Environmental Lies Multiply Themselves - Crying Wolf

Today, the Rocky Mountain News is reporting on Bill Ritter's written objections to the BLM trying to follow the law and lease 360,000 acres of oil shale land by 2007 (this being 2008).

Comments from [ Bill }Ritter and various state agencies covered 60 pages and echoed some of the concerns expressed over the past year by environmental groups, water utilities and Western Slope local governments. They fear oil shale production will require vast amounts of water - equal to what the Denver region uses in a year - and the electricity of as many as 10 large coal-burning power plants.

While we have no idea where the Rocky or Bill Ritter got the water use estimate, but we do know where the ten coal burning power plant estimate came from.

Not long ago we wrote a critical review about a paper by Mark Udall's brother Randy that we found to be full of obviously false arguments. We called the piece "We've decided it is in the DNA" refering to the whole Udall family's record of lying about the environment.

After deciphering the intent of Randy's plea that the gas produced by the in situ process be shipped away so that he could argue that there would be a need for ten coal fired plants we wrote:

Randy Udall admits in this single paragraph that one third of the energy production of the Shell Oil process will be in the form of natural gas. Then he goes on to pretend that the natural gas produced by the process can't be used, and that instead, much less efficient coal electrical plants must be used.

This makes about as much sense as requiring the residents of the island of Kauai, Hawaii, which gets more annual rainfall than any other location in the United States, to rely on desalinization for their drinking water.

This isn't a silly argument. It is an inane argument. Unfortunately, many of today's environmentalist's arguments are just that-inane.

Now Randy Udall's on-its-face false argument has reportedly made it into a formal state input to the BLM. We are not well served when Bill Ritter and his band of merry environmentalists are caught red handed crying wolf. There should be red faces in Denver.

Doing Some Thinking About Climate Change

We've written elsewhere about Paul Chesser coming to town and awakening us to what the environmentalist extremists like Bill Ritter and Mark Udall have in store for us, our children, and our grandchildren.

Imagine a world without energy. It's not hard to do. Man survived at a subsistence level for centuries without energy. Oh, there was the occasional wind or water powered grist mill, but candles lit the night. Even kerosene lamps didn't come into wide use until the late 1800's. Trains weren't really a part of our transportation world until the mid 1800's and if one wanted to travel very far off the tracks, he walked or relied on real horsepower.

All of the modern conveniences that we take for granted require power.

Not many years ago, PBS had several series that illustrated how hard it is to live a life without the conveniences that power brings us. They included one on an 1870's Texas ranch and a 1900's London household. The women had servants in both because it wasn't possible to live well without help. Even with servants, it is hard to describe what they were doing as living well.

What does this have to do with Bill Ritter and Mark Udall? With few exceptions, the generation of power also generates greenhouse gases. If one ignores that water vapor is a greenhouse gas, the exceptions are hydroelectric, but environmentalists want to dismantle dams, and nuclear, which the environmentalists won't abide.

Every other form of renewable energy produces at least some greenhouse gasses, either directly as with biofuels, or when its components are being manufactured and assembled. Bill Ritter and Mark Udall have bought into the extremist goal of an 80% reduction in greenhouse gasses from current levels by 2050.

When one considers that the US and Colorado population will double by that time, Bill Ritter and Mark Udall are advocating that power and transportation be rationed at a rate of about 10% of the rate we use today, per capita.

For some reason, the Al Gore's, the Bill Ritter's, and the Mark Udall's of the world have a great nostalgia for 19th century living standards. They want shove the majority of the nation's population back to that era. They would have a special place in this hellhole for themselves. Like the Russian commissars of the 20th century, they expect their wealth and political power to help them avoid the consequences of their own propaganda.

Ask Al Gore, who lives in a house that consumes ten times as much power as the average household. There will be the Al Gores in 2050, too. Some of them will be named Ritter and Udall.

Paul Chesser has more.

Fighting A Rear Guard Action, Weakly

With much fanfare, Bill Ritter assembled a coalition to fight bark beetles. It is too little, too late as Ritter, himself admitted:

Ritter said there is no way to stop the beetle infestation, which has destroyed more than 1.5 million acres of lodge pole pines over the past decade and could wipe them out in three to five years.

At no time did Bill Ritter acknowledge that the devestation was caused in large part by the obstinate refusal of the Wilderness Society and the Sierra Club to allow the forest service to be proactive. He also was careful not to admit that those two organizations and their bought and paid for Boulder Congressman, Mark Udall, will stand in the way of preparing fire breaks in the dead forests that would keep a fire from burning more than a few thousand acres.

When Mark Udall and Bill Ritter talk about fire breaks, they mean localized fire breaks near mountain towns, and nothing else.

Even if Mark Udall refuses to walk the walk, he can certainly talk the talk, and he managed to get a quote into the paper:

Rep. Mark Udall, D-Colo., said he would work with the task force to iron out any federal issues.

"We need to work together at the federal, state, local and private level to address the potential impacts of bark beetles, vegetative overgrowth, fire threats, tourist impacts, energy production and creating future healthy forest conditions on our forested landscapes," Udall said

Where is Bill Ritter on Nuclear Power?

One of the more interesting aspects of this election cycle has been the willingness of major Colorado politicians to undercut each other.

They may all be reading from the same environmentalist extremist playbook, but some seem to have started from the back of the book, some in the middle, and some at the beginning.

Take Roan drilling, for example. Neither Ken Salazar nor Mark Udall could seem to anticipate that the lure of billions of tax dollars would cause Bill Ritter to cave on the issue. Once Ritter caved, the position folded up like a house of cards. Now, Salazar and Udall favor drilling on the top of the Roan plateau.

It never was a defensable position because the Roan is not pristine back country. Any one who questioned that need only call up Google Earth to discover that is is scrub land.

