Bloodthirsty Liberal

What you call your unintended consequences:

Usually at night the air closer to the ground becomes colder when the sun goes down and the earth cools.

But on huge wind farms the motion of the turbines mixes the air higher in the atmosphere that is warmer, pushing up the overall temperature.

Satellite data over a large area in Texas, that is now covered by four of the world’s largest wind farms, found that over a decade the local temperature went up by almost 1C as more turbines are built.

This could have long term effects on wildlife living in the immediate areas of larger wind farms.

It could also affect regional weather patterns as warmer areas affect the formation of cloud and even wind speeds.

I’m thinking of writing a screenplay called The Chinook Syndrome, in which the earth faces imminent destruction by the meddling of lame-brained environmentalists. I’m going to name the protagonist Bill McKibben, and we’re going to know he’s a bad dude because when he checks his badger traps in the first scene, he finds he’s caught one and grins to himself disturbingly. Then he throws it, trapped badger and all, in a deep pond, chuckling to himself all the while. The badger will be named Al Gore.

I don’t want to be insensitive toward others feelings, but if you aren’t reading stories like this with tears and snot of laughter streaming down your face, you are a cold-hearted bastard. In my opinion.

After 1.4 million, it’s a rounding error (or a statistic, as Stalin once said):

Another 100,000 people may have to move away from China’s Three Gorges Dam due to the risk of disastrous landslides and bank collapses around the reservoir of the world’s biggest hydroelectric facility, state media said Wednesday.

The Ministry of Land Resources says the number of landslides and other disasters has increased 70 percent since the water level in the $23 billion showcase project rose to its maximum in 2010.

Some 1.4 million people already have been resettled as a result of the huge project on the Yangtze River. Authorities may move another 100,000 people in the next three to five years to minimize the risk of casualties from such threats, ministry official Liu Yuan told China National Radio in a report posted on a government website and carried by state newspapers.

He said 5,386 danger sites were being monitored and that work was beginning on rockfalls and landslides at 335 locations around the lake.

Borrowing from Michelle Obama, China says to the population equivalent of Erie, PA, “Let’s move!”

Maybe instead of proposing to nationalize the wealth of all wealthy nations (which funds naturally the UN would administer as it sees fit), the UN should invest in divining rods (via Jungle Trader):

Scientists say the notoriously dry continent of Africa is sitting on a vast reservoir of groundwater.

They argue that the total volume of water in aquifers underground is 100 times the amount found on the surface.

The team have produced the most detailed map yet of the scale and potential of this hidden resource.

Writing in the journal Environmental Research Letters, they stress that large scale drilling might not be the best way of increasing water supplies.

Across Africa more than 300 million people are said not to have access to safe drinking water.

…

“Where there’s greatest ground water storage is in northern Africa, in the large sedimentary basins, in Libya, Algeria and Chad,” she said.

“The amount of storage in those basins is equivalent to 75m thickness of water across that area – it’s a huge amount.”

It’s all freakin’ politics, man. Instead of looking for handouts and sitting on their collective asses, Libyans, Algerians, and Chadians ought to liberate some of those 75 meters (almost 250 feet!) of pure, fresh water, and grow themselves some arugula.

[O]ur work shows that with careful exploring and construction, there is sufficient groundwater under Africa to support low yielding water supplies for drinking and community irrigation.”

The scientists say that there are sufficient reserves to be able to cope with the vagaries of climate change.

“Even in the lowest storage aquifers in semi arid areas with currently very little rainfall, ground water is indicated to have a residence time in the ground of 20 to 70 years.” Dr Bonsor said.

“So at present extraction rates for drinking and small scale irrigation for agriculture groundwater will provide and will continue to provide a buffer to climate variability.”

Whatever you do, don’t ask the UN to get involved. Those bastards would just [bleep] or [bleep] in the wells. Just ask the Haitians.

Looks like it’s not just penguins’ feet that are happy, if you receive my meaning (nudge-nudge, wink-wink):

It started with some pickled herring, then one thing led to another.

Scientists counting emperor penguins from space have found twice as many of the birds in Antarctica as expected.

The discovery is reassuring for a species seen as under threat from global warming and will provide researchers with a benchmark for monitoring the giants of the penguin world in years to come.

…

“It’s good news,” team leader Peter Fretwell of the British Antarctic Survey said in an interview. “It gives us a bit more confidence not only that there are lots of emperor penguins out there but that we can actually keep track of them as well.”

