Month: July 2012

The Unintended Consequences of Wind Energy

I’m continuing my assault on the failures of progressive environmentalism by addressing another dark side of wind energy. Previously I explained how carbon taxes would hinder the adoption of wind energy but now I’m going to discuss the unintended consequences of adopting it. The problem with progressive environmentalism is the same problem that faces any central plan, you only have a handful of individuals mulling over the plan and therefore a great number of possible issues aren’t brought up.

Progressive environmentalists have been demanding more wind power. They have also been advocating the protection of wildlife. What didn’t occur to them was that these two goals are mutually exclusive. Let’s take a look at a report generated by the Fish and Wildlife Services (FWS):

Focus on Key Sectors: In fact, the rapid expansion of the wind industry will also be addressed in general as the second part of this Law Enforcement initiative to lessen the impact of energy production on wildlife resources. While wind power promises to be an important part of the Nation’s strategy to address climate change, wind farm operations already kill significant numbers of birds, bats, and other species. With more than 100,000 turbines expected to be in operation in the United States by 2030, annual bird mortality rates alone (now estimated by the Service at 440,000 per year) are expected to exceed one million.

Wildlife, it appears, doesn’t understand human central plans. Politicians and progressive environmentalists have been generating propaganda for the wind energy industry for some time now. What they didn’t stop to consider was the fact that humans are the only species that can read. When we build a giant wind farm the local airborne wildlife doesn’t comprehend that those wind turbines are giant rotating murder machines. Anything that flies into those spinning blades is almost certain to come out the other side in more pieces than it entered.

Now the progressive environmentalists have to make a decision, birds or wind energy. Like the decision between trees and water, the decision between birds and wind energy is mutually exclusive. You can’t simply build wind turbines away from birds because birds inhabit every part of the planet (even Antarctica). Today the FWS already estimates the bird mortality rate from wind turbines to be around 400,000. As the number of wind turbines increase the number of dead flying animals will also increase (until so many of them have been killed that their populations collapse due to lack of genetic diversity or breeding stock).

It’s actually amazing that the same central planners that enacted legislation to protect wild birds didn’t stop to consider giant spinning blades in the air as potential threats to birds. Oh well, at least there is always solar… son of a bitch [PDF]:

Solar One related animal mortality.–During approximately 40 wks of study, we documented 70 bird fatalities involving 26 species at Solar One (Table 1). The mean rate of mortality between visits was 1.7 birds _+ 1.8 SD (n = 40, range 0-7). Results of the scavenger bias experiments indicate that from 10-30% of carcasses were removed between searches, thus, the actual rate of mortality may have been from 1.9-2.2 birds. Two causes of avian mortality were identified at Solar One, colliding with structures and burning from standby points.

It’s almost as if there are no free lunches on this planet.

The Reds are Invading Minnesota

It appears as though I’ll soon have to run to the wilderness and fight for my survival against the invading Red Army. They’ve already sent their fighter jets in but they’ve had little affect:

A vintage Russian jet was destroyed after crashing Thursday morning in Eden Prairie as it attempted to land for this weekend’s annual air show.

The pilot, who hasn’t been identified, was landing his 1975 MiG-21 at 10 a.m. at Flying Cloud Airport for this weekend’s Wings of the North AirExpo. Officials said the jet’s parachute, which helps slow the aircraft, was deployed, but appeared to collapse and detach, causing the plane to overshoot the runway.

I’ll be honest, I wasn’t expecting to hear about MiGs crashing in my area… ever.

So Much for Fences

The Secure Fence Act of 2006 granted possible funding to a, at the time, hypothetical fence, to be build on the border of the United States and Mexico. In 2008 the Reinstatement of the Secure Fence Act of 2008 was passed into law, which had the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) build 700 miles of fence (on a 1969 mile border, you can see how effective it is). Finally senator Jim DeMint tried introducing a “Finish the Fense” bill that would have required the DHS to complete the 700 mile fence (at the time they had only completed 34.3 miles according to DeMint’s site). Needless to say a lot of time, effort, and money has been invested into build a fence for nothing:

Two sophisticated tunnels probably built to smuggle drugs into the United States have been found on the border with Mexico.

