Bird raptor
12/16
SEE BIRD FLU AVIAN
2nd yikes 1/20 esa
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an 6 25
If you think viruses are fake, chemtrails are real and public health is a conspiracy, you’re probably up in arms about four hundred potentially diseased Canadian ostriches.
Federal inspectors are poised to euthanize the flock to contain a novel strain of highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI) that killed 69 ostriches on a remote farm in Edgewood, British Columbia.
After losing their court case to save the flock, the owners of Universal Ostrich Farms invited the dregs of the antigovernment antivax trucker convoy that paralyzed Ottawa to surround the premises to stop the cull.
The fate of the ostriches has become a cause célèbre in rightwing media. We didn’t hear a peep out of maga when Trump declared open season on migratory birds, but every self-respecting antivaxer is an ostrich fancier now. In keeping with their philosophy of governance by trolling, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr and his wingman Dr. Mehmet Oz are stirring the pot.
Oz offered to adopt the enormous flightless birds and bring them to live on his 900-acre Florida estate because, apparently, we don’t have enough bird flu at home. “The Canadians should stop putting their heads in the sand,” he said, indulging in a little light colonialism. “We just have to get [the ostriches] out of Canada.”
After initially rejecting the offer, a spokesperson said the farmers would consider it as a last resort. Oz’s grandiose gesture coincided with HHS’s abrupt cancellation of a $766 million contract with Moderna to finish testing a promising mRNA bird flu vaccine.
“I think this is an incredibly stupid idea,” said Dr. Angela Rasmussen, a virologist at the University of Saskatchewan. Oz is pitching the move as an opportunity to study the effects of bird flu in ostriches, but Rasmussen sees zero scientific value in his plan because “[t]here are no controls, no baseline immunological data, no testing, and no clear experimental objective.”
The birds wouldn’t pose an imminent threat to the health of Americans, Rasmussen says, but they would pose a risk to Oz’s employees and the birds could also spread the virus to wild birds and animals in Florida.
Highly pathogenic avian influenza can be lethal to people. Currently, the virus does not spread readily between humans, but if it mutated, experts say, it could cause a pandemic several times deadlier than covid.
The farm’s owners insist that their birds are healthy, but they actually have no way of knowing. Ostriches can be asymptomatic carriers of the virus, Rasmussen warns. The birds could be passing the bug around like the world’s tallest kindergarten class.
The longer the virus circulates, the more opportunities it has to mutate into something more dangerous. Experts fear that someday, somewhere in some innocent-looking duck or chicken or ostrich, the virus will mutate into a human-to-human transmissible variant. It’s a numbers game. That’s one reason why the Canadian authorities stamp out HPAI wherever they find it. Nobody wants to be responsible for Ostrich Zero. Another reason is that Canada is bound by trade agreements to stamp out HPAI and British Columbia poultry farmers are locked out of key export markets until the flock is culled. Finally, stamp-out is the law in Canada and the courts have found no basis to overrule CFIA.
Showing no awareness that Canada is a sovereign nation with laws, treaty obligations, and a justice system, Kennedy tried to browbeat the head of the Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA) into sparing the birds. Because “my fans love ostriches and hate the government” isn’t a persuasive argument, Kennedy insinuated that Universal Ostrich is actually an elite biomedical research outfit probing the mysteries of bird flu. The birds should be spared, he argued, because the flock is in a controlled environment where it can be studied.
However, court records paint a picture of a decidedly uncontrolled environment on an ordinary farm with lax biosecurity. The owners have produced no evidence to CFIA that any research is taking place on the premises and in the agency’s opinion, “the current physical facilities at their location are not suitable for controlled research activities or trials.” The farm has also been fined $20,000 by CFIA for failing to report the outbreak and failing to follow quarantine procedures. This lackadaisical attitude is particularly alarming because the farm is on the great Pacific Flyway, a river of migratory birds that runs from Patagonia to Alaska and is a major conduit for novel strains of bird flu. The ostriches live in giant outdoor pens that bring them into direct contact with wild birds.
To add insult to injury, the owners have invited strangers from all across the country to commune with the birds, creating even more opportunities to spread the virus. Rasmussen notes that “the avian freedom fighters of the True North are not abiding by quarantine protocols and are in the pens with the ostriches.”
