Allison Krause was slain at Kent State University on May 4, 1970 by the Ohio National Guard. She was protesting against the VietNam war on her Ohio university campus.
The shots that killed Allison came from the Ohio National Guard that were occupying Kent State University over the first four days of May 1970.
Just before the shots of the Kent State Massacre, the guard turned and marched away from the protesting students. The guard continued up a hill, stopped and then turned in unison. Also in unison, they discharged 13 seconds of 67 dum-dum bullets from their M1 rifles into a group of unarmed, protesting students, most of them over a football field distance away.
This same troop of guardsmen have continuously claimed that there was not an order to shoot.
Forty years later, everyone involved with Kent State–everyone that has walked this path of horror–knows the truth.
That when the Ohio National Guard marched up the hill and all turned in unison to discharge their weapons in unison…it is evident that it was their intention to shoot as they aimed their weapons at unarmed protesters. Some one made a decision and, as in all military situations, this troop of guardsmen followed orders.
The trouble is that history does not report the truth at Kent State. And this is the reason for us to gather together for a truth tribunal…to share our stories, personal narratives..to document and honor these truths from all participants.
Allison calls for the national guardsmen to now share their ‘real’ truth at this tribunal. She calls for the truth in 2010!
Allison stood for peace and harmony and she is known for her words, “Flowers are better than bullets.”
This year we all call for the truth to finally be known about what happened at Kent State in 1970!
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To join this cause, support it and learn more, see the facebook event: http://bit.ly/7AKZl3 and facebook cause: http://bit.ly/4NoM4r and there is also considerable writing on Kent State, Allison Krause and the Kent State Truth Tribunal here.
I learned of Howard Zinn’s death last night. He had a heart attack as he swam while visiting Los Angeles. His passing, my grief and our recent interaction prompt me to recollect.
Howard Zinn has been a lifelong mentor, friend…an inspiration to me. He was my college professor more than three decades ago. I am proud and blessed to be his student. He opened my mind and spirit to the world of Emma Goldman, anarchy and civil rights…and on the importance of doing what’s right.
It began when I enrolled in Dr. Zinn’s class at Boston University in 1973. He wrote of meeting my family in his book You Can’t Be Neutral on a Moving Train:
“The Cambodian Invasion provoked nationwide protests, and on the campus of Kent State University, in Ohio, trigger-happy National Guardsmen fired into a crowd of unarmed student demonstrators, killing four of them, crippling another for life. A photo flashed around the world showed an unarmed young woman, her face anguished, bending over the body of one of the dead students.
On television I saw the father of one of the victims, Allison Krause, barely able to control his grief, pointing to the fact that President Nixon had referred to student protesters as “bums.” He cried out, “My daughter was not a bum!”
A few years later, when some visiting parents were sitting in on the introductory session of my course “Law and Justice in America,” I handed out the syllabus, which included as one of the course topics the shootings at Kent State. At the end of the session, one of the new students came up and introduced herself and her parents. She was Laurie Krause, the sister of Allison Krause. I recognized her father from the television screen and felt a pang of unease that their unspeakable grief was represented so matter-of-factly on a course syllabus. But they seemed to appreciate that the Kent State affair was not forgotten.
The spring of 1970 saw the first general student strike in the history of the United States, students from over four hundred colleges and universities calling off classes to protest the invasion of the Cambodia, the Kent State affair, the killing of two black students at Jackson State College in Mississippi, and the continuation of the war.”
Howard Zinn has been the only historian to understand and write about the massacre at Kent State correctly. He was appalled at our treatment in the judicial system over those ten years following the shootings.
Fast forward 35 years to early January this year–just two weeks ago–we exchanged email on the Kent State Truth Tribunal, an event we’re organizing right now. I wrote Howard to seek his participation in creating our truth forum for the extended family of the Kent State Massacre of 1970.
This year at the 40th anniversary of the shootings, May 1-4, 2010, we are inviting everyone involved and affected by the Kent State Massacre to come forth and be heard. Our aim is to enable the sharing of 1970 Kent State personal narratives, document and record these stories as we weave them into a collective truth. ALL participants from that day include protesters, university employees, university students, national guardsmen, Ohio and federal servants, and those deeply affected.
To learn about Four Days in May, the Kent State Truth Tribunal, go here and here. You’ll also find considerable writting on the Kent State Massacre and Allison Krause here.
So back to Howard: Our email exchange led to his apology for not being able to attend in May and he shared this:
“Laurie, you are right that trying to get ‘redress’ via the judicial system is a dead end, or a maze, and that learning and spreading the truth is the most important thing you can do.”
Four Days in May, the Kent State Truth Tribunal in 2010
We invite you to join us for the 40th anniversary of the 1970 Kent State Massacre.
If Kent State matters to you, please come to participate in the Kent State Truth Tribunal, May 1-4, 2010, at the Kent State University campus in Ohio.
The Truth at Kent State Calls to be Revealed in 2010
Inviting the extended family of the 1970 Kent State Massacre:
All witnesses of the 1970 Kent State Massacre
Kent State protesters or students
Ohio National Guardsmen
Ohio/federal government and public servants
Kent State Univ. administrators/educators
Local residents
Families damaged by the killings
Citizens that deeply care about the truth at Kent State
Leading practitioners in consensus-building, truth and forgiveness
Please join us by traveling to Kent, Ohio and participating over the first four days of May 2010.
What we wish to achieve:
We will uncover the truth at the Kent State 40th anniversary of the massacre.
Let us come together to share our personal narratives, social media, art, the Internet and music to rectify the mistruths and wrongs as we correct history.
Only with your help, spirit and participation shall the truth emerge and this tribunal be successful in creating the healing we seek.
As a grassroots organization forming now by the family of Allison Krause, we understand that your participation is crucial for the success of the truth tribunal. Our goal is to share all stories so that the truth may become known and honored.
If this speaks to you, and you wish to become meaningfully involved in helping create, organize, fund and successfully reveal the truth about the killings and massacre, please let us know. With early May liftoff, we have a short fuse!
To join now, see the facebook event: http://bit.ly/7AKZl3 and facebook cause: http://bit.ly/4NoM4r There is also considerable writing on Kent State, Allison Krause and the Kent State Truth Tribunal here.
Please spread the word by going to the Kent State Truth Tribunal facebook event, joining in and sharing it with your family, friends and colleagues.
We ask you to join us in uncovering the truth at Kent State,
Laurel Krause
sister of slain KSU student Allison Krause
TIM STELLOH, North Coast Journal, January 28, 2010
“Consensus” isn’t a word that comes to mind with the Marine Life Protection Act, Mendocino County branch.
Consider a Monday night meeting in Fort Bragg, where fishermen, seaweeders and enviros convened at St. Micheal’s Episcopal Church to do one thing: figure out which areas along the Mendocino Coast to “protect” — that is, which coastline to turn into no-take reserves and protected areas that limit or block fishing and harvesting, as required under MLPA.
Brevity was important. So was compromise, as the deadline is Feb. 1 for Mendocino, Del Norte and Humboldt counties — together the North Coast region of the MLPA — to officially make their choices as a single, unified group. If the coalition blows the deadline, the state will have a whole lot more power to make those decisions for them — particularly for Mendocino, said Jennifer Savage of the Ocean Conservancy. (Ed. note: Savage is the Journal’s art and poverty columnist.)
This process, of course, has been mired in conflict. Fishermen, seafood harvesters and other critics have called the science behind those protected zones — which the state says should be about nine square miles every 30 to 60 miles — bogus. They’ve described the process as an unfair, underfunded burden on communities, as obfuscatory and hostile to public input. Some have described the entire premise of MLPA as, at best, misguided and, at worst, a conspiracy to wrest control of California’s coast. On the flip side, enviros say the process has been transparent, and the protected areas are necessary to safeguard against overfishing and other harmful activities.
Del Norte has done just fine in deciding which parts of its coast to protect. Humboldt has slogged through. Then there’s Mendocino, which, let’s just say, has had a few problems.
It was about about two and a half hours into the Monday meeting when the mood soured. Bill Lemos, a local teacher who’s working with National Resources Defense Council (or “Big Green,” as MLPA foes call it) and Conservation First!, had, using a computer model map and projector, just cataloged all the areas he thought suitable for protection — areas near Cape Vizcaino and Pt. Cabrillo, among others.
A group of fishermen from the Salmon Trollers Marketing Association weren’t having it. Until now, most of them had, well, been fishing, and unable to attend any of the create-your-own map meetings that recently began, said Ben Platt, a salmon and crab fisherman. No longer. Were the state to implement one of Lemos’s suggestions near Usal Beach, he said, they’d lose 80% of their crab.
“That would gut the crabbing area,” another fisherman said. “I don’t know why you’d even put that up there.”
Another fisherman chimed in: “We’ve got to take in the economic value of our community. Commercial, recreational, everyone here. We’re supposed to be doing adaptive management not protective management — “
Lemos had had enough.
“Folks, we’ve been through this before. We walked out of this meeting before saying, ‘We are not here to take your negative input,’” Lemos said, referring to a meeting earlier this month that ended on less than cordial terms. “We’re here to share with you what our ideas are. We understand that these [changes] will cause you to be less active in the ocean and cause you some economic hardship. We understand that part of it. But folks, these are coming from somewhere, and we are trying to adapt them to places that would have the least impact. Thank you for your input, but I really don’t want to be here all night arguing with you. We’ve done the best we can.”
Another debate followed — one that shows how bewildering the process is: Just how much coastline does the state require that the North Coast region set aside in order to comply with MLPA rules? And just how important is that rule anyway? According to Dave Wright, a recreational fisherman, it’s not a top priority.
Lemos disagreed.
Even though there’s not a strict number, for the next echelon of scientists to even consider the map of protected coastline — the one that’s due in under a week — 15% of the North Coast should be protected, he said, adding that even that would be on the low end. In other parts of the California coast where MLPA has been implemented, between 16% and 22% of coastline has been turned into reserves and protected areas.
“I thought they were re-evaluating that for the North Coast,” Wright said. “Aren’t they re-evaluating that?”
“I don’t know,” Lemos said.
And that’s pretty much where the meeting ended — almost an hour past the scheduled end time, with no apparent compromise and no single, unified map.
Which gives Mendocino’s many coastal stakeholders even less time. If they don’t pull an all-nighter between now and next Monday and come up with that map, several maps will have to be submitted to begin the slow slog through the MLPA bureaucracy toward the final destination: a blue-ribbon panel appointed by the state, and the Department of Fish and Game, which the MLPA is officially part of.
With that last-gasp, non-public effort just days away, Jeanine Pfeiffer, the UC Davis scientist who’s been moderating the discussions, had a stern warning to Mendocino’s enviros: “If we fail to protect our cultural heritage — which in this region means small-scale fisheries, coastal towns and Native American tribes — if we fail to protect our cultural heritage with the same passion and attention as our biological heritage, then we’re not doing our best,” she said.
JOHN UPTON, San Francisco Examiner, January 28, 2010
Tracking gray whales as they migrate past the San Francisco shoreline will help provide key information for a proposed plan to for a wave energy farm.
The mammals — which can grow up to 50 feet long, weigh up to 40 tons and are considered endangered on the West Coast — migrate between the Alaskan coast to the shores off Mexico, where they give birth to their young.
During their travels, the whales pass near Ocean Beach — but there is a lack of information about exactly where.
Moss Landing Marine Laboratories researchers will partner with San Francisco and track the mammals’ depth and distance from the shoreline using visual surveys and satellite tracking devices. A review of existing scientific literature will also be undertaken.
“There’s a fair amount of data on gray whales down around Monterey,” San Francisco Public Utilities Commission Project Manager Randall Smith said. “But there’s a data gap off the San Francisco coastline.”
The study will help city officials decide how and where to safely place an array of potentially-revolutionary underwater devices that might eventually deliver power as cheaply as solar panels.
The farm would capture and convert into electricity the power of arctic storm-generated waves as they pulse toward Ocean Beach.
A wide variety of devices are being developed worldwide that could help capture the wave power: Some bob near the surface, others float midwater like balloons, and a third type undulates like kelp along the seafloor.
Learning about gray whale migration patterns will help officials determine which devices would minimize the risk of whale collisions and decide where they should be located.
Research by UC Berkeley professor Ronald Yeung previously identified Ocean Beach as having strong potential for the nascent form of energy generation.
A wave study completed by San Francisco city contractors in December confirmed the site’s potential, according to Smith.
“Potentially, we could do a 30-megawatt wave farm out there,” Smith said.
The timelines and investment structure of the wave project are unclear, largely because the U.S. Minerals Management Service — which historically managed gas and oil deposits — was recently charged with regulating offshore renewable energy projects.
While the SFPUC waits for the service to finalize its permit application procedures, it’s forging ahead with an environmental review of the project required by California law, which includes the whale study.
Gray whales – the giant mammals are an endangered species.
Annual migration: 10,000 miles
Length: Up to 50 feet
Weight: Up to 80,000 pounds
Lifespan: In excess of 75 years
Maturity: Six to 12 years
Gestation: 12 to 13 months
Newborn calves: 14 to 16 feet long; 2,000 pounds
Source: National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration
Lots has been said about warming temperatures and rising sea levels, but a new study puts the spotlight on a more imminent threat to coastal communities: extreme waves that are growing taller in some parts of the world.
Data from buoys off the Pacific Northwest coast found that since the mid-1970s the height of the biggest waves has increased on average by nearly four inches a year. That’s about 10 feet over that period.
“The waves are getting larger,” said lead author Peter Ruggiero, an assistant geosciences professor at Oregon State University.
And that, he said, means “the rates of erosion and frequency of coastal flooding have increased over the last couple of decades and will almost certainly increase in the future.”
In the study published in the journal Coastal Engineering, Ruggiero and his colleagues report that the reasons are not completely certain.
“Possible causes might be changes in storm tracks, higher winds, more intense winter storms, or other factors,” Ruggiero said. “These probably are related to global warming, but could also be involved with periodic climate fluctuations such as the Pacific Decadal Oscillation, and our wave records are sufficiently short that we can’t be certain yet.”
The team also looked at how high a “100-year event” might be, given that planners use those scenarios in approving development projects. Using the new data set, the researchers estimated that the biggest waves could get up to 46 feet tall — a 40 percent increase from 1970s estimates of 33 feet.
Ruggiero said that the study reinforces earlier ones showing similar trends off some other coasts, among them the U.S. Southeast Atlantic, the Northeast Pacific and southwest England. On the other hand, areas like the North Sea and the Mediterranean have shown little to no increase.
Double Whammy
Ruggiero said he’s working on a publishing another study that shows the increase in Pacific Northwest wave heights over the last 30 years “has been significantly more important than sea level rise” in terms of flooding and erosion threats to the coast.
“The bottom line,” Ruggiero said, “is that water levels have already increased in the Pacific Northwest due to wave heights and as sea level rise accelerates the region will experience a ‘double whammy’. So it is critical for engineers and planners to consider both processes.”
Both “winners and losers” are expected in terms of beach stability, with some areas gaining sand, but already some negative effects are visible in coastal towns like Neskowin, Ore.
“Neskowin is already having problems with high water levels and coastal erosion,” Ruggiero said.
“Communities are going to have to plan for heavier wave impacts and erosion, and decide what amounts of risk they are willing to take, how coastal growth should be managed and what criteria to use for structures,” he added.
Ruggiero emphasized that another factor for the Pacific Northwest is that a large earthquake could drop the shoreline by several feet, worsening the impact of extreme waves.
That proved to be the case in Sumatra, Indonesia, during the 2004 quake and tsumani, he said, and some of the shoreline there dropped by up to five feet.
MICHAEL COLLINS, Ventura County Star, January 18, 2010
Americans’ insatiable love of seafood is back on the federal government’s plate.
Five years after former President George W. Bush’s administration first proposed allowing fish farming in federal waters, the Obama administration is set to come up with its own set of rules for offshore aquaculture, including deepwater fish farming.
The new rules, which are expected to spell out a permitting process for offshore aquaculture operations, could come as early as this summer, said Michael Rubino, manager of the aquaculture program at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
“We’re looking at this whole question of aquaculture in federal waters — how to go about it,” Rubino said.
Meanwhile, Rep. Lois Capps, D-Santa Barbara, has filed legislation that would establish a regulatory framework for aquaculture operations in federal waters, which begin three miles beyond the nation’s shores.
Capps’ proposal not only lays out the permitting process for offshore aquaculture facilities, but also contains environmental safeguards to see that any such projects pose a minimal risk to ocean ecology — a concern that derailed the Bush administration’s efforts.
“It is important to take a strong public health standard approach and make sure we have food safety and environmental protection as a basis for any kind of aquaculture project that would come up,” Capps said.
Ocean fish farming has long been seen by advocates as a way to guarantee a plentiful bounty of seafood even as a number of wild fish stocks decline. An estimated 80% of all edible seafood supplies in the United States is imported, and nearly half of all seafood is farmed, according to the San Diego-based Hubbs-SeaWorld Research Institute.
Right now, fish farming is limited to state waters, which begin at the shoreline and extend out for three miles.
In 2005, the Bush administration proposed allowing fish-farming operations up to 200 miles off the coast, which would have marked the first time such facilities would have been permitted in federal waters.
But that proposal, and subsequent plans, died in Congress in large part because of environmental concerns associated with fish farming, such as the discharge of waste and the use of pesticides, antibiotics and other potentially harmful chemicals.
Capps objected to the Bush plan because of the environmental issues and a belief that it was too closely tied to the fishing industry. “They wanted to go out of their way to see that industry was satisfied,” she said.
In contrast, the congresswoman’s aides say, her proposal offers a comprehensive policy that spells out the permitting process for aquaculture facilities while putting in place standards for environmental, public health and consumer protection.
Under the Capps plan, a special office to deal with offshore aquaculture would be established within the National Marine Fisheries Service at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, or NOAA.
The office would be responsible for implementing the aquaculture permitting and regulatory program, as well as conducting environmental impact studies for each region of the country. The studies would determine which locations are appropriate for offshore aquaculture, the type of fish suitable for farming in each region and the impact such projects would have on other marine life.
Aquaculture permits would be good for 10 years and could be renewed for subsequent 10-year periods. Permit holders would be required to report fish escapes, the prevalence of disease and parasites and the use of any antibiotics, pesticides or other drugs and chemicals.
By putting in place a comprehensive regulatory framework, “It will be very clear to all of the stakeholders what the rules of the game are,” Capps said.
But Don Kent, president of Hubbs-SeaWorld, said Capps’ bill would create “a regulatory jumble” because some of the safeguards it would put in place already are covered by other federal agencies.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture and the Food and Drug Administration, for example, already regulate the use of antibiotics, Kent said.
The additional requirements would be so cumbersome that, if the proposal were to become law as written, “there won’t be an (aquaculture) industry in federal waters in the United States,” Kent said. “I won’t do it under the existing bill.’’
Hubbs-SeaWorld had wanted several years ago to set up an experimental fish farm on Platform Grace — an old oil rig about 10 miles off the coast of Ventura County — to raise California yellowtail, bluefin tuna and striped bass. The project eventually was abandoned, however.
The research institute also has put on hold plans for a commercial fish farm five miles off the San Diego coast in light of the Obama administration’s announcement that it is developing an aquaculture policy.
Capps’ office responded to Kent’s concerns by saying the congresswoman’s proposal attempts to legislate “a common sense national framework for aquaculture” and that it is the result of a collaboration with environmental and consumer groups, the scientific community, the aquaculture industry and others.
The congresswoman will continue to work with all stakeholders as the process moves forward, said her spokeswoman, Emily Spain.
Rubino said NOAA has no comment on the Capps proposal, other than to reiterate that the administration prefers a national approach to aquaculture instead of a region by region approach.
By 2015 India and China will both have outstripped the US in energy consumption by a large margin. Cap and Trade carbon markets will have been established by major developed economies, including India and China, as the most effective way to limit carbon emissions and encourage investment in renewable energy, reforestation projects etc.
There will have been a significant shift by consumers and industry to renewable energy technologies- around 25%, powered primarily by the new generation adaptive wind and solar energy mega-plants, combined with the rapid depletion of the most easily accessible oil fields. Coal and gas will continue to play a major role at around 60% useage, with clean coal and gas technologies still very expensive. Nuclear technology will remain static at 10% and hydro at 5%.
Most new vehicles and local transport systems will utilise advanced battery or hydrogen electric power technology, which will continue to improve energy density outputs.
Efficiency and recycling savings of the order of 30% on today’s levels will be available from the application of smart adaptive technologies in power grids, communication, distribution and transport networks, manufacturing plants and consumer households. This will be particularly critical for the sustainability of cities across the planet. Cities will also play a critical role in not only supporting the energy needs of at least 60% of the planet’s population through solar, wind, water and waste energy capture but will feed excess capacity to the major power grids, providing a constant re-balancing of energy supply across the world.
By 2025 a global Cap and Trade regime will be mandatory and operational worldwide. Current oil sources will be largely exhausted but the remaining new fields will be exploited in the Arctic, Antarctic and deep ocean locations. Renewable energy will account for 40% of useage, including baseload power generation. Solar and wind power will dominate in the form of huge desert solar and coastal and inland wind farms; but all alternate forms- wave, geothermal, secondary biomass, algael etc will begin to play a significant role.
Safer helium-cooled and fast breeder fourth generation modular nuclear power reactors will replace many of the older water-cooled and risk-prone plants, eventually accounting for around 15% of energy production; with significant advances in the storage of existing waste in stable ceramic materials.
