Germany, birthplace of the disastrous Energiewende program, has begun the process of felling 120,000 trees to make way for a wind farm in a 1,000-year-old “fairy tale” wood, home to many of the Brothers Grimm fairy tales. Once upon a time, the idea of just running a highway through this magical forest drew international ire. Today, there's an almost celebratory tone as clear-cutting it is discussed, so long as it’s to replace stately trees with noisy, steel monstrosities. Their claim, of course, is that killing tens of thousands of trees “is the only way to preserve forests and important ecosystems.”
I’m old enough to remember when the Vietnam-era claim that "we had to destroy the village in order to save it" was met with horror and disdain.
But Germany isn't alone in this. Scotland recently cleared 16 million trees for a wind farm. In New York State, trees across 313 acres of forest are being chopped down to make way for turbines. Los Angeles boasts that it has set aside about 20,000 acres to be denuded for dynamos. Trees and local flora and fauna in the Amazon Rain Forest are being killed as it is being deforested for the same reason, severely impacting local indigenous populations.
Moreover, wind farms are killing tens of thousands of the migratory birds of prey environmentalists once championed. The same folks that once limited timbering in the Pacific Northwest to protect the spotted owl now are all-in on clear-cutting for climate. Owls? We don’t need no stinkin’ owls.
Wind power, we are instructed, is “clean” and “green” and “sustainable” and “renewable” and will contribute massively to de-carbonizing our world. Scientific American, a publication not exactly known for its objective approach to climate questions, explained not long ago that killing all these trees is actually re-carbonizing our world. A live tree is a carbon sink. A dead tree is a carbon emitter.
Still, the environmentalist argument goes, wind will help cool the planet, to ensure we don’t surpass that (entirely arbitrary) “tipping point” of a 1.5 degree (C) temperature increase. Except that claim doesn't stand up to any real scrutiny.
Downwind of wind farms, the land is no longer being cooled by evaporative cooling of the passing wind; it is being warmed. How much? About 1.5 degrees
Naff off.
Offshore, windmill installations are killing whales and other marine mammals. The powers that be have, of course, explained that these are only causing “adverse effects” on whales, but not killing them. Even if true -- and the claim is highly dubious -- does that really make it okay? Meanwhile in the desert we are killing thousands of endangered desert tortoises for solar arrays covering hundreds or thousands of acres.
Across Europe, farmers are protesting as they are being told to kill tens of millions of their livestock. In America, we are instructed to thin-out our livestock numbers and transition to eating bugs and plants. Of course, if we killed all of our livestock, what will we accomplish? A mere 2.6 percent projected reduction in greenhouse gases along with a complete inability to provide for our country's nutritional requirements, the result of which will be fewer Americans. Which is the whole point of this madness.
Article tags: Brothers Grimm, carbon emissions, climate alarmism, Germany, global warming, Green Movement, spotted owl, wind and solar, wind turbines