Luckily, the Canadians don’t take our overexcitable Secretary of Health and Human Services any more seriously than we do. Asked about Kennedy’s pressure campaign, Canadian Minister of Agriculture Heath MacDonald said he didn’t think it was appropriate for Canadians to make major decisions based on social media. CFIA says it is still planning to euthanize the birds.
A normal HHS secretary might have qualms about egging on antigovernment protesters on friendly foreign soil, but not Kennedy. Dozens of protesters have been gathered at the farm for weeks and additional reinforcements rolled in recently. The atmosphere is festive with merch, live music and plenty of drumming for the ostriches.
However, if protesters tried to resist federal agents, the situation could devolve into another standoff like we saw at the Bundy ranch, the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge, and the siege of Ottawa. In the winter of 2022, a convoy of antivax truckers laid siege to Canada’s capital city for three weeks. As a private citizen, Kennedy supported the convoy financially and assailed the Canadian government as “a monster” for freezing the occupiers’ bank accounts.
The Universal Ostrich conflict is unique because instead of protesting the containment of an existing pandemic, these extremists might be causing the next one. By offering to import the birds and killing the most promising bird flu vaccine, Kennedy and Oz are only too eager to help.
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21-species-removed-from-endangered-list-because-they-are-extinct
fox & f morano 9 23 rather kill whales and eagles than stop wind
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/esi-energy-pleads-guilty-150-eagles-killed-wind-farms/
CRIME
Wind energy company pleads guilty after at least 150 eagles killed in U.S.
APRIL 7, 2022 / CBS/AP
A subsidiary of one of the largest U.S. providers of renewable energy pleaded guilty to criminal charges and was ordered to pay over $8 million in fines and restitution after at least 150 eagles were killed at its wind farms in eight states, federal prosecutors said Wednesday.
NextEra Energy subsidiary ESI Energy was also sentenced to five years probation after being charged with three counts of violating the Migratory Bird Treaty Act during a court appearance in Cheyenne, Wyoming. The charges arose from the deaths of nine eagles at three wind farms in Wyoming and New Mexico.
In addition to those deaths, the company acknowledged the deaths of golden and bald eagles at 50 wind farms affiliated with ESI and NextEra since 2012, prosecutors said. Birds were killed in eight states: Wyoming, New Mexico, North Dakota, Colorado, Michigan, Arizona, Illinois and California.
Eagles Killed Wind Turbines
This Jan. 5, 2020, photo shows a bald eagle in Philadelphia.
CHRIS SZAGOLA / AP
"This prosecution and the restitution it secures will protect the ecologically vital and majestic natural resources of our bald eagle and golden eagle populations," U.S. Attorney Phillip A. Talbert for the Eastern District of California said in a statement.
NextEra, based in Juno Beach, Florida, bills itself as the world's largest utility company by market value. It has more than 100 wind farms in the U.S. and Canada and also generates natural gas, nuclear and solar power
Almost all of the eagles killed at the NextEra subsidiary's facilities were struck by the blades of wind turbines, prosecutors said. Some turbines killed multiple eagles and because the carcasses are not always found, officials said the number killed was likely higher than the 150 birds cited in court documents.
Prosecutors said the company's failure to take steps to protect eagles or to obtain permits to kill the birds gave it an advantage over competitors that did take such steps - even as ESI and other NextEra affiliates received hundreds of millions of dollars in federal tax credits from the wind power they produced.
NextEra spokesperson Steven Stengel said the company didn't seek permits because it believes the law didn't require them for unintentional bird deaths. The company said its guilty plea will resolve all allegations over past fatalities and allow it to move forward without a continued threat of prosecution.
The criminal case comes amid a push by President Joe Biden for more renewable energy from wind, solar and other sources to help reduce climate changing emissions. It also follows a renewed commitment by federal wildlife officials under Biden to enforce protections for eagles and other birds under the Migratory Bird Treaty Act.Criminal prosecutions had been halted under former President Donald Trump for birds killed inadvertently by industry.
It's illegal to kill or harm eagles under the migratory bird act. However, a wide range of industries - from energy firms to manufacturing companies - have lobbiedfor years against enforcing the law for accidental bird deaths.
The bald eagle - the U.S. national symbol since the 1700s - saw its populations widely decimated last century due to harmful pesticides such as DDT and other problems. Following a dramatic recovery, it was removed from protection under the Endangered Species Act in 2007. Biologists say more than 300,000 bald eagles now occupy the U.S., not including Alaska.
