Sun’s close-up reveals atmosphere hopping with highly energetic particles – Princeton University

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Outbursts of energetic particles that hurtle out from the sun and can disrupt space communications may be even more varied and numerous than previously thought, according to results from the closest-ever flyby of the sun.

One of the greatest threats from the sun to astronauts and the satellites that provide GPS maps, cell phone service and internet access are high-energy particles that erupt from the sun in bursts. Top: On Nov. 17, 2018, the 321st day of that year, ISIS observed a burst of high-energy protons, each with more than 1 million electron-volts of energy. The warmer colors (yellow, orange, red) represent an increase in the number of these high-energy particles hitting the ISIS sensors.Bottom: An artists representation of one of these energetic particle events.

Image by Jamey Szalay and David McComas; Adapted with permission from D.J. McComas et al., Nature 575:7785 (2019)

The new findings, which help us understand the sun's activity and ultimately could provide an early warning for solar storms, come from one of the four instrument suites aboard NASA's Parker Solar Probe, a spacecraft that has completed its first passes near the fiery orb. Results from all four suites appear today in a set of articles published in the journal Nature.

The finding that these energetic particle events are more varied and numerous than previously known was one of several discoveries made by the instrument suite known as the Integrated Science Investigation of the Sun (ISIS), a project led by Princeton University that involves multiple institutions as well as NASA.

"This study marks a major milestone with humanitys reconnaissance of the near-sun environment," said David McComas, the principal investigator for the ISIS instrument suite, a Princeton professor of astrophysical sciences and the vice president for the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory. "It provides the first direct observations of the energetic particle environment in the region just above the sun's upper atmosphere, the corona.

"Seeing these observations has been a continuous 'eureka moment,'" McComas said. "Whenever we receive new data from the spacecraft, we are witnessing something that no one has ever seen before. That is about as good as it gets!"

ISIS seeks to find out how the particles become so fast moving, and what is pushing them to accelerate. The scientists searching for these answers includes ISIS team members at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech), Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory (APL), NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, the University of New Hampshire, Southwest Research Institute, the University of Delaware and the University of Arizona, as well as collaborators at the University of California-Berkeley, Imperial College London, the University of Michigan, Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatoryand the National Center for Scientific Research in France.

Highly energetic particles can disrupt communications and global positioning systems (GPS) satellites. These streams of particles, made up primarily of protons, have two sources. The first is from outside our solar system, generated when exploding stars release streams of particles known as cosmic rays. The other is our sun. Both can damage the electrical systems of spacecraft and are forms of radiation that can harm astronauts health.

These energetic particles fly much faster than the solar wind, which is the roughly million mile-per-hour flow of hot electrically charged gas that whips off the sun. If the solar wind were a stream, the energetic particles would be fish that leap out and jump ahead of the flow. The particles travel along pathways called magnetic flux tubes that extend from the corona out into the solar wind.

During Parker Solar Probes first two orbits, ISIS detected many small energetic particle events, solar bursts during which the rates of particles streaming out of the sun increased rapidly. On ISIS, the Epi-Lo instrument measures particles in the tens of thousands of electron-volts, while Epi-Hi measures particles with millions to hundreds of millions of electron-volts. (For reference, the electricity in your house is 120 volts.) Here, data from orbits 1 (left) and 2 (right) show the ISIS particle count rates overlaid as color strips along the black line that represents the trajectory of Parker Solar Probe. The lower energy (Lo) rates are on the inside of the track, while the higher energy (Hi) rates run outside. Both the size and color correspond to the measured rates, such that large red bars indicate the biggest bursts, when the sun released the most particles in a short amount of time.

Image by Jamey Szalay and David McComas; Adapted with permission from D.J. McComas et al., Nature 575:7785 (2019)

Understanding these particles could improve space weather forecasts and give early warning of the massive storms that can disrupt Earthly communications and space travel.

"The answer to questions about how energetic particles form and accelerate is incredibly important," said Ralph McNutt, who oversaw the building of the lower energy of the suites two instruments and is chief scientist in the Space Exploration Sector at APL. "These particles affect our activities on Earth and our ability to get our astronauts out into space. We are making history with this mission."

Due to their speed, the particles act as an early warning signal for space weather, said Jamey Szalay, an associate research scholar in the Department of Astrophysical Sciences at Princeton who leads the data visualization efforts for ISIS. "These particles are moving fast, so if there is a big solar storm on its way, these particles are the first indicators."

Most previous studies of solar energetic particles relied on detectors located in space about the same distance from the sun as is the Earth 93 million miles from the sun. By the time the particles get to those detectors, it is hard to track where they came from, because the particles from various sources have interacted and intermixed.

"Its a bit like cars coming from crowded tunnels and bridges and spreading out onto interstate highways," McComas said. "They get faster as they move away, but they also get mixed and interact in ways that it is impossible to tell who came from where as you move farther and farther away from the sources."

The top panel shows a schematic of a Coronal Mass Ejection (CME), during which a burst of mass as big as Lake Michigan is ejected from the sun. These can pose a hazardto astronauts and space satellites, but ISIS scientists discovered that tiny energetic particles rush ahead of the ejected mass, providing advance warning of the incoming threat. The bottom panel showsproton fluxes detected byISIS's EPI-Lo (top) and the magnetic field measurements (bottom) around the time of an observed CME. The energetic particles reachedParker Solar Probe nearly a day before the ejected mass.

Image by Jamey Szalay and David McComas; Adapted with permission from N.J. Fox et al, Space Science Reviews 204: 7 (2016) and D.J. McComas et al., Nature 575:7785 (2019)

In its first trips around the sun, the Parker Solar Probe travelled twice as close to the sun as any previous spacecraft has ever been. At its closest, the spacecraft was 14 million miles or 35 solar radii, which is 17.5 widths of the sun from the fiery surface.

Getting close to the sun is essential for unraveling how these particles form and gain high energies, said Eric Christian, the deputy principal investigator on ISIS and a senior research scientist at NASA Goddard. "It is like trying to measure what is happening in a mountain by studying the base of the mountain. To know what is happening, you have to go where the action is: You have to go up on the mountain."

A potential concern of the researchers was that the sun's 11-year cycle of activity is presently at a low. But the low activity level turned out to be an advantage.

"The fact that the sun was quiet allowed us to analyze events that are extremely isolated," said Nathan Schwadron, a professor of physics and astronomy and the head of the ISIS science operation center at the University of New Hampshire. "These are events that haven't been seen from farther away because they are just clobbered by the solar wind activity."

During its first two orbits, ISIS observed several fascinating phenomena. One was a burst of energetic particle activity that coincided with a coronal mass ejection, a violent eruption of energized and magnetized particles from the corona. Prior to the ejection, ISIS detected a buildup of relatively low energetic particles, whereas after the ejection there was a buildup of high energetic particles. These events were small and not detectable from the Earths orbit.

Another observation from ISIS was particle activity indicating a sort of solar wind traffic jam, which happens when the solar wind suddenly slows down, causing fast-moving solar wind to pile up behind it and forming a compressed region of particles. This buildup, which astrophysicists call a co-rotating interaction region, occurred out beyond Earths orbit and sent high energy particles back toward the sun where they were observed by ISIS.

Researchers are eager to understand the mechanisms by which the sun accelerates particles to high speeds. ISISs detection of each particles identity whether it is hydrogen, helium, carbon, oxygen, iron or another element will help researchers further explore this question.

On Epi-Lo, 80 tiny telescopes are looking in 80 different directions, and one of those was punctured by a dust grain when Parker Solar Probe was at its closest approach to the sun. The purple arrow shows the approximate arrival direction of the dust grain, and the bottom panel shows where during the second orbit collision occurred.

Image by Jamey Szalay and David McComas; Adapted with permission from D.J. McComas et al., Nature 575:7785 (2019)

There are two kinds of acceleration mechanisms, one that occurs in solar flares when magnetic fields reconnect, and another that occurs when you get shocks and compressions of the solar wind, but the details of how they cause particle acceleration are not that well understood, said Mark Wiedenbeck, a principal scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, who oversaw the development of the higher energy instrument in the ISIS suite. The composition of the particles is a key diagnostic to tell us the acceleration mechanism.

ISIS made its third brush by the sun on Sept. 1, and will make its next on Jan. 29, 2020. As the mission continues, the satellite will make a total of 24 orbits, each time getting closer to the solar surface, until it is roughly five sun-widths from the star. The researchers hope that future flybys will reveal insights into the source of the energetic particles. Do they start as "seed particles" that go on to attain higher energies?

Jamie Sue Rankin, a postdoctoral researcher at Princeton working in the McComas group, began working on the higher energy ISIS instrument as a graduate student at Caltech.

"It has been neat to see this whole process develop over the past decade, Rankin said. It is like surfing a wave: We built these instruments, made sure they were working, made adjustments to make sure the calibrations were right and now comes the exciting part, answering the questions that we set out to address.

"With any spacecraft, when you go out into space, you think you know what to expect, but there are always wonderful surprises that complicate our lives in the best way," she said. "That is what keeps us doing what we do."

The study, "Probing the Energetic Particle Environment near the Sun," by D.J. McComas, E.R. Christian, C.M.S. Cohen, A.C. Cummings, A.J. Davis, M.I. Desai, J. Giacalone, M.E. Hill, C.J. Joyce, S.M. Krimigis, A.W. Labrador, R.A. Leske, O. Malandraki, W.H. Matthaeus, R.L. McNutt Jr., R.A. Mewaldt, D.G. Mitchell, A. Posner, J.S. Rankin, E.C. Roelof, N.A. Schwadron, E.C. Stone, J.R. Szalay, M.E. Wiedenbeck, S.D. Bale, J.C. Kasper, A.W. Case, K.E. Korreck, R.J. MacDowall, M. Pulupa, M.L. Stevens and A.P. Rouillard, was published in the Dec. 5 issue of the journal Nature, released online on Dec. 4 (DOI: 10.1038/s41586-019-1811-1). This work was supported as a part of the Parker Solar Probe mission under NASA contract NNN06AA01C.

