The Global Warming Time Bomb and “The Fire Next Time”

By Charlie Barber
Staff Writer

And I saw another sign in heaven, great and marvelous, seven angels having the seven last plagues; for in them is filled up the wrath of God. -Revelation 15:1

Cap and Trade is dead in the Senate…that is good for North Dakota. -Congressman Earl Pomeroy

This is the way the world ends. Not with a bang but a whimper. -T. S. Eliot

Men and women who shill for the coal industry in 2010, whether politicians or those with a fiduciary interest in mining and transporting the stuff, should be reminded that Mother Nature is indifferent to whether the human species survives on this planet.

Man must intervene. God will not.

Fortunately, our ability to reason is God-given, and among our handiest tools for survival is “Science,” from the Greek word for knowledge.
One of the great achievements of Pure Science throughout the ages is its ability to question all assumptions made in its name, even as its breakthroughs are celebrated and exploited by Applied Science [i.e., Engineering].

Because of the penchant of scientists to question their own assumptions, and “prove” them one way or another through data collection and mathematics, the rational among us now know that coal, once the warmest friend to civilization and life on this planet, has become its deadliest enemy.

Irony of ironies, nuclear technology, considered the deadliest enemy of civilization during the Cold War, has become a potential ally in drastically cutting carbon dioxide [CO2] gas, which is overheating the earth to the point that it, without major change, will become uninhabitable.

Thanks to efforts by the Japanese, French, and our own military, nuclear fuel technology, always cleaner than fossil fuels, has become safe enough to use on a large scale. We could have new and improved nuclear plants up and running in less than ten years, if my friends on the left would take another look at our choices and realize that joining with the coal industry to litigate against nuclear power is not a good idea.

Meanwhile, a major breakthrough in our all important wind technology has occurred with development of the helix generator in Quebec and its deployment throughout New York State. The helix is a kind of spinning-lampshade electricity generator in varying sizes, all of them smaller than large wind turbines.

Unlike big turbines, the helix turns in light winds, just as a two hulled catamaran or wind surfboard needs less wind to propel it than a one hulled sailboat with its deeper draft. The smaller size also makes it less offensive to community cosmetic tastes and those worried about flying creatures. The helix can easily be deployed on sturdy brick homes and other small structures around the nation, thus drastically cutting back on overall demand for commercially generated electricity.

Evidence concerning global warming and its endangering of planet Earth is not only pouring in from the hard sciences, college campuses, and world wide think tanks. Viewers of the Discovery, National Geographic, or Weather Channels are getting enough information to rival any nightmares dreamed up in Hollywood.

Biological and medical experts are well aware of heat killing life forms in once cooler climates, as well as the unprecedented northward creeping of tropical diseases.

For example, my buddies in the Lewis and Clark reenactment of 2003-2006 inform me that water moccasins, heretofore confined to southernmost reaches of the Mississippi, are now regular inhabitants of the St. Louis area. This means, logically, that the warming waters have drastically altered the largest river system in North America.

The epicenter of our national and worldwide struggle to avoid the overproduction of carbon dioxide is not located in any of the above places, however. It lies in North Dakota.

I kid you not, and I’m not just talking about our wind, which caused General Wesley Clark to remark, after flying in to Bismarck in January, 2004, that, “North Dakota really is the Saudi Arabia of wind energy.”

I’m also not talking about the Bakken oil and natural gas deposits, as vast and important as they are. The truly viable, cheap, and clean substitute for coal in the next crucial decades is neither wind, geothermal, biodiesel, oil nor natural gas. It’s our “nukes.”

Just as nobody does nuclear submarines better than the U.S. Navy, nobody does it better than the U.S. Air Force in the defense of our country through the air. Our jokes about North Dakota once being the greatest nuclear power in the world have been our way of acknowledging that the USAF has been “doing it” here.

As a result of our geopolitical position in the Cold War, we have eons of unused nuclear energy buried in missile silos around Minot and elsewhere in North Dakota, eastern Montana and Wyoming. As we shrink our nuclear defenses by treaty agreement with the Russians, we can harvest that energy and rebuild missile sites into underground clean sources of electricity. We would thus downsize our global-warming lignite and coal-burning electricity-generating system.

Roughly 50% of electricity in the U.S. is currently produced by burning coal.

That’s too much.