In the 1970s, there were believed to be just two bald eagles left in the entire state of New York City. Now, there are close to 1,000, and they're no longer considered endangered. They've been spotted in all five boroughs of New York City.
Golden eagles have not fared as well, with populations considered stable but under pressure from wind farms, collisions with vehicles, illegal shootings and poisoning from lead ammunition.
Most of the eagles killed at the ESI and NextEra wind farms were golden eagles, according to court documents.
There are an estimated 31,800 golden eagles in the Western U.S. with an estimated 2,200 killed annually due to human causes, or about 60% of all deaths, according to a study released last week by leading eagle researchers from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and other entities.
The study concluded that golden eagle deaths "will likely increase in the future" because of wind energy development and other human activities.
Companies historically have been able to avoid prosecution under the century-old Migratory Bird Treaty law if they take steps to avoid deaths and seek permits for those that occur.
Charging documents said company representatives, including ESI's president, were warned that eagles would be killed if the company built two wind farms in central and southeastern Wyoming, and also knew about a risk to eagles when they authorized the repowering of a New Mexico wind farm, about 170 miles (274 kilometers) from Albuquerque.
The company proceeded anyway and at times ignored further advice from federal wildlife officials about how to minimize the deaths, according to court documents.
"For more than a decade, ESI has violated (wildlife) laws, taking eagles without obtaining or even seeking the necessary permit," said Assistant Attorney General Todd Kim of the Justice Department's Environment and Natural Resources Division in a statement.
ESI agreed under a plea deal to spend up to $27 million during its five-year probationary period on measures to prevent future eagle deaths. That includes shutting down turbines at times when eagles are more likely to be present.
Despite those measures, wildlife officials anticipate that some eagles still could die. When that happens, the company will pay $29,623 per dead eagle under the plea deal.
NextEra President Rebecca Kujawa said collisions of birds with wind turbines are unavoidable accidents that should not be criminalized. She said the company is committed to reducing damage to wildlife from its projects.
"We disagree with the government's underlying enforcement activity," Kujawa said in a statement. "Building any structure, driving any vehicle, or flying any airplane carries with it a possibility that accidental eagle and other bird collisions may occur."
https://abcnews.go.com/Technology/wireStory/owl-habitat-cuts-trump-appointees-faulty-science-81056783
no lnx
'Faulty' science used by Trump appointees to cut owl habitat
U.S. wildlife officials say political appointees in President Donald Trump's administration relied on faulty science to justify stripping habitat protections for the imperiled northern spotted owl
By MATTHEW BROWN and GILLIAN FLACCUS Associated Press
November 9, 2021,
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PORTLAND, Ore. -- Political appointees in the Trump administration relied on faulty science to justify stripping habitat protections for the imperiled northern spotted owl, U.S. wildlife officials said Tuesday as they struck down a rule that would have opened millions of acres of West Coast forest to potential logging.
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The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service reversed a decision made five days before President Donald Trump left office to drastically shrink so-called critical habitat for the spotted owl. The small, reclusive bird has been in decline for decades as old-growth forests were cut in Oregon, Washington and California.
Government biologists objected to the changes under Trump and warned they would put the spotted owl on a path to extinction, documents show.
But Trump's Interior Secretary David Bernhardt and former Fish and Wildlife Service Director Aurelia Skipwith dismissed those concerns — instead adopting a plan to lift restrictions on more land than even the timber industry had sought.
In documents disclosed to The Associated Press prior to their public release, wildlife officials said Bernhardt and Skipwith underestimated the threat of extinction and relied on a faulty interpretation of the science to reach their decision.
Bernhardt defended his handling of the matter, telling AP in an email that Congress gave the interior secretary authority to exclude areas from protection.
Bernhardt said the agency’s “reasonable certainty” the owl would go extinct did not match the law’s requirement that habitat be protected lest a species “will” go extinct.
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If wildlife officials want to change that standard, he said, “they should seek a change from Congress.”
“Any future Secretary can weigh the benefit factors differently, but they can not change the law or the legal standard,” he wrote.
Officials twice delayed the changes after President Joe Biden took office and they never went into effect. That puts them among numerous Trump-era policies reversed or struck down by the Interior Department in recent months, on issues from oil and gas drilling on some public lands, to protections for birds from power line and wind turbine collisions.
Democratic lawmakers from Oregon, Washington and California in February called for an investigation into the removal of spotted owl protections, citing potential scientific meddling by Trump appointees.
