CFACT has a great page devoted to the myriad environmental problems—including the threat to the endangered North Atlantic Right Whale (NARW)—with the push for offshore wind along the East Coast. These turbines are being erected right in the middle of protected marine mammals’ habitat and migration routes. In the rush to erect these turbines quickly, the biden regime played fast and loose with the rules, required reporting, and permitting, and, in particular, failed to follow the law and proper procedures in accounting for potential comprehensive, cumulative whale impacts. Mind you, for all the damage these offshore turbines will do to a variety of marine mammals and the ocean ecosystem, they will have a minimal, if any, effect on reducing CO2 emissions.
Scotland(1) is an interesting case study on technologies rushed into service to fight climate change that are, in fact, likely to be causing ancillary problems while resulting in increased CO2 emissions. Scotland had pitted one climate solution against another by cutting down nearly 16 million trees—you know. those carbon sinks that everyone, including wildlife, loves—to make way for wind turbines. In case one is wondering, despite promises to do so, there is no evidence any trees have been replanted elsewhere, as the government and the company promised would take place. To make matters worse, the turbines erected are disintegrating quickly, scattering tons of microplastics across the Scottish countryside in the process. As the Scottish Daily Express revealed , the edges and tips of the turbine blades are shredding during operation, resulting in small particles and larger chunks of composite waste littering the countryside and possibly fouling the waters with various chemicals. A single turbine can drop up to 62 kilos of microplastics annually and Scotland has 19,000 turbines. Do the math. Sweden has also found that turbines there are shedding microplastics. 1 of Sweden’s largest industrial wind facilities, reporting that its turbines were shedding microplastics at an alarming rate, polluting the surrounding land and waters with more than 50 different chemicals released as the composite materials erode and break down.
And ironically, even though a Scottish government commission specifically found that wood burning stoves actually emit less CO2 than the alternatives pushed by the government--locally sourced timber has the lowest emissions profile for alternative heating sources, and is renewable--the left-wing elites ban the stoves.
1. Scotland has decided to back off its timeline for making interim progress toward its self-established greenhouse gas emission reduction goal of cutting emissions 75% by 2030. Ministers have missed eight of the last 12 annual targets and have been told that reaching the 75% milestone by the end of the decade is unachievable.
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