Improving crop yields helps feed more people, but it’s also good for the environment. The more food that can be grown on each square kilometer of land, the less land that needs to be converted to agriculture.

Last month, RedState reported on the spate of dead whales washing up on beaches in New York and New Jersey. The pace has not slowed, and there now have been 25 reported deaths of the huge animals just since the beginning of December 2022. //

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1990 - liberals - "SAVE THE WHALES!"

2023 - liberals - "KILL THE WHALES!"
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23 Whales dead with only 2 wind turbines in place.

Plans for THOUSANDS of wind turbines may wipe out whales forever.
11:39 AM · Mar 3, 2023 //

Many blame the construction of massive offshore wind turbines, but the federal government insists there’s no connection, with the Marine Mammal Commission, the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM), and the National Ocean Atmospheric Association (NOAA) rejecting the claims. //

The main takeaway from the dead whales on the East Coast, the heinous conditions in the Congo cobalt mines, and the traumatized reindeer in Norway? Green energy is not so easy.

A dead whale was found on a New Jersey beach Monday — the ninth one to wash ashore in the New York-New Jersey area since early December in what activists are calling an alarming uptick. //

Clean Ocean Action, an environmental conservation organization, said that the high number of whale deaths in a roughly two-month period has not been seen in the region in about 50 years.

The group said it believes off-shore wind energy projects could be the culprit of the rising fatalities.

“This alarming number of deaths is unprecedented in the last half century, the only unique factor from previous years, is the excessive scope, scale, and magnitude of offshore wind powerplant activity in the region,” COA said in a statement.

Whale carcass washed up on a beach in Manasquan, NJ

On the 50th Anniversary of the Endangered Species Act, green groups throw their once-sacred "precautionary principle" to the wind. //

Since the passage of the 1973 Endangered Species Act, environmentalists have fought for strict protections for endangered species. They have demanded that the government apply what is known as the “precautionary principle,” which states that if there is any risk that a human activity will make a species extinct, it should be illegal.

And yet here we are, on the 50th anniversary of the Endangered Species Act, watching the whole of the environmental movement — from the Audubon Society and the National Wildlife Federation to scientific groups like the Woods Hole Institute, New England Aquarium, and Mystic Aquarium — betray the precautionary principle by risking the extinction of the North Atlantic right whale.

The cause of this environmental betrayal is massive industrial wind energy projects off the East Coast of the U.S. The wind turbine blades are the length of a football field. Sitting atop giant poles they will reach three times higher than the Statue of Liberty. The towers will be directly inside critical ocean habitat for the North Atlantic right whale.

There are only 340 of the whales left, down from 348 just one year earlier. So many North Atlantic right whales are killed by man-made factors that there have been no documented cases of any of them dying of natural causes in decades. Their average life expectancy has declined from a century to 45 years. A single additional unnatural and unnecessary death could risk the loss of the entire species. //

North Atlantic right whale population declined from 480 to 340 whales between 2010 and 2022

“In 2009, LS Power, a New York private equity company, tried to build a power line over Minidoka. Thankfully, the Department of the Interior moved LS Power’s Southwest Intertie Project (SWIP) power line away from the park. Today, LS Power seeks approval from the Bureau of Land Management to build the giant Lava Ridge wind project on federal land within two miles of the park’s visitor center.” — Friends of Minidoka

In Episode 329 of District of Conservation, Gabriella speaks with two leaders behind the “Stop Lava Ridge” movement, Diana Nielsen and Dean Dimond, to discuss the significance of the proposed Lava Ridge Wind Project in Southern Idaho. This proposed project is endorsed by the Biden administration as part of their goal to generate 25 gigawatts of onshore wind energy by 2025. This interview ties with today’s release of Conservation Nation Episode 12 on the very subject. Tune in to learn more!

Virtue-signaling politicians don’t want wind turbines like Lava Ridge near them. They let others pay the price of their energy fantasies. //

If all goes according to plan, Magic Valley Energy will soon be installing up to 400, 740-foot-tall wind turbines, 485 miles of new roads, miles and miles of transmission lines, and buildings filled with half-ton battery modules on upwards of 197,000 acres at Lava Ridge in southwestern Idaho.

The company is named after a beautiful valley that soon won’t be nearly so magical.

The acreage is equal to 15 percent of Delaware, and the turbines, at 740 feet tall, are larger than the Washington Monument — an appropriate comparison because the project is being advanced in cooperation with a climate-obsessed Biden administration determined to replace fossil fuels with “clean” energy.

