ANOTHER RESPECTED SCIENTIST COMES OUT AGAINST CO2 GW HYPOTHESIS
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February 15, 2017 at 05:30PM
Big Wind: Threat to Air Navigation, Military Assets
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“By 2008, nearly 40 percent of U.S. long-range radar systems were already compromised by wind turbines. Today, with more than three-times the wind capacity installed, the problem of radar interference persists.”
“Proper siting of turbines, while politically cumbersome, is the only tried and true form of mitigation. But this means denying wind developers access to land areas covered by radar.”
[Editor Note: This essay, the third in a series aimed at correcting the most harmful wind energy-related policies of the Obama era, examines how pro-wind federal law enacted in 2011 compromised U.S. aviation safety.]
U.S. air space has been made less safe and our national security compromised because of a reckless policy of siting wind towers within 30–40 miles of radar installations. By 2008, nearly 40 percent of U.S. long-range radar systems were already compromised by wind turbines.[1] Today, with more than three-times the wind capacity installed, the problem of radar interference persists.
As wind energy installations expanded under the Obama administration, project developers complained to the White House about military base commanders who were protesting turbines sited near radar and and pointing out the potential risks to base missions and aviation safety. Base commanders filed their objections with the FAA according to the long-established objective standard centered on aviation safety concerns contained in FAA Order 7400.2G, which specifically states that “electromagnetic interference potential may create adverse effects as serious as those caused by a physical penetration of the airspace by a structure.”
DOD Clearinghouse
Washington responded to Big Wind’s complaints by establishing the Department of Defense (DOD) “Siting Clearinghouse.”[2] The Clearinghouse was advertised as a “one-stop” service for industry, to ensure project compatibility with military operations. But the true intent was very different.
With the Clearinghouse, the White House successfully removed uncooperative base commanders from the decision chain. The law also realigned the review standard from aviation safety to national security. Under the new standard, the Secretary of Defense was expressly prohibited from objecting to energy projects unless, after all other technical mitigations were adopted, a project was still shown to be “an unacceptable risk to the national security.”
No one was sure what an “unacceptable risk” meant, but as long as President Obama was in office it was likely that no project would be unacceptable.
When Pioneer Green proposed siting twenty-five 575-foot-tall turbines across the Chesapeake Bay from the important U.S. Naval Air Station Patuxent River (“Pax River”) in Maryland, there was considerable pressure on the Navy to agree to a mitigation plan that would allow the project to proceed. It took an act of Congress to press the point that the turbines might cause irreparable harm to base operations.
Following then-Governor O’Malley’s veto of a state bill to stall the project for 13-months until more studies could be completed, Maryland Senator Barbara Mikulski (D-MD) forced the issue by adding language[3] to the 2015 Defense Appropriations bill directing the Navy “to refrain from executing any agreement with respect to the operation of the proposed wind energy project until the study is provided to the congressional defense committees” and a more detailed assessment of project impacts on base operations was finalized.
Recommended Actions
Large expenditures of government time and funds have been allocated in pursuit of technical mitigations, but so far the results are controversial. Proper siting of turbines, while politically cumbersome, is the only tried and true form of mitigation. But this means denying wind developers access to land areas covered by radar.
Last fall, Senator Cornyn (R-TX) introduced a critical bill aimed at addressing this issue. S3428[4] (refiled in this Congress as S.201) would remove all eligibility for the PTC and ITC tax credits for new wind turbine projects that would be sited within a 30-mile radius of an active military airfield, a military air traffic control radar site, or a weather radar site[5].
In doing so, Senator Cornyn is acknowledging that the wind credits, which enable wind development, are working at cross-purposes with other public funds spent to build and maintain the finest, most advanced radar systems in the world. Congressman Chris Collins (R-NY) introduced a sister bill in the House, HR 6397 (now HR 649).
