Energy Development - Oil & Gas
How Does Noise Affect Birds?
Reported recently in Science is that University of CO researchers studied whether noise alone can affect bird nesting and reproduction.
Birds were observed for three summers in the pinyon-juniper woodlands of NW New Mexico. Nests were located on 18 wooded plots adjacent to natural gas extraction wells. The study plots were nearly identical except half of the sites had compressors so loud the researchers had to shout to be heard. The other half were quiet. Noisy sites contained as many nests as quiet sites BUT, quiet sites had 32 bird species nesting on them compared with 21 species at noisy sites. Mourning doves and black-headed grosbeaks tended to nest on quiet sites, while black-chinned hummingbirds and house finches seemed to actually prefer noisy sites. The most important point, however, is that noise causes habitat fragmentation and loss of biopersity just as does road building, road usage and other development.
Problems of Titanic Proportions: Remember these old slogans? “Nuclear power will be too cheap to meter.” “The oceans are so vast we’ll never exhaust the resources.” A study in the Pacific Ocean, presented in the journal Science notes that fish larger than 5-6 ft have decreased from 5% of the ocean’s biomass to approximately 1%. This is probably akin to the terrestrial ecosystem effects we have seen of removing wolves and bears.
Similarly, Discover magazine reported a review of inflation-adjusted prices for sea food over the past 150 years. The now rare Abalone costs about ten times as much and “popular wild fish have become so rare that they have just vanished from menus.” For example, “halibut gave way to codfish, then haddock, and now scrod.” “They’re fishing their way through the food chain,” says the report’s author. See www.Audubon.org for a list of fish that are sustainably harvested and write our political leaders to insist on US participation in international treaties that promote sustainable harvest.
Consumerism Is the Problem (AND THE ANSWER): The lack of political leadership on energy issues is often scandalous. According to an article in Discover, alternative energy production would be much more viable in the US if subsidies were the same no matter “what technology it uses, how big it is, or who owns it.” Or, better yet, instead of the massive subsidies to gas and oil production, what if most subsidies were for alternative energy? This was the route taken by Germany and Japan; where both countries are already phasing out their subsidies because the goal of solar energy utilization and development of a world class solar industry has occurred. Now Spain is requiring all new construction to use solar cells.
How have the activities of these countries affected the US? Half of the solar cells sold in the US a decade ago were domestically made. Now with US solar installations slowly growing (primarily because of inpidual consumer decisions), only 8% of the cells sold here are made here.
Apparently, the US will only rely less on fossil fuels when consumers themselves insist on it. The oil and gas development which so vexes those of us who enjoy public lands for recreation and clean water will slow if we switch to solar cells and heat pumps for our homes.
Cars are another issue. Oil for gasoline mostly comes from overseas. A recent Daily Sentinel gave most of the front page to oil shale development. Do we consumers prefer continued dependence on fossil fuel with all of its impacts, or do we desire another route? A provocative view is provided by the documentary “Who Killed the Electric Car?” What was the problem? Basically it had too few parts (not enough after-market profits), too few repairs, and was incompatible with the marketing campaigns used for the other offerings from the car manufacturers.
Ask Congress to show some leadership that benefits the consumer and not a few large industries.
US Representative
US Rep Scott Tipton (R) District 3
(202) 225-4761 | (970) 241-2499
scott.tipton@mail.house.gov
US Senators
US Sen Mark Udall (D)
(202) 224-5941 | (970) 245-9553
http://markudall.senate.gov
US Sen Michael Bennet (D)
(202) 224-5852 | (970) 241-6631
http://bennet.senate.gov
