Bats and Windmills, not so perfect together.

I was going through some posts over at Watts Up With That and came across one (Holy irony, Batman!) about how the death of one Indiana bat (an endangered species) has caused a small wind farm (36 turbines) east of Pittsburgh to be shut down at night.

That, in turn led to a blog post about a Canadian project on Wolfe Island in the St. Lawrence River and a proposed New York project in the same area. (Cape Vincent, NY and Wolfe Island are located at the drainage of Lake Ontario in to the St. Lawrence.) The Indiana bat has a documented territory that overlaps some of the proposed wind farm.

(The latter also points out the personal involvement of Darrel Aubertine, New York's Department of Agriculture and Markets Commissioner. Seems he owns some of the land involved in the development of the New York wind farm project. But that's a whole 'nother kettle of fish.)

Meanwhile, alternative sources of energy just do not seem to be as "green" as their backers claim them to be.

US Energy Facts

I saw this posted over at Maggie's Farm. It needs to be spread far and wide.

You won't here this coming from President Obama. He and the environmentalists have decided we're to become energy poor. Unless it comes from nuclear...wait that was two decades ago...windmills...no, that was before they discovered windmills kill birds, bats and views...solar...no, desert tortoises....Well, energy poor.





You want to reduce the cost of energy and boost the American economy? We could do that now.
You want energy independence? We could do it now.
You want to reduce the trade deficit? We could do that now.
You want to tell the Arabs in the Middle East--unsound and unsavory suppliers of so much of our oil--to go pound sand? We could do that now.

What's that? You're worried about climate change? Hell, CO2 is not driving climate change, it's following increased temperatures...just like it always has. Besides CO2 promotes plant growth and is a miniscule part of the atmosphere (currently just below 400 parts per million...and that's really tiny..less than 0.04% by volume). Despite the findings of the USEPA, CO2 is hardly the deadly chemical they make it out to be. (Twenty times the current level to make you drowse? That's toxic? And plants love that 1% CO2. They gobble it up. "...elevated CO₂ levels cause increased growth reflected in the harvestable yield of crops, with wheat, rice and soybean all showing increases in yield of 12–14% under elevated CO2 in FACE experiments.") And warm temperatures kill far fewer people than cold temperatures do. ("...Palutikof et al. (1996) calculate that in England and Wales for a 1 °C temperature rise the reduced deaths from cold outweigh the increased deaths from heat, resulting in a reduction in annual average mortality of 7000, while Keatinge et al. (2000) “suggest that any increases in mortality due to increased temperatures would be outweighed by much larger short term declines in cold related mortalities.” Cold-related deaths are far more numerous than heat-related deaths in the United States, Europe, and almost all countries outside the tropics.") Only mad dogs and Englishmen remain out in the noon day sun when shade is available. Warm temperatures also promote much nicer scenery. Check it out.

Huh?

I had to shake my head (and bite my tongue) when I overheard a conversation about all the energy activity going on in the area while waiting to get my Tundra reshod the other day.

Seems this older couple were complaining that with all the windmills, gas wells, and pipelines being constructed all the electricity and gas would be going out of state and "we aren't going to get any benefit at all" from the changes being made.

All I could think of was the influx of cash from leases/sales being signed by landowners for the mineral rights and land for all the well sites and windmill sites (including to the state, since some of these sites are on and beneath state forest land), the money being paid to laborers and construction crews in the area, the money being dropped by those specialists who have come from out of state and rented up every hotel/motel/spare apartment, etc. Yet these folks could see "no benefit" to the state or local economy? How narrow minded can you be?

And let us not even speak of the fact that, at least as far as the natural gas is concerned, more supply means lower cost across the board.(Windmills are a different kettle of fish because of the government subsidies on their construction and operation.)

If we have plenty of anything, it's wind and gas!

When we chose to move to this little area of north-central PA, Terry and I were taken by the ruralness, the small town flavor (in a town that has no "town" there), the friendliness of the folks we met, and the quiet. Living on a rural dirt road that leads only to state forest lands could--or I should say was--pretty quiet. At least until this spring.

Seems we live in "Energy Central."

There are 67 windmills being constructed along a road that runs the ridge to our south. Only three will be in our immediate area and they will probably be far enough away so as to be either invisible or silent. While the plans were presented to the public last year, not much happened aside from the necessary survey crews roaming the roads. Some of the windmills are already erected on the eastern end of the ridge. One or two even have their blades attached although they are no where near to going on the grid. Most of the others have had the sites prepared. An optimistic report in last Sunday's paper said they were hoping to have all 67 up and running by the end of the year. Right!

But wait! That's not all! At the top of the ridge where my street of residence forms a T with the road running east-west along the crest (sorta) of the ridge an old state forest road once headed south. Now it and the east-west ridge road look like four lane highways! Some of it has to do with the power lines for the windmills, but more has to do with natural gas. There's a pipeline that will head south to Tennessee from these here hills of PA. A big one. And it's drawing in from several directions along the ridge top before turning south.

"Why a gas line?" you ask.

