Everyone on board rig survived – no news on whether there is a leak.
To be continued…
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Update:
from the Los Angeles Times -
In the wake of the BP catastrophe, this is an extremely disturbing event,” said energy committee chairman Rep. Henry A. Waxman (D-Beverly Hills), who has led an investigation into the BP spill. “I call on the administration to immediately redouble safety reviews of all offshore drilling and platform operations in the gulf and take all appropriate action to ensure safety and protection of the environment.”
[...]
We find it ironic that the explosion happened one day after the American Petroleum Institute, the oil industry’s trade association, held a rally in Houston, Port Arthur and Corpus Christi, Texas, to lift the moratorium on deep-water drilling in the gulf,” said United Steelworkers International Vice President Gary Beevers in a statement. “Instead of holding political protests, the API and the industry should be helping the government ensure all the rigs are safe to operate so the moratorium can be removed sooner.”
You want to save money don’t you? How about energy? When I was growing up, it was a common site in my parent’s yard every single day. Now there are rules in many neighborhoods against such things. Will you take the time to go back to the basics?
from the Herald-News -
The recession has reintroduced us to a lot of things: home cooking, gardening, the notion of saving money.
There are signs it may also be breathing new life into another once ubiquitous habit: hanging clothes out to dry.
For many generations, the clothesline was a colorful and necessary part of the American landscape. Then came the invention of the forced air dryer and, seemingly overnight, Americans opted for the faster, easier – albeit more expensive and less energy efficient – method of drying clothes.
Yes, there was nothing like the smell sheets dried in the fresh air, rough sun-bleached towels, laundry that had to stay out overnight because it got stuck in a surprise rainstorm or underwear brought into the house that were put on by your sister to the sound of a scream as she was stung by a wasp. Those were the days.
Remember President Obama announcing the American Recovery and Reinvestment Smart Grid projects back in 2009? No? Well maybe this will refresh your memory:
In announcing the American Recovery and Reinvestment Smart Grid projects in October 2009, President Obama explained the importance of our transformation to a smarter grid:
“It will make our grid more secure and more reliable, saving us some of the $150 billion we lose each year during power outages. It will allow us to more effectively transport renewable energy generated in remote places to large population centers, so that a wind farm in rural South Dakota can power homes in Chicago. And by facilitating the creation of a clean energy economy, building this 21st-century energy infrastructure will help us lay a foundation for lasting growth and prosperity.”
Well, how about this?
WASHINGTON, D.C. — The idea of a national electricity smart grid — a system that links your home’s electrical system and appliances to a national data network — is a hot topic in energy conservation circles but have we really thought out the privacy implications? For instance, could your jacuzzi rat you out?
People got sick and people will get sick. And that’s all I have to say about that.
from McClatchy -
ANCHORAGE — You’d think that more than 20 years after the Exxon Valdez oil spill, scientists would know what, if any, long-term health dangers face the thousands of workers needed to clean up the Gulf of Mexico spill.
It’s a possibility – at least when it comes to news photography. Just think about it. There have been very few photos of this disaster, which has been dubbed as one of the worst environmental disasters in U.S. history. Basically we’ve seen a few of the oil soaked animals, some tar clean-up on shore, and the oil slick in the ocean from a distance. Do we have to wait until the hurricane season gets into full swing and the disaster blows inland to get the real picture?
from Newsweek -
As BP makes its latest attempt to plug its gushing oil well, news photographers are complaining that their efforts to document the slow-motion disaster in the Gulf of Mexico are being thwarted by local and federal officials—working with BP—who are blocking access to the sites where the effects of the spill are most visible. More than a month into the disaster, a host of anecdotal evidence is emerging from reporters, photographers, and TV crews in which BP and Coast Guard officials explicitly target members of the media, restricting and denying them access to oil-covered beaches, staging areas for clean-up efforts, and even flyovers.
It’s been no secret that Africa has an electricity supply problem. Ghana’s people suffer like those of many countries in Africa, but fare womewhat better. One of the casualties of no electricity is school children. Ben Markham, of Utah’s Empower Playgrounds, Inc. has a solution to help some of the children of Ghana.
from KSL.com -
Markham, a retired engineer, worked with Brigham Young University students to develop a merry-go-round that could harness enough energy to power special lanterns. Students could use the lanterns to study at night, a huge development for villages located outside Ghana’s spotty electrical grid.
EPI has also developed and installed an electricity-generating swing set, and a zip-line is in the works.
