The Trump administration is turning to the nuclear option on endangered-species protections in the name of national security.
A rarely tapped panel nicknamed the “God Squad” will meet Tuesday to discuss whether overriding Endangered Species Act regulations for all federally regulated fossil fuel operations in the Gulf of Mexico is more important than preventing the extinction of several imperiled species. That includes sea turtles and a whale species down to its last 51 individuals.
Interior Secretary Doug Burgum announced the upcoming Endangered Species Committee meeting last week, with no details on specific projects in the Gulf or the basis for what would constitute an extraordinary action. Only twice in the panel’s nearly half-century has it ever lifted restrictions.
But after the nonprofit Center for Biological Diversity filed a lawsuit in an attempt to block the meeting, the Trump administration told the court that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth wanted all federal oil and gas activities in the Gulf exempted “for reasons of national security.”
A federal judge declined Friday to block the meeting.
How the fuck do you tie wind turbines to whales
Like obviously it’s not a logical argument I’m just curious what the proposed connection was
I suppose the argument is about offshore windparks. Whales specifically have insanely sensitive hearing and can communicate over hundreds of miles, so it seems like an intuitive argument that the turbines’ vibrations affect them negatively.
Conservational efforts are definitely important when picking a location. But in the end, it’s probably similar to the bird argument, which is not a completely fabricated concern, but has been distorted and overblown so much that it doesn’t have much to do with reality anymore.
Sonar is way worse for them, and the navy refuses to even lay off of it in whale areas.
Exactly, and cats kill like 200x more birds than wind turbines do. Window panes also kill more. Suggest doing something about that and you’ll experience people’s wrath.
Edit: Had to delete two comments, because I accidentally triple-commented.
Plus light pollution hurts their navigation and worsens window strikes, and pollution kills them and their food.
And that’s not even counting the damage they do to whales.
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offshore drilling is far more vibrations than wind turbines. There is underwater grinding/drilling noise and structural machinery noises above water are louder than the mostly “wind noise” of wind turbines. Shallow water drilling platforms connect that machine noise to sea floor, and wind turbines are most often shallow water as well.
I believe the argument was related to vibrations caused by the turbine
Wasn’t there a large beaching around then too? I don’t think you need much of a causal justification if it looks bad enough. Still, that’s a bit illogical if many of those that were outraged about potential issues with wind turbines aren’t also outraged by this