Bullshit. It’s Thetans.
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Wasn’t quite sure where to put this. I’m sure folks will have plenty of opinions on Baffin Bay and the upcoming Proposition 4:
https://www.texasmonthly.com/news-politics/texas-gulf-coast-baffin-bay-water/
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Baffin Bay is a pretty special place and for saltwater fisherman is well known (i.e. folks in Florida know about it).
And the thing that makes it special is the stable salinity. Mess with that and it will likely fade into obscurity.
We humans devastated the Galveston Bay oystery, destroyed the resident Tarpon population in Port Aransas (original name: Tarpon, Tx) and nearly obliterated redfish and speckled trout populations down the entire coast before slot limits.
Industry will always win out and however the lawmakers dress it up the reason they’ll build that plant right there is because there’s money to be made.
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Well, we do need potable water, as well. I am always suspicious of regulators forced by the legislature to placate industry, as well as environmental groups often led by people I have little faith in.
That being said, seems like an no-brainer, in my thinking, to require the more expensive brine disposal. Over a 30 year period, as water gets more and more expensive, that marginal increase in cost won’t be that significant when compared to the larger forces making water so expensive.
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Out of curiosity, which ones?
My major beef is that along the entire Texas coast there are few (if any) other estuaries with the stable salinity that Baffin Bay has.
Build elsewhere. Impact the less special environments, the ones already impacted by industry, runoff and development. The ones essentially indistinguishable from their neighbors.
But I suspect that someone stands to make a lot of money building it in that particular location. And that someone has made it worth other several someones whiles to see to it that it happens there.
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Oh, I don’t have names, and I realize that sounds like I’m full of it, and I may well be. In a previous life, I worked in the regulatory field in water quality and often met with engineering/development firms and environmental groups. My beefs with the environmental groups is that they were almost always steered by emotional fear rather than good science, and it always irritated me, as I sympathized with their goals.
As an easy example, though I can no longer access the original article, the Baffin Bay group listed the threats to water quality and included septic systems. Hell, that’s a watershed with a very, very low population density of non-sewered homes. I highly doubt anyone has shown a water quality impairment to Baffin Bay through septic systems, with any rigor at least. Just a small example, but was pretty representative of what I dealt with many local environmental groups.
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Gotcha, that’s all you needed to say, you’re obviously not full of it.
The November 2025 full moon, known as the Beaver Moon, reached its peak illumination at 8:19 a.m. Eastern Time on Wednesday, November 5, 2025.
- This full moon was also the closest supermoon of the year, occurring when the Moon was at its perigee, approximately 356,980 km (221,818 miles) from Earth, making it appear 14% larger and 30% brighter than a typical full moon.
- It was the second of three supermoons in 2025, following the October supermoon.
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Nice beaver… moon.
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Why are they using the past tense?
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You can strike the “there’s no point in us controlling emissions because look at China” excuse from the climate-denier’s playbook.
In fact, I saw elsewhere (that I cannot now find but will circle back if I do) that over 40 countries have peaked in their usage of fossil fuels and such is on a downward trajectory that is expected never to be reversed.
Meanwhile, we’re pumping nearly $1 billion into the coal industry to pop up about 20,000 jobs (and a couple of billionaires).
As to “bUt WhAt HaPpEnS wHeN iTs DaRk?”:
Northern Lights reaching well south.
If you’ve got a dark sky take a peak. My aunt on the Mississippi Gulf Coast saw them.
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Apparently they were visible here in Midland last night and maybe again tonight. It’s possible they’ll reach as far south as Houston, if you can see the horizon and get away from the light pollution.
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I went out and looked last night but couldn’t see anything. But I don’t really have a vantage where I can see low on the horizon to the north.
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That’s kind of the thing where we are. Getting a reasonably low line of sight to the horizon is tough. They are also very faint here. Apparently you can see them much better through your phone than your eyes.
I looked and did not see the aurora last night. Ratfarts.
Normal skies here too.
Speaking of the night skies, saw this story last night.
Telescope farm in Rockwood allows amateur astronomers access to dark skies:
I saw it the other night when I was out on my walk but at the time I assumed it was just some weird light pollution. It was pretty cool, I have to say.