Alaskans lobby Utah ski resort owner to give up coal dream
• Groups find irony in businessman’s investments
By Naomi Klouda
Homer Tribune
Image provided - This poster advertising a protest rally against Snowbird Ski Resort owner Dick Bass was distributed around the nation in an effort to help publicize the proposed Chuitna Coal Project.
The groups are sending appeals to the owner of a Utah ski resort and partner investor in the proposed Chuitna coal project. They are asking him to consider the impact of global warming on places dependent on snow.
Cook InletKeeper and the Chuitna Citizen’s Coalition joined with the Sierra Club to host a rally in downtown Salt Lake City last week. It was a call on Snowbird Ski Resort owner Richard Bass to not construct what would be Alaska’s largest surface coal mine. The groups say mined coal would be a huge contributor of greenhouse gases and to rising temperatures in the future. This would kill off the ski industry.
“Coal is the No. 1 contributor, so when we talked about how we can organize, it seemed natural we would reach out to groups impacted by climate change,” said Emily Fehrenbacher, regional representative for Sierra. “When we really looked at it, and saw Dick Bass was one of the investors in Pac Rim Coal and Snowbird both, it seemed like a natural way to point out the impact.”
Cook InletKeeper Executive Director Bob Shavelson wanted to join the effort to help point out that resources in Cook Inlet are put at risk in the plan, which is being pushed by a “multi-millionaire ski resort owner who otherwise paints himself as an environmentally conscious businessman.”
Bass, who owns the Utah resort, has partnered with Herbert Hunt to form PacRim Coal LLC, a Delaware mining company that is proposing the mine in order to feed Pacific Rim coal markets. Environmental studies and estimates on the mine proposal show that it could produce more than 12 million tons of coal annually. When that coal is burned, it would emit billions of pounds of carbon dioxide per year, groups said in a joint press release.
Though organizations such as the Chuitna coalition, which is made up of residents at Beluga and Tyonek, have written letters to Bass, he has never responded, Fehrenbacher said. The wealthy ski resort owner reportedly made a trip to Beluga this summer, but did not meet with residents while there.
“What about our dreams of living and retiring in a pristine area with mountains, salmon and wildlife, and a river with clean, drinkable water?” asked Bobbi Burnett from her home the Beluga area. As a founder of the Chuitna Citizens Coalition, Burnett confirms in the national press release the groups sent out that Bass has ignored their requests to meet with residents and landowners.
Bass, 80, opened Snowbird Ski and Summer Resort in 1971, reportedly making Little Cottonwood Canyon a premiere attraction by opening 2,500 acres of skiable terrain. He also was an original investor in Colorado’s Vail Ski Resort, has climbed the tallest peaks on every continent and received a Lifetime Achievement Award in 2006 from the National Ski Areas Association, according to articles in the Salt Lake City Tribune.
“This is the ultimate irony; a climate-dependent businessman investing in a project that would have the same climate-changing impact as more than a billion cars,” said Clair Jones with the Sierra Club’s Beyond Coal Campaign in Utah. “We’re here to ask Dick Bass to leave this dirty coal in the ground, due to the impacts that this project would incur on our planet’s climate, and ultimately Utah’s winters and its billion dollars-per-year ski industry.”
The local Utah Sierra chapter, Jones said, isn’t wanting to focus on any sort of boycott of the ski resort.
“The protest isn’t related to Snowbird. But global warming will effect the ski industry and we want to point that out,” Jones said. “We don’t want to support a ski resort owner who, in his investment practices, is harming the industry. We are not talking about boycotting, though some are looking into that.”
Environmental studies of the PacRim mine indicate it would inundate approximately 11 miles of tributaries in the Chuitna River system, impact some 30 square miles of land within the watershed, and could eventually destroy one of the state’s best wild salmon fisheries, the groups say. The Chuitna River is one of the main rivers that drain into the Cook Inlet.
At the rally, the groups launched a new Web site – www.nobasscoal.org – where individuals can take action to urge Bass to not construct the coal mine.
“I’m here to ask Dick Bass to have the same dream for Alaska that he has for Snowbird,” Fehrenbacher said.
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Posted by Newsroom on Nov 18th, 2009 and filed under More News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. Both comments and pings are currently closed.
