“Dirty Oil” — Duck Images

March 9, 2010 by Walter Schneider.

For some time now, the media reported on the case of the ducks who died at a Syncrude tailings pond, near Fort McMurray, in Northern Alberta.  First it was claimed that about 500 ducks had been killed.  That claim was later revised upward to 1,600 ducks in the incident or incidents.

The front page of the March 9, 2010 issue of the Edmonton Journal carried an article that reported Alberta Premier Ed Stelmach as stating that he had not seen the images of the ducks coated with bitumen at the Syncrude tailings pond, quite properly casting some doubt on Ed Stelmach’s claim that he had not seen those all-pervasive images.

The insinuation by the article in the increasingly liberal Edmonton Journal was that the pro-industry Alberta Government’s premier is in open denial of the truth, namely that the oil industry is deadly to the environment and specifically has little regard for the death toll it imposes on Alberta wildlife.

The deaths of 1,600 ducks appears to be a red herring dragged out to draw attention away from the death toll inflicted by “environment-friendly” alternative sources of energy, particularly wind power.

No doubt, environmentalist are ready and eager to crucify Ed Stelmach for daring to — either deliberately or inadvertently — belittle the deaths of the ducks in Fort McMurray.  The goal of the environmentalists’ exercise has been achieved.  Ed Stelmach’s denial is evidence of the Alberta Government’s program to insert “dirty oil” into the world market for oil production.

The deaths of the 1,600 ducks in the Syncrude tailings pond needs to be put into perspective.  The Alberta Government is an ardent promoter of alternative energy in the form of wind power, even though wind-power production cannot be justified economically and can be kept alive only through massive taxpayer-funded subsidies.

However, with respect to the impact of wind power on the lives of birds, the simple truth is that wind power is at least thousands of times more deadly to the lives of birds than the Fort McMurray tailings ponds could ever be feared to be.

 “Bernd Koop, based on monitoring studies conducted in Holland by Winkelman, estimated there would be 60,000 to 100,000 bird collisions per 1,000 megawatt installed capacity in his country - annually (13) . . ..Applying his estimate to Germany´s 17,000 MW, we obtain: 1,020,000 to 1,700,000 bird collisions per annum. And the closer we are getting to territorial saturation, the lower the chances for migrating birds to find safe routes through the maze, especially if we add the deadly power lines.

Already, birds in Germany die in great numbers from collisions with 70,000 km of high-tension lines that criss-cross the country - 30 million birds per year is an extrapolation found in Hoerschelmann, Haack & Wohlgemuth, based on a study along 4.5 km of high tension lines - electrocutions excluded (14). - As windfarms need more power lines, this mortality will increase as well; there is already evidence of this : Windfarms - the bird massacre continues. (Please follow this link, photos must be seen; author.)

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Source:
Wildlife Conservation Examiner

Deadly blades; death toll mounts as wind farms massacre birds of prey
August 7, 8:52 PM; by Cathy Taibbi

Not that anyone should downplay the unfortunate deaths of the ducks at Fort McMurray, but if we wish to measure the impact of energy sources on wildlife, let’s do justice to all sources of energy.  By objective measures, wind power is far more deadly to wildlife than the Syncrude tailings ponds are.

At least Syncrude is trying to do something, and largely successfully, about protecting ducks and other migratory birds, while most environmentalists who harp on Alberta’s “dirty oil” are totally silent about the massive deadliness and excessive costs of wind power.

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