By Larry Bishop of Buellton
Federal lands in Santa Barbara County are soon up for lease to oil companies for dangerous drilling and extraction processes. As our County strives to reduce the water, land, and air impacts of extreme oil drilling in County controlled areas, the Feds rush to push drilling on our Federal lands.
Federal agencies are greasing the regulatory skids to cram big new oil development down our throats. Soon the Federal Bureau of Land Management (BLM) will approve hastily prepared EIS (Environmental Impact Statements), allowing oil drilling and fracking above Nojoqui Falls, Drum Canyon, Los Padres National Forest, and the Lake Cachuma headwaters leading to our drinking water aquifers!
A U.S. Geological Survey report, published in September’s “Environmental Geosciences”, confirms the polluting impacts on Central Coast groundwater aquifers from cyclic steam injection, waste water injection, and other high intensity oil extraction processes.
Elections are coming. Ask your local and Federal elected leaders how they’ll stop this impending rape of our water, land, air, and climate.
Our kids strive to protect our climate by urging us to slash fossil fuel use. What do we tell them in 20 years as they struggle to cope with a burning planet?
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. The views and opinions expressed in Op-Ed articles are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect those of edhat.
Coal displaced wood for steam production enabling the industrial revolution and train transportation thus preventing deforestation. The first petroleum discovery led to kerosene displacing whale oil for lamps before electricity thus stopping the wholesale slaughter of whales for interior lighting. Refined petroleum products then led the way to transportation innovation resulting in modern air travel. Let me know when you book your flight on an electric or wood fired jet. We need lots of types of energy sources, but calling coal and petroleum failed and ignorant is as just being a latter day Luddite.
And claiming coal and petroleum aren’t killing us is foolish, willful ignorance.
Believe it or not we actually do have safe nuclear power technology. See Thorium nuclear reactors. Unfortunately, environmentalists will reject all things nuclear without understanding the difference and miss a huge opportunity.
If they continue with “dangerous drilling and extraction processes, extreme oil drilling,” and “cram big new oil development down our throats, rape our water, land, air, and climate,” we will have to “cope with a burning planet.” There, that’s better, put all of the scary words into a single sentence.
Macpuzl, you’re hilarious. Keep up the comedy. It’s amazing!!
Succinct enough that even simpleton deniers may understand.
Deniers? Do you drive a car? Fly in airplanes? Was your house built with wood, concrete and/or steel? Do you buy things delivered by truck? Ah, thought so. They aren’t going to be drilling next to lake cachuma. The best place to drill is off the coast of UCSB where 3 billion barrels still lie fallow and slowly percolate up to the surface.
China produces more CO2 emissions than USA and Europe combined. When are you going to be translating this op-ed into mandarin so Greta can read it to them?
From Forbes Magazine, that bastion of leftist thought: “One of the biggest challenges in developing a thorium reactor is finding a way to fabricate the fuel economically. Making thorium dioxide is expensive, in part because its melting point is the highest of all oxides, at 3,300° C. The options for generating the barrage of neutrons needed to kick-start the reaction regularly come down to uranium or plutonium, bringing at least part of the problem full circle…… There are currently no operating thorium reactors….. Waste radioactive for 500 years….. ” Yeah, this is the solutions to all of our problems……
Today’s wild predictions about climate doom are likely to be just as true as yesteryear’s. In other words, completely wrong. The major difference is today’s Americans are far more gullible and more likely to spend trillions fighting global warming.
When exercising critical thinking in regards to anthropogenic global warming, is it more rational to give credence to random anonymous internet trolls, or to look at what the actual climate science and decades of collected data tell us?
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https://climate.nasa.gov/evidence/
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http://www.skepticalscience.com/
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http://bit.ly/1pufueQ
Credence to the trolls, definitely. But we all need a hobby, don’t we Macpuzl?
Nice Whataboutism. “Fred down the street drives a gas guzzler.” So, that should influence your behavior?
