Cartoon by Emily Greenhalgh, NOAA Climate.gov
For the sake of argument, let us agree with the Obama Administration that the Earth is warming up. Should we respond by being scared or cautious and, if scared, exactly what should we be frightened of?
Frankly, I am frightened of my president, who goes about justifying huge conversions of our public lands to subsidize wind farms and solar power plants.
Recently announced, a photovoltaic solar project at Soda Mountain, California, is just the latest among dozens to win approval. Has no one in the administration advised the president that two wrongs never made a right?
Now 69 years on this planet, I have yet to see the oceans “rise.” They of course surge during storms and hurricanes, but I remember storms just as big from the 1950s. They are only worsened now because of sprawl. Mother Earth has never lied to us about the tide line, which developers along our seacoasts still ignore.
Of course Super Storm Sandy was super. She had millions of targets from which to choose.
Like Goldilocks in the Three Bears, a host of “experts” now insists that our sea level must be perfect—not too high, and not too low, but comfortably suited for everything we have built.
The problem is: It is indeed our plan and not the Earth’s. Nor has Earth ever given ample warning before deciding to go on a rampage. Hey, humans! I have a 9.0 earthquake coming. Get ready to rock and roll!
Granted, new methods of prediction have helped. Still, as Jay Leno advises, the only sure way of predicting a tornado is to visit the nearest trailer park.
It’s dark humor, but so true. Development has increased the drama. These days, there are simply more structures for storms to reach and destroy.
As for the storms themselves, they are no worse than they were historically. When I was growing up, cities were smaller, fewer in number, and farther in between. When a big hurricane hit, as in 1900 at Galveston, Texas, it left many thousands dead—in Galveston perhaps 12,000. P.S. No one in the country blamed global warming.
The problem is that developers don’t read environmental history—or think critically about it if they do. For them, as for alarmists, every natural disaster becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. We demand the country “do something” before Earth exceeds its “tipping point.”
Here the alarmists are entirely speculating. Going back hundreds of millions of years, we know from the geological record that the Earth has warmed repeatedly—and cooled repeatedly. Fifty-six million years ago, palm trees and crocodiles lived above the Arctic Circle. But again, why should anyone be bothered with geology—the grandest history of them all?
“Tipping point” has nothing to do with science. It is rather preferred by politicians, developers, and corporations to scare us into doing something stupid.
Such as parting with our public lands. But zoning 40 million acres for alternative energy? Again, how will that make us smart?
Spread across 4,000 acres of BLM land southwest of Las Vegas, Nevada, and in close proximity to the Mojave National Preserve, the Ivanpah solar-thermal power plant is the world’s largest, and but one of dozens of varying technologies proposed or under construction on the public lands. Environmental impacts of this plant include the excessive use of natural gas to keep it operational, as well as bird kills above the mirror fields (heliostats) caused by temperatures in excess of 1,000 degrees/Google Earth
Because we are the problem, they administration persists. We started this warfare with Mother Earth by suffocating her with gobs of CO2.
Mother Earth still has news for us—and for the administration. She will keep adjusting even if we can’t. Nor despite our best intentions will she necessarily adjust the way we want.
She simply doesn’t care. Even as we “model” her she refuses to be modeled. It’s a computer model, after all, showing but a pittance of her incalculable behaviors.
A better explanation for all of this modeling is money. A cabal of green energy developers is getting rich. Face it. Few politicians agreed to this “reform” without first being strong-armed by the industry.
When did President Obama go all out for green energy? The record there is deep. His chief adviser has been Jeffrey Immelt, the Chairman and CEO of General Electric. Now there is a top scientist for you.
And you, Senator Sanders. Just call it green. Wave your arms in the air and shout a lot. Tell them you’re not connected to Wall Street. It will be our secret, senator.
Just don’t mention that some people in Vermont are wising up, seeing wind farms as “moronic.” General Electric has billions on the line here, senator. Forget the tourist revenue.
There is your tipping point—money. News flash! Green acne grips the public lands. Not to worry, the lobbyists say. Lady Liberty won’t even notice the pimples because the rest of her face will remain “pristine.” The pimples, that is, the turbines, will require just five percent of her skin.
Those people in Vermont are right. Green acne is moronic. Five percent or even a tenth of one percent, the public lands were never meant to be picked over like a scab. These are life-giving lands—critical lands—demanding our everlasting respect.