In the coming months, the new administration can take action that protects air navigation and U.S. military and radar assets by following these recommendations:
——————
[1] Long Range Radar Joint Program Office Wind Farm Brief Kenneth Kingsmore, DOD Program Manager. September 29, 2008. http://ift.tt/2lNK1IU
[2] P.L. 111 Section 358 (Ike Skelton National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2011)
[3] Language added to the 2015 Defense Authorization Bill: “Patuxent Naval Air Station.–The Committee is aware that the Department of the Navy commissioned the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Lincoln Laboratory to conduct a study to determine the effects and a potential mitigation plan between the operation of the proposed wind energy project and the Patuxent Naval Air Station. The study is not yet completed. Therefore, the Committee directs the Navy to refrain from executing any agreement with respect to the operation of the proposed wind energy project until the study is provided to the congressional defense committees.”
[4] S.3428 – Protection of Military Airfields from Wind Turbine Encroachment Act http://ift.tt/2lNFFS6
[5] Wind power has been allowed to impair national weather radar used for severe weather detection and air travel. See: http://ift.tt/2lNDVrM
The post Big Wind: Threat to Air Navigation, Military Assets appeared first on Master Resource.
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February 15, 2017 at 05:06PM
Political Storm Erupts: Hostile Germans Turn on Ugly, Costly & Ineffective Wind Power
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Held up as the wind cult’s poster girl, Germany went hard and fast, spearing tens of thousands of these things all over its, once cherished and pristine, landscape. The cost of its maniacal rush into massively subsidised wind and solar to German businesses and households has been astronomical and, in the mother of all ironies, […]
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February 15, 2017 at 04:31PM
Baffin Bay and Kane Basin polar bears not ‘declining’ concludes new report
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The 2016 Scientific Working Group report on Baffin Bay and Kane Basin polar bears was released online without fanfare last week, confirming what local Inuit have been saying for years: contrary to the assertions of Polar Bear Specialist Group scientists, Baffin Bay and Kane Basin subpopulations have not been declining but are stable.
Until recently, the Baffin Bay (BB) and Kane Basin (KB) polar bear subpopulations, that live between NW Greenland, and Baffin and Ellesmere Islands, were assessed with confidence by the IUCN Polar Bear Specialist Group (PBSG) to be declining due to suspected over-hunting (see 2016 Report, Ch. 1, pg. 4).
It turns out they were wrong.
Baffin Bay – 2,826 (95% CI = 2,059-3,593) at 2013
[vs. 1546 (95% CI = 690-2,402) expected 2004]
vs. 2,074 (95% CI = 1,553-2,595) in 1997
Kane Basin – 357 (95% CI: 221 – 493) at 2013
vs. 164 (95% CI: 94 – 234) in 1997
[1997 figures from 2015 IUCN Red List estimates, from Supplement, pg. 8); 2004 “expected” figure for Baffin Bay from 2016 SWG report, Ch. 1, pg. 4]
In 2014, Environment Canada’s assessments were ‘data deficient’ for Kane Basin and ‘likely declining’ for Baffin Bay (see map below):
However, the results of this new study (conducted 2011-2013) would likely make KB in the map above dark blue (‘stable’), and BB light blue (‘likely stable’), depending on how the new information is interpreted (given differences in methodology between the 1991-1997 and 2011-2013 counts). Note that a recent paper by Jordan York, Mitch Taylor and others (York et al. 2016) suggested this outcome for Baffin Bay was likely (i.e. ‘stable’) but thought that the status of Kane Basin would remain ‘declining.’
This new information leaves only the Southern Beaufort subpopulation (SB) in a ‘likely declining’ condition, but since that decline was due to thick spring ice conditions in 2004-2006 (Crockford 2017), it does not reflect a response to recent loss of summer sea ice. The new population estimates for Baffin Bay and Kane Basin also suggests that a revision needs to be made to the 2015 IUCN Red List assessment with respect to the global population estimate because polar bears are clearly more abundant in Baffin Bay and Kane Basin than previously thought.
The new BB and KB subpopulation estimates should increase the 2015 global population size estimate issued in 2015 by the IUCN Red List from 22,000-31,000 to 22,633-32,257 which would likely be rounded off to 22,500-32,000. But wait! That estimate does not include a reported 42% increase in the Svalbard portion of the Barents Sea subpopulation in late 2015 (975 bears counted, up 290 over the 2004 count of 685) that was not included in the Red List assessment of 2644 (95% CI: 1,899 – 3,592) based on 2004 data. Therefore, when the Svalbard increase and the Baffin Bay/Kane Basin increases are all added to the 2015 Red List estimate, it might give a revised 2015 global estimate of something like 23,000-33,000 depending on how all the results are interpreted.
