Jonathan Soroko
Jon Soroko, co-founder of Popular Logistics, died in his sleep late Monday afternoon, May 13, 2013, at his home in Brooklyn, NY. For some time, he had been periodically ill with a debilitating neural disorder, which, sadly, curtailed the practical range of his activities but none of his ambitions or interests.
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Craig Fugate
After bombs exploded at the Boston Marathon, April 15, 2013, the FBI and the Boston Police tracked down the alleged terrorists, who in the course of their flight killed a cop at MIT, hijacked a Mercedes, fired and threw bombs at police, and tried to ram the police with the stolen car. [click to continue…]
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A Generator Step Up (GSU) transformer failed at the Salem River Nuclear Plant during the March 1989 geomagnetic storm. The unit is depicted on the left; some of the burned 22kV primary windings are shown on the right. Though immersed in cooling oil, the windings became hot enough to melt copper, at about 2000 degrees F. John Kappenman, Metatech
Coronal Mass Ejections are mainly charged particles, protons and electrons. When a CME arrives at Earth, the charged protons and electrons come under the influence of the Earth’s own magnetic field, the magnetosphere. Charged particles spin around the lines of magnetic force that comprise the magnetosphere, which diverts most of CME harmlessly around the planet, keeping Earth’s surface tranquil.
If the ejection is large enough, however, it can distort the shape of the magnetosphere, occasionally causing magnetic flux lines to snap and reconnect. When this happens, charged particles leak in and follow the magnetosphere’s flux lines down to the Earth’s ionosphere. There, they strike oxygen and nitrogen molecules and strip them of electrons. These ionized gases glow, giving rise to the ethereal beauty of the auroras around the north and south poles. Unfortunately, these excess charged particles also produce immense electrojets.
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On August 31, 2012 a long filament of solar material that had been hovering in the sun’s atmosphere, the corona, erupted out into space at 4:36 p.m. EDT. The coronal mass ejection, or CME, traveled at over 900 miles per second. The CME did not travel directly toward Earth, but did connect with Earth’s magnetic environment, or magnetosphere, causing aurora to appear on the night of Monday, September 3. The image above includes an image of Earth to show the size of the CME compared to the size of Earth. NASA Goddard Spaceflight Center
Thursday, May 2nd, 2013, a coronal mass ejection (CME) hurled nearly one billion tons of charged particles from the sun’s corona at an outward velocity of one million miles per hour – 270 miles per second.
In less than a half hour, 2,700 virtual Empire State Buildings, 340,000 tons apiece – give or take a few gorillas – erupted from an active region of the Sun’s surface called AR1748, a northern latitude sunspot. AR1748 had just become visible on the western limb of the Sun’s surface when it ejected this mass, so the vast bulk of it hurled outward, not toward us in Libra, but more or less toward Cancer, at right-angles to us. In practical terms, it shot wide of its mark. Still an impressive shot. The CME had been triggered by an M class solar flare, the second largest in a five step scheme (An, Bn, Cn, Mn, Xn; for n a relative magnitude). It had been the largest coronal mass ejection observed thus far in 2013.
And it was still early in the day for AR1748.
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John Kappenman reconstructed the electrojets which formed in the ionosphere late in the March 13, 1989 geomagnetic storm which compromised the Hydro-Quebec power grid in Canada. Concurrently, the eastward jet induced ground currents that severely strained the electrical distribution grid of northern continental United States, resulting in a transformer failure at the Salem Nuclear Power Plant, in New Jersey. Courtesy of Metatech
Nearly a quarter century ago, on March 13, 1989, a geomagnetic storm led to the collapse of the Hydro-Quebec electrical grid system, which furnishes power to much of the province of Quebec, Canada. So pervasive were abnormal currents, that protective circuit breakers tripped throughout the system, bringing the entire grid to a halt in about one and a half minutes. The grid’s self-protective systems were geared toward local abnormalities happening in particular places. In contrast, ground induced currents created abnormalities everywhere. The good news was that most of the hardware protected itself. The bad news was that six million customers were without power for as long as nine hours, and where transformer damage did occur, outages continued for another week.
Further south, the United States experienced a close shave. A second surge in the March 13 storm generated similar ground induced currents in the northern United States, with large current spikes observed from the Pacific Northwest to the mid-Atlantic states, one spike destroying a large GSU transformer at the Salem Nuclear Power Plant in New Jersey. According to John Kappenman, of the Metatech Corporation “It was probably at this time that we came uncomfortably close to triggering a blackout that could have literally extended clear across the country.”
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Ground Zero in Ruins. Courtesy CBS News
Adan Gonzalez, 69, died of throat cancer in April, 2015. Mr. Gonzalez had been a photographer and a volunteer at the World Trade Center site, working for two years as a photographer documenting the event and serving other volunteers.
Mr. Gonzalez is one of 1,712 First Responders who died due to the Sept. 11 attacks, 412 who died the day of the attacks (wikipedia) and 1,300 who died from medical complications arising from their search and rescue work. Over 40% of the 4,053 people who died in or resulting from the attack, not counting soldiers killed in Afghanistan or Iraq, or who died after returning home were first responders engaged in search and rescue or cleanup operations, a humanitarian mission.
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Two new shirts.
Both of the shirts pictured above are “Reaction” brand shirts from “Kenneth Cole.”
[click to continue…]
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The trend is clear – if 4 1/2 months is enough to establish a trend – the Sustainable Energy portfolio is up 58.78% from 12/21/12 while the Fossil Fuel portfolio is only up 6.71%. The Dow is up 15.49% and the S&P 500 is up 14.24% in that same period.
Is it because Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide has reached 400 PPM? (NPR / NY Times) Is Wall Street reacting because Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan, and other investment banks and hedge funds are hiring analysts from Greenpeace or people like me with MBAs in Sustainability from Marlboro, the Presidio, and the Bainbridge Institute? [click to continue…]
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Atmospheric CO2, Measured at Mauna Loa, 1960 – Present
Atmospheric CO2 hit 400 PPM on Thursday, May 9, 2013, as measured at the Koana Loa observatory. This is an increase of 85 ppm, 26.98%, from 1960. This is why Bill McKibben, of 350.org, calls our planet Eaarth. It’s weather, climate, and ecology are different than the one those of us who are over 30 – or over 12 – were born on. National Geographic, summed it up well, here:
“Greenhouse gas highest since the Pliocene, when sea levels were higher and the Earth was warmer.”
The scientists are taking the data – increased atmospheric carbon dioxide – and asking two questions:
The journalists and bloggers, like Geoffrey Lean, at the Telegraph, asks, here, “Did the contentious global warming ‘hockey stick’ graph get it right?” He could have asked “Did the scientists – and the environmentalists – get it right? And if so, shouldn’t we stop burning fossil fuels?”
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No IP address, no WiFi, works in a power failure, warns workers and drivers with a loud (124 db) signal:
SonoBlaster(R) Work Zone Intrusion Alarm – SonoBlaster® is an impact-activated safety device that warns work crews and errant vehicle drivers simultaneously to help prevent crashes and injuries in work zones. The NCHRP 350 accepted SonoBlaster® mounts on typical work zone barricades, cones, drums, delineators, A-frames and other barriers. Upon impact of an errant vehicle, the SonoBlaster’s built-in CO2 powered horn blasts at 125 dB to signal workers that their protective zone has been violated, giving them critical reaction time to move out of harms way.
From the webpage of the manufacturer, Transpo Industries.
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The same messages can be communicated by signalling the letter "K" in Morse code via signal lamp. (While a proper signal lamp may be ideal, a flashlight, probably best employing red LEDs, will certainly fit the bill).
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