Misleading Title: Desert tortoise deaths raise concerns as solar farms solve energy need

[NNadir]

Desert tortoise deaths raise concerns as solar farms solve energy need.

A few miles off the intersection of state Route 160 and Tecopa Road, about 10 miles south of Pahrump, lies a 3,000-acre solar farm under development. As you approach the project, bundles of metal fencing are prepped to soon become 10 miles of temporary desert tortoise exclusion fencing.

A team of biologists relocated 139 tortoises from their habitat to make way for the solar panels in the Yellow Pine Solar Project, one of four large solar energy developments initiated in Southern Nevada. The tortoises were moved across the road to Stump Springs in May.


In a span of a few weeks, 30 tortoises were killed, possibly by badgers. Conservationists believe relocation stress made the reptiles more vulnerable and drought caused badgers to look for new sources of prey. Wildlife experts are still looking into the exact cause.

The loss of the tortoises, a threatened species in Nevada since 1990, illustrates the challenges of bringing alternative energy sources to the Mojave Desert while still protecting its biodiversity...

There's a nice video connected to the article by people called "conservationists" who are, um, upset. The Lorax, as I read to my kids when they were small, spoke for the trees. These conservationists speak for the tortoises.

The title of the article is misleading, not about the death of the endangered tortoises owing to the transformation of wilderness into an industrial park. The misleading part is the claim that this has anything to do with solving energy needs.

Solar hasn't done a damned thing to solve energy needs. It's essentially useless. Without access to fossil fuels, the solar industry goes away.

We're burning fossil fuels at the highest rate ever, and the degradation rate of the atmosphere is the highest ever observed.

[hunter]

1. "We had to destroy the world in order to save it..."

... is not an ethical position.

The sad thing is that these vile projects will only prolong our dependence on fossil fuels, meaning any immediate reductions in greenhouse gas emissions will ultimately be inconsequential.

Building these things is just another flavor of climate change denial.

[NNadir]

2. Here's the real sad thing. The tortoises are just the tip of the iceberg. Treating the desert...

...biome like it's wasteland is horrible, but we are also trashing other biomes; most recently, all over the world the benthic biomes for greasy off shore wind turbines.

(One wonders about all kinds of burrows crushed under the weight of giant semis hauling wind turbine posts, if they even look.)

We have come back to the days when John Muir tried - and failed - to save the Hetch Hetchy valley, and are now worse off than even David Brower "trading" Glen Canyon for the Grand Canyon.

It's no longer just rivers - that sounds terrible "just" - we're tearing up, now it's all kinds of ecosystems.

For what? For fantasies of hydrogen cars? To provide grist for Elon Musk's ads for his obscene cars? For what?

It's heart breaking.

[Brenda]

3. Just wow, this is what DU is allowing now?

Building these things is just another flavor of climate change denial.

Referring to solar?

Solar hasn't done a damned thing to solve energy needs. It's essentially useless. Without access to fossil fuels, the solar industry goes away.

(from OP)

These are lies.

Edit to add:

https://www.greenamerica.org/fight-dirty-energy/amazon-build-cleaner-cloud/10-reasons-oppose-nuclear-energy

[hunter]

4. You can read my journal and do the math yourself.

I really can't say any more than that, but I will.

All these solar and wind schemes are simply not viable without fossil fuels.

For every new nameplate-megawatt of solar or wind power installed you need a megawatt of fossil fuel power installed, and these fossil fuels will be the primary energy source.

The amount of batteries, other sorts of energy storage systems, or "synergies" that would be required to overcome this problem are entirely ludicrous.

Like it or not, aggressive renewable energy schemes in places like California, Denmark, and Germany have failed, in the case of Germany quite spectacularly. They will only prolong our dependence on fossil fuels, especially natural gas.

I'm not hostile to home solar, rooftop solar, parking lot solar, etc.. But these solar and wind projects built on previously undeveloped land or seascapes are utterly vile.

(I'm being nice here. If you really want to set me off ask me about industrial scale meat and dairy production...)

I'm a radical environmentalist with a university degree to to match and I don't make any apologies for that.

Fossil fuels will destroy the natural world and our civilization as we know it. Natural gas is the most dangerous fuel imaginable because we've all been trained to call it "clean" and a good "backup" energy source for our wind and solar follies.

The volume of nuclear waste is small enough that it can be safely contained. Huge volumes of fossil fuel wastes are dumped anywhere and everywhere it's convenient.

Do you drive a car? It's a Fukushima accident spewing carcinogenic toxins wherever you go, not to mention the greenhouse gasses...

The major lesson I took away from Chernobyl and Fukushima is that humans going about their ordinary business are worse for the natural environment than the worst sorts of nuclear accidents.

Seriously, you can do the math yourself. California, for example, has gigawatt scale wind, solar, and energy storage schemes. You can use this real world data to model any sort of renewable energy utopia you like. Tell me how it works out when you scale it to eight billion people. How much would your utopia cost, and do we even have the natural resources to build it?

I used to be a hard core anti-nuclear activist starting about the time I met Helen Caldicott when I was seventeen. I was soon burning a lot of gasoline traveling between Humboldt Bay and San Onofre in protests and other sorts of mischief. That was a long time ago. I don't name names here to protect the innocent.

And then I changed my mind. Some of this evolution in my thinking is documented here on DU.