Environmental Risks of Wind Power

Well in my search for Windmill Photos I got distracted...

.......by the awful story about Wind Turbines killing bats in Pincher Creek Alberta! lol

To my way of thinking, this little CBC News article is kind of dumb-butt!

It says that people are concerned and DO NOT KNOW WHY EXACTLY the bats are flying into the Windmills. DOH! The answer is given early in the article by a Professor Robert Barclay, and the likely solution to the problem, as well.

If you've ever HEARD a Wind Turbine, you'll understand why bats would fly into them. They HUM and 'whistle' and 'moan.' Likely (As Professor Barclay said) they shut off other 'sonar' senses once they hear the turbine sounds - then end up just schmmmmmushing into 'em. (Yes, schmmmmmmushing is a common Canadian term for 'splat/splatting/smushing into' lol). The solution - put those nasty 'deer' whistles on the Turbines or something - whatever the bats DONT LIKE TO HEAR!

So why would I give a hoop about the bats and put them on the blog?

Well (thanks for asking *rolling my eyes* TBC-who-is-probably-sleeping-right-now), people DO NOT REALIZE HOW DETRIMENTAL many of our animals, rodents, and other creatures are TO OUR ECOSYSTEM.

TBC brought up the topic of 'Global Warming' and I might be somewhat off topic here, however, to my knowledge, the problems of Global Warming are multifarious (having great variety).

Here we have a SITUATION created by people who were trying to HELP the Global Warming, energy/power situation. It was a good idea to study and start developing WIND POWER but now it's affecting the ecosystem!

Now what are we going to do???

We have FOUND SOME ANSWERS out in Southern Alberta that will lead us away, as consumers, from fossil fuels and polluting types of fuels used for energy and power...and along the way, we just killed our bats!

The reason bats are so darned important is that they feed off more harmful pests that are both annoying and dangerous to man and our food crops in Southern Alberta - and to tell you the truth, bats - they're actually pretty cute - and they don't make the worst pets, either! These li'l guys eat insects that carry disease - mostly to our food supplies.

Psssst - here's my fave bat pic - li'l one looks like a mini-pooch upside down covered in wings lol
Ohyeah - here's a 'windmill turbine tower' design plan that someone posted online

Over 500 dead li'l guys were found dead in a local area around certain Wind Turbine fields in S. AB, so in effect, that was enough to kill off the benefit of the bats to a concentrated area! 500 bats DO A LOT OF BENEFICIAL good, so their immediate absense right now is going to affect farmers and communities in that local area presently and for the next few seasons.

What is worse.....we've already seen - in Canada and the USA - a very marked decline in bat population due to other not so altruistic man-made factors (city expansions, pollution, etc). Unlike many other types of small mammal or rodents, many bat species DO NOT reproduce in huge numbers or with great speed. Bats are kind of 'fussy li'l things' that don't have a very high survival rate, as compared with most creatures their size.

Anyhow - that's about enough on that, eh? It's hard for me to tackle TBC's HUGE 'Global Warming' topic without getting side-tracked by these smaller issues.

I still didn't find the pics I wanted to of the Windmill 'farms' that I have actually driven by, and can't spend more time on looking, either - heck - there are more BAT PICS to check out, ya know? lol

Before I go, I will make two direct statements about the 'Global Warming Debate':

I believe that much of the information we receive about 'Global Warming' issues - boils down to plain and simple SCARE TACTICS used for Political Momentum...

And if that is so:

The 'global' public is being side-tracked from the real facts that we need to know about the environment (which is in jeopardy, no doubt!) - in order to solve the REAL environmental issues that are happening in our world.

And Now, Back to You, TBC *Handing over the microphone*

:)