“Gleaming white wind turbines generating carbon-free electricity carpet chaparral-covered ridges and march down into valleys of Joshua trees.” Such is “the future” of American energy, not “the oil rigs planted helter-skelter in [nearby] citrus groves.”
So reads a recent Forbes article. But Wind vs. Bird by Todd Woody also raises concern about the fate of a 300-megawatt “green” turbine project threatening California condors, a species just coming back from the edge of extinction. The project might be cancelled as a result.
Indeed, the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service (FWS) has asked Kern County to “exercise extreme caution” in approving projects in the Tehapachi area, because of potential threats to condors. The “conundrum will force some hard choices about the balance we are willing to strike between obtaining clean energy and preserving wild things,” the article suggested.…
Continue Reading“When we hear of vast numbers of scientists endorsing Michael Mann’s famous ‘hockey stick’ graph… What we don’t hear is that the vast, vast majority of them never sought access to the specific data and algorithms claimed to support it (much of which was actively withheld from the scientific community at large). They did not independently evaluate either Mann’s claims or the specific, technical objections raised against them by a few critics who were able to wrest those data and algorithms from Mann’s clenched fist over a period of years. Neither had the scientific media performed any independent, critical review when reporting on such issues for over a decade, most of them simply not being equipped to do so.”
Solar energy in its non-fossilized forms – wind, hydro, biofuels, tidal, and direct use of the sun’s rays – are called “renewable,” meaning that it does not require vast geological ages to recreate them.
The term, however, can be misleading. All can only be renewed at a pace that natural cycles allow. The amount of solar energy that shines down upon the earth may seem inexhaustible, but it is extremely dilute. In order to match the highly concentrated power of fossil fuels, it must collected over vast areas and then brought together.
It is the collection process that is not inexhaustible and not always renewable. Hydroelectric dams, the most successful form of non-fossilized solar power, back up reservoirs covering hundreds of square miles in order to generate the same amount of electricity produced by a mile-square coal plant (not counting the area required to mine the coal).…
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