…

Scientists are concerned that emperor penguins will be badly affected by climate change, since they form large colonies on the sea-ice, which is fragile and vulnerable to earlier spring warming. Their more northerly colonies are particularly at risk.

Come on, scientists, you’re smart girls and boys. Put two and two together (or one and one, as the penguins have been doing). Global temperatures have been rising (except when they haven’t), penguins are proliferating like… well like polar bears.

Pardon my sexism, but Mother Nature is really a very silly woman. If she had half a brain in her head, she would put the penguins with the polar bears so the swelling population of the latter could feast off the swelling population of the former. Instead, they share the same ecosystem—just on the other side of the world from each other. Plan much?

Does humankind have to think of everything?

In the Arctic Circle, it’s party time till the sun goes down—in September!

Who wants gums? I do! I do!

The debate about climate change and its impact on polar bears has intensified with the release of a survey that shows the bear population in a key part of northern Canada is far larger than many scientists thought, and might be growing.

The number of bears along the western shore of Hudson Bay, believed to be among the most threatened bear subpopulations, stands at 1,013 and could be even higher, according to the results of an aerial survey released Wednesday by the Government of Nunavut. That’s 66 per cent higher than estimates by other researchers who forecasted the numbers would fall to as low as 610 because of warming temperatures that melt ice faster and ruin bears’ ability to hunt. The Hudson Bay region, which straddles Nunavut and Manitoba, is critical because it’s considered a bellwether for how polar bears are doing elsewhere in the Arctic.

…

The debate over the polar-bear population has been raging for years, frequently pitting scientists against Inuit. In 2004, Environment Canada researchers concluded that the numbers in the region had dropped by 22 per cent since 1984, to 935. They also estimated that by 2011, the population would decrease to about 610. That sparked worldwide concern about the future of the bears and prompted the Canadian and American governments to introduce legislation to protect them.

But many Inuit communities said the researchers were wrong. They said the bear population was increasing and they cited reports from hunters who kept seeing more bears. Mr. Gissing said that encouraged the government to conduct the recent study, which involved 8,000 kilometres of aerial surveying last August along the coast and offshore islands.

Mr. Gissing said he hopes the results lead to more research and a better understanding of polar bears. He said the media in southern Canada has led people to believe polar bears are endangered. “They are not.” He added that there are about 25,000 polar bears across Canada’s Arctic. “That’s likely the highest [population level] there has ever been.”

This is consistent with stories we’ve been linking to for years now. Far from being threatened by any perceived or genuine global warming, polar bears are going wild like college students on spring break.

(And global warming has also just been cleared in the great honeybee hive collapse mystery, too.)

Next the Global Warm Mongers will seize upon the threat to the Canadian seal population by the increased numbers of polar bears—due to global warming!

Where do I go to get my hive back?

A common pesticide used increasingly in recent years for crops such as corn and soybeans is the probable culprit in the destruction of honeybee colonies around the world, a study released Thursday by researchers at the Harvard School of Public Health has found.

The researchers said they found convincing evidence of the link between the pesticide known as imidacloprid and honeybees abandoning their hives, or colony collapse disorder, which they say began occurring in 2006 on a scale and scope never seen before in the history of the beekeeping industry.

Bees pollinate about one-third of crops in the United States, including fruits, vegetables, nuts, and livestock feed. A widespread loss of bees could be devastating to the nation’s agriculture.

…

“It apparently doesn’t take much of the pesticide to affect the bees,’’ Lu said. “Our experiment included pesticide amounts below what is normally present in the environment.’’

…

But officials at Bayer, the German chemical and pharmaceutical company that produces more of the pesticide than any other company in the world, said that the study was flawed and that its findings should be disregarded.

They said imidacloprid is used only on a small amount of the nation’s crops, although they could not provide specific figures, and argued the doses used in Lu’s study were excessive.

…

“The outcome of the study is overwhelming, and I think that outweighs the small sample size,’’ Lu said.

Benbrook, the Organic Center chief scientist, said the study builds on similar findings about the potential dangers of imidacloprid. “This adds an important piece of the puzzle, confirming another important pathway through which bees are getting exposed to these insecticides,’’ he said. “The experimental design is very sound, and the findings are dramatic.’’