For the administration, saving the planet from computer models of manmade climate disasters is far more important than saving land, scenery, habitats, wildlife, and ways of life from the ravages of wind and solar installations.

In fact, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, along with other federal agencies, is preparing to expedite wind and solar permit approvals, no matter the effects on Mother Earth. They’ve even decreed that bald and golden eagles killed by wind turbines are merely “incidental takings” — unintentional losses due to otherwise lawful activities — and thus irrelevant in permitting decisions. Nor do they consider the incomprehensible amounts of mining (in faraway lands with lax environmental standards) required to produce the metals, minerals, and concrete those installations will need.

At the end of 2022, climate startup Make Sunsets announced it had launched two payloads of reflective sulfur into the New Mexico sky as proof of concept for its planet-cooling technology. By filling the sky with sun-reflective sulfur, the company hopes to attack climate change directly by simply reducing the world’s temperature — and it’s hoping to make a fortune in the process by selling carbon credits to greenhouse gas emitters.

But because blocking out the sun would produce catastrophic consequences for food and energy production and even human health, these credits would have to include both the “cost” of each ton of carbon dioxide offset by the sulfur and the negative effects of less sunlight reaching the Earth. Once accounting for the damage from blocking our sun, it’s likely Make Sunrise’s credits are worth less than zero and are a net liability for humanity that could, if scaled, cause significant damage to our planet.

To prevent financial fraud and ecological catastrophe, including acid rain, the Biden administration must take immediate action to shut the company’s operations down for good.

But of all the mysteries and maybes surrounding the Dodo, there is one question that has intrigued me for years, and in the face of the tragedy of its demise it may seem callous or cruel, but--What did a Dodo taste like?

100LL is challenging to produce and distribute; it is a boutique fuel in terms of volume, hence why there is a limited number of producers. Avfuel, Epic, Titan, and others commonly swap stock to meet the ebb and flow of their stock levels. 

Aviation fuel innovation is not widespread, and it is no wonder only a limited number of entities even attempt it. No new producers are on the horizon. Fear of negative press and the EPA keep them at bay. Some reports of an endangerment finding and pushing the 100LL ban out to 2030 have been making the rounds. Even now, as GAMI has approval, a total replacement of 100LL by 2030 would “be a challenge.”

Additionally, Europe is on the brink of banning tetraethyl lead (TEL), the chemical which adds lead to 100LL fuel. Distributors can still import blended 100LL fuel but at a very high price. At press time, the European Union Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) is evaluating the G100UL STC.

G100UL has no toxic chemicals nor organometallic additives (like TEL in 100LL). Scavenging agents, such as the ethylene dibromide required to try to scavenge the deposits formed by the TEL in 100LL, are also not found in GAMI’s product. Another thing missing is MMT (methylcyclopentadienyl manganese tricarbonyl), another organometallic additive with both engine deposits, as well as health and environmental concerns.

When the transition occurs, converting to G100UL will be seamless. Operators will not worry about separate tanks nor exhausting their supply of 100LL; the new unleaded fuel can store in the same tanks as legacy avgas.

G100UL offers additional benefits. The result of going unleaded is a cleaner fuel burn, no deposits forming in the combustion chamber, and no fouled plugs. All of the above spells reduced maintenance. Trust me; you will appreciate the reduction when you see my maintenance labor total on your next shop bill.

Recycling paper (or cardboard) does save trees. Recycling aluminum does save energy. But that’s about it.

The ugly truth is that many “recyclables” sent to recycling plants are never recycled. The worst is plastic. Even Greenpeace now says, “Plastic recycling is a dead-end street.”

Hoffman often trucks it to a landfill.

Years ago, science writer John Tierney wrote a New York Times Magazine story, “Recycling Is Garbage.” It set a Times record for hate mail. But what he wrote was true.

“It’s even more true today,” Tierney tells me. “Recycling is an industry that uses increasingly expensive labor to produce materials that are worth less and less.” //

Putting garbage in landfills is often much cheaper than recycling. My town would save $340 million a year if it just stopped recycling. //

Since most plastic can’t be recycled, what’s the environmentalists’ solution now? “Stop producing it,” says Greenpeace’s John Hocevar. Lots of environmental groups now want to ban plastic.

That’s just silly. Plastic is useful. Using it often creates fewer emissions than its alternatives. Plastic bags create fewer than paper bags. A metal straw has to be used 150 times before it creates less pollution than a plastic straw.

CBS "60 Minutes" sacrifices its credibility in selling apocalyptic pseudoscience

Cities where US embassies installed air monitors saw improved air quality. //

In 2008, the United States embassy in Beijing installed an air-quality monitor and started tweeting out its findings every hour. Since then, these monitors have popped up in more than 50 embassies in countries and cities around the globe.