Wildlife advocates, government agencies and the timber industry have sparred for decades over the northern spotted owl, which officials said Tuesday is in “precipitous decline” and getting close to disappearing from parts of Washington and Oregon.
Federal habitat protections imposed in 2012 were meant to avert the bird's extinction. They've also been blamed for a logging slowdown that's devastated some rural communities.
Of 9.6 million protected acres (3.9 million hectares), federal officials proposed in August 2020 to remove protections for about 2%.
The timber industry said the plan didn't go far enough and called for removal of more than 28%. On January 7, Skipwith changed her agency's recommendation and went even further, telling Bernhardt more than one-third of the protected land, or 3.5 million acres (1.4 million hectares), should be excluded from protection.
The land has huge swaths of timber and includes 2 million acres (809,000 hectares) spread in a checkerboard pattern across western Oregon.
Logging those lands might not have immediately killed off the owls immediately — they live up to 20 years on individual territories that can stretch across 10,000 acres (4,000 hectares) —yet eventually they would have gone extinct, said Paul Henson, the wildlife service's Oregon supervisor.
When Henson brought his concerns to superiors last December, Skipwith overrode them.
“You can’t remove over a third of an endangered species’ habitat and not expect it to go extinct,” Henson said in an interview. “There wasn't much disagreement about the science. The disagreement was how much that risk constrains the secretary's authority" to remove habitat protections.
The logging industry says more thinning and management of protected forests is necessary to prevent wildfires, which devastated 560 square miles (1,450 square kilometers) of spotted owl habitat last fall. Most of that area is no longer considered viable for the birds.
Timber interests say much of the land set aside under Tuesday's announcement isn't actually spotted owl habitat or is broken up into parcels too small to support the owl. As such, the smaller habitat designation issued under Trump was “legally and scientifically valid,” said Nick Smith, a spokesman for the American Forest Resource Council. The group represents about 100 manufacturing and logging operations in five western U.S. states.
“The federal government cannot set aside critical habitat unless it is habitat for the species,” Smith said.
The logging industry says the larger, non-native barred owl is a much greater threat than cutting trees. Skipwith echoed that contention when she said the most effective way to preserve spotted owls was to control barred owl numbers.
"The main threats faced by the northern spotted owl are the barred owl and the devastating forest fires," Skipwith said, adding that she used sound science to reach her conclusion. "It’s not an issue of acreage; it’s an issue of the management of the land."
The barred owls, native to the eastern U.S., began affecting spotted owl numbers in Washington and Oregon about a decade ago as they expanded west and south. The incursion accelerated in recent years, putting spotted owls on a downward trajectory that could prompt them to disappear from some areas within ten years, said U.S. Department of Agriculture research biologist Alan Franklin.
Biologists beginning in 2009 studied whether removing barred owls in areas of northern California, Oregon and Washington would help the spotted owl. A pilot program that wrapped up in August showed spotted owl numbers stabilized when barred owl numbers were reduced. They continued to decline in areas without the removals.
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Study authors cautioned that the results show habitat protections also are critical to the spotted owl's survival.
In rejecting the Trump rule, federal officials said the dual threat of wildfires and competition from the barred owl underscore why more forest needs protection — to make sure there's enough “redundancy” of habitat that a large fire won't doom the species.
A large-scale barred owl removal program is not in place. Wildlife officials said the best science shows protecting older forests — where owls nest, roost and hunt — is crucial.
Owl expert R. J. Gutiérrez from the University of Minnesota agreed. He said setting aside forest habitat and naming the northern spotted owl as a threatened species in 1990 briefly boosted it before barred owls arrived.
Until barred owls are dealt with, “all habitat is critical” so spotted owls can find refuge from the aggressive newcomers, said Gutiérrez who has spent several decades studying spotted owls along the West Coast.
Environmental groups cheered Tuesday's move but expressed frustration that about 200,000 acres (about 81,000 hectares) of previously protected habitat were excluded under a replacement rule signed by Martha Williams, Biden's nominee to lead the Fish and Wildlife Service.
“In the past 20 years, there’s been accelerated loss of old-growth forest on state and private landsso it’s continued to lose habitat,” said Noah Greenwald with the Center for Biological Diversity. Climate change adds to the threats, he said.
In December, federal officials determined that northern spotted owl's continued decline means it merits a more critical listing as “endangered."
The agency refused to do so immediately, saying other species took priority. That decision is facing a legal challenge.
920 an
wildfire smoke? heat?
