The Energy Collective Group
This group brings together the best thinkers on energy and climate. Join us for smart, insightful posts and conversations about where the energy industry is and where it is going.
Post
Why Whales Are Dying in New York and New Jersey
It may be worthwhile to listen to this approximately 12 minute podcast of the NPR interview by Brian Lehrer with Andy Read.
Dr. Read is a professor of marine biology and the director of the Duke University Marine Laboratory. He talks about why so many beached whales are turning up on the New York and New Jersey coastlines, and why claims from some groups that surveying for wind farms is causing the deaths are untrue.
Lehrer quotes what Marjorie Taylor Greene recently said on Fox news:
“I'm not sure, I don't know why AOC isn't dressed in white and crying for the dead whales that keep washing on the beach from wind farms that are being placed all over the ocean. People are calling the alarms over how this is not only killing unknown thousands of bird species but also causing whales to beach themselves at record numbers.»
Lehrer asserts that
"...usually, it’s Democrats who center environmentalism and Republicans who shout that it’s gone too far. So, why are Marjorie Taylor Greene, New Jersey Congressman Chris Smith and other Republicans suddenly getting loud about saving the whales? Maybe it’s because the alleged threat to the whales, which may actually be fake, is part of the campaign to delegitimize climate change policy.
«Another way to put it: Protecting whales may be a new back door to protecting the fossil fuel industry.»"
At the very least it is an indication that various interest groups are determined, via misinformation, to impede the progress of the adoption of renewable sources of electricity.
Here are a few excerpts from the interview:
Brian Lehrer: The question is this, is it true or is it false that the development of offshore wind turbines, which are being built to protect the climate, are having the negative side effect of killing whales? Another way to frame the question is this, are Republicans suddenly concerned with protecting the whales because it's a way to protect the fossil fuel industry?
Andy Read: Yes. We should be clear that most of those species, most of the stranded whales are humpback whales, not right whales. Those numbers, the numbers you noted, 23 this year, are really nothing out of the ordinary. We had 34 humpback whales, for example, that stranded in 2017. Those of us who study whales are appreciative of the interest from the public in the causes of those strandings, but the numbers we're seeing this year are really no higher than what we've seen over the past decade or so.
Those that end up on shore may be the result of their prey closer to shore because of warming water. Most of the deaths are the result of boat strikes and entanglement with fishing gear.
We know that the oceans close to shore are warming, and that means that whales and their prey can stay longer in the waters off New York and New Jersey later in the fall, arrive earlier in the spring, and so it's more likely that the whales there that die will come up on the beach. Also, think about the ocean. Water is just outside New York City. They're very busy waters, lots of shipping, so the potential for them to get struck by ships is greater.
We're seeing lots of signals of climate change in the nearshore waters along the East Coast, and that's resulting in changes in distribution of prey, and then the whales track the changes in the distribution of their prey.
It is important to call out disinformation when we become aware of it. In this age of emerging AI, those that traffic in disinformation are acquiring tools to make it much easier to fool both the informed and uniformed among us.
Get Published - Build a Following
The Energy Central Power Industry Network® is based on one core idea - power industry professionals helping each other and advancing the industry by sharing and learning from each other.
If you have an experience or insight to share or have learned something from a conference or seminar, your peers and colleagues on Energy Central want to hear about it. It's also easy to share a link to an article you've liked or an industry resource that you think would be helpful.
Sign in to Participate