The tunnels were more than 200m (656ft) long and had lighting and ventilation.

A US agent said their design “wasn’t something that an ordinary miner could have put together”.

More than 150 tunnels have been found criss-crossing the US-Mexico border since 1990; most were crude passageways.

That’s the funny thing about fences, you can simply tunnel under them. Sinking resources into building a fence to separate the United States and Mexico is nothing but wasted effort. The problem comes from the fact that smuggling drugs is a very lucrative business so great deals of resources will be spend on bypassing any mechanism designed to keep them. Mexicans crossing the border in search of work are also going to find ways of bypassing any barriers to entry because they stand the chance to make a great deal of money (compared to working in Mexico) in the United States.

Possible Violations of the Geneva Conventions

Only the most ruthless and vile nation would violate the Geneva Conventions on the treatment of prisoners of war, right? If that’s the case then we can likely include the United States on the list of ruthless and vile nations:

Prisoners inside the U.S. military’s detention center at Guantanamo Bay were forcibly given “mind altering drugs,” including being injected with a powerful anti-psychotic sedative used in psychiatric hospitals. Prisoners were often not told what medications they received, and were tricked into believing routine flu shots were truth serums. It’s a serious violation of medical ethics, made worse by the fact that the military continued to interrogate prisoners while they were doped on psychoactive chemicals.

That’s according to a recently declassified report (.pdf) from the Pentagon’s inspector general, obtained by Truthout after a Freedom of Information Act Request. In it, the inspector general concludes that “certain detainees, diagnosed as having serious mental health conditions being treated with psychoactive medications on a continuing basis, were interrogated.” The report does not conclude, though, that anti-psychotic drugs were used specifically for interrogation purposes.

The claim that the drugs were being administered to treat “mental health conditions” is likely nothing more than a mechanism to get around the Geneva Conventions. One thing the Geneva Conventions prohibit is the use of drugs to interrogate prisoners [PDF]:

The essence of coercion is the compulsion of a person by a superior force, often a government, to do or refrain from doing something involuntarily. The intentional application of an unlawful force that robs a person of free will is coercive. However, circumstances that cause a person to reevaluate a course of action, even if deception is instrumental, may arguably be non-coercive pressure. Under the interpretation set forth in FM 34-52, “physical or mental torture and coercion revolve around the elimination of the source’s free will.”46 These activities, along with “brainwashing,” are not authorized, it explains, but are not to be confused with the psychological techniques and ruses presented in the manual. FM 34-52 includes in the definition of mental coercion “drugs that may induce lasting and permanent mental alteration and damage.” This appears to reflect a change from earlier doctrine, which prohibited the use of any drugs on prisoners unless required for medical purposes.47

Footnote 47 has more specific details:

47 See Stanley J. Glod and Lawrence J. Smith, Interrogation under the 1949 Prisoners of War Convention, 21 MIL. L. REV. 145, 153-54 (1963)(citing JAGW 1961 / 1157, 21 June 21, 1961).

In an opinion by The Judge Advocate General of the Army reviewing the employment of [“truth serum”] in the light of Article 17, it was noted that Article 17 justly and logically must be extended to protect the prisoner against any inquisitorial practice by his captors which would rob him of his free will. On this basis it was held that the use of truth serum was outlawed by Article 17. In addition, its use contravenes Article 18, which states in part : “. . . no prisoner of war may be subject to . . . . medical or scientific experiments of any kind which are not justified by the medical, dental, or hospital treatment of the prisoner concerned and carried out in his interest.” The opinion declared that “. . . the suggested use of a chemical “truth serum” during the questioning of prisoners of war would be in violation of the obligations of the United States under the Geneva Convention Relative to the Treatment of Prisoners of War.” From this opinion it seems clear that any attempt to extract information from an unwilling prisoner of war by the use of chemicals, drugs, physiological or psychological devices, which impair or deprive the prisoner of his free will without being in his interest, such as a bonafide medical treatment, will be deemed a violation of Articles 13 and 17 of the Convention.

