facts, analysis, exposure of wind energy's real impacts Windaction http://www.windaction.org/articles/c41?theme=atom Xarayar 2006-06-12T02:16:27Z .20568 2009-03-25T11:08:59Z 2009-03-25T11:08:59Z

Photographs taken at Meridian's West Wind project above the Makara coastline show how sediment has been overflowing from the construction site. The photos were taken by marine environmentalist Jim Mikoz, who wrote an article in the NZ Fishing Coast to Coast magazine with the headline: The dirt behind wind turbines.. your fishing is at serious risk. In response to the article, Meridian wrote a letter to the editor stating that there would be no mud runoff into the sea from its construction site.

.19937 2009-02-11T04:50:27Z 2009-02-11T04:50:27Z

This time the focus is Kibby Mountain in western Maine where Transcanada is in the process of developing a wind power project, and where related logging operations by Plum Creek and a sub-contractor have been linked to serious land use violations. Pictures taken at the site by an independent engineering firm and provided to the Land Use Regulation Commission in late October show a logging road so damaged by rain, logging activity and erosion that it created a mudslide described as nearly 900 feet long.

.19840 2009-02-05T02:00:11Z 2009-02-05T02:00:11Z

Despite the impending layoff of 184 blade production employees, Gamesa Inc. will install new equipment at its Falls plant as it moves forward with other areas of production. ...The DEP discovered several violations at the plant and Gamesa was forced to pay $639,161 in state penalties. A compliance consent order was issued to ensure the installation of the oxidizer.

.19732 2009-01-30T19:40:27Z 2009-01-30T19:40:27Z

The company building the wind plant on Wolfe Island has withdrawn an appeal it had launched to avoid being held responsible for a diesel spill that occurred last fall. Canadian Hydro Developers Inc. had appealed to the Environmental Review Tribunal, an independent provincial agency, after failing to comply with a director's order the Ministry of the Environment issued as a result of the spill. The firm launched the appeal in an effort to have its name removed from the order.

.19497 2009-01-14T14:18:00Z 2009-01-14T14:18:00Z

With two pipes beneath a road clogged in Noxen, Supervisor Carl Shook is concerned about runoff from a proposed wind farm in Wyoming County. "There is going to be a lot of water running off the mountain," Shook said. Shook was one of about 30 people last Wednesday who attended a public hearing ...The state Department of Environmental Protection held the hearing to receive public comment as it reviews an application from BP for a National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System permit.

.18922 2008-11-21T08:09:46Z 2008-11-21T08:09:46Z

Although the DEC has cleared the use of slag on wind farm access roads, the state Department of Agriculture and Markets has concerns. In a Sept. 8 letter to Invenergy regarding the High Sheldon Wind Farm, Agriculture Specialist Michael J. Saviola said ...the Department does not support the use of any adulterated industrial byproduct material (such as steel slag) as road base on, or adjacent to, structural lands used for the production of food and/or forage crops," Saviola wrote.

.14061 2008-02-10T15:26:39Z 2008-02-10T15:26:39Z

Ireland's failure to insist on environmental impact assessments before major development projects are carried out will be scrutinised by the European Court of Justice on Thursday. The European Commission brought an action against Ireland in May 2006, claiming that the government had failed to comply with its obligations under the 1985 Impact Assessment Directive. ...The commission alleged that ‘‘particular deficiencies'' in relation to environmental impact assessments for a wind farm at Derrybrien, Co Galway, amounted to ‘‘a manifest breach of the directive''. Work began on the 60-megawatt windfarm in July 2003. About 90 per cent of the site roads on the 300-hectare site and half the bases of the 71 wind turbines had been completed when a landslide occurred on October 16, 2003. The landslide destroyed trees, fisheries and an empty house, and blocked two roads, but nobody was hurt.

