Close to Losing Swath of South Jersey; Turbines Offer Great Real Estate to Big Oil

By Jay Mann | on June 07, 2023

DROP A LINE: A herring gull makes sure anglers offload discarded fishing line, lest it come back to entangle its avian friends. Special receptacles, like this one in Barnegat Lighthouse State Park, handle line better than everyday trash cans, which can't always contain the line. (Photo by Ryan Morrill)

It couldn't have come at a worse time.

That was my initial read upon seeing the recent Bass River wildfire going full bore. It burned from Thursday into Friday. Keep that time frame in mind since it roundaboutly validates the famed life admonition: Never say things can't get worse.

By late Friday, New Jersey Forest Fire Service officials announced the Burlington County blaze was fully contained, having consumed 5,475 acres. It was an especially smoky so-called "incident" due to moisture from lush late-spring greenery going up in, yep, smoke.

While officials reported that "no dwellings were threatened," I lament that such statements reflect highly human-centric thinking.

As a lifelong Pinelands aficionado and practiced supporter of wildlife, I can grimly assure that a shocking number of dwellings were lost. In fact, it was a profoundly deadly day for an uncountable number of woodland dwellers, particularly birds, which saw their just-readied nest, some with life-to-be within, scorched. Particularly hard hit were eastern towhees, the consummate Pine Barrens bird. Box turtles also fell by the many dozens. Deer, especially fawns, felt the burn in the worst possible way. Bleakly put, the amount of forest life lost was astronomically awful.

Admittedly, I wax ugly after every wildfire, mainly in an "Only You Can Prevent …" way. It's virtually always humans who begin the burns.

As to that "worst possible time" angle, by Saturday I changed my tune, realizing that things could have been catastrophically worse, especially in these days of heating skies. Albeit a bit dramatic on my part, I can make a case that we came within the proverbial hair's breadth of losing a huge swath of South Jersey, enough to make the lost 5,475 acres look like a Boy Scout campfire.

Had the Bass River wildfire broken out a mere day later than it had, Saturday's intense northeast winds would likely have spawned a firestorm disaster of out-West proportions, with far-ranging hellfire to pay. Even the astounding skills of our stellar N.J. Forest Fire Service would have been outdone since such a wind-whipped wildfire would have gone postal.

Based on wind trajectory, a fully feral wildfire might have burned all the way to Delaware Bay! There are woodlands nearly the entire way from the Bass River fire site to the tip of South Jersey. Embers being driven ahead of the main line of flames could easily jump over roadways.

If you’re thinking that surely every firefighter in the state would be called into action in such a blazing scenario, you’re missing the runaway-train angle of a wildfire traveling, inexorably, at 40 mph. Arriving firefighters would only be able to protect homes in imminent danger or hose down smoldering hotspots. Backburns would only fuel the inferno.

But haven't wildfires always had long-reach potential?

Even if you don't fully believe in big-picture global warming, there's no denying we’re being enveloped by a strange long-term warming trend, the stuff mega wildfires thrive upon. A beboggled climate means these are no longer your grandfather's wildfires. Just ask Nova Scotia, where an alignment of climactic conditions led to a bat-s— crazy outbreak of never-before-seen blazes.

BIG OIL LOVES TURBINES: This week I must disclose yet another little-known angle of offshore wind power. It is a downright paradoxical – many would say utterly ugly – tit-for-tat item hidden within the lower intestinal recesses of last year's 725-page Inflation Reduction Act. In short, it gives Big Oil a lead in the rush for oceanic territorial dominance. If that sounds complex, it is dangerously so.

The quickest way to cut to the territorial chase is to ponder an abridged interpretative offering from the federal website crsreports.congress.gov. It reads, "The Bureau of Ocean Energy Management may not issue a lease for offshore wind development unless the agency has offered at least 60 million acres for oil and gas leasing on the outer continental shelf in the previous year."

I’ll allow you to chew on this IRA provision, keeping in mind it soon sinks in like a million SHU ghost pepper.

As you run for milk, I’ll note that the entire IRA can be found at congress.gov/bill/117th-congress/house-bill/5376/text.

A Reader's Digest look can be found at crsreports.congress.gov/product/pdf/IN/IN11980. It is titled "Offshore Wind Provisions in the Inflation Reduction Act."

Just in case you’re thinking you aren't reading things correctly, the act indeed offers at least 60 million acres for oceanic oil and gas exploration, meant to compensate poor little Big Oil for the favors granted the oceanic wind power industry.