Now comes the issue of nuclear power. Mark Udall pulled his finger out of the anti nuclear dam when he told the Denver Post after the State of the Union address:

"I believe we've got to take another look at nuclear power because of the carbon footprint it doesn't have," said [ Mark ] Udall. "But we do it taking into account the challenges that nuclear power presents, cost-wise and environmentally."

So, now it is time to find out which part of the environmentalist extremist playbook Bill Ritter is playing on nuclear power. Where do you stand Governor? Your campaign contributors want to know.

Roan Plateau Games Still Being Played

Ken Salazar bought Bill Ritter some time to save the scrub land that is called the Roan Plateau. The time is up. Ritter proposed some very minor changes and claims:

Ritter and state Department of Natural Resources executive director Harris Sherman said they believe the BLM will incorporate their comments into the plan

If BLM does actually incorporate new comments in the plan, it must then open the plan up for comments on the comments. More wasted time, but that seems to be the plan. They don't have to stall drilling forever, but they think it would be nice to stall it until after Mark Udall is elected.

Pristine Back Country?

The DSCC made a mistake this week in releasing a YouTube ad supposedly showing the Roan Plateau to be lush with water. It is not. It is arid scrub land. Someone who questions that description need only call up Google Earth and enter "Roan Plateau" to see that.

Why do we get stuff like this from the associated press:

Some of the elected officials in western Colorado, hunting and angling groups, environmentalists and churches across the state have called for protecting the Roan Plateau, rich in natural gas and oil shale as well as wildlife and pristine backcountry. There is drilling on some of the formation's private land, and the Bureau of Land Management in June approved a plan opening some of the federal land to drilling.

Perhaps it is because the Associated Press cannot be trusted to be truthful. This Roan Plateau drilling hold up is an attempt by the environmentalists to drive up the cost of oil and gas, and they count on people not using the internet and their own eyes to see the truth. Go look at Google Earth for yourself.

While you are at it, check out just how deceptive the latest DSCC ad for Mark Udall is. We wouldn't have checked Google Earth ourselves had the photographs the DNCC provided the ad agency not looked so strange.

Backroom Bill Ritter Does Good, Maybe

It is unfair for a blog which calls itself Ritter Watch not to point out when Bill Ritter appears to be moving in the right direction.

Time will tell, but Bill Ritter doesn't seem to share the same environmentalist extremist position against drilling on the Roan Plateau that has so often been expressed by John Salazar, Mark Udall, and Ken Salazar.

The Denver Post reports that he is trying to strike a balance, which is what politics should be all about.

"Our recommendations will be a modification, or some may say a departure," said Ritter, who is nearing the end of a 120-day review of the Bureau of Land Management's drilling proposal. "I've never been a person opposed to drilling on the Roan. But we need to make sure any modifications are environmentally sound and we maximize the economic benefit to the state."

Now, if only we can get him out of the backroom on other issues.

Save Us From The Spin

Neither the Sierra Club, nor Bill Ritter, nor Mark Udall take blame for any environmental disaster facing Colorado:

Long periods of drought, rampant wildfires, fewer drinking water resources and
pervasive beetle infestations are just a few of the projected consequences
Colorado will face due to the global climate crisis.

Wildfires and beetle infestations could be mitigated with responsible forest management, including responsible clear cut fire breaks and responsible forest road building that allows forest management.

Drinking water resources are destroyed when the Sierra Club's litigated management policies result in wildfires, so it is all tied together.

It is Easy to Dislike Zealots

Yesterday, the Aspen Daily News published Enviros up pressure on Ritter over the Roan.

In it appeared the following curious comment:

In addition to species like deer and elk, the Roan is also home to some rare populations of native cutthroat trout.

That has raised concerns among anglers. “They’re a pretty unique population of fish up there,” said Ken Neubecker, vice president of Colorado Trout Unlimited. “Right now, while they’ve survived thousands of years in these small populations, a single accident up there, either from stormwater discharge or a tanker truck spill, could wipe these populations out. There’s no need to rush into this and go after this gas.”

Neubecker is simply putting out false propaganda for those who don't bother to think. Since when does the gas industry use tanker trucks to remove gas from a gas field? It is possible to liquefy gas, but that requires that its temperature be lowered in complex plants that no one is suggesting will be used at any point in the process, either on the Roan Plateau or elsewhere.

Storm water discharge would only be a problem if liquid byproducts (water) of gas production were being stored on the plateau. It is entirely possible that the liquid byproducts will be potable, and unlikely that they will be stored on the plateau if they are not. If the water turns out to be potable, as has happened elsewhere in Colorado, expect the fight not to be over storm water discharge, but over the rights to this new water source.

Another Zealot put out another lie:

"It only makes sense, I think, to go slow on developing resources like the Roan,” said [ Claire ] Bastable, [ conservation director for the Colorado Mountain Club ] who said most of the gas leases already approved haven’t been drilled on yet. “We’re in no danger of losing revenue.”

A very reasonable plan has been worked out over the years to develop the Roan in 350 acre segments with the requirement that each segment be restored before moving to the next one. It is difficult to see how that plan could be modified to go slower and still recover the gas. It turns out that Bastable has no interest in "going slow." She wants to stop it entirely.

We have written elsewhere how the threat that Bill Ritter, Mark Udall, Ken Salazar, and John Salazar will succeed in making gas leases less valuable through regulation and prohibition makes energy companies less willing to pay top dollar for the leases. If people like Bastable and her organization want to keep claiming that their actions aren't losing the state revenue, let them post a bond to ensure that their claim is true. So much money is involved that they would find they couldn't afford it.

A reminder is in order: The Aspen Daily News has a strange archive system that may make the link stop operating. If that happens, do a google search on the title, which we provided.