Author Archives: Jonathan Soroko

About Jonathan Soroko

Revived from the dead, 18-July-2013

NYC planning more wind energy

 

The Bloomberg Administration is planning to increase wind powered energy generation – welcome steps all,  but the minimum scale – such as proposals for 55-foot turbines on top of 100-foot or greater roofs exclude experimentation with smaller units, which can be more widely distributed and decentralized.

From Projects to Add Wind Power for City Gain Momentum by Mireya Navarro:

Despite Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg’s long-expressed dream of putting wind turbines on skyscrapers and bridges, the constraints of an urban landscape have so far proved too challenging for reliable wind power in the city, energy experts said. As a result, New York City has been largely inactive — and behind the national curve — in embracing wind power.

But that is about to change. This spring, the city’s Department of Environmental Protection will solicit plans for the first major wind project, the installation of turbines atop the Fresh Kills landfill in Staten Island. And city planners are working on zoning changes, now under review by the City Planning Commission, to allow turbines up to 55 feet high on the rooftops of buildings taller than 100 feet, and even taller turbines on commercial and industrial sites along the waterfront.

But the biggest potential for supplying wind power to the city lies offshore, where the Bloomberg administration is supporting an application filed last September by a coalition led by the New York Power Authority to lease a swath of the ocean floor for a wind farm 13 miles off the coast of the Rockaways in Queens.

City officials say they are ready to take advantage of their coastal proximity to seek bigger renewable-energy projects and quicken the pace toward cleaner air and the jobs and economic benefits that would accompany those projects. A study commissioned by the city last year said wind farms could play a major role in replacing power now generated by the Indian Point nuclear power plant in Westchester County. The plant supplies up to 25 percent of consumption in Consolidated Edison’s service area, including New York City.

“When you’re talking about huge wind, offshore is really a unique opportunity,” said Farrell Sklerov, a spokesman for the city’s Department of Environmental Protection.

Frontline: “Inside Japan’s Nuclear Meltdown”

PBS Frontline broadcast, earlier this week,  Inside Japan’s Nuclear Meltdown: “An unprecedented account of the crisis inside the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear complex after the devastating earthquake and tsunami.” That’s their own description, but it’s fair, as we expect from this outstanding program.  And – if you’ve got a decent connection – you don’t even need a conventional television to watch it.

Which is yet another illustration of the point that access to broadband, reasonably priced, should be thought of as access to telephone or mail service. A point that, I am embarassed to say,  has been dawning on me only gradually.  On that subject we refer you, generally, to Stimulating Broadband.

San Francisco power interrupted by Valentine's day Mylar – helium balloons

From Mylar balloon causes Valentine’s Day outage in San Francisco – San Jose Mercury News:

PG&E had warned residents earlier this week to be careful with metallic balloons purchased for Valentine’s Day, as hundreds of outages each year in Northern California are caused by balloons drifting into power lines.

This would seem to be a power grid weakness we should examine.

Syria: "at hospitals, security personnel outnumber medical personnel"

This morning’s report from Weekend Edition Saturday discusses, via discussion with a Paris-based of Doctors without Borders, makes clear that the Syrian military is now waiting in force at hospitals, assuming that people seeking medical attention may have been injured by government agents. In response. Doctors With Borders’ affiliates in Syria are trying as best they can to manage with improvised O.R.’s in living room, bedrooms and kitchens. Doctors without Border is trying to get supplies and equipment to this underground medical care network.

More information after NPR posts its transcripts and links.

Blasts Rock Aleppo as Dozens More Are Reported Killed in Syria – NYTimes.com – http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/11/world/middleeast/blasts-in-aleppo-syria-homs-violence-said-to-continue.html?_r=1&ref=world

PFCs, chemicals widespread in children, appears to impair children's immune systems

This is Jon Hamilton‘s excellent explanation of this disturbing risk possibility, reported yesterday in JAMA. From Common Chemicals Could Make Kids’ Vaccines Less Effective

The more exposure children have to chemicals called perfluorinated compounds, the less likely they are to have a good immune response to vaccinations, a study just published in JAMA, the Journal of the American Medical Association shows.