Posted by Newsroom on Nov 18th, 2009 and filed under More News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. Both comments and pings are currently closed.
8 Responses for “Alaskans lobby Utah ski resort owner to give up coal dream”
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Prove that coal causes global warming.
PROVE IT. I want to see absolutely irrevocable proof, by more then 1 group of scientists that are in no way at all influenced by politics. As soon as I hear that these studies are done by some evironmental group, then that totally takes away their credibility to me. That is why I am SO skeptical of this crap. Sierra Club? Bah. Bunch of wussy tree huggers that contribute to chaos all the time. Look at the ’99 WTO in Seattle. They helped organize that chaos.
In the early 1980′s it was front page news of the New York Times of a coming Ice Age due to carbon emissions.
Now, this.
If you can politicize the weather then you’ve got it made.
Well, the weather has been politicized.
I echo the previous sentiment. “Prove that coal causes global warming”. I cannot believe how the media at large has grabbed on to this man made global warming idea, when there is no solid evidence supporting the man made warming theory. This is a complete sham, designed to facilitate an expansion of government control. Any doubters of this should go look at the Climate Change bills that are being debated in Congress. It’s quite simple. First you drown people in a tidal wave of scare scenarios (such as “An Inconvenient Truth”). You then ask them to hand over their freedom and money in return for stopping the dreamed up problem. And Al Gore makes bazillions on the side so he can fly a private jet and live in an energy guzzling mansion.
I wish someone would notice the credentialed scientists who are challenging global warming theory. The fact that the earth has warmed and cooled dramatically in the past in levels far greater than what we’re seeing now (maybe the neanderthals had SUVs and coal plants) should cast a shadow on this scare campaign.
To present global warming as a fact is a falsehood. No concrete evidence has been given. To present it as a consensus is misleading, as many qualified scientists and well-learned lay people have mounted serious challenges to the Climate Change theorists that have not been refuted.
The fact is, whether or not global climate change is man made, burning coal is causing pollution. The rates of asthma are rising, our fish are full of mercury,…When there are so many alternative clean ways to provide the energy we need, it is time for humanity to move forward. We must begin to put people over profit and selfishness, caring about the world we leave behind for the children.
Who benefits from having us little people argue about this? Global warming is a wedge issue created by the corporations who rather than paying to clean up their messes and find better ways, instead are stalling and laughing, watching us argue about global climate change that has been happening since the beginning of time. Are we responsible? Who knows. But we are responsible for the state of the planet we leave behind.
A few of the many pieces of evidence that climate change is happening and that humans are causing it:
A couple weeks ago, eighteen leading scientific organizations sent a letter to the US Senate calling for action to reduce climate change and offering scientific guidance to the Senators. They also highlighted the consensus within the scientific community (http://www.aaas.org/news/releases/2009/media/1021climate_letter.pdf).
A recent Pew survey of scientists found that 84% said “the earth is getting warmer because of human activity such as burning fossil fuels” (http://people-press.org/report/528/).
There are currently no scientific bodies of national or international standing arguing global warming is not man-made (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_opinion_on_climate_change).
Don’t believe the scientists? Ask the economists: A New York University survey of them found that “84% agreed the effects of global warming ‘create significant risks’ to the economy, particularly to agriculture, fishing, insurance and health” and “94% believe the U.S. should join climate agreements to limit global warming”(http://www.usatoday.com/tech/science/environment/2009-11-03-economist-climate_N.htm).
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change 2007 report (http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/publications_and_data_reports.htm#1) highlighted the agreement within the scientific community that climate change is a human-created problem, and scientific findings since then have reinforced the link between CO2 emitted by humans and climate change (http://www.pewclimate.org/docUploads/Key-Scientific-Developments-Since-IPCC-4th-Assessment.pdf).
A 2004 study published in Science Magazine reviewed all articles published in scientific journals from 1993-2003 with the keywords “global climate change.” Of the nearly 1000 articles reviewed, not a single one argued global warming wasn’t man-made (www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/306/5702/1686).
A study using more than 50 million laser readings from a NASA satellite found that glaciers were melting at an extremely alarming rate, considerably faster than many scientists had expected (http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/32985250).
And finally, a report just released by the NOAA and the National Center for Atmospheric Research found that record high temps are fast outpacing record lows across the US. This is just another of the thousands of studies done showing evidence that the planet is warming (http://www.ucar.edu/news/releases/2009/maxmin.jsp).
