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In our country’s race to become more energy independent, offshore wind farms have taken a back seat to the offshore drilling debate that is currently heating up in our politics.  Realistically, we could be seeing these offshore wind farms begin to pop-up off the Atlantic coast sometime in the near future, way before any oil rigs.  CNN.com tells us:

Delaware hopes to be the first state to construct a wind farm off its coast. The project, scheduled to be completed in 2012, is one of several offshore wind proposals that have cleared significant hurdles in recent months.

Proponents say wind offers more long-term energy independence than offshore oil. Residents along the Eastern seaboard are embracing it as a stable-priced, environmentally friendly energy alternative.

“When people see the price of gas hit $4, they are very open to having discussions about alternatives,” said Stephen Smith, executive director of the Southern Alliance for Clean Energy, a nonprofit group.

Wind energy today accounts for only 1 percent of the nation’s electricity. A May report from the Energy Department concluded wind energy could generate 20 percent by 2030, with offshore sources accounting for nearly 20 percent of that. Projects mostly would be located along the Atlantic coast because the seabed floor elsewhere drops off too quickly to anchor turbines.

Offshore wind farms present a promising source of unlimited energy.  According to an article written by TreeHugger.com, there is as much potential wind power off our coasts as the current capacity of all power plants in the U.S. combined. [Continue Reading →]

With the close of this years arctic ice retreat and this years melt is just another reason to have scientists worrying.  While not quite reaching the extent of the last year, the 2008 season proved to be the second lowest on record.

Overview of conditions

On September 12, 2008 sea ice extent dropped to 4.52 million square kilometers (1.74 million square miles). This appears to have been the lowest point of the year, as sea has now begun its annual cycle of growth in response to autumn cooling.

The 2008 minimum is the second-lowest recorded since 1979, and is 2.24 million square kilometers (0.86 million square miles) below the 1979 to 2000 average minimum.

Conditions in context

Despite overall cooler summer temperatures, the 2008 minimum extent is only 390,000 square kilometers (150,000 square miles), or 9.4%, more than the record-setting 2007 minimum. The 2008 minimum extent is 15.0% less than the next-lowest minimum extent set in 2005 and 33.1% less than the average minimum extent from 1979 to 2000.

This season further reinforces the long-term downward trend of sea ice extent.

Overlay of 2007 and 2008 at September minimum

The spatial pattern of the 2008 minimum extent was different than that of 2007. This year did not have the substantial ice loss in the central Arctic, north of the Chukchi and East Siberian Seas. However, 2008 showed greater loss in the Beaufort, Laptev, and Greenland Seas.

Unlike last year, this year saw the opening of the Northern Sea Route, the passage through the Arctic Ocean along the coast of Siberia. However, while the shallow Amundsen’s Northwest Passage opened in both years, the deeper Parry’s Channel of the Northwest Passage did not quite open in 2008.

(source: NSIDC)

Obviously, greatly reducing CO2 emissions from the burning fossil fuels is the ideal solution for fighting global warming.  However, what if there is more we can do?  Well, researchers John Latham of the University of Manchester and Stephen Salter of the University of Edinburgh have proposed a radical idea that could actually counter the warming effect caused by increased CO2 emissions and induce cooling.

The idea: developing a fleet of wind powered cloud seeding yachts.  These yachts would pump salty sea water particles into the air, thus increasing the reflectivity of clouds covering 25% of the worlds water mass.  By increasing the the amount of solar energy reflected back into space, this form of cloud seeding would have a cooling effect on the earth’s atmosphere.

The yachts would be unmanned and operated via GPS positioning and the ideal location for these vessels is in the southern oceans, where most of this type of low-level cloud cover is.  Also, Flettner rotors would be used to power the yacht and turbines attached to the hull would generate the operational power, including the power needed for the spraying, making sea water the only raw material required.

