Message-ID: <199504221710.KAA27296@cdp.igc.apc.org> Date: Sat, 22 Apr 1995 10:10:50 -0700 From: Raleigh Myers <mailto:ramyers@IGC.APC.ORG> Subject: Re: Gipe's New Wind Book To: Multiple recipients of list DEVEL-L
Re. Tom Gray's article on P.Gipe's new windmill manual where he mentioned his articles dealing with windmill bird kills.
STONED BIRDS TILT WINDMILLS
I have also seen the articles about bird kills on the AE list and elsewhere and I believe the criticism is basically a reactionary exaggeration by a right wing owned media rather than an environmental campaign against windpower. Organized money's fossil fuel, the biocide dependent agriculture, and the central electric utility industry kills far more wildlife than any other entity on earth other than the cattle industry ie. Especially when you include the disease cause by the meat diet and the enormous displacement of humanity because of the land(five acres per citizen) it takes to sustain the methane belching beasts. For the wind industry to roll over in the wake of these distortions is ludicrous. To start with, the electric transmission lines kill thousands of birds a year but goes unnoticed because of all the no trespassing signs along the thousands of miles of ugly towers and buzzing and sparking wires. Large birds like eagles(buzzards) get zapped on a regular basis and it is covered up by the twenty three corporations that own the media but the windmill smokescreen seem to get out somehow. Unfortunately the windmill people can't say anything to nullify this because they have to coexist with the electric grid who they are tying to sell windmills to. A real good reason for the wind industry to begin gearing up for the Hydrogen economy ie. a windfarm outside of town producing for the Hydrogen town gas grid. The dioxin from the PCBs from the transformers as well as the 24D and 245T (agent orange) used to control the vegetation along the rights of ways for the transmission lines have perhaps genetically destroyed more wildlife for generations to come than all the windmills have attracted since the beginning of time. The generating plants themselves are spewing soot concealing a raft of pollution, acid rain, dioxin and even radiation which is not only altering wildlife genetically, it is rendering their habitat useless. Acid rain from fossil fuel generating plants has killed the entire populations of fish in lakes and reservoirs down wind to say nothing of the genetic re- engineering of the rest of the wildlife from the dioxin and other chemicals. The dead forests caused by the acid rain altering the pH of the soil in turn is contributing to co2 build up in the atmosphere coupled with the alien chemical skyfill scenario brings up the second hand smoke liability question which is as serious as the asbestos fiasco and the tobacco kill in the preventable insult department. Domino litigation the latest citizen tool is coming of age especially if you include the planet as wild life ie. upsetting mother nature in general. This clever emotional campaign of windmills killing eagles, a form of buzzard which happens to be on the dollar bill(some even call it the mark of the beast), is insidious when examined more objectively. Fossil fuel which will lose revenues with wind has an even more destructive role in the extinction of species than the electric industry (owned by the same stockholders-organized money) which it sells it's fuel to. The millions of tons of pollutants from the transportation boondoggle is probably the most visible fossil fuel pollution as far as the general public is concerned. Auto emissions have the effect of reaking havoc directly on the global population who have cars and use fossil fuel as well as those who don't. The second hand smoke and formedahyde from car exhaust is a direct contributor to our equal opportunity health care costs. In other words the heavily lobbied use of fossil fuel in transportation is benefiting the same group of stockholders(organized money) who also own the tobacco companies as well as the recently privatized health care system. If you think that is far fetched you need to get some minutes from the competitive counsel chaired by the bird man d quail(pun intended) the friend of all creatures great and small. Oh and by the way theeeer baaack in the form of the contract "ON " America, health, environment, the unborn and the planet in general. The fossil fuel refineries, tank farms, chemical plants, strip mines, uranium mines have laid waste thousands of square miles of land. The nuclear industry alone has already wasted more wildlife and rendered useless more land than the two world wars by their fuel extraction and blowouts. But the real danger is that every nuclear power plant is a potential nuclear bomb(neutron bomb chases out the people saves the real estate). The fact that it can be sabotaged or detonated somehow to release radiation at the behest of a blackmailing power is overlooked. Fertilizer bombs pale by comparison. So in closing I am defending the wind industry based not only on my personal experience as an infrastructure contractor and consultant but on a windmill farm near me in Princeton Mass. I have to report that I have never seen any dead birds in or around any of the fenced in areas not even feathers. I have visited these machines regularly for a number of years now on my jogging run. But I have seen dead birds along utility lines, squirrels are continually being zapped right in town, transportation has given us the roadkill, birds(buzzards included) fly into buildings and hit aircraft on a regular basis which makes the "almost" normal collision of birds with almost anything just that, birds hitting things. The chemical soup they have to breath doesn't help either. So if we cleaned up the air by using renewable energy sources the birds wouldn't be flying around stoned tilting windmills. When the canary started acting funny in the bottom of a mineshaft every body evacuated. But where do we go? I think it is time to start quizzing the Limbaugh lobotomites(COA junkies) about these things.
In Solidarity
Raleigh RALEIGH MYERS GEER.........................FOLKSAY(people say) RA ENERGY FDN.............THIS LAND IS YOUR LAND, THIS LAND IS MY LAND INTERNET...................................The Global Village anthem mailto:ramyers@igc.pc.org..............sung by those who already voted
THE DAWNING OF THE AGE OF AQUARIUS ..is the reality at hand The children of the universe, the right to be here generation ie. the meek taking their prophetic inheritance out of probate is not a conspiracy.