Commentary: Big Tent Ideas

FRANK LASEE: Offshore Wind Making Everything More Expensive, From Lobsters To Electricity

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National Lobster Day is a good time to look at what Bidenomics is going to do to lobsters and the $400 million lobster industry. And it isn’t good. It isn’t good for electric users’ budgets either.

Biden’s 30 GWs of offshore wind is catering to the left’s rush to “end fossil fuels” (which provide 80% of our energy) is wrongheaded. It is part of a costly, unnecessary, not well-thought-out transition to part-time, weather dependent, middle ages technology. Only a fool ends their primary energy or food source before it is fully replaced.

Offshore wind towers harm lobsters in several ways.

30,000 MW of offshore wind will take 3,000 to 4,000 800 ft towers placed at least a mile apart in all directions, 2 to 5 miles is better. Those towers take the energy out of the wind, altering weather patterns. 

Put too close together, they produce less electricity. Offshore wind may be responsible for the recent wind droughts in Europe. Backup is necessary if we want to avoid blackouts because the wind does not always blow. Paying for full-time and part-time electricity is costly.

Each tower has a cable that moves electricity to the mainland for use. They estimate at least nearly 7,000 miles of cables. The buried cables escape their shallow trenches, snagging fishermen’s gear. If that gear is lost or damaged, replacing it causes lobster and fish prices rise by increasing the costs of the fishermen. 

The EMF from the cables caused three times more lobster larvae to be bad swimmers and three times more likely to be deformed, mainly in their tails and eyes. More of them are small, maybe because they don’t swim as well as the others. 

Bigger is better for survival. The EMF also attracts and mesmerize crabs and lobster, causing them to linger and roam around more than usual and making them more vulnerable to predators. 

We should be concerned about deformed lobster larvae. What will they do to future generations? Less lobsters means higher cost lobsters. Just like less oil causes higher prices at the pump. 

The noise from the blasting needed to build a base for the towers is temporary. 4,000 towers will need lots of blasting and cable buried for many years. The sound waves from this blasting will kill many types of fish, mammals and whales and harm their hearing permanently. It can also cause them to flee the area, maybe never to return.

Then there is the operational noise of turbines and all the additional boat traffic. Each turbine has to be visited every day. Do they have an electric fleet of boats? I think not.

The ongoing sound from thousands of towers grouped together will chase fish and whales away, change weather patterns in unknown ways, negatively impact fishing and ocean use, alter lobster, crab, fish, and whale feeding grounds and migration routes, and chase birds away.

Lastly, changing the ocean floor with mega wind tower bases and anchors will provide homes for sea bass. They like to gather around ocean structures. Baby lobsters are their favorite food, they will clean an area out. The new sea bass habitat, coupled with the EMF damage, will likely decimate lobsters.

Or the sea bass may be chased off by the constant regular ocean noise of the massive wind turbines. Sea bass are an important fish resource too. Shouldn’t we go slow and study these issues and do it right? 

We have plenty of time. It will take 400 years for CO2 to triple to 1,200 ppm. Which is at the lower end of the amount needed for best plant growth for nearly every plant species. 

Greenhouses routinely add more than 1,200 ppm. They pay to add CO2. That tells you something about enhanced plant growth caused by more CO2. 

Remember that water vapor is the dominant greenhouse gas and is fifty times more abundant than CO2. Dr. Will Happer, physicist at Princeton, tells us that water vapor and clouds make up 95% of the greenhouse effect. 

Many are beginning to realize that climate energy policy is worse for them and their kids than climate change. What’s not to like about a little more warmth, longer growing seasons, better plant growth, increasing crop yields, a greener earth, fewer weather-related deaths and longer lives? BTW, according to the UN IPCC there is no trend in droughts or floods. According to NASA there are less wildfires worldwide. 

We need to slow this energy transition down. There is a lot that can go wrong. A lot we don’t know. A lot of wasted money.

Hopefully there will be enough lobsters to celebrate Lobster Day in 50 years by our grandkids.

Frank Lasee is a former Wisconsin state senator and former member of Gov. Scott Walker’s administration.

The views and opinions expressed in this commentary are those of the author and do not reflect the official position of the Daily Caller News Foundation.