Climate Change Gave Us the Great Salt Lake, but It’s Not the Reason It’s Shrinking Today
The Great Salt Lake, or the “Bad Water,” as it was known to the Shoshoni, exists thanks to climate change.
The present lake was formed from a much larger lake, Lake Bonneville, about 30,000 years ago. A drier climate reduced Lake Bonneville to the Great Salt Lake’s current dimensions. The lake has persisted within its historical size range for nearly 13,000 years. Records show the lake was largest in 1985 at 8,500 square kilometers, and then shrank to 2,500 square kilometers in 2021, only 40 years later.
The evaporation of the lake seemed imminent just last year. Such concerns can change quickly.
Up to 1985, rapid lake growth resulted in flooding. At that time, as older residents of Utah will remember, the West Desert Pumping Project diverted nearly a cubic mile of water into a depression to the west to prevent flooding of farms to the east of the lake. The pumping stopped in 1989 as inflows from the Bear River and smaller rivers again declined. The pumps are in place still, just in case.
Changes in climate over thousands of years reduced the depth of Lake Bonneville from nearly 1,000 feet to today’s average of only 16 feet for the Great Salt Lake. The lake still contains nearly 4.6 cubic miles of water. The Great Salt Lake is a terminal lake — that is, water flows in, but does not flow out. Lake Bonneville did drain to the Snake River, at times, before 13,000 years ago. Since then, as a terminal lake, the lake exists due to a balance between inflow from rainfall and rivers competing with evaporation by the sun.
A simple calculation shows that the sun heating the Great Salt Lake could evaporate all its water in a year, leaving only salt pans and saline puddles behind. For millennia, the lake has been constantly replenished by inflow, but the inflow is changing as humans increasingly divert water for other purposes.
Today, as much as two-thirds of the potential river inflow never reaches the lake. Consequently, the lake is shrinking. However, it is not climate change, but human water use that’s cutting the Great Salt Lake’s lifeline. Humans take the water and then mutter something about “climate change,” hoping that no one will notice what they’re doing to Utah’s most famous natural symbol.
Manicured green lawns consume vast amounts of water, not to mention fertilizers and pesticides. The proposed Bear River Development Project would take 30% of the average Bear River water flow, mostly to water lawns. Thirty percent of the average Bear River water flow amounts to 100% in dry years. Then, the lake would shrink or even vanish.
A perfect green lawn, once a symbol of suburban bliss, is seen increasingly as an environmental threat, not just in semi-arid regions like Utah, but all over America. For Utahns determined to have a green lawn, “gray water” — waste water from individual homes— could be a way to keep their lawns green. That was the solution at Pebble Beach Golf where perfect greens trumped imperfect water. A better solution is to dispense with the perfect green lawn entirely, substituting native plants, which are beautiful as well as commensurate with the local environment.
Let’s take a closer look at the long-term history of the water level in the Great Salt Lake. Hydrologists have reconstructed the level of the lake over the past 600 years. The level changes constantly, but the average remains close to 4,202 feet above sea level. Utah’s geology agency data shows the same variations for more than 180 years. The ups and downs closely correlate with rainfall changes. If rainfall is high, the lake rises, and if low, the lake level sinks, just as one expects for a lake in close equilibrium with the climate. If human-originated climate change were altering the lake, the average would decline (or rise), but nothing remarkable is found during the entire industrial age, from 1800 to today. Climate change, clearly, is not the main threat to the lake.
The Great Salt Lake has important environmental, ecological and dollar values. The lake is responsible for a local “lake effect precipitation” — typically 10% of the average 16 inches a year is provided to areas toward the east. The semi-arid Great Salt Lake region has highly variable annual rainfall. The year 1979 was the driest year on record with 8.70 inches of measured rainfall, while only four years later, 1983 was the wettest year on record, with 24.26 inches.
The large variation in annual rainfall is due to weather, not climate change. The “average” Great Salt Lake level has been nearly constant over hundreds of years. The rapid variation in area results from evaporation and water diversion in the shallow lake.
The Great Salt Lake is a major tourist attraction for water sports, for viewing migratory birds and for enjoying the spectacular Utah scenery in quiet contemplation. If the Great Salt Lake is strangled by water diversion, its benefits — and a part of the soul of Utah — disappear. The Great Salt Lake wetlands are, biologically, highly productive sites and a critical wildlife habitat. The lake’s wetlands are essential resting and feeding sites for migratory birds. The rapidly expanding wind turbine “farms” on the Great Plains are directly in the paths of migratory birds, increasingly slaughtering them. Eliminating the migratory bird habitats could easily be a coup de grâce for those beautiful birds.
“Climate change” is blamed for lots of things, but water diversion is the greatest threat to the Great Salt Lake. Utahns should oppose water diversion for real estate development, and work to maintain natural water flows into the lake. The lake will still fluctuate, but as for thousands of years, it will not disappear.