They claim that a mere 3% increase in cloud reflectivity would fully counter the global warming affect caused by increased CO2 emissions and that this could be met with an estimated 1000 vessels, and as little as 50 vessels could produce a significant impact.

Of course, talk of cloud-seeding and essentially manipulating our atmosphere does not come without strong opposing arguments.  Many argue the costs or unintended consequences to our fragile ecosystem cannot be justified.  To this Latham and Salter claim various tests still need to be done, including implementation of the system on a small scale and that if an emergency did arise, the system can be turned off and conditions would return to normal within a couple of days.

Photo by AMagill

We all know the basics of knots. They rely on friction to cinch against themselves or an object, they reduce the breaking strength of a line and a good one is easy to remove but what about randomly created knots? Doug Smith, a physics professor at the University of California set to find out. The New York Times tells us:

Working with his research assistant Dorian Raymer, he took some string — about the thickness of a computer-mouse cord — and dropped it into a small square plastic box. They spun the box around for 10 seconds, then opened it up. Sure enough, they found “this really monster, complex knot,” Smith says. Then they repeated the experiment a dizzying 3,415 more times, using strings of different lengths and boxes of larger sizes, to see whether there were any rules that governed how badly the string knotted.In the end, one law emerged: The longer the string, the more likely it is to form a knot. String that was 1.5 feet or shorter never got tangled up. But “as the string gets longer, the probability of a knot forming goes up and up,” Smith says, at least to 18 feet. Flexibility matters, too. The more pliable the string, the more likely it is to knot spontaneously.

Trying to figure out how to tie a knot? Try Grog’s Animated Knots.

The Star Tribune points us to a new prehistoric discovery;

Remains of a bus-sized prehistoric “monster” reptile found on a remote Arctic island may be a new species never before recorded, researchers said Tuesday.

Initial excavation on the Svalbard islands, 300 miles north of Norway’s mainland, in August yielded the remains, teeth, skull fragments and vertebrae of a reptile estimated to measure nearly 40 feet long, said Joern Harald Hurum of the University of Oslo. It appears to be the same species as a sea predator whose remains were found nearby last year.

Hurum’s team described those 150-million-year-old remains as belonging to a short-necked plesiosaur measuring more than 30 feet — “as long as a bus … with teeth larger than cucumbers.” It was a voracious reptile often described as the Tyrannosaurus rex of the oceans.

CLICK HERE for the project team’s website.

Physics World points us to an article from the most respected journal in science; Nature. They tell us;

Every so often mariners report the sighting of a huge wave towering up to 30 m above the regular swells of the ocean surface. No-one is sure why these rogue waves form, but now physicists in the US and Germany have managed to produce equivalent optical rogue waves by launching laser pulses into photonic-crystal fibres. Having performed computer simulations of the optical system, the researchers suggest that optical rogue waves, and therefore oceanic rogue waves, are seeded by noise.

A photonic-crystal fibre is a transparent strand containing hundreds of regularly-spaced air holes running throughout its length. The alternating refractive index produced by this structure has a non-linear effect on light waves, shifting their frequency depending on the wave intensity.

When a wave pulse — which comprises many waves with a bell-shaped distribution of frequencies — enters a photonic crystal fibre, its frequency spectrum is broadened. Rogue waves are examples of wave pulses, but their short, sharp nature requires too broad a frequency spectrum to be produced by this process alone.

Ok this isn’t the easiest article to read but is well worth the effort. You can find the entire article HERE.

Photo by OneEighteen

We have some bad news to report for mates working the 00-04 watch. Like UV rays and diesel exhaust fumes, working the graveyard shift will soon be listed as a “probable” cause of cancer. The Associated Press tells us;

Next month, the International Agency for Research on Cancer, the cancer arm of the World Health Organization, will add overnight shift work as a probable carcinogen.

The higher cancer rates don’t prove working overnight can cause cancer. There may be other factors common among graveyard shift workers that raise their risk for cancer.

