Thanks to strong opposition by Mainers and State Representative Regan Paul, the plan to install gigantic floating wind turbines off Maine’s beautiful coast will not be moving forward.
In addition to adverse environmental impacts such as harm to wildlife and the threat to recreational and commercial fishing opportunities, the project would also have resulted in significantly higher utility bills for customers.
“The federal government turned down Maine’s request for a $456 million grant that would cover most of the cost of building an offshore wind port on Sears Island, officials confirmed Tuesday.
The Maine Department of Transportation had applied in May for $456 million from a competitive federal fund focused on multimodal transportation. Following protests from environmentalists, tribes and Republicans, the state picked Sears Island over nearby Mack Point in Searsport earlier this year for the staging area of the wind port and said the project will cost $760 million.” Source
October 11, 2023 | Image source | Where are the environmentalists?
Federal regulators at the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) have designated over 15,000 square miles, or almost 10 million acres of our oceans for wind farm development. Sonar, acoustic sounding, and other destructive activities involved with wind turbine operations and surveying are destroying marine life and must be immediately halted.
The fishing industry is fighting to protect ocean life and maintain their ability to provide food security for the American people.
Sign the petitionHERE and tell lawmakers and regulators – it’s time for a moratorium on offshore wind.
A sobering report released by New England Fisherman Stewardship Association summarizing research on offshore wind projects found that “electromagnetic fields (EMFs) emanating from subsea cables appear to produce birth deformities in juvenile lobster.” That’s only the beginning.
According to the report, wind turbines “generate operational noise in a low frequency range (less than 700 Hz) with most energy concentrated between 2 and 200 Hz. This frequency range overlaps with that used by fish for communication, mating, spawning, and spatial movement.”
If you want to know just how far the environmentalist movement has fallen in recent years, the destruction of marine life off the coast of Massachusetts in 2023 provides a disgraceful example. Greenpeace, an organization that not only led the earliest vanguard of the modern environmental movement, but was specifically formed to save the world’s whales, is actively denying what is likely the most egregious massacre of whales by Americans in more than a century.
Greenpeace is not alone. This shameful demonstration of mass deceit is on full display by all the organizations that supposedly exist to protect wilderness and wildlife, along with the media that marches in lockstep with their every whim. Continue Reading
“These rolling walls of noise are no doubt too much for some marine wildlife. While little is known about any direct physiological effects of sonar waves on marine species, evidence shows that whales will swim hundreds of miles, rapidly change their depth (sometime leading to bleeding from the eyes and ears), and even beach themselves to get away from the sounds of sonar.”
August 9, 2023 | Image source | Four US Navy destroyers responded to 11 Chinese and Russian ships operating near Alaska.
Chinese and Russian ships were reported to be operating in international waters near Alaska this week as geopolitical tensions have increased.
The failure of Congress and the Biden administration to engage in diplomatic negotiations and instead increase finance and support for Zelensky’s quagmire, is creating harsh consequences for American economic and national security interests at home.
Additionally, wildfires in Hawaii and open border policies are urgent matters of national security that must be prioritized and addressed instead of funding endless war in Ukraine.
August 6, 2023 | Image source |’The current level of marine mammal mortality is unacceptable.’
50 Mayors from east coast states of New Jersey, Maryland and Delaware sent a letter to the U.S. Congress demanding an immediate moratorium on offshore wind activity in response to unprecedented deaths of whales, dolphins and other marine life.
The letter states, “As dozens of whales and dolphins continue to wash onto our beaches, the 50 undersigned East Coast mayors demand an immediate moratorium on all offshore wind activity until the connection between offshore wind activity and marine mammal mortality occurring on our shorelines is thoroughly investigated…The current level of marine mammal mortality is unacceptable, and we need answers.”
Harm to whales and ocean life from sonar and technology associated with windfarms is well documented:
“These rolling walls of noise are no doubt too much for some marine wildlife. While little is known about any direct physiological effects of sonar waves on marine species, evidence shows that whales will swim hundreds of miles, rapidly change their depth (sometime leading to bleeding from the eyes and ears), and even beach themselves to get away from the sounds of sonar.”
The tide has turned for Maine’s lobster industry after a federal judge ruled that data used by NOAA regarding the fishery’s impact on North Atlantic right whale deaths was flawed.
