Although Pentagon officials don’t see wind power as an obstacle to military readiness, in the past two years, a growing number of state lawmakers are citing national security to block wind farms. That’s what’s happening along the North Carolina coastline, which is home to Marine Corps and Naval aviation facilities as well as a burgeoning wind industry.
North Carolina’s state legislature is considering a bill to ban all wind farms within 100 miles of the coast from Virginia to Camp LeJeune. The bill’s sponsor, state senator Harry Brown (R), was also behind an 18-month moratorium on North Carolina wind farms that expired in December 2018. At a legislative hearing on the bill last month, some military experts said prohibition goes too far.
Many people who care about climate change are wrestling with what, if anything, they can do about it. Although many of the most popular consumer choices, from ditching plastic straws to using an electric vehicle instead of a gas-guzzler, have some environmental benefits — they don’t put a dent in global emissions. Meanwhile, carbon pollution is approaching frightening levels: According to an influential report published in October, the world could experience dangerous warming as early as 2030 if we don’t rapidly cut emissions.
And yet, President Trump has reversed course on a lot of US climate policies. His administration has repealed the Clean Power Plan designed to curb pollution from coal plants, gutted stricter climate standards for cars and trucks and, just this month, signed executive orders aimed to streamline the development of new fossil fuel projects. Trump also pledged to withdraw the US from the Paris climate agreement, slowing momentum for global action.
Suffice it to say: The Greenland Ice Sheet, which contains enough water to refill the Great Lakes 115 times over, is very large. And it is also falling apart.
A new study finds that the Greenland Ice Sheet added a quarter inch of water to global sea levels in just the past eight years. The research, published Monday in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, covers nearly 20 years previously not included in our detailed understanding of the troubled Greenland Ice Sheet. It finds that climate change has already bled trillions of tons of ice from the island reservoir, with more loss than expected coming from its unstable northern half.