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Sun's close-up reveals atmosphere hopping with highly energetic particles - Princeton University

Take Back Our Party: Restoring the Democratic Legacy – The American Prospect

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The Prospect is proud to exclusivelyrelease the bookTake Back Our Party: Restoring the Democratic Legacyby JamesKwak. We will release one chapter every other day over the next two weeks,starting with todays introduction.

Kwak, the co-author of13 BankersandWhite House Burningand the author ofEconomism, is a keen observer of policy and politics, and his book offers powerful evidence of how the Democratic Party drifted from its traditional position as a party of the people. He adds his prescription for how the party can get back on track. As the battles for the soul of the Democratic Party continue,Take Back Our Partyis a field guide to that debate. We're excited to bring it to you.

We live in troubled times.

Ordinary Americans are struggling. Despite decades of technological innovation and economic growth, the typical familys net worth is no higher than in the 1980s. Health care costs, including rising insurance premiums, deductibles, co-payments, prescription drug prices, and often unexpected out-of-network charges, bankrupt a growing number of once-secure families. Young adults are burdened by student loan payments extending as far as they can see. Steeply rising rents make finding an affordable home virtually impossible in more and more cities. State and local governments are failing to deliver even essential services like clean water to their residents. A handful of companies controlled by billionaires have levels of control over our lives once imaginable only in science fiction. Increasingly precarious federal government finances threaten future reductions in the Social Security and Medicare benefits that many elderly Americans rely on. And decades of unsustainable growth have already profoundly changed the climate of our planet in ways we are only now beginning to realize.

Yet despite these disturbing developments, many peopleparticularly those who are well-off and well-educatedinsist that nothing could be better. As of 2019, the United States is in the 11th year of an economic expansion that has seen the stock market rise and the unemployment rate fall to record levels. We remain enthralled by every years new marvels produced by the dream factories of the technology superpowersself-driving cars, drone deliveries to your doorstep, virtual reality, space travel, and on and on. (The full realization of these wonders always seems just out of reach, but no matter.)

The explanation for this divergence is simple. Over the past 40 years, the economic fortunes of the very rich and more or less everyone else have become completely uncoupled. From 1980 to 2014, the total incomes of the top 1 percent more than tripled, while those of the bottom 50 percent remained essentially unchanged. The previous 34 years, from 1946 to 1980, saw the opposite pattern: Income growth was substantially higher for the bottom 50 percent than for the top 1 percent. If you have the money, you live in one economy, with the best health care in the world, easy access to green space, the finest restaurants that have ever existed, elite educational institutions from preschool through the most opulent research universities anywhere, and luxury goods and services that once were reserved for royalty. If you dont have the money, you live in another economy, where your familys welfare is vulnerable to sudden changes in the demand for your skills generated by distant markets, you breathe the dirty air produced by uncontrolled development or drink the toxic water delivered by a crumbling infrastructure, your children go to underfunded public schools, and you are rapidly being priced out of the health care your family needs.

Obviously there is no border wall that cleanly divides the very rich from everyone else. There is an intermediate zone, roughly from the 75th to the 95th income percentile, where people are more or less comfortable in a material sense. But they can see the speed with which the truly wealthy have separated themselves from the rest of society, and many of them are desperate not to be left behindif not for themselves, then for their children. Anxiety about getting into a good college, landing choice summer internships, and securing a job at one of the handful of highly selective companies that promise entry into the economic eliteGoldman Sachs, McKinsey, Google, Facebook, Amazon, and their few peersis at pathological levels. The recent college admissions cheating scandal is not only more proof that the very rich live in a different world from everyone else, but also shows that they, too, are desperate to place their children on the educational escalator to success and fortune. The forward march of inequality is there for anyone to see, and no one wants his or her family to be caught on the wrong side of history.

This divide between the vast majority of Americans, who face the prospect of negligible improvements in their living standards at the cost of constant insecurity, and a small minority who both literally and figuratively jet away into another world, is the central economic challenge of our time. It is a problem in clear view today. Only one in five Americans think that todays youth will have a better life than their parents generationstark skepticism about what for centuries we have been calling the American dream.

Inequality is a problem that, on its own, will only get worse. Technological advances will vastly increase the advantages of being rich and well-educated and the costs of not being so fortunate. Increasingly capable machines will displace low-skilled workersconsider how apps and kiosks are doing the job of cashiers at casual restaurants and big-box storeswhile enriching the people who design them and the shareholders of the companies that manufacture them. Artificial intelligence will replace many knowledge workers while rewarding a small elite of computer scientists and their employers. It is true that people made the same doomsday predictions about earlier inventions, and in past ages of capitalism the market found higher-value occupations for many workers (though not necessarily for those who lost their jobs to new technology). It is possible that a society could adapt to these transformations in ways that help everyone, not just an intellectual and economic elite. But there is little reason to think that ours is such a society. In trusting to markets to allocate all good things, we have allowed the benefits of automation to be monopolized by people with the capital to invest in new technology and those with the skills to master it.

This is not merely an economic problem. It is hard to see how a society can long endure when the precarious fortunes, interests, and life experiences of its people become foreign to a small ruling class. (Let them eat cake, a noblewoman in 18th-century France is reputed to have said upon hearing that the peasants had no bread.) The rise and fall of nations depend on the extent to which their economic and political institutions remain open to a wide range of interest groups within society, as documented by Daron Acemoglu and James Robinson in decades of research. Fourteenth-century Venice was both a democracy of sorts and a thriving commercial center of the Mediterranean. Once political power was seized by a closed hereditary aristocracy, however, the city-state fell into irreversible economic decline, eventually becoming the sinking museum that it is today.

In a modern democracy, this should not happenat least in theory. When everyone has an equal vote, a tiny minority of the super-rich should not be able to run away with the lions share of societys economic gains. In the classical model, there should be a party of business and a party of labor, generally representing the rich and working class, respectively. The United States has never had a true labor party, but through the middle of the 20th century these roles were more or less approximated by Republicans and Democrats. The Republicans were the party of business, generally favoring lower taxes, smaller government, and fiscal responsibility. The Democrats were the party of labor unions and immigrant minorities, favoring higher taxes, bigger government, and more generous social programs. In the 1930s, it was Democratic President Franklin Roosevelt who established the federal safety net with public jobs programs and Social Security. In the 1960s, it was another Democratic president, Lyndon Johnson, who created Medicare and Medicaid, the last major expansions of the welfare state, and launched an optimistic war on poverty.

During the past half-century, however, the tectonic plates of the political landscape have completely shifted. It is common knowledge that the Republican Party has been taken over by radical conservatives who want to dismantle government altogether (or, as Grover Norquist famously said, reduce it to the size where I can drag it into the bathroom and drown it in the bathtub) and hold a host of unsavory views on immigration, racial and ethnic diversity, and womens rights. The parallel transformation of the Democratic Party has received relatively less attention. Todays Democratic eliterepresented by Bill Clinton, Barack Obama, and Hillary Clintonhas, in deed if not in word, repudiated the heritage of Roosevelt and Johnson, fleeing what it sees as an embarrassing legacy peopled by unionized workers and welfare recipients. Instead, todays establishment Democrats style themselves as expert managers of a sophisticated market economy, friends of big finance and big technology, and architects of growth and opportunity. Instead of a party of capital and party of labor, the United States today has two parties of capitalone insular and white nationalist, the other generally tolerant and multiculturalor, as the pathbreaking economist Thomas Piketty has argued, two parties that represent different segments of the elite. When it comes to economic policy, one is absolutist and ideological, the other technocratic and evidence-based, but both see growth as the overriding objective and markets as the optimal way to produce and distribute goods and services.

This is the political context that made it possible for the 1 percent to reach economic escape velocity and launch themselves away from the mundane, stagnant, anxiety-ridden lives of everybody else. The Democratic Party is dominated by people who fear nothing more than being called liberals (let alone socialists) or being seen as soft-hearted, soft-headed believers in big government and the welfare state. Since the 1990s, the partys economic platform has been that markets deliver prosperity, and the role of government should be limited to correcting market failures such as externalities, adverse selection, or moral hazard, in the academic jargon employed by the policy elite. This is why Bill Clintons lasting economic policy achievement was the introduction of work requirements for poverty assistance; this is why the greatest financial crisis in 70 years did not lead to structural change in the banking sector; this is why the health care program that bears Barack Obamas name is a warmed-over version of the plan introduced by Mitt Romney in Massachusetts, which was originally the brainchild of the reflexively conservative Heritage Foundation. As Republicans have succumbed to tribalism and irrationality, Democrats have claimed the mantle of fiscal prudence and responsible stewardship of the capitalist market economy.

The consequence is that the Democratic Party of the past 25 years has done next to nothing about inequality and has little to say about it. The party establishment has only taken up progressive policy ideas, such as the $15 minimum wage, when forced to by activists, usually working at the state or local level. The onetime defenders of the working class have stood idly by as the 1 percent has swept up an increasing share of the gains from economic growth, including the benefits of the post-recession recovery. Its response has been to lecture that a rising tide lifts all boatsa maxim that differs little from the trickle-down economics so dear to conservatives. (Nominating Barack Obama for president at the 2012 Democratic National Convention, Bill Clinton acknowledged that too many people did not yet feel the effects of economic growthbut, he promised, if you will renew the presidents contract, you will feel it.) Alternatively, Democrats will claim that some bundle of clever, market-friendly policiesfunding for infrastructure spending and incentives for clean-technology investment are the current darlingswill magically shift the distribution of income and wealth down toward the working and middle classes.

Of course, the rise of inequality and the stagnation of the middle class are more the fault of the conservatives who took over the Republican Party than of the moderates who responded by shifting the Democratic Party to the political center. It is crucial to understand the conservative movement in order to appreciate how we got ourselves into our current mess. I have written books that were largely about Republicansabout their campaign to deregulate the financial sector, their willingness to sacrifice two centuries of fiscal responsibility on the altar of tax cuts, and their use of simplistic economic theories to mask policies that favor the rich.

