Extinction expert says windfarms hasten extinctions

Clive Hambler, a lecturer at Oxford University and the author of an important textbook on conservation, has written an important article at the Spectator on the effects on windfarms on wildlife.  It looks as if the "bird-blender" name is well-deserved:

My speciality is species extinction. When I was a child, my father used to tell me about all the animals he’d seen growing up in Kent — the grass snakes, the lime hawk moths — and what shocked me when we went looking for them was how few there were left. Species extinction is a serious issue: around the world we’re losing up to 40 a day. Yet environmentalists are urging us to adopt technologies that are hastening this process. Among the most destructive of these is wind power.

Comments

[NW]

Philip Foster, thanks, I was going to look that up. That's the figure Myers said "seemed about right", isn't it?

Incredible that they are still using it. Lomborg IIRC goes on to explain that the logic behind it is something like: take number of species per unit area of habitat, assume for every so many percent of "habitat loss" there is a corresponding percentage of species which will become extinct, err, that's it.

Not only is the basic premise patent nonsense, the number of species per unit area is a made up number, as is the extent of the supposed loss of habitat and the relationship between them. And this is the basis of "species extinction", which UKMO appears to take seriously.

[tckev]

On climate and extinction I can think of no better advice than Darwin.

From Darwin's Origin of Species
Chapter III - THE STRUGGLE FOR EXISTENCE

Page 82 Nature of the Checks to Increase.

Climate plays an important part in determining the average numbers of a species, and periodical seasons of extreme cold or drought seem to be the most effective of all checks. I estimate (chiefly from the greatly reduced numbers of nests in the spring) that the winter of 1854-5 destroyed four-fifths of the birds in my own grounds; and this is a tremendous destruction, when we remember that ten per cent. is an extraordinarily sever mortality from epidemics with man. The action of the climate seems at first sight to be quite independent of the struggle for existence; but in so far as climate chiefly acts in reducing food, it brings on the most severe struggle between the individuals, whether of the same or of distinct species, which subsist on the same kind of food. Even climate , for instance extreme cold, acts directly, it will be the least vigorous individuals, or those which have got least food through the advancing winter, which suffer the most. When we travel from south to north, or from a damp region to a dry, we invariably see some species gradually getting rarer and rarer, and finally disappearing; and the change of climate being conspicuous, we are tempted to attribute the whole effect to direct action. But this is false view; we forget that each species, even where it most abounds, is constantly suffering enormous destruction at some period of its life, from enemies or from competitors for the same place and food; and if these enemies or competitors be in the least degree favoured by any slight change of climate, they will increase in numbers; and as each area is already fully stocked with inhabitants, the other species must decrease.
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IMHO -
Winter of 1854-5 was very, very harsh, and this before the scream of CAGW.
As climate changes over any area the competition within species and between species require that flora and fauna will change. It is natural for this to happen, human influence on this process can be profound in certain localities but overall and in the long run it is minor.