He pointed out that bans of the pesticide in parts of France and Italy since 2009 have substantially reduced colony collapse disorder there.

“This isn’t just an issue for bees,’’ Benbrook said. “People, especially children, consume a lot of high-fructose corn syrup. The presence of any pesticides in high fructose corn syrup should be a concern for the general public.’’

I didn’t see Global Warming mentioned anywhere in the piece. What’s up with that?

Unless you’re in China:

Poisonous fumes were preventing efforts to rescue 17 Chinese miners trapped underground for three days, according an official and state media.

On Thursday, a gas blast at the coal mine in the northeastern province of Liaoning killed five miners outright, injured another and trapped 17 others.

“At the scene, there is still no way for rescue,” a Liaoning provincial mine safety official, who declined to be named, told AFP.

“The carbon monoxide level is very high,” he said.

…

Authorities had detained the owner and three managers of the Dahuang Number Two Coal Mine where the accident occurred, Xinhua said. State media said previously that the mine was operating illegally.

China’s mines are known for being among the world’s most deadly due to lax regulation, corruption and inefficiency, and accidents are common as safety is often neglected by bosses seeking quick profits.

Just last month, 15 miners were killed and another three injured when a tramcar derailed in a coal mine in central China.

I’m very sorry for them and their families. But you have to wonder if their days weren’t numbered:

Tobacco-related deaths have nearly tripled in the past decade and big tobacco firms are undermining public efforts that could save millions, a report led by the health campaign group the World Lung Foundation (WLF) said on Wednesday.

In the report, marking the tenth anniversary of its first Tobacco Atlas, the WLF and the American Cancer Society said if current trends continue, a billion people will die from tobacco use and exposure this century – one person every six seconds.

…

In China, tobacco is already the number one killer – causing 1.2 million deaths a year – and that number is expected to rise to 3.5 million a year by 2030, the report said.

No offense, but isn’t 3.5 million a rounding error in the Chinese population? Don’t they have like a hundred cities of that size no one’s heard of? In any case, whether it’s due to tobacco, carbon monoxide, or just plain soot, breathable air may be China’s rarest commodity.

Export them to China as a delicacy [via Jungle Trader]:

Jellyfish are lovely creatures to behold underwater, as their gelatinous, tentacled bodies undulate in the currents. They are also a nuisance and a hazard. They can sting swimmers and clog fishing nets.

But, along the coast of the southern U.S. state of Georgia, jellyfish are a valuable export, which end up on dining tables across Asia.

Early on this chilly February morning, most everyone in the tiny coastal town of Darien is still asleep, but on the docks of Marco Seafood, along the Darien River, there’s plenty of activity. The shrimp trawler, Kim C. King, has just moored, and nearly 100 workers are ready to start processing last night’s catch of jellyfish, which the locals call jellyballs.

…

The jellyfish are dried, preserved and packaged before being sold to a seafood distributor that ships them to Japan, China, and Thailand.

There, dried jellyfish are a delicacy, used in soups and salads.

TK says they’re crunchy. “Actually they taste a little like the gristle of a chicken bone. It’s got that crunchy taste and that’s what the people in Japan and China, they like that crunch.”

Marine biologist Page has tried them, too. He’s not a fan. “One time and that was gracious plenty for me. They were more salty than anything. It was not my favorite, but fortunately there’s others out there that found it to be a favorite.”

Did he say they taste like chicken? He did, or close enough.

Anyhow, I think I see a way to narrow the trade gap between the US and China, one jellyball at a time.

Don’t know where, don’t know when…

During a Combat Engineering Corps training session, held near Israel’s border with Lebanon, soldiers stumbled upon a mature calf who had fallen into a three meter ditch. The training was immediately halted while the soldiers rushed to assist the captured animal.

…

“The calf was probably scared of the firing and ran into the ditch in an attempt to find a way out. The calf fell into the ditch but didn’t sustain any injuries from the fall. While waiting for the calf’s owner, the soldiers fed him some grass,” said Segal.

In an effort to assist the calf, several units were called to the area, such as the Combat Engineering Corps’ special task force, Givati soldiers and the 769 brigade.

When the owner finally arrive, a group of 12 soldiers began pulling the calf up from the ditch. The group effort eventually paid off and after a short while, the calf was pulled out.

“This was the first time we had the chance to assist an animal in distress. During our routine training in the area we tend to run into many wild animals. We always try to train around them in order to not disturb them and cause incidents such as this one,” Segal said.