But I am not a Republican and, if you are reading this, you probably arent, either. More to the point, we can be certain that todays Republican Partydominated as it is by ultra-wealthy donors and a fundamentalist ideology of cutting taxes for the rich and eliminating programs for everyone elsewill do nothing to stem the rising tide of inequality or improve the economic fortunes of ordinary families. If we are going to more fairly share the vast wealth that our society produces, we first need a political party dedicated to improving the economic well-being of all Americans. That means we have to restore the historical identity of the Democratic Party as the champion of the poor, workers, and the middle class.

And so, because this is a book about how to make things better, its a book about Democrats. Its about how, in the wake of the Reagan Revolution, we latched onto the idea that a more modern, more sophisticated, more business-friendly Democratic Party could successfully compete for the White House. Its about how this transformation, while paying off in victories in four of the past seven presidential elections (six if you go by the popular vote), has left us impotent in the face of growing inequality, even when in power, and incapable of making the case that we can help families struggling against economic insecurity and misfortune. And its about how a new Democratic Party, dedicated to a progressive economic agenda, can take up the challenge of ensuring a decent life for every American.

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Take Back Our Party: Restoring the Democratic Legacy - The American Prospect

Breaking News – Smithsonian Channel(TM) Revisits the Legendary Event That Triggered the Birth of Tabloid Headlines in "Battle of Little Big…

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SMITHSONIAN CHANNEL(TM) REVISITS THE LEGENDARY EVENT THAT TRIGGERED THE BIRTH OF TABLOID HEADLINES IN

"BATTLE OF LITTLE BIG HORN"

NEW SPECIAL PREMIERES ON JANUARY 13 AT 8 PM ET/PT

NEW YORK - December 9, 2019 - The Battle of the Little Big Horn. Custer's Last Stand. The Battle of the Greasy Grass. An infamous conflict known by many names is one that has been edited, embellished and sensationalized for over a century. On June 25, 1876, Hunkpapa Lakota Chief Sitting Bull and thousands of American Indians were attacked by General George Custer's 7th Cavalry as they camped on the banks of Montana's Little Bighorn River. Vastly outnumbered, Custer's entire regiment was wiped out. What was to follow was a nationwide media storm - but what led to this deadly encounter, and how did history books get it so wrong? BATTLE OF LITTLE BIG HORN premieres Monday, January 13 at 8 p.m. ET/PT on Smithsonian Channel.

BATTLE OF LITTLE BIG HORN explores how the proliferation of the telegraph and burgeoning newspaper industry led to a simultaneous news break across the country. The inaccurate and dramatized reporting resulted in an American public both outraged and captivated; with no white survivors left to tell the tale, a decisive 19th-century conspiracy theory was born. BATTLE OF LITTLE BIG HORN draws inspiration from the Smithsonian's National Museum of the American Indian's exhibition Americans, which highlights the ways in which American Indians have been part of the nation's identity since before the country began, and features interviews with three of the museum's curators - David Penney, Emil Her Man Horses and Ccile Ganteaume. The special also visits the National Museum of Natural History's National Anthropological Archives to examine rare original drawings created by Lakota Chief Red Horse - a pictorial version of his testimony of the events at Bighorn - and notes the obvious absence of the fabled "Custer's Last Stand" image depicted on the battle field.

BATTLE OF LITTLE BIG HORN traces the events leading up to Bighorn - broken treaties, stolen lands and the threat of lost identity at the hands of government initiatives targeting assimilation of the Lakota Sioux and other American Indian tribes. The special uncovers how tabloid news coverage of the battle turned the U.S. Cavalry's bombshell loss at Bighorn into an unstoppable mythos, while fueling stereotyped depictions of the Native American - a Plains warrior wearing a feathered headdress - that persist to this day. Whether celebrating the victors at the Greasy Grass or dissecting the myth of Custer's Last Stand, Bighorn has been stirring emotions in the American public for almost 150 years. It was a pivotal moment in our nation's history and one that serves as an important reminder of all that we are, and all that we have lost.

BATTLE OF LITTLE BIG HORN is a Biscuit Factory Production for Smithsonian Networks. Producers for The Biscuit Factory are Molly Hermann and Rob Lyall. Linda Goldman and David Royle serve as executive producers for Smithsonian Channel.

Smithsonian Channel(TM), a ViacomCBS network, is where curiosity lives, inspiration strikes and wonders never cease. This is the place for awe-inspiring stories, powerful documentaries and amazing factual entertainment, available in HD and 4K Ultra HD across multiple platforms. Smithsonian Channel, winner of Emmy(R) and Peabody awards for its programming, is the home of popular genres such as air and space, travel, history, science, nature and pop culture. Among the network's offerings are hit series including Aerial America, America in Color, America's Hidden Stories, Apollo's Moon Shot, The Pacific War in Color and Air Disasters, as well as critically-acclaimed specials that include The Green Book: Guide to Freedom, Black Hole Hunters and Princess Diana's Wicked Stepmother. Smithsonian Networks also operates Smithsonian Channel Plus(TM), a subscription video streaming service delivering over a thousand hours of the Channel's stunning and diverse library of documentaries and series in HD and 4K Ultra HD. Smithsonian Channel is also available internationally in Canada, Singapore, Latin America, the UK and Ireland. To learn more, go to smithsonianchannel.com, or connect with us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.

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Breaking News - Smithsonian Channel(TM) Revisits the Legendary Event That Triggered the Birth of Tabloid Headlines in "Battle of Little Big...

What Is 5G? What Does It Do? And How Will It Benefit You? – Women Love Tech

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A common question is what does the G in 5G stand for?. Weve all heard of 3G, 4G and even 5G; from third generation to the fourth and then the fifth, but what does a generation really entail? Given 5G technology is now available, what does it all mean?

Well, for starters 5G will offer speeds of up to 1000x faster than 4G and that means better mobile performance, gaming experiences, video capabilities and stronger connectivity which opens up the playing field especially when it comes to apps such as Facetime and Snapchat.

To understand the advancements in mobile technology, lets take a look at the journey from 1G to 5G or rather from the days of carrying heavy brick-like mobiles to the super light weight smartphones of today.

To answer the question, you need to go back to the basics of the telephone. Analogue cellular, big like a brick and capable of making calls across a very limited space. Revolutionary in every way. Back then, they mustve thought Weve hit the jackpot here.

This was great, at the time, but the first mobile phones had a very limited range and as increasingly more people demanded quicker and more accessible communication, it needed to be upgraded. The first step to doing this was to standardise the cellular network to make it work across multiple systems. Queue the 3GPP (third generation partnership program); the people who started the standardisation process that eventually lead to 2G.

A shift from analogue systems to digital with the addition of SIM cards that ensured more security, and more importantly allowed other networks to communicate with each other.

Its not just across the Brisbane or Sydney networks that these cellular devices work, but around the globe. 2G also took a step up in its communication capabilities with the addition of SMS or texting; a means of communicating that is far more used than calling in todays society.

This came about during the era of the Pager. You remember that little box you had holstered to your waist like a gun? The thing that would allow users to receive and respond to messages? Well at the time, the thought was that SMS would be useless in the face of Pagersboy were they wrong.

2G was essentially the dawn of the communications disruption.

People could even use Blackberrys to receive emails. The world was clearly changing at a rapid pace, and Telco companies needed to keep up or risk falling behind.

Now we can receive files on a mobile phone, and so logically the next step is to provide an internet connection to these devices so that these files can be accessible anywhere and at anytime. In comes 3G.

A lot of people associate 3G cellular with the iPhone 3Gbut think before that. Were talking 2003 with Hutchinson as the sole providers at the time; before smartphones were even released. We had the blueprint, but not the right device to build the project to completion. Essentially, what we needed was a PC. And so the challenge was How do we get a mobile device to act like one?

Smartphones is how.

This opened up a new world of communication. It was already impressive that we could receive attachments, but now we wanted to be able to send them, and not just any attachment, but photos and videos.

4G, introduced in 2011, focused on the relationship between the user and the internet. We were now able to send each other photos and videos via SMS, we had data to roam the internet, but we still werent really adapted to what we now know as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, etc. With 3G, we reached speeds of 42Mbps which at the time was deemed impressive. But advancements to the next generation allowed for up to 2Gbps, meaning that things like Facebook live, video conferencing and FaceTime were all possible; and in real time.

We were also introduced to the concept of latency. To put it simply, if I were to send you a package, latency is how long it would take for you to receive the package. With 4G, the latency speed was at 30 ms; bringing about the term Instant Messaging.

An important point that needs to be understood is that 5G is not simply about your Google results page loading a few mili-seconds faster; it is instead a gateway to a new dimension of possibilities.

Its the next step to dealing with a software society full of a multitude of connections.

5G will be crucial for gaming, training and entertainment purposes. Getting 2.3 Gbps at now 20 mili-seconds of latency means that users will be receiving data even faster. For VR, training simulations for firefighting, space travel and airplane piloting can be used even more efficiently; self-driving cars like those form Tesla will respond to its environment at high speeds, gaming will be high-quality and lag-less and much more.

When it comes to you and me, we can expect a plethora of new and exciting technologies on apps such as Snapchat, as well as ultra-fast connectivity for FaceTime calls, Facebook lives, Instagram lives and video in general. And, of course, your phone will load pages faster, messages will be sent and received at ping rates, and you will genuinely notice a huge difference in performance. In fact, it is said that 5G will offer speeds of up to 1000x faster than its predecessor.

5G will bring us a new meaning to a connected society. More people will be able to connect to the same network without hindering its performance level; a feature that is especially important in developments to autonomous cars, connected machinery, and general Internet of Things devices.

To sum it up, 5G will bring greater speeds in terms of the moving of data, lower latency (at more responsive rates), and the ability to connect far more devices at once on one network. It will not banish 4G, instead it will continuously work in tandem with, bouncing back and forth to gauge the best connection possible for your device.