In the name of subjectivity, these congressional concessions to Big Oil do not mean millions upon millions of ocean acres are about to go under the knife, in this case the drill. I’m sure Big Oil can be trusted to play nicely with all that ocean, right?

The IRA tit-for-tat concept is a win-win for folks like Shell USA and plc, an immense company that is now playing both sides of the energy card by investing in renewable energy, via its matrimonial ties to Atlantic Shores, while relinquishing nary a drop of its commitment to petroleum and fossil fuels.

More than a few organizations have read the IRA's offshore wind provision … to have minds blown!

The "Save the Earth" folks at Center for Biological Diversity (biologicaldiversity.org) express their blown minds in an article titled "(Sen.) Manchin Poison Pills Buried in Inflation Reduction Act Will Destroy Livable Climate."

Brett Hartl, government affairs director at the center, says, "This is a climate suicide pact. It's self-defeating to handcuff renewable energy development to massive new oil and gas extraction."

He added, "The new leasing required in this bill will fan the flames of the climate disasters torching our country, and it's a slap in the face to the communities fighting to protect themselves from filthy fossil fuels."

The Center for Biological Diversity also posts that the bill would have the Department of the Interior offering those 60 million acres of offshore waters for oil and gas leasing every year for a decade "as a prerequisite to installing any new solar or wind energy."

If the Department of the Interior does not offer this acreage for leasing, "no rights of way could be granted for any utility-scale renewable energy project on public lands or waters."

Those folks who have long been fighting a pitched battle to keep the nation's ocean bottom from being further industrially poked to high heaven are profoundly baffled by roundaboutly having the renewable energy crusade turn against them.

How could such a blatant reversal of the IRA's prime intent even happen?

West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin played an almost absurdly pivotal swing-vote role in breaking the act out of a D.C. deadlock. His relentless support of his state's coal industry was unchangeable. Fellow politicos had to cave in, accepting things like the tit-for-tat clause to win his vote.

The Manchin capitulation is seen as the lowest point in President Biden's campaign to thwart new oil and gas drilling on public lands, even though those voting to pass the IRA spoke of the disingenuous concessions as being for the greater good.

WHERE DO DEAD TURBINES GO?: If you believe BOEM mantras, "Unless otherwise authorized by the Lessor … the Lessee must remove or decommission all facilities, projects, cables, pipelines, and obstructions and clear the seafloor of all obstructions created by activities on the leased area and project easement(s) within two years following lease termination, whether by expiration, cancellation, contraction, or relinquishment."

I beg the writers of the above decommissioning clause to introduce an addendum regarding non-seafloor obstruction, such as bayfloor obstructions. It's a case of letting sleeping cables lie. Such would be best for the bay, preventing it from suffering a reopening of scars from the initial cross-bay gouging.

Once decommissioned, the bay-crossing cables would no longer emit an electromagnetic halo. The equipment would be defunct but not dangerous. Should they become exposed over bayside time, it is written (hopefully) that the lessees must cross the sea to then remove the naturally exposed cable sections.

As to the seafloor, every iota of turbine-related stuff must go, lest future storms rip them apart, driving things like ancient turbine cable pieces onto Island beaches – in a "bone wreck" manner.

OSTEO SPEED SHIFT: In general terms, a "bone wreck" refers to any sunken vessel that goes down while transporting cattle parts, post-butchering, for further rendering. At first sinkage, the meaty bones are scattered on the ocean bottom, to be utterly defleshed by crabs, worms and pecky fish.

Post-sinking, many bones get washed ashore rather quickly. This occurred immediately after the sinking of the Remedios Pascaul. It and its bone cargo went down off Ship Bottom on Jan. 3, 1903. However, not all its bones were quick to reach the beach. Many were buried in the nearby ocean bottom, where they settled in for very lengthy stays, turning black in the process. Since then, on a regular basis, storms unbury bones, driving them beachward. Those stained latter-day bones still wash ashore on LBI, often identifiable by the butchering saw marks.

As to why the white-by-nature bones turn ebony black when buried, it comes down to the chemicals in ocean bottom sands, most impactfully manganese, along with help from iron. The chemicals superficially replace the calcium on the bone surface. It's technically called a diagenetic process. Manganese creates the blackest look, with iron pitching in browns and reds.

