Mediterranean Sunset wallpaper
Plan will help harvest sun’s energy
Interior Secretary Ken Salazar’s “moonshot” is all about the sun.
Instead of merely talking about the possibilities of solar energy and waiting for private entrepreneurs to propose projects, Salazar is wisely jumpstarting development on public land by mapping areas with the most potential and conducting environmental studies.
His goal is to have 13 “commercial-scale” solar-energy projects under construction by the end of next year. Eventually, he predicts, solar power produced on the 700,000 acres his department has designated for study in six states will reach 100,000 megawatts. That’s enough to supply 88 percent of the West’s electricity needs.
88 percent seems high and one wonders about how much wildlife habitat and water resources will be affected.
More than 800 wildlife species now extinct
The new analysis shows 869 species became extinct or extinct in the wild since the year 1500 while 290 more species are considered critically endangered and possibly extinct.
At least 16,928 species are threatened with extinction, including nearly one-third of amphibians, more than one in eight birds and nearly a quarter of mammals.
This is described as a snapshot using 2.7 percent of the 1.8 million described species analyzed, thus probably on the optimistic side. At least 16 species of animals have become extinct just since the 2004 Red List published by the International Union for Conservation of Nature.
Fox News promotes global temperature decline falsehood
Graph of average global temperature increase
