Environment

Amazing Coincidence

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Anyone remember the Russian submarine Kursk (K-141)? In the year 2000, it was severely damaged by an on board explosion and sank in relatively shallow water. All hands were lost.

(And yes, I know that Wikipedia is unreliable and should not be used as a reference. But it is the best brief encapsulation of the facts that I have found on this subject.)

Within days of the disaster, both the British and Norwegian military had offered the use of their underwater rescue teams. The Russians flatly refused, even though both of the foreign teams were probably the best trained and equipped in the world for retrieving crew from a stricken submarine. This proved to be a terrible mistake on the part of Russia, as budget woes since the fall of the USSR had caused maintenance to be cut back to the point that their own specialized rescue submersibles were no longer able to do the job.

What is more, then President Vladimir Putin found himself at the center of a great deal of negative PR. On vacation when informed of the disaster, he made the decision to continue relaxing while the rescue efforts started. It wasn’t until five days after the explosion that he made a public statement about the incident, lending to the impression that he was unconcerned about the lives of fellow Russians.

The humiliation of the Russian government was complete when it came to light that they didn’t even have the means to raise the wreckage from the sea floor! Two private Dutch companies had to do the work, making the initial refusal of help all the more poignant for the families and loved ones of those who lost their lives in the disaster.

I’m bringing up this bit of ancient history because I see some amazing parallels between the Kursk disaster, and the current problems with oil gushing from a damaged offshore well.

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Deepwater Horizon – Random Thoughs with a dash of Hypocrisy

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Back on May 4 I posted some random thoughts about the Deepwater Horizon disaster. Surprisingly, all of them still hold true.

-The human cost still has taken a major back seat to the environmental cost
-Almost zero people reporting on the story knows anything about how a deepwater drilling rig works. I was taught that the word “busted” was not to be used when I was growing up, but I am reading a lot of stories that say things like “busted pipe”. That is a grammatical digression, I admit.
-I still think BP is trying everything they can muster to stop the leak(s)
-The market still seems to be doing a big shoulder shrug over the whole thing. The collapse of the eurozone and the poor jobs reports seem to weigh much heavier on the markets. And oil prices are going down.
-I did say that the federal response was quick (for them) but really can’t tell at this point if it is. A lot of people are slagging the Obama administration for acting slowly, but I don’t live there so maybe one of our commenters could clear that up.

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Solar in Spain, Then and Now

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“The sun in Spain shines brightly on the plain”

Here’s Barack Obama, speaking in January 2009:

Think of what’s happening in countries like Spain … where they’re making real investments in renewable energy. They’re surging ahead of us, poised to take the lead in these new industries.

…and here’s a report on what’s happening in Spain currently:

Only two years ago, Spanish solar energy companies feasting on generous government subsidies expanded at a feverish pace, investing €18 billion (then worth roughly $28 billion) to blanket rooftops and fields with photovoltaic panels. They briefly turned the country into the top solar market in the world.

Spain’s subsidies for solar were four to six times higher than those for wind. Prices charged for solar power were 12 times higher than those for fossil fuel electricity. Germany and Spain received about 75 percent of the world’s photovoltaic panel installations that year.

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Nine Years versus Nine Months

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After nine years of litigation and regulatory maneuvering, the Secretary of the Interior has given the approval for construction of the Cape Wind offshore power-generation facility. (Well, sort of…there are still a few more regulatory hurdles to clear before any actual wind turbines can be erected.)

Nine years is a long time, and it’s worthwhile to look at what Americans have been able to do in that amount of time…and in much shorter amounts of time…in other periods of our history.

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Worthwhile Reading and Viewing

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(Every week or so, I post a collection of interesting links at Photon Courier under the above heading. There’s so much interesting stuff this week I thought I’d post it here as well)

Erin O’Connor on California’s universities and their role in the state’s economic debacle.

Climategate: it was an academic disaster waiting to happen. Interesting and contrarian thoughts about the role of peer review.

Richard Fernandez wonders if World War III has already started…without many people even noticing. (via Isegoria)

Solar arbitrage in Germany. (via Maggie’s Farm) It’s hard to believe he will really get away with this, but still pretty funny. See also this related post from Evolving Excellence: Better Call the Waaaahmulance!

AnoukAnge writes about ambition. (One of the great literary works that deals with this subject is Goethe’s Faust…memo to self: a blog post on the treatment of ambition within Faust could be very interesting)

AnoukAnge also has a nice photographic essay on color…including the psychological connotations and cultural-symbolic meanings of various colors.

Speaking of color, this year’s winning images have been chosen for GE’s In Cell Analyzer photography contest. The In Cell system used used by scientists for better understanding disease processes and for drug development; as it happens, it also produces images which are appealing and even beautiful, in a psychedelic sort of way. There’s a nice video, with music, at the bottom of GE’s post about the contest.

One more photography-related link: British industry in the 1950s and 1960s. (via Brian Gongol)