East Coast states gearing-up for a push to develop “energy” on the Outer Continental Shelf.
Just days after California lawmakers rejected a proposal that would have approved the first new offshore oil leases in state waters in forty years, industry organizations are lining-up on the East Coast to tout the economic benefits of offshore oil and gas development. According to a new report (pdf) released by the Southeast Energy Alliance—a consortium of utilities, oil and gas companies, manufacturing associations, and major power purchasers—North Carolina alone could receive up to $577 million annually in revenue sharing payments from offshore energy development.
But even though the Department of Interior recently reported that the shallow coastal waters of the Mid-Atlantic—including those in and around North Carolina’s Outer Banks—are ripe for large-scale wind energy development, the report defines energy solely in terms of fossil fuel.
I can’t believe I’m writing an article about Justin Timberlake. On Saturday, the 27-year-old actor and singer opened the first LEED Platinum certified golf course in the United States.
The multi-talented Timberlake’s latest business venture, Mirimichi Lakes golf club in North Shelby County, Tennessee, opened Saturday after Timberlake christened the course with a 291-yard drive crushed down the middle of the fairway, after which, the singer and actor grinned and said, “nobody’s happier about this course.”
Texas start-up Baryonyx awarded two offshore wind energy leases
Which state’s waters will be the home of the United States’ first offshore wind farm? Will it be Massachusetts, where an eight-year battle for a wind farm near Cape Cod seems like it may never end? How about a little further south, in Rhode Island or New Jersey? Will it be Delaware, where Bluewater Wind hopes to develop a project that would provide almost 1/3 of the energy needed by Delmarva Power? What about other Mid-Atlantic states like North Carolina or Virginia, where the Department of Interior says sites with easily-developed shallow water wind resources dot the coastline?
Well, if you answered none of the above, you may be on to something.
Texas General Land Office last week awarded leases to Baryonyx, authorizing the company to develop wind farms on three sites, two of which are offshore, with a total potential capacity of 3,000 megawatts.
Shortly after winning approval from the California State Senate, a controversial deal that would have allowed the first new offshore oil leases in California state waters in forty years, was rejected by the California State Assembly by a vote of 43-30.
Danish scientists are developing a new wind turbine blade that mimics the stability found in hawk wings during highly-turbulent wind events.
The tremendous dynamic loads put on large wind turbine blades shortens the life of fiberglass blades, adding to the total cost of large-scale wind energy development. But researchers at the Risø National Laboratory for Sustainable Energy in Denmark are developing an elastic component for the trailing-edge of large wind turbine blades that could drastically lengthen the life of those blades, thereby reducing the frequency and likelihood of breakage — and ultimately reducing cost.
Bigfoot. Sasquatch. Whatever you want to call the legendary North American biped, it is likely the elusive beast will lose a portion of its existing habitat in the coastal and lowland regions of the northwestern United States as the climate warms. The good news? Bigfoot will be gaining a bunch of new land in the Rockies and up into Canada.
In a paper recently published in the Journal of Biogeography, biologist Jeff Lozier of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and his colleagues argue that a potential source of error in publicly available data employed in a commonly-used statistical modeling technique to predict the “ecological niche” of species may affect the accuracy of ecological niche models.
Using a database of sightings and footprints for Bigfoot in western North America, the researchers suggest that convincing distributions of an animals range can be generated from questionable data. By comparing the distribution of Bigfoot to that of a black bear, Lozier et al. “suggest that many sightings of this cryptozoid may be cases of mistaken identity.”
In other words, it’s not Bigfoot that is really the focus of the research by Lozier and his team, but rather the methodology used and the assumptions drawn from incomplete data.
On Friday, the St. Louis Cardinals will travel via Amtrak train from Washington D.C. to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania for a weekend series with the Phillies. The railroad road-trip will be the first time in over forty years the Cardinals have traveled via train.
Cardinals General Manager John Mozeliak told NPR that both he and the players were looking forward to the trip. “It’s very unusual for us, but it was something we looked into and it seemed to make a lot of sense,” said Mozeliak. “Plus it ends up shaving a significant amount of time off our travel.”
The Cardinals will ride in three privatized train cars that will be added to the standard train for the one hour, forty-five minute journey.
The good folks at Grist put together a comprehensive analysis of the 50 Senators’ treatment of energy and climate on their interwebs pages. And the results weren’t exactly flattering.
The Department of the Interior is proposing to cut the number of snowmobiles allowed per day into Yellowstone National Park by more than half.
While I know the details of climate policy can be a little dry at times, I didn’t know it was quite this sleep-inducing.