However, scientists suspect that overnight work is dangerous because it disrupts the circadian rhythm, the body’s biological clock. The hormone melatonin, which can suppress tumor development, is normally produced at night.

If the graveyard shift theory eventually proves correct, millions of people worldwide could be affected. Experts estimate that nearly 20 percent of the working population in developed countries work night shifts.

They continue;

Scientists believe having lower melatonin levels can raise the risk of developing cancer. Light shuts down melatonin production, so people working in artificial light at night may have lower melatonin levels.

Sleep deprivation may be another factor in cancer risk. People who work at night are not usually able to completely reverse their day and night cycles.

“Night shift people tend to be day shift people who are trying to stay awake at night,” said Mark Rea, director of the Light Research Center at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in New York, who is not connected with the IARC analysis.

Not getting enough sleep makes your immune system vulnerable to attack, and less able to fight off potentially cancerous cells.

Confusing your body’s natural rhythm can also lead to a breakdown of other essential tasks. “Timing is very important,” Rea said. Certain processes like cell division and DNA repair happen at regular times.

Even worse than working an overnight shift is flipping between daytime and overnight work.

“The problem is re-setting your body’s clock,”

This article continues with advice and links for more information. To access it CLICK HERE.

Boing Boing and Cryptomundo bring us news of a new species of Killer Whale.

Revealing once again how little we know about our oceans’ inhabitants, researchers announced discovery of two new marine species, including a Dwarf Killer Whale in Antarctica and a new species of beaked whale in the tropical pacific. Loren Coleman has more over at Cryptomundo. From one of his posts about these animals:

The oceans hold many natural history treasures and wonders. New animals are being discovered at a faster rate from the seas than in freshwater or on land. But these finds from the marine environment often get little attention from Homo sapiens versus, say, a new giant peccary or a new monkey.

Overnight, famed marine biologist Bob Pitman shared with me breaking news about several new marine mammal species. The news will not get as much of a read as a fuzzy picture of a land mammal from the woods of Pennsylvania or of a rapid moving otter-like animal videotaped in Loch Ness. That’s a darn shame.

Link to “First Live Sightings of Shepherd’s Ziphiid,” Link to “New Species of Tropical Pacific Beaked Whale?,” Link to “Dwarf Killer Whale Discovered in Antarctica”

Telstar Logistics brings us the scoop on the construction of the new Bay Bridge in San Francisco. They write:

We live in a time of many wonders and miracles, and one of them is taking shape in San Francisco Bay. The new eastern span of the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge will replace the cantilevered span built in 1936. The old span was vulnerable to earthquakes — as the Bay Area discovered in 1989 — so the new structure is designed to be a bit less fragile.

Estimated to cost billions of dollars and six more years of construction this project will huge in scope and a topic likely to be discussed often in the maritime community. Read his full story HERE and be sure to click on the photo links.

If you prefer the other bay bridge visit his story: Backstage atop the Golden Gate Bridge

Fisherman have discovered thousands of Jumbo Squid off the Southern California coast this week. The site mongabay.com tells us:

Thousands of Jumbo squid (Dosidicus gigas) squid are appearing off the coast of Southern California, according to published reports.

Ventura County fishermen have caught hundreds of squid in recent days, according to the Associated Press.

The cephalopods, which can measure 6-feet long and weigh 100 pounds (40 kg) (though usually smaller), appear periodically in California waters. The species, also known as the Humboldt squid, is commonly found from Peru to Baja California but seems to be expanding its range according to researchers tracking the beasts. Hundreds washed up on San Diego and Orange county beaches in 2002 and 2005, a sign that the species may be on their way to becoming year-around residents according to the Los Angeles Times. No one is sure what causes Jumbo squid to end up on beaches. Jumbo squid invasion in California

While not as large as Colossal Squid these giants can grow upwards of 43ft and with a diameter over 1 foot possess the largest eyes of any living thing.

Interesting Links: [Continue Reading →]