By 2035 global warming will reach a critical threshold with energy useage tripling from levels in 2015, despite conservation and efficiency advances. Renewables will account for 60% of the world’s power supply, nuclear 15% and fossils 25%. Technologies to convert CO2 to hydocarbon fuel together with more efficient recycling and sequestration, will allow coal and gas to continue to play a significant role.
By 2045-50 renewables will be at 75-80% levels, nuclear 12% and clean fossil fuels 10-15%. The first Hydrogen and Helium3 pilot fusion energy plants will be commissioned, with large-scale generators expected to come on stream in the latter part of the century, eventually reducing carbon emissions to close to zero.
However the above advances will still be insufficient to prevent the runaway effects of global warming. These long-term impacts will raise temperatures well beyond the additional two-three degrees centigrade critical limit.
Despite reduction in emissions by up to 85%, irreversible and chaotic feedback impacts on the global biosphere will be apparent. These will be triggered by massive releases of methane from permafrost and ocean deposits, fresh water flows from melting ice causing disruptions to ocean currents and weather patterns.
These will affect populations beyond the levels of ferocity of the recent Arctic freeze, causing chaos in the northern hemisphere and reaching into India and China and the droughts and heat waves of Africa, the Middle East and Australia.
The cycle of extreme weather events and rising oceans that threaten to destroy many major coastal cities will continue to increase, compounded by major loss of ecosystems, biodiversity and food capacity. This will force a major rethink of the management of energy and climate change as global catastrophe threatens.
Increasingly desperate measures will be canvassed and tested, including the design of major geo-engineering projects aimed at reducing the amount of sunlight reaching earth and reversal of the acidity of the oceans. These massive infrastructure projects would have potentially enormous ripple-on effects on all social, industrial and economic systems. They are eventually assessed to be largely ineffective, unpredictable and unsustainable.
As forecasts confirm that carbon levels in the atmosphere will remain high for the next 1,000 years, regardless of mitigating measures, priorities shift urgently to the need to minimise risk to life on a global scale, while protecting civilisation’s core infrastructure, social, knowledge and cultural assets.
Preserving the surviving natural ecosystem environment and the critical infrastructure of the built environment, particularly the Internet and Web, will now be vital. The sustainability of human life on planet Earth, in the face of overwhelming catastrophe, will be dependent to a critical degree on the power of the intelligent Web 4.0, combining human and artificial intelligence to manage food, water, energy and human resources.
Only the enormous problem-solving capacity of this human-engineered entity, will be capable of ensuring the continuing survival of civilisation as we know it.
In December, Obama’s Ocean Policy Task Force published it’s Interim Framework and approach for waterways, oceans and all things marine.
WASHINGTON – President Obama’s Ocean Policy Task Force released its Interim Framework for Effective Coastal and Marine Spatial Planning (Interim Framework) today for a 60-day public review and comment period. With competing interests in the ocean, our coasts and the Great Lakes, the Interim Framework offers a comprehensive, integrated approach to planning and managing uses and activities. Under the Framework, coastal and marine spatial planning would be regional in scope, developed cooperatively among Federal, State, tribal, local authorities, and regional governance structures, with substantial stakeholder and public input.
What jumps out at me is the 60-day public REVIEW and COMMENT period.
If you care about our oceans, waterways and coasts, I hope you’ll read the report (read what is interesting to you) and consider commenting, participating. The 60-day public review and comment period ends February 12, 2010.
DAVID PERLMAN, San Francisco Chronicle, January 11, 2010
The powerful earthquake that rocked the seabed off the Northern California coast near Eureka on Saturday underscores the complexity of seismic dangers within the Earth’s crust, and is likely to be followed by a large aftershock this week – but it is not expected to exceed the 6.5 magnitude of the temblor that was felt as far away as Reno, scientists said Sunday.
A “probability report” from the U.S. Geological Survey said there is a 65% chance for a “strong and possibly damaging aftershock” from the temblor in the next seven days. As many as 90 weaker aftershocks are expected to be felt in local communities, the report said, but it’s not probable any will be larger than Saturday’s mainshock.
More than 20 smaller aftershocks – some with magnitudes larger than 4 – churned the seabed throughout the day Sunday.
Although Californians are most conscious of the quakes that constantly hit the San Andreas Fault Zone, where its many offshoots include the dangerous Rodgers Creek and Hayward faults, offshore quakes are extremely common.
Saturday’s quake was unrelated to the San Andreas, but struck within the southern end of an offshore geological feature of the Earth’s crust called the Gorda Plate, according to David Oppenheimer, a seismologist with the Geological Survey’s main research center in Menlo Park.
Scientists have long known that the entire crust of the Earth is composed of vast crustal plates that are constantly in slow movement. The familiar San Andreas Zone, for example, marks the boundary between the huge Pacific Plate and the North American Plate, and when these two plates suddenly slip after building up pressure grinding past each other, potentially deadly quakes are the result.
The Gorda Plate, with its eastern edge along the coasts of California and Oregon, is a much smaller slab of the crust, and above it lies a far larger segment of the crust called the Juan de Fuca Plate that extends along the coast well north of Seattle and Vancouver Island.
The San Andreas Fault’s northern end veers sharply west at Point Arena in Mendocino County, and there the fault is known as the Mendocino Fracture Zone. That area – the most seismically active in the continental United States – marks the southern edge of the Gorda Plate and the boundary between the Gorda and Pacific plates.
“It’s a highly complex region,” Oppenheimer said, “and the convergence of all these plates has generated earthquakes of many types.
Saturday’s powerful temblor was known as a “strike-slip” quake, where the convergence of the Pacific and Gorda plates caused one side to slip past the other.
The Gorda and Juan de Fuca plates, however, form part of an offshore crustal segment called the Cascadia Subduction Zone where the huge slabs dip deep beneath the North American Plate and can cause truly giant quakes every few hundred years. Those quakes actually are the tectonic forces that have raised the volcanic Cascade Mountains, including – in California – Mounts Shasta and Lassen.
Saturday’s offshore quake struck 18 miles deep within the Gorda Plate, in an area very close to the epicenters of two large aftershocks that followed a magnitude 7.1 earthquake on land near Petrolia and Cape Mendocino on April 25, 1992.
Those two aftershocks, centered 16 miles offshore and within the Gorda Plate’s southern edge, registered magnitudes of 6.6 and 6.7. They were very similar, Oppenheimer said, to Saturday’s 6.5 magnitude mainshock – which struck at 39 seconds past 4:27 p.m., 23 miles northwest of Ferndale and 29 miles southwest of Eureka.
For the first time in 150 years, the city of Fort Bragg in California can claim its own coastline.
On January 5, 2010, the Mendocino County community of 7,000 acquired 92 acres of the former Georgia-Pacific mill site, which stretches for 3 1/2 miles along most of the city’s oceanfront. The city’s newly acquired property will be used for a park and a long-awaited stretch of the California Coastal Trail.
Although the sale is complete, for the next two years, public access will be restricted as plans and development of the parkland and trails takes place and the dream of an open coast becomes a reality.
The city purchased part of its new property using a $4.2 million grant from the State Coastal Conservancy, and Georgia-Pacific donated a 100-foot-wide corridor encompassing over 57 acres along the site’s coastal bluffs for a trail.
The City’s acquisition had been in the works since about the time the mill closed in 2002. Early on, the city worked closely with the Coastal Conservancy and Georgia-Pacific to examine potential uses of the site and a series of public workshops made it clear that local residents were united in their desire for a coastline that is open to the public.
“We have never had the opportunity to open the entire coastline of a city in one fell swoop,” said Sam Schuchat, executive officer of the Coastal Conservancy. “A public coastline in Fort Bragg will be a tremendous recreational and economic asset not just for the city, but for the entire north coast of California.”
The property’s main trail corridor is slated to become part of the California Coastal Trail, which will eventually extend 1,200 miles along the entire coastline of California. More than half of the Coastal Trail is already complete, and new sections are being added in all parts of the state’s coast.
HELON ALTONN, Honolulu Star Bulletin, December 27, 2009
The ocean is becoming a noisier place due to increased greenhouse gas emissions, California and Hawaii scientists report.
Rising atmospheric carbon dioxide absorbed by the oceans not only has increased seawater acidity but has affected its acoustics—making it more transparent to low-frequency sound, the scientists said in a study published in the journal Nature Geoscience.
Scientists said seawater sound absorption will drop by up to 70% this century.
“It was surprising to us,” said Richard Zeebe, an associate professor of oceanography at the University of Hawaii School of Ocean and Earth Science and Technology.
Increased atmospheric carbon dioxide dissolved in the oceans increases acidity, or hydrogen ion concentration, and as the acidity rises, it lowers the seawater pH (a measure of acidity), researchers said.
“Certain chemical compounds in the ocean absorb sound and affect sound propagation,” Zeebe said. “Frequencies can get louder and more intense, depending on the chemistry.”
Not all frequencies will be affected, he said, explaining pH changes mostly affect sounds in the lower frequency range.
SOEST researcher Tatiana Ilyina said the pH of surface seawater will drop by 0.6 units by the year 2100 at the current rate of carbon dioxide emissions, with a one-unit drop of pH representing a tenfold increase of acidity.
“As a result, the absorption of 200 Hz sound would decrease by up to 70%,” she said, noting the middle C of the piano is tuned to 261.6 Hz. Sound around that frequency is produced by natural phenomena such as rain, wind and waves, and marine mammals and manmade activities, she said.
Naval, commercial and scientific activities use low-frequency sound and marine mammals rely on low-frequency sound to find food and mates, the scientists said.
“As a result, ocean acidification may not only affect organisms at the bottom of the food chain by reducing calcification in plankton and corals, but also higher tropic-level species, such as marine mammals, by lowering sound absorption in the ocean,” they said.
Zeebe said: “The consequences of these changes on marine mammals is not well known at the moment. There is a lot of background noise in the ocean generated by humans—ship noise, construction, seismic surveys and sonar—and this noise will essentially increase in volume in the ocean in the future.
“If the noise level increases, it can distract species,” he said. “If they’re trying to identify certain sounds in the ocean important for them for reproduction, feeding or something, and if the background noise is increasing, it could essentially cover certain sounds they depend on. This is a possibility.”
Another possibility is that marine mammals may be able to communicate over larger distances in the lower frequency range if sound absorption is decreased because underwater sounds can travel farther than at the surface, he said.
“Also, there are commercial and scientific applications, seismic surveys, that probably will have to take into account that future sound propagation in the ocean will slowly change,” Zeebe said, adding that more study is needed to determine the effects of the ocean acoustics changes.
Editor’s Note: In late December 2009, the sea lions at Pier 39 in San Francisco vacated their home on the floating piers. This article may shed some light on what’s happening on the SF coast and the reasons for their leaving. Like many others, we wonder where they went and for what reasons.
PETER FIMRITE, San Francisco Chronicle, September 22, 2009
A humpback whale that suddenly rose out of the water and splashed down near the Farallon Islands provided a research vessel full of scientists with a surprising bonanza of research data.
“Whale poop!” shouted several researchers in unison, as biologists scrambled to collect the floating reddish specimens Saturday as part of a comprehensive study of the ocean’s ecology off the Northern California coast.
The color of the whale excrement meant that the huge creature had been feeding mostly on a tiny shrimp-like crustacean called krill instead of fish and anchovies, its preferred food in recent decades. It is a change in diet that several bird species at the Farallon National Wildlife Refuge are unable to make, according to researchers in a joint ocean survey by the Cordell Bank National Marine Sanctuary, the Gulf of the Farallones National Marine Sanctuary and PRBO Conservation Science.
As a result, colonies of fish-eating cormorants, seagulls and murres failed to breed this year on the Farallon Islands. Over the past few months, dozens of dead birds and even sea lions have been found on local beaches.
Anchovies have disappeared, and scientists don’t know why. The researchers on the vessel believe that, in their absence, birds and mammals like humpback whales that eat krill are thriving while the ones that are eating only fish are in trouble, and the whale excrement served as evidence.
“We’ve had an extraordinary number of dead animals,” said Jan Roletto, the research coordinator for the Gulf of the Farallones National Marine Sanctuary. “It seems to be that the animals that suffered the most were the animals that forage on anchovies.”
Brandt’s cormorants, a black bird with white plumes that can dive as deep as 300 feet for its prey, did not produce any chicks this year on the Farallones or on Alcatraz. That’s compared with 15,000 chicks in 2007.
Breeding fails
For the anchovy-loving bird, it was the first complete breeding failure in 40 years during a year without El Niño conditions so far, according to scientists at PRBO, formerly known as the Point Reyes Bird Observatory.
Western gulls and common murres produced about one-seventh of the number of chicks they normally hatch. Researchers on the Farallones reported an increase in predation on the chicks that were produced, mainly because the parents were too far away looking for food.
Beachgoers probably noticed the death toll. Six to eight times the normal number of dead cormorants and sea lions were found on Bay Area beaches in May, June and July, according to researchers. The death toll in each case involves birds and marine mammals that prey on anchovies and other fish.
The deaths and breeding failures are all the more troubling because there appears to be plenty of krill, rockfish and other prey species to feed the seagoing birds and mammals.
Jaime Jahncke, the director of marine ecology for PRBO, said common murres had previous breeding failures in 1982-83 and in 1991-92, but both times the problems were linked to El Niño, a weather condition associated with warmer ocean temperatures and atmospheric conditions that cause heavy storms. Although forecasters say an El Niño is forming in the tropics, it has not yet hit California, Jahncke said.
No explanation
“I don’t know what it means, but it’s not good,” Jahncke said. “There are a lot of changes happening, and none of them have a clear explanation.”
Seagoing birds and mammals near the Farallon Islands depend on krill, anchovies and other prey that are attracted to conditions produced when cold, deep ocean currents bounce off the underwater outcropping called the Cordell Bank, forcing nutrients upward. The nutrients are most abundant during the transition from winter to spring.
Spring arrives an average of 20 days earlier than it did in 1970, Jahncke said. There has also been an increase in the strength of the upwellings over the past two decades, he said.
Apart from the lack of anchovies, that is probably a good thing.
The team of scientists on the boat spotted several blue whales before the humpback put on its show.
The abundance of blue whales, which feed almost exclusively on krill, and the evidence provided by the humpback made it clear that there is plenty of krill in the ocean.
“Whales primarily over the last decade have been feeding on fish,” said Lisa Etherington, the research coordinator for the Cordell Bank National Marine Sanctuary. “The last couple of years they’ve been feeding on krill. We don’t know why.”
Wild fluctuations
Jahncke said salmon smolt also feed on krill, a fact that may or may not help the beleaguered Central Coast chinook. The Cassin’s auklet, a small, chunky seabird that feeds on krill, had above-average nesting success this year.
But wild fluctuations are now almost normal, according to the researchers, who are concerned that the El Niño predicted for next year will cause a further decline in the numbers of birds.
About 30 pilot whales died after they became stranded on Coromandel peninsula yesterday and will be buried by the local Maori.
Meanwhile, up to 120 long-finned pilot whales, both calves and adults, were found dead at the Farewell Spit on Boxing Day.
“More offshore wells have been drilled in the last two years than the rest of the decade combined: 35 on and offshore wells were drilled between January 2008 and July 2009 alone,” said a report.
Each year about 2.5 million tourists visit New Zealand, straining its fragile ecosystems to the breaking point, creating a massive litany of different types of pollution, including noise.
Mendo Coast Current wrote: “Studies show that these cetaceans, which once communicated over thousands of miles to forage and mate, are losing touch with each other, the experts said at a U.N. wildlife conference in Rome.”
“The sound of a seismic test, used to locate hydrocarbons beneath the seabed, can spread 1,800 miles under water, said Veronica Frank, an official with the International Fund for Animal Welfare. A study by her group found that the blue whale, which used to communicate across entire oceans, has lost 90% of its range over the past 40 years.”
Environmental experts are studying numerous cases of beached whales and dolphins that are believed to have been caused by sound pollution, according to Simmonds.
Just two weeks ago at least five whales died after nine were beached in Mediterranean off the southern coast off Italy, an unusual place for whales to beach themselves.
‘A massive beaching is extremely rare in the Mediterranean,’ biologist Maurizio Wurtz at the University of Genoa said.
Noise pollution from seismic surveys for oil and gas as well as naval activities are believed to have confused whales by interfering with their communication, thus leaving them stranded and ultimately dead, many Conservationists and biologists say.
The International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW) says man-made ocean noise inhibits cetaceans’ communication and disrupts their feeding.
The level of ocean noise in some regions is doubling each decade, according to IFAW. “Humanity is literally drowning out marine mammals.”
Editors Note: We thank the Daily Kos for this valuable, in-depth reporting on the Kent State Massacre. The family of Allison Krause seeks and supports the creation of Four Days In May, the Kent State Truth Tribunal, a collaborative, multimedia, sharing event to dialog, document, discover and uncover the truth in the events leading to the killing of four students and wounding of nine at the Kent State Massacre.
At 12:24 pm on May 4, 1970, twenty-eight Ohio National Guardsmen opened fire on the Kent State campus. When the shooting stopped, four students lay dead or dying while an additional nine had suffered wounds ranging from minor to life-threatening. The shootings had lasted thirteen seconds but legal repercussions would continue for nearly a decade.
In Part I, we look at Nixon’s curiously timed announcement of the Cambodian invasion and the May Day rally at Yale University. Part II examines the events of that weekend at Kent. Part III explores the events of Monday, May 4. Part IV deals with the immediate aftermath of the shootings. Part V looks at the various investigations following the shootings. Part VI examines the federal grand jury and criminal trial of eight guardsmen. Part VII concludes the series by examining the years of civil proceedings.
(First, let me apologize that it has taken three weeks to continue this series. The reaction to my May 4 diary was absolutely overwhelming and it left me emotionally and physically exhausted. This, then, is offered as a “bonus edition” in the series, dealing with the immediate aftermath. Part V will cover the legal aftermath. Now, on with the story…)
News of the shootings spread quickly across the country that May afternoon. The first reports claimed that two Guardsmen had been shot. Whether disinformation or a mistake, many heard this news and took it as evidence of the deadly intent of the student protesters. However, within hours, the truth of students shot and killed overtook the earlier rumors. As parents and friends tried to connect with those in Kent, the phone lines jammed and then, in mid-afternoon, crashed. The inability to get accurate information in or out heightened anxieties. For four families, the incomprehensible news of the shootings would give way to the heartbreaking realization that their children were gone forever.
Sarah Scheuer was painting the house on May 4, her twenty-seventh wedding anniversary, when she heard news of the shooting. She immediately tried to call Sandy’s house but it took several hours to get through. When she finally did, one of Sandy’s roommates told her that she better come right away: ”Sandy’s in the hospital, but that’s all we know right now.” The roommate also told Sarah that Sandy’s wallet was still in the house. Sarah then called Robinson Memorial Hospital in Ravenna and asked whether there was a wounded girl, dressed in a red shirt and blue jeans, with no identification. The administrator she spoke with wasn’t sure but confirmed that at least one of the injured girls had no identification. Sarah and her husband, Martin, quickly left their home in Boardman, near Youngstown, for Ravenna. At the hospital, they asked about Sandy. A police officer overheard them and, assuming they’d heard the news, asked if they had come to identify the body. Still hoping there was a mistake, Sarah asked if the unidentified girl was wearing a gold ring with a blue stone. The policeman went into the morgue and returned to confirm that, yes, the girl was wearing such a ring. After the morgue had been cleared of the other dead students, the Scheuers were allowed in to identify Sandy.
Jeff Miller’s mother, Elaine, heard about the shootings on the radio as she drove home from work in Long Island. She decided then and there to make Jeff come home because it just wasn’t safe in Kent. At home, she called Jeff’s off-campus apartment. Although by this time in late afternoon, the phone system was severely overloaded, Elaine’s call somehow got through on the first try. The phone rang and rang and rang. Finally someone picked up. Elaine asked to speak with Jeff. The voice on the other end asked “Who is this?” When Elaine, annoyed by the question, replied, “It’s his mother,” the boy replied bluntly, “He’s dead.” Elaine began to shriek. Her husband-to-be, who had followed her home, found her in a heap at the end of her bed, still holding the phone and screaming incoherently. Later that night, Jeff’s father and brother flew to Ohio to bring Jeff’s body home. When shown his son’s body in the morgue, Jeff’s father initially refused to identify him. His face had been so badly damaged by the bullet wound, Bernard Miller simply couldn’t recognize him. After the shock wore off, he realized that, indeed, this was his son. Later, this event would be twisted by those who wanted to paint the student victims as worthless agitators deserving of their fate. “Did you hear,” the rumor mill asked, “that Miller’s own father couldn’t recognize him because he was so dirty?” Back in New York, the funeral director advised Jeff’s mother not to view his body because of the extensive damage. Still in shock, Elaine accepted that advice and regretted it for the rest of her life. Months later, the high school that Jeff attended (and where his mother and would-have-been stepfather worked) held a memorial service for him. A boyhood friend told the crowd: ”Like many of us, (Jeff) left for college confused, seeking answers and trying to legitimize his own existence. Now his search has ended. A National Guardsman’s bullet has brought him the final reality. Dust to dust – another statistic – why should the world notice?” He finished his eulogy with a poignant question: ”Jeff, friend, you as much as anybody typified the fact that we all march to the beat of a different drummer. Why didn’t you tell me it was going to be a procession?”
