Climate Journey series of films

These come from the British Guardian, and are presented by John Vidal and Dan Chung. Look to the right of the page to see the rest.

Here's the link:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/video/2010/nov/29/climate-change-andes-peru-water

And here's one embedded.

Chuing the fat on green energy race

From today's Guardian:

US energy secretary warns of 'Sputnik moment' in green technology race

Steven Chu says US must invest urgently in research and innovation to keep pace with China and other countries

MPBN on Fox Islands wind shear

Finally, the Maine public is getting some better information on wind shear and turbine noise.

http://www.mpbn.net/Home/tabid/36/ctl/ViewItem/mid/3478/ItemId/14310/Default.aspx

This is just a short news clip, but it mentions the proper reason for the unplanned noise.

Without understanding this complex phenomenon, you can't understand turbine planning, but Maine "Home Rule" planning regulations basically require amateur planning of wind power proposals, and have resulted in numerous restrictive ordinances, town by town, with many more in the pipeline, some of which essentially prohibit even the smallest and most innocuous of turbines (such as the Southwest Wind Power Air X) for noise planning reasons.

There's nothing wrong with Home Rule, or amateur involvement in planning, but we should understand that some things are complex and can't be easily understood without at least some hard work.

See the last post but one for the best information I've seen yet in the public domain.

MPBN of Fox Islands wind shear

http://www.mpbn.net/DesktopModules/PDGNews/MediaPlayer.aspx?PDGNewsStoryID=14310&PDGNewsMediaID=2498&TabID=36&ModuleID=3478

Excellent report on wind turbine noise from the Acoustic Ecology Institute

I finally had chance (on Thanksgiving morning!) to catch up with some of the New England Wind Energy Education Project (NEWEEP) webinars. NEWEEP is a service of NREL and DOE, and aims to provide good information on which to base a reasoned discussion of commercial and community-based wind power in the New England region.

What pleased me greatly was a very balanced report from Jim Cummings of the Acoustic Ecology Institute. The report is well-detailed and provides a wealth of reasoned and scientific explanation of noise concerns related to wind turbine siting. Read side by side with the survey results from a recent survey of Vinalhaven residents, which one of my students is analyzing for an independent study (preparatory to graduate school in the applied social sciences), things begin to make more sense.

And the broad comparison of different perceptions of a "proper" rural lifestyle fit in well with some work we did much, much earlier on Sense of Place, now (partly) available via Google Books preview (page 191).

The AEI report is in the form of a well-referenced PDF slideshow.

(Todd) Stern on Cancun

It must be confusing to some that two of the key players have the same last name.

http://fpc.state.gov/151748.htm

Abraham on Monkton, for class

Students in GL 4003, Global Change, who are interested in the validity of Christopher Monkton's opinions on climate change, recently quoted by a class visitor, are directed to this fairly exhaustively researched lecture by John Abraham, PhD (of the University of St. Thomas, MN.

It is possible to skip through to the various slides that address the questions raised in class.

http://www.stthomas.edu/engineering/jpabraham/