tide charts and sun diagram stuffff

More on "Environment or Economy"

http://www.ktuu.com/Global/story.asp?S=11893021

Representative opposes Cook Inlet habitat designation

Millett introduced a resolution which opposes the designation of Cook Inlet as a critical habitat for beluga whales. (Daniel Hernandez/KTUU-DT)

by Ted Land
Wednesday, January 27, 2010

JUNEAU, Alaska -- Rep. Charisse Millett hopes the feds will pay attention to what she calls a threat to Alaska's economy.

The Anchorage Republican introduced a resolution on the House floor Wednesday which opposes the designation of Cook Inlet as a critical habitat for beluga whales.

The National Marine Fisheries Service is considering protecting 3,000 square miles of Cook Inlet, but Millett says this will only harm Southcentral Alaska's economy, as the state would have to meet new environmental regulations.

She also says shipping at the Port of Anchorage would be disrupted.

In October, the National Marine Fisheries Service released its annual Cook Inlet beluga population estimate.

They say the 2009 population of 321 whales is down 54 from the year before, and way down from more than 650 counted in 1994.

They say the population is not recovering as anticipated.

Millett looks at the numbers differently, and points out that in 2005, the population of Cook Inlet belugas was estimated at 278, and last year's estimate of 321 shows a 4 percent yearly increase.

She says the critical habitat is unjustified.

"I think that this is not a good idea. I think it's just a way to slow down development and I really think that ESA's and listings like this are used to a detriment to our state, especially, singled out all the time," Millett said.

House Joint Resolution 40 now goes to the House Resources Committee for consideration.

Contact Ted Land at tland@ktuu.com

WIND ENERGY

CIRI is investing in innovation, technology and a diverse portfolio of clean, dependable and economic energy options, including wind power.

FIRE ISLAND

A photo simulation demonstrates a possible wind farm on Fire Island. Image courtesy of Chugach Electric Association.

CIRI is developing Alaska's first commercial-scale wind energy project on company land on Fire Island, in Cook Inlet just west of Anchorage.

Southcentral Alaska uses natural gas to generate more than 90 percent of its electricity. However, Cook Inlet gas reserves are running out. Clean, renewable wind energy could diversify Railbelt power resources, which would increase reliability and decrease ratepayers' vulnerability to gas shortages and price increases.

The project is expected to include 36 turbines capable of producing 54 megawatts of electricity, enough to power more than 19,000 homes.

Site preparation on Fire Island is underway, with infrastructure work to commence in 2010.

The location was initially selected by Chugach Electric Association as a site that could provide commercial quantities of electric power to key load centers on the Railbelt grid.

WHY WIND?

- Wind energy is renewable, so it won't run out
- The long-term cost of wind-generated electricity is cheaper and more predictable than fossil-fuel powered sources
- Wind power reduces greenhouse gas emissions and other environmental impacts
- Wind power could offset the need to burn natural gas, so that Cook Inlet oil and gas reserves would last longer
- Using wind energy locally could let the state take full advantage of escalating petroleum prices by selling more Alaska oil and gas to the rest of the world
- Alaska wind energy resources would be built and operated in-state by Alaskans

http://www.ciri.com/content/company/FireIsland.aspx

Environment or Economy?

Apparently a Republican representative from Anchorage believes the economy trumps the environment.

http://www.ksrm.com/ksrm/news.asp?newsID=7924

Volcano Erupting

Here's a timelapse from youtube on the smoke coming from the volcano...

Hopefully we'll be able to see it!!

some people aren't helping

this just in: http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/jan/21/lisa-murkowski-epa-greenhouse-gases/print

infrastructural damage...solution?

at: http://online.wsj.com/article_email/SB10001424052748704576204574531373037560240-lMyQjAxMDA5MDAwNzEwNDcyWj.html

Keeping It Frozen

In Alaska, a low-tech solution helps the ground stay cold enough, for now

By JIM CARLTON

FAIRBANKS, Alaska—While the world debates the causes of climate change and what, if anything, to do about it, Alaskans are busy dealing with its consequences.

Permafrost, the frozen ground that lies just beneath the surface in most of the state, has become less stable in many areas, thanks in part to higher average air temperatures. It has begun to thaw in the warmer months and refreeze in the winter, causing shifts that wreak havoc on the structural integrity of the pipelines, railways, roads and buildings that sit on top of it.

"If we're going to build on frozen ground, we want to keep it frozen," says Dan White, director of the Institute of Northern Engineering at the University of Alaska Fairbanks.

To do that, engineers increasingly are turning to a low-tech solution: devices called thermosiphons that draw heat out of the ground. It's a solution that shows how effective even relatively simple ingenuity can be in the absence of a more comprehensive, policy-driven response to climate change. But Alaska's experience also shows the limits that such stopgap measures often run up against.

Alyeska Pipeline consultant Mike Mertz provides a look at how the company is coping with thawing permafrost on the Trans-Alaska Pipeline. The Wall Street Journal's Jim Carlton reports.

Alaska's permafrost has been degrading since 1982 amid record warm temperatures, according to a 2006 study funded by oil giant ConocoPhillips. Milder winters are keeping the permafrost in many areas from getting cold enough to stay frozen during summers that are also getting warmer. Between 1949 and 2007, average annual temperatures in Alaska rose 3.4 degrees Fahrenheit, including an increase of 6.3 degrees in the winter, according to the Alaska Climate Research Center at the University of Alaska Fairbanks.

Development worsens the problem by stripping vegetation, an effective insulator, from the surface, replacing it with heat-absorbing man-made materials or leaving the ground bare.

With permafrost thawing and refreezing in more of Alaska over recent years, highways and railroad tracks have to be constantly repaired because of cracks, heaving and sinking. All around Fairbanks, homes can be seen listing on foundations that have been unsettled as the permafrost underneath them has thawed, and buildings in many other parts of the state have the same problem.