Something unexpected happened in each of the cities in which the monitors appeared. Researchers found that, overall, air quality improved in the cities where embassies were tweeting out air-quality data. “We were surprised,” Akshaya Jha, assistant professor of economics and public policy at Carnegie Mellon University and one of the paper’s authors, told Ars.

While he wasn't sure what to expect, Shatner did not predict this. He had been excited to travel to space, and had thought about it for nearly 60 years, but didn't think he'd be overwhelmed with sadness, or that he'd go through "the strongest feelings of grief" that he's ever experienced.

There's a name for what Shatner felt: it's called the "overview effect." The term was coined by space philosopher Frank White in his 1987 book of the same name.

"The overview effect is a cognitive and emotional shift in a person's awareness, their consciousness and their identity when they see the Earth from space," White told NPR. "They're at a distance and they're seeing the Earth ... in the context of the universe."

This context was what struck Shatner the most.

"It was the death that I saw in space and the lifeforce that I saw coming from the planet — the blue, the beige and the white," he said. "And I realized one was death and the other was life."

According to White, everyone who travels to space experiences an "overview effect" — an emotional or mental reaction strong enough to disrupt that person's previous assumptions about humanity, Earth, and/or the cosmos. Everyone's overview effect is unique to them, but there are reactions that are more common than others.

Missouri knew of contamination in Springfield’s groundwater decades before anyone told residents //

Early in 2019, Ed Galbraith faced a crowd of some 200 unhappy Springfield, Missouri, residents. He wanted to make amends.

Galbraith, then director of the Missouri Department of Natural Resources’ environmental quality division, acknowledged that the state agency in charge of protecting the environment should have announced sooner that contaminated water had spread from an old industrial site near Springfield-Branson National Airport. Residents had recently found out that a harmful chemical known to cause cancer had been detected in the groundwater.

The contamination came from the site of the now-shuttered Litton Systems, a former defense contractor that had employed thousands of people in Springfield to make circuit boards for the Navy and telecommunications industry.

Litton used a toxic solvent called trichloroethylene (TCE) to wash the circuit boards and for years improperly disposed of it. The pollutant leached into the groundwater and into aquifers deep below the ground. It then spread to nearby properties, where it made its way into wells that supplied water to those who lived and worked near Litton.

The plant closed in 2007, six years after defense contractor Northrop Grumman bought Litton. Even after Northrop Grumman demolished the facility, the contamination problem lurked below the surface.

“For those people for whom this came as a surprise, especially for those who had TCE in their (water) wells and didn’t know it, I apologize,” Galbraith said at a public forum on March 13, 2019. “We didn’t tell people about it in a timely manner.”

Nearly six years after the United States helped negotiate it, the Senate has ratified a global climate treaty that would formally phase down the use of hydrofluorocarbons, or HFCs, industrial chemicals commonly found in air conditioners and refrigerators, insulating foams and pharmaceutical inhalers.

The Kigali Amendment, an addition to the Montreal Protocol climate treaty, aims to drastically reduce the global use of the compounds.

"This measure will go a long way to lowering global temperatures while also creating tens of thousands of American jobs," Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said before Wednesday's vote, which passed 69-27.

HFCs were widely adopted in the 1980s and 1990s to replace another family of chemicals, chlorofluorocarbon, or CFCs, which damage the Earth's ozone layer. But after the switch, HFCs emerged as some of the most potent greenhouse gases, hundreds to thousands of times more potent than carbon dioxide. //

On the climate side, there is some evidence that commitments to cut back on the use of HFCs are not being followed. A study published in Nature Communications in 2021 found that atmospheric levels of the most potent HFC, HFC-23, should have been much lower than what scientists detected if China and India, countries responsible for manufacturing the majority of the compound that turns into HFC-23, had accurately reported their reductions.

Is it a coincidence that the people who said Western civilization was unsustainable are making it so?

As policymakers have shifted focus from pandemic challenges to economic recovery, infrastructure plans are once more being actively discussed, including those relating to energy. Green energy advocates are doubling down on pressure to continue, or even increase, the use of wind, solar power, and electric cars. Left out of the discussion is any serious consideration of the broad environmental and supply-chain implications of renewable energy.

As I explored in a previous paper, “The New Energy Economy: An Exercise in Magical Thinking,”[1] many enthusiasts believe things that are not possible when it comes to the physics of fueling society, not least the magical belief that “clean-tech” energy can echo the velocity of the progress of digital technologies. It cannot.