As beachcombers know, chemically stained bones undergo an almost miraculous return to whiteness when exposed to air and sun, especially in summer. It's due to the solar reactivity of manganese, the reason older once-clear glass made with manganese additives turns pink in sunlight, referred to as sun-colored glass. New research is proving manganese could help transform sunlight into energy.

Now that I’ve wandered so deeply into Triviality Territory, I see where the study of aging bones, as they take the immense journey from fresh-from-the-body to fossilization, is called taphonomy.

Taphonomy first came about in the dating of paleolithic bones. More recently, it has gotten highly forensic, covering everything from primitive human remains found in Scottish peat to skeletal remains from far more recent deaths. That aspect is called forensic taphonomy.

There might even be some potential taphonomy value in bone wreck wash-ups, which show the aging process of bones buried in the ocean for 100 or so years.

Lore-wise, I’ve heard tell of a human bone or two being found by beachcombers, one of which sat for years with a slew of beachline wrack goodies artistically displayed inside one of those hollow glass lamp vases. A twice-told tale had a doctor visiting an Island friend and nonchalantly noting, "I see you have a human finger bone there" – setting off a rather hysterical reaction from the lady of the house.

RUNDOWN: The weather has been a borderline freakshow, if only from my mainland pickerel fishing point of view. One day last week I was sweltering under a 91.7-degree sun while wading around in a couple secret Pinelands ponds. The next day, clad in a short-sleeved T-shirt, I was freezing from wind chills in the 40s.

Those weird swings in temp can play havoc with bay fishing, slowing fluke bites. It has very little impact on blue claws, which might be showing yet another spring flourish. Crabbing is one of the finest family affairs in all of the fishingesque realm.

Stripering has cooled, though we’re still seeing a goodly spattering of migrating fish. Soon we’ll get an idea of what our over-summering bass presence looks like. These are usually smaller stripers, found early a.m. along the beachfront and day-long near Barnegat Inlet jetties, south and (mainly) north.

This is the finest time of year to jig plastics. Fake-o eels thrown into the surf at sunrise will almost always interest any bass in vicinity. Also, blues and fluke can't resist a bottom-jumping thingy. Jigging for fluke demands a heightened sensitivity to any resistance – followed by a rock-solid hook set.

No sincere showing of kingfish. That biomass should ratchet upward starting yesterday. Check with your local bait and tackle shops.

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Hellfire BioweaponTo the Editor: I dare say the forest fire smoke dreadfully masking the entire Northeast has caught our attention. For several years now we’ve been hearing about California Burning, and Australia Burning, amid chronic drought conditions. And now, thanks to Canada Burning, we get our own choking taste of this new, alarming phenomenon. A few days ago, I was only casually interested in what had started in Novia Scotia. But later, I was suddenly burning with serious questions about what is going on.Within the last two years, I had wondered a lot about the strange jet "contrails" constantly crisscrossing our sky; maybe some of you have, too. During that time, I learned about a man who is 30 years ahead of me in this concern. On June 8, a day after the Northeast Fire Smoke Plume put New York City into a breathing-hazard shutdown, I sought to learn what the founder of Geoengineering Watch, Dane Wigington, might be saying about this issue, and if it had anything to do with wildfires.Here is what I found."Is the military industrial complex insane enough to incinerate Earth's last remaining forests in order to achieve the objectives of the global controllers? The short answer is yes," wrote Wigington on his website in August 2022. "A formerly classified US military document titled ‘Forest Fire As A Military Weapon’ is a truly shocking exposé of planned scorched Earth destruction. The US Forest Service actually participated in the research and planning that went into this military instruction manual for carrying out orchestrated forest fire catastrophes. What part have climate intervention operations played in the preparation of forests for extreme and unprecedented incineration all over the world?"His post included an 18-minute video ("Wildfires as a Weapon: US Military Exposed") that "puts together the pieces" of what has been planned and experimented for 53 years since the study was submitted to the U.S. military Joint Chiefs of Staff in June 1970, during the Vietnam War. Wigington says it "reveals the shocking degree of research that the US military and the US Forest Service has put into preparing forests for extreme incineration."The military report even suggested specific forest "targets" in California, Florida (Everglades), Minnesota, New Mexico, New York, South Carolina, Texas and Utah, as well as in certain "allied nations" such as Greece, Turkey, France and Spain. Canada was not specifically mentioned in 1970. But what about now?I highly recommend The SandPaper readers take a look, and form an opinion as to whether our own military is merely "defending our freedoms," or whether it is up to something else entirely.God help us!Neal RobertsLanoka Harbor, NJ

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