From several years ago - Offshore wind energy fraud exposed and then ignored

Green energy’s best weapon over the last 38 years, has been the avoidance of real research. Also never forget green energy’s true motives and the reality of this madness…..the more they lie about wind energy, the more they’re rewarded.

Several years ago, I wrote this as part of a report about offshore turbines planned for Lake Erie.

Offshore wind’s expert opinions and fraudulent research:

If “green” wind energy is so good, why do so many people have to lie their asses off about it? Except for making a lot of money for a select group of people, I can see no good that has come from any of this industrial blight. As it is, this industry cannot cite one scientifically credible impact study from the last 30 years related to the species impacted by wind turbines.

The Icebreaker project is the first of what the wind industry hopes will be hundreds of turbines placed on Lake Erie. One or the primary obstacles to this plan is the impacts to birds and bats once wind turbines will have when placed Lake Erie. As an expert on wildlife and wind turbine mortality impacts, I can safely say that hundreds of massive wind turbines on Lake Erie will have a tremendous impact on these bird and bat species, easily killing tens of thousands of birds annually.

Rigging opinions and citing fraudulent research that says otherwise will not change this fact. In addition, rigged post construction mortality research with fraudulent research methodologies approved by the USFWS, is another wind energy pattern that will be repeated on Lake Erie if this project is approved.

A few weeks ago, I had a chance to look over their Final Environmental Assessment. This assessment needs to be amended because there is absolutely no possible way that this project can be approved unless the State of Ohio accepts this industry’s fraudulent research and opinions from their list of terrible experts.

One of the industry’s primary experts quoted for this project made the following statement: “Biologically significant impacts to any bird or bat species, including those that are endangered and threatened, are highly unlikely”. Industry expert Dr. Kerlinger went on to say that this opinion drew upon survey data collected at the project location and impacts were reviewed on birds and bats of offshore wind farms in Europe and onshore facilities in the United States.

“The weight of evidence gathered from studies conducted over many years is quite conclusive,” said Dr. Kerlinger. “

For this false opinion Dr. Kerlinger drew upon the flawed survey data collected at the project location. He also reviewed the very limited information available pertaining to offshore wind farms. But most importantly, the mortality evidence from land based wind energy facilities looked at, was all produced from fatally flawed nonscientific research studies conducted over a period of many years.

The European Wind Energy Association in their recent report, “Birds and offshore wind farms” made this true statement: “For offshore wind, there is little knowledge regarding certain aspects, such as collision mortality”. Keep in mind that the first offshore wind farm was constructed 22 years ago in Denmark in 1991 and to this day little is still known about offshore wind turbine collision mortality.

While all this may seem amazing to some, it makes a little more sense when one realizes that offshore wind turbine impacts cannot be studied with conventional wind industry methodology. Those methods call for searching around turbines for carcasses and then making calculated estimates. This cannot be done with offshore turbines because bodies drift away and remains quickly become fish food.

The obvious thoughts to most reading this are that there are other ways to get this information: Cameras. It would be so easy and inexpensive to do so with 24-hour video surveillance on a few select turbines.

So why has this not been done? It never will be because this visual truth about the wind industry’s ongoing bird and bat genocide would be revealed. It has not been done for the same reasons that it has not happened on land based wind turbines. Camera surveillance would be this self-proclaimed green industry’s worst nightmare. The site of peregrine falcons, whooping cranes, bald eagles or any beloved species being cut in half would not sit well with the public. With cameras, the industry’s hidden mortality would be revealed and the numbers would be staggering. Slow agonizing deaths of sliced up victims along with bodies being removed by scavengers and wind personnel, would also be revealed.

I have also reviewed a number of Dr. Kerlinger’s wind industry related mortality studies. I have found all of them to be unscientific due to severely flawed research methodology. I found data his collection methods to be very biased and found his opinions and reports lacking and all without professional forthright information one would expect from a true expert.

My enclosed attachment of the article “Exposing the wind industry Genocide,” examines some of Dr. Kerlinger’s fatally flawed land based turbine research.

Another research group Tetra Tech conducted radar studies for this project. Like Dr. Kerlinger’s research, I am well aquatinted with their history of unscientific wind industry research. Besides reading over a severely flawed mortality study from the Hatchet Ridge wind turbines in Northern CA, I even had credible evidence given to me of mortality searches written up for these turbines, that never even took place.

As for Tetra Tech’s Lake Erie research, I found that the their Avian and Bat Studies were deliberately designed so important incidental data could be excluded, so their radar sampling would miss the highest concentrations of migrating species and very important data detailing lower altitude bird flight patterns during periods of low visibility were left out.

“Though incidental observations of birds in the vicinity of the Study Area were not included in the results of the standardized surveys, they provide insight on the avian community in the general area.”

“The MERLIN Avian Radar System operated offshore at the Crib (see Figure 1.1) during the 2010 sampling period, from May 1 to May 26, 2010, and again from August 16 to October 12, 2010.”

Tetra Tech has conducted research for this project that is not scientific or even close to accurately reporting real world conditions from the field. Look close at their filtered Radar data results. They dismissed 583 hours of radar data or 82%, of the total, using rain and wave clutter as an excuse. During this amount of time 10 million birds could have flown through this area. And even if they had, because this is a “Wind Energy” radar study, accurate direct observations would be classified as “incidental”. If Ohio wants the truth, new studies by credible researchers are desperately needed here.

“It is known that concentrations of most waterfowl species peak on Lake Erie during March to early April (Prince et al., 1992) with fall migration spanning a three to four month period where different species show peaks in abundance at different times late into the fall migration season (Ewert et al., 2006).”
“Data was not collected or analyzed due to weather (precipitation or fog) interference and/or radar mechanical downtime.”

When dealing with one of North America’s most important and highest concentrations of birds, one would think that credible scientific radar studies would have included year-round data and credible observations.

The Tetra Tech studies were supposed to provide baseline data for risk assessment. But this is not possible considering the limited unscientific data collected for this project. These studies also included no information or opinions about avian behavior responding to the absence of ice (open areas) expected around these offshore turbines during winter months, the risk created by increased year round perching availability attracting species, and the attraction of species due to the increased food available to raptors and fish eating species at turbine sites, that will accumulate because the cover provided by offshore turbines.

The amount of ice cover on Lake Erie varies with the shallow western region of Lake Erie icing up first. The open water created by these turbines during periods of ice-over, will attract great numbers of birds to these turbine installations, increasing the numbers that will be killed.

Jim Wiegand