There are currently smartphones that do support 5G. You can check out the list here.

We can expect two Apple products that support 5G in 2020, along with Sony, Nokia and plenty more. Right now, these 5G-supported phones are quite expensive, but when more of them start to roll out, the prices will start to drop.

The simple answer is no. There is a common misconception that 5Gs higher frequency will be harmful to humans. The truth is that 5G, although higher than 4G, remains in the safe zone of 30GHz and 300GHz known as the Millimetre wave; in the same zone as microwaves. Things only start getting dangerous at the range of 790THz to 30PHz (1 PHz = 1,000,000 GHz). So in conclusion, no, 5G is not harmful.

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What Is 5G? What Does It Do? And How Will It Benefit You? - Women Love Tech

Floating Cities: The Next Big Real Estate Boom – Forbes

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Floating island.

"I'm a real estate developer and this is a developer's dream, spoke Lela Goren, a NYC-based developer and investor during a UN Habitat event as she looked over a scale model of Oceanix Citya floating city concept that could be deployed around the world. In this era where the value of and need for coastal property throughout Asia is so high that dozens of countries are creating hundreds of square kilometers of artificial land for urban development, her words resonated throughout the room. Not only may floating cities be a salve to help to mitigate the impacts of rising sea levels, but also a way for governments and developers to create vast swaths of much-coveted space for highly profitable coastal development by building out into the sea in a more environmentally sustainable way than land reclamation.

Most cities are located nearby water and this number will also increase in the next decades, said Kees-Jan Bandt, the CEO of Bandt Management & Consultancy. This was already the case a hundred years ago: water is life and always has been a center of economic activities.

For this reason, coastal cities have been drawing people towards them at an ever-increasing rate. Nearly three million people move from the countryside into cities each week, with the bulk of this migration heading to coastal cities, which now contain over half of the worlds population and are, quite literally, bursting at the seams. This is a situation that is expected to only grow more dire, as UN Habitat predicts that by 2035 90% of all mega-citiesmetropolises with over 10 million peoplewill be on the coast.

Over the past decades, coastal cities across Asia have been responding to the need for more land by simply making it themselves. Land reclamationdumping or corralling sand in aquatic areas to create new landhas grown to bonanza-like proportions, as Asian cities build arrays of high-value housing, luxury shopping malls, entertainment facilities, transportation infrastructure, and even entirely new cities where there was only open water not long ago. From 2006 to 2010, China was tacking on an additional 700 square kilometers of new land each year. Malaysia is engaged in mass reclamation work for the 700,000-person Forest City project as well as a slew of luxury developments in Penang and Melaka. Sri Lankas capital of Colombo reclaimed enough land to build an entirely new financial district thats meant to rival Singapore. South Korea built the Songdo smart city entirely on land expropriated from a bay. Dubai has turned reclamation into an art. While upwards of 20% of Tokyo and nearly 25% of Singapore is on land that nature didnt make.

In some Asian countries it is sometimes easier, quicker, and, on the long-term, cheaper to reclaim land from the sea than develop on existing land because of land ownership, Bandt explained.

In already crowded coastal cities, large swaths of development land are rare, and the procurement of such often requires costly and complicated evictions and relocations. So land reclamation was often seen as a win-win for developers and municipal planning boards: they could get fresh, barren land in high-value, central locations without needing to deal with the trouble of land owners or tearing down already built-up areas. Also, in most countries, reclamation is a land rights wild card, as there are no existing statutes on the ownership of land created on the seaits a simple matter of makers-keepers. And the profits from land reclamation? According to Ocean University of China professor Liu Hongbin, land reclamation in China could produce a 10- to 100-fold profit.

However, there is another side of land reclamation that isnt all glittering shopping malls and gleaming gantry cranes. It turns out that land reclamation is environmentally hazardous.

Once you reclaim, you lose the ecosystem, Professor Jennie Lee, a marine biologist from Malaysia Terengganu University, stated bluntly. The coral reef, the mangrove are the shoreline's protector, so once you reclaim, you destroy the natural protection to the coastline and, over time, you will see the water currents change and physical changes of the coastline itself: some beaches will have more sands piling up and some beaches will be eroded away. When you pile side dunes on an area, you have a lot of runoff, a lot of siltation happens, she continued. When you increase the turbidity of an area the phytoplankton reduces because there is not enough light, and then it just goes to the next level: the fishes reduce because there is no more food for them, and after that it will just change the ecosystem itself.

Besides being environmentally hazardous, land reclamation is contributing to the depletion of a resource that until recently was thought to be inexhaustible: sand. According to many reports, the sand wars have already begun, with many countries throughout Asia banning the export of the resource and organized crime syndicates filling the void by trafficking it like a narcotic. The world is running out of suitable sand for developmentour thirst for concrete, of which sand is a necessary component, and artificial land has pushed the resource to the brink.

There is also another unfortunate, often inopportune thing about land reclamation: it is often no match for nature.

Even in Dubai, with the worlds best engineering and obviously a lot of money, many of their land reclamation projects dont hold after a decade, said Marc Collins Chen, the founder of Oceanix, one of the leading companies driving the development of floating cities. If you look at Japan, the Kansai airportbuilt with state of the art engineering and a lot of moneyits sinking, and its sinking fast.

As the years pass, countries throughout Asia have started to understand the pernicious impacts of their land reclamation activities, and many want to see the projects come to an end. China has already banned all but essential land reclamation developments in 2018, and earlier this year, Zhejiang province doubled-down on Beijings order.

Meanwhile, the demand for more coastal development land continues to exist, signaling that a new solution is needed.

A substitute for land reclamation is now being proposed, offering the same perkscheap and easy to make blank slates for developmentwithout as many of the environmental and social drawbacks. They call them floating cities, but the term is an overt misnomer. Floating cities dont actually float, but are essentially platforms that are anchored to the seabed in coastal areas. The technology is not newits basically the same idea as an oil rig or large dock, only with a city built on top of it. Once the intellectual property of libertarians looking to construct utopias and tax shelters, the idea is now creeping into the consciousness of the commercial real estate sphere worldwide.

The economic potential is in the hundreds of billions of dollars, opined Collins Chen. More and more countries are banning commercial land reclamation while population pressures on coastal cities continue to grow. Floating cities become the only option to expand onto the ocean sustainably.

There are currently dozens of floating city models that are being tested and proposed around the world by a new class of innovator dubbed the aquapreneurs. In the Netherlands there is a company called WaterStudio, that has already built small-scale floating buildings, including UNESCO-backed schools. Recouping from its failure in French Polynesia, the Seasteading Institutewhich was founded by PayPal founder Peter Thiel and Milton Friedmans grandsonis still adamant about building floating cities to create a space for innovative forms of governance and economics. The Chinese construction giant CCCC is also in the floating city game, commissioning a design for a floating city that looks like a sprawling buoyant landmass made from prefabricated hexagonal modules. The French architecture firm XTU developed a floating city concept called X SEA TY. The architect Vincent Callebaut designed a floating city called Lilypad that would house 50,000 people in an array of high-rise towers that look like, yes, lily pads. Then theres Marc Collins Chens Oceanix Citya design that has already received considerable traction.

This visionary group of aquapreneurs believes that humanitys future isnt found in recoiling from sea level rise or stemming the tides of coastal migration, but in facing the reality in front of us and building out into sea to an extent that would make even the most ambitious land reclamation engineer blush. Rather than engaging in a perpetual fist fight with the ocean, the aquapreneurs are saying that we should build over top of the sea and just let nature do its thing down below.

Eventually, it's going to happen. There is no turning back. We are going to eventually have floating cities, declared Nathalie Mezza-Garcia, a complexity scientist who once worked with the Seasteading Institute.

While there is not yet an example of a living floating city, the model does present the potential of being less environmentally hazardous than land reclamation. Floating cities dont require large amounts of sand to create, preserving a dwindling resource and negating the damage done to the environment in the locales where the sand is sourced and where it is deposited.

Floating is a lot better than land reclamation because it protects the marine environment. It can be easily be removed or expanded, whereas land reclamation usually takes a bunch of sand and dumps it over a place, killing everything that lives there, Mezza-Garcia explained.

Floating cities are also being touted as being cheaper and faster to construct than land reclamation. When developers reclaim land there is generally a multi-year waiting period for the sediment to settle before it is safe to build on. Floating cities have no such requirements: you can start building the day the platform is anchored.

So let's say Shenzhen needs 5,000-person low income housing, Collins Chen proposed. You could literally tow it in within months instead of waiting ten years [for the reclaimed land to settle]. Reclaimed land is expensive because you got to bring trucks and trucks of sand and dirt and then you have to bring all of the teams to actually build and lay the concrete slab. Whereas, floating cities can be entirely built in a factory, towed out, and assembled. So it really is about the environment, costs, and speed.

Floating cities are not only for idealistic libertarians anymore, but grounded entrepreneurs looking to be a part of the next big boom in real estate development.

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Floating Cities: The Next Big Real Estate Boom - Forbes

Jumanji: The Next Level Notches $53M In Early Offshore Bow; Many Markets Up, But China Not Game; Frozen 2 Plows To $920M WW International Box Office…

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Refresh for latest: Sonys Jumanji: The Next Level is out in 18 early overseas release markets ahead of domestic next weekend, and in many, the movie is stepping up versus predecessor Jumanji: Welcome To The Jungle. Overall, the Jake Kasdan-directed sequel opened to $52.5M at the international box office, slightly down on the last films $54.8M (at historical rates and in like-for-likes) while also lower than where the industry saw The Next Level ahead of the weekend the culprit here is China.

There were 16 No. 1 openings for The Next Level across Europe and Asia, but rumble was lacking in the jungle in China as the film lags the previous installment with an estimated debut frame of $25.3M. It still topped the Middle Kingdom box office at No. 1 in a sluggish market where word of mouth is down, with a 6.2 on Douban and a 7.7 on Maoyan, versus the earlier films respective scores of 6.9 and 8.6.