That's where thermosiphons come in. The device essentially is a tube filled with gas that can't escape. Part of the tube is buried in the ground, with the top exposed in the air. As temperatures plunge in the winter, the gas condenses into a liquid and falls to the bottom of the tube.

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Jim Carlton/The Wall Street Journal

Thermosiphons protrude out of support beams on the Trans-Alaska Pipeline.

Heat Release

The relative warmth of the ground then causes the liquid to evaporate back into gas that rises to the top of the tube, where the heat it carries is dissipated into the air. The cycle keeps repeating itself, with no need for any kind of power source or any intervention other than maintenance. Scientists say the process cools the ground around a tube so much during the winter that it stays frozen even in summer.

Branching Out

Thermosiphons have been around in the Arctic for about 50 years. For most of that time they weren't used much outside of large infrastructure projects like the Trans-Alaska Pipeline, which is outfitted with about 120,000 of them. But they have been deployed more widely in recent years.

Arctic Foundations Inc., a company that specializes in ground-freezing systems, says its annual sales of the devices have jumped 50% over the past five years as it has installed them in hundreds of places in Alaska, including around schools and water tanks. The company, based in Anchorage, Alaska, has even used the devices as fence posts, since fences anchored by the usual kinds of posts are frequently "frost-jacked," or driven out of the ground by shifting soil, says Ed Yarmak, the firm's chief engineer.

One of the heaviest concentrations of thermosiphons is around Fairbanks, a metropolitan area of about 100,000 people. Among other uses, the devices ring a Federal Aviation Administration building, are stationed near utility poles and transmission towers, and have been installed along various roads in the area. On a one-mile stretch of Thompson Drive near the University of Alaska Fairbanks campus, engineers from the school put in a thermosiphon demonstration project five years ago. The devices are working as designed in keeping the ground frozen, says Doug Goering, dean of the school's college of engineering and mines.

The devices are being used in other Arctic regions, too. Arctic Foundations of Canada, an affiliate of the Alaskan company, says its sales of the devices have tripled over the past five years. That's partly because the thermosiphons have proved useful in shoring up structures in the many mines that have been opened in the Canadian Arctic in recent years, says John Jardine, president of the affiliate. Similar devices are being deployed in Russia and China, where they are helping stabilize the Qinghai-Tibet railroad.

Cost and Maintenance

While thermosiphons have proved effective, they aren't foolproof. Like any device, they sometimes malfunction. Alyeska Pipeline Service Co., an Anchorage-based company that operates the Trans-Alaska Pipeline, long ago embarked on a program to make sure that thermosiphons all along the pipeline keep working. Alyeska crews on the ground inspect the pipeline, using infrared cameras to scan the devices. If the telltale glow of heat being released is too dark, that indicates a gas blockage that may need repair.

In all, Alyeska has had to repair about 16,600 of its thermosiphons since 2001, or about 14% of the total, says Michelle Egan, an Alyeska spokeswoman.

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Jim Carlton/The Wall Street Journal

Thermosiphons flank a Federal Aviation Administration building in Fairbanks, Alaska. The devices help keep the permafrost frozen beneath buildings and infrastructure in Alaska by transferring heat out of the ground.

Also, while the use of thermosiphons has surged, cost is an issue for many users and potential users. The devices are available in different sizes, but typically each one cools an area no more than about 10 feet in diameter, so it can take many of them to protect a structure. To shore up a home with nine of the devices would cost around $20,000, and protecting infrastructure on a massive scale is of course far more expensive.

As a result, thermosiphons are being used strategically. For example, 14 of the devices were installed by Alaska state highway officials along a stretch of Chena Hot Springs Road outside Fairbanks about 16 years ago. The reason: The location lies at the bottom of a hill, where there is more permafrost, and so more permafrost-related problems, than in many steeper places, says John Zarling, professor emeritus of mechanical engineering at the University of Alaska Fairbanks.

"It's too costly to protect the whole world," Mr. Zarling explains. "So you pick the problem areas."

The Trouble with Wilderness; or, Getting Back to the Wrong Nature

by William Cronon, May 2005

The time has come to rethink wilderness.

This will seem a heretical claim to many environmentalists, since the idea of wilderness has for decades been a fundamental tenet—indeed, a passion—of the environmental movement, especially in the United States. For many Americans wilderness stands as the last remaining place where civilization, that all too human disease, has not fully infected the earth. It is an island in the polluted sea of urban-industrial modernity, the one place we can turn for escape from our own too-muchness. Seen in this way, wilderness presents itself as the best antidote to our human selves, a refuge we must somehow recover if we hope to save the planet. As Henry David Thoreau once famously declared, “In Wildness is the preservation of the World.” (1)


But is it? The more one knows of its peculiar history, the more one realizes that wilderness is not quite what it seems. Far from being the one place on earth that stands apart from humanity, it is quite profoundly a human creation—indeed, the creation of very particular human cultures at very particular moments in human history. It is not a pristine sanctuary where the last remnant of an untouched, endangered, but still transcendent nature can for at least a little while longer be encountered without the contaminating taint of civilization. Instead, it’s a product of that civilization, and could hardly be contaminated by the very stuff of which it is made. Wilderness hides its unnaturalness behind a mask that is all the more beguiling because it seems so natural. As we gaze into the mirror it holds up for us, we too easily imagine that what we behold is Nature when in fact we see the reflection of our own unexamined longings and desires. For this reason, we mistake ourselves when we suppose that wilderness can be the solution to our culture’s problematic relationships with the nonhuman world, for wilderness is itself no small part of the problem.

to read the full article, click the link:
http://www.guernicamag.com/features/41/the_trouble_with_wilderness_or/