Newsletter - September 2020

If you are an independent thinker you probably don’t jump on every band wagon that comes along.  If you are conscious and paying attention to our national dialogue you will have noticed that global warming has been the buzz word for quite a while and is the official religion of the left.  This is not an indictment against keeping the planet clean and free of pollution.  In fact there are far better ways that do not increase pollution to deal with the garbage in the world.  That appears to be beyond the ability of the powers that be. 

The fires in California are now justification for total embrace of the concept of global warming.  Of course, it is how California has embraced global warming that has given the state black outs, intermittent electricity and raging fires.

Pacific Gas and Electric has been forced to concentrate their entire business model on renewables such as wind and solar.  They have also had to focus the management of the company on making sure there are enough employees that are members of a minority group.  Political correctness is more important than running the utility well and maintaining and replacing the power lines, many which are almost 100 years old.

Wind and solar energy are part of green politics.  They will always be subject to blackouts. Wind and solar produce no power when the wind drops or there is no sunlight.  The collection area for wind and solar must be huge.  Solar panels and wind turbines are old technologies and are now close to collecting maximum energy from any given area.  Wind turbines generate nothing from gentle breezes and have to shut down in gales.  It also requires 1200 million gallons of water for just two of California’s solar power generating facilities.

When the sun is shining, solar energy floods the network which causes energy prices to plummet.  However, coal and gas plants are forced to operate at a loss or shut down.  When all green energy suddenly fails, coal cannot ramp up swiftly.  No one will build coal plants for part time use.  Therefore, the solution is rationing.  That is why during the past two weeks, residents have lost electric power.  Fossil fuel generated electricity (natural gas) has also been voted out in California.

Let’s also remember the number of bird deaths due to solar panels and wind turbines. 6,000 birds a year are fried in midair over just one solar plant in the Mojave Desert.  People have been hired to keep track of the number of raptors killed by the wind turbines at the Altamont Pass and the total is tens of thousands since the turbines were erected.

Now, it cannot be denied that California has had blackouts and fires throughout the state.

Is this due to global warming?  No.  Unfortunately, California for the last 40 years has had an obsession with global warming and the assumption that human beings can affect it.

For the last 40 years, California, in the name of not interfering with nature has allowed million of dead trees to accumulate.  The logging industry is now an after thought in the state and controlled burns are very rare.  There has been no preemptive trimming.  As President Trump recently stated: “You’ve got to clean your floors.  You’ve got to clean your forests.”

Let’s not forget Bill Clinton.  In the mid 1990’s Mr. Clinton drastically reduced logging and road creation on federal lands.  The undergrowth and dead wood built up tremendously.

The next crisis facing California is the issue of water.  Let’s read what Victor Davis Hanson has to say about water in California.  Originally, the state’s vast water projects were engineered to expand with the population.  The plan called for the state to finish planned additions to the California State Water Project.  But in the 1960’s and 1970’s environmentalists went to court and stopped new dam construction.  This included the 14,000 acre Sites Reservoir on the Sacramento River near Maxwell; the Los Banos Grandes facility along a section of the California Aqueduct in Merced County and the Temperance Flat Reservoir which is above Millerton Lake north of Fresno.  The canceling of the Klamath River diversion project resulted in the Aw Paw reservoir not being built.  This reservoir would have stored 15 Million acre-feet of water.

Environmentalists moved to freeze California’s water-storage resources at 1970”s capacities.  Bay Area environmentalists believed that more freshwater inflows would help oxygenate the San Francisco Delta enabling the survival of the Delta smelt, a three-inch baitfish. 

It is definitely possible that a flood of biblical proportions is in the not too distant future.

 In the winter of 1861-1862 a flood submerged the Central Valley in up to 15 feet of water. The Central Valley produces a great amount of American’s food and one fifth of the nation’s milk.  However, the gurus in this state are obsessing about the ocean rising an inch in a hundred years.  California’s infrastructure has inadequate drainage but our leaders are not preparing for entirely predictable weather occurrences. 

What has become apparent is that the Governor and Democrat leaders in California believe that they can operate against the laws of nature and manage the natural resources of the state.  What they have forgotten, if they ever knew, is that Mother Nature always wins in the end.  If human beings go against the laws of nature, Mother Nature has a lesson to teach. 

Let’s not forget that the “wise” leaders of this state voted for the Bullet Train.  Billions have been spent and the train is going nowhere.  However, unions are making a lot of money.  What if all that money had been spent on maintaining our state?

In all of this discussion, you cannot forget that presidential candidate Joe Biden has a “climate plan.”  It states that America must run on 100% emissions-free power by 2050 with enforceable milestones as early as 2025.   A recent Harvard University study found that in order to meet America’s current electricity needs, it would require covering one-third of the nation’s land mass with wind turbines.  Joe Biden has pledged to enact the Green New Deal which requires an all-electric vehicle fleet.  Wind turbines require 360 times more land to generate the same amount of power as nuclear power.  Coal and natural gas land requirements as just as low as nuclear power.

Of almost greater concern is that the mining of rare earth minerals that are necessary components of wind and solar equipment is possibly the most environmentally destructive activity on earth.  Rare earth mining is so environmentally devastating that only a few nations allow it.  China is one of them and is the reason they dominate global rare earth production. 

President Trump has been heavily criticized for leaving the Paris Climate Accord when he became President.  Contrary to the news propaganda, the Accord required the United States to give a lot of money to other countries.  Countries such as China would not have been required to clean up their country and deal with their pollution which manages to reach California.  Again, President Trump is looking out for America and American citizens.  What a concept! This is just a summary of the results of the Green New Deal.  Pay attention to how you vote.