Here’s some pretty good humor on the subject, though you might have trouble discerning it: http://denialdepot.blogspot.com
We ARE energy independent, for now, and what has it got us? We’re still kowtowing to Saudi princelings and doing their bidding. Energy independence is a myth… gas prices still went up $1/gal. this past month in spite of no changes in production or availability to US markets.
Of course, the Luddite were resisting progress, as are the carbon lackeys.
You are sadly VERY misinformed. The United States is by far the largest oil producing nation in the world, and with a relatively small population, gross over producers of carbon. Easy to check your fake news : https://www.google.com/search?q=who+produces+the+largest+oil+and+gas+emissions%27&oq=who+produces+the+largest+oil+and+gas+emissions%27&aqs=chrome..69i57.13523j1j7&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8
Instead of indulging in this standard hysteria and unfounded hyperbole, encourage our younger generation to engage in dedicated research that will develop nuclear energy safety and expanded battery capacity. Nonsense scoldings are going no where and not sure why you are even wasting your words.
What’s it matter, we only have 11 years & 6 months to live. “impending rape of our water, land, air, and climate”….maybe go outside and scream really loud.
We need to be energy independent. By all means possible….wind….solar….hydro….and even, yes, oil production.
Fossil carbon for fuel is a toxic failed technology of the ignorant past.
Red creek you work for Xi? I said Biggest emitters of CO2 and you did a nifty google search for oil producers. https://www.forbes.com/sites/rrapier/2018/07/01/china-emits-more-carbon-dioxide-than-the-u-s-and-eu-combined/#73b6013f628c
Obviously they don’t have oil which is irrelevant because they’re building coal plants by the dozens.
How are we “doing the Saudis’ bidding” other than protecting oil markets which directly benefits us? After Iran bombed them did we attack Iran or show restraint?
I hope Everyone here reads this https://apnews.com/bd45c372caf118ec99964ea547880cd0 with the exact same 10yr deadline issued by the same UN scientists, only it was in… 1989. Notice the alarmism and same sea level rise predictions, dust bowl, Maldives submerged all by 2000…
Also everyone here needs to check out Tony Heller’s you tube channel if they have a suspicion the media is overhyping climate theory. After all, 40,000 people die a year in car crashes@was at a staggering social cost of lawsuits and rehabilitation, lost parents and children and economic cost of tens of billions. When is climate change going to start racking up those kinds of numbers according to the “models”?
Lol “whataboutism” is what liberal says when you point out their hypocrisy and projection. Nice defense mechanism. The point is you and the rest want to destroy our way of life- using cars, building and repairing roads, having heat and air conditioning Amazon deliveries, grocery stores and those things rely on cheap reliable energy. You claim to want to give those up even though America could stop all carbon emissions and the CO2 would still rise. As for whataboutism Do a google search for the word and it skyrocketed in 2016. Funny how a word can become a tool of only one political party.
Freeman Dyson is a little smarter than you give credit. https://youtu.be/BQHhDxRuTkI
Yeah, those YouTube and denier links are, I agree, pure ignorance on display. And the real insult is that deniers are still not ashamed of their ignorance.
But Freeman Dyson is not a climate scientist. Do you go to a podiatrist for dental work?
Whataboutism was a standard Soviet propaganda ploy, and is still a staple of Russia and the Republican party, which is why it rose to such prominence in social media around 2016.
Denying reality makes you less than smart, for sure.
It is amazing people still want to deny there is a climate/ozone problem. If you say it is not true you don’t have to do anything to help save the environment, or show any concern. The ocean is warming making hurricanes stronger and coming more often, there are islands washing residents off the land, more extreme temperatures. But hey, just deny and it is all “not problem”.
Possibly you are looking for something. Acceptance? Emptiness inside? Loneliness? Loss of a loved one? I certainly do not know, but something is missing. Namaste my good friend.
Name calling doesn’t make you smart.