For several hours after the shootings, reports indicated that a “William Schneider” was among those killed. Back at Bill Schroeder’s apartment, his roommates waited for Bill to return. When the 5:00 curfew came and went without Bill appearing, his roommates got “that sick feeling” that William Schneider was really William Schroeder. Around 5:15, one of Bill’s friends got through to the apartment and he told Bill’s roommates that he had seen Bill after he was shot, but that he was just wounded. Bill’s roommate, Lou Cusella, then called the hospital to ask if William Schneider had been positively identified. The hospital said he hadn’t. The hospital urged Cusella to call State Senator Robert Stockdale, a professor at Kent State, who had been given the job of notifying the victims’ families. Stockdale asked Cusella if he would be willing to go to the morgue to try to identify his friend. Cusella agreed, reluctantly, and soon thereafter, a sheriff’s department car arrived to transport Cusella to the morgue. There, after being frisked, Lou was taken to a viewing room. Behind a pane of glass, Cusella saw Bill’s profile. “Oh god, it’s him,” Cusella told the officials. Later, Cusella called Stockdale to ask how Bill’s family had taken the news. “Not too well,” Stockdale told him. In fact, Stockdale had never called the Schroeders – or the Scheuers, the Krauses or Millers. Instead, Bill Schroeder’s mother, in Lorain, had heard the reports of a William Schneider dead. Her repeated calls to his apartment never got through. Then, at 4:00, someone from the Cleveland Plain Dealer called to ask if the family had a picture of Bill the newspaper could use. When Florence Schroeder asked why, the reporter quickly apologized, saying he must have called the wrong house, and hung up. When Lou Schroeder got home, his wife persuaded him to go talk to a neighbor, a Lorain policeman. The policeman assured the Schroeders that, if Bill had been killed, they would have heard by now. But, at 6 PM, the Plain Dealer reporter called again. This time, he said he had reliable information that William Knox Schroeder had been killed at Kent State. Minutes later, a Lorain police dispatcher called the Schroeders and gave them a number to call. The number turned out to be Robinson Memorial Hospital where they were put in touch with a hospital administrator who asked if Senator Stockdale had called them. When Florence said no, the administrator told her that Bill had “expired.” Florence Schroeder collapsed.
Allison Krause’s uncle lived in Cleveland. In the early afternoon of May 4, he heard a report that there had been trouble at Kent and that his niece had been killed. He called his brother, Arthur, and relayed what he was hearing on local radio. Arthur immediately called his wife to get Allison’s phone number. Not wanting to alarm his wife until he could find out more, Arthur mentioned nothing of what his brother had told him. Meanwhile, Allison’s little sister, Laurie, was on her way home when a neighbor told her that KDKA, a local Pittsburgh radio station, was trying to get in touch with her family. When Doris, Laurie and Allison’s mother, called home a bit later, Laurie passed along the message. Doris called KDKA and a reporter there told her that Allison had been shot. Doris began frantically trying to get through to the hospital, with no luck. Eventually, someone suggested using a police band radio and they were finally able to get the emergency call through. Doris asked if there was an Allison Krause at the hospital and was switched to the hospital administrator. She asked her question again and received a chillingly blunt reply, “Yes, she was DOA.” (DOA=dead on arrival) Even that turned out to be disputed as Allison’s boyfriend, Barry, who rode with her to the hospital, swore she was alive when they arrived. The Krauses left for Ravenna in the early evening. At the hospital, reporters crowded around Arthur Krause seeking a statement. In his grief, Krause told the reporters: ”All I know is that my daughter is dead! I’m not on anybody’s side. We were so glad we had two daughters so they could stay out of Vietnam. Now she’s dead. What a waste. What a terrible waste.” He hesitated and then went on: ”I’d like to know who the boys were who shot my daughter. I’d like to meet them. They’re young, immature guys who joined the National Guard to stay out of Vietnam. They’ve got a miserable job to do.” The Krauses stayed at the hospital until an ambulance came to take their daughter’s body to a funeral home. The next day, an emotional Arthur would again speak to the media and his powerful words would be broadcast on all the national news networks: ”She resented being called a bum because she disagreed with someone else’s opinion. She felt that our crossing into Cambodia was wrong. Is this dissent a crime? Is this a reason for killing her? Have we come to such a state in this country that a young girl has to be shot because she disagrees deeply with the actions of her government?” (emphasis added)
The state of Ohio did extensive autopsies on all the students killed that day and, even though it went against the tenets of his Jewish faith, Arthur Krause decided to have another autopsy done once Allison’s body was returned to Pittsburgh because, even then, he didn’t trust any official report. After the second autopsy had been completed, her devoted family laid Allison to rest in a small Jewish cemetery in Pittsburgh. A few weeks later, they got a check from Kent State University for $514. It was a refund for Allison’s spring tuition.
Before the end of June, Arthur Krause had filed a wrongful death suit against Ohio officials, including Governor Rhodes and National Guard Generals Del Corso and Canterbury. When his lawyer asked Krause how much he wanted to sue for, Krause responded $1. For him, the lawsuit had nothing to do with money and everything to do with holding people accountable. Informed that federal courts required a certain dollar threshold before they would entertain the suit, Krause thought for a bit and then announced he would sue for $6 million. Asked later how he arrived at that figure, he said it represented $1 for every Jew killed in the Holocaust. (Three of the four students killed – Scheuer, Krause and Miller – were, by chance, Jewish.) By mid-September, the parents of Jeff Miller and Sandy Scheuer had also filed suit.
Meanwhile, all across the country, college students tried to understand what had happened. Their gut instincts, combined with what many had seen happen on their own campuses, convinced them that the students had been innocent and that the Guard had overreacted. The shock of the killings, however, was heightened for many when they called home that afternoon. Scared and upset, they heard their own parents denounce the students and proclaim that “they should have shot them all” or “they must have done something to deserve what they got.” This widespread attitude that blamed the victims for their fate only served to pull the generations further apart. A fog of grief and outrage descended. One report described how, in the weeks after the killings, the citizens of Kent would greet each other by flashing four fingers, signifying, “We got four.” Bill Gordon, author of Four Dead in Ohio: Was There a Conspiracy at Kent State would call the Kent State shootings “the most popular murders ever committed in the United States.”
Students, reacting to what they believed was murder, took to the streets to demand answers and to remember their fallen comrades. Memorial vigils occurred that night all across the country. Over the next few days, however, many campuses moved from quiet candlelight vigils to more direct action. A nationwide student strike was called and, by the end of the week, some 800 campuses had been shut down, affecting nearly four million college students. It was the largest such event in American history. Many students went home but others, fearing parents who supported the actions of the National Guard, wandered from friend to friend, searching for some place to hang out until their campus reopened. That first weekend, hundreds of thousands of students found that place in Washington, DC, where people from all over the country gathered to protest the killings and demand accountability.
The DC protesters that weekend included Jeff Miller’s older brother, Russ, who left for DC shortly after his brother’s funeral in New York’s historic Riverside Church. Thousands of young people gathered outside, waving banners with peace doves and blown up photos of Jeff lying dead on the pavement. One placard declared “WE THE PEOPLE MOURN OUR BROTHERS AND SISTERS.” When police arrived with barricades, the wary youth stood back and then, respectfully, they helped the police set up a barrier to provide space for the hearse carrying Jeff’s body. Inside the glorious old church, the large crowd heard a series of distinguished speakers remember the 20-year-old none of them had known. NY Senator Charles Goodell told the crowd, “We pledge to do what we can to make this a meaningful death.” Dr. Benjamin Spock, the outspoken opponent of the war in Vietnam, also spoke: ”Young people…are willing to look at the terrible injustices that exist in the United States. They have the courage to act out their idealism. They put the rest of us to shame. To me, the most impressive thing of all this is that they cannot be intimidated. The more efforts there are at oppression, the more it opens young peoples’ eyes. (Jeff’s) death and the death of the other three at Kent State may be a blessing. This may do more to end the war in Vietnam than all the rest of us have been able to do in five years.” Rabbi Julius Goldberg noted that Jeff had been “killed by a fusillade of bullets labeled fear, panic, mistrust, war to end wars.” He admonished the crowd to “listen to Jeff’s brothers and sisters. We must give peace a chance.” Finally, when the service ended, six pallbearers carried Jeff’s simple hardwood coffin down to the street where the young, mostly long-haired mourners filled the street for a block in either direction. When they saw the coffin, the kids became silent and raised their hands in the peace sign. Later, Elaine Miller Holstein would say that she had no real understanding of how the memorial service came to be. She didn’t know who had arranged for the service to be held in Riverside Church. She had no knowledge of how so many VIPs came to speak at the funeral. She just remembered the kids outside. She knew that they were really the ones who had come to remember Jeff as a person, rather than as a symbol.
Meanwhile, in Washington, DC, Richard Nixon heard the news on May 4 and issued a statement supposedly expressing regret but really just blaming the students for their own deaths: ”This should remind us all once again that when dissent turns to violence it invites tragedy. It is my hope that this tragic and unfortunate incident will strengthen the determination of all the nation’s campuses, administrators, faculty and students alike to stand firmly for the right which exists in this country of peaceful dissent and just as strongly against the resort to violence as a means of such expression.” (emphasis added)
On Friday, May 8, Nixon held a press conference where, as expected, most of the questions revolved around the shootings. As he spoke to the press, students had begun gathering in D.C. for the massive weekend protest. When asked what he thought the students were trying to say with their protest, Nixon replied: ”They are trying to say that they want peace. They are trying to say that they want to stop the killing. They are trying to say that they want to end the draft. They are trying to say that we ought to get out of Vietnam. I agree with everything that they are trying to accomplish.” He added, “I think I understand what they want. I would hope they would understand somewhat what I want.” When asked if he felt the country was heading into a period of revolution and repression, he pointed to the pending demonstrations as evidence disputing this claim. “Briefly, this country is not headed for revolution. The very fact that we do have the safety valves of the right to dissent, the very fact that the President of the United States asked the District Commissioners to waive their rule for 30 days’ notice for a demonstration, and also asked that that demonstration occur not just around the Washington Monument but on the Ellipse where I could hear it–and you can hear it pretty well from there, I can assure you–that fact is an indication that when you have that kind of safety valve you are not going to have revolution which comes from repression.” In fact, by this point, buses had been brought in to surround the White House and, according to Alexander Haig, troops had been stationed in the basement in case students decided to attack.
Following the press conference, Nixon went back to his quarters where, apparently, he began drinking heavily. Unable to sleep, he began working the phones. As Army troops moved into position to protect government buildings from the demonstrators, Nixon made 47 phone calls in four hours, including eight to Henry Kissinger, seven to Bob Haldeman, and at least one each to Norman Vincent Peale and Billy Graham. While we still don’t know everyone he called, we do know that one of the calls went to DeWitt Wallace, founder and publisher of Reader’s Digest which had a well-deserved reputation of printing books and articles that “portrayed an America that was kindly, religious, self-sufficient, neighborly, and staunchly anticommunist.” A few days later, Wallace would commission James Michener to write Kent State: What Happened and Why, a massive work designed to prove that what happened at Kent State was a tragedy in which no one was to blame. Michener’s high profile and solid reputation, combined with the marketing power of Reader’s Digest, gave the book wide circulation. For years, publishers approached about doing another book on the shootings would decline, pointing to Michener’s work as “definitive.” Unfortunately, however, like most of Michener’s works, he sprinkled fiction in with his facts. The result could more honestly be called a “nonfiction novel.” But Nixon got what he wanted and DeWitt Wallace was rewarded in 1972 when Nixon conferred on him the Presidential Medal of Freedom.
To his dismay, Nixon discovered that even this mad round robin of phone calls couldn’t calm his brain. After finally giving up on phone calls, Nixon listened to Rachmaninoff’s First Piano Concerto. When that, too, failed to bring peace, Nixon summoned his personal valet, Manolo Sanchez, and asked if he had ever visited the Lincoln Memorial at night. When Sanchez replied that he had not, Nixon decided to go sight-seeing despite the fact that it was now 5 AM. Without alerting his Secret Service detail, Nixon summoned a limousine and took off with Sanchez for the Lincoln Memorial. There, they found thousands of students hanging out on the steps, waiting for the next day’s protests. The students, of course, were stunned to see Nixon approaching. They stood by respectfully while the President clumsily attempted to engage them in conversation. Nixon talked about surfing and football and how travel would broaden their understanding of the world. Mostly, the students maintained a stunned silence. Finally, Nixon told the protestors to enjoy their time in D.C. but admonished them to keep things peaceful. He then left, with Sanchez still in tow, and went over to the Capitol. In the chamber of the House of Representatives, Nixon encouraged Sanchez to give a speech to the empty chamber while Nixon sat and listened. One can only imagine the thoughts running through Nixon’s head as he remembered his days in the House and the Senate. By then, however, the Secret Service had realized their most important person had gone missing. They tracked him down and brought him back to the White House where, referring to his talk with the students at the Lincoln Memorial, he said simply, “I doubt if that got over.”
A few days later, after seeing pictures of the students shot down at Jackson State, Nixon would say, “What are we going to do to get more respect for the police from our young people?” Later, Henry Kissinger would confide his belief that, that May, Nixon was on the verge of a mental breakdown. H.R. “Bob” Haldeman would suggest in his Watergate memoir, The Ends of Power that the shootings deepened the White House paranoia, thereby adding to the conspiratorial thinking that ultimately forced Nixon from office. For those of us who believe that the Nixon administration was not necessarily caught off guard by the shootings, this explanation sounds like another attempt to blame the victims.
FRANK HARTZELL, Fort Bragg Advocate News, December 24, 2009
Image by Larry R. Wagner
The California State Lands Commission last week found its own regulations designed to protect marine mammals so inconsistent and confusing as to be unenforceable.
That was good news for Fugro Pelagos, owner of the 176-foot survey vessel Pacific Star that reported it fatally struck a female blue whale on Oct. 19.
“On behalf of all of us at Fugro Pelagos, we thank … the California State Lands Commission (SLC) for assessing the facts of the matter and deciding not to revoke our offshore geophysical survey permit. In making such a decision, they recognized that language of the current permit is unclear and could be subject to interpretation,” said Fugro Company President David Millar, in a statement issued after the meeting.
State Lands Commission staff had recommended that the company’s permit be yanked and that Fugro pay $13,000 for staff investigatory expenses.
Instead, the commission hashed out an agreement by which the company now agrees to follow the conditions of the permit — as the commission wrongly believed had been happening all along.
“It is now clear that the California State Lands Commission considers hydrographic surveying using only an echo sounder to be an activity covered by the offshore geophysical survey permit. Fugro Pelagos has agreed to comply with this interpretation on the basis that all other permit holders will receive written notification of the State’s position and that the State will work with Fugro Pelagos and other stakeholders in reviewing and modifying the current permit language so that there can be no future misunderstandings about what activities are and are not covered by the offshore geophysical survey permit,” Millar stated.
The whale bled to death in about half an hour, washing up just south of Fort Bragg.
The entire matter is a gigantic “I told you so” for Steve Sullivan, who has been criticizing these very regulations for being confusing and widely ignored.
Sullivan owns a Fugro rival surveying company. He has harped at state authorities for about five years, saying others should be made to do what his company does, including always having a marine mammal observer on deck and employing a spotter boat.
Sullivan had predicted catastrophe for marine mammals unless regulations became consistent. Prior to the Oct. 19 whale strike, Sullivan not only criticized Fugro, but also state and university agencies for ignoring the regulations designed to protect marine mammals.
At last Thursday’s meeting, the State Lands Commission set out to demand those agencies and Fugro all now follow consistent rules.
Sullivan’s pleas seemingly fell on deaf ears at the State Lands Commission and the Ocean Protection Council. In fact when Sullivan contended following the whale strike that Fugro was operating without a permit, state and federal officials had vociferously refuted Sullivan’s contention.
But technically, Sullivan was right. Fugro never finalized a marine mammal plan required by the permit because they felt it did not apply to any of the work they were doing. Yet, the company kept renewing the incomplete (and thus theoretically invalid) permit, all a demonstration of how meaningless and unintelligible the permit process was.
The marine mammal plan, had it been prepared, would be expected to contain measures that might or might not prevent whale strikes.
Fugro has consistently maintained that the whale killing would likely have happened even if there had been a NOAA-certified marine mammal observer on deck.
“During the hearing, it was noted that State scientists considered this tragic accident unavoidable, and not the result of Fugro Pelagos not following survey permit conditions,” Millar said.
“Nevertheless, we were deeply saddened by it. In the decades that the company has been in existence, no incident of this type has ever occurred and we acknowledge the loss that comes with the death of such a large and precious marine animal,” Millar said.
Fugro will carry a marine wildlife monitor in the future. Perhaps more importantly, State Lands has launched a process designed to standardize all permits and require more measures to protect marine mammals, as the permitting process originally intended.
At one point, state officials were working on a plan for better protections of marine mammals, but that effort collapsed due to the state budget crisis.
“I am very pleased that the State Lands Commission has finally required the multi-billion dollar international firm, Fugro, to abide by the same regulations to protect marine mammals that us small California survey companies have complied with for years,” Sullivan said in a statement after the meeting.
“At their meeting on Dec. 17, the State Lands Commission disclosed that Fugro and a new permit applicant, the California State University at Monterey Bay, have for years been conducting marine surveys without compliance with regulations to protect marine mammals,” Sullivan said.
A community effort stripped the whale of its flesh and buried the skeleton so it can be dug up later and displayed.
FRANK HARTZELL, Mendocino Beacon, December 17, 2009
The Obama administration has launched a new “zoning” approach that puts all ocean activities under the umbrella of nine regional planning bodies.
Public comments are being accepted through Friday, Feb. 12.
The approach is more local and integrated than the current strategy, which puts separate functions under different federal agencies. But it remains to be seen how such a plan can satisfy a plethora of federal laws that now protect the Atlantic and Pacific oceans, the Gulf of Mexico and the Great Lakes.
The issue of whales killed by ships (like the blue whale kill in October off Fort Bragg) is cited in the new report as an example of how the regional planning approach could solve problems that single agencies cannot.
In the Stellwagen Bank National Marine Sanctuary off Boston, the Coast Guard, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and several other government agencies and stakeholders reconfigured the Boston Traffic Separation Scheme, after numerous fatal collisions between marine mammals and ships.
This kind of joint action is what the new Obama approach anticipates using nationwide.
The reconfigured shipping lanes reduced risk of collision by an estimated 81% for all baleen whales and 58% for endangered right whales, studies show.
NOAA is the lone federal agency dealing with the whale kill issue locally, working with two state agencies, which have regulations that are inconsistent. With the Fort Bragg incident highlighting weaknesses in the regulatory process, a regional board could propose solutions.
In another example of oversight conflict, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) planned and launched a policy for wave energy leasing completely without local governments’ knowledge. Other federal agencies also bombarded FERC with criticism and problems their federal fellow had failed to anticipate when FERC’s program came to light.
The Obama administration’s idea is to bring all the federal and local agencies to the table at the planning stage, not the reactive stage.
“The uses of our oceans, coasts and Great Lakes have expanded exponentially over time,” said Nancy Sutley, chair of the White House Council on Environmental Quality, who also heads the Ocean Policy Task Force. “At the same time they are facing environmental challenges, including pollution and habitat destruction, that make them increasingly vulnerable.
“Without an improved, more thoughtful approach, we risk an increase in user conflicts and the potential loss of critical economic, ecosystem, social, and cultural benefits for present and future generations,” said Sutley, in a press release.
Many scientific studies have called for ocean zoning, but this is the first effort to make the idea work.
California, Oregon and Washington would be included in a single planning area The participants in the planning process, such as Indian tribes, federal agencies, states and local entities, would be asked to sign a contract modeled on development agreements.
Development agreements are widely used by housing developers to bring all county and state permitting agencies to the table so they can get loans and prepare to launch a project.
Sutley said the administration will reconvene the National Ocean Council to work with the regional planning bodies.
While the new approach promises more locally responsive planning, the job of the National Ocean Council will be to ensure that planning is consistent from region to region. That is likely to create some conflicts with monied interests representing some uses, such as oil drilling, and leave other uses with less ability to advocate at the table.
The proposal comes from the Interagency Ocean Policy Task Force, established by President Obama on June 12. It is led by Sutley and consists of 24 senior-level officials from administration agencies, departments and offices.
The task force’s interim framework is available for a 60-day public review and comment period. After the close of the comment period, the task force will finalize its recommendations in both this report and the Sept. 10 interim report and provide a final report to the President in early 2010.
For more details on the Interagency Ocean Policy Task Force, including the interim framework, and to submit comments, visit www.whitehouse.gov/oceans.
I have been somewhat intrigued by the topic of wind power charging the electric cars of the future as of late. After reading through a number of blogs and different Q&A areas on the internet, I decided to take the question of feasibility into my own hands, so that I can calculate the outcome and offer you the facts.
The first production scale electric vehicle will be the Nissan Leaf, which will hold a charge of up to 24 kilowatt hours. According to Nissan, this 24 kilowatt hour battery can be changed fully in approximately 4-8 hours, and during a quick charge can be 80% charged in only 26 minutes. Wouldn’t that be great, or I guess I should say “won’t that be great” because it is already set for production. It seems that if I were to install a 1.5 kilowatt turbine on my house it should theoretically charge my car over night so it will be ready for me when I head off to work the next day. That’s what I thought too, but the calculations just don’t support it.
Let me first start out by explaining a kilowatt hour and how it differs from the 1.5 kilowatt output of our turbine. So, we have this 1.5 kilowatt turbine on our house, how much power is that really producing? Well, when wind speeds are ideal (usually around 12 mph) your wind turbine will be producing 1.5 kilowatt hours each and every hour, or at least until the wind dies down. As the wind dies down, the power output exponentially decreases until the wind reaches a low speed (generally around 4-6 mph). At this low wind speed no power production will occur, the wind just does not have enough energy to spin the blades on the home wind turbine. Since, the wind doesn’t always blow at 12 mph or higher, scientists have calculated averages for actual wind power production from a turbine. Now I won’t get into all the details, but 40% peak production is very good and we will use that for the calculations to follow.
