Global Warning/Climate Change

[Ken]

Deaths of birds and bats.
Eagles have made significant comeback since “Silent Spring,” evidently, so much so, they can now be written-off as collateral damage - ahem, for the acceptable PC cause.

Wear blinders, don’t think about it in any balanced manner.

2022
NPR / “A wind energy company has pleaded guilty after killing at least 150 eagles”
https://www.npr.org/2022/04/06/10912506 ... ald-eagles

NextEra Energy subsidiary ESI Energy was sentenced to probation and ordered to pay more than $8 million in fines and restitution after at least 150 eagles were killed over the past decade at its wind farms in eight states.
Chris Szagola/AP[/i]

Oil and gas and coal actually kill 20-times more birds than wind power according to the studies that look at such things.

And, of course house cats kill maybe 500-times more birds in the US than oil and gas and coal.

In any event, it sounds like this company just behaved negligently and stupidly. All they had to do was take reasonable measures to avoid bird strikes and then apply for the proper permits authorizing them to take eagles when it can't be avoided. They chose to do neither. From the article:

Companies historically have been able to avoid prosecution if they take steps to avoid bird deaths and seek permits for those that occur. ESI did not seek such a permit, authorities said.

The company was warned prior to building the wind farms in New Mexico and Wyoming that they would kill birds, but it proceeded anyway and at times ignored advice from federal wildlife officials about how to minimize the deaths, according to court documents.

"For more than a decade, ESI has violated (wildlife) laws, taking eagles without obtaining or even seeking the necessary permit," said Assistant Attorney General Todd Kim of the Justice Department's Environment and Natural Resources Division in a statement.

[temporal1]

It’s reflective of normalized hypocrisy to have such rigid+harsh penalties for so little as a feather,
while hand-waving away slaughter for monied corporations (who, doubtless, lobby and play other high-stakes political games).

[Robert]

Storage of high-level nuclear waste is actually mostly a political problem not a scientific problem. There are plenty of viable and safe options for permanent storage. They are just politically difficult to implement. It can also be re-processed but but that is expensive and also politically problematic because you end up with weapons-grade plutonium.

Thorium has even less issues with storage of waste. Nuclear is really the only real option for mass power without strip mining for Lithium.

[Ken]

It’s reflective of normalized hypocrisy to have such rigid+harsh penalties for so little as a feather,
while hand-waving away slaughter for monied corporations (who, doubtless, lobby and play other high-stakes political games).

How would you design laws intended to protect endangered species that have commercial value?

It isn't just eagle feathers. It is all manner of animal parts that have possible commercial value. Elephant ivory, walrus ivory, pelts of endangered big cats, sea turtles, bear gall bladders, rhino tusks, and and other wild animal products used for Asian folk remedies. If you allow possession of these things then you open up giant illegal markets in those same things and make it more likely/profitable for poachers to hunt bears or eagles or rhinos for their parts. So all possession is outlawed. But that doesn't mean the DOJ is going after some kid who finds an eagle feather and keeps it.

As for corporations and industry? The fact of the matter is that there are a lot of human activities that tend to threaten or kill protected species. We aren't going to shut down all economic activity just because an endangered species might be threatened. The point of issuing permits for incidental "takes" is to both get a handle on what those deaths are and to make sure industry is taking reasonable steps to limit them. And to work with industry to make sure incidental deaths are minimized.

I was actually involved in this years ago when I worked for NOAA. In that case it wasn't eagles but marine mammals like sea lions, seals, and whales. There are a lot of commercial fisheries around the US that have incidental takes of different marine mammal species. In Alaska it was mostly Stellar sea lions Dall's porpoise, dolphins, and albatross that got caught in fishing gear. The point of granting permits to these industries is to evaluate what they are doing, collect statistics, and then work with industry to make sure they are minimized. One in a while you encounter methods that are egregiously worse than normal. There was a fishing method in the north Atlantic called "pair trawling" in which two boats would work together at night to tow a massive pelagic net between them close to the surface to target tuna and albacore. They were catching and killing 100x more dolphins than other methods of fishing for those same species of fish and so pair trawling was highly regulated if not completely prohibited and industry shifted to fishing methods that are less deadly to marine mammals. Such as the line fishing that you see on shows like "Wicked Tuna" that kill no marine mammals.

