Dave “Whale Killer” Watters ended up having his meeting yesterday despite the lack of a quorum and took time to listen to the peasants’ objections to offshore wind projects off the coast of New Hampshire. One participant noted how disrespectful Whale Killer Watters was to the rabble’s concerns.
That’s a lot of video; I’ve not sifted it yet. Time has been at a premium for the past several days (no comment of the week if you’d not noticed). If the crowd has time to source examples, send me time stamps, and we’ll see about pulling those out for display purposes – and not just clips of Watters being a weenie. Good questions with bad or no answers are good, too.
There is an obvious disdain for suggesting that these leases not get done. The project is being fast-tracked. They want to get out there and kill some whales, and on that point – here’s Robert Bryce – (author, filmmaker, public speaker, and energy sector observer) – with some unpleasant observations.
Related: Of Course Offshore Wind is a Bigger Threat to Right Whales than Lobster Fisherman
Why are they developing offshore wind infrastructure on top of endangered Right whale habitat?
The U.S. Wants To Put Hundreds Of Wind Turbines In North Atlantic Right Whale Habitat. This Map Proves It. #rightwhale #us #newyork #alternativeenergy #greenenergy #windturbine #wind #solar #climate #climatechange #endangered pic.twitter.com/1xRE3fwyZV
— Robert Bryce (@pwrhungry) April 25, 2024
You might recall a California pressure group called Seafood Watch and its smear on Maine Lobster fishermen. They were endangering right whales, they said. They banned their lobsters, and they did. But we don’t eat whales, so Seafood Watch isn’t watching right whales when it comes to wind. Neither is Greenpeace, which actively promotes offshore wind. They have a page to stop commercial whaling, and they oppose offshore drilling/mining ‘cuz whales, but wind? Nothing.
A Group Called Save the Whales issued a 78-page report as part of public comment for an East Coast wind project that challenged many of the assumptions about offshore wind and included concerns about harm to the endangered right whale.
- The findings of federal scientists at NOAA-Fisheries (National Marine Fisheries Service) were that the project represented a threat to the continued existence of the North Atlantic Right Whale. The agency wrote a letter in May of 2022 to BOEM recommending, for harm mitigation, a buffer zone bounded on the east by the depth line where the Nantucket shoals depth measures 30 m and extending southwest for 20 km (12 mi). There was a big exposé by Bloomberg News in November of 2022 that BOEM was not heeding the federal government’s own scientists at NOAA-Fisheries. The Mayflower DEIS reveals that BOEM ruled out doing this because it considers the power purchase agreement to have irretrievably committed whatever portion of the lease area is necessary for power production outlined in the agreement, which was formed in 2020, three years before conclusion of the environmental inquiry as to the project’s effects. This means the decision as to whether to commit ocean resources to any specific purpose is being made ahead of the environmental review which examines what the environmental consequences will be. This runs counter to the intent of the environmental law.
That seems to parallel the experience here in New Hampshire regarding BOEM and the alleged tri-state offshore wind commission upon which Dave ‘Whale Killer’ Watters so proudly sits.
Of course, whales are not the only issue. Despite the massive growth of wind generating capacity in the US, electricity generated by the infrastructure declined last year.
But what happens when you build massive amounts of wind energy capacity and it doesn’t deliver — not for a day or a week, but for six months, or even an entire year? That question is germane because, on Wednesday, the Energy Information Administration published a report showing that U.S. wind energy production declined by 2.1% last year. Even more shocking: that decline occurred even though the wind sector added 6.2 GW of new capacity!
A hat tip to fellow Substack writer Roger Pielke Jr., who pithily noted on Twitter yesterday, “Imagine if the U.S. built 6.2 GW new capacity in nuclear power plants and after starting them up, overall U.S. electricity generation went down. That’d be a problem, right?”
Something about weather-dependent intermittent energy capacity … blah, blah, but don’t you dare point it out, or you are just being political. Damn right (whale!) I am because nothing about this is NOT POLITICAL. It is all political, and we know that because if it were not, more environmental groups (who have become cutouts and proxies for the Federal wind and solar agenda) would be up in arms.
A much younger Jeanne Shaheen proudly protested the construction of the Seabrook Nuclear power plant to protect the environment, including sea life. I’m unsure if she’s raised a drawn-on eyebrow regarding the rise in whale deaths following the rapid expansion of offshore wind along the East Coast. Not even one blue-ribbon committee.