We’ve never seen anything like this’: Mysterious mass death of birds in New Mexico has scientists spooked
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ewv 820
number of conservationists claim cats are a zombie apocalypse for biodiversity that need to be removed from the outdoors by "any means necessary" – coded language for shooting, trapping and poisoning. Various media outlets have portrayed cats as murderous superpredators. Australia has even declared an official "war" against cats.
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pandemic, avian
someone pointed out pandemics come out of ~ ecology, logging etc
https://theconversation.com/the-new-coronavirus-emerged-from-the-global-wildlife-trade-and-may-be-devastating-enough-to-end-it-133333
OVID-19 is one of countless emerging infectious diseases that are zoonotic, meaning they originate in animals. About 75% of emerging infectious diseases are zoonotic, accounting for billions of illnesses and millions of deaths annually across the globe.
When these diseases spill over to humans, the cause frequently is human behaviors, including habitat destruction and the multibillion-dollar international wildlife trade – the latter being the suspected source of the novel coronavirus.
The COVID-19 pandemic has forced governments to impose severe restrictions, such as social distancing, that will have massive economic costs. But there has been less discussion about identifying and changing behaviors that contribute to the emergence of zoonotic diseases. As a conservation biologist, I believe this outbreak demonstrates the urgent need to end the global wildlife trade.
Markets for disease
As many Americans now know, the COVID-19 coronavirus is one of a family of coronaviruses commonly found in bats. It is suspected to have passed through a mammal, perhaps pangolins – the most-trafficked animal on the planet – before jumping to humans.
The virus’s spillover to humans is believed to have occurred in a so-called wet market in China. At these markets, live, wild-caught animals, farm-raised wild species and livestock frequently intermingle in conditions that are unsanitary and highly stressful for the animals. These circumstances are ripe for infection and spillover.
The current outbreak is just the latest example of viruses jumping from animals to humans. HIV is perhaps the most infamous example: It originated from chimps in central Africa and still kills hundreds of thousands of people annually. It likely jumped to humans through consumption of bushmeat, or meat from wildlife, which is also the likely origin of several Ebola oubreaks. PREDICT, a U.S.-funded nonprofit, suggests there are thousands of viral species circulating in birds and mammals that pose a direct risk to humans.
Decimating wildlife and humans
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ew 220
Pesticides Are Killing off the Andean Condor
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djt mofo re wind
The Trump administration announced plans Thursday to formally weaken protections for millions of migratory birds.
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https://www.alternet.org/2020/01/bird-species-are-facing-extinction-hundreds-of-times-faster-than-previously-thought/
Bird species are facing extinction hundreds of times faster than previously thought
While Hail Mary conservation efforts can pull birds back from the brink, an extinction wave still looms.
an 120
A red-flag warning’: Scientists alarmed by mass death of 1 million seabirds from a hot ocean ‘blob’Jessica Corbett / Common Dr
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note for context, djt killd electric car subsidy
https://www.alternet.org/2019/12/observers-stunned-after-trump-delivers-moronic-and-unhinged-diatribe-against-wind-power/
no lnx
Observers stunned after Trump delivers ‘moronic’ and ‘unhinged’ diatribe against wind power
Written by Jake Johnson / Common Dreams December 23, 2019
In a speech to the right-wing Turning Points USA conference in Florida on Saturday, President Donald Trump launched into an incoherent diatribe against wind power in which he said in the same breath that he “never understood wind” and has studied windmills “better than anybody,” pointed out for no apparent reason that the earth is “tiny” compared to the rest of the universe, and claimed there are “bird graveyards” under wind turbines.
“I never understood wind. You know, I know windmills very much,” Trump told the audience of mostly high school and college students. “It’s very expensive. They’re made in China and Germany mostly—very few made here, almost none. But they’re manufactured tremendous, if you’re into this, tremendous fumes, gases are spewing into the atmosphere.”
“You know we have a world, right?” the president added. “So the world is tiny compared to the universe. So tremendous, tremendous amount of fumes and everything. You talk about the carbon footprint. Fumes are spewing into the air, right? Spewing. Whether its in China, Germany, its going into the air. Our air, their air, everything. Right?”
Trump went on to rant about the threat wind turbines pose to birds, without noting that fossil fuel plants are far more deadly.
“They’re noisy. They kill the birds,” Trump said. “You want to see a bird graveyard? You just go. Take a look. A bird graveyard. Go under a windmill someday. You’ll see more birds than you’ve ever seen ever in your life.”