Decisions affecting Utah’s land and natural resources should be made by Utahns, not by unelected bureaucrats in the federal government or real estate developers. Utah needs to take back control of its land, as Eastern states have already done, and then do what’s best for Utah, and for its beautiful resource, the Great Salt Lake.
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Those Crazy Environmentalists Are at It Again
Climate activists around the globe pull stunts from time to time to protest whatever latest grievance they have. Sometimes their complaint is against people using gas-powered cars; sometimes it’s against deforestation. This time some ecofascists in Italy were protesting fossil fuels and attacked one of Rome’s most famous landmarks.
Members from an environmentalist group called Ultima Generazione (“Last Generation”) clambered into the wading pool of an 18th-century marble masterpiece, the Trevi Fountain.
The Trevi Fountain is a beautiful landmark first designed by the famous sculptor Gian Lorenzo Bernini but was actually constructed and completed by two others: Nicola Salvi and Giuseppe Pannini. Completed in 1792, the fountain is a popular tourist destination. Legend says that if you turn around, close your eyes, and throw a coin over your left shoulder with your right hand, you’ll return to Rome someday. Throw two coins in the manner described, and you’ll find your true love!
The climate activists opted to throw something else into the Trevi Fountain: diluted charcoal. It turned the water a startling shade of black. Then the protestors shouted about how the country is dying.
The group later explained on its website that its attack was motivated by the recent flooding in northern Italy that killed 14 people. The activists believe that public subsidies that went toward fossil fuels were the cause of the floods … somehow.
Rome Capital Police quickly arrived and yanked the protestors out of the western marvel while tourists watched and hopefully cheered.
Then the real work began to save the fountain. Rome Mayor Roberto Gualtieri posted that the “indifferent environmental damage” that the thuggish protestors wrought is not insignificant. The fountain needed to be emptied of the tainted water first to prevent the black sludge from being sucked up by the porous marble, but also because the fountain functions as a water recycler (i.e., a closed system). It wasted roughly 300,000 liters (just shy of 80,000 gallons) of water.
Gualtieri went on to emphasize: “Such gestures are completely wrong and damaging, because they risk damaging precious common goods such as our monuments, and force public administrations into very expensive and environmentally impactful restoration interventions. So they are completely counterproductive, and they also risk reducing the consent in public opinion regarding the right battle for the environment and climate.”
With the exception of the slight pandering to the environmentalists at the end of his statement, this is a point that myself and others have repeatedly made, and yet the environmental cultists continue to wantonly attack works of art.
To quote a recent sentiment from historian Victor Davis Hanson, “Like Byzantines, Americans have become snarky iconoclasts, more eager to tear down art and sculpture that they no longer have the talent to create.” To which we’d add: Not just Americans, but anyone who cynically destroys art.
Ecofascists are happy to damage and destroy works of art, but their acts of terrorism never achieve anything except contempt. It’s hard to grasp their motivation.
Are they so bored with their own lives that they feel the need to spread that misery around? Or is it because of the dread of fictitious apocalyptic doom?
Either way, it’s inexcusable and akin to a petulant child throwing a tantrum.
Another aspect of that same line of thinking is that these wackos aren’t defacing modern art pieces. No activist has yet tried to stick themselves to Boston’s new Martin Luther King sculpture “The Embrace” to bring attention to climate change.
A prominent social media handle articulates a possible answer: “This is not about the climate, it’s about destroying Western civilization and anything it has built.”
The next question we have to ask is: Are we willing to let the “Byzantines” continue to degrade and corrupt our great works of art, or are we going to finally bring down the hammer?
https://patriotpost.us/articles/97528-those-crazy-environmentalists-are-at-it-again-2023-05-24
**********************************************Three bat species at risk of becoming endangered as wind turbines take heavy toll on wildlife
Wind turbines – towering emblems of the shift toward renewable energy – have been cited as a primary reason why three of Canada’s native bats species are in existential peril.
The Committee on the Status of Endangered Wildlife in Canada, an independent body that reports to the federal government, recommended on Wednesday that the three species be listed as endangered.
Such a designation would represent the highest level of risk under Canadian law – a fact made all the more striking because it is the first time any of those species have been assessed by the committee.
“There’s lots of indication that all three have been precipitously declining,” said Stephen Petersen, director of conservation and research at Winnipeg’s Assiniboine Park Zoo, who co-chairs the committee’s work on terrestrial mammals.
Among the causes that the committee identified as contributors to the bats’ decreasing numbers, “the mortality at wind farms seems to be the top threat,” he said.
The recommendation for listing the species was issued following the committee’s semi-annual meeting, which concluded last week in Regina.
