not to fly.
The dark and even pale greens refuse to confront this basic reality. After all, what matters the lives (and grisly) end of thousands of birds when you’re embarked on saving the planet.
You can see this attitude play out in the official publication from another wind farm, at Bald Hills in South Gippsland. Its latest newsletter admitted to 19 bird and 13 bat fatalities at the site to date. These included seven wedge-tailed eagles.
Excuse my cynicism but can we trust their counting? Further, the language used was a bizarre combination of euphemism and brutal cold-blooded calculation.
Hence: the number of eagles “recorded under turbines”. Recorded? Contrasted with: “the population consequences of such impacts are not considered significant.”
Andrews wants to double, then triple, then triple again the number of turbines scattered across Victoria. And if he doesn’t force you to spend billions of dollars to buy expensive power from wind farms he wants you to get it from solar arrays.
They also slaughter birds. But at least I guess, it makes for a change: being fried rather than sliced.
If Andrews gets his way, we will kill more birds in Victoria than any other state. He will have well and truly earned the LBJ chant.
Hey, hey, hey D (Daniel) M (Michael) A (Andrews) How many birds did you kill today?
Truly, our premier birdkiller.
Herald Sun
STOP THESE THINGS 
Reblogged this on Climatism and commented:
Green hypocrisy update…
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In America the wind industry gets a pass for their destruction because of government corruption is creating great profits for this industry. Brolgas, eagles, condors, people or anything else standing in the way, mean nothing to this nightmare industry.
Wind turbines in eagle habitat are their number one killer and the wind energy slaughter of thousands of these eagles has been covered up by our government. But my expertise and scientific research into the wind industry has smashed through this industry’s wall of fraud leaving them exposed.
In response to this, a recent proposal has been put forth by the Obama administration that will allow the wind industry to slaughter 6200 eagles annually with their “bird safe” turbines.
A President covering for this fraudulent industry is not new. If one looks back a few years they will learn that thanks to another corrupt administration, the wind industry has been able to hide most of their devastating wind energy slaughter from the public. Our slimy President Bill Clinton rewrote the Freedom of Information Act in 1997 so the public would never find out the truth about wind energy.
In 1997 Bill Clinton amended the Freedom of Information Act to protect wind energy interests and help them conceal their industrial carnage to highly protected species. With another stroke of his pen Clinton also silenced all USFWS employees with knowledge of this slaughter with penalties of up to 3 year prison terms for releasing information that was not approved by Interior Department superiors.
Everyone can read about all this in the article “Harvesting Eagles. In this article you will also discover that the Denver eagle repository was primarily set up in 1997 by the Clinton administration to handle the flood of new carcasses coming in from wind energy developments. Since then more than 33,000 eagle carcasses have been secretly shipped to this facility. But thanks to Bill Clinton, the origin and cause of death for all these eagles will remain a top secret until our laws are changed.
Thanks to Bill Clinton and his corrupt merry-men, wind energy stories have been completely fabricated across the world about how safe and wonderful turbines are. Those that believe in wind are having their important tax dollars squandered on a disgraceful green side show that offer no real energy solutions while causing the extinction of many species.
I started my research into this in 2008 because of my concern for the raptors being slaughtered off by wind turbines. Since then I have seen the rigging of laws, rigging of court cases, agency rigging, media rigging, lying at a congressional hearing, rigging of reported wind energy outputs, and an across the board pattern of deliberately producing fraudulent mortality related research. All of which together are really a form of treason selling out our country.
Baffling how Premiers can keep glorifying these things, when here in Australia they have a fully mature example of why they should not. But SA has always been a bit of a side show and laughing stock for the rest of Australia.
Lets hope the other States are mature enough to learn from SA’s mistakes, even this puppet of the industry Daniel Andrews.
Wind energy is neither clean nor green. A most compelling case supports that-
Interesting. We missed that, David. It certainly hasn’t shot up in Scotland anyway!
We really hope that the beautiful brolgas in your country are given the protection that they warrant.
Some of us watched a programme last night – a beautiful production about the Highlands of Scotland, with not a turbine in sight.
Part of the programme was given over to watching two osprey (a protected fish-eating bird of prey which come over here for the spring and summer and then fly the 3000 miles to Africa) repair their nest and raise their young. And we wondered if either of those lovely birds would meet the fate of the osprey killed at one of the Loch Ness wind farms in recent weeks.
In the UK foxes etc eat the bird carcasses under the turbines, so the statistics are always wrong. Regarding the world temp., I thought the latest thing is that after a strong El Nino, La Nina is taking over and temps are falling. But what do I know? But there again, what does anyone know?
Here’s a very recent article with interesting comments on the El Nino/La Nina topic at wattsupwiththat.com :
As an aside – I watched the Olympic games opening and was stunned to hear towards the end that global warming took over the games and that the planet temperature has “shot up” this year. Where, when and how much???
Another hijacking by pseudo science.??!!
Hitler’s 1936 Berlin Olympics were the first to be televised, and were an integral part of the Nazi propaganda machine. Todays ‘Green’shirts may have changed their colours but they haven’t changed their spots. Their rotating eco-crucifixes may as well be swirling swastikas, their concern for the planet more aligned with those of Nazi storm troopers rather than than any concern for the people who inhabit it.
Check out this article and the comments which are directly related to your comment.
David, here’s a good discussion of the Olympic games opening comments on climate change: https://wattsupwiththat.com/2016/08/07/sporting-news-buzzkill-global-warming-message-had-no-place-at-rio-olympics/