Bats: Cats, windmills and other hazards

The ignorance of many people who spew forth right-wing scripts they assimilate from their fearless oil-company-executive-trained leaders' rants on any form of energy that they cannot control is downright scary. The current debate on the "horrific mind-numbing impacts" of wind power on the environment is a good example. Bats and birds are reportedly being "killed off in horrific numbers by the huge whirling, deady, razor sharp blades of these monstrous machines." In their lemming-like scurrying to the cliff, these sheep-people seem to avoid the obvious fact that human activity will have some impact on the environment regardless of what we do, and most improvements are not perfect. The media-hyped reporter's foray of the scientist from Berkeley who's study found that ethanol puts slightly more ozone in the atmosphere than gasoline is a good example of the spread of fear, uncertanty and doubt. This report conveniently fails to mention that ethanol is carbon neutral and puts less particulate matter into the air than petro-fuels and helps us avoid dependence on energy from parts of the world where we are now not welcome.

There are studies that will show the harm that other types of electrical power generation have on birds and bats; and those that show how much of an improvement windmills are to our environment by lowering the overall impact we have as a result of their use. These are ignored. Simply showing the pros and cons of windmills is far to narrow and not a complete enough picture. For example how do the emissions of coal fired power plants effect bats, and people? How do salmon and bats connect in the web of life? (this we have already studied extensively - salmon have an enormous impact on the forest ecosystem and hydroelectric power generation has not helped them) How many bats are killed each year by coal mining operations? When we flood another valley, like the Hetch Hetchy was flooded (now used for water supply) in the early 20th century without consideration for the destruction it caused, or build a dam like the Elwa dam in Washington state (now being removed) for a power generation utility, how many bats will be killed? Where do bats live? In open fields on windy slopes (with the windmills) where there are no insects for them to eat? In the studies, where bats are attracted by the ultrasonic and electromagnetic emissions of wind turbines do those involved in the study import the bats to the location to "see" if they will seek out the windmills? When all of this is taken into consideration, the viability of windmills can be shown to be far greater than what the skeptics would have people believe.