Another example is sea turtles in the Gulf of Mexico. The shrimp fishery down there used to kill thousands of sea turtles annually. Through the regulatory and permit process and cooperation between the industry, government, and university researchers they developed turtle excluder devices for shrimp nets that allow sea turtles to escape drowning while still catching shrimp. Now the shrimp industry continues but only a small fraction of sea turtles are killed compared to before.

It isn't a perfect system but it is what we have. The alternatives are either (1) allowing unregulated and unrestricted intentional and unintentional killing of protected species, or (2) shutting down vast numbers of industries to prevent incidental killings of protected species. We have the technology to wipe out vast numbers of species around the world and that would likely happen without regulation. Whether or not one thinks that is important depends on one's values I guess.

So when a giant windfarm company decides to completely ignore this process maybe they deserve to get fined. That is apparently the only way to get their attention.

[ohio jones]

It’s reflective of normalized hypocrisy to have such rigid+harsh penalties for so little as a feather,
while hand-waving away slaughter for monied corporations (who, doubtless, lobby and play other high-stakes political games).

How would you design laws intended to protect endangered species that have commercial value?

The bald eagle is not endangered or threatened, but it is nonetheless protected.

[Ken]

It’s reflective of normalized hypocrisy to have such rigid+harsh penalties for so little as a feather,
while hand-waving away slaughter for monied corporations (who, doubtless, lobby and play other high-stakes political games).

How would you design laws intended to protect endangered species that have commercial value?

The bald eagle is not endangered or threatened, but it is nonetheless protected.

Correct. It came off the endangered species list in 2007 but it still protected under the Bald and Golden Eagle Protection Act.

[Szdfan]

Wild fire season came early this year due to dry conditions and high winds. We had four prairie fires in one day near where I work. Fortunately, only a couple of houses were lost.

Right now, northern New Mexico has major fires.

Recently, there was satellite imagery released showing the fires in New Mexico, while at the same time, a dust storm crosses from Colorado into Oklahoma. My house was in that dust storm.

[nett]

Storage of high-level nuclear waste is actually mostly a political problem not a scientific problem. There are plenty of viable and safe options for permanent storage. They are just politically difficult to implement. It can also be re-processed but but that is expensive and also politically problematic because you end up with weapons-grade plutonium.

Thorium has even less issues with storage of waste. Nuclear is really the only real option for mass power without strip mining for Lithium.

I don't see how nuclear reduces the need to mine for lithium. If we're gonna get away from petroleum for easily transportable energy, we'll need a lot of batteries.

On another note, nuclear doesn't satisfy our current hunger for energy, and it's not even close. Neutron embrittlement is probably the single biggest issue, dictating a finite lifespan that means the nuclear will never be able to reach the EROI that oil and hydro provided us.

I'm not saying nuclear doesn't work at all, but it cannot replace our currently reliable on oil.

Plundering the earth for essentially free energy has made us morbidly obese in terms of our energy consumption. We've been eating a lot of free lunches, but now it's time to pay. Crash diets aren't fun.

source: https://phys.org/news/2011-05-nuclear-p ... nergy.html

[Robert]

I'm not saying nuclear doesn't work at all, but it cannot replace our currently reliable on oil.

It could easily and cheaply supply all our needs if they would reduce regulation and build more plants. They require a very small footprint and produce on demand energy so there is no need for massive energy storage that wind and solar require.

Thorium plants can be safely placed right next to population centers because of how safe they are. They can be built in one to two years and within 10 years we would be producing 50%+ easily from nuclear.

[ken_sylvania]

I'm not saying nuclear doesn't work at all, but it cannot replace our currently reliable on oil.

It could easily and cheaply supply all our needs if they would reduce regulation and build more plants. They require a very small footprint and produce on demand energy so there is no need for massive energy storage that wind and solar require.

Thorium plants can be safely placed right next to population centers because of how safe they are. They can be built in one to two years and within 10 years we would be producing 50%+ easily from nuclear.

Nuclear power is "on demand" in the sense that it doesn't need to wait for the sun to shine or the wind to blow, but it's not a good option all on its own for variable power needs. Nuclear reactors start up and shut down slowly, so while they are an excellent source of "base power" they need to be supplemented with something like hydro or gas fired power that can react quickly when more, or less, power is needed in the grid.