The Morning Rant

punk-monkey.jpg

The Law Of Unintended Consequences is always operative. Of course you can see it in a slightly different way, as explained in a Yiddish aphorism: “Man plans and God laughs.” But there is more to this than the unforseen results of new technology used in novel ways. This is one more egregious example of the hubris and stupidity of our so-called “elites.”

What happened to those decade-long environmental studies that seem to be required before we build a 20 foot foot bridge over a swamp in the Meadowlands? What about the survival of the North Atlantic Sargassum flea? All cast aside so that our obviously idiotic government planners can worship at the altar of Gaia and virtue signal their commitment to the Sustainable Organic Church of the Carbon Apocalypse.

Never mind that the environmental impact of these monstrous, ugly, fragile and polluting machines is completely unknown. Vibration? Electromagnetic fields? Sound? Changes in currents? How do these impact the oceans?

They don’t know, and they don’t care. Graft, virtue signalling, political correctness, wokism, naked vote buying…you name the leftist neurosis and it is operative in this massive boondoggle.

Dead humpback whale found washed ashore in New York amid uptick in endangered whale deaths along East Coast

Nine whales — including two sperm whales and seven humpback whales — have been found dead off the coasts of four East Coast states in less than two months, according to federal environmental officials. The discovery of the whales, five of which were beached in New Jersey, sparked calls from environmentalists to halt offshore wind development until more information was known about their deaths.

Of course the assumption that the deaths of these whales* are caused by the wind farms is nonsense, just as the assumption that there has been an increase in whale deaths is also nonsense. There are multiple other explanations for the appearance of these dead whales on the coast, and it could be as benign as the concomitant increase in their population! Yup…humpback whale populations have been increasing.

But the correlation between an increase in whale carcasses on our beaches and the wind farms is just too delicious to discard because of logic and rational analysis of the issue. It is my fervent desire that the rabid environmentalists, who seem to crawl out from under their rocks whenever some obviously benign project is proposed, will lose their minds over this one.

I want MUSE (Musicians United for Safe Energy) to be reconstituted! Does anyone remember the anti-nuclear power movement? Let’s have Jackson Browne back for an encore! And maybe Graham Nash can blabber on about giant sponges and Bruce Springsteen can yell at us for a set or two.

Seriously…there is so little research on the long-term effects of these machines that building them in the oceans off our coasts is profoundly irresponsible. We simply don’t know what will happen, and until there is enough data to make an informed decision about the net effects it makes much more sense to go slowly and build small pilot projects that will test for environmental safety and economic viability.

Or…you know…open Shoreham and reopen Indian Point…two nuclear power plants that could generate far more electricity than all of these wind farms combined.

*As for disposal? Well…duh!