Coyote Crossing

Energy waste as seen by the International Space Station

If you haven’t seen the amazing time-lapse video generated from footage shot by residents of the International Space Station, you should do so now. I’ve embedded it here. It’s undeniably beautiful. But there’s something about it that’s incredibly

Scientific illiteracy and he-said she-said reporting

This is a really frustrating bit of recursive scientific illiteracy.

The issue was kicked off by a post which you can find at “friedcranes.org” though due to the cumbersome layout of this page by the time you read this you may have to search a

Visit to the Brenda Solar Energy Zone

I went, I took some photos, I came back. I was really only able to explore the southwest corner of the site. I’ll be going back to look at the rest of the tract, especially as we get a chance of fall bloom. The ocotillos I saw were in full leaf,

Ground-truthing The Wilderness Society

As background, here’s a longish quote from the Facebook page of our friends at Basin and Range Watch:

Not long ago, joining an environmental organization seemed like a rational thing to do if you had a busy schedule and didn’t have the time to be

Chuckwalla Valley

I went out today to see a landscape before it’s completely altered. My camera is on its last legs after only 6 years, but I squeezed a few more washed-out shots from its unwilling frame.

It was in the Chuckwalla Valley, site of the Desert

Ivanpah Photos: Before and After

Here are two photos taken by Kevin Emmerich of Basin and Range Watch.

The first, taken around the time of Camp Ivanpah, just a few days shy of a year ago, shows a nice little spot in the creosote a few feet from where we all camped. It’s perhaps

Louie

I have a few thank-you notes to write in the next day or so, for those of you who kicked in to the “feed the rabbit” fund after this recent post. I am breathing a little easier. I still have tough decisions to make, but I now have more than just a

Spent

Wednesday marked the occasion of my first visit to the Ivanpah Valley since construction began in earnest. I’d been there in October during the Spirit Run to protest the project, but they’d just barely gotten started at that point — putting fences

A note for future historians if Obama loses in 2012

[Update: What does the Desert Tortoise Website actually cost?]

If, in November 2012, the incumbent in the Presidential election loses the State of California by one vote, and the course of the nation is thereby altered, I would like to take this

Hundreds of tortoises dead at Ivanpah?

David Danelski reports in the Riverside Press-Enterprise:

More than 3,000 desert tortoises would be disturbed by a solar project in northeast San Bernardino County and as many as 700 young ones would be killed during three years of building, says

Ivanpah construction halted

Here’s a somewhat impenetrable document from the BLM that likely gave sour stomachs to those Coyote Crossing readers who work for BrightSource when they received it:

BLM Temporary Suspension Notice for Ivanpah Solar site

The nut grafs [emphasis

The fleeting idea of permanence

I wrote an essay about a dozen years ago that is now obsolete, a hopeful piece about eternity in a marriage that has since ended. There is a line in it:

The year that Becky and I were married, we drove south to an un-named valley near Blythe, a

Larry Hogue’s Ivanpah Video

Larry’s put together a really lovely video-slideshow on YouTube to show what we’re losing at Ivanpah. Spread it around!

And don’t forget to sign the … (continues)

BrightSource Kills Another Ivanpah Tortoise

BrightSource killed another Ivanpah tortoise recently, my sources have heard from the BLM. BrightSource, or agents thereof, lined a fence at ground level with black plastic — you’ve seen the stuff if you’ve worked landscaping. It’s dark, it’s

I prove too optimistic, again

More than two years ago, in a post entitled Is a fish more important than a tortoise?, I said

The Glen Canyon Dam provides renewable energy too, and yet I don’t see too many “big picture” enviros like Mark and Lipow self-righteously demanding

Cats and windmills

Image by Carl Buell.

The next person I see arguing that we shouldn’t worry about giant windmills because domestic cats kill far more birds, I’m going to take out to the middle of the Mojave so I can run them over with my Jeep.

This will be a

Dave Foreman on Desert Solar

This is the most recent “Around The Campfire” missive from the estimable Dave Foreman, who these days is working with the Rewilding Institute.

I received this and immediately sent off a request to reprint it, and then an hour later re-reading it I

What once was desert, from the air

Erin Whitefield photo, Ivanpah Solar Electric Generating Station construction site.

There are more photos, and some description of each, at Basin and Range Watch, whose proprietors have stronger stomachs than … (continues)

Climate, Biodiversity, and Colonizing the Desert (Three Maps)

I went to a conference today, and I learned some good things about which I will be writing shortly, but before I do that I wanted to share with you a couple of maps I saw at the conference, and a third I decided to put together myself to see what

Ivanpah solar site may hold 140 tortoises

Funny thing. As soon as The Atlantic’s Alexis Madrigal refers dismissively to the Ivanpah solar site’s tortoise population as being “around 25,” the BLM ups the ante a little.

To 140 tortoises. A hundred forty tortoises on a bit less than four