So now that we know that we have a 1.5 kilowatt small wind turbine and we know that 40% annual power production is near the best we could ever hope for, we can calculate a best case scenario for power output. Simply multiply your turbine’s rated output by the number of hours in a year as well as the 40% annual production statistic.
1.5 x 8,760 x 0.40 = 5,256 kWh’s
This gives us a theoretical annual output of 5,256 kilowatt hours. Now from here, we go back to the car. The Nissan Leaf can store up to 24 kilowatt hours of energy and can travel approximately 100 miles per charge. Since we know that the average American travels 12,000 miles per year, we can accurately deduce that in order to drive the Nissan Leaf as we would like to, we will need to charge it a minimum of 120 times. So, since we are considering best case scenarios, let assume that every time your car is plugged in you will be producing energy at the constant 40%. If that were the case, the Nissan leaf would require 2,880 kilowatt hours (or 120 x 24 kilowatt hours) of energy per year, and that is very do-able.
Now this is where I see a lot of analysis stop. People simply assume that that should work and life should be peachy, however that isn’t the case. As mentioned above and further explained in Understanding the Basics of Windpower, a wind turbine can only produce it’s capacity (in this case 1.5 kilowatts) once each hour. So in the 4-8 hours of charging time for your Nissan Leaf, your 1.5 kilowatt turbine will only produce a maximum of 6-12 kilowatt hours, while the car requires 24 kilowatt hours. And just to emphasize the 6-12 kilowatt hours is a maximum, when output is full and the winds are howling.
I just want to close by saying that in no way am I saying small wind and residential wind systems are not the future of America’s energy policy, nor am I saying that they will not have a large part in powering the cars of tomorrow. I simply wanted to dispell any misconceptions concerning the feasibility of residential wind equipment charging the electric cars of tomorrow.
DAVID R. BAKER, San Francisco Chronicle, December 12, 2009
The waves off of Vandenberg Air Force Base on the central California coast could one day generate electricity, if Pacific Gas and Electric Co. has its way.
The utility reported Friday that it has signed an agreement with the U.S. Air Force to study the area’s potential for a wave power project. If approved by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, the project could one day generate as much as 100 megawatts of electricity. A megawatt is a snapshot figure, roughly equal to the amount of electricity used by 750 average homes at any given instant.
Wave power technologies have the potential to provide large amounts of electricity. But they have been slow to leave the lab.
The typical wave power system consists of buoys that generate electricity as they bob up and down on the ocean’s surface. But the ocean has proven tougher than some of the systems.
PG&E two years ago agreed to buy electricity from a proposed “wave park” near Eureka to be built by Canadian company Finavera. But Finavera’s prototype buoy sank during a test, and California energy regulators killed the deal.
Under its $6 million WaveConnect program, PG&E is still studying potential wave park sites off Humboldt County. The utility, based in San Francisco, also examined the Mendocino County coast before ruling it out.
Vandenberg makes an attractive test site. It occupies a bend in the coast of Santa Barbara County where some of the beaches face west, some face southwest and others face south. PG&E in particular wants to study the area between Point Arguello and Point Conception.
“Generally, that piece of the coast is very active for waves,” said PG&E spokesman Kory Raftery. “It picks up swells from different directions.”
If the company wins federal approval, it will study the area for three years before making a decision on whether to test wave power devices there. The company wants to test several different devices but has not yet picked which ones, Raftery said.
FRANK HARTZELL, Fort Bragg Advocate News, November 27, 2009
Image by Larry R. Wagner
California’s regulatory system, designed to protect whales from science vessels will get some rethinking, following controversy over the October 19, 2009 death of a blue whale off Fort Bragg, a state official said.
The incident has highlighted an inconsistent and controversial regulatory system for which change was blocked by funding cuts due to the state budget crisis.
When the survey vessel Pacific Star struck the whale, it did not have a federally-approved whale spotter on board as required by the terms of its permit that this newspaper obtained from the California State Lands Commission.
Ship owner Fugro Pelagos, Inc. says both they had a valid permit and that they didn’t need one for the mapping being done when the whale was killed.
“There was no official whale observer on board because the work that was being done at the time did not require it,” said said James Hailstones of Fugro Pelagos. However, it contradicts a previous statement where he said an observer was present, as is required on all commercial vessels.
“The permit to which you refer pertains specifically to geophysical surveys, defined by state regulations as operations that measure and record physical properties of subsurface geologic structures,” said Hailstones.
“These are usually associated with mineral exploration and underwater resource development, and require higher-powered equipment than those aboard the Pacific Star. Instead, the vessel was conducting hydrographic survey work that is designed to simply measure the water depth above sea floor’s surface,” Hailstones said.
The permit states that Fugro is required to have “at least one person on board during survey operations that is a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) approved marine wildlife monitor,…” during geophysical work.
A review of the permit confirms that it does apply to geophysical work as described by Hailstones and raises questions as to the efficiency of the regulation system.
Fugro, the largest company in the business the permit was created for, has never found a situation where the permit was needed. As evidence of that, the State Lands Commission permit demands a marine wildlife contingency plan be filed, which specifies information about interactions with marine mammals and reptiles. That plan has been completed but not filed because it isn’t needed, according to the current rules.
“A draft plan exists and is ready for use when we perform a geophysical survey. However, a tailored plan was not filed because there is no requirement to do so for the work that was being conducted,” Hailstones said.
Controversy over the incident and the permit has been stirred by Steve Sullivan, whose family operates Sea Surveyor, Inc., which competes with the larger Fugro Pelagos for surveying contracts. He says the permit was intended to apply to all types of mapping and surveying work.
Sullivan has been predicting for several years that lax and inconsistent regulation would lead to whale kills, state records show.
In interviews and letters broadcast on local radio and the Internet, Sullivan claimed that Fugro didn’t have a permit when it struck the whale.
This was refuted by Sheila Semans, a staff member of the Ocean Protection Council through the California Coastal Conservancy.
“[Fugro] did have a valid geophysical permit. I am told by the company that they have had a geophysical permit since they were required. What Mr. Sullivan fails to point out is that the permit that was issued on October 22, 2009 was effective starting Oct. 1, 2009,” Semans said.
She went on to explain that the permit was issued retroactively because of a series of delays, that were not the fault of Fugro.
Hailstones said the company had a permit issued October 1st, which was not issued retroactively.
How the work Pacific Star was doing at the time of the whale strike may or may not fit into the intent of the permit is a topic in an investigation into the whale strike by NOAA.
Scientists generally believe that the kind of sonar the Pacific Star was using isn’t harmful to whales and some believe they can’t even hear it. However, all say more study is needed.
One study says whales, which can hear for long distances, are becoming confused due to the increasing noise level in the oceans caused by all human activity.
Publicity following the death of the blue whale may revive efforts killed by the state budget crisis to clarify and expand permits and the understanding of the effects of all types of sonar on whales.
“Because of the confusion and disagreement about what the geophysical permit should cover, State Lands has asked [ the Ocean Protection Council] to fund further investigation into any potential impacts from passive equipment’ such as the sonar use for seafloor mapping,” Semans said.
“We have not been able to fund any new projects since December 2008 so discussions have stopped. But I’d imagine this incident will resurrect those discussions once we can spend money again,” she said.
Sullivan argues that the permit was required when the strike happened but says there is a larger issue.
“That’s just paperwork, my main complaint for the past few years is they and others up and down the coast are not taking the precautions needed and required to protect marine mammals,” he said
Sullivan says the Department of Fish and Game itself, along with study vessels operated by universities, operate such surveys without following permits and without complying with regulations designed to protect marine mammals.
He says he first confronted the State Lands Commission, then found that body had no meaningful enforcement power. Recently, he appeared before the Ocean Protection Council in an effort to cut funding to the efforts until marine mammal concerns could be met, a meeting video shows.
Sullivan said that because of the way modern hydrography works, those involved are using only a narrow beam of sonar, which would be unlikely to detect whales.
“The captain is not looking out the window anymore. That’s why you need the special spotters. You don’t see a whale unless you are looking for them,” Sullivan said.
Hailstones said Fugro keeps an eye out for whales, along with other marine hazards.
“Personnel onboard the bridge of the Pacific Star are always on watch for dangers to navigation, other vessels, crab and lobster pot buoys and marine mammals and obviously try to avoid such incidents,” said Hailstones.
The 176-foot Pacific Star completed its mapping work for the state and is now back in drydock in Seattle, Hailstones said.
Sullivan thinks the size of the vessel may have been a contributing cause to the whale strike. He said the work only requires a 50-foot vessel and says use of such a large ship in whale migratory waters is irresponsible. He said a larger ship makes it much harder to see whales and more likely for a strike to be fatal.
“Being experts in our field, we utilize the correct vessel for the application,” Hailstones said.
“The Pacific Star is similar in size to others used in safely conducting offshore and coastal hydrographic surveys. Much larger vessels than the Pacific Star sail California waters every day and do so at far greater speeds than the 6.5 miles per hour the Pacific Star was doing at the time of the incident,” Hailstones said.
Hailstones said the whale apparently surfaced under the propellers in the rear section of the boat and was not struck by the bow.
Sullivan says the propellers of his survey vessels are protected by screens that would keep them from inflicting a fatal wound should there ever be a whale strike.
“The Pacific Star — like 99.9% of the world’s ships — does not have screens surrounding their screws,” said Hailstones.
“Not only would this be impractical to retrofit for the majority of vessels, but the possible negative consequences far outweigh the positives,” Hailstones said. “Screens would offer a large surface area for marine growth to flourish or even water borne garbage to accumulate, it wouldn’t be long before a vessel’s ability to make way would be severely hampered as a screw relies on the ability of large volumes of water to pass by unobstructed.”
Hailstones said the greatest nemesis for a vessel propeller is rope in the water.
“A screen would pose a great catch’ mechanism for rope and often, when rope gets caught in a vessel screw, the vessel is dead in the water, which poses a great risk to the human life onboard,” Hailstones said
One thing Hailstones and Sullivan agree on is that this incident is a first time in anyone’s memory that a survey vessel has reported striking and killing a whale.
“Our company and our sister companies utilize hundreds of vessels in thousands of miles of oceans and seas worldwide to conduct such operations, and are proud of our long-standing safety record. In the company’s 45-year history, Fugro (including Fugro Pelagos) has never been involved in such an unfortunate incident before,” Hailstones said.
Editor’s Note: The family of Allison Krause seeks and supports the creation of Four Days In May, the Kent State Truth Tribunal, a collaborative, multimedia, sharing event to dialog, document, discover and uncover the truth in the events leading to the killing of four students and wounding of nine at the Kent State Massacre.
At this four-day event, commencing exactly 40 years later, we invite all concerned persons, all witnesses, all concerned humans and all those damaged by the Kent State Massacre to come together to SHARE, RECOUNT and EXPLORE what really happened those Four Days in May, the Kent State Truth Tribunal to finally uncover the truth!
If you wish to join and support this event, please go to http://bit.ly/91Ez5X . It has been #2Long!
ALAN JOHNSON, The Columbus Dispatch, December 2, 2009
It’s not unusual for a battlefield to be declared a historic site, but it’s rare when the scene of a protest qualifies for that distinction.
But what happened at Kent State University on May 4, 1970, is indeed history.
Ohio officials want to recognize that by nominating 17 acres on campus to the National Register of Historic Places.
The Kent State site is one of five that the Ohio Historic Site Preservation Advisory Board will review Friday for nomination to the National Register. View a video of this meeting to learn more about this nomination, here: http://bit.ly/7VSgmi
The Ohio Historical Society, which handles the nominations, acknowledged that the Kent State events happened less than 50 years ago. However, the events were nationally significant, according to the nomination:
“They caused the largest student strike in United States history, increased recruitment for the movement against the Vietnam War and affected public opinion about the war, created a legal precedent established by the trials subsequent to the shootings and for the symbolic status the event has attained as a result of a government confronting protesting citizens with unreasonable deadly force.”
The nominated site includes 17.24 acres on campus in three areas: the Commons, Blanket Hill and the Southern Terrace.
That is where Ohio National Guard members, called out by then-Gov. James A. Rhodes, clashed with protesters, eventually shooting into the crowd, killing four students and injuring nine others.
Sites, buildings, structures and objects are listed on the National Register because of “their significance in American history, architecture, archaeology, engineering, and culture”
Being named to the National Register does not obligate property owners to preserve or improve the property, nor does it prevent alteration, sale or even demolition. The final decision on nominations is made by the National Park Service program administrator.
ALLAN CHEN & RYAN WISER, Lawrence Berkeley Nat’l Lab, December 2, 2009
Home sales prices are very sensitive to the overall quality of the scenic vista from a property, but a view of a wind energy facility does not demonstrably impact sales prices.
Over 30,000 megawatts of wind energy capacity are installed across the United States and an increasing number of communities are considering new wind power facilities. Given these developments, there is an urgent need to empirically investigate typical community concerns about wind energy and thereby provide stakeholders involved in the wind project siting process a common base of knowledge. A major new report released today by the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory evaluates one of those concerns, and finds that proximity to wind energy facilities does not have a pervasive or widespread adverse effect on the property values of nearby homes.
The new report, funded by the DOE, is based on site visits, data collection, and analysis of almost 7,500 single-family home sales, making it the most comprehensive and data-rich analysis to date on the potential impact of U.S. wind projects on residential property values.
“Neither the view of wind energy facilities nor the distance of the home to those facilities was found to have any consistent, measurable, and significant effect on the selling prices of nearby homes,” says report author Ben Hoen, a consultant to Berkeley Lab. “No matter how we looked at the data, the same result kept coming back – no evidence of widespread impacts.”
The team of researchers for the project collected data on homes situated within 10 miles of 24 existing wind facilities in nine different U.S. states; the closest home was 800 feet from a wind facility. Each home in the sample was visited to collect important on-site information such as whether wind turbines were visible from the home. The home sales used in the study occurred between 1996 and 2007, spanning the period prior to the announcement of each wind energy facility to well after its construction and full-scale operation.
The conclusions of the study are drawn from eight different hedonic pricing models, as well as repeat sales and sales volume models. A hedonic model is a statistical analysis method used to estimate the impact of house characteristics on sales prices. None of the models uncovered conclusive statistical evidence of the existence of any widespread property value effects that might be present in communities surrounding wind energy facilities.
“It took three years to collect all of the data and analyze more than 50 different statistical model specifications,” says co-author and project manager Ryan Wiser of Berkeley Lab, “but without that amount of effort, we would not have been confident we were giving stakeholders the best information possible.”
“Though the analysis cannot dismiss the possibility that individual homes or small numbers of homes have been negatively impacted, it finds that if these impacts do exist, their frequency is too small to result in any widespread, statistically observable impact,” he added.
The analysis revealed that home sales prices are very sensitive to the overall quality of the scenic vista from a property, but that a view of a wind energy facility did not demonstrably impact sales prices. The Berkeley Lab researchers also did not find statistically observable differences in prices for homes located closer to wind facilities than those located further away, or for homes that sold after the announcement or construction of a wind energy facility when compared to those selling prior to announcement. Even for those homes located within a one-mile distance of a wind project, the researchers found no persuasive evidence of a property value impact.
“Although studies that have investigated residential sales prices near conventional power plants, high voltage transmission lines, and roads have found some property value impacts,” says co-author and San Diego State University Economics Department Chair Mark Thayer, “the same cannot be said for wind energy facilities, at least given our sample of transactions.“
Berkeley Lab is a DOE national laboratory located in Berkeley, California. It conducts unclassified scientific research for DOE’s Office of Science and is managed by the University of California. Visit our Website at www.lbl.gov/
Scientific Computing, Advantage Business Media, November 2009
The ocean is a potentially vast source of electric power, yet as engineers test new technologies for capturing it, the devices are plagued by battering storms, limited efficiency and the need to be tethered to the seafloor. Now, a team of aerospace engineers is applying the principles that keep airplanes aloft to create a new wave energy system that is durable, extremely efficient and can be placed anywhere in the ocean, regardless of depth.
While still in early design stages, computer and scale model tests of the system suggest higher efficiencies than wind turbines. The system is designed to effectively cancel incoming waves, capturing their energy while flattening them out, providing an added application as a storm wave breaker.
The researchers, from the U.S. Air Force Academy, presented their design at the 62nd annual meeting of the American Physical Society’s Division of Fluid Dynamics on November 24, 2009.
“Our group was working on very basic research on feedback flow control for years,” says lead researcher Stefan Siegel, referring to efforts to use sensors and adjustable parts to control how fluids flow around airfoils like wings. “For an airplane, when you control that flow, you better control flight — for example, enabling you to land a plane on a shorter runway.”
A colleague had read an article on wave energy in a magazine and mentioned it to Siegel and the other team members, and they realized they could operate a wave energy device using the same feedback control concepts they had been developing.
Supported by a grant from the National Science Foundation, the researchers developed a system that uses lift instead of drag to cause the propeller blades to move.
“Every airplane flies with lift, not with drag,” says Siegel. “Compare an old style windmill with a modern one. The new style uses lift and is what made wind energy viable — and it doesn’t get shredded in a storm like an old windmill. Fluid dynamics fixed the issue for windmills, and can do the same for wave energy.”
Windmills have active controls that turn the blades to compensate for storm winds, eliminating lift when it is a risk, and preventing damage. The Air Force Academy researchers used the same approach with a hydrofoil (equivalent to an airfoil, but for water) and built it into a cycloidal propeller, a design that emerged in the 1930s and currently propels tugboats, ferries and other highly maneuverable ships.
The researchers changed the propeller orientation from horizontal to vertical, allowing direct interaction with the cyclic, up and down motion of wave energy. The researchers also developed individual control systems for each propeller blade, allowing sophisticated manipulations that maximize (or minimize, in the case of storms) interaction with wave energy.
Ultimately, the goal is to keep the flow direction and blade direction constant, cancelling the incoming wave and using standard gear-driven or direct-drive generators to convert the wave energy into electric energy. A propeller that is exactly out of phase with a wave will cancel that wave and maximize energy output. The cancellation also will allow the float-mounted devices to function without the need of mooring, important for deep sea locations that hold tremendous wave energy potential and are currently out of reach for many existing wave energy designs.
While the final device may be as large as 40 meters across, laboratory models are currently less than a meter in diameter. A larger version of the system will be tested next year at NSF’s Network for Earthquake Engineering Simulation (NEES) tsunami wave basin at Oregon State University, an important experiment for proving the efficacy of the design.
Compelling images of the cycloidal turbine:
The view from the far downstream end into the test section of the U.S. Air Force Academy water tunnel. Three blades of the cycloidal turbine are visible at the far end. Engineer Stefan Siegel and his colleagues test the turbine using the tunnel, with both steady and oscillating flow conditions simulating a shallow-water wave-flow field. Courtesy of SSgt Danny Washburn, U.S. Air Force Academy, Department of Aeronautics
A cycloidal turbine is installed on top of the test section of the U.S. Air Force Academy water tunnel. In the background, Manfred Meid (left) and Stefan Siegel (right) operate the turbine. Courtesy of SSgt Danny Washburn, US Air Force Academy, Department of Aeronautics
A cycloidal turbine prototype with three blades (translucent, at bottom of image), is shown lifted out of the tunnel. One of the blade pitch control servo amplifiers is visible in the foreground, and the servo motors can be seen in the top portion of the image. Courtesy of SSgt Danny Washburn, US Air Force Academy, Department of Aeronautics
Linda Rutta says she has a “tiger by the tail” with a renewable energy device she and her husband, Stanley, invented that can convert the power of ocean waves into electricity.
Now the research and development team needs funding to analyze five days of data from a landmark test of the 12-foot cylindrical prototype and build a life-size version.
“We have to scale up and make a commercial unit,” said Linda Rutta, but “the costs ahead are larger than a small entity can shoulder.”
Able Technologies is based in the Ruttas’ Englewood home, where the couple designed what they call an electricity-generating wave pipe with the help of colleagues in mechanical and oceanic engineering after patenting their concept in 2002.
Devices harnessing kinetic energy from ocean waves, known as wave energy converters, are not new and can be problematic. Online organizations reported in March that three devices installed off the coast of Portugal by a Scottish developer were taken ashore due to structural problems and lack of funding.
The Scottish devices are horizontal, serpentine structures that undulate in sync with the waves, whereas the Ruttas’ version anchors vertically to the ocean floor.
That means the machine has to stand up to the fierce oceanic conditions much like a bridge stanchion. These include the very force it captures in trying to produce enough electricity to be viable, said Rutta.
The Ruttas got their first opportunity to test the prototype’s endurance and energy production in mid-November, at the Ohmsett Oil Spill Response Research and Renewable Energy Facility at Leonardo in Monmouth County. The facility operates under the U.S. Department of Interior and runs a massive, 11-foot-deep wave tank for testing oil spill response equipment. This year it added wave energy technology.
The agency offered the Ruttas a week at Ohmsett after finding merit in a white paper the Ruttas submitted on the technology.
Every day for a week, the wave pipe was fitted with probes and other sensory equipment while being battered with saltwater waves up to 3 feet high. The purpose was to measure how it performed against small waves — which might have made it stall — and high ones, and whether it delivered energy, said Rutta.
“It worked with the waves beautifully — that was my happiest surprise,” said Rutta, “and it produced power. It exceeded our expectations.”
