Category Archives: wind energy

Judd Hirsch’s Wind-Power Plan Unsettles Catskill Town

by SherlynHa Posted on November 15, 2013

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Codex: Eldar – Games Workshop

Codex: Eldar is your comprehensive guide to wielding the deadly warhosts of the Craftworld Eldar upon the battlefields of the 41 st Millennium. This volume details the craftworlds of the Eldar, and the different types of army they field. The Eldar embody excellence in the arts of war, from their psychic might to their deadly aircraft, and their ranks co […]

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Codex: Inquisition – Games Workshop

The Inquisition is the most powerful organisation within the Imperium. Bound by no Imperial law or authority, its agents – Inquisitors – operate in a highly secretive manner and answer only to themselves. Inquisitors use whatever means are necessary in order to safeguard the Imperium from heretics, mutants and aliens. It is not without good reason that Inqui […]

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Codex: Inquisition (eBook Edition) – Games Workshop

The Inquisition is the most powerful organisation within the Imperium. Bound by no Imperial law or authority, its agents – Inquisitors – operate in a highly secretive manner and answer only to themselves. Inquisitors use whatever means are necessary in order to safeguard the Imperium from heretics, mutants and aliens. It is not without good reason that Inqui […]

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Codex: Space Marines (Enhanced Edition) – Games Workshop

The Space Marines are the chosen warriors of the Emperor, and the greatest fighting force of the Imperium. Each Space Marine is a genetically enhanced super soldier, easily a match for a dozen lesser men, armed with some of the deadliest weapons in the galaxy and encased in formidable power armour. This codex explores the formations and Chapters of the Space […]

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Duct Tape Your Heart Out! – Leisure Arts & Patti Wallenfang

With today’s colorful duct tape and the fun projects in this book, you can craft to your heart’s content! Dress up school stuff and rain gear, make hip headphones and a purse or wallet, give new life to old shoes, bend covered coax cable into wall art words, and create unique jewelry to share with friends. These ideas are irresistible! Step-by-step photos an […]

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How to Raise the Perfect Dog – Cesar Millan & Melissa Jo Peltier

From the bestselling author and star of National Geographic Channel’s Dog Whisperer , the only resource you’ll need for raising a happy, healthy dog. For the millions of people every year who consider bringing a puppy into their lives–as well as those who have already brought a dog home–Cesar Millan, the preeminent dog behavior expert, says, “Yes, […]

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Codex: Adepta Sororitas – Games Workshop

The Adepta Sororitas, also known as the Sisters of Battle, are an elite sisterhood of warriors raised from infancy to adore the Emperor of Mankind. Their fanatical devotion and unwavering purity is a bulwark against corruption, heresy and alien attack, and once battle has been joined they will stop at nothing until their enemies are utterly crushed In this b […]

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Paracord Fusion Ties – Volume 2 – J.D. Lenzen

Paracord Fusion Ties – Volume 2 (PFT-V2) is the second installment in the paracord fusion ties book series and another stunning achievement by author J.D. Lenzen. Like Paracord Fusion Ties – Volume 1, PFT-V2 reveals innovative and stylish ways of storing paracord for later use. So once again you’ll find crisp, clear, full-color photographs (over 1,000 i […]

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The Art of Raising a Puppy (Revised Edition) – Monks of New Skete

For more than thirty years the Monks of New Skete have been among America’s most trusted authorities on dog training, canine behavior, and the animal/human bond. In their two now-classic bestsellers, How to be Your Dog’s Best Friend and The Art of Raising a Puppy, the Monks draw on their experience as long-time breeders of German shepherds and as t […]

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Warhammer 40,000: The Rules – Games Workshop

There is no time for peace. No respite. No forgiveness. There is only WAR. In the nightmare future of the 41st Millennium, Mankind teeters upon the brink of destruction. The galaxy-spanning Imperium of Man is beset on all sides by ravening aliens and threatened from within by Warp-spawned entities and heretical plots. Only the strength of the immortal […]

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Judd Hirsch’s Wind-Power Plan Unsettles Catskill Town

Posted in alo, ALPHA, Citadel, eco-friendly, FF, G & F, GE, Monterey, ONA, PUR, solar, solar power, Uncategorized, wind energy, wind power | Tagged , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Judd Hirsch’s Wind-Power Plan Unsettles Catskill Town

Walmart’s carbon emissions soar despite all that green talk

by bibw6a Posted on November 14, 2013

Walmart’s carbon emissions soar despite all that green talk

By

Heather Ingram

Walmart’s flagrant labor abuses have been well-documented, as have the effects of its sprawling big-box stores on town centers and small retailers. But less well-known is how much the mega-retailer is doing to wreak havoc with the world’s climate.