The Obama Administration must believe in Clearasil. Unfortunately, these scars will not soon be undone. Destroying the beauty and biology of the American landscape is never an excuse for “action.”
Granted, global warming is not a hoax. But yes, the statement is designed to deceive. We are not supposed to ask: If global warming is for real, for how long has it been for real? The answer, at least for human civilization, is the better part of the past 15,000 years.
The Ivanpah Solar facility located southwest of Las Vegas "stands to destroy valuable desert tortoise habitat near Mojave National Preserve while also impacting the viewshed," the National Parks Conservation Association said in a 2012 report.
Nor are we supposed to see the deception here: 97 percent of scientists agree about global warming. Of course they agree. After all, they would have to agree. Now with us for 15,000 years, global warming is just about as certain as gravity.
That’s not what we mean, the cabal protests. We mean human CO2 emissions only. We get to say what is causing climate change. No wonder American education, especially higher education, has turned into another mess.
Again pardon history for violating everyone’s “safe zone.” For giving us a Northern Hemisphere virtually free of ice sheets and full of freshwater lakes, we owe thanks to the Big Melt. Without it, Western Civilization would not exist.
What will green energy do to reverse the melting? Not a thing. Are we making the melting worse? Again, what is meant by worse? On a warming planet, ice melts. It is neither better nor worse as far as Earth is concerned. It is simply something that she does.
As for what is meant by “we,” eight billion people on the planet is a pretty big we. With all of those people exploiting resources, we do have a tremendous impact.
However, that especially is what universities mean by a "safe zone," where anything controversial is banned. Lest even a single person in the room be offended, the real problem is out of bounds.
Certainly, there is little chance of going back to “us”—that sweet spot in the middle of the twentieth century when the United States stood virtually alone in the developed world. When I was born, there were just 145 million people in the country and everyone could get a job. Now the entire world wants what America has, nor will they let some Paris “emissions treaty” stand in their way.
What most countries don’t have are public lands. It’s up to us to use common sense. We set aside our public lands for a very specific purpose, at once both biological and aesthetic. They were never meant to be industrialized.
We’ve done enough of that already looking for oil, coal, gas, and minerals. Breaking faith with biology—wilderness—we break faith with America the Beautiful period, undoing the wisdom of some of our greatest leaders, especially Theodore Roosevelt and FDR.
As an exceptional history, it remains immovable, and so yes, the green energy cabal is stumped. Getting their way with the White House and Congress first depends on silencing us. Give it up, Dr. Runte, lest we next throw you to the wolves as a denier and card-carrying member of the three percent!
Here again, I grew up with black-listing and commie-baiting. I know censorship when I see it. “I have a list,” warned Senator Joseph McCarthy. “Be careful your government doesn’t put you on it.”
The ancients called it hubris, filling their mythology with the inevitable result. Nor will the gods now be appeased by mere mortals showing no respect for creation.
How big is a wind farm? As initially proposed east of Searchlight, Nevada, between the town and Lake Mead National Recreation Area, 161 turbines (262 feet, 415 feet with blades), 35 miles of service roads, and 16 miles of transmission lines would have been spread across nearly 19,000 acres, equivalent to the city of Las Vegas. Here imposed in yellow over Las Vegas, the footprint of the wind farm is shown. Last October 30, U.S. District Court Judge Miranda Du, citing a woefully inadequate EIS, vacated a scaled-back version of the project (87 turbines, 9,000 acres) pending a rewrite by BLM and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service/Mojave Desert Blog
Pummeling the American landscape is hardly less criminal than emitting CO2. As George Perkins Marsh first reminded us (remember that Vermonter, Senator Sanders?), the public lands are America’s antidote to what happened to Greece and Rome.
George Perkins Marsh would know what to tell the White House. No more wind farms and solar power plants on the public lands. If they worked, they would work just as well on private lands paid for by the ratepayers.
Of course, that explains the censorship. Suddenly, few of those plants would work. Without their subsidies, they are bound by physics. Perhaps “the battery” they need is just around the corner. Well, so was fusion 50 years ago. I’m still waiting for fusion, as I suspect the nation will be waiting for that battery years after I am dead.
Simply improving a technology does not make for a revolution. Those are few and far between. There will be nothing revolutionary about wind or solar power until their reliability is 100 percent.
It may happen, and we should hope it does happen. Then no one will need the public lands—or polluting fossil fuels. Investors will be speculating on a proven technology and laughing all the way to the bank.