The week’s worth of results will be analyzed to determine the weight and size a commercial unit should be to withstand ocean conditions and estimate how much electricity could be produced, Rutta said.
While the tests raise their credibility, she said, funding is needed to analyze the data and design and build a full-size prototype.
Rutta said she is waiting for word on their application for a $150,000 grant from the small business arm of the Department of Energy to analyze the data. Designing and building a commercial-sized prototype could be “in the millions,” she said.
All money up to this point has come from their personal savings, said Rutta, and has reached “into the six figures.”
JESSICA MARSHALL, Discovery.com News, November 30, 2009
The patterns that schooling fish form to save energy while swimming have inspired a new wind farm design that researchers say will increase the amount of power produced per acre by at least tenfold.
“For the fish, they are trying to minimize the energy that they consume to swim from Point A to Point B,” said John Dabiri of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, who led the study. “In our case, we’re looking at the opposite problem: How to we maximize the amount of energy that we collect?”
“Because both of these problems involve optimizing energy, it turns out that the model that’s useful for one is also useful for the other problem.”
Both designs rely on individuals capturing energy from their neighbors to operate more efficiently.”If there was just one fish swimming, it kicks off energy into the water, and it just gets wasted,” Dabiri said, “but if there’s another fish behind, it can actually use that kinetic energy and help it propel itself forward.”
The wind turbines can do the same thing. Dabiri’s wind farm design uses wind turbines that are oriented to rotate around the support pole like a carousel, instead of twirling like a pinwheel the way typical wind turbines do.
Like the fish, these spinning turbines generate a swirling wake. The energy in this flow can be gathered by neighboring turbines if they are placed close enough together and in the right position. By capturing this wake, two turbines close together can generate more power than each acting alone.
This contrasts with common, pinwheel-style wind turbines where the wake from one interferes with its neighbors, reducing the neighbors’ efficiency. The vortexes occur in the wrong orientation for the neighboring turbines to capture them.
For this reason, such turbines must be spaced at least three diameters to either side and 10 diameters up — or downwind of another, which requires a lot of land.
Although individual carousel-style turbines are less efficient than their pinwheel-style counterparts, the close spacing that enhances their performance means that the amount of power output per acre is much greater for the carousel-style turbines.
Dabiri and graduate student Robert Whittlesey calculated that their best design would generate 100 times more power per acre than a conventional wind farm.
The model required some simplifications, however, so it remains to be seen whether tests of an actual wind farm produce such large gains. That will be the team’s next step. “Even if we’re off by a factor of 10, that’s still a game changer for the technology,” Dabiri noted.
In the end, schooling fish may not have the perfect arrangement. The pair found that the best arrangement of wind turbines did not match the spacing used by schooling fish.
“If we just mimic the fish wake, we can do pretty well,” Dabiri said. “But, as engineers, maybe we’re smarter than fish. It turns out that for this application there is even better performance to be had.”
This may be because fish have other needs to balance in their schooling behavior besides maximizing swimming efficiency. They seek food, avoid predators and reproduce, for example.
“I think that this is a very interesting possibility,” said Alexander Smits of Princeton University, who attended a presentation of the findings at a meeting of the American Physical Society Division of Fluid Dynamics in Minneapolis last week.
But a field test will show the idea’s real potential, he noted: “You have to go try these things. You can do a calculation like that and it might not work out. But it seemed like there was a very large reduction in the land usage, and even if you got one half of that, that would be pretty good.”
California released on Tuesday draft rules for its landmark greenhouse gas cap and trade plan that will be the most ambitious United States effort to use the market to address global warming.
State law requires California to cut its carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gas emissions to 1990 levels by 2020. Measures will range from clean vehicle and building rules to the cap and trade system that lets factories and power companies trade credits to emit gases that heat up the earth.
Federal rules under debate by Congress could eclipse and pre-empt regional plans, but California and other local governments see themselves as the vanguard of addressing climate change, especially in light of slow national action and setbacks for international talks scheduled in Copenhagen next month.
The draft shows California, seen as an environmental trend-setter, may take on even more than expected in its first round of cap and trade, which will start in 2012.
Gasoline and residential heating fuel suppliers could be included in the first cap and trade phase, which had been expected to focus on big pollution sources like power plants and refineries.
“California is the first out of the box,” Mary Nichols, state Air Resources Board chair, told reporters on a conference call. The draft rules kick off a comment period that will lead to final regulation next fall.
A less comprehensive Northeastern United States regional trading system is already under way, focusing on carbon dioxide emissions by big emitters. California by contrast plans to include nearly every source of emissions to reach its goal.
California businesses regularly criticize the plan as going too far too fast – and costing too much. Whether the net effect of the plan will be a new green economy or disaster for overburdened businesses is still hotly debated.
Outsize attention
New estimates of plan costs, including suggestions on how much support to give industry, won’t be available until an independent advisory group issues a report next year.
The draft avoids what may be the toughest issue – how much to rely on auctions of credits, which would require power companies and the like to buy permission to pollute. The emitters want allowances given to them, especially early on.
But Ms. Nichols said California had shown a strong preference for moving to auction as quickly as possible and that its 2006 global warming law provided clear guidance while politicians in the United States Congress were still raising support for a bill.
“Congress started this, you know, as a political exercise to see how many allowances you had to give out to which groups to get them to buy into the program. They didn’t have a climate bill,” she said.
“We know how many emissions we have to reduce. The question is how do we do it in a way that costs less,” added Ms. Nichols, whose Air Resources Board was appointed by state law as the main regulator deciding on how to cut greenhouse gases.
The cost of a ton of carbon dioxide initially could be around $10, based on how other programs operated, she said. That is about half the current European price. The average American has carbon production of about 20 tons per year, according to the Union of Concerned Scientists.
The cap and trade system will account for only about a fifth of California reductions but it draws outside attention, in part because the state, with the largest United States economy and population, is part of the 11-member Western Climate Initiative, which includes American states and Canadian provinces.
China, too, will watch California’s action, partly by virtue of the state’s partnerships with Chinese provinces, said Derek Walker, climate change director of the Environmental Defense Fund California.
“In many ways this is similar to what you are hearing from international circles now. Everybody is coming to the table with their opening bets,” he said. But unlike most, California has committed to cuts and now is working out the details.
The National Marine Fisheries Service, the agency charged with the stewardship of the U.S.’s living marine resources, may be sued for failure to implement the 1998 Blue whale Recovery Plan. Friends of the Earth, Pacific Environment and the Center of Biological Diversity have joined the notice of intent to sue submitted by the Environmental Defense Center last week.
Among other actions, the recovery plan mandates that the Fisheries Service identify and implement methods to eliminate or reduce blue whale mortalities from ship strikes. According to the groups, the agency has failed to carry out key provisions of the plan intended to both minimize and eliminate threats caused by ship strikes, pollution, and other harmful activities, as well as to improve the agency’s limited knowledge concerning blue whale populations and habitat needs.
Brian Segee, staff attorney with the Environmental Defense Center said:
“Recovery plans serve as the primary ‘road map’ of actions necessary to both protect and recover our nation’s most imperiled wildlife species . The blue whale deaths in October again demonstrate that it is long past time for the Fisheries Service to carry out the Blue Whale Recovery Plan’s mandate to implement measures that will eliminate or minimize ship strikes.”
Driven to the brink of extinction by whaling in the mid-20th century, blue whale populations have begun to slowly increase in many areas, and the species is now sighted during the summer along many areas of the California coast. While these increased sightings are cause for optimism, blue whale population numbers remain at a small fraction of their historic levels — today’s global population is estimated to be 10,000 animals, compared to a population of at least 350,000 before whaling. In addition, the species is now confronted with a host of new and emerging threats, including not only ship strikes but climate change, ocean acidification, and noise pollution.
Blue whales are the largest animal to have ever lived on Earth. The average adult blue whale is almost as long as a Boeing 737. They live more than 50 years for certain and could live as long as 90-100 years. They live in all oceans and migrate, travelling thousands of miles each year. It is known that the Santa Barbara Channel hosts the largest seasonal population of blue whales.
The Potential Biological Removal (PBR) level for blue whales under the MMPA is 1.4. The PBR is a number referring to the maximum number of animals, not including natural mortalities, that may be removed from a population annually while still allowing that population to reach or maintain its optimum sustainable size. The deaths of at least five blue whales from ship strikes in Southern California in 2007, as well as two additional ship strike mortalities along the California coast in October 2009 appear to indicate that actions need to be taken. Andrea Treece, an attorney with the Center for Biological Diversity said:
“Abundant blooms of krill have brought blue whales to our coast, which has given many people a wonderful opportunity to see this rare, mammoth creature. Unfortunately, as more whales have gathered off busy ports, more have been hit and killed by ships. The Fisheries Service’s refusal to address threats like ship strikes threatens to erase all the hard-won progress this species has made so far.”
Under the Endangered Species Act, potential litigants must file a 60-day notice of intent to sue before lawsuits can be filed alleging that the government has failed to carry out its nondiscretionary duties under the Act. While the conservation organizations are committed to pursuing legal remedies if necessary, it is their hope that submission of the notice will prompt the Fisheries Service to begin implementing the Blue Whale Recovery Plan without court intervention.
A reporter named Jim Dudas from the Cleveland Press contributed this story on a National Guardsman present at the Kent State Massacre:
The year was 1971 or 1972. A federal grand jury had just handed down indictments of a number of Ohio National Guardsmen for the events on the afternoon of May 4, 1970, when the guardsmen fired upon a group of students protesting the United States’ bombing of Cambodia. The guardsmen were accused of violating the civil rights of the four slain students.
I was a relatively new reporter for the Cleveland Press. I had just been assigned the federal courts beat. And I was hungry and aggressive.
The morning after the indictments were handed down, and reported in the morning paper, the city editor came to my desk first thing upon my reporting for work and told me to go to Wooster, a small community about two hours south of Cleveland, and see if I could talk with one of the indicted guardsmen, Matthew McManus.
None of the indicted guardsmen were answering their phones or returning calls. I had McManus’ home address from the indictment. I found the home, left my car and rang the bell and rapped on the door. No answer. No surprise.
Not wanting to return empty-handed, I took a chance and found a phone booth (there were no cell phones then) and called the largest employer in town, Rubbermaid. The receptionist put me right through to McManus, a mid-level manager.
I remember to this day my exact words: “Hello, Mr. McManus, my name is Jim Dudas with the Cleveland Press, and I would like to get your side of the story about the indictments.” I did not say shootings because it would have implied that he actually shot and/or hit a student. He was not eager to talk, but he was too polite not to.
When it appeared he was willing to talk with me, I panicked. I didn’t expect the interview. I left my notebook in the car. But not wanting to slow him down or disturb him as he patiently and comprehensively answered my questions, I started writing on my hands, arms and, ultimately, my bare ankles, which, at the time, I could lift and rest on the small shelf in the booth. (Fortunately, I had only two days prior shaved my legs from the calves down in preparation for taping them for a marathon I was planning to run).
He was saying things no other guardsman had said before. He was scathing in his judgment of his commanding officers. I knew it was going to be a good story. I started running out of bare skin and he started running out of patience.
I asked if we might meet for lunch (it was then about 10 a.m.) to further explore some of his comments. “I will have to talk with my attorney,” he said. “Call me back in about an hour.” I knew there was not a snowball’s chance in hell that his attorney would let him talk to me while under federal indictment. Still, I hung around Wooster and, while waiting, transcribed my notes from my skin to my reporter’s notebook.
At precisely 11 a.m. I called McManus back. “Yes,” he said, “I did talk with my attorney and he does not think it a good idea for me to talk with you.” I thanked him for trying and hung up the phone. I did this hurriedly because I did not want him inquiring about what I might or might not do with the notes from our earlier conversation.
Not to be pejorative, but McManus was kind of unsophisticated, and I knew it almost immediately by the way he answered the questions. He was as unassuming and forthright as any subject I had talked with.
So here was my dilemma that I had two hours to think about as I drove back to the newspaper office. I had a great story, one we called a “one-er” (front page, above the fold). I also knew it was a national story. But I knew in my heart of hearts that McManus did not know talking to a reporter, without stipulating that it was an off-the-record conversation, could automatically be an on-the-record story.
My city editor was not expecting a story. No one else had one. McManus was not living at his home, so coming back empty-handed would not have hurt my career one bit. Only I knew I had a story. Only I knew I had a choice.
I did not want to hurt McManus. He was, after all, a fine young man, with a family, a bungalow and a comfortable existence in one of those storybook communities. And I knew a story like the one I had would cause him pain, embarrassment and, perhaps, impact the outcome of his trial.
But I had this freedom of the press thing to deal with, as well. I had my professionalism. And, yes, I had my ambition. Those three things were part of the mix, and I found it impossible to separate them.
About halfway into the ride, I forced myself to stop thinking about it. I put a Bob Seeger tape in the car stereo (I think it was an eight-track) and decided I would make a decision at the front door of the Press. An hour never went so quickly. There I was, facing the front door and the biggest decision of my nascent career.
Let me add that I was raised by the Golden Rule. My parents instilled fair play into all of us. There were six kids in the family and, to a kid, we all found a way to befriend those on the playground who were otherwise friendless. It was not goodness, it was just expected.
I kept putting off the decision as I slowly climbed the stairs to the building. There were 10 of them. And I took my time with each. I kept putting off the decision and decided that once I grabbed the handle of the door, I would make up my mind.
I touched the door and said to myself: “I’m going to go with it.”
I ambled up to the city editor. “Bill,” I said, “I think I got a hell of a story. He talked to me.”
The city editor sprang into action so we could get it into that afternoon’s edition. He assigned the best rewrite man on the paper (some would say one of the best in the country) to sit down with me and take my notes. I read them to him. He asked me some questions. “Are you sure he said that?” he would ask. I would look at my leg or other note-sullied skin and read my notes and reply: “Positive.”
Each page was ripped from the rewrite man’s typewriter and rushed to the composing room, where they were already remaking Page 1. We got it in the first edition. It was a banner headline that used the most damning quote: “We were led like blind fools.” It referred to the officers.
I was the toast of the city room. That evening, gathering my stuff in preparation for going home, one of my buddies said: “You look bummed out, wanna go have a beer?” “Nah,” I said, “I think I just want to go home.”
That evening I got a call from Dan Rather, who, at the time was an ambitious reporter for CBS. He asked how he could contact McManus. My story had hummed across the wires and it was national news.
My feelings about McManus were swirling in my head. I knew that McManus would not likely talk to Rather. Still, I decided, in my own way, to protect the small-town kid who was suddenly thrust in the big-time spotlight.
“Dan,” I said, “I can’t give you that information. I have to protect my source.” He understood, and hung up. At least I had that to feel good about.
The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) will fund $18 million to support small business innovation research, development and deployment of clean and renewable energy technologies, including projects to advance wave and current energy technologies, ocean thermal energy conversion systems, and concentrating solar power (CSP) for distributed applications.
The funding will come from the American Recovery & Reinvestment Act and, in this first phase of funding, 125 grants of $150,000 each will be awarded to 107 small advanced technology firms across the United States for clean and renewable energy. The companies were selected from a pool of 950 applicants through a special fast-track process with an emphasis on near-term commercialization and job creation.
Companies which demonstrate successful results with their new clean and renewable technologies and show potential to meet market needs, will be eligible for $60m in a second round of grants in the summer of 2010.
“Small businesses are drivers of innovation and are crucial to the development of a competitive clean energy US economy,” says Energy Secretary Steven Chu. “These investments will help ensure small businesses are able to compete in the clean energy economy, creating jobs and developing new technologies to help decrease carbon pollution and increase energy efficiency.”
Grants were awarded in 10 clean and renewable energy topic areas, including $2.8m for 12 projects in Advanced Solar Technologies where projects will focus on achieving significant cost and performance improvements over current technologies, solar-powered systems that produce fuels, and concentrated solar power systems for distributed applications.
Another $1.7m will go to 12 clean and renewable energy projects in Advanced Water Power Technology Development where projects will focus on new approaches to wave and current energy technologies and ocean thermal energy conversion systems.
Other key areas are:
Water Usage in Electric Power Production (decreasing the water used in thermoelectric power generation and developing innovative approaches to desalination using Combined Heat and Power projects);
Advanced Building Air Conditioning and Cool Roofs (improve efficiency of air conditioning and refrigeration while reducing GHG emissions);
Power Plant Cooling (advanced heat exchange technology for power plant cooling);
Smart Controllers for Smart Grid Applications (develop technologies to support electric vehicles and support of distributed energy generation systems);
Advanced Industrial Technologies Development (improve efficiency and environmental performance in the cement industry);
Advanced Manufacturing Processes (improving heat and energy losses in energy intensive manufacturing processes);
Advanced Gas Turbines and Materials (high performance materials for nuclear applications and novel designs for high-efficiency and low-cost distributed power systems); and
Sensors, Controls, and Wireless Networks (building applications to minimise power use and power line sensor systems for the smart grid).
Three UK groups studying climate change have issued a strong statement about the dangers of failing to cut emissions of greenhouse gases across the world.
The Royal Society, Met Office, and Natural Environment Research Council (Nerc) say the science of climate change is more alarming than ever.
They say the 2007 UK floods, 2003 heatwave in Europe and recent droughts were consistent with emerging patterns.
Their comments came ahead of crunch UN climate talks in Copenhagen next month.
‘Loss of wildlife’
In a statement calling for action to cut carbon emissions, institutions said evidence for “dangerous, long-term and potentially irreversible climate change” was growing.
Global carbon dioxide levels have continued to rise, Arctic summer ice cover was lower in 2007 and 2008 than in the previous few decades, and the last decade has been the warmest on average for 150 years.
The best thing we could do is to prepare for the worst. Build better flood defences in vulnerable areas Lee, Bracknell
Persistent drought in Australia and rising sea levels in the Maldives were further indicators of possible future patterns, they said.
They argue that without action there will be much larger changes in the coming decades, with the UK seeing higher food prices, ill health, more flooding and rising sea levels.
Known or probable damage across the world includes ocean acidification, loss of rainforests, degradation of ecosystems and desertification, they said.
In 2007, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) warned that the world faced more droughts, floods, loss of wildlife, rising seas and refugees.
But Professor Julia Slingo, chief scientist of the Met Office, Professor Alan Thorpe, Nerc’s chief executive, and Lord Rees, president of the Royal Society, said cutting emissions could substantially limit the severity of climate change.
Copenhagen summit
Prof Slingo told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme the importance of the statement was that “it emphasises that whilst global mean temperature changes may not sound very large, the regional consequences of those are very great indeed”.
She said: “As the inter-governmental panel on climate change stated very clearly in 2007, without substantial reductions in greenhouse gas emissions we can likely, very likely, expect a world of increasing droughts, floods, species loss, rising seas [and] displaced human populations.
“What this statement says very clearly is that some of those things, whilst we can’t directly attribute them at the moment to global warming, are beginning to happen.”
RICHARD BLACK with MendoCoastCurrent edits, BBC News, November 24, 2009
US President Barack Obama will announce a target for reducing greenhouse gas emissions before next month’s UN climate summit, according to a White House official.
The target is expected to be in line with figures contained in legislation before the Senate – a reduction of about 17-20% from 2005 levels by 2020.
The absence of a US target has widely been seen as the single biggest obstacle to agreement at the summit.
At the weekend, the hosts of the Copenhagen conference announced that more than 60 heads of state and government had pledged to take part in the two-week negotiating session.
Mr. Obama will join them as it appears that his presence would increase chances of the 192 parties reaching agreement, the official indicated.
“There’s been recognition that if we want to keep momentum going, numbers have to be put on the table,” said Peter Bahouth, executive director of the US Climate Action Network, a network of organisations lobbying for action on the issue.
“There’s been pressure for the US to come (to Copenhagen) with its hands full rather than empty, and I think what we’re seeing are the results of that.”
In the last week, Mr. Obama has discussed climate change with a number of other world leaders including Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, President Hu Jintao of China and Japan’s Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama.
Domestic delays
Although Mr. Obama campaigned on a promise to cut emissions, and pledged global leadership on climate change on assuming office, the US position has been constrained by delays in putting legislation to curb greenhouse gas emissions through Congress.
The House of Representatives passed a bill in June that would cap emissions and establish a national carbon trading scheme.
But progress of a similar bill through the Senate is not likely before March at the earliest.
Administration officials have indicated that the targets are being discussed with senior senators in an attempt to ensure that the Senate will back whatever target Mr. Obama takes to Copenhagen.
It is not clear when the target will emerge, but there are now less than two weeks before the summit opens on December 7, 2009.
There will also be pressure internationally for the US to say how much money it is prepared to transfer to poorer countries to help them fight climate change, as it is bound to do under the UN climate convention.
Cutting edge
In the UN climate process, targets are conventionally given in comparison with 1990 levels of emissions.
On that basis, the likely US figure amounts to a cut of just a few percent, as emissions have risen by about 15% since 1990.
This is much less than the EU’s pledge of a 20% cut over the same period, or a 30% cut if there is a global deal; and much less than the 25-40% figure that developing countries are demanding.
Bhubaneswar, India – The underwater behaviour of the endangered Irrawaddy dolphins of Chilka Lake in Orissa will now be monitored with special hydrophones developed to catch their high-frequency “click” sounds.
The Chilka Development Authority, along with the Underwater Technology Research Center of Tokyo University, has developed the hydrophones that are being tested in the lake. The devices would help in chalking out long-term conservation plans for the endangered species, an official said.
“This is the first time that such a study is being conducted to observe the underwater behaviour of the Irrawaddy dolphins. The software for the hydrophones has been developed by Underwater Technology Research Center of Tokyo University,” said Ajit Pattnaik, chief executive officer of the Chilka Development Authority.
