I’ve recently moved to Santa Barbara and am delighted at its natural beauty. I often walk from my home down to Montecito’s Butterfly Beach where, at high tide, the beach is under water, and ironically, the view across the water is filled with looming oil platforms.
Jeffery Young’s Nov. 27 commentary, “Impressive King Tides Also Herald Ominous Coastal Conditions from Climate Change,” connects the dots. Heat-trapping emissions from burning coal, oil and gas increase Earth’s temperature, which melts polar ice, thermally expands ocean water and floods coastal communities.
While I agree with Young that we must act urgently, it won’t be enough to “take a good look at our individual and collective carbon footprints.” Scientists warn that climate impacts will become out of control unless we reduce emissions in half by 2030.
Using bikes, eating less meat and conserving energy are commendable, but these kinds of actions will not stop the sea from rising. Adding sand to our beaches, restoring marshlands, or moving coastal infrastructure and beachside homes to higher ground, as necessary as it may become, will not stop the sea from rising.
The only way we can protect coastal communities like ours is to support congressional action to drastically reduce emissions, phase out fossil fuels and make the transition to clean energy. No other action stops the sea from rising.
Bob Taylor
Montecito
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Kudos to Jeffrey Young for his commentary on upcoming king tides, their awesome beauty and good spots where to watch them.
I particularly appreciate his advice that, in the not-too-distant future, king tides will become an increasing menace as sea levels continue to rise due to global warming driven by the release of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere by our use of fossil fuels.
Among the many detrimental impacts of global warming and the climate change it drives, sea-level rise is an especially severe threat for coastal communities like Santa Barbara. Young is absolutely right in urging that “the time is now — not tomorrow — to take a hard look at our individual and collective carbon footprints …”
We are in dire straits, particularly since the recently concluded international climate meeting in Glasgow failed to produce the decisive commitments by world leaders that are necessary to avoid disaster. The United States currently has an opportunity to exercise global leadership in this arena through provisions included in the “Build Back Better Act” that is currently being negotiated in Congress.
Economists are nearly unanimous that one of the most effective tools for lowering and eventually eliminating human-caused greenhouse gas emissions is a carbon tax imposed on fossil fuels at their source (the mine or the wellhead). Such a tax must be included in the bundle of provisions in the bill, if it is to be truly effective in fighting climate change.
We must email/phone the White House, email/phone our congressional representative, and email/call our two U.S. senators and urge them to support such an initiative. The lives and well-being of our grandchildren are at stake.
Karl Hutterer
Santa Barbara
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The under-informed public is under the false impression that electricity from the new Strauss Wind Energy Project near Lompoc will be going to Santa Barbara and Los Angeles.
The local grid in Lompoc is tied to PG&E, and there is no local grid connection south of Lompoc. The wind turbines are tied to the local Lompoc grid, which is tied to Santa Maria, Nipomo, Bakersfield and Diablo Canyon, and crosses the San Andreas Fault twice. PG&E has a tie to Southern California Edison at Bakersfield, the closest tie to the Southern California grid from Lompoc.
The Strauss Wind Energy Project is for Northern California, not for Lompoc, Santa Barbara or Los Angeles, although it may help stabilize the local Lompoc grid.
Also, the wind turbines will not supply power if the grid goes down; they automatically disconnect during such a situation.
Jay Salsburg
Lompoc
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The California Geologic Energy Management Division (CalGEM) is hosting two hearings regarding a draft public health rule requiring a 3,200-foot setback zone between new oil wells and sensitive receptors, such as homes, hospitals, schools and businesses open to the public.
It also would require enhanced monitoring of wells already within this setback zone, although they would be allowed to continue extracting oil and gas.
More than 2 million Californians live within 3,200 feet of an existing oil well. People living in these areas experience health problems such as increased rates of asthma and other respiratory illnesses, lower birth rates and higher risk of cancer,
New research also shows that those who live in more polluted areas are also more likely to experience complications from COVID-19. Communities of color and low-income communities are much more likely to live within 3,200 feet of an active oil well, making their environmental health risks disproportionately higher than more white and more affluent communities.
While this draft rule is a big first step for California — one of the only major oil-producing states without any setback requirement currently in place — it does not go far enough. We need protections for those already experiencing these detrimental health impacts.
This rule does not apply to existing drill sites without an active well on them, meaning that if there is an existing well pad in a neighborhood that has been inactive for years, an oil developer can restart that well without concern that it is within 3,200 feet of a sensitive receptor.