The 1987 version of FM 34-52 suggested that the use of any drugs for interrogation purposes amounted to mental coercion. FM 34-52 ch. 1 (1987).

Administering drugs for interrogation isn’t allowed under the conventions but administering drugs for medicinal reasons is a humanitarian action. Thus it’s easy to get around the Geneva Conventions if you want to interrogate prisoners with drugs, you merely have to claim the prisoners have mental conditions and administer the drugs for strictly medicinal reasons. As these prisoners are being held in a secret prison where no third-party doctor can come in and examine the prisoners any diagnosis of mental disorders is unverifiable. Isn’t that convenient?

Will Fast and Furious Whistleblowers be Prosecuted

Operation Fast and Furious hasn’t gone the way the current administration was hoping. Eric Holder was found in contempt of Congress when he refused to release documents related to the inquiry. Since that point the administration has been in damage control mode. Obama granted Holder executive privilege to keep the documents hidden and the Department of Justice (DoJ) said they weren’t going to prosecute Holder since he’s a member of the DoJ. Now it appears that the DoJ is looking for victims for it’s wrath:

The Justice Department’s inspector general is probing whether two federal agents could face retaliation for blowing the whistle on operation “Fast and Furious.”

In a letter to Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) and Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.), made public on Monday, IG Michael Horowitz said he was investigating their concerns that two federal officials could be at risk of retaliatory action for speaking out against the botched gun-tracking operation.

John Dodson and Pete Forcelli, special agents in the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF), testified before Congress last year about the shortcomings of Operation Fast and Furious as details of the failed program were becoming public.

Considering what’s happened in the case so far I’m betting the DoJ will find that the Fast and Furious whistleblowers can be prosecuted and will shortly afterward prosecute them. If there is one guarantee in this world it’s that a government agency, like a wild animal, with lash out at anybody and everybody when wounded. This is because, being an entity that survives entirely on violence, they must show that they are capable of causing great amounts of harm to anybody who dissents. I will actually be surprised if the DoJ says the Fast and Furious whistleblowers can’t be prosecuted.

More Information Regarding the Zimmerman Case Released

Miguel over at Gun Free Zone noted that 284 pages of information relating to the Zimmerman case have been released. I haven’t had time to do anything more than skim through it so far but I can say that any accusations of racism against Zimmerman can be put to rest now. I also haven’t found any mention of evidence supporting the charges brought against them, which leads me to further believe that Florida State Attorney General Angela Corey’s motives in bringing the charges were political. If Corey managed to get a guilty verdict against Zimmerman she would be seen as a hero to those who want to hang the man. At the very least it would be enough publicity to write a book and do a speaking tour.

Even if Zimmerman is ruled innocent is life is likely ruined. It won’t matter what evidence is brought forth demonstrating Zimmerman’s innocence, there are numerous people so emotionally invested in his guilt that there will likely be attempts on the man’s life. In all likelihood he’ll never be able to sleep with both eyes closed again. That, more than anything else, is the tragedy of actions taken based on public opinion.

The Cause of Increasing Severity of Forest Fires

2012 has been quite a year for forest fires with a great portion of the western and southeastern parts of the country ablaze. Many of these fires, including one in Colorado, have been record breakers as far as span of the fire and the cost in property damage. As you can expect the progressive environmentalists are blaming the increased number and severity of these forest fires on global warming climate change:

As the climate warms, moisture and precipitation levels are changing, with wet areas becoming wetter and dry areas becoming drier.

Higher spring and summer temperatures and earlier spring snow-melt typically cause soils to be drier for longer, increasing the likelihood of drought and a longer wildfire season, particularly in the western United States.

These hot, dry conditions also increase the likelihood that, once wildfires are started by lightning strikes or human error, they will be more intense and long-burning.