Keep in mind these are nonpartisan sources and that the US is the only country where climate change is seen as a political issue rather than a moral one–probably because the coal lobby has so much sway in Congress.
Coal burning releases massive amounts of CO2 into the atmosphere. Excess CO2 is the primary cause of global warming. If coal isn’t causing global warming, it’s certainly one of the largest contributers–along with all of our other favorite fossil fuels.
But what’s even more important is that cutting our carbon emissions makes sense whether or not you believe in global warming. Investing in clean energy and energy efficiency would save homes, businesses, and the nation millions of dollars on energy bills. We’d cut air pollution and reduce our dependence on foreign oil, while shoring up our national security by breaking ties with the anti-American nations that sell us that oil. And we’d spur job growth in the clean energy industry at a time when this country really needs economic rebirth. Alaska’s clean energy industry already has a 9.4% job growth rate, according to a study by the Pew Center. We could greatly use a source of income other than oil, as well as sources of energy that won’t cost us exorbitant amounts to ship them in from elsewhere. The clean energy economy can meet these needs, in Alaska and beyond.
Let’s forget the coal lobby/Beck-Limbaugh hype. This country needs massive investment into clean energy and nationwide infrastructure. Call Begich and Murkowski and tell them to support the Senate clean energy bill.
Marie,
Kudos for giving us a well-prepared defense of that point of view.
I just wanted to point out that the evidence links you supplied to prove manmade global warming consist entirely of trying to prove that there is a scientific consensus on the subject. What does that prove? Scientist were wrong about bleeding patients at the time of our nation’s founding, they were wrong about eugenics in the last century which tragically resulted in the sterilizing of many innocent folks, and they were wrong about the global cooling scare a few decades ago… and on we could go. They’ve been driven by underlying philosophies, political factors, etc, not good solid evidence. Of course, a small group of scientists have generally been around to challenge the consensus view on most subjects. Due to the plethora of blunders, we should recognize the need to keep a critical eye open and encourage lively debate on all topics instead of merely saying “hey! A majority agrees. Shut up.” That’s not to ignore the position that such a large number of credentialed scientists have taken. We should never accept something as true just based on a headcount though. I would encourage you to first provide links that actually contain scientific research tying manmade emissions to warming. I researched the subject, and found that most of the research is shaky and easily disputed. For example, I found research that demonstrates that CO2 and warming have occurred simultaneously during the fluctuations of the climate throughout history. How can the carbon CAUSE the warming if it rises simultaneously?
I noticed in the “consensus” charts you linked to, that the breakdown among scientists was 84% believe in manmade warming, while 10% believe it is due to natural causes. Giving them the benefit of the doubt (polls have been known to be misleading), I want to know what basis these 10% stand on. One in ten scientists would tell you that the earth is warming right now of natural causes. Are they wrong because they are in a minority? I personally agree that warming has been occurring in the past century, but I am even interested in the positions of the 4% who say that no warming is occurring. Let’s not be close-minded to the views of the minority. Need I set forth a list of all the times in history when minorities have held the truth? You did provide a link to evidence for warming (not necessarily manmade). Again, I do not dispute that. Many do, including 2 out of every 50 scientists. Not a big percentage, but it would come out to a huge number of scientists, and I’m interested in their evidence.
I think it bears mentioning that science is tied closely to politics because science gets much of its funding from the government. This could keep some scientists who need to keep the funding coming from visibly attacking the consensus view. You cite surveys that find that no science group of national or international standing has disputed manmade warming. The page specifically stated that no individual scientist or University is considered, many of whom (individuals at least) have disputed warming hysteria. I would be interested to see if any of the groups discussed are completely independent of government or other groups that have vital interests in manmade warming being true. The IPCC is not partisan in regards to democrats/republicans, but hardly unbiased.
