by Steve Milloy, E&E Legal Senior Policy Fellow and Junkscience.com Founder
As appearing on The Daily Caller
Save the whales. Once upon a time, that used to be the favorite mantra of environmental activists. Today, not so much. These days, it’s more chic to be into giant offshore wind turbines. And if dozens upon dozens of whales must be killed to make way for turbines along with their new mantra, “save the planet,” well, that’s just the price we must pay. Or so goes the current thinking among the green set.
Scores of whale and dolphin carcasses have washed up along the East Coast in recent months, and particularly on New Jersey and New York-area beaches where no fewer than nine whales have washed ashore just since December. The evidence is not yet incontrovertible, but the deaths coincide with sonic testing in conjunction with massive wind turbine projects. Seismic testing can “injure and kill marine wildlife” such as whales and dolphins holds, according to one environmental group. The Natural Resources Defense Council once went all the way to the Supreme Court in a bid to stop the U.S. Navy’s seismic testing.
The Biden administration has committed itself to transitioning America’s entire electricity grid to wind and solar, seemingly at any cost. Supportive of that goal, its National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration attempted to dispute the link. “At this point, there is no evidence to support speculation that noise resulting from wind development-related site characterization surveys could potentially cause mortality of whales, and no specific links between recent large whale mortalities and currently ongoing surveys.”
NOAA’s claim is ridiculous, but even more absurd, it’s being backstopped by Greenpeace which dismisses the link between seismic testing for offshore wind projects and the whale and dolphin deaths as a fossil fuel industry-funded “right-wing disinformation campaign.”
