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School Daze and Tilting at Windmills
My introduction to windmills dates back to my senior year in a boy’s Catholic high school. About two weeks before the fall semester begins the school bookstore would be opened and you purchased your textbooks. For Literature class two books, Don Quixote and Crime and Punishment, were on the list.
Above the stack of books was a note stating that we were to read the first 100 pages of Don Quixote before the first day of class to be prepared for lecture and discussion on the first day of class.
Catholic schools are expensive, and our teachers felt obligated to the parents that were paying the bills unlike some schools today that are dismissive of parents having any involvement in what goes on in a classroom. The annual tour of the school library was the only moment I remember that required no challenges to our intellect, or our work ethic.
Our librarian was one of two women on campus. The other was the school secretary. Our librarian was a nice person, but she would open up a book, place her nose in the book and take a deep breath. She would say that she even loved the odor of a book. We knew better than to laugh. If we mocked her that would mean a trip to the Dean of Discipline’s Office. Detention was not going to be an hour or two of goofing around with our fellow miscreants. Detention meant an hour or so of forced labor cleaning up the campus.
Detention could be more than just one day. I suppose if one was sentenced to seven days of detention, by the way there was no trial, they could ask to be addressed as Foreman.
We saved our comedic talents for the next class. As the brother walked into the room, we all had our noses pressed into our books taking deep breaths and exclaiming that we loved the “odor” of books. He looked around the room with a wry smile and said, I see you enjoyed the library tour, now let’s get to work.
On a more serious note, I was reading a CJ Box story involving the fictional Joe Pickett, a Wyoming Game Warden. The story involved a massive wind turbine project in Wyoming titled “The Disappeared”. Mentioned in the story is the Government permit that allows wind farms to kill birds including eagles. I did a little research and it’s true.
On January 17, 2017, the number of bald eagles that can be killed by wind farm permit holders will increase from the current legal number of 1,100 to 4,200—almost a quadrupling. The Fish and Wildlife Service is issuing new 30-year permits that allow the additional eagles to be killed or injured without prosecution under the Bald and Golden Eagle Protection Act. The fee for a long-term permit is $36,000. A permitted facility that exceeds its authorized eagle kill limit will not be fined or criminally prosecuted, although it could be “subject to an enforcement action at any time for unpermitted prior take of eagles.” Under the previous rule, the permits were for a five-year term.
The new permits will be reviewed every five years by an independent third party. Companies are required to submit reports of how many eagles they kill. Currently, companies report killed or injured eagles on a voluntary basis to the Interior Department, which does not release the information.
This does not count other raptors, birds, or bats that wind turbines kill. I’m not sure how you get an accurate count for any bird kills. There are estimates that between 500,000 and 700,000 birds are killed by wind turbines every year. Eco-friendly appears to be subjective.
Just some random musings on a Sunday morning.
Published in Energy
Anything to meet their woke agenda. It makes me ill.
Here’s an interesting article explaining why wind turbines kill so many raptors.
That’s a fascinating take. Too often, we don’t really know what the heck we’re doing, and the long-term repercussions are probably endless.
I really prefer Raptors & Migratory Birds to windmills. Nuclear is the cleanest power, followed by natural gas. Hydro messes with wetlands & fish environments. Solar covers farmland with toxic waste. CO2 is a nutrient that plants need.
It really is amazing that we’ve learned to think of the stuff plants breathe as bad–while calling ourselves green.
Please provide a link to the information about wind farm permits to kill eagles.
Link
Thanks!
Eagles have been making a comeback in Illinois for years, along the Mississippi and Illinois Rivers.
The picture of these guys in that tree was taken three winters ago about six miles from here (as the eagle flies).
The wind farms are all around too, though not any in the immediate vicinity.
Nevertheless, the turbines do kill eagles.
Ha! I did the same thing after I read that book. It just made me hate the unelected bureaucrats even more.
Echo-friendly.
Here is another slant on birds and wind farms.
https://skeptoid.com/episodes/4709