.12474 2007-11-01T17:51:26Z 2007-11-01T17:51:26Z

SILT run-off during the construction of a wind farm is believed to be the source responsible for the wiping out of valuable vegetation and a colossal decrease in wild Brown Trout fish stocks in one of Tyrone's hidden beauty spots. ...One source described the fish caught as "feeble and malnourished" and indicated that the "damage to the rare genetic strain was irreparable." Lough Lee has long been considered by angling tourists as one of the most unique freshwater fishing sites in Ireland or Britain. ...problems arose during the construction of the 9MW wind farm by leading company Airtricity, who was given planning permission to position turbines on the slope of Bin Mountain facing and in close proximity to the Lough.

.11316 2007-08-13T14:37:09Z 2007-08-13T14:37:09Z

Gov. Ed Rendell, who has been outspoken on the need to limit emissions of global warming gases, has not delivered on a promise to come up with his own strategy for Pennsylvania. Administration spokesmen would give no reason for the delay, other than to say a plan is still being worked on.

.10806 2007-07-18T12:48:00Z 2007-07-18T12:48:00Z

A wind farm company has said greenhouse gases released during the construction of a scheme on peat land will be "paid back" in clean energy within months. Lewis Wind Power (LWP) predicts it will take seven months for the turbines planned for Barvas Moor to cancel out the carbon dioxide (CO2) released. The pledge comes in the wake of a call by Wetlands International for greater protection for the world's peat lands. It warns that the areas store huge quantities of harmful gases.

.9939 2007-06-05T11:22:56Z 2007-06-05T11:22:56Z

BEIJING - China acknowledged Monday that it soon may become the world's biggest source of harmful greenhouse gases but said the United States and other advanced countries must take the lead in fighting global warming because they had been polluting heavily for longer.

.9330 2007-05-04T11:08:05Z 2007-05-04T11:08:05Z

Wind power could also reduce coal-plant carbon dioxide, which is thought to cause climate change, but the impact may be small, the report said. By 2025, wind turbines could cut carbon dioxide output by 4.5 percent compared with what it would otherwise have been, but this "would only slow the increase," said Dr. Risser. "It wouldn't result in a decrease in the amount of CO2."

.9269 2007-04-30T12:27:11Z 2007-04-30T12:27:11Z

RALEIGH - A nonprofit environmental advocacy group, which staunchly believes global warming must be reduced through reductions in human-caused carbon dioxide emissions, controls another nonprofit organization that advises a climate action panel started by the N.C. Division of Air Quality. The DAQ-created group, in turn, makes recommendations on carbon-dioxide reductions to the Legislative Commission on Global Climate Change. The advisory organization, the Center for Climate Strategies, is Pennsylvania-based and helped establish the study commission through a proposal to DAQ. But there is question whether the study panel, called the Climate Action Plan Advisory Group (CAPAG), is authorized under N.C. law.

.9235 2007-04-27T10:54:24Z 2007-04-27T10:54:24Z

Zichichi pointed out that human activity has less than a 10% impact on the environment. He also cited that models used by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) are incoherent and invalid from a scientific point of view. The U.N. commission was founded in 1988 to evaluate the risk of climate change brought on by humans.

.8750 2007-04-03T12:45:26Z 2007-04-03T12:45:26Z

As the U.S. Supreme Court took decisive action Monday on the matter of planet-warming emissions, a proposed law in Washington to reduce carbon dioxide pollution continued to creep along, scarred and slightly mangled from multiple revisions. In its original form, the bill would have set state goals for cutting greenhouse gases, created limits for how much carbon dioxide new power plants could release, created a state climate office and required other actions to reduce pollution that's contributing to climate change. Since then, the legislation has morphed into a Franken-bill with new rules tacked onto it and major rewrites. It was then patched together into something approximating its original form and on Monday, it was tacked onto another piece of legislation to help ensure its survival. "Trying to figure out how to stop global warming is complex," said Rep. Hans Dunshee, D-Snohomish. "We know it's a problem. How do we deal with it? There are various schools of thought."