The finding suggests, but doesn’t prove, that these chemicals can affect the immune system enough to make some children more vulnerable to infectious diseases.

For decades now, PFCs have been used in nonstick coatings, stain-resistant fabrics and some food packaging. And because they persist in the environment for years, they have become common around the globe.

“You can find them in polar bears,” says Dr. Philippe Grandjean, the study’s lead author who works at both Harvard and the University of Southern Denmark.

Studies in animals have shown that PFCs can weaken the immune system.

Grandjean wanted to know whether this was happening in children. So he led a team that studied nearly 600 kids in the Faroe Islands, which lie about halfway between Scotland and Iceland.

The Faroese have levels of PFCs similar to those of U.S. residents. Grandjean figured if the chemicals were having an effect, it would show up in the way kids’ bodies responded to vaccinations.

Normally, a vaccine causes the production of lots of antibodies to a specific germ. But Grandjean says the response to tetanus and diphtheria vaccines was much weaker in 5-year-olds whose blood contained relatively high levels of PFCs.

“We found that the higher the exposure, the less capable the kids were in terms of responding appropriately to the vaccine,” Grandjean says. The results raise the possibility that “the immune system is not really developing optimally.”

The health effects of PFCs are still poorly understood. But in the past decade, government scientists have become increasingly concerned about possible links to developmental problems in children.

If this turns out to be coincidental, without causal connection, all well and good. But if there’s something here that, on the precautionary principle, would lead us to ban or limit PFCs – it’s likely we’ll do it first in more affluent countries. This may protect some children – but if the children of entire continents are left unprotected, not only are those children at direct risk, their communities may constitute international disease paths. In a world with routine international travel and shipping, diseases don’t need green cards.

Drug companies to be required to report all payments to physicians

Robert Pear, who has always provided excellent coverage of public health issues for The Times, reports that the administration plans to require drug and medical equipment suppliers to report all payments – down to coffee and bagels – made to physicians and medical personnel – and make them accessible to the public via the web. We can’t imagine that there’s a plausible argument that anyone has a privacy information in this data.

What would your reaction be if your physician prescribed a particular medicine, and then found out that your doctor was taking thousands of dollars from the drug’s manufacturer? By the same token –  if you found out that your physician accepted no gifts at all from drug prescribers, might that not enhance your view of that physician’s credibility? From Robert Pear’s U.S. to Force Drug Firms to Report Money Paid to Doctors:

WASHINGTON — To head off medical conflicts of interest, the Obama administration is poised to require drug companies to disclose the payments they make to doctors for research, consulting, speaking, travel and entertainment.  Many researchers have found evidence that such payments can influence doctors’ treatment decisions and contribute to higher costs by encouraging the use of more expensive drugs and medical devices.

Consumer advocates and members of Congress say patients may benefit from the new standards, being issued by the government under the new health care law. Officials said the disclosures increased the likelihood that doctors would make decisions in the best interests of patients, without regard to the doctors’ financial interests.

Large numbers of doctors receive payments from drug and device companies every year — sometimes into the hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars — in exchange for providing advice and giving lectures. Analyses by The New York Times and others have found that about a quarter of doctors take cash payments from drug or device makers and that nearly two-thirds accept routine gifts of food, including lunch for staff members and dinner for themselves.

The Times has found that doctors who take money from drug makers often practice medicine differently from those who do not and that they are more willing to prescribe drugs in risky and unapproved ways, such as prescribing powerful antipsychotic medicines for children.

Largest energy net-zero school in U.S.

Jessica Dailey, writing at Inhabitat, notes the United States’ largest net-zero school, Lady Bird Johnson Middle School, in Texas:

Texas is known for the Alamo, spicy Tex-Mex food, big Stetson hats, and now it also has the nation’s largest net-zero public school. Welcoming its first students this past fall, the Lady Bird Johnson Middle School in Irving Texas is a 152,000 square foot facility that produces as much energy as it uses thanks to wind turbines, solar panels, and a slew of the most advanced green technologies and building techniques. Dallas-based firm Corgan Associatesled the design team, which incorporated a variety of experts to create a school that serves not only as a classroom, but also as a teacher of sustainability and energy-efficiency.