In greenwashing on an epic scale, the company has been making a lot of noise in the press over its pledges and occasional projects to reduce carbon emissions. The company’s chief executive proclaimed in 2005 that “every company has a responsibility to reduce greenhouse gases as quickly as it can.”

Which is nice rhetoric. But apparently Walmart doesn’t think it falls into the same bucket as “every company.”

Eight years into the retailer’s self-professed love affair with the environment, a new report [PDF] by the nonprofit Institute for Local Self-Reliance lays bare its hypocrisy: Walmart is significantly growing its carbon footprint, even as it claims to be reducing it.

“Walmart is failing on climate exactly like it is failing on worker’s rights,” Michael Marx, director of the Sierra Club’s Beyond Oil Campaign, said in a statement [PDF] that coincided with publication of the report. “The company’s carbon pollution is up 14 percent while it pours millions of dollars into a misleading PR campaign around sustainability and anti-environmental public officials who obstruct solutions to climate disruption.”

From the report:

Today Walmart ranks as one of the biggest and fastest growing climate polluters in the country. If it were included in the Greenhouse 100 Polluters Index, a list that is limited to heavy industrial firms, such as oil companies and power plants, Walmart would take the 33rd spot, just a hair behind Chevron, America’s second largest oil company. …

Since 2005, Walmart’s reported greenhouse gas emissions have risen 14 percent, reaching 21 million metric tons per year, according to data the company has filed with CDP, formerly known as the Carbon Disclosure Project. What’s more, this figure only accounts for a fraction of the company’s total emissions, as Walmart does not include large segments of its greenhouse gas pollution in these disclosures. …

Walmart reports emissions from its stores, distribution centers, and trucks, but does not report emissions from other sources, such as international shipping, land development, store construction, and manufacturing of store-brand products.

Here’s a chart from the report that compares Walmart’s use of renewable energy with that of other large retailers:

ILSRClick to embiggen.

That’s right — the company has been promising since 2005 to switch over to clean energy, but it still gets 96 percent of its electricity from dirty sources. Why? “It has sometimes been difficult to find and fund low-carbon technologies that meet our ROI [return-on-investment] requirements,” the company has stated. In other words: We will only go green if it’s cheaper than not going green.

And here’s another chart from the new report, showing how Walmart funds political candidates who block all things green and support all things polluting:

ISLRClick to embiggen.

Publication of the report coincided with an open letter sent to Walmart by environmental groups demanding that the company live up to its promises and quit with the whole destroying-the-planet thing. From the letter, which was signed by Friends of the Earth, the Sierra Club, Rainforest Action Network, and six other groups and coalitions:

We call on Walmart to implement a publicly verifiable, accurate tracking of all of their climate change emissions, commit to an overall 20% reduction in emissions by 2020, and end reliance on environmentally destructive energy sources and industries, including dirty coal, fracking and the tar sands. This reduction in emissions could be achieved by investing in a faster shift to renewable power and energy efficiency, phasing out construction of auto-oriented store formats built on greenfields, and shifting to more local and regional sourcing of goods. In addition, we call on Walmart to hold its suppliers and business partners to these same standards or sever its relationships with them.

The letter comes just days after 54 protesters were arrested in downtown Los Angeles during a march that coincided with strikes over low wages and working conditions at Walmart stores. Strikes and protests continue throughout the country over the retailer’s egregious treatment of its workers, and those actions are expected to culminate with shuttered stores on Black Friday when workers walk off the job.


Source
Walmart’s Assault on the Climate, Institute for Local Self-Reliance

John Upton is a science fan and green news boffin who tweets, posts articles to Facebook, and blogs about ecology. He welcomes reader questions, tips, and incoherent rants: johnupton@gmail.com.