.8443 2007-03-15T10:08:31Z 2007-03-15T10:08:31Z

A Danish scientist said the idea of a "global temperature" and global warming is more political than scientific. University of Copenhagen Professor Bjarne Andresen has analyzed the topic in collaboration with Canadian Professors Christopher Essex from the University of Western Ontario and Ross McKitrick of the University of Guelph. It is generally assumed the Earth's atmosphere and oceans have grown warmer during the recent 50 years because of an upward trend in the so-called global temperature, which is the result of complex calculations and averaging of air temperature measurements taken around the world. "It is impossible to talk about a single temperature for something as complicated as the climate of Earth," said Andresen, an expert on thermodynamics. "A temperature can be defined only for a homogeneous system. Furthermore, the climate is not governed by a single temperature. Rather, differences of temperatures drive the processes and create the storms, sea currents, thunder, etc. which make up the climate". He says the currently used method of determining the global temperature -- and any conclusion drawn from it -- is more political than scientific. The argument is presented in the Journal of Non-Equilibrium Thermodynamics.

.8279 2007-03-07T10:42:13Z 2007-03-07T10:42:13Z

Accepted theories about man causing global warming are "lies" claims a controversial new TV documentary. 'The Great Global Warming Swindle' - backed by eminent scientists - is set to rock the accepted consensus that climate change is being driven by humans. The programme, to be screened on Channel 4 on Thursday March 8, will see a series of respected scientists attack the "propaganda" that they claim is killing the world's poor. Even the co-founder of Greenpeace, Patrick Moore, is shown, claiming African countries should be encouraged to burn more CO2. Nobody in the documentary defends the greenhouse effect theory, as it claims that climate change is natural, has been occurring for years, and ice falling from glaciers is just the spring break-up and as normal as leaves falling in autumn. A source at Channel 4 said: "It is essentially a polemic and we are expecting it to cause trouble, but this is the controversial programming that Channel 4 is renowned for."

.8276 2007-03-06T13:58:23Z 2007-03-06T13:58:23Z

Any U.S. law requiring renewable power sources to provide a greater portion of the country’s total electricity would not be enough to plug a rapid rise in emissions of the main gas linked to global warming, according to a new report. Amid rising concerns about fossil fuel supplies and emissions of greenhouse gases, several recently proposed U.S. bills called for a national renewable portfolio standard, a requirement that renewable energy sources, like wind, solar and small hydro, provide about 15 percent of U.S. power in about 20 years. Nearly half of U.S. states have passed their own renewable portfolio mandates. But if the country enacted such a law — without mandates that also cut power demand — U.S. carbon dioxide emissions would still rise 18 percent above current levels by 2026, according to the Wood MacKenzie report, titled “The Impact of a Federal Renewable Portfolio Standard.”

.8148 2007-02-27T11:18:51Z 2007-02-27T11:18:51Z

The United Nations Foundation and Sigma Xi, The Scientific Research Society, today released "Confronting Climate Change: Avoiding the Unmanageable and Managing the Unavoidable," the final report of the Scientific Expert Group on Climate Change and Sustainable Development. The report, prepared for the upcoming meeting of the UN's Commission on Sustainable Development (CSD), outlines a roadmap for preventing unmanageable climate changes and adapting to unavoidable ones.

.7949 2007-02-15T13:12:45Z 2007-02-15T13:12:45Z

As Democratic leaders in Congress prepare to put climate change legislation on the agenda, some in the utility industry are arguing that it will take decades of investments and innovation to get substantial reductions in their emissions of greenhouse gases. Electric power companies, which emit about one-third of America’s global warming gases, could reduce their emissions to below the levels of 1990, but that would take about 20 years, no matter how much the utilities spend, according to a new industry study. The report, prepared by the Electric Power Research Institute, a nonprofit consortium, is portrayed as highly optimistic by its authors, who will present the findings on Thursday at an energy conference in Houston.