From  US’s Largest Net Zero School Welcomes Students in Irving, Texas

Apparently the building is powered by a large solar array and a smaller array of wind turbines, producing in a ratio of 99 to 1; the 152,000-plus square foot building also uses geothermal energy, employs every conservation tactic available, and still has some power to sell back to the grid.

Urban Planning: A brief history of the Minneapolis skyways

Posted in its entirety from Jason Kottke’s blog. We did not know about this system, but think it’s worth considering for a number of reasons: it gets people walking in inclement weather rather than taking their vehicles or not travelling at all; probably stops the weather from entirely shutting down Minneapolis, and, to the extent it’s reducing vehicle and pedestrian traffic, likely reducing accidents, property damage, death and injury. An example of excellent urban transportation planning.

A brief history of the Minneapolis skyways

If you’ve ever been to downtown Minneapolis, you’ve likely used the large network of above-grade covered walkways that now stretches into nearly every corner of the downtown area. I’d always assumed they were built to help downtown workers and residents avoid cold weather during the winter, but that’s not the case.

Rather, the skyway system originally emerged from a twofold desire. First, planners in the 1940s and 50s were very concerned about managing increasingly dense pedestrian flows, and viewed skyways as a way to maximize the use of urban space for both people and automobiles (Byers 1998 154). Second, business owners were interested in maximizing their property values, and saw the skyways an opportunity to double the amount of valuable retail space in their downtown buildings (Byers 1998 159).

I used to work in downtown Minneapolis, and the skyways were great in the winter. To be able to take a walk and get lunch without having to bundle up in coat, hat, mittens, scarf, etc. was almost like living in a warm climate…and that’s no small thing during a long, dark Mpls winter. (via ?than)

via kottke.org – home of fine hypertext products.

We’re aware of the Chicago system of underground streets, the abandoned postal tube systems in the United States and others  (See, e.g. Multilevel streets in Chicago – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia). To the extent we’ve failed to exploit these opportunities, or used and abandoned them, they constitute wasted assets. See also Minneapolis Skyway System (Wikipedia entry); Leif Petterson’s Take the Skyway on Vita.MN (The Twin Cities Going-Out Guide).

Furman Appointed to Manalapan Township Finance Committee

Lawrence J. Furman, MBA, co-founder of Popular Logistics, has been appointed to the Manalapan Township Finance Committee (Township here,  news article here). The Finance Committee reviews  expenditures, projects tax receipts, and submits the budget to the Township Committee. Back in 2007 Furman suggested that the Township Committee look into deploying solar energy systems on municipal properties. He was appointed to the Manalapan Township Environmental Commission in 2007, served for two years. In 2008, he ran for School Board with a platform built around solar energy for the schools.  While he lost the election, and Manalapan does not yet have solar energy systems on municipal properties or schools (are these related?) people are talking about it. He earned his MBA in Managing for Sustainability from Marlboro College in December, 2010.

He has delivered various iterations of a talk entitled “Beyond Fuel: Energy in the 21st Century,”  at the June meeting of the NYC Business Sustainability Action Round-Table, NYC B Smart, and in September, 2011 at the Space Coast Green Living Festival, Cocoa Beach, Florida.

Furman has been thinking about energy and what we now call sustainability since 1976, when, as a student intern with the New York Public Interest Research Group, Inc., NYPIRG, at Rachel Carson College, then at the State University of New York University of Buffalo, he helped develop a case for offshore wind power. His testimony, delivered to the “NY State Legislative Committee on Energy, the Economy, and the Environment” stated:

We could power the New York City Subway System with a battery of wind driven electric turbines, located off the shores of Long Island. It would burn no fuel, and, therefore, unlike coal, oil, gas, and nuclear power, create no waste.

When you factor in the life cycle of the fuel, and the pollution and health costs of the wastes, this would be less expensive than the fuel based alternatives.

Reflecting on this today, he said,

“My colleagues and I knew what we were talking about, but the Committee members didn’t get it. Sadly, it seems that the Committee’s name – Energy, the Economy, and the Environment – indicated it’s priorities.”

