Wind power threatens rare Texas prairie bird

[XemaSab]

One of the most interesting and endearing sights on the Texas prairie is the Lesser Prairie-Chicken. During mating season, males strut and dance, puff up orange air sacks on their necks, and raise horn-like feathers. Maybe you've never heard of the Lesser Prairie-Chicken but the odds are you will.

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"A listing is going to absolutely change the playing field," says biologist Heather Whitlaw. The US Department of Fish and Wildlife created her job to solve the Prairie-Chicken dilemma before it's too late - if it's not already too late.

The Texas Department of Parks and Wildlife framed the Lesser Prairie-Chicken on a wanted poster on its website. Wanted alive, that is. The caption reads, "Have you seen this bird?" The bird even got its own website recently: lesserprairiechicken.org.

"Chickens hide because lots of things like to eat them," says state biologist, Sean Kyle, as we pick our way through prairie grass on a vast preserve near Lubbock. Kyle counts Prairie-Chickens or tries to. There used to be millions. Now experts fear there may be no more than 30,000 left in the whole country world.

http://www.wfaa.com/green/news/prairie-chicken-problem-109317584.html

[jpak]

1. Yeah - like all those Texas oil and gas wells and pipelines don't bother them

or subdivisions

or malls

or new power lines from new nuclear plants.

[NNadir]

2. Undoubtedly oil and gas pipelines are bad things.

However, I would make the case that anyone who hypes the essentially useless and failed wind industry can by definition, have no problem with oil and gas lines, since the wind industry is totally dependent on oil and gas fueled spinning reserve.

If one attempts to use coal as spinning reserve, one must burn coal continuously, since their are huge thermodynamic and time losses to letting a boiler cool.

[jpak]

3. Failed wind industry? Please show us the numbers:global installed capacity and annual growth

and show us how it has *failed*

(((((ambien))))

[Sal Minella]

4. He don't have to show you nothing.

.
He says things.
You spoze to believe them.
That's how it works.
:)

[NNadir]

6. Sure. My pleasure, although I'm not optimistic about an anti-nuke comprehending something...

...called "numbers."

I've done this lots of times, by the way, usually meeting tremendous bursts of denial from the anti-science, anti-nuke faction.

Wind energy, worldwide, produced, as of 2008, http://tonto.eia.gov/cfapps/ipdbproject/iedindex3.cfm?tid=2&pid=37&aid=12&cid=&syid=1980&eyid=2008&unit=QBTU">2.189 exajoules (2.075 quads) of energy on the entire planet. Note that without regressive taxes on the poor, it wouldn't even produce that, since it is totally driven by subsidy and requires inherent redundancy from, um, dangerous natural gas plants.

By contrast, a single nuclear power plant at Gravelines, has produced in its lifetime - in a land area that is easily contained in a single photograph - http://www.dailykos.com/story/2010/11/9/224519/362">3.6 exajoules of energy.

Also by contrast, the dangerous natural gas industry, which amortizes its waste problem by simply dumping the waste in Earth's atmosphere, produces http://www.eia.gov/cfapps/ipdbproject/iedindex3.cfm?tid=3&pid=26&aid=2&cid=&syid=1980&eyid=2009&unit=QBTU">117 exajoules (111 quads) of energy on this planet.

The entire wind industry does not even equal the growth of dangerous natural gas in the last decade, although the mindless often come here to announce that wind is an alternative to wind.

Two exajoules after 50 years of mindless cheering?

Humanity consumes 500 exajoules of energy per year. There are zero nations that have announced plans to expand wind capacity by a factor of 250, although China has just announced a plan to match world nuclear energy capacity in 40 years, to exceed French and Japanese nuclear capacity in 10 years, and US nuclear capacity in 20 years. They've funded it too, with an announced budget of 120 billion dollars over the next five years.

They are clearly planning to phase out their coal disaster.

Most tellingly there are zero countries on this planet that rely for more than 50% of their electricity for wind power. In fact, every country on the planet with a large wind capacity is drilling for oil and gas, building new gas electricity plants, or building new massive pipelines for gas.

I define "success" as the ability to eliminate dangerous fossil fuels. I have never met an anti-nuke anywhere who calls for the immediate phase out of dangerous fossil fuels. On the contrary, most of them end up talking "clean coal" or "clean natural gas."

If you have any information showing that a wind dependent country exists and is planning to phase out dangerous natural gas, we'd love to hear about it.

Have a swell "Picken's plan" kind of evening.

[jpak]

7. Ummm...here are the real numbers- and they do not describe "failed"

:rofl:

[joshcryer]

8. Erm, that doesn't disagree with his statement.

Neither does this.

[jpak]

5. ...and nuclear power plants do not require fossil-fired spinning reserve??

what do you think prevents the grid from going down when a nuclear power plant has an "unscheduled outage" - like they do all the time?