Studies have found that dolphins interpret the meaning of the click sounds through its complex nerve system after the sound bounces off the objects.
The hydrophones are designed to capture the high frequency clicks which can travel through water at a speed of about 1.5 km/sec, which is 4.5 times faster than sound travelling through air.
These hydrophones have been designed to capture the clicks and underwater behaviour of the dolphins.
“These devices would help determine the responses of dolphins to approaching boats and noise from the boat and other sources. It will also help to develop protocols for dolphin watching,” he said.
The data gathered from the devices would help in determining the size, shape, speed and migration behaviour of the dolphins in the lake, without disturbing them.
An MoU had been signed in 2006 to develop these devices and tests were also conducted before these complete devices were decided on. The Japanese scientists have now developed a set of eight devices with inbuilt software to interpret the data. The World Wide Fund for Nature is also collaborating on the project. (IANS)
WENDEE HOLTCAMP, National Wildlife, December/January 2010
Frank Fish was browsing in a Boston sculpture shop a few years ago when he noticed a whale figurine. His first thought was, “This isn’t right. It’s got bumps on the leading edge of its flipper. It’s always a straight edge.”
Fish, a West Chester University professor specializing in the dynamics of locomotion, was surprised because all flippers he knew of had straight edges—including those of dolphins, penguins and even most whales. The straight-edge blade is also shared by ceiling fans and most industrial blades and rotors. But the store manager showed him a photo of a humpback whale, and sure enough, it had tubercles on its flippers. Humpbacks have a unique habit of catching fish in a bubble net that they create by diving deep and swimming in a spiraling circle, and Fish speculated that the tubercles may somehow give them a hydrodynamic advantage.
Turns out he was right. After testing a scaled-down flipper replica in a wind tunnel, Fish and colleagues Loren Howle and Mark Murray found the tubercles reduced drag by 32% and increased lift by 6% compared with a smooth-edge flipper. The bumps have the same effect on rotors and blades in air—a revolutionary discovery in aerodynamics. Fish co-patented so-called “Tubercle Technology” and in 2005 he helped found Whale Power, a company that is building energy-efficient windmills using scalloped-edge blades. The technology could eventually improve energy-efficiency for any machine that uses turbines, fans or pumps.
Fish is among an increasing number of scientists, inventors and companies turning to the natural world to help them create better, more sustainable products and to find solutions to some of humanity’s most vexing problems. The concept is called biomimicry and the idea behind it is simple: Over the millennia, living organisms in the natural world already have tested and solved many of the challenges humans are grappling with today.
“People are looking for ways to reduce material use, get away from toxic substances and reduce energy use. When they hear about biomimicry, they realize it’s an R&D program that’s been going on for 3.8 billion years,” says biologist Janine Benyus of the Biomimicry Guild, a Montana-based consulting firm that provides research and guidance on natural solutions for some of the country’s largest companies and government agencies.
In her landmark 1997 book Biomimicry: Innovation Inspired by Nature, Benyus issued a call to action, urging people to engage not just in shallow biomimicry—copying nature’s forms—but to push for deep biomimicry where manufacturing processes follow nature’s lead of sustainability. The ideal industrial loop, she says, would work as seamlessly as a redwood forest, where one’s processed wastes become food or input for another and nothing is wasted. In the book, Benyus also compiled dozens of examples of how people are emulating natural processes.
Velcro, for example, one of the most famous products to come from mimicking nature, was created by a Swiss engineer in the 1940s after observing how cockleburs got stuck in his dog’s fur. Three decades later, a German botanist discovered that lotus leaves contain tiny waxy bumps that cause water to bead up and run off the surface, washing and cleaning the leaves in the process. The discovery has since inspired a number of waterproof products including Lotusan, a self-cleaning paint that keeps the outsides of buildings free of algae and fungi.
More recently, scientists from the University of New South Wales discovered a revolutionary antibacterial compound in a type of red algal seaweed that lives off the coast of Australia. Bacteria form slimy biofilms but require a “quorum” to congregate, and so they constantly communicate with one another. The seaweed stays bacteria-free by emitting the compound furanone, which jams the bacteria’s communication sensors. Mimicking that natural action, the Australian company Biosignal created cleaning fluids that keep surfaces bacteria-free without killing them, which is a breakthrough because its use does not lead to the evolution of antibiotic resistance, as has happened with the proliferation of so many antibacterial cleaning compounds. So far, furanone works on various bacteria, including staphylococcus and vibrio, which causes cholera. It also works on the bacteria that corrode pipes, leading to oil spills.
In another flip on tradition, Mercedes-Benz recently modeled an ecologically friendly, fuel-efficient concept vehicle called the Bionic Car after the yellow boxfish, a squarish tropical creature found in reefs in the Pacific and Indian Oceans. Traditionally, aerodynamic cars have been built long and lean, but it turns out the boxfish has a drag coefficient nearly equal to that of a drop of water, which has one of the lowest drags possible. The automobile company not only borrowed from the boxfish’s boxy but aerodynamic shape but also from its unique skeletal structure that protects the animal from injury, making the car safer by putting extra material in certain parts of its frame and economizing by lightening up the load elsewhere.
Another product, the UltraCane, was developed not long ago as a result of research at the University of Leeds in Great Britain to help the blind “see” by utilizing the echolocation systems of bats. The cane emits an ultrasonic sound that bounces off objects, allowing vision-impaired people to develop a mental picture of where and how far away objects are—and hence better navigate around them.
In Zimbabwe, the architectural design firm Arup Associates modeled the country’s largest office complex, Eastgate Centre, after the passive cooling system used by African termites in their mounds. Termites farm fungus that they must keep at a precise 87 degrees F, while outside air varies from 35 degrees at night to 104 by day. To accomplish this amazing feat, termites constantly plug and unplug cooling vents that create convection currents, drawing air through the mound as needed. The Eastgate Centre builders copied this model, using fans and chimneys to shunt hot air out, and ground-level cavities to allow cooler air in—a concept known as passive cooling. Without any modern heating or air conditioning, the facility uses only 10% of the electricity of a conventional building its size. The energy-cost savings trickle down to tenants, who pay 20% lower rent than in neighboring buildings.
Elsewhere, scientists are turning to Mother Nature for inspiration for other energy-related materials. To increase the amount of sunlight that is absorbed by solar panels, for instance, a University of Florida researcher is developing a coating for the panels based on the structure of moth eyes, which reflect little light. In China and Japan, scientists are modeling more efficient solar cells after the scales on butterfly wings, which serve as highly effective, microscopic solar collectors.
The benefits humans gain as a result of such research provide a strong argument for conserving wildlife. “Protecting plant and animal habitats means also preserving the wellspring of ideas for the next industrial revolution,” says Benyus, who in 2007 was named by Time magazine as one of its “International Heroes of the Environment.”
That same year, she also founded the nonprofit Biomimicry Institute, which urges companies to donate a percentage of their profits to the habitat from which their biomimicry-inspired products come from. “We must become nature’s apprentice at this point,” she says, “and part of that path has to be preserving the wild places we now realize are the homes of geniuses.”
CASSANDRA SWEET, Dow Jones Newswires, November 20, 2009
California regulators have proposed approving a long-term contract between PG&E and Solaren, developers of a speculative technology that would beam 200 megawatts of solar power to earth from outer space.
Under the 15-year contract, Solaren Corp., of Manhattan Beach, Calif., would ship 850 gigawatt-hours of solar power a year starting in 2016, doubling that amount in later years. The power would be sent by radio frequency from an earth-orbiting satellite to a receiving station in Fresno, California. The energy-conversion technology has been used by communications satellites for 45 years on a much smaller scale, Solaren said.
PG&E wouldn’t disclose the cost of the proposed 15-year contract but said it would be above-market, more than 12.9 cents a kilowatt-hour, according to documents filed with the California Public Utilities Commission, or CPUC.
PG&E among other California utilities are required to use renewable sources for a fifth of the power they sell by 2010, ramping up to one-third of their retail power by 2020. The requirements are part of the state’s 2006 plan to combat climate change.
Because Solaren’s technology is untested, raising “concerns regarding the viability of the project,” PG&E can’t rely on the contract to comply with its renewable energy requirements until construction begins on the project and the CPUC gives additional approval, the agency said in a proposed decision.
The CPUC could make a decision as early as December 3, 2009.
For centuries humanity has gazed at the sea, rivers and rambling brooks in awe of water currents and the energy potential they hold. With increasingly critical demand for safe renewable energy solutions, our ability to capture water power has been an abstruse, distant choice for mitigating our dependence on fossil fuels.
Now with Peak Oil and Climate Change concerns igniting our interest in renewable energies, our brightest, most creative thinkers the world-over turn their attention and intention toward creating efficient, sustainable and safe renewable energy capture devices. It’s understood best bets for generating constant electricity straddle natural energy sources: the sun, the wind and the tides, with the energy captured from water and the tides currently garnering longest odds.
Water power, known more formally as hydrokinetic energy, is based on hydro, meaning water, and kinetic with roots in Greek, κίνηση, or kinesis, meaning motion. The motion of water and study of it includes capturing its power. At the heart of this energy is spinning and flowing, ironically a strikingly dissimilar concept from capture.
Whether extracted, converted, captured or transformed, hydrokinetic energy may well be the ‘holy grail’ of renewable energy, especially when considering the math:
‘One foot of tidal change, when funneled through the natural orifices of the coastal inlets, has the potential to generate pure, clean, green energy and all with absolutely no carbon footprint.’
Thus, as an example, one Florida inlet having an average tidal change between 2” up to 1’ carries 75 trillion Cu-Ft of fast moving water every tide.
Furthermore, hydrokinetic energy offers consistent yields and potentials unknown and possibly undiscoverable from other naturally-sourced energy. Wind power faces insufficient, constant wind to return the capital investment, even with government subsidies, and robust solar energy opportunities are mostly located in far, off grid locales.
Traditional hydrokinetic solutions include tidal turbines, wave buoys, wave hubs, tethered ocean, buoyant/flexible wave snakes and tidal stream machines that generate electricity yet also create gross negative impacts on marine wildlife and the environment.
These solutions must overcome fundamental issues like potential fish or turtle kill, corrosion and tethering issues, repair distance and processes, long-term durability in water/weather, noise pollution and super expensive grid connections that are also environmentally damaging.
Seems that when we embrace and mimic nature in creating organically-derived energy capture tools, the harmonious capacity of the design inherently overcomes the problems of other inelegant hydrokinetic systems.
Over the last two years, W. S. “Scotty” Anderson, Jr. may have either consciously or unconsciously designed along these lines as he victoriously led his team to invent and build the ECO-Auger™. You’ll find information on this and other cool inventions at Anderson’s laboratory, www.smartproductinnovations.com.
As a lifelong fisherman, Anderson designed his hydrokinetic system to convert energy from moving water, delivering renewable, sustainable energy, while completely safe for fish and marine wildlife.
The tapered helix permits fish and other marine life to pass through with absolutely no sharp edges to injure them. Even turtles can swim through or are gently pushed aside as the ECO-Auger generally rotates under 100 rpm. The tapered design also permits debris to pass.
First thoughts of the ECO-Auger came to Anderson in 2008 as he was fishing the waters of the fast-moving Kenai River in Alaska. His mind focused on capturing the river’s energy; here are his notes: “I got the vision of a screw turning in the river current and generating electricity on the river bank. The screw would turn a flexible shaft and drive an electric generator outside the water.”
The ECO-Auger is a double-helix, auger-shaped spinner regulated by the size of the radius and the strength of the water current. “It’s easy to array, bi-directional and housed in an individual, streamlined single form,” Anderson points out.
Anderson originally envisioned the ECO-Auger “simply installed under bridges between the arches of bridges, housed on the ECO-Sled, a sort of a pontoon boat like a floating dry-dock.” This permits easy launch and retrieval for maintenance or if/when the ice gets too thick.
Over the next year Anderson built and tested prototypes, refining his hydrokinetic system completely from U.S. materials, requiring that each generation of the ECO-Auger be “very reasonable to build, deploy, easy to service and inexpensive to array.”
In describing his invention, Anderson said, “the ECO-Auger does not have blades, straight or twisted like other devices, and is environmentally-friendly to all marine wildlife. The fish are not harmed and swim through the organic design. With no electrical generation under or in water, there also is no danger to transmitting vibrations or naval sonar to whales and dolphins.”
This novel approach is so very different to existing technology. So very different and innovative that in late September 2009 Anderson’s team won First Place in the ConocoPhillips Energy Prize, a joint initiative of ConocoPhillips and Penn State University recognizing new ideas and original, actionable solutions that help improve the way the US develops and uses energy.
The prize-winning ECO-Auger was described as “a hydrokinetic energy capturing device that converts moving water from river and ocean currents to renewable electric energy using the constant hydraulic pressure and storage to maintain continuous energy output regardless of tidal current strength.”
How the ECO-Auger Works:
The ECO-Auger rotates in either direction from the moving water and current and is directly transferred through planetary gears to a high-pressure hydraulic pump located in the machine’s nose cone. The nose cone, which is physically tethered to bridges by cables, or anchored in moving water, stabilizes the torque generated from the rotation and transfers it to a hydraulic pump. The pump supplies variable volumes of high-pressure fluid at controlled, set pressure, regardless of the direction or speed of rotations. This pressure turns an oil-driven electric generator that delivers stable electrical current. Thus, constant power is generated through the ECO-Auger’s unique hydraulic circuit.
As the ECO-Auger rotates, the high-pressure oil flows through check valves to an array of standard air oil accumulators that are connected directly in line to the oil motor driving the electric generator. The oil to the electric generator is sized below the maximum gallons per minute of the ECO-Auger’s hydraulic pump, allowing the pumped oil to be supplied to the motor, while the excess volume is stored in the accumulator. A computer-monitored storage system assures maximum energy stability, storing energy and supplying the generators during the slow down of tidal flow.
Guide for Installation Opportunities:
Since the ECO-Auger is bi-directional, it is well-suited for high velocity, coastal ocean and bay locations. Near the ocean, the generation hydraulic system uses nitrogen-over-oil accumulators to maintain power generation during ebb tides or slack tidal movement under 1 knot (0.5m/s).
Each potential installation of the ECO-Auger is unique, requiring the water velocity and profile or depth of the installed area to be fully studied and documented. Anderson recommends a month-long study to support 30-year energy capture forecasts and projections.
River installations of the ECO-Auger are successful when current is in excess of 3 kts (1.5 meters/sec). The accumulators mentioned above are not required in mono-flow installations and installation reflects this cost savings. With the mono-directional ECO-Auger, electricity can be generated already existing power dams, downstream in any dam outlet, discharge from municipal water treatment facility, cooling water discharge and many river bridge options.
The ECO-Auger in its recent First Place win in the 2009 ConocoPhillips Energy Prize, a joint initiative of ConocoPhillips and Penn State University — won specifically for its new, original idea improving the way the U.S. creates and uses energy.
Anderson and his team are up to this important challenge and set their sights on installing this remarkable fish-friendly, economical, high-yielding hydrokinetic solution in a river, alongside a bridge or coastal inlet near you.
This is Bob Lyon’s version of a midlife crisis sports car.
“This is the craziest thing I’ve done in my life,” the 47-year-old commercial painter joked Friday after a crane lowered a 19-foot, 1-ton wind turbine onto a pole behind his waterfront vacation home.
While the aluminum device that looked like a giant strand of DNA wasn’t as sexy as a red Ferrari, it prompted as much oohing and ahhing as crews prepared it to capture winds from the Gulf of Mexico and convert them to energy that will lower Lyon’s electricity bills.
“This is fascinating,” said Mary Bona, who lives next door to Lyon in the Westport community. “He’s done his homework. He’s been working on it for quite some time. He’s been itching to get it going.”
Neighbors snapped photos with their cell phones as men in jeans and T-shirts directed the crane operator and then bolted the turbine down to a metal base that had been bolted to a concrete platform.
“Let’s plug this toaster in and see if it works,” said Dave Graham, a welder who made the base. He disconnected some wiring that was being used to still the turbine during the installation.
It spun as the breeze blew.
Lyon, who was running around in paint-splattered jeans and puffing on a cigar, handed out water and soft drinks.
“This has got to be a thing of the future,” neighbor Mike Kratky told Lyon.
Lyon, who lives part of the year in Pittsfield, Mass., had already gone green in other ways. He recycles and drives a fuel-efficient Toyota Prius.
Last year, he began researching wind turbines after learning about the generous government incentives. He gets back 100% of the purchase price in property tax relief over 10 years. It amounts to about $2,500 a year, wiping out a big chunk of the tax bill on his nearly 2,000-square-foot house. He also gets a 30% federal tax credit.
“You heard so much about going green, cleaning the Earth, and the rising cost of electricity,” he said.
The greatest benefit for Lyon is that the turbine generates electricity that will be used to reduce his meter reading. When he uses less than the turbine generates, it will be sold back to his utility company, Withlacoochee River Electric Cooperative. The device will begin paying for itself in just a few years.
Lyon said his wife was hesitant when he approached her with the idea.
“She thought it was crazy,” he said. But she came around after hearing about the savings.
Lyon said county officials and neighbors also have been supportive.
“I was ready to go through a bunch of hoops and loops,” he said.
The location, right off the gulf, is ideal for generating wind. And the turbines produce as much noise as the rustle of trees.
Lyon bought his 2,000-pound turbine from Helix Wind, a San Diego company. It arrived in seven boxes. Neighbors helped him assemble it in two days.
“It’s like an Amish barn-raising,” said Martin Little, who stopped by to watch the turbine being put up.
It can produce 10,000 kilowatts a year with an average 12 mph wind.
Lyon said all the county inspectors are set to visit on Tuesday.
Not because of any problems, “but because they want to see it,” he said.
Those in the industry say the use of wind turbines is taking off with the new emphasis on green energy.
Ron Stimmel, small systems manager for the American Wind Energy Association, a national trade association for the wind energy industry, said the turbines are used in all 50 states, mainly in windy places that offer the best incentives.
“Florida’s not the strongest of either but that’s not to say they don’t have a solid presence, especially along the coast,” he said.
Sales were up 78% last year, mainly because of investors who put money into manufacturing companies.
The high up-front costs make them prohibitive for many but Stimmel expects that to decrease as the manufacturing process is streamlined.
Payback can begin in as few as five years, he said.
“It’s like free electricity for life in 20 to 30 years,” he said.
Lyon admitted it was a costly investment. He saved money by doing a lot of the work himself.
“I was my own general,” he said. But he knows it will pay off.
“I’m feeding the electric company rather than feeding my house,” he said.
Editor’s Note: The family of Allison Krause seeks and supports the creation of Four Days In May, the Kent State Truth Tribunal, a collaborative, multimedia, sharing event to dialog, document, discover and uncover the truth in the events leading to the killing of four students and wounding of nine at the Kent State Massacre.
LYDIA COUTRE, KentNewsNet, November 3, 2009
Last night, Ron Snyder became the first Kent State National Guardsman to speak in a public forum at Kent State University about what happened on May 4, 1970.
Snyder, along with four other panelists, discussed the May 4th shooting at the Kent State University Kiva organized by the May 4th Task Force.
“The situation isn’t the same as it was in 1970,” said Alan Canfora, who was wounded by a National Guardsman on May 4th. “The antagonisms are gone. There’s still the need for the truth.”
“There’s a need for talking, for healing and for dialogue, and as a result I have no real antagonism toward (Snyder). I respect him. I think he has great courage coming here tonight,” Canfora said.
The panelists included Ron Snyder; Alan Canfora; Tim Moore, a Kent State freshman in 1970 and now associate dean of the College of Arts and Sciences; Laura Davis, who witnessed the shooting and is now a professor of English; and Vietnam veteran Tom Saw.
Snyder, who fired no shots on May 4th, noted that the National Guardsmen were called to the campus and didn’t go there on their own, which he said some have misunderstood. He also said that by bringing the National Guard to campus, politicians are also partially responsible. “This is one of the problems with sending military personnel to deal with civil service,” Snyder said. “Before you send military to handle civilian protests, you really need to put the politicians’ feet to the fire, as the expression goes, because once they start the ball rolling, they don’t have any control over it.”
Moore said he appreciated Snyder coming to share his point of view. “I really feel that anyone in the military is for the most part going to follow the orders of the commander,” he said. “And so I hold no malice toward anyone in the National Guard. I’m glad that we’re finally getting his point of view because we need to know that.”
Learning more about different perspectives was the driving force behind the forum. The details of the Kent State Massacre are still greatly surrounded by mystery, Davis pointed out. “Ask questions. Continue to look for answers,” she said. “It’s still very much an unfinished story.”
Canfora encouraged the undertaking of an organized effort to uncover truths about the shooting. “One thing we’d like to see at Kent, whether it’s through a Truth Commission sponsored by the government or the community, would be to have the guardsmen and the students and all the eyewitnesses come together to testify about what happened,” he said. “Not for the purpose of jailing the guardsmen or punishing them at this late date, but just for the sake of the truth for the families of the dead and for the sake of history.”
CNN Editor’s Note: Sam Waterston is an award-winning stage, film and television actor who is best known for his long-running role as prosecutor Jack McCoy on “Law & Order.” He is a member of the board of directors of Oceana, a nonprofit organization that seeks to protect the world’s oceans by opposing overfishing and pollution.
As a native New Englander, I know full and well how much we depend on the oceans. They have often been a solution for our problems.