Given that these three surveys were known to have been completed (or were planned to be done) at the time the latest Red List assessment was being compiled, it seems very odd it was not simply postponed until the new data could be included. But perhaps an update will be forthcoming before the next formal assessment takes place.
A polar bear in the summer of 2012 near Thule, NW Greenland (part of the Baffin Bay subpopulation). Note the decidedly chubby back end on this bear, who looks well prepared for winter. Photo by Robin Davies. [details at my Quote Archive, Featured Quote #6]
The entire 2016 SWG [Scientific Working Group to the Canada-Greenland Joint Commission on Polar Bear] report on the Baffin Bay/Kane Basin study is >600 pages and is available broken into smaller pdf parts, which are available from the Government of Nunavut website here.The citation is listed in the References below.
The report Summary is a separate stand-alone file, with discrete pagination, see the pdf here. I may have more to say about this in a few days but for now, the status change and population size estimates are the most noteworthy.
Summary, pg. 13-14 [Kane Basin subpopulation size & status] – my bold:
“The estimated abundance of the KB subpopulation was 357 polar bears (95% CI: 221 – 493) for 2013 – 2014. A re-calculation of the 1990s data provided an estimate of 224 bears (95% CI: 145 – 303) for the period 1995 – 1997. Based on physical MR, the size of the KB subpopulation was previously estimated to be 164 polar bears (95% CI: 94-234) for 1994-1997 (noting that this estimate applies to different years than our re-analysis; Taylor et al. 2008).
…
Based on a randomization procedure that assumed normal sampling distributions for abundance estimates, the mean difference between the estimate of KB abundance for 2013-2014 and the estimate for 1995-1997 was approximately 133 bears (standard deviation of the difference ≈ 80 bears), with 95% of the sampling distribution suggesting that population change between the two time periods could have been positive. This suggests relatively strong evidence for a stable to increasing subpopulation, and is consistent with data on movements, condition and reproduction.
These changes suggest the subpopulation is currently healthy and stable.
…
We documented a reduction in mortality associated with harvest, likely attributable to implementation of Greenland’s harvest quota in 2006.”
Summary, pg. 21 [Baffin Bay subpopulation size & status] – my bold:
“The genetic mark-recapture assessment of the BB subpopulation resulted in a mean estimate (2012-2013) of total abundance of 2,826 polar bears (95% CI = 2,059-3,593). Due to several limitations of the available data, discussed in detail in this report, the estimates of abundance for the 1990s and 2000s are not directly comparable. Therefore, it is not possible to draw firm conclusions about trends in the abundance of the BB subpopulation. Nevertheless, the study has demonstrated the presence of a subpopulation in Baffin Bay considerably larger than that inferred from previous modeling (1,546 bears cf. PBSG 2015); the results of which formed part of the basis for the PBSG’s (2015) designation of BB as a declining subpopulation. TEK information has not indicated any marked decline in the BB subpopulation (e.g. Dowsley and Taylor 2006, Born et al. 2011).”
Save
Crockford, S.J. 2017. Testing the hypothesis that routine sea ice coverage of 3-5 mkm2 results in a greater than 30% decline in population size of polar bears (Ursus maritimus). PeerJ Preprints 19 January 2017. Doi: 10.7287/peerj.preprints.2737v1 Open access. http://ift.tt/2jB2S8i
SWG [Scientific Working Group to the Canada-Greenland Joint Commission on Polar Bear]. 2016. Re-Assessment of the Baffin Bay and Kane Basin Polar Bear Subpopulations: Final Report to the Canada-Greenland Joint Commission on Polar Bear. +636 pp. http://ift.tt/2lTHatD9
York, J., Dowsley, M., Cornwell, A., Kuc, M. and Taylor, M. 2016. Demographic and traditional knowledge perspectives on the current status of Canadian polar bear subpopulations. Ecology and Evolution 6(9):2897-2924. DOI: 10.1002/ece3.2030
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February 15, 2017 at 04:00PM
Iowa Climate Science Education 