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Walmart’s carbon emissions soar despite all that green talk

Posted in alo, ALPHA, Anchor, Bragg, Casio, Citizen, FF, G & F, GE, LAI, ONA, Uncategorized, wind energy | Tagged , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Walmart’s carbon emissions soar despite all that green talk

U.S. says poor countries’ calls for climate compensation could screw up climate treaty process

by maciao85 Posted on November 14, 2013

U.S. says poor countries’ calls for climate compensation could screw up climate treaty process

By

NASA

The U.N. climate treaty process, hatched in the ’90s, was intended to fight the looming threat of climate change. But as climate negotiators meet in Warsaw this month to develop a successor to the Kyoto Protocol, they are doing so not under the looming threat of climate change — they are doing so in a world currently being throttled by climate change.

That change in the weather is changing the tone of the negotiations. And it’s doing so in a way that some say is a distraction from the original purpose of the treaty process, which was to try to arrest climate change.

No longer are poor countries asking rich ones merely to shoulder the financial burden of reducing emissions. (In past talks, wealthy countries committed to pouring $100 billion a year by 2020 into the new Green Climate Fund to help the others reduce emissions and adapt to climate change.) Now developing countries are also demanding compensation for “loss and damage” caused by climate change, such as the typhoon that just ravaged the Philippines.

And the U.S. fears that bid is going to derail climate negotiations, particularly those now under way in Warsaw. The Guardian explains:

At last year’s climate talks in Doha, the US fought off calls from African nations, the Pacific Islands and less developed nations for a “loss and damage mechanism” to channel finance to help nations cope with losses resulting from climate change, such as reduced crop production due to higher temperatures.

The member nations of the G77+China, which includes most African and some Latin American countries, cannot leave Warsaw without agreement on a loss and damage mechanism, said G77 lead negotiator Juan Hoffmaister.

“We can’t only rely on ad-hoc humanitarian aid given the reality that major climate-related disasters are becoming the new normal,” Hoffmaister said.

This issue is also a priority for other nations including India, small island states and the least developed countries. …

Trigg Talley, the US senior negotiator at Warsaw, acknowledged this week that some developing countries are experiencing costly damages and losses but said the US has “technical and political issues” with any loss and damage mechanism.

The US briefing document indicates that the Obama administration believes a focus on loss and damage will be “counterproductive from the standpoint of public support” for the UN climate talks.

There are two prickly issues for negotiators to pick through here. (1.) Should developed countries that have been responsible for most of global warming so far help the poor ones patch up damages caused by carbon-juiced storms, droughts, and floods? (2.) If so, is the U.N. climate treaty process an appropriate mechanism for dealing with that compensation?

Those are tough questions, and how they play out during the next week, and then over the coming years, will dramatically shape the future of the world.


Source
US fears climate talks will focus on compensation for extreme weather, The Guardian

John Upton is a science fan and green news boffin who tweets, posts articles to Facebook, and blogs about ecology. He welcomes reader questions, tips, and incoherent rants: johnupton@gmail.com.

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U.S. says poor countries’ calls for climate compensation could screw up climate treaty process

Posted in ALPHA, Anchor, Citizen, FF, G & F, GE, LAI, ONA, Pines, PUR, Uncategorized, wind energy | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on U.S. says poor countries’ calls for climate compensation could screw up climate treaty process

As world dithers on climate treaty, funding for climate projects dwindles

by Romona Traywick Posted on November 14, 2013

As world dithers on climate treaty, funding for climate projects dwindles

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Shutterstock

The Clean Development Mechanism helps solarize poor, rural communities.

Failure thus far to agree on a successor to the Kyoto Protocol means the world’s largest carbon-offset program is poised to shrink.

Since it began operating in 2004, the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) has supported 7,432 projects to rein in greenhouse gas emissions in poor and developing countries. Those projects have included wind, solar, and bioenergy installations, forest plantations, and energy-efficiency efforts. (Controversially, they have also included coal- and other fossil fuel-based projects considered cleaner than alternatives.) The $315 billion in funds for those projects came from wealthy countries looking to invest in opportunities abroad to help meet their domestic Kyoto Protocol commitments.

But that cash pipeline is starting to dry up as demand for such greenhouse gas-reducing projects shrivels.

The U.N. board that oversees the CDM voted Friday to cut its administrative budget by 14 percent for the coming year. “[R]equests for registration have declined significantly, and are now at levels not seen since 2005,” the board noted. “They may be expected to remain low for 2014 and 2015, and potentially beyond.” That’s because of uncertainty over the fate of an agreement now being negotiated to replace the Kyoto Protocol — an agreement that would not take effect before 2020.

