bird deaths

This site is dedicated to a moral principle, which I call the Principle of Goodness, and as such I have largely refrained from direct political comments. But world conditions have so worsened since this site was first created that I think this policy must change. One of the things I warned of back in 2010 was the danger of descent of our entire civilisation into a new dark age. Now, many commentators are coming to the same conclusion. I warned of how leftism, political correctness, neo-marxism, call it what you will, is actually a religion, and a false one at that. And I specifically added that the global warming cult is not science, it is just one more branch of bad religion. Once more, many others have added their voice to the same opinion.

So, it is certainly time that I directly applied the Principle of Goodness to these situations, not only to illustrate the Principle, but also in the hope of changing the bad situation. And solar thermal is one of the very worst.

Start of open letter to Jay Weatherill:

I write to you today in your capacity as Premier of South Australia, and in light of your announcement to build a massive solar thermal power plant in your state. Now I do not know whether you are a "typical politician", whose only interest is to count "for" and "against" voters, or whether you genuinely care and will change your views depending on evidence and ethics. If the former, count me as "against", but note that I live in Queensland and, therefore, stop reading. But I assume you are the latter, and so I write on.

I do not know whether you are aware that these plants are bird-killers. Not only that, but they are bird-torturers. Any bird that flies into the path of the beam (which is huge) is instantly blinded, then its feathers catch fire and its skin is burned off. It is likely that it then falls out of the path of the beam onto the ground, in writhing agony but still alive, to slowly die in excruciating pain over several hours.

I was watching "Catalyst" today. (For non-Australian readers, Catalyst is a science show put on by "Your" ABC - the government owned anti-government propaganda outfit).

Story 1: A fantastic new way to concentrate the sun's rays hundreds of times to generate power.

Story 2: The wonderful environmental benefits from Australia's incredible birds.

The New York Times published a 'map' of 'organised climate change denial', which is supposed to be 'winning' because of the deep pockets and superior organisation of the hidden movers and shakers in the fossil fuel industry. As I showed before, the Australian fossil fuel industry alone is funding the climate alarmists to the tune of a billion dollars. I would be very much surprised if Andrew C. Revkin, author of the latest piece of work at NYT, can identify even a tenth of that much money spent worldwide on the skeptic side of the argument. In other words, pot - kettle - black.

But in the comments, this neat summary of the whole scare appeared:

Critics have disputed my previous analysis about the rate of bird deaths due to wind turbines. However, we have a story now from Britain about what is a small to moderately sized turbine killing at a rate of about thirty times greater than the estimates in my post. Since the only special thing about this wind turbine is that it is erected where lots of people see the results, I think it can be safely said that I vastly underestimated the assault upon wildlife by these monstrosities.

Here's a wind farm striking down a bird. The global warming panic has people erecting murder machines without regard for the welfare of animals. And the tragedy is it's all pointless because CO2 is plant food and a boon for the planet, for humanity trying to feed itself, and for wildlife.

A short while ago I read this shocking and disturbing article about bird deaths from wind farms on climaterealists.com. I immediately asked myself: "Is that really true?" I wanted to know the right answer to this question, whether or not I liked it. If we want to create a peace legacy for future generations, to safeguard the planet for both humans and our non-human friends, we need to know the truth.

The issue is this: the story above claims that millions of birds are killed by wind farms. But a "green" friend I mentioned this to told me that this is absurd: she had studied wind farms in depth, she had personally visited them, and they were the safest, most wildlife-friendly places imaginable; the blades rotate so sedately nothing could possibly be killed by them; and there wasn't a dead or injured bird to be found anywhere around about. She went so far as to wonder if the writers of the above article weren't simply lying through their teeth.

The paradox I was struggling with was this: my green friend is without doubt one of the most truthful people I know. I did not doubt her account for a second. Equally, it seemed impossible that anyone could write such a credible-sounding article as the one linked above. Two truthful sources in direct contradiction - I needed facts that no one could dispute, because if lies are involved (and who won't at least wonder about the possibility?), it isn't good enough to merely discover the truth; I also needed it in a form that would allow anyone to prove it for themselves.So here's what I did.