Marcellus Shale my friend. There's gas beneath our feet here in the Twin Tiers of the PA/NY border. And they're drilling for it as fast as they can. Several places along Route 6 in Bradford and Tioga counties there are drilling rigs hard at work seeking the natural gas a mile or more beneath the surface. Just because you see a rig at work in a particular site doesn't mean it's confined to extracting what's directly beneath it either. Directional drilling will allow the energy company to put a root system of wells out from a single platform and extract gas from miles away.

The state has leased several sites on top of the ridge for drilling. Farmers and land owners in the valley have done the same. Many more of us have had folks knocking at our door asking about mineral rights and offering signing bonuses and royalties on the production. I'm sure the money has been a help to many a farmer. But some are finding they jumped at the offer too soon. (Like ten years ago.) They are locked into leases that are renewable by the signing company for a fraction of what is being offered now. Heck, I got an offer just a few months ago that was a fraction of what I was offered (and accepted) last week.

Our lease, stipulates no above ground construction (see directional drilling), runs for just five years and can be renewed or canceled at that time. The money isn't Jed Clampett type of stuff but it will ensure some financial security for the next few years without having to tap into our retirement accounts or early Social Security.

Almost makes up for all the damn construction trucks running up and down the hill every day starting at 0630. And the traffic congestion of all those construction trucks on Route 6--which itself seems to be under constant reconstruction somewhere in Tioga and/or Bradford county.

Common sense energy plan

This makes so much sense that it will never get through congress.

Ross bill calls for energy 'independence' on back of oil drilling

A plan introduced Thursday by U.S. Rep. Mike Ross to encourage alternative and renewable energy relies on oil drilling in Arctic wildlife lands and the Gulf of Mexico to meet its goals.


Ross' bill, the "American-Made Energy Act of 2008," also would create tax credits to build new nuclear power plants throughout the United States, with an aim of having 40 percent of the nation's power come from nuclear sources.

Drill for oil on our own shores, build non-CO2 producing nuclear power plants, distance the US from dependence upon foreign energy sources…it all makes great sense. But you know that the environmental weenies will stall every aspect of this plan, will lobby and rail against it as “raping the earth,” and will likely win against a bunch of spineless politicians who see the money (and the votes) raised by the Birkenstock crowd as more important the health and safety of the USA.

"We're not just trying to suck the oil out of the ground for no reason," said Ross, D-Ark. We're trying "to reduce our dependence on foreign oil and take the revenue from the sale of that oil and invest in all of these environmentally friendly and job-creating emerging technologies."

Even as a source of funding for alternative energy sources (and that’s what nuclear power is) drilling along the Florida coast and in places people never go to—and on only a tiny little fraction of ANWAR, at that—will be a difficult sell.

Ross said the drilling in the Arctic and off the Florida coast called for in his bill would raise about $80 billion over 30 years. He said that money would be "more than enough" to fund efforts to expand tax credits to fight global warming, encourage renewable energy operations and help consumers buy plug-in electric and flex-fuel cars.

Ross said the bill's tax credits for nuclear power plants would help wean the U.S. off of fossil fuels as well, though his bill includes subsidies to encourage liquid fuel production of coal. He said that could encourage further exploration of Arkansas' own coal reserves, bringing more jobs and industry to the state.

However, Ross acknowledged encouraging nuclear power and drilling in the Arctic might be a tough sale to Congress.

And that last sentence is just plain sad. Our political class—our leaders on virtually all levels from town council to the president—has lost its vision, its innovative get up and go, for the ability of Americans to achieve anything when presented with a challenge. Instead members of the political class have aligned themselves with those who build obstacles against achievement. As a result problems that are identified are seldom if ever solved but are allowed to ferment until a crisis arises and then either a patch of little or no significance is applied or a particular practice is banned outright.

The Law of Unintended Consequences strikes again!

UN Warns of Biofuels' Environmental Risk

The world's rush to embrace biofuels is causing a spike in the price of corn and other crops and could worsen water shortages and force poor communities off their land, a U.N. official said Wednesday

And here in the US we are seeing a rise in food prices and fuel costs created by the sale of corn as an ethanol source. You’d almost think the politicians rushing to making these decisions didn’t anticipate the consequences.

Idiots.

High Power Job

Next time you see some electric lines stretched across the sky, remember these guys who maintain them.

glumbert.com - High Power Job

Gives a whole new meaning to high wire acts.

Sent to me by my buddy Joe.

Supply and Demand

Those are the two things that should determine the price of a commodity. If you reduce the supply, then, by golly, the price of what is available will, and should, go up. That is the way the system works.

I hate paying over $3 for a gallon of regular, but I also know that the taxes included in that amount to nearly a quarter of the price and that there plenty of steps between the ground and my tank and that, reports of "record profits" aside, ain't a whole lot of "price gouging" going on. In fact, the taxes collected by the feds and states are the biggest chunk of money going to the entities that have been doing absolutely nothing to see that that gasoline gets to the pump. That might be considered gouging.