As Reuters explains, “the failure of nations to craft a new climate change deal to force emission cuts on the biggest emitting countries has left the market for carbon offsets oversupplied, sending prices crashing and nearly bankrupting many of the companies that invested in CDM projects.”

But there’s another, more heartening reason for the funding slowdown: The need for carbon credits is falling as more countries find ways to reduce their own emissions at home. The rise of carbon taxing and trading schemes around the world is reducing demand for CDM-issued credits. And companies operating in the developed world are reducing their own carbon footprints.

Even if nations succeed in crafting a new climate pact in Warsaw this month, it might not help the CDM. Again, from Reuters: “The final deal will likely include new market-based mechanisms designed to allow the private sector to fund emissions cuts at the cheapest cost, but the CDM’s role alongside any new mechanism is unclear.”


Source
U.N. carbon panel slashes budget amid weak offset demand, Reuters

John Upton is a science fan and green news boffin who tweets, posts articles to Facebook, and blogs about ecology. He welcomes reader questions, tips, and incoherent rants: johnupton@gmail.com.

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As world dithers on climate treaty, funding for climate projects dwindles

Posted in alo, ALPHA, Anchor, Citizen, FF, G & F, GE, LAI, ONA, solar, solar power, Uncategorized, wind energy | Tagged , , , , , , , | Comments Off on As world dithers on climate treaty, funding for climate projects dwindles

The six U.S. nuclear power plants most likely to shut down

by julyye49 Posted on November 13, 2013

The six U.S. nuclear power plants most likely to shut down

By

Sandia National Laboratories

Three Mile Island: still not popular.

The nuclear power industry is melting down in America, and in the rest of the Western Hemisphere too.

Nuclear plants still generate nearly 20 percent of electricity in the U.S. But a report by investment research firm Morningstar in its latest Utilities Observer publication warns about the sector’s risks. The report says “the ‘nuclear renaissance’ is on hold indefinitely” in the West thanks to low electricity prices, largely driven by the natural-gas fracking boom but also by new renewable energy projects, and controversy in the wake of the Fukushima meltdown:

Aside from the two new nuclear projects in the U.S., one in France (Flamanville), and a possible one in the U.K. (Hinkley Point C), we think new-build nuclear in the West is dead. …

We don’t expect an end to the new nuclear construction in China and South Korea or the development interest in India and elsewhere in Asia. … Nuclear power is not going to disappear as a long-term option and it will continue to evolve. However, an investment in a new Western nuke plant even with the best available technology today will remain a rare experiment.

Another problem for the sector: Nuclear power plants are ill-suited to modern energy-pricing schemes, as The New York Times recently reported. Nuclear plants can’t be quickly powered up or down to meet demand as prices rise and fall throughout the day and night, so sometimes reactor operators are forced to sell electricity at a loss when demand is lowest. 

Five U.S. nuclear power plants have recently shuttered or announced upcoming closures: Vermont Yankee in Vermont, San Onofre in California, Kewaunee in Wisconsin, Crystal River in Florida, and Oyster Creek in New Jersey. Those closures have been largely the result of falling power prices and rising maintenance costs.

Here are six more nuclear plants that Morningstar identifies as the most likely to close next:

1. & 2. R.E. Ginna, opened in 1984 in Onatario, N.Y., and James A. FitzPatrick, opened in 1974 in Scriba, N.Y.

Blame it on the wind. “Renewable energy has flooded the wind-rich region, driven by New York’s renewable portfolio standard,” the Morningstar report notes. “Upstate New York off-peak power prices have fallen to $32 per megawatt hour as of mid-2013 from $55/MWh in 2008. Transmission bottlenecks prevent the plants from tapping the state’s eastern markets, where power prices are 30% higher.”

3. Pilgrim, opened in 1972 in Plymouth, Mass.

The power plant’s operating license was extended until 2032 despite fierce opposition last year. Still, says Morningstar, “Entergy is not obligated to operate it for that long and could exit if power prices sink much further.”

4. Three Mile Island, opened in 1974 in Middletown, Penn.

One of Three Mile Island’s two reactors closed down in 1979 because, well, because it partially melted down. Now Morningstar says the other reactor is at risk of closure because it “faces challenging economics,” and those challenges will be exacerbated if several large natural-gas plants are built nearby as proposed.