You mention that America is the one nation that views this as a political issue instead of a moral one. Not exactly. I want to wait and see the research and debate on this topic unfold. But when Barbara Boxer and John Kerry rise up and proclaim this as a reason for the government to grab more control, it causes those who care about freedom to act upon their moral obligation to stop them. I think that the reason that this is a controversial issue in America is because there are millions of Americans who love and understand freedom. Most of the West has fallen into socialism and meaningless subjective “diversityism”. But not America… entirely… yet. We’re free here, not sheep under the staff of a tyrant or a tyrannical state. Since when has government been able to solve national problems? The government exists to enforce the law (i.e. punish evildoers), NOT to control your life. In a free nation, the people rise up to solve the nation’s problems. Do not ask the government to solve climate change. They will promise to do so, and then take your freedom away while bungling what you asked them to do. If climate change is proven to be occurring at the hand of man, then the people of the free nation must stand up to create solutions. The “climate change” bill will do NOTHING to help curb climate change, even if it is occurring. Even the director of the EPA admitted that (of course, they blame it on China and India’s unwillingness to crack down). The climate change bill (I assume the “clean energy” bill you refer to is the same thing) exists for one purpose: to slap down huge new taxes and restrictions, thus helping to fill government coffers (or actually to lessen the amount of red ink for the year) and to give government more power, at the expense of jobs, the well-being of the economy, and our freedom. There will always be opposition to such corrupt power grabbing as long as any shadow of what America was built to represent endures.
I agree that we should be developing clean energy and cutting pollution, but if we get it into our heads that government is best suited to develop, lead, and regulate us toward that end, then we have bought into one of the greatest hoaxes of history: that freedom is inferior to elite control.
Don’t be misled by our power-hungry government and its compliant media allies who seem to be allergic to any covering of alternative ideas in this “settled” debate. Stand up for the freedom and prosperity of our children.
We are moving towards more efficient uses of fossil fuels – and perhaps it will be less use all around as time goes on – BUT – to unduly wring our hands at this point in time about coal or petroleum and the harm it does ignores just how much mankind has benefitted from those substances. Heat and energy though the centuries helped us escape from the dark ages of earlier human existence in a multitude of ways. The massive contribution of petroleum products to quality of life as we know it is staggering. If a very very slow lessening of dependence on it is the price to pay – it was well worth it. Agony about global warming is a minor player in the pace of that evolution.
Don’t forget about this interesting little tidbit of information that came out this week. Well, 2 tidbits of rather interesting information.
In 2007, a British High Court judge ruled that Al Gore’s global warming film contained nine significant errors and should no longer be screened in schools unless accompanied by guidance notes to balance Gore’s “one-sided” views.
Al Gore’s award-winning global warming film “An Inconvenient Truth,” socked two years ago by a British court ruling that found several errors, is facing additional scrutiny with the release of a new documentary that seeks to rebut many of Gore’s claims.
Buoyed by the ruling, two Irish journalists — Phelim McAleer and Ann McElhinney — released a documentary in which they gather evidence outlining the damage of global warming hysteria. In “Not Evil Just Wrong,” they challenge the claims made in Gore’s film and conclude that the film is not worth screening in schools because it is shown there as “an article of science, not faith.”
“I wouldn’t like our documentary to have nine significant errors and if it did, I certainly wouldn’t be showing it to school children across America, and that’s the important thing,” McAleer told Fox News’ Sean Hannity on Friday.
In Gore’s film, directed by Davis Guggenheim and released in 2006, the former vice president argues that humans are causing climate change, a problem he says is the biggest moral challenge facing the globe.
If humans don’t act to reduce their emissions of greenhouse gases, Gore contends, the deaths caused by climate change will double in 25 years to 300,000 people a year, and more than a million species worldwide could be driven to extinction in half a century.
The film went on to win Academy Awards for Gore and Guggenheim and to re-energize the environmental movement.
But in 2007, a British High Court judge ruled that Gore’s film contained nine significant errors and should no longer be screened in schools unless accompanied by guidance notes to balance Gore’s “one-sided” views.
The film’s “apocalyptic vision” was not an impartial analysis of climate change, High Court Judge Michael Burton said, adding that the film is “substantially founded up scientific research and fact” but that the errors were made in “the context of alarmism and exaggeration.”
Just last month, McAleer publicly confronted Gore in an contentious exchange at an environmental journalist conference, where Gore was the keynote speaker and took questions from the audience.
When asked by McAleer whether he would do anything to correct the errors found by the British court, Gore said he wouldn’t go through each of the errors but added that the ruling was in favor of screening the film in schools.