They’ve been a highway for goods and people, connecting us to the world, and a barrier against foreign invasion, protecting us from the world; a source of food and wealth, going back to our earliest beginnings, when whale oil lit our houses and when cod were so plentiful that huge specimens were commonly stacked like cordwood on our docks and wharves, and still there were so many that you could almost walk on their backs across some harbors.
Until the recent unrelenting hammering by our technologically impressive, very efficient, very destructive commercial fishing fleets, the seas have seemed an inexhaustible cornucopia of sea life for our sustenance, delight and wonder.
Now, science tells us the global wild fish catch is, for the first time in history, declining. Fortunately, we also know what steps our governments need to take to reverse this trend — steps that can again return our seas to abundance.
But, along with the ravages of industrial-scale fishing, there is another even more troubling story to tell about our oceans. For centuries, our oceans have been an uncomplaining dump. They’ve absorbed our waste — from manufacturing, power generation, and oil spills, and our nuclear waste, our trash, and our sewage.
And carbon. For the last 250 years, the oceans have absorbed 30% of the carbon dioxide we put into the atmosphere through the burning of fossil fuels and deforestation, moderating and masking its global impact. They take in 11 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide per year. Each year, the amount we release grows another 3%.
What happens to the carbon dioxide absorbed by the seas is something that you should understand if you love seafood or care about the millions of fishing jobs vital to coastal towns.
Carbon dioxide combines with seawater to create carbonic acid, raising the acidity of that vast solution and reducing the amount of available carbonate. And that is serious mischief for all kinds of sea life, from corals and pteropods, continuing on through shellfish, clams, oysters, lobsters, mussels and so on, which need carbonate to make the structures that support them.
A chain reaction begins. Even creatures whose own structural parts might better survive a decrease in available carbonate in sea water depend to one degree or another on critters with higher sensitivity. Whales and salmon eat pteropods for dinner. The very tasty and much-prized Alaskan pink salmon makes pteropods 45% of its diet.
Many kinds of fish need corals for habitat. And corals aren’t just tropical — the colder the water they live in, the more vulnerable they are to changes in the availability of carbonate.
The current acidification level hasn’t been seen for at least 800,000 years, and acidification is coming on 100 times faster than at any point for hundreds of thousands for years. The levels are alarming. The rate of change makes them even scarier, because it so restricts the ability of sea creatures to adapt.
In contrast to the debate that continues about the causal relationship between this or that weather event and human activity, there is no debate about the source of ocean acidification. The change in the chemistry of the ocean is a man-made event, plain and simple, and the consequences of its continuing rise in acidity will belong squarely to us.
It will make for some uncomfortable moments around the dinner table when our children and grandchildren ask, “What did you do in the [climate] war, Daddy?” If we don’t recognize the ocean’s warning, the first cataclysm from man-made carbon dioxide emissions that will get our attention will be the collapse of the oceans.
If we do recognize the warning, the oceans are ready to be a solution. Power in the tides and waves is there to tap. Offshore wind power is a technology that’s ready to go right now, near the great population centers on our coasts, where it’s most needed.
For 800,000 years, the seas were a stable solution, a hospitable solution for all sorts of creatures to live in, and a generous solution to all sorts of human problems, from food supply to waste disposal. We must not make them inhospitable, for people or for the 80% of life on the planet that lives in them.
Carbon dioxide in the sea is the front line of climate carbon addiction. Reverse the trend toward ocean acidification, and we will also have made a giant stride in addressing the effects of climate change. The sea is warning us to change course and calling us to seize enormous opportunities. Now.
Just last week in Scotland the Oyster from Aquamarine Power passed a crucial test and is no longer in locked-down position on the seabed. Now the Oyster moves back and forth in the ocean waves, pumping high-pressure water to its onshore hydro-electric turbine as it readies for full-commissioning.
The Oyster captures energy found in near-shore waves up to depths of 10 to 12 metres and consists of a hinged flap connected to the seabed at around 10m depth. Each passing wave moves the flap which drives a hydraulic piston to deliver high-pressure water to an onshore turbine which generates electricity. The Oyster now goes through commissioning in advance of grid connection as the official switch on by Scotland’s First Minister Alex Salmond is set for on November 20, 2009.
Martin McAdam, Aquamarine Power chief executive said: “We are delighted to have passed this crucial stage in commissioning the world’s very first Oyster wave energy convertor. This major milestone shows that the Oyster does what we have always believed it will do, and we look forward to completing commissioning and producing clean, green energy from Scotland’s waves in the coming months.”
Endangered species’ communication critical to survival
ARIEL DAVID, Seattle Post Intelligence, December 8, 2008
The songs that whales and dolphins use to communicate, orient themselves and find mates are being drowned out by human-made noises in the world’s oceans, U.N. officials and environmental groups said Wednesday.
That sound pollution — everything from increasing commercial shipping and seismic surveys to a new generation of military sonar — is not only confounding the mammals, it also is further threatening the survival of these endangered animals.
Studies show that these cetaceans, which once communicated over thousands of miles to forage and mate, are losing touch with each other, the experts said at a U.N. wildlife conference in Rome.
“Call it a cocktail-party effect,” said Mark Simmonds, director of the Whale and Dolphin Conservation Society, a Britain-based NGO. “You have to speak louder and louder until no one can hear each other anymore.”
An indirect source of noise pollution may also be coming from climate change, which is altering the chemistry of the oceans and making sound travel farther through sea water, the experts said.
Representatives of more than 100 governments are gathered in Rome for a meeting of the U.N.-backed Convention on the Conservation of Migratory Species of Wild Animals.
The agenda of the conference, which ends Friday, includes ways to increase protection for endangered species, including measures to mitigate underwater noise.
Environmental groups also are increasingly finding cases of beached whales and dolphins that can be linked to sound pollution, Simmonds said.
Marine mammals are turning up on the world’s beaches with tissue damage similar to that found in divers suffering from decompression sickness. The condition, known as the bends, causes gas bubbles to form in the bloodstream upon surfacing too quickly.
Scientists say the use of military sonar or seismic testing may have scared the animals into diving and surfacing beyond their physical limits, Simmonds said.
Several species of cetaceans are already listed as endangered or critically endangered from other causes, including hunting, chemical pollution, collisions with boats and entanglements with fishing equipment. Though it is not yet known precisely how many animals are affected, sound pollution is increasingly being recognized as a serious factor, the experts said.
As an example, Simmonds offered two incidents this year that, though still under study, could be linked to noise pollution: the beaching of more than 100 melon-headed whales in Madagascar and that of two dozen common dolphins on the southern British coast.
The sound of a seismic test, used to locate hydrocarbons beneath the seabed, can spread 1,800 miles under water, said Veronica Frank, an official with the International Fund for Animal Welfare. A study by her group found that the blue whale, which used to communicate across entire oceans, has lost 90 percent of its range over the past 40 years.
Despite being the largest mammal ever to inhabit Earth, the endangered blue whale still holds mysteries for scientists.
“We don’t even know where their breeding grounds are,” Simmonds said. “But what’s most important is that they need to know where they are.”
Other research suggests that rising levels of carbon dioxide are increasing the acidity of the Earth’s oceans, making sound travel farther through sea water.
The study by the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute in the United States shows the changes may mean some sound frequencies are traveling 10% farther than a few centuries ago. That could increase to 70% by 2050 if greenhouse gases are not cut.
However, governments seem ready to take action, said Nick Nutall, a spokesman for the U.N. Environment Program, which administers the convention being discussed in Rome. The conference is discussing a resolution that would oblige countries to reduce sound pollution, he said.
Measures suggested include rerouting shipping and installing quieter engines as well as cutting speed and banning tests and sonar use in areas known to be inhabited by the animals.
President Barack Obama has announced the largest single energy grid modernization investment in U.S. history, funding a broad range of technologies that will create tens of thousands of jobs, save energy and allow consumers to cut their electric bills.
Speaking at Florida Power and Light’s (FPL) DeSoto Next Generation Solar Energy Center, President Barack Obama today announced the largest single energy grid modernization investment in U.S. history, funding a broad range of technologies that will spur the nation’s transition to a smarter, stronger, more efficient and reliable electric system.
The $3.4 billion in grant awards – part of the American Reinvestment and Recovery Act – will be matched by industry funding for a total public-private investment worth over $8 billion. Full listings of the grant awards by category and state are available here and a map of the awards is available here.
An analysis by the Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI) estimates that the implementation of smart grid technologies could reduce electricity use by more than 4% by 2030. That would mean a savings of $20.4 billion for businesses and consumers around the country. One-hundred private companies, utilities, manufacturers, cities and other partners received Smart Grid Investment Grant awards today, including FPL, which will use its $200 million in funding to install over 2.5 million smart meters and other technologies that will cut energy costs for its customers.
The awards announced represent the largest group of Recovery Act awards ever made in a single day and the largest batch of Recovery Act clean energy grant awards to-date. The announcements include:
Empowering Consumers to Save Energy and Cut Utility Bills — $1 billion. These investments will create the infrastructure and expand access to smart meters and customer systems so that consumers will be able to access dynamic pricing information and have the ability to save money by programming smart appliances and equipment to run when rates are lowest.
Making Electricity Distribution and Transmission More Efficient — $400 million. The Administration is funding several grid modernization projects across the country that will significantly reduce the amount of power that is wasted from the time it is produced at a power plant to the time it gets to your house. By deploying digital monitoring devices and increasing grid automation, these awards will increase the efficiency, reliability and security of the system, and will help link up renewable energy resources with the electric grid.
Integrating and Crosscutting Across Different “Smart” Components of a Smart Grid — $2 billion. Much like electronic banking, the Smart Grid is not the sum total of its components but how those components work together. The range of projects funded will incorporate various components into one system – including smart meters, smart thermostats and appliances, syncrophasors, automated substations, plug in hybrid electric vehicles, renewable energy sources, etc.
Building a Smart Grid Manufacturing Industry — $25 million. These investments will help expand our manufacturing base of companies that can produce the smart meters, smart appliances, synchrophasors, smart transformers, and other components for smart grid systems in the United States and around the world – representing a significant and growing export opportunity for our country and new jobs for American workers.
More details on the proposed projects are available here. Click here for the full test of remarks by President Obama on Recovery Act Funding for Smart Grid Technology.
Editor’s Note: Over the past few weeks there have been numerous Blue Whales showing up dead on the coast of California and a cause of the recent Blue Whale washing up on the Mendocino coast has been the topic of great discussion and mystery here. Actual cause of death has been identified by propeller of a NOAA research ship. Additionally, here’s a new theory based on noise pollution and new research: Blue whales are forced to make more noise to compete with man-made noise pollution like ship sounds and sonar. More specifically: Blue whales increase their ’singing’ to cope with noise pollution. And: Man-made noise such as ships’ engines has caused hearing loss in whales.
LOUISE GRAY, Telegraph UK, September 23, 2009
It has also caused other behavioural changes, including forcing the creatures to strand on beaches because they are unable to navigate.
The endangered blue whale uses sonar to navigate, locate prey, avoid predators and communicate.
However in recent years the increasing use of hi-tech sonar by ships, the noise of propellers, seismic surveys, sea-floor drilling, and low-frequency radio transmissions have made oceans noisier.
New research has shown that the whales are having to ‘chatter’ more often and for longer periods to communicate the location of prey and to mate.
Zoologist Lucia Di Iorio, of the University of Zurich, analysed the song of blue whales recorded by microphones during seismic explorations in the St Lawrence estuary off Canada’s north east coast over an eleven day period in August 2004.
“We found that blue whales called consistently more on seismic exploration days than on non-exploration days as well as during periods within a seismic survey day when the sparker was operating,” she said.
“This increase was observed for the discrete, audible calls that are emitted during social encounters and feeding.”
The study, published in Biology Letters, provides the first evidence that blue whales change their calling behaviour when exposed to sounds from seismic surveys.
“This study suggests careful reconsideration of the potential behavioural impacts of even low source level seismic survey sounds on large whales. This is particularly relevant when the species is at high risk of extinction as is the blue whale,” added Dr Di Iorio.
Lately, the shores of San Francisco, California have been attracting more than wet-suit clad surfers and their boards.
A site five miles off the city’s western beach is being considered for a new Oceanside Wave Energy project.
Australian energy company BioPower Systems is collaborating with the City of San Francisco to investigate wave energy generation from the Pacific Ocean.
Wave power, not to be confused with tidal power, takes advantage of energy from the actual surface waves of the ocean. People have attempted to harness this power since 1890, but with little success. However, that may change thanks to BioPower Systems application of biomimicry.
The ideas underlying the company’s novel technologies reap the full benefit of billions of years of underwater evolution. The proposed bioWAVE ocean wave power system will sway like sea plants in ocean waves. Each lightweight unit—developed for 250kW, 500kW, 1000kW capacities—will then connect to a utility-size power grid via subsea cables. It’s now predicted that the same Californian waves that propel sundry surfers could generate between 10MW and 100MW of power. That’s enough energy to power between 3,000 to 30,000 homes annually.
If this project is indeed determined feasible—and it does look hopeful—BioPower Systems and the City of San Francisco will begin to develop a way to deliver clean renewable electricity to the city’s power grid. By 2012 that “hella rad swell” could be something electrifying.
Click here to view a full animation of the bioWAVE farm in action.
Australian ocean energy company BioPower Systems announced it reached an agreement with the city of San Francisco to explore wave energy technology.
“The feasibility of ocean waves as an energy source is being considered and this could lead to further project development,” said John Doyle, acting manager of infrastructure at the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission.
BioPower will work with the San Francisco utility to examine the feasibility of a project site 5 miles off the coast of California. The project could generate between 10MW and 100MW of power, the company said.
The BioPower wave system, bioWAVE, generates 1MW of energy per unit. The company said it would install several units at an undersea wave energy farm that is out of view and environmentally friendly.
San Francisco and BioPower are working to bring wave energy to the power grid by 2012 pending results from a feasibility study.
“We have already assessed the potential for economic energy production using bioWAVE at the proposed project site, and the results are very promising,” said Tim Finnigan, chief executive officer at BioPower.
Environmentalists and fishermen on California’s North Coast are calling for an independent investigation into the killing of an endangered blue whale off Fort Bragg by a mapping survey boat contracted by NOAA’s National Marine Fisheries Service.
In order to stop the killing of any more whales, locals are also asking for an immediate suspension of the Marine Life Protection Act (MLPA) process that the boat was collecting habitat data for.
The 72-foot female blue whale, a new mother, perished on Monday, October 19, after being hit by the 78-foot Pacific Star, under contract to NOAA to update maps of the ocean floor
Jim Milbury, spokesman for the National Marine Fisheries Service, said the boat was doing multi-sonar beam surveys to update marine charts and to determine the habitat to be used in state and federal marine protected area designations.
“We know that the whale’s death was caused by the collision with the boat because the boat crew called us to report the collision,” said Milbury. “After the collision, the dead whale washed up on the beach off Fort Bragg.”
Collisions with boats are relatively infrequent, but the Fort Bragg blue whale was the second to perish from a collision with a boat this fall. On October 9, a 50-foot blue whale was found floating in a kelp bed off Big Sur along the Monterey County coast after an undetermined vessel hit it.
The National Geographic and other media outlets gushed that the Fort Bragg blue whale’s death provided a unique opportunity for scientists to study a whale.
“Though unable to move the blue whale, scientists and students are leaping at the research opportunity, scrambling down rock faces to take tissue samples and eventually one of the 11-foot-long (3.5-meter-long) flippers,” according to an article at National Geographic.
However, fishermen, environmentalists and seaweed harvesters are outraged that the vessel, conducting surveys designed to designate habitat to be included in no-fishing zones that will kick Indian Tribes, fishermen and seaweed harvesters off their traditional areas, was negligent in trying to avoid a collision with the whale. Many believe that the sonar beams coming from the boat may have disoriented the whale, causing it to collide with the boat.
Fearing the endangered animals could soon become extinct, the International Whaling Commission banned all hunting of blue whales in 1966. There are now an estimated 3,000 to 4,000 blue whales in the Northern Hemisphere. The longest known blue whale measured 106 feet long and 200 tons. Whales are an average life span of 80 to 90 years.
Local environmentalists and fishermen have decided to name the dead whale “Jane” after Jane Lubchenko, the NOAA administrator who is running the federal fishery “management” scheme that resulted in the whale’s death.
“The NOAA vessel was mapping both federal and state waters, and part of that data will be used in the MLPA process,” said Jim Martin, West Coast Regional Director of the Recreational Fishing Alliance. “I guarantee you she wants to have a federal MPA process to close large chunks of the ocean out to 200 miles. The state MLPA process is just the beginning.”
The RFA, Ocean Protection Coalition and other conservation groups have asked for a suspension of the MLPA process, due to lack of dedicated funding, numerous conflicts of interests by MLPA decision makers and the lack of clarity about what type of activities are allowed in reserves. This tragic incident only highlights the urgent need to suspend the corrupt and out-of-control MLPA corporate greenwashing process that is opposed by the vast majority of North Coast residents.
“How many blue whales must be killed in the name of so-called ‘ocean protection,’” asked Martin. “How many of these beautiful and magnificent animals must be sacrificed at the altar of corporate-funded marine ‘protection’?”
Martin emphasized, “The whale is a metaphor for North Coast communities who have been run over by NOAA, an agency on auto pilot. The Department of Fish and Game is riding their coattails using this habitat data in the MLPA process.”
Among the communities of the North Coast dramatically impacted by the corrupt MLPA process is the Kashia Pomo Tribe, who have sustainably harvested seaweed, mussels and abalone off Stewarts Point for centuries. However, the California Fish and Game Commission in August, under orders from Governor Arnold Schwarzeneger, banned the Kashia Tribe, seaweed harvesters, fishermen and abalone divers from their traditional harvesting areas in Sonoma and Mendocino counties.
As Lester Pinola, past chairman of the Kashia Rancheria, said in a public hearing prior to the Commission August 5 vote, “What you are doing to us is taking the food out of our mouths. When the first settlers came to the coast, they didn’t how to feed themselves. Our people showed them how to eat out of the ocean. In my opinion, this was a big mistake.”
Everybody who cares about the health of our oceans and coastal communities should support a full, independent and impartial investigation of the killing of “Jane ” the whale by a NOAA contract boat. At the same time, the MLPA process, rife with conflict of interests, mission creep and corruption of the democratic process, should be immediately suspended.
Ocean Power Technologies Inc. has signed an exclusive agreement with three Japanese companies to develop a demonstration wave energy station in Japan. Idemitsu Kosan Co., Mitsui Engineering & Shipbuilding Co. and Japan Wind Development Co. comprise this consortium and have invited OPT to become a member of this Tokyo Wave Power Initiative.
This is OPT’s first venue in Japan and complements OPT’s global strategy to form alliances with strategic partners in key markets. OPT now has a range of power generation projects globally, including those in Oregon and Hawaii in the U.S., Scotland and Southwest England in the U.K., Spain, Australia and now Japan.
Under the anticipated agreement to build the demonstration plant, OPT said it will sell the equipment for the power station to the The companies in Initiative. And they will provide manufacturing and maintenance of the power stations and on-going plant operations, while OPT will provide its PowerBuoy technology and appropriate subsystems.
A first attempt fell victim to the crisis: now in the docks of Scotland’s ancient capital, a second-generation scarlet Sea Snake is being prepared to harness the waves of Britain’s northern islands to generate electricity.
Dwarfed by 180 metres of tubing, scores of engineers clamber over the device, which is designed to dip and ride the swelling sea with each move being converted into power to be channelled through subsea cables.
Due to be installed next spring at the European Marine Energy Centre (EMEC) in Orkney, northern Scotland, the wave power generator was ordered by German power company E.ON, reflecting serious interest in an emerging technology which is much more expensive than offshore wind.
Interest from the utility companies is driven by regulatory requirements to cut carbon emissions from electricity generation, and it helps in a capital-intensive sector.
Venture capitalists interested in clean tech projects typically have shorter horizons for required returns than the 10-20 years such projects can take, so the utilities’ deeper pockets and solid capital base are useful.
“Our view … is this is a 2020 market place,” said Amaan Lafayette, E.ON’s marine development manager. “We would like to see a small-scale plant of our own in water in 2015-2017, built on what we are doing here. It’s a kind of generation we haven’t done before.”
The World Energy Council has estimated the market potential for wave energy at more than 2,000 terawatt hours a year — or about 10% of world electricity consumption — representing capital expenditure of more than 500 billion pounds ($790 billion).
Island nation Britain has a leading role in developing the technology for marine power, which government advisor the Carbon Trust says could in future account for 20% of the country’s electricity. The government is stepping up support as part of a 405 million pound investment in renewable energy to help its ambition of cutting carbon emissions by 80% by 2050 from 1990 levels, while securing energy supply. (The challenge is more about getting to a place where we are comparable with other renewable technologies… We want to get somewhere around offshore wind,” said Lafayette.)
Britain’s Crown Estate, which owns the seabed within 12 nautical miles of the coast, is also holding a competition for a commercial marine energy project in Pentland Firth in northern Scotland.
Besides wave power, Britain is testing systems to extract the energy from tides: private company Marine Current Turbines Ltd (MCT) last year opened the world’s first large-scale tidal turbine SeaGen in Northern Ireland.
DEVELOPING LIKE WIND
“We are often compared to the wind industry 20 years ago,” said Andrew Scott, project development manager at Pelamis Wave Power Ltd, which is developing the Sea Snake system, known as P2. Standing beside the train-sized serpent, Pelamis’ Scott said wave power projects are taking a variety of forms, which he said was similar to the development of the wind turbine. “You had vertical axis, horizontal axis and every kind of shapes before the industry consolidated on what you know as acceptable average modern day turbines.”