5. Davis Besse, opened in 1977 in Oak Harbor, Ohio

Morningstar notes “strong opposition” to efforts to extend the power plant’s operating license after it expires in 2017 and the plant’s “tarnished reputation.” The facility closed in 2002 after corrosion was discovered in the main vessel and it didn’t resume operations until 2004. Still, U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission staff declared in September that there were no safety issues at the plant that would affect its relicensing effort.

6. Indian Point, opened in 1973 in Buchanan, N.Y.

Neighbors and many lawmakers really want to shut down this plant, located less than 50 miles north of Manhattan. “When you have this much local opposition and opposition from state government, what I’ve seen over time is that it’s very difficult to operate plants,” former U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commissioner Michael Jaczko told Bloomberg in October. “The best solution is to sit down with all the interested stakeholders and think about a way to shut down the plant on a reasonable time frame.” Still, Morningstar’s analysts say that “owing to transmission constraints and Indian Point’s relatively low cost, we think there is a strong probability that the plant will eventually be relicensed.”

Maybe somebody should tell James Hansen about the nuclear industry’s mounting woes.

MorningstarClick to embiggen.

John Upton is a science fan and green news boffin who tweets, posts articles to Facebook, and blogs about ecology. He welcomes reader questions, tips, and incoherent rants: johnupton@gmail.com.Find this article interesting? Donate now to support our work.Read more: Business & Technology

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The six U.S. nuclear power plants most likely to shut down

Posted in ALPHA, Anchor, Citizen, FF, G & F, GE, LG, ONA, Safer, Uncategorized, wind energy | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on The six U.S. nuclear power plants most likely to shut down

Oil refineries in Louisiana have accidents almost every day

by dtynpwb Posted on November 13, 2013

Oil refineries in Louisiana have accidents almost every day

By

bengarland

Well, OK, Louisiana’s oil refineries don’t have accidents every single day. Just six days a week on average. Actually, to be specific, 6.3 days a week.

Last year, the 17 refineries and two associated chemical plants in the state experienced 327 accidents, releasing 2.4 million pounds of air pollution, including such poisons as benzene and sulfur, and 12.7 million gallons of water pollution. That’s according to a report published Tuesday [PDF] by the nonprofit Louisiana Bucket Brigade, which compiled the data from refineries’ individual accident reports.

Nearly half of the accidents were triggered by the weather, including Hurricane Isaac. Nearly a third were the result of equipment or operational failures. The remaining 12 percent were caused by power outages.

“Year after year our state gets the pollution and the oil industry gets the profit,” said Bucket Brigade director Anne Rolfes.

The findings are grim, but they may actually understate the problem. The nonprofit claims many refinery accidents are underreported or covered up, as the Baton Rouge Advocate reports:

Rolfes said she and Louisiana Bucket Brigade know this is the case because workers tell the organization about the accidents or incidents that don’t show up on the records.

One example involves a release of materials at ExxonMobil’s Baton Rouge facility where there was an initial report of at least 10 pounds of benzene as required by law within an hour of the release.

It turned out the release was more than 31,000 pounds.
The Louisiana Mid-Continent Oil and Gas Association responded by questioning the credibility of the report and saying the industry is “making strong environmental progress.”

If managing to operate safely almost one day a week is your definition of “progress.”


Source
Bucket Brigade: Air pollution increases at refineries in 2012, The Advocate
Mission: Zero Accidents, Louisiana Bucket Brigade
New Report: Pollution from Louisiana Refineries Increasing, Louisiana Bucket Brigade

John Upton is a science fan and green news boffin who tweets, posts articles to Facebook, and blogs about ecology. He welcomes reader questions, tips, and incoherent rants: johnupton@gmail.com.

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Oil refineries in Louisiana have accidents almost every day

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Divine intervention? Pope opposes fracking

by sssaa Posted on November 13, 2013

Divine intervention? Pope opposes fracking

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Catholic Church England and Wales

The worldwide leader of the Catholic Church, none other than the motherfracking pope himself, has come out in opposition to the worldwide scourge of hydraulic fracturing.