Dwanye Johnson has a big base in the Middle Kingdom, but the movie didnt pin audiences down as hoped. Across the board, industry sources we spoke with were seeing The Next Level in China coming in at around $40M before the session began. That led to those projections of a $60M+ overseas opening. But China was ultimately flat from Friday to Saturday with no family bump. It also didnt help that Sonys release date changed very close to the last minute. The Middle Kingdom authorities are in charge of dating, and backed The Next Level up from an original December 13 to December 6 which impacted the ability to get Johnson and others to Beijing, particularly as the Thanksgiving holidays were in the mix. A dedicated press day for key Chinese media and social influencers had been handled out of Cabo in November and the team then did a three-city European tour, which has paid dividends so far (Frances $5.7M weekend is 93% ahead of Welcome To The Jungle, for example).

China repped just 14% of the last films overseas gross and is not required to be the major driver on what last time around was a global property that took in nearly $1B worldwide. With domestic still to come next session and many overseas markets to go, its early to make a call on this one. The previous film had a wild multiple, playing as counter programming to Star Wars: The Last Jedi. This year, Star Wars: The Rise Of Skywalker starts rollout on December 18 internationally.

Numbers elsewhere in Europe and Asia on The Next Level are much better, relatively, than in China. The Netherlands opened 58% ahead of the last film and the Nordics combined outperformed it by 30%. South East Asia as a whole did 47% better than Jungle including Malaysia which scored the 2nd biggest opening of the year and the biggest Sony opening ever for the market.

Given the small share of markets, Jumanji: The Next Level was not expected to lead overseas play, and particularly with the Frozen 2 ice-grip in the mix. That Disney movie added $90.2M this session in 48 offshore markets, retaining scores of No. 1s and seeing soft drops. The international cume is now $582.1M for $919.7M global as it looks towards $1B next weekend, and has helped push Disney past the $10B mark worldwide.

Other major titles like Fox/Chernins Ford V Ferrari and Lionsgates Knives Out are continuing to perform, with respective offshore cumes of $76.5M and $60.6M to date.

Breakdowns on the films above and more are being updated below.

NEWJUMANJI: THE NEXT LEVELSony PicturesSonys sequel to the reboot of the beloved 1995 original didnt step it up as well as hoped in its early offshore bow, but thats primarily down to one market. China can be fickle and the family/general audience simply didnt turn out this weekend which was overall rather sluggish.

The Next Level still took in $52.5M from 18 overseas markets, including $23.5M from the Middle Kingdom (which also includes $2.3M from IMAX there). Roundly, industry sources we heard from ahead of the weekend were pegging $40M in China for a $60M+ launch session. Ultimately, the numbers came in lower but with bright points in some areas.

Dwayne Johnson & Co launch next weekend in North America as well as the UK, Germany, Spain, Russia, Korea, Japan and Mexico. The idea is to jump start the holidays before Star Wars: The Rise Of Skywalker dominates discussion beginning December 18. The last Jumanji worked as leggy counter programming to The Last Jedi, so well see how that pans out this time around. Based on the initial 18 markets, its early to make a call and recalling that China repped only 14% of the earlier movies haul.

Diving down, Europe was powered by France where a $5.7M start was 93% ahead of Jumanji: Welcome To The Jungle. The team did local press, which helped, and a nationwide strike on Thursday also appears to have fueled some of the gross. The strikes, such as we are all too accustomed to here, are scheduled to continue next week.

In the Netherlands, The Next Level topped the chart with $1.4M, which is 58% ahead of the last film. The Nordics grabbed No. 1s in all five debut markets for a combined total of $2.4M (+30% vs WTTJ).In Asia, Taiwan played relatively like China with just $2.3M. However, Malaysia debuted to $4.6M for the 2nd biggest opening of the year and the biggest Sony opening ever for the market. Indonesia bowed to $6.4M, which is the 2nd biggest opening ever for a December release there, and Singapore and Philippines opened to $1.7M and $1.4M, respectively.

Ultimately, the top hubs for Welcome To The Jungle last time around were China, the UK, Australia, France and Russia. The movie played to a high multiple, continuing to beat the drum for weeks until its offshore final of $557.6M and $962.1M global (at historic rates). Well obviously keep an eye on this one going forward.

HOLDOVERS/EXPANSIONSFROZEN 2DisneyDisneys winter wonderland continues as Frozen 2 has packed another $90.2M into the sleigh this weekend internationally. That brings the offshore cume to a snow-stopping $582.1M and global to $919.7M with $1B worldwide in reach later this week.

The sequel is about to become the No. 12 animated release of all time overseas, and the 4th Walt Disney Animation Studiosmovie within that top group.

In IMAX, Frozen 2 this weekend set a new global record as its biggest animated film ever. The global cume is $38.6M to overtake Chinese title Ne Zha in the format.

F2 added South Africa this weekend where $800K gave Disney its best animated opening ever. Elsewhere, there were continued No. 1s in Austria, Belgium, France, Germany, Hungary, Italy, Poland, Russia, Spain, Switzerland, UAE, UK, Korea, Japan, Hong Kong, Philippines, Australia, New Zealand and every territory released in Latin America. Brazil does not release until January 2.

In holds, the grip is tight. Overall, the drop was 47% overseas. The best holds included Poland (-13%), Spain (-18%), Chile (-22%), Germany (-25%), Israel (-25%), Netherlands (-30%), Japan (-30%), France (-40%), Hong Kong (-43%), Australia (-44%), Korea (-47%), Mexico (-47%), Italy (-48%) and Taiwan (-49%).

Frozen 2 has already become the highest grossing animated title of all time in Korea, Indonesia,Philippines, Malaysia and Thailand as well as the 2nd highest grossing animated title of all time in India and Ukraine.

The movie has further surpassed the original in Philippines, Indonesia, Thailand, Taiwan, Malaysia, Singapore, Korea, Mexico, Vietnam, India, China, Poland, Hong Kong, Russia, Peru, Central America, Colombia, Ecuador, Albania, Bosnia/Herz, Croatia, Czech Rep, Egypt, Ethiopia, Hungary, Israel, Kuwait, Macedonia, Oman, Qatar, Romania, Serbia, Slovakia, Slovenia, Syria, Turkey, UAE and Ukraine.

Here are the Top 5 markets: China ($104.4M), Korea ($75.5M), Japan ($55M), UK ($43.1M) and Germany ($34.4M).

FORD V FERRARI20th Century FoxAdding Korea and Thailand, notably, Fox/Chernins awards-season racer has lifted its international cume to $76.5M. The Disney release picked up $8.3M in 52 material markets this lap, and raised the global total to $167.6M so far.

The Christian Bale/Matt Damon-starrer raced to $3.3M at No. 2 in Korea, behind only Frozen 2. Elsewhere, holds have been strong in Germany (-23%), Hungary (-24%), Austria (-28%), New Zealand (-31%), Australia (-33%), Spain (-36%), Denmark (-37%), India (-39%), Taiwan (-39%), Belgium (-40%), Netherlands (-43%), Brazil (-43%), Hong Kong (-44%), Switzerland (-49%) and Peru (-49%).

Still to come is the Japan release on January 10, and the China date is still TBD.

The Top 5 markets so far are Russia ($9.5M), France ($8.2M), UK ($7.3M), Australia ($5.8M) and Mexico ($4.6M).

KNIVES OUTClaire Folger/LionsgateLionsgates ensemble thriller is keeping audiences on the edge of their seats offshore with another $18.7M from 68 counter programmed markets this weekend. That cuts a fine figure of $60.6M international for $124.1M global.

Koreathis session was the top debut market with a strong$1.7M, ranked No. 4 from 686 locations. ItalyandMexicoalso kicked off well with$1.2Mfrom 361 locations and$1.1Mfrom 871 locations, ranked Nos 3 and 2, respectively.China, where the Daniel Craig pic had an impressive start last session, remains the top grossing market with$23.6M to date. In the UK, the gross is $8.1M so far, just a 20% drop from open.

Upcoming major markets include Brazil on December 12, followed by Germany and Japan in January.

LAST CHRISTMASUniversalUniversals romantic comedy added $10.9M in 61 markets this weekend, including 22 new outings. The offshore cume is now $51.3M for $84.8M global as play continues through the festive season. Overall overseas, the Emilia Clarke-starrer is tracking ahead of The Intern, Yesterday, Crazy Rich Asians and About Time.

Russia opened at No. 3 with $1.5M, ahead of Yesterday by 224% and About Time by 471%. In Korea, where About Time became a phenomenon, Last Christmas bowed to $1M, better by 29% than CRA. Mexico was also new at No. 3 with $848K two track ahead of The Holiday (+95%) and CRA (+144%).

The UK has now grossed $15.8M, with a 19% drop this 4th session. Australia dipped 22% for a run-in cume of $6M, while Germany was up 13% for a $5.2M gross so far.

Thailand and Italy are still to bow.

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Jumanji: The Next Level Notches $53M In Early Offshore Bow; Many Markets Up, But China Not Game; Frozen 2 Plows To $920M WW International Box Office...

Vineyard Wind Selected for Connecticut Offshore Wind Project – The Maritime Executive

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Credit: Vineyard Wind

By The Maritime Executive 2019-12-07 20:32:23

The Connecticut Department of Energy and Environmental Protection has announced that Vineyard Wind has been selected to advance to contract negotiations with the states electric distribution companies to provide 804MW of offshore wind through the development of the Park City Wind Project. The Park City Wind project will now enter into contract negotiations with the states two electric utilities, The United Illuminating Company and Eversource Energy, for a contract with a 20-year term.

When it comes online in 2025, the project will provide the equivalent of 14 percent of the states electricity supply, becoming a major part of Connecticut's reliance on natural gas power plants. The Department says the Park City Wind project is offered at a price lower than any other publicly announced offshore wind project in North America.The project also includes an estimated $890 million in direct economic development in Connecticut, including Bridgeport Harbor and the local supply chain. Vineyard Wind estimates 2,800 direct full-time employment years will be created in Connecticut through the project.