This paper turns to a different reality: all energy-producing machinery must be fabricated from materials extracted from the earth. No energy system, in short, is actually “renewable,” since all machines require the continual mining and processing of millions of tons of primary materials and the disposal of hardware that inevitably wears out. Compared with hydrocarbons, green machines entail, on average, a 10-fold increase in the quantities of materials extracted and processed to produce the same amount of energy.

This means that any significant expansion of today’s modest level of green energy—currently less than 4% of the country’s total consumption (versus 56% from oil and gas)—will create an unprecedented increase in global mining for needed minerals, radically exacerbate existing environmental and labor challenges in emerging markets (where many mines are located), and dramatically increase U.S. imports and the vulnerability of America’s energy supply chain.

As recently as 1990, the U.S. was the world’s number-one producer of minerals. Today, it is in seventh place. Even though the nation has vast mineral reserves worth trillions of dollars, America is now 100% dependent on imports for some 17 key minerals, and, for another 29, over half of domestic needs are imported.

Among the material realities of green energy:

• Building wind turbines and solar panels to generate electricity, as well as batteries to fuel electric vehicles, requires, on average, more than 10 times the quantity of materials, compared with building machines using hydrocarbons to deliver the same amount of energy to society.

  • A single electric car contains more cobalt than 1,000 smartphone batteries; the blades on a single wind turbine have more plastic than 5 million smartphones; and a solar array that can power one data center uses more glass than 50 million phones.

  • Replacing hydrocarbons with green machines under current plans—never mind aspirations for far greater expansion—will vastly increase the mining of various critical minerals around the world. For example, a single electric car battery weighing 1,000 pounds requires extracting and processing some 500,000 pounds of materials. Averaged over a battery’s life, each mile of driving an electric car “consumes” five pounds of earth. Using an internal combustion engine consumes about 0.2 pounds of liquids per mile.

• Oil, natural gas, and coal are needed to produce the concrete, steel, plastics, and purified minerals used to build green machines. The energy equivalent of 100 barrels of oil is used in the processes to fabricate a single battery that can store the equivalent of one barrel of oil.

• By 2050, with current plans, the quantity of worn-out solar panels—much of it nonrecyclable—will constitute double the tonnage of all today’s global plastic waste, along with over 3 million tons per year of unrecyclable plastics from worn-out wind turbine blades. By 2030, more than 10 million tons per year of batteries will become garbage. //

All machines wear out, and there is nothing actually renewable about green machines, since one must engage in continual extraction of materials to build new ones and replace those that wear out. All this requires mining, processing, transportation, and, ultimately, the disposing of millions of tons of materials, much of it functionally or economically unrecyclable. //

Over the past century, there have been two significant developments. First, the U.S. has not expanded domestic mining, and, in most cases, the country’s production of nearly all minerals has declined. Second, the demand for minerals has dramatically increased. These two intersecting trends have led to significant transformations in supply-chain dependencies. Imports today account for 100% of some 17 critical minerals, and, for 29 others, net imports account for more than half of demand. //

For a snapshot of what all this points to regarding the total materials footprint of the green energy path, consider the supply chain for an electric car battery. A single battery providing a useful driving range weighs about 1,000 pounds.[15] Providing the refined minerals needed to fabricate a single EV battery requires the mining, moving, and processing of more than 500,000 pounds of materials somewhere on the planet (see sidebar below).[16] That’s 20 times more than the 25,000 pounds of petroleum that an internal combustion engine uses over the life of a car.

“I just dissected the Inflation Reduction Act,” Mills said. “Frankly, IRA’s ‘clean energy’ provisions will make you spoil the Earth to save it.”

“I’m listening,” POTUS grumbled.

“I brought you my paper, “Mines, Minerals, and ‘Green’ Energy: A Reality Check.” [1]

“Intriguing,” POTUS mumbled, as he thumbed through its 19 pages and 127 footnotes.

Mills told POTUS that the solar panels, windmills, and electric vehicles that he and congressional Democrats crave would mean mining, refining, shipping, and dumping that would scar the planet but barely nick expected global warming.

“Compared with hydrocarbons, green machines entail, on average, a tenfold increase in the quantities of materials extracted and processed to produce the same amount of energy,” Mills said.

“Continue,” POTUS replied.

• “A lithium EV battery weighs about 1,000 pounds,” Mills explained. “Such a battery typically contains about 25 pounds of lithium, 30 pounds of cobalt, 60 pounds of nickel, 110 pounds of graphite, 90 pounds of copper, about 400 pounds of steel,” plus aluminum and plastic.