House panel votes to extend ban on most offshore drilling

Remind me again. When was the last oil refinery built in California...or New York…or Massachusetts? Before we go looking for price gougers, perhaps we should look at the supply side of the equation.

UPDATE: Jeez this internet thingy has all the answers. Do a little surfing and they just pop out at you.

Behind high gas prices: The refinery crunch

So why hasn't a new refinery been built in the U.S. since 1976?

So there’s my answer. No refinery’s been built, not just in those three states, but anywhere in the country, since 1976. But there has been an increase in refinery capacity.

While refinery capacity may not be growing as fast as demand, it is growing.

For example, Drevna noted that expansion projects at the nation's existing refineries have had the effect of adding the equivalent of a brand new refinery every year. That increase came despite mandates for cleaner gasoline and diesel fuel, which take longer to make.

But what about new, cleaner refineries here in the states?

First off, experts note, gasoline, like any commodity, is subject to big price swings. After all, in the late 1990s it was selling for less than $1 a gallon, hardly an encouraging number if you're a refinery exec looking at making a decades-long, multi-billion dollar investment.

While retail gasoline prices are currently near record highs at just below $3 a gallon, where they might be five years from now is a matter of debate.

Some experts say new investment, in both alternative energy and conventional sources, will boost supply and could cut prices in half. If a global recession hit, the drop could be even more dramatic.

Others say rampant demand, especially in the developing world, will keep prices from going anywhere but up. For an oil executive trying to decide on a refinery investment, picking who's right is a tough call.

Secondly, stringent environmental laws and effective community organizing have made it very difficult to build a new refinery in the U.S.

"Everyone is quick to say "look at these refiners, they're driving up the price,'" said Phil Flynn Flynn, senior market analyst at Alaron Trading in Chicago. "But if I wanted to build a refinery tomorrow, I couldn't do it."

And then there's the public's newfound concern over global warming and its supposed commitment to do something about it. President Bush himself has called for a 20 percent reduction in gasoline use over the next 10 years.

"What refining executive in their right fiscal mind would say, gee, we need to add refining capacity right now," said Drevna at the refiners' association.

So demand elsewhere in the world where the governments may e more amenable to construction have siphoned off refineries. Then there’s the NIMBY crowd that would dearly like lower prices at the pump but not at the cost of either oil exploration or refinery construction within our own borders. And finally, there are governmental policies at the state and federal level geared toward the reduced consumption of gasoline in the near future.

Properly Planned Wind Farms Won't Harm Birds (as a population)

A congressionally mandated study released by the National Research Council (NRC) says: Wind Turbines Not a Threat to U.S. Bird Population

The last few meetings of the local Audubon Club included discussions as to what position the club should take vis-à-vis wind turbines. There are several locations here in the Northern Tier of Pennsylvania being studied for potential wind turbine sites. The mountain ridges run east west and the winds coming from the north or northwest could generate tremendous amounts of energy. Our club’s concern is with the birds, of course, but also with the need for clean energy alternatives.

One thing that was discovered early on was that the local and state governments had no guidelines by which either the developer or the opponents to development could look for assistance.

But while some states have developed guidelines, wind energy is such a recent addition to the energy mix in most areas -- the nation's wind-energy capacity more than quadrupled between 2000 and 2006 -- that most states are relatively inexperienced at planning and regulation.

Just this past week Tioga County did adopt some preliminary guidelines which put any construction of wind turbines under the gees of the planning committees and building inspectors. A small but important step.

As far as the impact on bird populations:

Focusing its study on a mountainous region that included parts of West Virginia, Virginia, Maryland and Pennsylvania, the report cited that bird deaths caused by collisions with wind turbines are a minute fraction of total anthropogenic bird deaths -- less than 0.003% [three of every 100,000] in 2003.

The study does admit that in some local and/or poorly planned areas the impact can be more substantial.

While the study found that wind facilities can have certain adverse environmental effects on a local or regional level, the report committee saw no evidence that fatalities from existing wind facilities are causing measurable changes in bird populations in the U.S. A possible exception to this is deaths among birds of prey, such as eagles and hawks, near Altamont Pass, California -- a facility with older, smaller turbines that appear more apt to kill such birds than newer models of wind turbines.

As the second commenter to the story mentions, the older, smaller, and more inefficient turbines used at Altamont pass will have to be replaced which should alleviate some of the problem in that locale.

And as the first commenter opines, cats do far more damage to the bird population so why don’t we fight harder to keep Tabby indoors and/or declawed and neutered?

I get the jitters whenever I see a cat walking across a field or along the side of a road. I probably shouldn’t now that I live in farm country and most of the farm cats earn their keep in and around the barn but they still “freelance” a bit on their own time.

Back in NJ there were folks who would intentionally feed feral cats at the train station. There had to be several dozen of these beasts. Whenever someone would propose capturing them and euthanizing these feral critters…well, the howling wasn’t just from the cats!

I don’t like free roaming dogs either.

(My three cats are neutered and are indoor cats. I won’t declaw them, however.)