At least 178 humpback whales have died between the coasts of Maine and Florida since 2016. Half of those whales have been necropsied, with 40 percent of those showing evidence that the animal was struck by a vessel or entangled in fishing gear. NOAA found similar evidence for at least 15 right whales during that same timespan. Shipping traffic in the Atlantic Ocean has also jumped 34 percent over the last five years, a 2022 study found.
Some 23 dead whales have washed ashore along the East Coast since early December, including a dozen in New Jersey and New York, where several offshore wind projects are moving forward in different stages of development. That has led some people, including Republican Rep. Jeff Van Drew of New Jersey, to blame those deaths on the projects, despite the vast majority of them still being sited and planned by developers that have yet to begin construction.
This is another inflection point in American energy policy.
The actual bill is non-story. But the Republican pivot to concern-trolling against domestic energy production is interesting. Lightheaded memes on the internet have perchlorated up to the policymakers.
Expect their rhetoric to get very desperate and pathetic as the world changes.
Capital investments in renewables have also increased significantly and are set to reach $494 billion in 2022, outstripping upstream oil and gas at $446 billion for the year, according to Rystad Energy research. This is the first time that investment in renewables is set to be higher than for oil and gas.
The damage to whales have to be substantiated before action can be taken? I thought environmental impact studies were supposed to be performed before major changes like this took place.
Anybody remember the concern over the possible impact on the snail darter? Now to heck with the whales. Whoever wanted to save them ,anyway?
As to future energy, we will need more of that from whatever source. How much of that more being spent on renewable energy than oil and gas is due to reduced spending on oil and gas while going begging to Venezuela and Saudi Arabia?
But it is perfectly fine to want to severely limit the lobster industry because of rumored dead whales. Something that has actually been studied and proven false.
I remember that stupid snail darter well. They stopping working on a nearly done dam in TN because the lefty environmentalists sued and had a hissy fit over snail darters.
Never did finish the dam.
Back to plentiful fossil fuels instead of ruining our land with wind mills and solar panels.
That is some nice biased and selective reporting right there. And a dog-whistle knee-jerk reaction to it!
Just a few weeks ago we were discussing NJ pols calling for a moratorium on offshore turbines because of whales.
NJ pols.
Ripe, plump, juicy lib NJ pols.
But oh, now “Inside Climate News” focuses on Republicans who follow suit. And look! Here is a sample tweet!
We already ignore the substantiated, documented fact that eagles and other protected birds are getting whacked by land based turbines. You’d think greenies would care about those, but apparently not. So let’s just hand-wave off the whales too. That’s what they did when the NJ pols tried to raise the concern. Now that some GOPs are joining the call to investigate, it’s a great distraction boogeyman!
Im not an advocate of bans but I also dont like to see whales being killed, perhaps a partial ban where whales are, do they come into the Gulf of Mexico?
Please enlighten all of us about the technology that allows the offshore wind turbines to be held suspended in the air, above the ocean surface, along with the transmission lines to connect the turbines to the on shore power grid. Can’t wait to hear about how this is being accomplished.
There’s a silly concept out there regarding blimp style wind turbines being suspended in altitudes with laminar winds. Looks cute in a cartoon (Big Hero 6) at least. Of course, the leftards who surely made that movie also envisioned a Chinese-speaking United States in the future.
I would imagine that the electro-magnetic fields generated by the transmission cables, running from the turbines, down to the base and then along the sea floor to the shore transformer station where they tie into the grid, are causing all sorts of unexpected interactions with the sea life near these off shore turbine fields.
What about the subsea electro control umbilicals we use to control subsea X trees and other subsea oil and gas infrastructure in the GOM. Worried about them as well?