The progressive environmentalists are correct in part, the increased intensity of forest fires is manmade. What they’re incorrect about is what manmade phenomenon is causing the headaches. I wrote about the water shortages caused by denser forests that exist due to human efforts to fight all forms of fire. On top of water shortages there is another unintended consequence, more fuel exist to feed the fires:

For most of the 20th century, U.S. federal fire policy focused on suppressing all fires on national forests. The goal was to protect timber resources and rural communities, but this policy ignored the ecological importance of fire. North American forests have evolved with fire for thousands of years. Fire returns nutrients to soils, encourages growth of older fire-resistant trees, and promotes establishment of seedlings.

Decades of fire exclusion have produced uncharacteristically dense forests in many areas. Some forests, which previously burned lightly every 15-30 years, are now choked with vegetation. If ignited, these forests erupt into conflagrations of much higher intensity than historic levels. Grasses, shrubs, and saplings in the understory now form a fuel ladder, through which flames can climb to the forest canopy, killing entire forest stands.

The intensity of modern forest fires is due to the arrogance of central planning. Some guys in Washington decided to decree that fire is bad and that all forest fires that breakout in the United States will be suppressed. This arrogance has lead to a vicious cycle. Water is used to prevent forest fires from occurring, forests become more dense, more water is needed to prevent further forest fires due to the increase in available fuel, forests become more dense, etc. Property damage also becomes a bigger issue because fires that do breakout burn much hotter, burn longer, and cover much more ground than they naturally would. Like our economy, our issue with forest fires is spiraling towards a disastrous collapse. In order to prevent future forest fires we need to use a great deal of water, which creates a further water shortage. If we don’t prevent forest fires they have enough fuel at this point to cause great amounts of property damage (the ones have been been breaking out recently have been causing record amounts of damage already). We’re effectively stuck between a rock and a hard place… if we rely on the state to resolve this issue.

What can be done to stave off disaster? In a twist of fate I find humorous the solution to our forest fire problems and our economic problems is the same, the free market. A great deal of forest fire fuel happens to be a valuable resource, wood. Why not let logging companies go into the forests and get rid of a great deal of the fuel that is currently lying around and waiting for a mere spark? We can harness this valuable commodity for the benefit of all instead of letting it go up in smoke, taking much of our valuable property with it. Unfortuneatly the state has been doing quite the opposite, they’ve actually been reducing the amount of logging:

The fire problem is exacerbated by decreasing federal timber harvests since the late
1980s.1 In the absence of fire, and with reduced timber harvests and thinning, numerous smalldiameter trees have proliferated. Stressed trees compete for scarce water, sunlight, and growing
space. In this weakened state, trees are not only at greater risk of catastrophic wildfire, but are
also more susceptible to disease and insect infestation (Fretwell 1999).

We can see the Achille’s heel of central planning, when a central planner makes a bad decision everybody suffers. Combine the central planner that issued the decree against forest fires with the central planner that issued the decree against logging and we get a cascade of unintended consequences. Increases in wood prices, water shortages, and more property damage from hotter burning fires are all thanks to a handful of politicians in Washington DC dictating decrees that everybody in the United States is forced to obey. At least if these decisions were made only on a state level the chances of containing major damage to said states would be possible. In fact the need for clearing out forest fire fuel was well know:

The Forest Service was created in 1905 to manage the nationís forest reserves, and soon thereafter the agency adopted a nation-wide policy of fire suppression. Fire historian Stephen Pyne notes that in the early years, the Forest Service needed to prove its qualifications. Many foresters at the time recognized the value of “light burning” to clear out understory vegetation, but the Forest Service wanted to set itself apart from this common practice of rural farmers and Native Americans. “The Forest Service had insisted that it should manage the forest reserves precisely because it offered something different from frontier practices” (Pyne 1982, 106).

Native Americans and frontiersmen periodically practiced “light burning” to clear out current underbrush and reduce the severity of any forest fires that may breakout. Then some idiots in Washington decided they knew better than the people living in forested areas and decided to arrogantly force their central plan on the entire country, which lead us to the problems we face today.