The point is that until it happens we have no business acting as if it will—or has. Instead we are left crying as our public lands die piecemeal. For what? At this point, still at best for a costly experiment and at worst another scam.
Every time Mother Nature fails to cooperate, wind and solar power call for backup, in other words, fossil fuels. Wind not blowing? Fire up the gas. Sun not shining? Fire up the coal. Actually, keep the fire hot 24/7 because both can die in an instant.
Where, oh, where, is that perfect battery? Lacking it, proponents next talk about “improving” the grid. The wind will always be blowing and the sun always shining somewhere. We simply need enough projects that overlap.
In short, they plan for even worse. More pimples, more power. After promising to treat with Clearasil Ultra, bring on the concrete, asphalt, rebar, culverts, bridges, retaining walls, service roads, transmission lines, and more. Fence it all off for security. Put up floodlights to hold back the night. What? No CO2 emissions in any of it?
As for wildlife, let the arrogance flow. Demand from the government a legal “take.” Failing in that, fudge the numbers in the EIS. Eagles? Following a very “rigorous,” “comprehensive,” “meaningful,” and “responsible” assessment—that after consulting every “stakeholder”—we didn’t see a one. Well, maybe one, but it was flying away from us. We therefore concluded it will not come back.
What the Interior Department calls an environmental impact statement is just about that bad. All are fudged; all are rushed, unless some judge, refusing to be bent by politics, forces the department back to the drawing board.
We may hope that will happen at Soda Mountain. Certainly, green energy has flaunted every principle of stewardship, if by stewardship we mean do no harm.
Us? Harm the environment? If it lives, we first try to move it. If it dies in its new location, so be it. When the public gets suspicious, we know to repeat the mantra. We are being as “green” as we possibly can.
The immovable history remains: Nothing dismissive of life and the American past has any place on our public lands.
History will already venture this. If the Obama Administration persists in making tradeoffs—as if what the public has to trade is expendable—future generations will never allow that a pittance of national monuments “balanced” out the loss.
The urge to start someplace is no excuse for starting badly. Might we then elect for ourselves a president who believes in the public lands? There again, and especially in this election year, I join Mother Earth in not holding my breath.
An environmental historian and frequent contributor to the Traveler, Alfred Runte lives in Seattle, Washington, where he writes about the public lands. His books include National Parks: The American Experience (Taylor Trade) and Yosemite: The Embattled Wilderness, which he is revising for a second edition.
Comments
Just checking on the peers, Argalite.
In other words, a whitewash similar to what we witnessed in 1962 with the publication of Rachel Carson's Silent Spring. I was there to watch the chemical industry say: Eagles, peregrine falcons, condors, etc., actually love DDT in their carrion and prey. Those thinning egg shells? Too little calcium in birds' diets. They should be drinking more milk.
Just for the record, no cat of mine has ever killed 70 birds a year--and no cat of mine has ever killed an eagle, hawk, falcon, owl, condor, bat, crow, or pigeon. One of my cats got a pigeon once, but after it beat the stuffing out of her, she let it go.
In short, peer-review means nothing when you are trying to bend the truth. Use of the word "responsible" does not mean you are the one being responsible. Everyone has a price, and even scientists can be bought. As here, they are bought all the time by the wind industry, which is why environmentalists have no choice but go to court. Recent court rulings, one described in the article above, have indeed upheld environmentalists' contentions that most of these peer-reviewed studies are rushed and fudged. This is to explain why the Obama Administration has just agreed to rewrite the rules, so that the courts and federal legislation can be bypassed.
If we allow that, and yes, agree, that our cats are the problem and not us, we deserve what we already have--a government that is miserably failing our public lands and wildlife in the pursuit of a corporate agenda.
I guees no matter what science I bring up, climate change deniers will always come up with a reason that they don't believe.
The author argues about facts and not beliefs, but them shuts down the facts when they don't fit his beleief system, and says the facts are skewed. I guess 7 billion people spewing Co2 is nothing to care about and lets just have a tea party.
Welcome back, Argalite, but yes, I do find an organization supported by the wind power industry a bit suspicious when it comes to "science." Allow me another short story. Years ago, when I was a seasonal ranger in Yosemite, I told visitors the story of the comeback of the peregrine falcon. One night, a man approached me after my program and vehemently objected that I had demeaned the value of DDT. When I pushed him he confessed. Yes, he worked for Chevron Oil, but what did that have to do with anything? "Everything," I replied. "Your company makes DDT. Why should I believe in Chevron's scientists?"