Watch:
Aaron Rupar
@atrupar
- 19h
If a guy at the bar sounded like this you’d slide a couple stools down as quickly as possible
Embedded video
Aaron Rupar
@atrupar
Trump’s nuts rant about wind energy: “I never understood wind. You know, I know windmills very much... Gases are spewing into the atmosphere. You know we have a world, right? So the world is tiny compared to the universe. So tremendous, tremendous amount of fumes & everything.”
Embedded video
Activist Matt Ortega tweeted in response to the president’s speech that “Trump says he doesn’t understand wind then proved it.”
Trump’s remarks were so bizarre that environmentalists and other observers had a difficult time critiquing them, aside from noting that they were completely “unhinged.” Vox‘s David Roberts wrote that while was no decipherable argument in Trump’s speech, that won’t stop mainstream media outlets from presenting the president’s remarks as a “coherent point about wind power.”
Earther‘s Matt Novak wrote Monday that Trump’s speech would “be almost funny if it wasn’t coming from the most powerful person in the world—a man who’s setting energy policy while climate change makes the world less inhabitable for all of us.”
“All in all, the speech was suitably unhinged for a president who has mostly lost touch with reality,” Novak added. “But President Trump has learned that he can say whatever he wants now and his supporters will stick with him.”
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yikes
Climate Change Threatens Two-Thirds of North American Bird Species With Extinction
ew
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https://www.ecowatch.com/california-condor-chick-born-2639303735.html
1000th chick
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Ocean Is Screaming': What Killed Thousands of Seabirds on an Arctic Island?
BY: SABRINA SHANKMAN
The story of the puffins’ deaths likely starts at the bottom of the food chain, where warming water and climate change are changing the menu.
https://www.ecowatch.com/trump-wind-turbines-cancer-2633591489.html
many lnx
Trump Falsely Claims Noise From Wind Turbines Causes Cancer
Olivia Rosane Apr. 03, 2019 12:08PM EST POPULAR
At a National Republican Congressional Committee event Tuesday night, President Donald Trump took his war on wind power to the next level.
"If you have a windmill anywhere near your house, congratulations, your house just went down 75 per cent in value," Trump said, as The Independent reported. "And they say the noise causes cancer. You tell me that one, okay? Rerrrr rerrrr!"
Watch the clip below:
The cancer claim, as Jonathan Chait pointed out in New York Magazine, is not true. There has been opposition to wind turbines on the basis of long-standing beliefs that low-frequency sound can disturb sleep, trigger anxiety and cause nausea and other health problems, The Atlantic explained. but no scientific experiments have verified these claims.
"Cancer is not caused by noises of any kind," Chait wrote.
Social media was quick to counter Trump's remarks, The Huffington Post reported. Wired columnist Maryn McKenna took the opportunity to link to a study published in March that found no connection between wind turbine noise and heart attack or stroke. Researchers had conducted the study because of claims that wind turbine noise was more annoying than noise from traffic.
During his remarks Tuesday, Trump repeated claims he has made about wind turbines before, that they reduce property values and harm birds.
"And of course, it's like a graveyard for birds," he said Tuesday, as The Washington Post reported. "If you love birds, you'd never want to walk under a windmill."
Wind turbines do kill birds, but at a much lesser rate than other forms of power. A 2009 study cited by Chait found that fossil-fuel plants killed nearly 15 times the number of birds as wind turbines. So why does Trump hate wind turbines so much?
The Washington Post's Philip Bump wrote that it dated back to Trump's fight against a wind farm that had been scheduled to go up off the coast of Aberdeenshire in Scotland, where he had bought land to start a gulf course in 2006. Trump sued to stop the farm, but was not successful. He also initiated a public relations campaign against Scottish politicians backing the project and against wind power itself, tweeting any negative coverage he could find. As part of that blitz, he did retweet a story in 2012 claiming that wind power had negative health impacts, though no such impacts have been confirmed by scientists. Tuesday likely marks the first time he has claimed wind power causes cancer, Bump said.
Chait observed that Trump is selective in his health concerns when it comes to energy.
A power source that does cause many health problems, including cancer, is coal, an extremely dirty fuel Trump loves and has attempted to bolster, with almost no success. Aside from costing more to produce than other sources of power, and in addition to enormous air pollution side effects, coal also emits greenhouse gases in large amounts. Though this, of course, is another aspect of science Trump rejects.