The Maine Lobstermen’s Association stated that the analysis provided by NOAA: “did not rely on the best available scientific information, made erroneous and arbitrary assumptions unsupported and contradicted by data and evidence, relied on an outdated and flawed methodology to model projections of the North Atlantic right whale population, and inexplicably failed to account for either the positive impact of mitigation measures already or soon-to-be employed by the Maine lobster fishery.”
Maine is the largest lobster-producing state in the nation, contributing over $1 BILLION to the local economy, harvesting over 100 MILLION pounds of lobster a year, and employing more than 5,600 lobstermen.
“In this case, we decide whether, in a biological opinion, the Service must, or even may, when faced with uncertainty, give the “benefit of the doubt” to an endangered species by relying upon worst-case scenarios or pessimistic assumptions. We hold it may not.”
-U.S. Court of Appeals D.C. Circuit Judge Douglas Ginsburg
A report titled, “Conflicts of Interest: Environmental Organizations Take Offshore Wind Industry Money,” has revealed that environmental groups such as National Wildlife Federation, Sierra Club, and Audubon Society accept millions of dollars in donations from the offshore wind industry.
The letter states, “When offshore wind companies donate to environmental groups, they often frame their donations as a way to mitigate the impacts of their projects by funding conservation research. But such research may be mere tokenism that serves to distract from the immediate risks of the proposed project.”
The existence of North Atlantic Right Whales is being threatened by destruction of their habitat by the offshore wind farm industry. Harm to whales and ocean life from sonar and technology associated with windfarms is well documented:
March 26,2023 |We need a moratorium on all offshore wind projects | Image Source
In response to the grave threat to ocean life as dolphins and whales continue washing up on the eastern shore, federal lawmakers are calling for a halt to offshore wind farms.
Led by New Jersey Representative Jeff Van Drew, Reps. Chris Smith of New Jersey, Andy Harris of Maryland, Scott Perry of Pennsylvania and Anthony D’Esposito of New York have introduced H. Res. 239, a Resolution calling for a moratorium on offshore wind projects.
Rep Van Drew stated in a press release, “The numbers of deaths we are witnessing are staggering, and the concentration of where the animals have washed up raises serious and legitimate questions as to what role offshore wind surveying may be doing to the hearing of these mammals.”
The policies being promoted to support “green” industry have turned out to be gigantic failures that are actually destroying the environment and Life on Earth.
For example, “green” products such as electric vehicles and wind farms are exponentially increasing environmental degradation and human rights abuses due to the mining for exotic minerals and metals required to manufacture wind turbines, solar panels, and EV batteries.
1. It’s a fact that sunlight is essential for plants to grow, farming and health.
2. Blocking the sun defeats the purpose of having solar panels.
3. SAI is poisoning the environment with harmful contaminants such as sulfur dioxide (SO2), known to cause acid rain and asthma, especially in children.
As for the destruction caused by wind farms, in addition to killing birds, destroying our beautiful coastlines, and harming marine life, whales in particular are being tortured by the projects because the wind farm operations violently disrupt the natural ocean sounds with extremely loud noise so that whales are unable to communicate or navigate, and so they beach themselves to try and escape the assault.
January 15, 2023 | Calls grow to stop offshore wind farms as another whale washes up in New Jersey |
In only one month, 7 whales have washed up on the Jersey Shore. In November, 6 pilot whales washed up in Cape Cod. The whale die off is being attributed to the construction and operation of wind farms, involving the deployment of sonar, which produce loud, unpleasant sound that cannot be avoided by ocean life. The harmful impacts of this system on marine wildlife are well established, especially damaging to whales.
According to a 2009 Scientific American article, “Sonar systems—first developed by the U.S. Navy to detect enemy submarines—generate slow-rolling sound waves topping out at around 235 decibels; the world’s loudest rock bands top out at only 130. These sound waves can travel for hundreds of miles under water, and can retain an intensity of 140 decibels as far as 300 miles from their source.
These rolling walls of noise are no doubt too much for some marine wildlife. While little is known about any direct physiological effects of sonar waves on marine species, evidence shows that whales will swim hundreds of miles, rapidly change their depth (sometime leading to bleeding from the eyes and ears), and even beach themselves to get away from the sounds of sonar”.
This wind-farm atrocity is another example of how “green” industry is NOT ecofriendly and actually causes catastrophic harm to the environment and life. -JD