“There’s been such a long discussion of each one of those specific things,” he said. “One of them for example was that polar bears really aren’t endangered. Well polar bears didn’t get that word.” The audience laughed.
Phelim countered that the number of polar bears has increased and is increasing.
“You don’t think they’re endangered?” Gore asked.
“The number has increased,” McAleer repeated, prompting the same question from Gore. “If the number of polar bears has increased, surely they’re not in danger.”
Before McAleer could say anything else, he was interrupted by environmental journalists who said it wasn’t a debate and shut off his microphone. Sounds like he was shut down literally, this seems to happen often when someone points out a fact or error that highlights the green movement.
McAleer, who has reported in the past for the Financial Times and the Economist, among other outlets, said he believes the incident shows that the members of the Society of Environmental Journalists are simply environmentalists, not journalists.
“They see it’s their duty to protect the multi-millionaire politician/businessman, rather than support the journalist asking difficult questions,” he said.
McElhinney, McAleer’s filmmaking partner, said Gore, while doing research for his newly released book, “Our Choice,” asked a scientist to dial back the science to fit his narrative.
“So much for the inconvenient truth,” McElhinney said. “He just doesn’t like the truth.”
McElhinney said it’s a flawed argument by environmentalists that there’s a consensus that everyone agrees about the causes and consequences of global warming.
“That’s not how science works,” she said. “It doesn’t matter if 99,000 people all agree about something and one person is right. Politics works like that — a certain number of people vote for something and then it becomes true. But with science, it’s the one person who tells the truth.”
And the second tidbit of information:
Hackers broke into the servers at a prominent British climate research center and leaked years worth of e-mail messages onto the Web, including one with a reference to a plan to “hide the decline” in temperatures.
The Internet is abuzz about the leaked data from the University of East Anglia’s Climate Research Unit (commonly called Hadley CRU), which has acknowledged the theft of 61MB of confidential data.
Climate change skeptics describe the leaked data as a “smoking gun,” evidence of collusion among climatologists and manipulation of data to support the widely held view that climate change is caused by the actions of mankind. The authors of some of the e-mails, however, accuse the skeptics of taking the messages out of context, adding that the evidence still clearly shows a warming trend.
The files were reportedly released on a Russian file-serve by an anonymous poster calling himself “FOIA.”
In an exclusive interview in Investigate magazine’s TGIF Edition, Phil Jones, the head of the Hadley CRU, confirmed that the leaked data is real.
“It was a hacker. We were aware of this about three or four days ago,” he told the magazine, noting that the center has yet to contact the police about the data breach.
TGIF Edition asked Jones about the controversial “hide the decline” comment from an e-mail he wrote in 1999: “I’ve just completed Mike’s Nature trick of adding in the real temps to each series for the last 20 years (ie from 1981 onwards) amd [sic] from 1961 for Keith’s to hide the decline.”
He told the magazine that there was no intention to mislead, but he had “no idea” what he meant by those words.
“That was an e-mail from ten years ago. Can you remember the exact context of what you wrote ten years ago?” he said.
“Mike” refers to Jones’ colleague Michael Mann, who told the New York Times that the “trick” was simply a way of solving a data problem. In this case, the warming trend of the last century was detected in tree-ring samples only until 1960, but it continued in thermometer readings.
Jones’ word choice was poor, Mann told the Times, but the calculations were “not something secret.”
The Telegraph has posted some of the more scathing excerpts from these emails, which the newspaper suggests points to manipulation of evidence and private doubts about the reality of global warming, though the much of the scientific language in the e-mails is esoteric and hard to interpret.
Others suggest the comments are simply “scientists talking about science.” In an interview with Wired, Kevin Trenberth, head of the Climate Analysis Section at the National Center for Atmospheric Research, points out that “if you read all of these e-mails, you will be surprised at the integrity of these scientists.”
Still, one notable e-mail from the hacked files clearly describes how to squeeze dissenting scientists from the peer review process:
“I think we have to stop considering Climate Research as a legitimate peer-reviewed journal. Perhaps we should encourage our colleagues in the climate research community to no longer submit to, or cite papers in, this journal. We would also need to consider what we tell or request of our more reasonable colleagues who currently sit on the editorial board…What do others think?”
Sources: http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2009/11/21/new-documentary-challenges-gores-inconvenient-truth-global-warming/ & http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,576009,00.html