Markham said the first ideas for the merry-go-round generators were scratched on the backs of envelopes as he left his mission.
Near the equator, Ghana only gets 12 hours of sunlight. A young student with daytime chores has no chance to study at night without an artificial light source.
I’m not sure about the whole concept though. If children are working during the day on chores – how are there some playing on the merry-go-round during the day? And why are there some playing rather than going to school? In watching the video they were dressed in uniforms and were older children. It’s just a bit confusing as to when the children will be “playing” on the merry-go -round (besides of course recess time, which shouldn’t all be spent making electricity).
Oh, I’m not talking about those of you who are driving gas guzzling vehicles.
I’m talking about you who are lounging in your home in front of a huge HDTV….especially if it has a plasma screen. You are the most recent culprit of energy waste and will be under the watchful eye of government regulation.
from the Economist -
THE energy cops in California are clamping down again. Not content with the federal government’s voluntary Energy Star standard for home electronics, the Golden State’s energy commissioners voted unanimously on November 18th to introduce their own mandatory requirements for electricity-guzzling high-definition television (HDTV) sets. From the beginning of 2011 all new HDTVs with screens measuring up to 58 inches along a diagonal will have to use a third less electricity than today’s models. By 2013, their consumption will need to have fallen to half of present levels. The move is expected to save Californians up to $1 billion a year in electricity charges.
The state’s new mandatory requirements for television sets are expected to kick-start a national trend. As the biggest market in America, what California does today, the rest of the country tends to do tomorrow-if only because manufacturers find it too expensive to make different products for different regions.
“We said, ‘Eat wild salmon,’” said Astrid Scholz, vice president of knowledge systems at Ecotrust and one of the report’s authors. “But it made me a little uneasy…. There’s something wrong about catching an Alaska salmon, putting it on a helicopter, and then putting it on a jet to Moscow and then to New York so someone can eat their $50 dinner of fresh Copper River salmon.”
Should we not eat Fresh Maine lobster then? What about those fresh fruits from Chile? And what about your vacation overseas? You didn’t need to try the cuisine or chocolate.
I’m perfectly fine eating Wisconsin cheese curds. We used to do well living without foods when they were out of season. Now we’re spoiled. We could probably do without the fresh salmon – but should we do without them all? Will that be next?
Global warming? How about another way of cooling the economy.
This story makes nuclear power even more appealing. Is fly ash from an Indian coal-fired power plant the source of off-the-wall radiation that has caused deformities in children?
Let’s start with Florida- a new nuclear power plant is going to be built…Really! Gov. Charlie Crist and members of the Florida Cabinet gave the go-ahead for Florida’s first nuclear power plant in what seems like forever. At least there is a sense of vision.
from a 2005 article in City Journal -
We’re burning our 40 quads of raw fuel to generate about 3.5 trillion kilowatt-hours of electricity per year; if the automotive plug-and-play future does unfold on schedule, we’ll need as much as 7 trillion kWh per year by 2025. How should we generate the extra trillions of kilowatt-hours?
With hydrogen, the most optimistic Green visionaries reply-produced by solar cells or windmills. But it’s not possible to take such proposals seriously. New York City consumes so much energy that you’d need, at a minimum, to cover two cities with solar cells to power a single city (see “How Cities Green the Planet,” Winter 2000). No conceivable mix of solar and wind could come close to supplying the trillions of additional kilowatt-hours of power we’ll soon need. Nuclear power could do it-easily. In all key technical respects, it is the antithesis of solar power. [...] What’s more, North America has vast deposits of uranium ore, and scooping it up is no real challenge.
We need more nuclear plants. Luckily there are some leaders who know this. Senator Bob Bennett, R-Utah, sees the vision.
from the Salt Lake Tribune -
Bennett said Monday the nation needs to construct 100 new nuclear reactors by 2030 — doubling the nation’s current number of 104 plants — if it is serious about slashing carbon emissions while still producing enough electricity to keep up with American needs.
Bennett also brought together three other Republican senators and pro-nuclear energy witnesses to argue for constructing new nuke plants.
“It’s been my experience and my position…that one of the driving forces behind America’s economic growth has been our access to cheap energy,” Bennett said at a Republican-only hearing on energy development he organized. “If we’re going to survive in the kind of economy we want, we need to have access to cheap energy.”
That means, Bennett says, reviving the idea of building new nuclear reactors, a move the United States hasn’t made since 1977.