Folks who believe otherwise, especially those with offspring, need to read James Hansen’s “Storms of My Grandchildren.” His scientific case against coal and carbon dioxide is overwhelming, and can no more be subject to a vote than Einstein’s E=mc2.

These skeptics need to look in a mirror and see if they can persuade their reflection that we can continue to risk future human existence for the sake of current electricity that could, with comparative ease, be produced by sources other than coal.

Putting science to a vote, however, is what we do in a democracy, just as we do with everything else, for better or for worse.

Like it not, we must examine the positions of our public representatives, both statewide and national, on the matter of coal vs. alternative energies. The bad news is that the state government of North Dakota, with a few Dem/NPL exceptions in the Legislature, is a wholly owned subsidiary of big coal. This is true of our Congressional delegation as well, and is not likely to change in November, 2010, unless North Dakota voters have the good sense to elect Tracy Potter to the U.S. Senate. Tracy is not yet beholden to big coal, and his position that wind energy is a really good idea has not endeared him to lignite lobbyists.

It isn’t that our politicians are not aware of lignite pollution. John Dwyer, chief lobbyist for lignite in North Dakota, has testified before the Legislature in Bismarck that every ton of lignite burned releases 1.4 tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.

The good news is that decisions regarding production of electricity through “nukes” can be made in the U.S. executive branch and the Pentagon. National Security, after all, does depend on there being a planet to sustain the United States of America.

No more “junk science.” In the words of Daniel Kevles, Stanley Woodward Professor of History at Yale University: “Obama has restored scientists to power, along with the values they cherish.”

The recent agreement of President Obama and Russia’s Prime Minister, Vladimir Putin, to accelerate decommissioning of nuclear missiles, frees up ready-made nuclear fuel for generation of electricity. No need to dig up uranium in Wyoming.

More bad news, however, is that other than Tracy Potter, Tim Mathern, and a few others, most North Dakota politicians are simply “lignite enablers.”

“Clean Coal?” “Cleaner Coal?”

Please. Next they’ll come up with “smokeless coal.”

“Cheap Coal” doesn’t work either, if you factor in the costs of cleaning up damages to the environment caused by CO2 and global warming. The coal industry makes out like bandits, but the rest of us pay the price of their irresponsibility.

With similar distorted logic, we can all agree that oil can also be considered “cheaper,” if BP does not have to pay for cleanup of their disaster in the Gulf of Mexico, and passes the buck to U.S. taxpayers to pick up the pieces and pay for the damages.

When Byron Dorgan proposed the coal severance tax to deal with the perennial problem of voters who want services, but don’t want to pay taxes, it seemed like a good idea. But like reliance on taxes on tobacco in North Carolina, reliance on taxes on coal becomes an enslaving addiction as bad as the toxic substance itself. California may well do the same thing with a marijuana tax, due to their economic plight. It will likely be trumpeted as a progressive measure, but that is an illusion. These dependencies are neither liberal nor conservative. They are destructive.

Nuclear-produced electricity in North Dakota can be cheap too, and eventually taxed when fully developed in the private sector. Right now its development can avoid lignite-enabling politics and take place within the friendly confines of the Pentagon and federal jurisdiction. It is an investment by the nation in its long-range interests that could be turned to a profit and source of tax revenue in the future.

Hmmmm. Nothing new about that. The Erie Canal. Abraham Lincoln’s railway legislation. Eisenhower’s Interstate Highway System. NASA.

Minot and Grand Forks could be centerpieces for turning swords into plowshares rather than potential losers in the game of musical base closings. A large nuclear-engineering program for the UND system would be a logical extension of this new reality. The closed missile system in Jamestown would be a perfect site to start the first plant, with an immediate and major creation of high-paying jobs and power generation within a relatively short distance from the Red River valley, and already on the power transmission grid.

The message of Bill McKibben’s new book, “Eaarth,” updates Hansen’s message. The key tipping point of 350 parts per million of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has been passed and is up to 390 and climbing. The only way to reverse it and reduce it to below 350 is to phase out coal.
Immediately.

No rhetoric will change this situation. It is science, not an election or an opinion poll. Without effective action, we will die knowing that we have failed our children and their offspring.

My advice for lignite enablers in North Dakota and elsewhere is to read James Hansen’s book and then face your grandchildren, or the grandchildren of any of your friends.

An awakening is better than being a dead ostrich.

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