AnonymousBy Larry Bishop
Our County Planning Commission and the Board of Supervisors face a choice this week to promote a future of clean energy development in the County or double down on our past history of high risk and polluting oil development. The ERG and AERA dangerous oil project proposals are being stretched out to wear the County down and approve these high intensity, long term drilling schemes, through our drinking water aquifers.
A recent BNP Paribas Bank analysis predicts, that oil prices are poised to crash due to future low demand, thanks to rapid clean solar/wind energy production worldwide. The report posits that further oil development will result in major bankruptcies of oil companies with local and national governments picking up the cleanup tab (thinkprogress.org Aug 8).
Does Santa Barbara County want to approve 30 to 40 year oil expansion projects in this environment? Haven’t we learned our lesson with the Venoco bankruptcy due to the Platform Holly clean-up costs?
Please urge your County Planning Commissioner and Board of Supervisor to deny the pending ERG Cat Canyon proposal at their 8/14 Wednesday meeting. Let’s nip this disaster in the bud!
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Wow! Alarmist article! Dangerous oil project proposals! Oil price crash! Veneco bankruptcy! Cleanup costs! Disaster! Woe woe thrice woe!
Sorry you lost me when you cited “Thinkprogress” as your reference. Can you cite another reference? Future oil prices are poised to crash because of the rapid clean solar/ wind energy production worldwide…REALLY? I’m all for clean energy but I think we need a common sense approach.
Let me help you out MP805. Here is the link to the report referenced in the Thinkprogress article. It was created by those leftists at BNP Parabas, the 8th largest bank in the world.
https://docfinder.bnpparibas-am.com/api/files/1094E5B9-2FAA-47A3-805D-EF65EAD09A7F
While a change to renewables may, in theory, help save world ecosystems, it will also tend to make the electric grid increasingly unstable. To prevent grid failure, electrical systems will need to pay substantial subsidies to fossil fuel and nuclear electricity providers that can offer backup generation when intermittent generation is not available. Modelers have tended to overlook these difficulties. As a result, the models they provide offer an unrealistically favorable view of the benefit (energy payback) of wind and solar.
Cut back on driving. Buy fewer things.
Doing these two things are free, save you money, give you better health (walking) and reduce waste.
MP805–common sense is that we stop poisoning our air and water with the by products of combustion. You idea seems to be we will just sort of wait it out until we can easily do away with carbon based energy. This will not happen until we realized the immanent peril we face and stop temporizing and belittling the people who point out the danger.
Uh, sorry your facts confirm what I’ve said. That they derive the bulk of energy from nuclear power. Have a look at Germany’s stats. They’ve been deactivating nuclear. Because solar and wind are not truly viable (especially for Germany), they’ve had to resort of burning MORE COAL. Denuclearization leads to more emissions. And you need to educate yourself on the actual amount of waste produced. It’s really very small and easy to manage. Calm down.
We need CLEAN ENERGY NOW, and any step in that direction is a step in the right direction. It’s about time.
at Aug 12 5:06pm – this is the reason so much research and money is being put into battery storage. It’s not a reason to forgo pursuing renewables. The whole “instability” argument doesn’t hold water anymore . There will still be power on calm days and at night.
This is not going to be popular in the land of loonies, but any proposal to decarbonize is DOA without a huge nuclear component. Unfortunately, nuclear power has been demonized for decades, halting decarbonization, spiking global emissions, and literally killing millions in the process (not to mention the future millions who will die from climate change induced disasters). The failure of environmentalists to embrace nuclear power and use a single nuclear event as the reason no one should have nuclear power will be looked back on as one of the greatest mistakes in history. Modern reactors are safe, cannot melt down, and fusion is only a few decades away. When we closed San Onofre, statewide emissions spiked. Now, we’re closing the perfectly safe Diablo Canyon and emissions will spike again. Good luck meeting carbon goals. If you think nuclear power is scary, I recommend you never vacation in France. The entire country is nearly powered by nuclear, the only way France has been able to meet any emissions goals whatsoever. Science and reason over emotion. Unfortunately we have a lot of self righteous “environmentalists” in town who are wildly ignorant to real ways to save the planet. I only hope my generation can undo the heinous damage they’ve done and dismantle their pathetic campaign of misinformation and fearmongering regarding nuclear power. There is no viable carbon free future without nuclear power. I suggest any skeptics watch Pandora’s Promise and actually do some research on the issue. While they’re at it they should throw away their homeopathy pills and their crystals, too.
Uh, sorry to add facts to your screed- “France derives about 75% of its electricity from nuclear energy, due to a long-standing policy based on energy security. Government policy is to reduce this to 50% by 2035.” They, like everyone else, have no way to deal with the toxic nuclear waste they are generating, so are going green instead.
Molten salt reactors are a promising nuclear technology.
Why not put them at Diablo Canyon?
Imagine using free energy to power desal plants.
Here is an interesting article about them:
http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/crux/2019/02/26/molten-salt-nuclear-reactors/#.XVL3pOhKg2x
This company hopes to have a full scale prototype reactor by 2025:
https://www.seaborg.co/the-reactor
So all of these nuclear advocates have to be somewhat embarrassed by the latest nuclear “accident” wherein the Russians apparently killed 7 or 8 of their top nuclear scientists (you’d think they knew how to be safe around this crap wouldn’t you?), contaminated another city, probably polluted the White Sea and created a mess along the lines of so many nuclear messes before them. What is the fantasy that compels folks to advocate that we produce more permanent poison for ourselves while playing with immediate large scale death and destruction? These allegedly small scale reactors they advocate sound an awfully lot like the small scale reactor the Russians were trying to send aloft in their bizarre nuclear powered and armed drone experiment.
Embarrassed ? Not at all. Now you on the other hand..
I have yet to see a legitimate cradle to the grave carbon footprint analysis of nuclear power. Given that so much extra energy is spent safeguarding the mining, processing, transporting, consuming, and disposing the fuels, is it’s carbon footprint as low as even the cleanest carbon fuel – natural gas?
Umm, yes, they derive the bulk of their energy from nuclear but are moving away from that. To you that indicates ongoing strong support? You have a lot of disinformation in your posts, must have a hidden agenda. Or not so hidden.
Not to mention Chernobyl, Three Mile Island, the sinking of the Russian sub Kirsk, contamination of Hanford, contamination in Idaho at their reactor site, contamination of the Marshall Islands, Fukushima, etc…. I don’t think we’re smart enough to be messing around with this type of power.