Why do I think that if this calf had stumbled across the border and been discovered by Hezhollah’s forces (who run Lebanon, especially the South, in spite of UN monitoring), he would have been on Nasrallah’s lunch table by noon?

While the UN just wrings its hands over what it sees as a coming water shortage, Israeli high school students wring water from stones:

A pair of Netanya high school pupils who developed a system using solar rays to disinfect and clean water supplies so they are suitable for drinking won the Intel-Israel 15th Annual Young Scientists Competition on Tuesday.

Avishai Katko and Maya Braun of Sharett High School found a way to expose polluted water to ultraviolet light using renewable energy at low cost. The device, if produced commercially, could be used in any home, the pupils said.

The system is modular, mobile and suitable for use in places with a severe shortage of potable water that also enjoy sunlight most of the year.

Think that might be useful in parts of Africa?

PS: Cute kids, huh?

Ever seen Alfred Hitchcock’s Foreign Correspondent? Fun film. My beloved Robert Benchley has a small role.

Before I go on, if you haven’t seen it, this is a spoiler alert. The clip below is a key scene in the movie. Skip this whole post if you don’t want the surprise given away.

Joel McCrae notices something fishy with one of the windmills. Little did he know, they’re all that way:

Wait a minute, you say: what’s this nonsense about wind providing roughly zero percent of the world’s energy? What about all the mills and turbines in Europe, Asia, America… how can they add up to zero?

Like this:

Wind makes up about 0.3% of the world’s energy, which, rounded to the nearest whole number, is zero.

But the biggest embarrassment, it seems to me, is solar photovoltaic at 0.04%. After how much money Obama has shoveled into it and all we get is 0.04%? That’s a whole lot closer to zero than wind—in fact, it’s pretty damn close to this:

Which brings me to this, and then I’m done:

Fat, drunk, and stupid may be no way to go through life, but if they get me through the next months of this abysmal administration, I’m going to stick with them.

Let’s give solar a break for a change. The sun is clearly upset at getting such a bad rap.

Besides, wind power blows:

Wind farms in the Pacific Northwest — built with government subsidies and maintained with tax credits for every megawatt produced — are now getting paid to shut down as the federal agency charged with managing the region’s electricity grid says there’s an oversupply of renewable power at certain times of the year.

The problem arose during the late spring and early summer last year. Rapid snow melt filled the Columbia River Basin. The water rushed through the 31 dams run by the Bonneville Power Administration, a federal agency based in Portland, Ore., allowing for peak hydropower generation. At the very same time, the wind howled, leading to maximum wind power production.

Demand could not keep up with supply, so BPA shut down the wind farms for nearly 200 hours over 38 days.

…

Now, Bonneville is offering to compensate wind companies for half their lost revenue. The bill could reach up to $50 million a year.

The extra payout means energy users will eventually have to pay more.

In the real world, excess supply lowers costs. But not in Governmentia.

But the Northwest has it good compared to California:

For years, the wind energy industry has had a license to kill golden eagles and lots of other migratory birds. It’s not an official license, mind you.

But as the bird carcasses pile up—two more dead golden eagles were recently found at the Pine Tree wind project in Southern California’s Kern County, bringing the number of eagle carcasses at that site to eight—the wind industry’s unofficial license to kill wildlife is finally getting some serious scrutiny.

Some 77 organizations—led by the American Bird Conservancy, Cornell Laboratory of Ornithology, Endangered Species Coalition and numerous chapters of the Audubon Society—are petitioning the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to toughen the rules for the siting, permitting and operation of large-scale wind projects.

It’s about time. Over the past two decades, the federal government has prosecuted hundreds of cases against oil and gas producers and electricity producers for violating some of America’s oldest wildlife-protection laws: the Migratory Bird Treaty Act and Eagle Protection Act.

But the Obama administration—like the Bush administration before it—has never prosecuted the wind industry despite myriad examples of widespread, unpermitted bird kills by turbines. A violation of either law can result in a fine of up to $250,000 and imprisonment for two years.

Maybe we should pay them not to kill golden eagles.

We cause starvation in Africa by putting corn in our gas tank, bankruptcies, job losses, and crony capitalism by underwriting solar power, price rises in the Northwest by paying windmills not to turn, and dead eagles in California by paying them to turn.

Seriously, is oil so bad?