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Friday, June 06, 2003
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New York Times: Energy --Vincent Collins, a lawyer from nearby Morgantown, has been vacationing in this scenic area for 35 years. A few years ago, he bought a 1.2-acre lot near here and planned to build a house on it. But once he saw the windmills, and learned of plans for more, he scrapped that dream.  Soaring above the treetops are 44 sleek white steel cylinders, 228 feet high. Churning on each tower are three glinting fiberglass blades, 115 feet long. Like quills on a porcupine, they spike the emerald spine of Backbone Mountain for six miles along the Allegheny Front. They have also generated huge turbulence within the environmental movement. Proponents of wind farms view those who oppose them as heretics, obstructing the promise of clean renewable energy, while opponents decry them as producing insufficient power to warrant their blight on the landscape. For now, the wind farm here is the largest east of the Mississippi, but the wind-energy industry, long a staple of the California landscape, is blowing eastward. Unobstructed winds, favorable economics and the absence of local zoning laws are attracting developers, and soon more than 400 turbines could be sprouting across 40 square miles of West Virginia's most scenic mountaintops. "I can't believe how large and hideous they are," Mr. Collins said. "When you hear the word `windmill,' you think Holland and Don Quixote. That's wrong. They look like alien monsters coming out of the ground." The growing industry has caused a kind of identity crisis among people who think of themselves as pro-environment, forcing them to choose between the promise of clean, endlessly renewable energy and the perils of imposing giant man-made structures on nature. To some environmentalists, the opposition to wind power from within their ranks not only stifles the growth of a new source of energy but also calls into question the integrity of the environmental movement itself. (06/06/03) | |
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New York Times: Environment -- Millions of people in northern China face water shortages this summer as the Yellow River falls to its lowest level in 50 years, environmental officials warned today. In addition, more than half the watersheds of China's seven main rivers are contaminated by industrial, farm and household waste, the officials said in a bleak annual report on the nation's environment. "China is a country that lacks water resources, and the problem of water pollution remains severe," said Xie Zhenhua, head of the State Environmental Protection Administration. "This year our top priority is to ensure clean drinking water for our people." Booming industry and a population of 1.3 billion people have outstripped China's rudimentary water and sewage systems and left its cities choked with smog. Despite improvements, air in two-thirds of China's cities is still considered polluted by official standards, the environmental report said. Only one-quarter of the 21 billion tons of China's annual output of household sewage is treated, Mr. Xie said. Treatment plants are being built, but will still handle only half of all city sewage, leaving rural waste water untreated. The government has forecast an annual water shortfall of 53 trillion gallons by 2030 — more than China now consumes in a year. In the north, drought and overuse have left the Yellow River so drained that in recent summer low seasons it has dried up before reaching the sea. This spring, oil spills and water shortages on the Yellow River forced the government to suspend work on a project to divert some of its water further northward, said Wang Jirong, a deputy director of the environmental agency. "The Yellow River is facing a serious environmental crisis," she said. (06/06/03) | |
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New York Times: Politics -- Ten labor unions, including the steelworkers and auto workers, urged presidential candidates yesterday to back a 10-year, $300 billion research plan that would promote energy efficiency, reduce dependence on foreign oil and preserve manufacturing jobs. Labor leaders said the plan, called the Apollo Project, would foster energy independence by promoting hybrid and hydrogen cars and energy-efficient factories and appliances. Supporters said the project would help make the United States the leader in these areas and would help preserve factory jobs after the nation had lost more than two million manufacturing jobs in the past two years. The plan's backers said they hoped it would improve ties between labor and the environmental movement, groups that have clashed in recent years on issues like emissions standards and energy exploration. "We believe this plan can create good manufacturing jobs, good construction jobs, can improve the public infrastructure, can be good for the environment and can reduce our dependence on foreign energy," Leo Gerard, president of the United Steelworkers of America, said at a news conference. The plan is also backed by the United Mine Workers, the Service Employees International Union, the International Association of Machinists and the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers. (06/06/03) | |
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New York Times: Politics -- Drivers in every state but Hawaii and Alaska could be pumping gasoline containing ethanol by 2012 if a plan approved today by the Senate becomes law. The proposal, incorporated in a broad energy bill, would change how refiners blend gasoline and how they meet clean-air requirements. It would require doubling the use of ethanol, to at least five billion gallons a year, in what would be a boon to corn farmers. Methanol is made mainly in the Midwest from corn, although it can be produced with other grains and biomass. Under the bill, refiners in every state except Alaska and Hawaii would have to use it. The measure, approved 67 to 29, would also ban the use of another gasoline additive, methyl tertiary butyl ether, or M.T.B.E., a derivative of natural gas that can contaminate supplies of drinking water. M.T.B.E. has been added to gasoline in many states since the 1970's to increase the octane rating and make the fuel burn more cleanly. Refiners would have more freedom to blend fuel because the measure would also end a requirement that gasoline contain at least 2 percent oxygen in areas with air pollution problems. Although the rule has been credited with achieving significant reductions in tailpipe pollution, refiners say they can produce cleaner gasoline without it. ... Backers of ethanol said the bill would help energy independence by displacing up to 250,000 barrels of oil a day by 2012. America currently burns ~20,000,000 barrels of oil a day. (06/05/03) | |
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New York Times: Technology -- The nation's most powerful supercomputer for weather forecasting is scheduled to go online today, I.B.M. said yesterday, a machine that may eventually rival the Japanese Earth Simulator as the world's fastest supercomputer. The new computer, with a theoretical peak computing power of 7.3 trillion operations a second, is expected to be enhanced over the next few years, and it may reach speeds up to 100 trillion operations a second by 2009, I.B.M. said. It ranks third in the United States in speed, behind two Hewlett-Packard machines at Los Alamos National Laboratories in New Mexico. The federal government will use the new computer to improve the accuracy of weather forecasts, particularly to help predict the path of hurricanes three to five days in advance, providing additional time to prepare for the storms. The Earth Simulator, financed by the Japanese government, was installed in Yokohama, west of Tokyo, at a cost of $350 million to $400 million. It is capable of 35.8 trillion operations a second. (06/06/03) | |
8:39:20 AM 
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2003
Timothy Wilken.
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7/1/2003; 5:51:02 AM.
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