Included in the recommendation are the hoary bat, the silver-haired bat and the eastern red bat. All are high-flying migratory species that spend their winters in the southern United States or Mexico. The first two range across Canada during the summer, except in the Arctic, while the third mainly occurs in the central and eastern parts of the country.
During their migration, the bats encounter an array of human-made structures along their flight paths, both in the U.S. and Canada, including the swiftly whirling blades of wind turbines.
Studies based on counts of bat carcasses near wind turbines have shown that the toll can be heavy when multiplied across all the units that are currently operating. With each turbine killing on the order of 10 bats per year, the impact works out to tens of thousands of individual animals removed from the population annually in Canada alone.
In 2019, an Ontario government-led study used the trend in bat deaths at wind turbines in that province to demonstrate that populations of all three species, as well as the big brown bat, have declined significantly.
The study, which was part of the supporting evidence for the committee’s recommendation, ruled out the possibility that bats are learning to avoid the structures.
“We’re unintentionally harvesting them out of the air space every year,” said Christina Davy, a conservation scientist who was lead author on the study and who is now based at Carleton University in Ottawa.
The effect is compounded by habitat loss, pesticides in the food chain and other threats that bats must cope with.
“The good news is that we have tools to reduce the mortality from wind turbines,” Dr. Davy added. “They’re not ones the industry loves, but they work.”
Those tools include shutting turbines down during periods of low wind when bats are likely to be flying but the energy return is low, as well as during the peak of the fall migration season.
Brandy Giannetta, vice-president of the Canadian Renewable Energy Association, said the domestic wind industry is aware of the issue and has been taking steps to reduce the impact on bat populations.
“We are not surprised by the recommendation for listing,” she said.
She added that turbine operators, using sound-based devices, can also detect when bats are near and, in some cases, can emit sounds that are intended to ward bats away.
But others say the measures deployed to date are not sufficient, as is made apparent by the three species now recommended for listing.
The toll of wind turbines on bats is “one of the best-kept secrets – in a bad way,” said Cori Lausen, director of bat conservation with Wildlife Conservation Society Canada.
WCSC and other groups have been warning of the danger posed to bats by wind turbines for years, but the warnings seemed to have little impact, she said.
Because bats can live for decades and tend to have only one pup per year, high losses because of wind turbines have an enduring effect that is difficult to reverse.
“They have no way to bounce back from that kind of mortality rate,” Dr. Lausen said.
The measured pace of Canada’s species law means that the committee’s recommendation will not be formally submitted until later this year. If Ottawa agrees with the recommendation and lists the three species as endangered, the designation will apply only on federal land. Such an outcome is unlikely to have a meaningful impact on bats unless it is supported by provincial regulators who oversee the wind industry.
“The provinces need to step up and recognize that these three species have a very dire outlook if something isn’t done soon,” Dr. Lausen said.
Dr. Petersen said that the committee’s recommendation can serve as a wake-up call that draws more attention to the issue.
“I’m hoping that even though this is not great news, it’ll spur some action,” he said.
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New push to lower speed limits for SUVs and other high-emission vehicles in Australia to combat climate change
Lowering the speed limit for larger vehicles must seem easy for an academic but would be murder for drivers. A less onerous policy might be to make the registration costs so high that only those who need big vehicles for work would buy them
A top professor has called for Australia to lower motorway speed limits for SUVs and other high-emission vehicles to combat climate change.
Australia's love for dual-cab utes, large SUVs and older vehicles is making the country one of the biggest petrol consumers in the world, a new report by The Australia Institute found.
Professor Lennard Gillman from Auckland University of Technology said one way to drastically reduce petrol consumption and carbon dioxide emissions is to drive slightly slower.
He believes Australia should introduce differential speed limits for high-emission and low-emission vehicles so cars that put out more pollution are forced to drive slower to reduce their environmental impact.
'Lowering the speed limit for high emission vehicles has the double effect of cutting emissions but also incentivises people to buy low-emission cars,' he told Daily Mail Australia.
'In a vehicle like the Ford Ranger V6 you'll be expending 260g (of fuel) per kilometre. That's more than twice as much as a Toyota Corolla.'
He believes Australia should introduce differential speed limits for high-emission and low-emission vehicles so cars that put out more pollution are forced to drive slower to reduce their environmental impact.
'Lowering the speed limit for high emission vehicles has the double effect of cutting emissions but also incentivises people to buy low-emission cars,' he told Daily Mail Australia.
'In a vehicle like the Ford Ranger V6 you'll be expending 260g (of fuel) per kilometre. That's more than twice as much as a Toyota Corolla.'
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My other blogs. Main ones below
http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM )
http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)
http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)
http://australian-politics.blogspot.com (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)
http://jonjayray.com/blogall.html More blogs
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Jim Hansen and his twin
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