(LETTERS) Lack of downtown holiday lights disappointing; Chuck Gray’s one policy regimen; Carrying Putin’s water

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Dear Casper,

I’ve lived Casper my entire 74 years. I love the holiday lights in the park by the hospital and David Street and beyond.

What really disappoints me is the lack of lights downtown.

I remember the swag lights across the entire streets. A few trees and a few poles do not make it very exciting to shop in the evenings.

Guess I’m just getting old. I miss the store windows and street decorative scenery.

Judy Reed
Casper

Dear Casper,

This is in response to Secretary of State Chuck Gray’s ongoing regimen of harping on “election integrity” and attempts to change Wyoming’s election laws and codes to reflect his extremist views and step lock adherence to the extremist views promulgated by the ultraconservative members of the Republican National Committee.

I’ve commented before that Mr. Gray is a one-issue politician focused on elections and how they are conducted. Wyoming has been cited multiple times for the way our state conducts fair and ethical balloting with virtually perfect scores as far as proper voting practices are concerned, including the past voting cycle this November.

However, once again, Mr. Gray has used his office as a bully pulpit to rant against constitutional means of gathering the votes of the public in an attempt to limit access to the ballot box and the ways U.S. citizens make their wishes known during election cycles.

Every one of the practices he vilifies repeatedly – including in the article in the Dec. 21 Oil City News – are legal and acceptable according to Wyoming laws and statutes.

I call on Mr. Gray to desist in this constant campaign and focus on the duties of his office that remain. And I call on our legislature and governor to remind him of those remaining duties.

As it is, Mr. Gray does the Wyoming public no service with his one note – one issue diatribes.

Joseph Rogers
Casper

Dear Casper,

As most of Wyoming is heading for no chance of a white New Year, let alone Christmas, I have been pondering how to explain what I believe to be the real reason why we are in a headlong-rush to burn as much fossil-fuel as fast as possible. The easy answer is that burning coal and oil is good for Wyoming jobs, and everybody wants lower electric and gas-bills.

But I think the actual truth is that President-elect Donald Trump, Sen. John Barrasso, et al., are carrying Russian President Vladimir Putin’s water. Nobody will benefit more from accelerated global warming and be harmed less by accelerated climate change than Russia. So I think Putin is using all his resources to do everything possible to accelerate global warming and support candidates who oppose green energy and advocate for increasing our use of fossil fuels, under the pretext that it is good economically.

While there is little reporting of it, 96% of Wyoming has drought conditions, with drought being extreme or severe in over 70% of the state, according to state and federal agencies. 2024 is going to be the hottest year on record. 2023 was also the hottest year on record. The last 10 years are the 10 hottest years on record, according to both NASA and NOAA. That is indicative of global warming causing Wyoming’s climate to change. There is no reason not to expect that to continue, which will be devastating to our ski-businesses and skiers.

By contrast, try to imagine a virgin wilderness of completely untapped natural resources bigger that the entirety of the United States, including Alaska. That’s what Russia has, frozen solid, in what we call Siberia. It’s called permafrost. The ground is frozen so solid as to make it impossible to build roads or railroads, let alone to allow mining or drilling for oil. This permafrost has been frozen for more than 20,000 years, but it’s melting now.

Siberia’s forests alone are about 22% larger than the total land area of the United States, including Alaska. A rough estimate put together by ChatGPT suggests that the lumber in these forests is worth something in the neighborhood of $300 billion. But there is currently no way to harvest the wood because Russia can’t get the workers there, and if they did cut down the trees, they couldn’t get the wood back to civilization. It is also likely that there is as much total gold and oil to be found in Siberia as to exceed the entire historical amount of gold and oil harvested in the history of the USA. The melting of Siberian permafrost could easily give Russia the most prosperous economy in the world.