The Edinburgh Snake follows a pioneering commercial wave power project the company set up in Portugal last September, out of action since the collapse of Australian-based infrastructure group Babcock & Brown which held a majority share. “It’s easy to develop your prototypes and models in the lab, but as soon as you put them in water, it swallows capital,” said John Liljelund, CEO of Finnish wave energy firm AW-Energy, which just received $4.4 million from the European Union to develop its WaveRoller concept in Portugal.
At present, industry executives say marine power costs about double that from offshore wind farms, which require investment of around 2-3 million euros per megawatt. Solar panels cost about 3-4 million per megawatt, and solar thermal mirror power about 5 million.
UTILITY ACTION
Other utility companies involved in wave power trials include Spain’s Iberdrola, which has a small experimental wave farm using floating buoys called “Power Take- offs” off the coast of northern Spain. It is examining sites for a subsea tidal turbine project made by Norwegian company Hammerfest Strom.
Countries developing the technology besides Britain include Portugal, Ireland, Spain, South Korea and the United States: about 100 companies are vying for a share of the market, but only a handful have tested their work in the ocean.
Privately owned Pelamis has focussed on wave energy since 1998, has its own full-scale factory in Leith dock and sees more orders for the second generation in prospect.
Lafayette said E.ON examined more than 100 devices since 2001 before picking Sea Snake for its first ocean project, a three-year test: “They have a demonstrable track record … and commercial focus and business focus.”
A single Sea Snake has capacity of 750 kilowatts: by around 2015, Pelamis hopes each unit will have capacity of 20 megawatts, or enough to power about 30,000 homes.
Neither Pelamis nor E.ON would elaborate on the cost of the Sea Snake, but they said the goal is to bring it down to the level of offshore wind farms.
KATE GALBRAITH, The New York Times, August 27, 2009
When Greg Hare looked into putting solar panels on his ranch-style home in Magnolia, Tex., last year, he decided he could not afford it. “I had no idea solar was so expensive,” he recalled.
But the cost of solar panels has plunged lately, changing the economics for many homeowners. Mr. Hare ended up paying $77,000 for a large solar setup that he figures might have cost him $100,000 a year ago.
“I just thought, ‘Wow, this is an opportunity to do the most for the least,’ ” Mr. Hare said.
For solar shoppers these days, the price is right. Panel prices have fallen about 40% since the middle of last year, driven down partly by an increase in the supply of a crucial ingredient for panels, according to analysts at the investment bank Piper Jaffray.
The price drops — coupled with recently expanded federal incentives — could shrink the time it takes solar panels to pay for themselves to 16 years, from 22 years, in places with high electricity costs, according to Glenn Harris, chief executive of SunCentric, a solar consulting group. That calculation does not include state rebates, which can sometimes improve the economics considerably.
American consumers have the rest of the world to thank for the big solar price break.
Until recently, panel makers had been constrained by limited production of polysilicon, which goes into most types of panels. But more factories making the material have opened, as have more plants churning out the panels themselves — especially in China.
“A ton of production, mostly Chinese, has come online,” said Chris Whitman, the president of U.S. Solar Finance, which helps arrange bank financing for solar projects.
At the same time, once-roaring global demand for solar panels has slowed, particularly in Europe, the largest solar market, where photovoltaic installations are forecast to fall by 26% this year compared with 2008, according to Emerging Energy Research, a consulting firm. Much of that drop can be attributed to a sharp slowdown in Spain. Faced with high unemployment and an economic crisis, Spain slashed its generous subsidy for the panels last year because it was costing too much.
Many experts expect panel prices to fall further, though not by another 40%.
Manufacturers are already reeling from the price slump. For example, Evergreen Solar, which is based in Massachusetts, recently reported a second-quarter loss that was more than double its loss from a year earlier.
But some manufacturers say that cheaper panels could be a good thing in the long term, spurring enthusiasm among customers and expanding the market.
“It’s important that these costs and prices do come down,” said Mike Ahearn, the chief executive of First Solar, a panel maker based in Tempe, Ariz.
First Solar recently announced a deal to build two large solar arrays in Southern California to supply that region’s dominant utility. But across the United States, the installation of large solar systems — the type found on commercial or government buildings — has been hurt by financing problems, and is on track to be about the same this year as in 2008, according to Emerging Energy Research.
The smaller residential sector continues to grow: In California, by far the largest market in the country, residential installations in July were up by more than 50% compared with a year earlier. With prices dropping, that momentum looks poised to continue.
John Berger, chief executive of Standard Renewable Energy, the company in Houston that put panels on Mr. Hare’s home, said that his second-quarter sales rose by more than 225% from the first quarter.
“Was that as a product of declining panel prices? Almost certainly yes,” Mr. Berger said.
Expanded federal incentives have also helped spur the market. Until this year, homeowners could get a 30% tax credit for solar electric installations, but it was capped at $2,000. That cap was lifted on Jan. 1.
Mr. Hare in Texas cited the larger tax credit, which sliced about $23,000 from his $77,000 bill, as a major factor in his decision to go solar, in addition to the falling panel prices. Sensing a good deal, he even got a larger system than he had originally planned — going from 42 panels to 64. The electric bill on his 7,000-square-foot house and garage has typically run $600 to $700 a month, but he expects a reduction of 40-80%.
Mr. Berger predicts that with panel prices falling and the generous federal credit in place, utilities will start lowering rebates they offer to homeowners who put panels on their roofs.
One that has already done so is the Salt River Project, the main utility in Phoenix, which cut its homeowners’ rebate by 10% in June. Lori Singleton, the utility’s sustainability manager, said the utility had recently spent more than it budgeted for solar power, a result of a surge in demand as more solar installers moved into Arizona and government incentives kicked in.
California has been steadily bringing down its rebates. An impending 29% cut in rebates offered within the service area of Pacific Gas and Electric, the dominant utility in Northern California, means that “with the module price drop over the last few months, it is pretty much a wash,” Bill Stewart, president of SolarCraft, an installer in Novato, Calif., said in an e-mail message.
Even if falling rebates cancel out some of the solar panel price slump, more innovative financing strategies are also helping to make solar affordable for homeowners. This year about a dozen states — following moves by California and Colorado last year — have enacted laws enabling solar panels to be paid off gradually, through increased property taxes, after a municipality first shoulders the upfront costs.
Some installers have adopted similar approaches. Danita Hardy, a homeowner in Phoenix, had been put off by the prospect of spending $20,000 for solar panels — until she spotted a news item about a company called SunRun that takes on the upfront expense and recovers its costs gradually, in a lease deal, essentially through the savings in a homeowner’s electric bill.
“I thought well, heck, this might be doable,” said Ms. Hardy, who wound up having to lay out only $800 to get 15 solar panels for her home.
TODD WOODY, The New York Times, September 30, 2009
In a rural corner of Nevada reeling from the recession, a bit of salvation seemed to arrive last year. A German developer, Solar Millennium, announced plans to build two large solar farms here that would harness the sun to generate electricity, creating hundreds of jobs.
But then things got messy. The company revealed that its preferred method of cooling the power plants would consume 1.3 billion gallons of water a year, about 20% of this desert valley’s available water.
Now Solar Millennium finds itself in the midst of a new-age version of a Western water war. The public is divided, pitting some people who hope to make money selling water rights to the company against others concerned about the project’s impact on the community and the environment.
“I’m worried about my well and the wells of my neighbors,” George Tucker, a retired chemical engineer, said on a blazing afternoon.
Here is an inconvenient truth about renewable energy: It can sometimes demand a huge amount of water. Many of the proposed solutions to the nation’s energy problems, from certain types of solar farms to biofuel refineries to cleaner coal plants, could consume billions of gallons of water every year.
“When push comes to shove, water could become the real throttle on renewable energy,” said Michael E. Webber, an assistant professor at the University of Texas in Austin who studies the relationship between energy and water.
Conflicts over water could shape the future of many energy technologies. The most water-efficient renewable technologies are not necessarily the most economical, but water shortages could give them a competitive edge.
In California, solar developers have already been forced to switch to less water-intensive technologies when local officials have refused to turn on the tap. Other big solar projects are mired in disputes with state regulators over water consumption.
To date, the flashpoint for such conflicts has been the Southwest, where dozens of multibillion-dollar solar power plants are planned for thousands of acres of desert. While most forms of energy production consume water, its availability is especially limited in the sunny areas that are otherwise well suited for solar farms.
At public hearings from Albuquerque to San Luis Obispo, Calif., local residents have sounded alarms over the impact that this industrialization will have on wildlife, their desert solitude and, most of all, their water.
Joni Eastley, chairwoman of the county commission in Nye County, Nev., which includes Amargosa Valley, said at one hearing that her area had been “inundated” with requests from renewable energy developers that “far exceed the amount of available water.”
Many projects involve building solar thermal plants, which use cheaper technology than the solar panels often seen on roofs. In such plants, mirrors heat a liquid to create steam that drives an electricity-generating turbine. As in a fossil fuel power plant, that steam must be condensed back to water and cooled for reuse.
The conventional method is called wet cooling. Hot water flows through a cooling tower where the excess heat evaporates along with some of the water, which must be replenished constantly. An alternative, dry cooling, uses fans and heat exchangers, much like a car’s radiator. Far less water is consumed, but dry cooling adds costs and reduces efficiency — and profits.
The efficiency problem is especially acute with the most tried-and-proven technique, using mirrors arrayed in long troughs. “Trough technology has been more financeable, but now trough presents a separate risk — water,” said Nathaniel Bullard, a solar analyst with New Energy Finance, a London research firm.
That could provide opportunities for developers of photovoltaic power plants, which take the type of solar panels found on residential rooftops and mount them on the ground in huge arrays. They are typically more expensive and less efficient than solar thermal farms but require a relatively small amount of water, mainly to wash the panels.
In California alone, plans are under way for 35 large-scale solar projects that, in bright sunshine, would generate 12,000 megawatts of electricity, equal to the output of about 10 nuclear power plants.
Their water use would vary widely. BrightSource Energy’s dry-cooled Ivanpah project in Southern California would consume an estimated 25 million gallons a year, mainly to wash mirrors. But a wet-cooled solar trough power plant barely half Ivanpah’s size proposed by the Spanish developer Abengoa Solar would draw 705 million gallons of water in an area of the Mojave Desert that receives scant rainfall.
One of the most contentious disputes is over a proposed wet-cooled trough plant that NextEra Energy Resources, a subsidiary of the utility giant FPL Group, plans to build in a dry area east of Bakersfield, Calif.
NextEra wants to tap freshwater wells to supply the 521 million gallons of cooling water the plant, the Beacon Solar Energy Project, would consume in a year, despite a state policy against the use of drinking-quality water for power plant cooling.
Mike Edminston, a city council member from nearby California City, warned at a hearing that groundwater recharge was already “not keeping up with the utilization we have.”
The fight over water has moved into the California Legislature, where a bill has been introduced to allow renewable energy power plants to use drinking water for cooling if certain conditions are met.
“By allowing projects to use fresh water, the bill would remove any incentives that developers have to use technologies that minimize water use,” said Terry O’Brien, a California Energy Commission deputy director.
NextEra has resisted using dry cooling but is considering the feasibility of piping in reclaimed water. “At some point if costs are just layered on, a project becomes uncompetitive,” said Michael O’Sullivan, a senior vice president at NextEra.
Water disputes forced Solar Millennium to abandon wet cooling for a proposed solar trough power plant in Ridgecrest, Calif., after the water district refused to supply the 815 million gallons of water a year the project would need. The company subsequently proposed to dry cool two other massive Southern California solar trough farms it wants to build in the Mojave Desert.
“We will not do any wet cooling in California,” said Rainer Aringhoff, president of Solar Millennium’s American operations. “There are simply no plants being permitted here with wet cooling.”
One solar developer, BrightSource Energy, hopes to capitalize on the water problem with a technology that focuses mirrors on a tower, producing higher-temperature steam than trough systems. The system can use dry cooling without suffering a prohibitive decline in power output, said Tom Doyle, an executive vice president at BrightSource.
The greater water efficiency was one factor that led VantagePoint Venture Partners, a Silicon Valley venture capital firm, to invest in BrightSource. “Our approach is high sensitivity to water use,” said Alan E. Salzman, VantagePoint’s chief executive. “We thought that was going to be huge differentiator.”
Even solar projects with low water consumption face hurdles, however. Tessera Solar is planning a large project in the California desert that would use only 12 million gallons annually, mostly to wash mirrors. But because it would draw upon a severely depleted aquifer, Tessera may have to buy rights to 10 times that amount of water and then retire the pumping rights to the water it does not use. For a second big solar farm, Tessera has agreed to fund improvements to a local irrigation district in exchange for access to reclaimed water.
“We have a challenge in finding water even though we’re low water use,” said Sean Gallagher, a Tessera executive. “It forces you to do some creative deals.”
In the Amargosa Valley, Solar Millennium may have to negotiate access to water with scores of individuals and companies who own the right to stick a straw in the aquifer, so to speak, and withdraw a prescribed amount of water each year.
“There are a lot of people out here for whom their water rights are their life savings, their retirement,” said Ed Goedhart, a local farmer and state legislator, as he drove past pockets of sun-beaten mobile homes and luminescent patches of irrigated alfalfa. Farmers will be growing less of the crop, he said, if they decide to sell their water rights to Solar Millennium.
“We’ll be growing megawatts instead of alfalfa,” Mr. Goedhart said.
While water is particularly scarce in the West, it is becoming a problem all over the country as the population grows. Daniel M. Kammen, director of the Renewable and Appropriate Energy Laboratory at the University of California, Berkeley, predicted that as intensive renewable energy development spreads, water issues will follow.
“When we start getting 20%, 30% or 40% of our power from renewables,” Mr. Kammen said, “water will be a key issue.”
Editor’s Note: When walking Manny, my dog, at Seaside Beach on the Mendocino coast on October 3rd, I noticed evidence from the tsunami in the dramatically high water markings left behind and advised below:
Ukiah Daily Journal, September 29, 2009
A 25-inch tsunami is expected to hit the Mendocino Coast tonight at 8:53 p.m., according to county and federal officials.
An 8-magnitude earthquake Tuesday morning near Pago Pago, American Samoa triggered a tsunami advisory for the California coast. The National Weather Service issued the advisory for the California and Oregon coasts, warning of possible dangerous currents.
“We’re advising people not to go out in their boats and stay away from low-lying areas,” Mendocino County Sheriff Tom Allman said Tuesday evening.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s West Coast and Alaska Tsunami Warning Center says an advisory means that a tsunami capable of producing strong currents or waves dangerous to persons in or very near the water in imminent or expected.
Widespread inundation is not expected.
The waves are expected to begin arriving about 9 p.m. and built toward the most hazardous period early Wednesday morning.
Editor’s Note: The family of Allison Krause seeks and supports the creation of Four Days In May, the Kent State Truth Tribunal, a collaborative, multimedia, sharing event to dialog, document, discover and uncover the truth in the events leading to the killing of four students and wounding of nine at the Kent State Massacre.
MendoCoastCurrent, October 3, 2009 & December 14, 2009
Allison dying at Kent State
On May 4, 1970, 67 bullets were fired at protesting anti-Viet Nam war students on the Kent State University campus. The 13-second discharge of the Ohio National Guard weapons devastatingly concluded four days of protests with the death of four and wounding of nine young American students.
In courtrooms over the next 10 years, all the way to the US Supreme Court and back, National Guardsmen and Ohio government officials testified the guardsmen marched away from the protesting Kent State students, up a hill, then turned in unison, to discharge M-1 rifles into unarmed, protesting students, many over a football field away — all claiming it occurred without an ‘order to shoot.’
It is believed, yet obviously still-to-be-proven, that an ‘order to shoot’ was indeed given at Kent State. Common sense and physics alone support this.
This past May 4, 2009, Laurel Krause spoke for her sister, slain student Allison Krause (read her talk here: http://bit.ly/32U7gK). She concluded, “Triggers were not pulled accidentally at Kent State.” Allison’s family continues to search for the truth about the killings at Kent State.
With the 40th memorial approaching quickly, the Krause family is wishing to work with others to create a tribunal over the first four days in May at the Kent State University campus to uncover the facts about what occurred forty years earlier.
We are now launching ‘Four Days in May, the Kent State Truth Tribunal’ to discover, uncover and examine what really happened and to learn the REAL TRUTHS that occurred on those four days in American history. Let’s explore through art, music, video interviews, poetry, enactments, rituals and discussions.
We see this as appropriate BOOKENDS to the event. When we uncover the final, long-sought-after truths of what occurred those Four Days in May so long ago…the truth shall set us free, history shall be corrected from hence day forth and we will share in this beautiful healing!
Won’t you please join us by helping to uncover the truth at Kent State at the 40th?
AW-Energy, a Finnish renewable energy company developer of WaveRoller, a patented wave energy technology, has signed a $4.4M (3 million euros) contract with the European Union to demonstrate its technology.
The contract between AW-Energy and the EU is the first one under the “CALL FP7 – Demonstration of the innovative full size systems.” Several leading wave energy companies competed in the CALL. The contract includes a 3 million euro or $4.4M US grant agreement, providing financial backing for the demonstration project.
The project goal is to manufacture and deploy the first grid-connected WaveRoller unit in Portuguese waters. The exact installation site is located near the town of Peniche, which is famous for its strong waves and known as “Capital of the waves.” The nominal capacity of the WaveRoller is 300 kW and the project will be testing for one year.
The ‘Dream Team’ consortium is led by AW-Energy and includes companies from Finland, Portugal, Germany and Belgium. Large industrial participants include Bosch-Rexroth and ABB, together with renewable energy operator Eneolica and wave energy specialist Wave Energy Center, supporting with their experience to ensure successful implementation of the project.
“The experience of our dream team consortium is a significant asset to the project, and we are thrilled about this real pan-European co-operation. AW-Energy has been working hard the last three years with two sea installed prototypes, tank testing and CFD (Computational Fluid Dynamics) simulations. Now we have the site, grid connection permission, installation license and the technology ready for the demonstration phase,” says John Liljelund, CEO at AW-Energy.
PODESTA, GORDON, HENDRICKS & GOLDSTEIN, Center for American Progress, September 21, 2009
With unemployment at 9.5%, and oil and energy price volatility driving businesses into the ground, we cannot afford to wait any longer. It is time for a legislative debate over a comprehensive clean energy investment plan. We need far more than cap and trade alone.
The United States is having the wrong public debate about global warming. We are asking important questions about pollution caps and timetables, carbon markets and allocations, but we have lost sight of our principal objective: building a robust and prosperous clean energy economy. This is a fundamentally affirmative agenda, rather than a restrictive one. Moving beyond pollution from fossil fuels will involve exciting work, new opportunities, new products and innovation, and stronger communities. Our current national discussion about constraints, limits, and the costs of transition misses the real excitement in this proposition. It is as if, on the cusp of an Internet and telecommunications revolution, debate centered only on the cost of fiber optic cable. We are missing the big picture here.
Let’s be clear: Solving global warming means investment. Retooling the energy systems that fuel our economy will involve rebuilding our nation’s infrastructure. We will create millions of middle-class jobs along the way, revitalize our manufacturing sector, increase American competitiveness, reduce our dependence on oil, and boost technological innovation. These investments in the foundation of our economy can also provide an opportunity for more broadly shared prosperity through better training, stronger local economies, and new career ladders into the middle class. Reducing greenhouse gas pollution is critical to solving global warming, but it is only one part of the work ahead. Building a robust economy that grows more vibrant as we move beyond the Carbon Age is the greater and more inspiring challenge.
Reducing greenhouse gas emissions to avert dangerous global warming is a moral challenge, but it is also an economic, national security, social, and environmental imperative. The “cap and trade” provisions, which will set limits on pollution and create a market for emissions reductions that will ultimately drive down the cost of renewable energy and fuel, represent a very important first step and a major component in the mix of policies that will help build the coming low-carbon economy. But limiting emissions and establishing a price on pollution is not the goal in itself, and we will fall short if that is all we set out to do. Rather, cap and trade is one key step to reach the broader goal of catalyzing the transformation to an efficient and sustainable low-carbon economy. With unemployment at 9.5%, and oil and energy price volatility driving businesses into the ground, we cannot afford to wait any longer. It is time for a legislative debate over a comprehensive clean energy investment plan. We need far more than cap and trade alone.
This is not just an exercise in rhetoric. Articulating and elevating a comprehensive plan to invest in clean energy systems and more efficient energy use will affect policy development and the politics surrounding legislation now moving through the Senate, as well as international negotiations underway around the globe. The current debate, which splits the issue into the two buckets of “cap and trade” and “complementary policies,” has missed the comprehensive nature of the challenge and its solutions. It also emphasizes the challenge of pollution control instead of organizing policy for increased development, market growth, reinvestment in infrastructure, and job creation through the transition to a more prosperous, clean energy economy.
This paper lays out the framework for just such an investment-driven energy policy, the pieces of which work together to level the playing field for clean energy and drive a transformation of the economy. Importantly, many elements of this positive clean-energy investment framework are already codified within existing legislation such as the American Clean Energy and Security Act, passed by House of Representatives earlier this year. But with all the attention given to limiting carbon, too little attention has been placed on what will replace it. These critical pieces of America’s clean energy strategy should be elevated in the policy agenda and political debate as we move forward into the Senate, and used to help move legislation forward that advances a proactive investment and economic revitalization strategy for the nation.
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Allison Krause was slain at Kent State University on May 4, 1970 by the Ohio National Guard. She was protesting against the VietNam war on her Ohio university campus.