Progressive environmentalists continue to demand state intervention in environmental matters and it only results in more environmental damage. You would think that they would have learned their lesson by now.

SOPA Being Introduced in Pieces

The state has been having a difficult time passing their pet bill to punish those who violate the copyrights of their cronies. Americans won’t raise too much fuss until you go after their Internet but once that line is crossed they actually start getting incredibly angry. Needless to say passing the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) didn’t happen, attempting to rename the bill to pass it has failed to get through the Senate (but has already passed the House), and the politically well-connected copyright holders are losing patients. What’s the state to do? Easy, pass the legislation in small pieces:

While it didn’t get nearly as much attention as other parts of SOPA, one section in the bill that greatly concerned us was the massive expansion of the diplomatic corp.’s “IP attaches.” If you’re unfamiliar with the program, basically IP attaches are “diplomats” (and I use the term loosely) who go around the globe pushing a copyright maximalist position on pretty much every other country. Their role is not to support more effective or more reasonable IP policy. It is solely to increase expansion, and basically act as Hollywood’s personal thugs pressuring other countries to do the will of the major studios and labels. The role is literally defined as pushing for “aggressive support for enforcement action” throughout the world. A few years ago, we detailed how, at a meeting of these attaches, they bitched and complained about how copyright “activists” were making their lives difficult and were a “threat” who needed to be dealt with.

In other words, these people are not neutral. They do not have the best interests of the public or the country in mind. Their job is solely to push the copyright maximalist views of the legacy entertainment industry around the globe, and position it as the will of the US government.

It was good that this was defeated as a part of SOPA… but now comes the news that Lamar Smith is introducing a new bill that not only brings back this part, but appears to expand it and make it an even bigger deal.

As I said previously, “The rule of thumb with politics is this: if there is money backing a bill it will be passed.” Whether by hook or by crook the cronies will get what they want and the people will suffer under new tyrannies. Unfortunately there are 435 voting members of Congress and 50 senators whose job is to write, propose, and attempt to pass legislation. Because of the sheer number of these crooks it’s almost impossible to keep an eye on what every one of them is doing at all times.

The State Won’t Spy on You Unless it Does

With the increased use of drones in domestic airspace the Air Force went on record claiming they won’t use them to spy on American citizens unless it’s done accidentally:

“Collected imagery may incidentally include US persons or private property without consent,” reads the instruction (.pdf), unearthed by the secrecy scholar Steven Aftergood of the Federation of American Scientists. That kind of “incidental” spying won’t be immediately purged, however. The Air Force has “a period not to exceed 90 days” to get rid of it — while it determines “whether that information may be collected under the provisions” of a Pentagon directive that authorizes limited domestic spying.

In other words, if an Air Force drone accidentally spies on an American citizen, the Air Force will have three months to figure out if it was legally allowed to put that person under surveillance in the first place.

It appears that there is another caveat to add to the list, when the Air Force is training drone pilots:

Holloman sits on almost 60,000 acres of desert badlands, near jagged hills that are frosted with snow for several months of the year — a perfect training ground for pilots who will fly Predators and Reapers over the similarly hostile terrain of Afghanistan. When I visited the base earlier this year with a small group of reporters, we were taken into a command post where a large flat-screen television was broadcasting a video feed from a drone flying overhead. It took a few seconds to figure out exactly what we were looking at. A white S.U.V. traveling along a highway adjacent to the base came into the cross hairs in the center of the screen and was tracked as it headed south along the desert road. When the S.U.V. drove out of the picture, the drone began following another car.

“Wait, you guys practice tracking enemies by using civilian cars?” a reporter asked. One Air Force officer responded that this was only a training mission, and then the group was quickly hustled out of the room.

I like how the trainees were whisked out of the room before the reporter could inquire further about this apparent breech of the Air Force’s accidental spying only promise. I’m sure the Air Force will destroy any footage collected during these training sessions within 90 days so everything will be nice and legal.