Vineyard Wind says that Park City Wind has the potential to establish Bridgeport often referred to as The Park City into an American hub for the emerging U.S. offshore wind industry. Over the last two years, states from Virginia to Massachusetts have announced plans to procure 22,000MW of offshore wind power which represents $85 billion in economic and investment opportunity. Bridgeport can play an integral role in both Connecticut and different project opportunities up and down the East Coast, says the company.

The Park City Wind proposal includes options to develop an up to 1,200MW project, which could generation enough electricity to power 600,000 Connecticut homes. Vineyard Wind has proposed hundreds of millions of dollars in investments in Connecticut, including:

Transforming Barnum Landing: Vineyard Wind will partner with McAllister Towing and Transportation to redevelop an 18.3-acre waterfront industrial property in Bridgeport that is currently underutilized and undeveloped.

Constructing an O&M Facility with a 25+ Year Lifetime: Vineyard Wind is also committed to making Bridgeport home to Park City Winds operations and maintenance (O&M) hub for the life of the project.

Vineyard Wind is a joint venture of Avangrid Renewables and Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners, each of which own 50 percent.

In 2018, the Department selected 304MW from Revolution Wind developed by rsted and Eversource.

With this most recent selection, Connecticut is leading New York (five percent) and Massachusetts (13 percent), with the equivalent of 19 percent of its electric load under contract with offshore wind projects. Rhode Island currently has the equivalent of 25 percent of its electric load committed.

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Vineyard Wind Selected for Connecticut Offshore Wind Project - The Maritime Executive

Offshore Wind May Help The Planet But Will It Hurt Whales? – NPR

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A humpback whale feeds on a school of fish off Long Island, New York. Migrating whales have increased dramatically in this region in recent decades but they're also facing human challenges. David 'Dee' Delgado/WCS/Ocean Giants/Image taken under NMFS MMPA/ESA Permit no. 18786-04 hide caption

A humpback whale feeds on a school of fish off Long Island, New York. Migrating whales have increased dramatically in this region in recent decades but they're also facing human challenges.

"Tail! Tail!" shouts Dr. Howard Rosenbaum, a marine biologist, before grabbing his crossbow, as we close in on a humpback whale.

Rosenbaum gets into position on the bow of the boat, stands firmly with legs apart, takes aim, and fires at the 40-foot cetacean. The arrow that he releases doesn't have a point it has a hollow 2-inch tip to collect skin and blubber, and a cork-like stopper to prevent it from penetrating too deeply.

"Oh, yeah!" come shouts from the small research crew. The hit looks clean. Sure enough, when they scoop the floating arrow out of the water, its tip is filled with a small white sliver of whale flesh, containing DNA that will help identify the humpback and its pod and potentially say something about its migratory patterns.

This is the sort of research that Rosenbaum, the director of the Wildlife Conservation Society's "Ocean Giants" program, has been doing for decades around the globe. Recently, though, whale monitoring has taken on a new urgency in Rosenbaum's own native habitat the Atlantic waters off New York City and Long Island.

A pointless arrow tip, shot by crossbow into a humpback whale, captures skin and blubber for DNA testing. David 'Dee' Delgado/WCS/Ocean Giants/Image taken under NMFS MMPA/ESA Permit no. 18786-04 hide caption

A pointless arrow tip, shot by crossbow into a humpback whale, captures skin and blubber for DNA testing.

As whale populations have grown, the WCS and its collaborator, the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, have been monitoring them, with an eye toward mediating conflicts with the ocean's heaviest users: cargo ships, commercial fishing trawlers and the U.S. military.

Now, the whales are poised to get many new, potentially disruptive neighbors: hundreds of skyscraper-high wind turbines, rising from the ocean floor.

The New York Energy Research and Development Authority has awarded two large contracts for offshore wind and anticipates several more in the coming years. The first phase, expected to be complete by 2024, involves dozens of wind turbines in two different offshore plots, leased by energy companies from the federal Bureau of Ocean Energy Management. They would generate 1700 megawatts enough to power more than one million homes.

These would be the largest offshore wind farms in North America and among the largest in the world. Subsequent phases are slated to build hundreds of turbines to generate 9,000 megawatts by 2035.

Rosenbaum's mission is to share information about the whales, in particular their feeding and migratory patterns, with regulators and the energy developer, a Norwegian multinational corporation called Equinor, and together craft strategies to mitigate damage to the whales' habitat.

"Everyone is interested in the benefits of renewable energy and what that does for our climate and for society," Rosenbaum says, as the boat motors to Equinor's lease area, an 80,000-acre triangle 20 miles south of Queens and Nassau County. "We also want to protect the wildlife and these habitats.'

Equinor is primarily a fossil fuel developer, drilling for oil and natural gas around the globe. A spokeswoman for the company's North American operation says the company has a "zero harm mandate" when it comes to extracting natural resources which they hope to exceed in this project.

Environmentalists are naturally skeptical of such energy producers, but the major groups in the region believe the risks posed by climate change, to ocean life and all life, are so vast that they justify whatever risks to local habitat might come from offshore wind farms. They're hopeful the trade-offs will be minimal.

"It's possible to harmonize protections for marine life with ambitious efforts to fight the climate crisis," says Francine Kershaw, from the Natural Resources Defense Council.

Catherine Bowes, from the National Wildlife Federation, praises Equinor for committing to a new construction technology that will lower enormous prefabricated cement foundations for the wind turbines, rather than pile-driving into bedrock to hold the 850-foot-tall steel towers in place.

Whales are extremely sensitive to noise, she says, so avoiding the extremely noisy process of pile-driving is a big step.

"These 'gravity foundations' are a really exciting technology that could change how everyone puts up turbines," says Bowes, who is a member of the Environmental Working Group overseeing New York's two projects. "They could potentially take one really large threat to whales off the table."

But Bowes would also like to see Equinor and the other company that won a New York contract, the Danish corporation Orsted, put into writing strict commitments comparable to one made recently by a Massachusetts developer, Vineyard Wind, especially on how they manage their boats during construction and then later, during the multi-decade-long operational period.

"Ship strikes are the single greatest risk to whales," she says. "We need to get all developers to commit to actively monitoring for whales and to reducing ship speeds to avoid hitting the animals."

In one study, NOAA estimated that 37 whales were killed by boat strikes between 2010 and 2014, from the Gulf of Mexico up the Atlantic coast to Canada, but more recent monitoring by the Atlantic Marine Conservation Society found roughly that many whales killed by boats in a two-year period off New York alone.

"We believe we can actually be part of the solution here in bringing back whales and improving the whole ecosystem," says Julia Bovey, Equinor's director of external affairs in New York. "The data Howard and his team are collecting can make a massive difference in how we affect the marine environment."

Equinor is underwriting much of the research. The company declined to say how much it is spending, but Rosenbaum estimates that two sophisticated buoys they will soon deploy will cost "hundreds of thousands of dollars." These "near-real-time acoustic monitors" record whale calls and relay them to on-shore scientists via satellite.

Howard Rosenbaum, from the Wildlife Conservation Society, keeps an eye out for whales while a special high-tech buoy 'listens' for their calls. David 'Dee' Delgado/WCS/Ocean Giants/Image taken under NMFS MMPA/ESA Permit no. 18786-04 hide caption

Howard Rosenbaum, from the Wildlife Conservation Society, keeps an eye out for whales while a special high-tech buoy 'listens' for their calls.

"We need to be able to stop construction when the whales are in the area and be able to construct responsibly when they're not there, and the information from these buoys will be crucial," Bovey says.

While all whales are considered vulnerable, the North Atlantic Right Whale is among the most endangered animals on earth. There are only about 400 of them, according to the latest research by the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration.

There are two sets of dangers to whales that Rosenbaum hopes the data he's collecting will mitigate. The first is ship strikes during the construction period. The other is the long-term danger the massive underwater structures and the transmission cables might pose to the whales. That is largely unknown, as whales do not migrate through the massive offshore wind farms in Europe.

"Does it create better foraging areas for whales? Does it disturb an area they might use?" Rosenbaum wonders aloud. "I think these are all questions that are all going to be borne out in the years to come."

The wind farm project predates a massive greenhouse gas reduction package the state government passed earlier this year, but it has become a centerpiece of what Gov. Andrew Cuomo is calling New York's 'Green New Deal.' The legislation calls for 100% renewable energy by 2040, with a plan for reaching that goal to be mapped out in the next two years.

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Offshore Wind May Help The Planet But Will It Hurt Whales? - NPR

Vineyard Wind: delayed project reveals bluster in US’s offshore wind ambitions – Power Technology

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For its adherents, the benefits of offshore wind are self-evident: abundant, clean, emission-free power.

But for supporters of a new development off the Eastern seaboard billed as the first utility-scale offshore wind project in the US progress to make their vision a reality has been frustratingly unforthcoming.

In August, it was announced that Vineyard Wind which had been scheduled to start construction off the coast of Massachusetts later this year had been put on hold, pending a federal environmental review supported by the Interior Department.

The agencys decision means Vineyard Winds original aim to construct 84 giant turbines, 14 miles off the states coast, able to generate enough electricity to power 400,000 homes by 2022 now hangs in the balance.

The reason behind the Interior Departments slow-walk is due to concerns around the projects impact on the local fishing industry. The National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) claims the windfarms design, as it stands, would encroach on species and commercial fishing operations in the Atlantic waters.

Thus, the NMFS has informed the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM), the agency responsible for offshore wind projects, that it wont sign off on the project until it is satisfied suitable changes have been incorporated.

Having already secured contracts with Massachusetts electric utilities, the companies behind Vineyard Wind Spanish-owned Avangrid Inc and Denmarks Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners are unamused by this interagency scrimmage. The developer claims the wait for an environmental permit would jeopardise the projects timeline.