OK, so Pope Francis didn’t exactly make a policy statement or a speech denouncing fracking. But hints have emerged that he might do so soon. And Twitter is afire with pictures of His Holiness holding up anti-fracking T-shirts. The pictures were taken Monday following meetings with Argentinians dealing with environmental issues:

Environmental filmmaker Fernando ‘Pino’ Solanas told elEconomista that the pope had indicated during a Monday meeting that he was working on a papal memo, known as an encyclical, that will address environmental issues.

John Upton is a science fan and green news boffin who tweets, posts articles to Facebook, and blogs about ecology. He welcomes reader questions, tips, and incoherent rants: johnupton@gmail.com.Find this article interesting? Donate now to support our work.Read more: Climate & Energy

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Divine intervention? Pope opposes fracking

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No, global warming isn’t caused by solar flares or cosmic rays

by Giuseppe4532 Posted on November 12, 2013

No, global warming isn’t caused by solar flares or cosmic rays

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Shutterstock

Of all the fanciful folklore espoused by climate deniers, among the strangest is cosmoclimatology. It posits that climate change is not the result of the blanket of carbon dioxide we’ve pumped into the atmosphere. Rather, the theory goes, global warming is caused when changes in the 11-year cycle of the sun cause the Earth to be bombarded by cosmic rays, which are high-energy particles, most of which come from deep in Outer Space. 

“Evidence is accumulating that cosmic rays associated with fluctuations in the sun’s electromagnetic field may be what drives global warming,” explains the Texas-based Institute for Creation Research. “[W]hen the sun is more active — more sunspots, a stronger magnetic field, larger auroras, stronger solar winds, etc. — fewer cosmic rays strike the earth and cloud cover is reduced, resulting in warmer temperatures.”

Nice theory. But actual scientists (i.e., those who believe in evolution and the like) have been rejecting it for years, and a flurry of new research is confirming that the theory is bunk.

One such paper (which is receiving a fair bit of media coverage) was published last week by a pair of British researchers in the journal Environmental Research Letters. From the paper’s conclusion:

Numerous searches have been made to try [to] establish whether or not cosmic rays could have affected the climate, either through cloud formation or otherwise. We have one possible hint of a correlation between solar activity and the mean global surface temperature. … Using the changing cosmic ray rate as a proxy for solar activity, this result implies that less than 14% of global warming seen since the 1950s comes from changes in solar activity. Several other tests have been described and their results all indicate that the contribution of changing solar activity either through cosmic rays or otherwise cannot have contributed more than 10% of the global warming seen in the twentieth century.

We conclude that cosmic rays and solar activity which we have examined here, in some depth, therefore cannot be a very significant underestimated contributor to the global warming seen in the twentieth century.

Other recent studies have been less kind to the theory. A paper published in Meteorology and Atmospheric Physics in August concluded that research results “do not lead to the conclusion that cosmic rays affect atmospheric clouds significantly. … [E]ven if cosmic rays enhanced cloud production, there would be a small global cooling, not warming.”

John Abraham and Dana Nuccitelli do a nice job of summing all this up in a column for The Guardian. “[E]very step in the galactic cosmic ray-climate hypothesis is fraught with problems,” they conclude. “This failed hypothesis offers a stark contrast to the overwhelming consensus that our greenhouse gas emissions are driving warming. The latter is supported by solid, well-understood fundamental physics.”


Source
Cosmic rays fall cosmically behind humans in explaining global warming, The Guardian
A review of the relevance of the ‘CLOUD’ results and other recent observations to the possible effect of cosmic rays on the terrestrial climate, Meteorology and Atmospheric Physics
Cosmic rays, solar activity and the climate, Environmental Research Letters

John Upton is a science fan and green news boffin who tweets, posts articles to Facebook, and blogs about ecology. He welcomes reader questions, tips, and incoherent rants: johnupton@gmail.com.

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No, global warming isn’t caused by solar flares or cosmic rays

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California, on track for record dry year, is ready to seed clouds

by wjtydf3g Posted on November 12, 2013

California, on track for record dry year, is ready to seed clouds

By

cdrin

California, already parched and fire-scorched following two consecutive snow- and rain-deprived winters, is on track to experience its driest year on record.

“It’s absolutely dry,” Bob Benjamin, a National Weather Service forecaster, told the San Francisco Chronicle. “We just went through October where there was no measurable precipitation in downtown San Francisco. That’s only happened seven times since records started.” From the article:

The state’s reservoirs are all well below their normal carrying capacity, according to Arthur Hinojosa, the chief of hydrology and flood operations for the California Department of Water Resources.