“If the cheapest unit of energy, the ‘negawatt,’ is the unit of energy that you don’t need, then the next cheapest is the ‘nega-fuel-watt,’ the unit of enegy you obtain without consuming fuel.”

On this committee I intend to look at our energy expenses and see where we can save money in the long term with PV Solar, LED lighting, insulation, micro-hydro, etc.

We’re not sure if this is part of Chicago’s underground street system, now unused, which was used to expedite deliveries and at the same time to reduce traffic congestion on Chicago’s street-level. We believe that underground systems – including pneumatic tube systems – have in some places been prematurely abandoned. They reduce congestion (waiting time and reduced speeds are responsible for a large share of the pollution generated by vehicles), speed delivery, and reduce costs for everyone. Here’s an early photograph of rail-based mail processing in Chicago.

 

 

Iran isn’t the most transparent of countries, so it’s hard to know whether this is  another country’s attempt to slow down the Iranian nuclear program, something to do with Iranian politics or something else entirely.

What follows is excerpted from BBC correspondent  Mohsen Asgari’s report Iran car explosion ‘kills nuclear scientist’ in Tehran

 

 

A university lecturer and nuclear scientist has been killed in a car explosion in north Tehran, reports say. Mostafa Ahmadi-Roshan, an academic who also worked at the Natanz uranium enrichment facility, and another unidentified person were killed in the attack. The blast happened after a motorcyclist stuck an apparent bomb to the car. Several Iranian nuclear scientists have been assassinated in recent years, with Iran blaming Israel and the US.

Both countries deny the accusations. Iran’s Vice-President Mohammad Reza Rahimi told state television that the attack against Mr Ahmadi-Roshan would not stop “progress” in the country’s nuclear programme. He called the killing “evidence of [foreign] government-sponsored terrorism”. Local sources said Wednesday’s blast took place at a faculty of Iran’s Allameh Tabatai university. Two others were reportedly also injured in the blast, which took place near Gol Nabi Street, in the north of the capital. ‘Magnetic bomb’

Mr Ahmadi-Roshan, 32, was a graduate of Sharif University and supervised a department at Natanz uranium enrichment facility in Isfahan province, semi-official news agency Fars reported. “The bomb was a magnetic one and the same as the ones previously used for the assassination of the scientists, and the work of the Zionists [Israelis],” deputy Tehran governor Safarali Baratloo said.

Witnesses said they had seen two people on the motorbike fix the bomb to the car, reported to be a Peugeot 405. A second person died in the attack though the car itself remained virtually intact. The BBC’s Mohsen Asgari, in Tehran, says that the explosion was caused by a targeted, focussed device intended to to kill one or two people and small enough not to be heard from far away.

RNLI: 139,000 lives saved since 1824

Originally the “National Institution for the Preservation of Life from Shipwreck,” renamed in 1854, the Royal National Lifeboat Institution, RNLI, has been saving lives and promoting marine safety, for nigh on 190 years. 139,000 lives have been saved since 1824. This is 139,000 people who would otherwise have been lost at sea. The number of lives preserved by the promotion of marine safety is harder to calculate, but doubtless much larger.

It’s an all-volunteer outfit which saves lives at sea in the United Kingdom and the Republic of Ireland, without, as we understand it, any government money. To an American, it may seem odd that a country famous for its National Health Service would rely on an all-volunteer marine safety program. Whether or not it’s philosophically consistent, it seems to work. We’ll take effective life-saving in place of ideology any day.

See also Wikipedia entry Royal National Lifeboat Institution.

Infowar – BBC reports "Israel vows to retaliate after credit cards are hacked"

Israel has said it will respond to cyber-attacks in the same way it responds to violent “terrorist” acts after the credit card details of thousands of its citizens were published online. A hacker named OxOmar claiming to be Saudi said on Thursday he had leaked the private information. Credit card companies say at least 6,000 valid cards have been exposed. Reports say OxOmar may be a 19-year-old living in Mexico.

Israel vows to retaliate after credit cards are hacked  via BBC News.