It is not the first time a major offshore wind project off the Massachusetts shoreline has been met with the thumbs down. Vineyard Wind is preceded by Cape Wind, which, back in 2001, promised to be the countrys first offshore wind farm, situated in Nantucket Sounds, some five miles off the coast.

However, a 16-year-long culmination of financial setbacks and political and personal opposition local, well-heeled residents, including industrialist Bill Koch and Senator Edward Kennedy, were amongst its loudest critics saw the project finally give up the ghost in 2017.

Its easy to draw parallels between Vineyard Wind and Cape Wind. That said, appetite for offshore wind development in the US is much greater now than it was at the start of the millennium. The Interior Department is said to be considering auctioning more offshore wind leases to New York and California, while New Jersey has set 1200MW solicitations for next year and 2022.

Such enthusiasm, though, is yet to translate into the construction of any tangible large-scale offshore wind infrastructure. In contrast to the boom of inland turbines in recent years the US has the worlds second largest onshore wind power capacity behind China there is only one small offshore wind farm in the country, situated near Block Island, Rhode Island. It went online in 2016.

However, offshore wind experts believe it is only a matter of time before the industry will begin to catch up.

Currently, eight states, from Maine to Virginia, have committed to their utilities procuring 22.5GW of offshore wind from now through to 2035, says Stephanie McClellan, a researcher and director of the Special Initiative on Offshore Wind at the University of Delaware.

That is equivalent to the entire global installed capacity at the end of 2018, and is just the tip of the iceberg. As the cost of offshore wind continues to fall and the US supply chain matures, the industry is set for continued market growth well beyond initial state policy commitments.

For McClellan, once the first utility-scale projects see the light of day, others will follow in quick succession which she likens to a blast cap. Liz Burdock, president of the Business Network for Offshore Wind also believes that the US offshore wind energy market is expanding every day, but there are caveats for growth.

In order to keep the industrys momentum, we need to focus on certain key issues and policies, she says. That means expanded training programmes to build the skilled labour force we will need, as well as greater investments in ports to support both installation and offshore wind component manufacturing.

There also needs to be increased outreach with science-based research to the commercial fishing industry, so that offshore wind may proceed smoothly without the added cost and time delays from lawsuits.

Such ardour for offshore wind does not extend to the White House. President Trump was vocal in his criticism of the European Offshore Wind Deployment Centre in Aberdeen Bay situated close to one of his golf courses which he accused of creating an eyesore and denting tourism.

Offshore wind also runs counter to the Presidents attempt to revive fossil fuels in the US a theme on which he campaigned during the 2016 election. However, according to Timothy Fox, a vice president with the Washington research firm ClearView Energy Partners, this hasnt necessarily dampened wind deployment targets at state level.

The economics of offshore wind compared to other renewable resources in the US suggest its domestic deployment may remain state-policy driven, he says. We also dont think the Trump Administration opposes offshore wind, but we think it is prioritising its efforts toward other resources.

We project East Coast states to deploy between 5,000 8,000MW of offshore wind by 2025, representing a significant uptick from the current deployment of 30MW.

Nonetheless, Fox is circumspect when it comes to certain areas. He believes the BOEMs decision to delay its permit for Vineyard Wind has raised uncertainty and risk for project developers and their investors. He also believes comparisons between the US and Europe which now has a total installed offshore wind capacity of over 18,000MW to be overly ambitious.

European nations have experience and established supply chains for offshore wind, he says. They are also deploying the resource at a faster clip than the US. Offshore wind deployment here is unlikely to rival Europe soon.

Burdock is more optimistic. In her eyes, US demand for offshore wind-generated electricity is growing on both coasts and could soon surpass that of Europe.

We see almost limitless opportunity for the US offshore wind industry, she says. Offshore wind is now a global industry, and it is clear that the US pipeline of projects with secure off-take agreements is equivalent to all that Europe has installed over the past 30 years.

We believe that the US experience in offshore oil drilling, onshore wind, big data and artificial intelligence will allow the offshore wind industry to make giant steps forward once it starts getting steel in the water here.

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Vineyard Wind: delayed project reveals bluster in US's offshore wind ambitions - Power Technology

Petrobras seeks swift sale of Braskem, smoother offshore auction process – Reuters

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LONDON (Reuters) - The chief executive of Brazilian state-run oil firm Petroleo Brasileiro SA (Petrobras) said on Friday he wants to sell the companys stake in petrochemical company Braskem SA within a year.

FILE PHOTO: A logo of Brazil's state-run Petrobras oil company is seen at their headquarters in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil October 16, 2019. REUTERS/Sergio Moraes

At the London leg of an international investor roadshow, top Petrobras officials presented plans to sell tens of billions of dollars in assets to reduce a hefty debt load.

However, creditors of corruption-ensnared construction conglomerate Odebrecht SA, which also has a large stake in Braskem, are in advanced talks to delay the sale of the crown jewel asset for another two to three years, Reuters reported on Monday.

Its a very long period of time to sell a company, Petrobas CEO Roberto Castello Branco said during the meeting with investors in London. We understood this as a signal of someone who at the end of the day doesnt want to sell anything.

Branco also said that the process by which Brazil offers offshore oil blocks must be refined, with the current bidding system allowing Petrobas a privileged position.

Last month, no major global oil firms committed to participate in an auction for the blocks in a major blow to the South American exporters ambitions to develop the sector.

Its very important to have a significant change...toward the adoption of a more pro-market (regulatory) regime, eliminating all the complexities which at the end of the day reduce the attractiveness of Brazil, Branco said.

Asked if the firm would make a pledge similar to that from Spains Repsol to slash net carbon emissions to zero by the middle of the century, Branco told reporters: Its too early ... each company has its own views.

Petrobras refining and natural gas chief Anelise Lara said the company had completed a feasibility study with Chinas CNPC over refining operations in Rio de Janeiro.

She added that Petrobras was also looking to reduce the amount of gas it imports via a Bolivia-Brazil pipeline from a contracted 30 million cubic meters per day to 15 million following discussions with Brazils anti-trust regulator.

Petrobras agreed a deal with the regulator earlier this year to foster competition in gas imports and encourage new participants in the market.

Reporting by Noah Browning, editing by Louise Heavens and Kirsten Donovan

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Petrobras seeks swift sale of Braskem, smoother offshore auction process - Reuters

Huawei urging suppliers to break the law by moving offshore: Ross – Reuters

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(Reuters) - Chinas telecoms giant Huawei has been encouraging its suppliers to violate U.S. law by telling them to move operations offshore in a bid to avoid U.S. sanctions, Commerce Department Secretary Wilbur Ross told Reuters on Tuesday.

FILE PHOTO: An attendee wears a badge strip with the logo of Huawei at the World 5G Exhibition in Beijing, China November 22, 2019. REUTERS/Jason Lee/File Photo

In May, the U.S. government placed Huawei Technologies Co Ltd on a trade blacklist known as the entity list, over national security concerns, forcing some suppliers to apply for special licenses to sell equipment to the company.

But the U.S. government has become frustrated by the limitations of the blacklisting to keep overseas suppliers from selling to the company, the worlds largest telecoms equipment supplier, Reuters reported last week.

On Tuesday, Ross said in an interview that those frustrations extended to a push from Huawei to move its supply chain overseas.

Huawei has been openly advocating companies to move their production offshore to get around the fact that we put Huawei on the list, Ross said. Anybody who does move the product out specifically to avoid the sanction... thats a violation of U.S. law. So here you have Huawei encouraging American suppliers to violate the law, he added.

Huawei spokesman Rob Manfredo declined to comment.

Reuters reported last week that the U.S. government may expand its power to stop more foreign shipments of products with U.S. technology to Huawei, by broadening the reach of two key rules to capture more products.

One of those regulations, known as the De minimis Rule, dictates how much U.S. content in a foreign-made product gives the U.S. government authority to block an export. Currently the de minimis threshold for China is set at 25%, meaning that if American content constitutes more than a quarter of the value of the item, U.S. rules apply to its export to China.

Ross declined to say whether such rule changes were imminent. However, he said Huaweis advocacy of suppliers moving offshore has flagged an issue weve been starting to deal with, that is, whether the 25% threshold is right for China.

Whether 25% is forever and all time the right ratio, thats something to be resolved, Ross said, adding that the agency was always considering such moves.

Additional Reporting by David Shepardson; Editing by Chris Sanders and Edward Tobin

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Huawei urging suppliers to break the law by moving offshore: Ross - Reuters

Talks accelerate on East Hampton cable for wind farm – Newsday

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Closed-door settlement talks to finalize terms for a contested offshore wind-farm cable in East Hampton have accelerated in the past month, even as opponents of the likely landing site in Wainscott mount a counteroffensive.

Negotiations have centered on increasing a community benefits package from its initial $8.5 million and addressing concerns about commercial fishing, construction and environmental issues. All are expected to be addressed before the Town of East Hampton and the separate East Hampton Town trustees, who manage the towns common lands, give final approval for needed road permits for the site on Beach Lane in Wainscott, officials said. Specific terms are confidential, they said.

East Hampton Town hadalready given a tentative nod to the Wainscott landing site a year ago, but the project has increased in size and the state Public Service Commission, which will ultimately approve the cable route, has held hearings on the matter. Now, town officials say, talks to finalize needed permits with the town are active.

The movement [of settlement talks] is likely to accelerate, East Hampton Town Supervisor Peter Van Scoyoc said last week, adding the recent election provided him and the town board with a larger electoral mandate and greater confidence that this is what the public wants and theyll be much more willing to move forward with this to resolve any outstanding issues.

If the town and trustees ultimately move to approve a benefits package and road permits for the shortest land route for the cable in Wainscott, there are signs that influential neighbors in that community who oppose the Beach Lane route will take action to stop it.

All options are on the table, said Mike McKeon, a spokesman for Waintscott neighbors, some 1,700 of whom signed a petition to reject Wainscotts Beach Lane as the cable route.