“Generally speaking, it has been dry across the state, and it has been remarkably dry where the population centers are and where the bulk of the water storage is,” Hinojosa said. “Most operators plan on multiyear dry years, but nobody plans on as dry as we’ve seen.”

The dry weather is also extending the fire season. The California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection has responded to 6,439 fires this year, almost 2,000 more fires than during an average year, said Battalion Chief Julie Hutchinson. That doesn’t include fires on federal land like the Rim Fire, which burned 400 square miles in and around the Stanislaus National Forest and Yosemite National Park.

As winter approaches, water officials are getting ready to take matters into their own hands: They plan to step up cloud seeding. The Sacramento Bee reports:

As California concludes a second drought year and water managers hope eagerly to avoid a third, utilities across the state are poised for that first mass of pillowy gray clouds to drift ashore from the Pacific Ocean.

When it arrives, if conditions are right, they’ll be ready with cloud-seeding tools to squeeze out every extra snowflake, with the goal of boosting the snowpack that ultimately feeds the state’s water-storage reservoirs. …

As practiced in California and elsewhere in the West, cloud seeding involves spraying fine particles of silver iodide into a cloud system to increase snowfall that is already underway or about to begin. Silver iodide causes water droplets within the clouds to form ice crystals. As the crystals grow larger, they become snowflakes, which fall out to create more snow than the storm would have generated on its own.

Cloud seeding is done only when temperatures within the clouds are between 19 and minus-4 degrees Fahrenheit. This is the range at which silver iodide does its best work, as demonstrated by decades of research.

“It enhances precipitation that’s already occurring,” said Dudley McFadden, a civil engineer at the Sacramento Municipal Utility District who manages the utility’s cloud-seeding program. “Once you’ve got snow, you can make more with this approach.”

Of course, cloud-seeding only works when there are clouds in the air to begin with. It’s certainly not a real fix for climate change, which is drying out the American West and fueling wildfires.


Source
Cloud seeding, no longer magical thinking, is poised for use this winter, The Sacramento Bee
California on course for driest year on record, San Francisco Chronicle

John Upton is a science fan and green news boffin who tweets, posts articles to Facebook, and blogs about ecology. He welcomes reader questions, tips, and incoherent rants: johnupton@gmail.com.

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California, on track for record dry year, is ready to seed clouds

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Floating offshore wind turbines spinning near Fukushima

by genestrong2484 Posted on November 12, 2013

Floating offshore wind turbines spinning near Fukushima

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Even as the crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant sits idle, dribbling radiation and awaiting deconstruction, refreshing winds of change are gusting off the nearby shoreline.

A floating wind turbine began operating about 12 miles off the Fukushima coast on Monday, the first of many planned in a region best known for the 2011 meltdown. From Bloomberg:

The project, funded by the government and led by Marubeni Corp., is a symbol of Japan’s ambition to commercialize the unproven technology of floating offshore wind power and its plan to turn quake-ravaged Fukushima into a clean energy hub.

“Fukushima is making a stride toward the future step by step,” Yuhei Sato, governor of Fukushima, said today at a ceremony in Fukushima marking the project’s initiation. “Floating offshore wind is a symbol of such a future.”

The 11-member group’s project so far consists of a 2-megawatt turbine from Hitachi Ltd. nicknamed “Fukushima Mirai.” A floating substation, the first of its kind, has also been set up and bears the name “Fukushima Kizuna.” Mirai means future, while kizuna translates as ties.

The group is planning to install two more turbines by Mitsubishi Heavy Industries Ltd. with 7 megawatts of capacity each. The Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry has said the floating offshore capacity may be expanded to 1,000 megawatts.

For comparison, the Fukushima Daiichi plant had a capacity of about 4,400 megawatts of electricity, so the new wind farm won’t replace all of its output. Then again, there’s very little chance that the floating wind turbines will ever produce nuclear waste or melt down, triggering years-long evacuations.


Source
Fukushima Floating Offshore Wind Turbine Starts Generating, Bloomberg

John Upton is a science fan and green news boffin who tweets, posts articles to Facebook, and blogs about ecology. He welcomes reader questions, tips, and incoherent rants: johnupton@gmail.com.

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