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
Really, that's not what the quantified data says:
http://blog.dana-farber.org/insight/2015/03/which-u-s-states-have-the-hi...
Al, it would seem that the questions were reasonable whether they come from Anastasia Anonumous, Freddie Mickelschnortz, or anyone else.
To an outside observer, it would also seem that the only reason to deflect with a demand for a name of your questioner would be to lay a ground for an adhominem.
Now, Anonymous, please reread your posts. Where is YOUR scientific data? Nor are your assumptions scientific data. You say you were left to assume that I favor coal-fired power plants. Here is what I said: "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."
How will industrializing the public lands for wind and solar mitigate having industrialized them for the extraction of everything else? You're right. Everything has a trade-off, but I never said I liked coal.
As for your so-called "quantified data," who the quantifier is counts a lot. It's a dodge as old the hills. You didn't give me the data I wanted, so I will now declare everything about your data suspect. Fine, call my data hyperbole, but when a single wind farm gobbles enough land to cover Las Vegas, I think any environmentalist is entitled to worry. Agreed, mountain-top removal is just as bad--or worse. Nor is the data there disputable. But yes, the same people promoting wind and solar are often promoting mountain-top removal, too. After all, any energy company will follow the money, and if Uncle Sam is offering money for wind and solar, you can bet that everyone will be piling in.
Is this what we want for our public lands? As i see it, two wrongs don't make a right. Just because some Americans want to correct for coal, oil, and gas does not give them the right to repeat the mistake of turning our public lands into an industrialized mishmash.
And no, don't put the blame on George W. Bush. A Texan, he believes in Big Oil. This all started under President Obama and Interior Secretary Ken Salazar, and there the data is clear. Yes, it can take many years to site a power plant, but these were all sited in a rush. Nor did we, the American people, ever get the proper say.
I could have used more data, but nothing I have said has been disproved. If you now want to prove me wrong, I also look forward to chapter and verse. Tell me how a 300-megawatt power plant is worth losing the Mojave Desert for? Rooftop solar could do that in an instant, but then, Uncle Sam isn't buying because General Electric has convinced President Obama to give away our public lands. From Forbes Magazine, hardly a defender of the public lands, here is but one citation to that:
http://www.forbes.com/sites/beltway/2011/04/08/the-unholy-marriage-of-ge...
ecbuck,
I don't need to go any further on this subject, since it remains mostly unrelated to this topic. Plenty of studies on this subject from a variety of reports based on quantified data are out there for you to discover.
You can start by reviewing this link.
http://www.americanscientist.org/issues/pub/fallout-from-nuclear-weapons....
Rick, in the newspaper world of old--and still when you write the editor--you have to give your name, address, and phone number for verification. They will not publish your letter if you don't. They will also usually call you and ask if you sent the letter, and again, will not publish you without direct confirmation.
Now that we have this thing called the Internet, we are all calling ourselves this and that. Is it protection? Perhaps. But I wonder protection from what. Often, it is merely protection from accountability. We needn't really get serious because we can vent.
For the same reason I dislike polls (why should pollsters be able to influence our vote?) I would prefer that the Internet be more formal. But then, I do see and appreciate your point. Some people are legitimately protecting themselves from harassment. As an author, I simply consider that a luxury in my case.
You can start by reviewing this link.
And there is nothing in that article that says cancer rates are higher in the west. At best, the article speculates that a small number of people 50+ years ago may have had a higher risk. Nothing "quantified" about it.
But you are right, it is irrelevant. My comment was merely a joke about the desolate terrain of Nevada.
I don't disagree that solar, wind, and tidal energy come with cost, and risk. I dont consider any energy source, "green" and think that term is overused.
Regardless, I do not, nor will not reject the scientific method, and quantified data is a real asset in forming a solid theory. Unfortunately, your article presented no quantified data, and a lot of hyperbole. I simply asked for quantified data to form a better opinion in regards to your ideology, which seems to take the approach that we should keep the status quo, and not develop any further energy technologies. Unfortunately, after your few posts, you have yet to provide any quantified data, and to accept a forbes article as a substitute leaves me a little cold.
The USFS and BLM were not formed strictly to preserve wilderness. As the years have moved on, and scienfic knowledge of forest and land conservation ecology advance, that philosophy has changed, quite a bit. Yet, BLM land is still committed to energy development as one of its main uses. The National Park Service, on the other hand has a much different mission, and in that we can agree.
The Bush administration, and especially the energy policy in 2005 created tax credits for large scale wind, geothermal, and solar projects. Many solar thermal projects were sited during the Bush administration, and the Obama administration has carried the policy further. To state that solar thermal development is strictly an Obama administration policy is false. It very much takes many years to site large scale solar, geothermal, wind, and tidal development, and many times these projects have development phases crossing over at least two administrations.
In your op-ed, you did not state that solar thermal development, as an option, should instead commit itself to projects within city limits. I was not left with enough information to conclude that as an opinion of yours. I was left to the opinion that we should take a lazze faire approach to the status quo. I do not disagree that roof top solar is an option, at least for a portion of the capacity to allievate the energy grid. However, in an economic landscape as diverse as California, the question remains is that enough to meet California's vast energy needs? And once again, that data needs quantified.
The Obama administration has set aside 265 million acres as National Monuments in many BLM and USFS areas. Many, of which are in the Mojave desert region. Perhaps you have heard about them.
Anonymous, I think you mean 2.65 million acres of national monuments. 265 million acres would be the size of Washington State, Oregon, and California--and would triple the entire national park system in both the continental US and Alaska.
But fine. You needn't believe in Forbes Magazine. Just put these words in Google "Obama Green Energy Wind Solar General Electric Immelt," and dozens of sources will pop up. Hyperbole, you say? How about the hyperbole of the press that every storm is caused by climate change?
News Flash! The climate of the Earth is always changing, and has been changing for billions of years. As for the "quantified data," consider alone the formation of the Great Lakes, the Finger Lakes, Lake Bonneville, and Lake Missoula. Missoula, Montana, is at the bottom of a lake bed that used to be hundreds of feet deep. Lake Pond OReille in Idaho is that lake's remnant.
You want to get serious about climate change? Good luck with that, unless you can figure out (which the press never reports) how to stop the loss of millions upon millions of acres of CO2 absorbing forests, croplands, wetlands, and grasslands every year (between two and three million in the US alone) to population growth and urban development.
Yes, I believe we should transition from fossil fuels, but not at the price of fear and misinformation, of which there is plenty to go around among climate "scientists," too.
Call it hyperbole if you wish. But yes, you are losing your public lands to this latest "space program," and this time you won't even get to land on the Moon. However, that is what your public lands will look like--the Martian invasion from War of the Worlds. Just take a pleasant little drive to Tonopah, Ivanpah, or points south. See what your government is up to in the name of "quantified data." Do you feel "saved?" I don't.