It is true that, in the short term, melting the Siberian permafrost, will make an unpredictable mess. Nobody knows for certain what will happen to the climate when all the carbon sequestered in the permafrost melts. It is also impossible to predict what kind of soil is actually beneath the frozen ground, and how the topography of terrains will settle when the frozen water melts. We can only guess where the melt water will drain through the soil to form aquifers, where the ground will sink to form lakes and rivers, and where the land will remain flat and swampy. Some parts of Siberia will gradually turn into something like Minnesota, with thousands of lakes embedded in fertile farmland, while other parts of Siberia would remain swampy longer. For now, it is also impossible to predict how hot it will get in Siberia, or how fast water will evaporate there.

Taming any wilderness is a challenge, but by putting roads and railroads on raised concrete platforms, Russia could soon start to exploit Siberian resources, and use that money to make more improvements. They will certainly find coal deposits that can fuel electric plants to run pumps to pipe water from places they don’t want it to places they do want it. They might even be able to sell the water to drought stricken places, and send it there in pipelines. This would be a vast engineering and logistical challenge, but the payoff will make it worth the investment.

Investment is the operative word here because it is reasonable to doubt that the Russian government could accomplish this challenge. They didn’t quite get to the moon, a nuclear power facility melted down and the war in Ukraine has been a fiasco. However, all of these failures happened because of top down government planning and poor execution. But resource extraction in Siberia could be accomplished “in partnership” with multinational corporations. Essentially, Russia could leave entire projects to be built and run by corporate partners taking all the risks, and the Russian government just gets a share of the profits.

Russia is almost immune to the danger of the kind of powerful hurricanes that have been plaguing the U.S. because Russia has virtually no warm ocean coastlines. Global warming is a win-win situation for Russia. Russia does have almost 15,000 miles of coastline on the Arctic Sea, but this is only navigable 20–30 days per year. Current estimates say that these waters will be navigable year-round by 2100. However there is zero chance of the Arctic Sea water ever getting warm enough to spawn a hurricane. Moreover, if the arctic icecap goes away, Russia is ready to drill for oil there.

With the permafrost melted, the forests cleared, the northern sea route open, and Russia’s economy thriving, this would open up enough land to agricultural investment as to make Russia capable of becoming the world’s primary source of food. If you do not think that melting permafrost is Russia’s intent, ask yourself: Why is Trump suddenly so interested in acquiring Canada and Greenland? Supposing Canada and Greenland do not want to be part of the USA, try to imagine the U.S. ravaged by hurricanes, flooding and drought caused by climate change becoming dependent on Russia to supply us with food.

The Siberian permafrost is now rapidly melting. Last summer, temperatures as high as 104 degrees were recorded there. Every acre that melts puts more carbon into the air, speeding up the melting. Some estimates suggest that the entire thing could be in full meltdown as early as 2030. For Putin, what seemed like an impossible dream when he took office could become reality while he is still in power. In summation, Trump, Barasso, et al., are what Putin would call “useful-idiots.” At best. At worst, Putin is funding green-energy opponents through dark money SuperPacs.

I am an avid skier, living in Casper, so I buy season passes to Hogadon Basin every year. Hogadon currently has one single run open, but the snow is as thin as paint. So, this week, I traveled to Pinedale to ski White Pine because there is not enough snow for good skiing at any of the four Wyoming ski areas on this side of the continental divide. White Pine Resort puts a huge focus to getting children onto the slopes, more than any place I have ever skied. It is heartwarming to see parents and ski instructors working with very small children. It gives me mixed emotions to see the great family time they are all having, and know that there is no way that those children are going to have the same opportunity with their children.

If the president-elect, Republicans in general, and the Wyoming federal delegation (Barasso, Sen. Cynthia Lummis, and Rep. Harriet Hageman) continue on their present course of accelerating global warming and climate change by increasing rather than trying to reduce use of fossil fuels, then Wyoming is likely to see more drought and less snow. They’re all carrying Putin’s water, and so are Wyoming’s steadfastly Republican voters. If we don’t have a metaphorical sea change in voting, we are certain to have a literal sea change in climate, and a Wyoming where the only place to ski is the high Tetons.

Gina Douglas
Casper