Tell you what, I continued. Put $10 million in a pot and let any university scientist apply to do a study by lottery. These would not be scientists on Chevron's payroll but rather scientists allowed full academic freedom. "But of course we would never do that," he replied. "Our scientists work for us."
Exactly. Now that those scientists have captured the language, you believe everything they say. You see nothing wrong when those scientists say: Everyone agrees with us. Well, 97 percent--and the rest are deniers. The only thing I deny is anyone's right to buy a fact and call it objective science.
An environmental impact statement, were it to be done objectively, would not be done by the self-interested party. That goes for government as well as corporations, or is even the Interior Department producing objective science when they say that eagle strikes from wind turbines should be allowed to increase fourfold?
On one fact we can agree--seven billion people have a lot of impact. But don't think for a moment their impact will be reversed by destroying our public lands--or wildlife. That is again sentiment and hardly science. Independent, i.e., university scientists were telling us 50 years ago that human population could not grow indefinitely. I took my college courses from those scientists and not from Chevron or General Electric.
Nor do I have any use for the current faculty occupying the Department of the Interior. Anyone who would say that killing raptors is justified by what we might learn from the process only reminds me of the worst of government.
In his new book on Yosemite, former superintendent Robert Binnewies is proud of his record in saving Yosemite's peregrine falcons. I was there and can attest to that fact. I was not fired for speaking truthfully to anyone, although I was called on the carpet a couple of times. What happened to that government, I wonder? It sure does not exist in any of the current plans to bypass science for expedience. Hear, ye! Hear, ye! Hear, ye! The 97 percent have spoken. Now the rest of you shut up.
It just isn't in my genes, Argalite. Now, show me some facts I can believe in--and don't start with killing what you say we must save.
You were working for the Dept of Interior, which had published Silent Spring and were defending the party line. I can't tell what you would believe, so I will not give you any more fodder. Did you know that this administration had the wind turbines with the highest kill rates removed from Altamont Pass in California because they were killing too many eagles? They were put there by a previous administration.
Say again? The Department of the Interior published Silent Spring? I believe that was Rachel Carson, the distinguished naturalist, and an independent scholar through and through.
As for the so-called party line, that these days holds wind power harmless to raptors, provided we allow the industry to do it right.
In this case, yes, the industry was forced to admit that the wind turbines at Altamont Pass "were killing too many eagles." But that is not the reason those particular turbines were removed. They were rather an older technology, and much less efficient. Half were also broken and generating no power at all. "Repowering" was needed, as the industry calls it. In other words, the turbines needed to be replaced.
Sure, everyone took advantage to claim that the replacement was in fact to protect the eagles. It's good spin, but still the upgrade, again paid for by taxpayer subsidies, was to get more milage out of Altamont Pass.
Here is a good article on the entire issue. This time, I would suggest you read it to the end:
http://www.sfgate.com/science/article/Wind-power-company-to-replace-bird...
Thank you Alfred for a very informative post. There was a time in the dear old USA when states actually regulated corporations. One common restriction was that corporations could not contribute to political campaigns. It is always interesting to read about a public official justify extensions, deregulation, poor development proposals, with the phrase , "we must strike a balance". A very interesting book on the subject is "Dark Money" by Jane Mayer. It is a troubling read, but documents the issues we face with large corporations, financial institutions, etc. ruling the roost. EC. I agree with Alferd on the population issue, I am certainly no expert on the subject, but a good start, along with Alfred's suggestions, is "every child a wanted child". This will require total equality for women, support for educational programs in family planning (sex ed), health care for all citizens including groups like planned parenthood, living wage, well the list is lengthly. As Alfred points out, we can not even stop people from dumping oil down storm drains, let alone reuse shopping bags, water bottles, quit using roundup, well we can add much more to the list. Education is the hope, but it going to require researching the best information available, not "we must strike a balance", the common political sellout to ensure profits are not infringed upon, let alone political donations.
Ron - you think more social programs and give aways will reduce population growth? I think you have it exactly backwards.
Rachel Carson was working for the Dept of the Interior when she wrote Silent Spring. Yes, the removed those turbines and placed new ones that were situated better to avoid eagles.