In the last two years, more than 600 permits have been granted for oil and gas sites in neighborhoods. Of those, more than 450 of them were located on existing drill sites.
Almost all new wells in Santa Barbara County are built on oil fields with existing infrastructure. Also, if existing sites are exempt from the setback rule, that would only incentivize oil developers to return to inactive well pads and restart them with enhanced oil recovery techniques, such as fracking, cyclic steam injection and horizontal drilling that can be even more threatening to groundwater than traditional extraction methods.
We must keep in mind that there is NO safe distance from oil and gas drilling. California leaders should not approve any new oil wells, regardless of their proximity to sensitive receptors, and should be making plans to phase out all existing fossil fuel extraction.
All fossil fuel extraction contributes to climate change, which deteriorates the public health and safety of all communities throughout California and around the world.
Nadia Lee Abushanab
SB CAN (Santa Barbara County Action Network)
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Regarding Michael Rattray’s Nov. 21 commentary, “Perspective Is Key — and Often Missing — in Climate Change Debate,” and his series, he is incorrect in his interpretations that dismiss the world scientific consensus as biased and incorrect, suggest human contributions are minimal, dismiss real dangers as remote and portray any attempt at intervention as counterproductive and futile.
Rattray references climatic changes of glaciation due to orbital variations over time, suggesting changes seen are natural earth cycles. He moves past this statement without comparison of the time scale of these temperature changes. The changes he referenced do occur over thousands of years, and hundreds of generations.
Rattray suggests his personal study of the science of geothermal venting affects the climate in ways yet unknown to thousands of oceanographers and climate scientists. He suggests geothermal vents that are measured to heat ocean water 10 feet less to each side, and perhaps 30-50-100 feet above each vent, in fact warm thousands of square miles of ocean.
Rattray produces graphs demonstrating temperature changes over geologic time through the Pliocine, Pleistocene and Holocene periods. This suggests temperature changes as normal and dismisses our current increase in temperature as a normal variation.
A closer look at his shows note that Pleistocene ice ages required only a 2-degree cooling, which resulted in drastic world changes, including a time of woolly mammoths and ice that covered most of North America.
Rattray correctly discusses the tremendous energy we now derive from fossil fuels and the small contribution that renewable sources provide in comparison.He correctly discusses the large and unwieldy price tags and needed scale for attempts to move away from hydrocarbons as a source of energy.
Rattray discounts the world consensus of thousands of real scientists, hundreds of organizations and governments are overstating this issue. Personal anecdotes and quick calculations based incorrectly interpreted cherry-picked data aside, there is reality that global warming due to man made CO2 is real.
I do not see “the answer” and most experts do not see all the workable answers to this immense problem or see comprehensive ways to stop or reverse these changes. Partial solutions exist today. What I do see is that when we put our minds to a task as a people with a sense of urgency, Mankind has achieved amazing and impossible results. Now is the time to stop listening to armchair internet experts and accept that there is no conspiracy, science is real, and that for the sake of our country and our children, we need to act now.
Lawrence Mietus
Santa Barbara
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Regarding Elwood Watson’s Nov. 29 commentary, “Kyle Rittenhouse Is the New Darling of the Right,” Noozhawk is basically a rag sheet. You can do better, but probably not. Would not spend a dime on your reporting.
Alan Kruthers
Lompoc
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For a university professor, Elwood Watson’s scholarship comes up way short on facts.
Among his many misstatements about the Kyle Rittenhouse jury acquittal on all charges, he alleges that “Rittenhouse, with the aid of his mother, went to Kenosha in the wee hours of the morning with an AR-15 gun he was not licensed to carry.”
If Watson had bothered to watch the trial, he would have known that Rittenhouse did not cross state lines with an AR-15-style rifle but that he kept it at a friend’s house in Kenosha. In addition, the judge in the case ruled that Rittenhouse’s possession of the gun was technically legal at the time. These are salient facts.
In addition, the man who was shot and wounded by Rittenhouse was no peaceful bystander. On the witness stand, and in multiple media interviews afterward, he admitted that Rittenhouse only fired after he pointed his own gun at him. Again, the jury found Rittenhouse acted in self-defense and found him not guilty on all charges.
Whether Rittenhouse should or should not have been in Kenosha that night is beside the point. He acted in self-defense when he found himself in fear for his life, and the jury agreed on all charges.
Ben Palmer
Santa Ynez
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