Biomass Logic Spreads to MSM
The Oregonian has dutifully followed our lead and reported on Congressman Greg Walden’s YouTubed exchange with Al “The Very Definition of Fatuous” Gore, in a stirring editorial. They even almost got the point:
Rural Oregon has energy to burn
by The Editorial Board, May 02, 2009 [here]
More than 1,000 people from 25 countries gathered in Portland last week for a conference on the vast promise of crop residues, wood waste and other sources of biomass to help power a greener, cooler, safer world.
At roughly the same time the world’s biomass experts were in town, the Democratic leadership of the U.S. House of Representatives released ant energy bill that explicitly disregards the largest available source of biomass in Oregon: federal forests.
That makes no sense as a matter of energy policy, economics or environmental stewardship. Oregon has hundreds of thousands of acres of federal forests that are overgrown, infested with insects and disease and vulnerable to catastrophic wildfires. It has rural communities struggling with 17 percent unemployment. It has everything it needs — and every economic motivation — to become a center for biomass energy.
But that won’t happen, can’t happen, if Congress approves an energy bill that sets out incentives and an ambitious goal — requiring that 25 percent of the nation’s energy come from renewable sources by 2025 — and then expressly discounts biomass from the nation’s federal forests.
Congressman Greg Walden, a Hood River Republican who represents much of rural Oregon, has a reasonable question: “What’s the science behind this decision to say biomass from federal lands is not a renewable energy source?” Walden said he can’t get an answer, not from Democratic leaders, not from former Vice President Al Gore, who testified on the bill last week, and not from the leaders of national environmental groups who helped draft the energy legislation. …
The Editorial Board is onboard with Fatuous Al as far as climate change hysteria is concerned:
… we disagree with his [Walden's] general opposition to what he labels “cap-and-tax” legislation to reduce the greenhouse gas emissions that are responsible [for] climate change.
But they are willing to repress it long enough to advocate against catastrophic wildfires, which, by the way, emit more CO2 in Oregon than all the rest of the to-be-regulated CO2 emissions combined [here]. Too bad the Oregonian didn’t report (hasn’t yet reported) that story, too.
Be that as it may, kudos to the Oregonian for realizing that biomass from Federal land is a useful commodity for many reasons, and that fatuousness should not plague Federal legislation.
Outside of Oregon, very little of that Congressional Hoo-Ha made it out to the public. I think the eco’s saw how pathetic Gore’s response was, and to mitigate the damage to their agenda, they seem to have a gag order on anything to do with forests. They realize that their defense of the status quo can’t be supported with sound science. I wonder if they even realize just how fundamentalist and unprogressive their beliefs on forests are.
Still, the key to saving our forests is proving to the public that today’s wildfires are ALWAYS bad for our environment. Always bad for our economy and always bad for our health. Once we’ve convinced the public of that, we can proceed onward to solutions. Solutions to fit that particular piece of land and condition.
by bear bait
I pondered more on this subject. 60% of Oregon land CANNOT participate in this biomass alternative fuel deal, because they are Federal lands. So two thirds of the State landmass is disenfranchised by intent, in the bill from the filibuster proof Democrat Congress. A tail to pin on that donkey, as it were.
So, Oregon is overwhelmingly urban Democrat ruled. One must only win Multnomah County (read Portland) to win a statewide election. I must then assume that with 4 Democrat Congressmen, and two Democrat Senators, and Democrats in all statewide state elected offices, that his language to preclude Federal Lands is in the bill, and not being challenged by any Oregon Democrats, it must mean that it is their stated intent, and the urban majority could give a tinker’s damn if the bill is a rural job killer. If there were evidence of the urban/rural split, the tyranny of the urban majority, this legislation personifies that situation.
So the answer, of course, is to legislate that all mass transit must run on biomass-produced fuel. Government buildings must be heated with biomass-produced fuel. All government vehicles must run on biomass-produced fuels. Those who have absolute control over the public purse and the administration of public works and law enforcement should have to live with their green solutions. If they can’t live with their laws, foisted on the public by public employee unions, by trade unions, and by tax forgiven profit making NGOs, then they should perish. That is the option given to the private sector.
No matter what, it will most likely be a moot argument in any case, as the plan is to burn the public biomass for its own good. Burning grass seed field residue is harmful to health at less than 50,000 acres a year, but wildland and range fire is just the cat’s meow while they burn 200,000 acres or more each year. Evidently logic has left Salem, and we know is has been missing in Washington DC for years. But putting your name on a bill to prove how stupid your logic is astounds me. And there are Congressmen and women lined up to do just that.
The logic is simple Mike: The Green NGOs don’t want a stick of wood cut on public lands. It is the forest’s right to chose. Only a right wing troglodyte would advocate using public land wood fiber to fire a biofuels plant.
This country is polarized. You is or you ain’t. No middle ground. No common ground. And zealots on either side saying the other is going to kill us all.
In that vein, since all public lands are best served burned, it would please me to see it all burn now, in one fell swoop, because I want to be here when it does. Just to see it burn. To hear it burn. To witness the handwringing. To hear the excuses. Put some more lampblack on the glaciers, the ice fields, where it will do some good, and heat this place up. The more heat we get, and sooner, the longer it will be before the ice age returns….or……
Maybe the land cleared of forests will now reflect sunlight and energy on cloudless days with snow cover. That will combat global warming. And with a whole lot more acres, millions in fact, tens of millions, that much more heat into space. Golly!! That could forestall global warming. Ice ages can do that, you know. We are saved!!! Landscape burning, across the continents will save us!!! Al Gore can use that blubber to keep warm!! And the rain forests can be clear cut again, to feed the remaining people in the world. How much better can it get?
Wowzie! I can go to bed with a smile on my face knowing we are not going to fry in the global warming pan. Nite nite……