Bump also noted that Trump's anti-wind stance dovetailed neatly with Republican policy.
"As climate change became a sharply polarized issue, Trump was prepared for the fight thanks to his battle over that wind farm near his golf course in Scotland," Bump wrote.
RELATED ARTICLES AROUND THE WEB
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https://www.desmogblog.com/2018/11/08/no-wind-farms-don-t-kill-75-birds-nearby-birds-just-don-t-hang-out-around-turbines
Deniers are crowing over a new study in Nature that’s supposedly claiming wind turbines are killing three-fourths of birds in the areas around them. Obviously that’s absurd, so what the flock is going on?
This new myth took flight with a Daily MailOnline story with a headline claiming “Wind farms are the 'new apex predators': Blades kill off 75 percent of buzzards, hawks and kites that live nearby, study shows.” The Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF) quickly posted the Mail story on its site, Watts Up With That? (WUWT) lazily copied GWPF’s copy of the Mail, and JoNova excerpted it.
The problem is that the study did not, at all, in any way or at any point, show that wind turbine blades “kill off 75 percent of buzzards, hawks and kites.” While it mentions once, in passing, that turbines can kill birds and bats by direct impact, the study has no tally of bird corpses or anything dealing with avian mortality at the study site.
What the study instead showed is that there were four times fewer birds flying around the 20-year-old wind farms than there were flying around adjacent plots of land without turbines. Per the study author in a press release, turbines act like predators “not in the sense of killing [birds], but by reducing the presence of raptors in those areas.”
This makes total sense. If you were a bird, and had to choose a place to hunt for lizards that’s either covered in wind turbines that might hurt you if you flew into it, or an area free from such hazards, where would you spend most of your time?
Obviously, the safer hunting spot is preferable, meaning that the lizards living their lives in the wind farm are going to be free from having those predators. This then triggers changes in their population and physiology, which was the true focus of the study.
Researchers set out to see how two decades of wind turbines changed the ecosystem, particularly the interactions between lizards that were commonly prey and their avian predators. They found that bird populations were lower around the wind turbines, and that had an effect similar to what biologists refer to as “apex predators.”
As the name suggests, apex predators are those carnivores who sit at the top of the food chain and dominate the landscape — for example by preventing smaller predators from hunting in their territory. Removing those predators lets the prey species flourish, growing in numbers as well as in comfort and relaxation in not having to worry about dive bombing birds of prey.
This is the context the scientists invoke when describing turbines as apex predators — a description of their impact on the species down on the food chain.
The study isn’t saying wind turbines literally kill off a majority of birds in the area, but you wouldn’t know that from the Mail’s coverage, mindlessly copied and pasted on to denier blogs around the world.
Apparently none of the eagle eyes at GWPF, WUWT, or JoNova could see the Mail’s murderous turbine angle was a flight of fancy.
52 Percent of World's Birds of Prey Populations in Decline
Grim news for the world's raptors—an iconic group of birds consisting of hawks, falcons, kites, eagles, vultures and owls.
After analyzing the status of all 557 raptor species, biologists discovered that 18 percent of these birds are threatened with extinction and 52 percent have declining global populations, making them more threatened than all birds as a whole.
Keep reading...
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trump wind
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http://www.ecowatch.com/snow-geese-die-montana-2133506920.html
As many as 10,000 snow geese landed on the remains of an open pit mine near Butte, Montana that was filled with toxic water. Now, they are being found sick and dead in places as unwild as a Walmart parking lot and a nearby casino.
The Berkeley Pit, an abandoned open pit copper mine in Butte, Montana—part of the largest Superfund site in the U.S.—is filled with 40 billion gallons of acidic, metal-contaminated water.PitWatch.org
The 700-acre Berkeley Pit closed in 1982, leaving behind a trove of toxic heavy metals. As the pit filled with rainwater, arsenic, cadmium, copper, cobalt, iron, zinc and other inorganic compunds leached into the water. It soon became a U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Superfund site.
Snow geese summer in colonies on the Canadian and Alaskan tundra, migrating south in the fall to wintering grounds along the American coasts and inland wetland areas. For those in the central part of the continent, their migration route takes them across Montana.
On the evening of Nov. 28, wildlife spotters hired by Montana Resources, which jointly manages the abandoned mine with Atlantic Richfield, saw an incoming flock about 25 miles away that they estimated at 25,000 geese.
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