Why don’t you judge Tony Heller/Steve Goddard for yourself: https://realclimatescience.com/2019/10/new-video-50-years-of-failed-nasa-climate-forecasts/ Dr. James Hansen was one of the early proponents of AGW in the 1980s which led to a series of failed apocalyptic climate predictions by Climate Scientists. We are familiar with them now: ice free summer in the Arctic by 2015, island nations such as the Maldives submerged by 2018, after the year 2000 snow will be a rare and exciting event, sea ice decline decimating polar bear population. When Climate (political) Scientists go on the record that their hypothesis will result in specific catastrophes, but the catastrophes don’t occur, they shouldn’t double down with more useless predictions. At this rate AGW likely will go down as a hoax comparable to Piltdown Man or Canals on Mars. Don’t use derogatory language such as “deniers”, “simpletons”, “idiots”, “lackeys”, “shills”, “trolls” and etc to dehumanize those you disagree with. The use of denier is especially disgusting because it equates those you disagree with on the same level as holocaust deniers. Prediction failure is basically a hypothesis killer in any scientific endeavor. I have my reasons for not accepting AGW. That does not make me a “reality denier”. My livelihood depends on the proper application of physics and chemistry using the scientific method to solve complex semiconductor problems. Calling people like myself and many other Edhatters “anti-science” is quite offensive. Bullying people into silence isn’t debate, it’s just bullying.
Tony Heller is a longtime conspiracy theorist who used to go by the alias “Steve Goddard”, and has no climate science credentials whatsoever – he’s an electrical engineer. Really, you get your science from YouTube and 30 year old AP news articles???
604 – You didn’t even read the article you quoted. Here is a direct quote, “Since 1965, no country has put more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere than the United States. The 264 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide the U.S. has emitted to the atmosphere represented 22.5% of global emissions during that time, and was well ahead of the cumulative 216 billion metric tons from the European Union (EU). In second place among countries was the 188 billion metric tons emitted by China.” The article goes on to state that China will exceed the U.S. in the future, but hands down the U.S. has been the greater producer and polluter.
Tony Heller / Steve Goddard, or whatever his latest alias is, is a known crackpot on the subject of climate science, and thus gets lots of funding from Big Carbon and the various Koch dark money groups to spread his nonsense. You should indeed judge him on the basis of the drivel he produces.
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https://www.desmogblog.com/steven-goddard
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Or go to:
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https://skepticalscience.com
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and type one of his names into the search box. Or, read up on him at:
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https://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Climate_Change_Deniers
Critical thinking? Posting non-stop URLs to iffy pseudo-science is not thinking at all. Better to be positive and supportive than a “critical thinking” insult machine.
Climate data refutes your claims. Ignoring that makes you anti-science. If the shoe fits, wear it.
Freeman Dyson is anti-science? Got it.
Tony Heller uses the pseudonym Goddard many years ago but has used his real name on Twitter, when he testified before congress and on YouTube. You are 100% deranged liberal smear artist who has no concept of science. You’re all about consensus with your nonsense 97% of scientists sophistry.
I don’t get my science from the article I get Proof that this hysteria started over 30yrs ago. That’s a link to the associated press you …
Climate scientists are inferior. Ones, probably never got past calculus ins chill and could never get into physics programs. A better analogy would be me going to an oral surgeon for a cavity.
Shasta- great post. Glad you’re familiar with tony Heller. His work is excellent. There is no excuse for starting timelines at convenient points for the purpose of confirmation bias, as climate scientists are wont to do.
My, but you’re articulate. And the podiatrist/dentistry analogy is quite appropriate, since repeated denial of the climate reality is like sticking your foot in your mouth and twisting it.
“Why don’t you judge Tony Heller/Steve Goddard for yourself”
I judged your comment for myself and determined that it is completely invalid in terms of facts, history, rationality, integrity, honesty, and so on … which tells me something about your citation of Goddard … whom I have read and read about at length, and so I know that the same applies to him also.
Good analysis of Dyson’s misunderstanding of climate science here:
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https://initforthegold.blogspot.com/2007/08/dyson-exegesis.html