• These substances must be clawed from the earth, Mills noted. This battery’s components would be purified from 12.5 tons of lithium brines and ores of cobalt (15 tons), nickel (3 tons), graphite (a half ton), and copper (12.5 tons). Isolating those commodities involves excavating 250 more tons of dirt and rock.

• Dig, baby, dig: “The mining of cobalt for batteries will need to grow 300% [to] 800%,” Mills said. “Lithium production … will need to rise more than 2,000%,” he added. “The mining of indium … will need to increase as much as 8,000%.”

• That requires power. “The energy equivalent of 100 barrels of oil is used in the processes to fabricate a single battery that can store the equivalent of one barrel of oil,” Mills said. POTUS’ eyes widened.

• Energy-efficient pipelines carry 75% of oil and 100% of natural gas. For green machines, Mills observed, “Using trucks instead of pipelines entails a 1,000% increase per ton-mile in the embodied transportation of energy materials.”

• When green machines die, “[n]early all of them will eventually show up in waste dumps,” Mills noted. A decommissioned 100-megawatt wind farm’s 20 turbines will pollute “fourfold more nonrecyclable plastic trash than all the world’s [recyclable] plastic straws combined. There are 1,000 times more wind turbines than that in the world today.”

Too bad these efforts barely tame global warming.

Copenhagen Consensus Center founder Bjorn Lomborg calculates that the Inflation Reduction Act would decrease expected global temperatures by 0.0009 degrees Fahrenheit to 0.028 degrees Fahrenheit in 2100. Imagine lowering a thermostat from 72 degrees Fahrenheit to 71.9991 degrees Fahrenheit or (best-case scenario) 71.972 degrees Fahrenheit.

“Come on, man!” POTUS snapped. “We have this under control.”

Mills tilted his head in curiosity. From the bottom desk drawer, POTUS pulled a footlong rod.

“This was carved from a chair leg at Philadelphia’s Independence Hall, America’s birthplace,” POTUS whispered. “Watch this.”

POTUS stood at his desk and waved the stick over his head. “Presto!”

[1 https://www.manhattan-institute.org/mines-minerals-and-green-energy-reality-check]

Il reste maintenant la question qui nous a amené ici : que se passe-t-il si on roule à 110km/h au lieu de 130km/h ? Cela correspond à une diminution de seulement 15% de la vitesse.

Mais on voit que pour les frottements aérodynamiques (la source principale de consommation), ce qui compte c’est le carré de la vitesse ! En utilisant une vitesse de 110km/h, on trouve une valeur de 42 MJ (au lieu de 60) pour le travail de cette force. Notre total de 72 MJ se trouve donc réduit à 54 MJ, soit une diminution de 25% de la dépense énergétique.

On voit donc que du fait que les frottements aérodynamiques (80% du total) dépendent du carré de la vitesse, une diminution de vitesse de 15% engendre une diminution de consommation de 25%. Évidemment, il faudrait un peu raffiner en regardant la façon dont le rendement du moteur dépend de l’allure, etc., mais une fois de plus ça donne l’ordre de grandeur qui nous permet de raisonner quantitativement.

The Israel Salt Company, for example, has struck a deal with the Mekorot desalination plant in the southern port city of Eilat to make high-quality table salt from the leftover sodium.

“A brine discharge line and other discharge facilities are not needed,” wrote a pair of researchers in 2007, adding “non-homogenous salinity distribution profile of the sea is prevented, leaving the sea fauna and flora at this beautiful resort city untouched.”

Ten years later, a study from the Australian government found in the absence of such an arrangement, excess salt runoff can be carefully dropped into the open ocean without significant changes in the ocean’s salinity. //

According to researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), concentrated desalination brine can be converted into chemicals with market value.

In a 2019 report, a team of scientists outlined how direct electrosynthesis of desalination waste can produce sodium hydroxide and hydrochloric acid, both of which are also useful ingredients in plant operations themselves.

Sodium hydroxide, also known as “caustic soda,” can be used to pretreat incoming seawater and lower its acidity, allowing membrane filters to last longer. Plants creating their own sodium hydroxide would no longer need to purchase the chemical from a third-party seller when the product can be made onsite. In fact, plants could make so much of it that excess products could be sold on the open market as another stream of revenue.

Hydrochloric acid from recycled brine discharge can also be used as a cleaning chemical inside the plant, or can be exploited to produce hydrogen. Hydrogen is an emissions-free fuel, the only byproduct of which is water when consumed in a fuel cell to generate electricity.

Both hydrochloric acid and hydrogen are lucrative byproducts that could be sold off by plant operators in addition to excess sodium hydroxide.