Locals say the Wainscott group may have a war chest of upward of $1 million to battle the cable landing site, and that litigation, if pursued, could tie up issuance of permits for months or more.

"By their actions, they [Orsted] have practically begged residents to sue if they don't like their subscale project," McKeon said. "Orsted won't be disappointed."

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Approval for the cable landing site is one of numerous items developer Orsted needs to complete the project for LIPA by the end of 2022. Last year, an official for the former Deepwater Wind, which was acquired by Orsted, had said the company hoped to have the cable landing site locally approved by July 2018.

Were trying to put something together in the very near future, said Francis Bock, clerk of the East Hampton town trustees, which must approve the location if its at Beach Lane, a prospect trustees favor. Wainscott is the preferred landing site for the trustees and the town. We own that and thats whats keeping us in the negotiations.

One of the bigissues for locals is possible disturbance of theWainscott beach. "It's the iconic Hamptons beach," said Richard DeRose, whowalked his dog there one afternoon last week. Like others in Wainscott, he supports offshore wind, but "if I had my druthers I'd rather see the cable landing in Montauk."

Late last week a group calling itself Citizens for the Preservation of Waintscott began running online ads attacking the South Fork wind project overall, noting Orsted is a "foreign company" that got a "sweetheart deal" to produce energy that will "the most expensive in the state." The online petition, at truthaboutorsted.com, urges the state Public Service Commission to "reject this deal."

But other organizationssuch as citizens' group Montauk United and Win With Wind, a green-energy advocacy group in East Hampton, say Wainscott is the shortest, most direct route with the least impact on the environment and commercial districts.

Common sense seems to be prevailing, said Judith Hope, a former town supervisor and founder of Win With Wind. Even though the good people of Wainscott have mounted a ferocious opposition. It seems to me the preferred site remains the preferred site, in Wainscott.

Hope said its now time forthe town to finalizean agreement. It would be a great help in moving the project forward, she said. It would be a great help if theyd negotiate terms under which theyd allow the developer to lay the cable along a town road. Its one simple procedure.

An Orsted spokeswoman declined to comment, but Jennifer Garvey, Long Island development manager for Orsted Wind, said at a forum in Woodbury Friday that community opposition is part of every large building project, not just wind farms.

Theres no such thing as a project without opposition, she said.

Sometimes, we face NIMBY-style opposition: Hey, cant you just take this project elsewhere?'" she continued. "We cant do that anymore. We worked hard to find the best places to land our cables. We do count on the communities to help us get these [projects] over the finish line because these are [climate] goals we want to achieve together.

With James T. Madore

Mark Harrington, an 18-year Newsday veteran, covers energy, wineries, Indian affairs and fisheries.

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Talks accelerate on East Hampton cable for wind farm - Newsday

New Hampshire governor signs order to prepare for offshore wind development – Press Herald

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CONCORD, N.H. New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu has signed an executive order preparing the state for future offshore wind development.

The order signed Tuesday establishes four advisory boards focused on fisheries and endangered species, workforce and economic development, offshore industries and infrastructure.

New Hampshire recognizes the tremendous potential that offshore wind power has to offer, Sununu said in a statement. With todays executive order, New Hampshire will ensure that this is an open and transparent process involving diverse stakeholders to balance existing offshore uses with a new source of clean energy.

The boards will report to a a Bureau of Ocean Energy Management Offshore Renewable Task Force, which has its first meeting Dec. 12 at the University of New Hampshire.

The order also instructs several government agencies to study and report on greenhouse gas reduction potential of offshore wind in the Gulf of Maine and opportunities for New Hampshire to attract offshore wind supply chain operations.

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New Hampshire governor signs order to prepare for offshore wind development - Press Herald

New "must read’ report confirms once again that offshore drilling is not for NC | The Progressive Pulse – The Progressive Pulse

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In case you missed it, a new report released earlier this week by the good people at Environment North Carolina confirms once again the utter folly of the Trump administrations plan to bring offshore oil drilling to the North Carolina coast. This is from the release that accompanied the report:

Plans to expand drilling off the coast of North Carolina could have significant negative impacts onshore, according to a new report released by Environment North Carolina Research & Policy Center. From pipelines running through sensitive coastal habitats to air pollution released by oil refineries, Offshore Drilling, Onshore Damage: Broken Pipelines, Dirty Refineries and the Pollution Impacts of Energy Infrastructure highlights how onshore industrial infrastructure created for offshore drilling damages our environment in a variety of ways.

According to the report, pipelines running from offshore rigs to inland processing facilities can degrade estuaries water quality and risk spilling oil across our beloved beaches. In addition, toxic waste brought onshore from drilling operations can pollute drinking water and tracts of land. Beyond those issues, air pollution from oil refineries can threaten local residents health.

The study shows that these problems could only get worse. Expanding offshore drilling, as the Department of the Interior proposed last year, could lead to additional infrastructure pollution in previously pristine coastal areas, where communities have long been able to avoid this type of industrialization.

[Oil companies] must undertake a proper impact assessment in order to really avoid the most sensitive receptors, taking into account for example, commercial fishing areas, coastal tourism, reefs, right whale migration routes and shipwrecks, says Dr. Joni Backstrom of UNC Wilmington.

The North Carolina coast, along with Florida and Louisiana, are the three most impacted coastlines for storm occurrences in the U.S. Though platforms are designed to resist storm impacts, there have certainly been issues with platforms, pipelines, and onshore storage facilities. Hurricanes Katrina and Rita in 2005 led to spills of over 11 million gallons, says Professor Roger Shew (also of UNCW), And with somewhat increasing storm intensities, such as seen with Dorian and Michael, we should be aware of the possibilities of damages associated with these types of storms.

In January 2018, the Trump administration released a plan to open more than 90 percent of Americas oceans to oil & gas drilling, including off North Carolinas coast. The plan is an unprecedented expansion of offshore drilling and faces stiff opposition, including from every governor along both the Atlantic and Pacific coasts.

Whether it causes oil spills off our coast or pollution on our shores, offshore drilling is dirty and dangerous, said Duvall, We dont want drilling off our coast, now or ever.

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New "must read' report confirms once again that offshore drilling is not for NC | The Progressive Pulse - The Progressive Pulse

Cyprus petitions The Hague to safeguard offshore rights – Reuters

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ATHENS (Reuters) - Cyprus has petitioned the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in The Hague to safeguard its offshore mineral rights, its president said on Thursday, upping the ante with neighbor Turkey which disputes its claims.

FILE PHOTO: Turkish drilling vessel Yavuz is pictured in the eastern Mediterranean Sea off Cyprus, August 6, 2019. REUTERS/Murad Sezer/File Photo

Cypruss internationally recognized government discovered offshore gas in 2011 but has been at loggerheads with Turkey over maritime zones around the island, where it has granted licenses to multinational companies for oil and gas research.

Cypriot President Nicos Anastasiades said Cyprus is committed to protecting its sovereign rights with every legal means possible.

Our recourse to The Hague has that very purpose, he told journalists in Nicosia.

Turkey, which does not have diplomatic relations with Cypruss government, says that some areas Nicosia operates in are either on the Turkish continental shelf, or in areas where the breakaway Turkish Cypriot state has rights over any finds. It has sent its own drill ships to the island.

The ICJ has the power to issue binding decisions on countries which recognize its jurisdiction.

The actual petition Cyprus has filed has not been disclosed and officials in Nicosia declined any immediate further comment.

Anastasiades said Cyprus had attempted to deliver a notice of its intentions to Turkeys embassy in Athens but it was not accepted. So it was sent another way, he said. There is proof that it was received, so that gives (Cyprus) the right to recourse.

Cypruss Sigma TV, which first reported the petition, said the notice was sent by fax.

EU member Cyprus was divided in a Turkish invasion in 1974 after a brief Greek-inspired coup. Turkey supports a breakaway Turkish Cypriot state in north Cyprus.

Both Greek and Turkish Cypriots created the Republic of Cyprus in 1960 but the partnership crumbled in acrimony in 1963, leaving Greek Cypriots running the island.

Reporting By Michele Kambas; Editing by David Goodman and Elaine Hardcastle

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Cyprus petitions The Hague to safeguard offshore rights - Reuters

To those stuck in offshore detention: we will keep fighting for you. The medevac repeal is not the end – The Guardian

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Sometimes, the medical profession and governments are on the same page. Examples are public health initiatives like immunisation programs or bowel cancer and cervical screening programs, when medical expertise informs policy.

This week we sadly saw the opposite, an ugly clash between medical ethics and political expedience.

On one side, there were 13 medical colleges, the Australian Medical Association and thousands of doctors who were arguing passionately to keep the medevac process in place.

On the other side, a government hell-bent on repealing a piece of legislation that gave doctors the ability to carry out our professional oath to do no harm, and to put the patients needs at the forefront of decisions about medical care.

When I heard about the repeal of the medevac legislation, I felt a mixture of emotions, but mainly a profound sense of sadness. This repeal signals a return to the governments unambiguously cruel and inhumane policy in the treatment of a small cohort of people seeking asylum. These are among the most vulnerable people on the planet.

The decision to repeal medevac is an absolute violation of Australias obligations under international law to provide these refugees with safe asylum and medical care. It also strikes at the heart of our medical training and ethical principles.

Before medevac, medical treatment of refugees in offshore detention was often delayed until conditions were life threatening and even then, human rights lawyers were often forced to fight for their transfer in the courts. Before medevac, 12 people died in offshore detention.

Usually cloaked in secrecy, the dire situation on Nauru and Manus Island began to emerge in late 2018. Brave whistleblowers, risking a jail sentence for speaking out, told us of the intolerable conditions in Australian offshore refugee facilities.

So now we go back to politicians and bureaucrats deciding who lives and who dies

When the medevac legislation was passed, the government made no apparent attempt to set up a process to honour the new law. It was left to a group of doctors who came to be known as the Merg (Medical Evacuation Response Group) to set up an urgent triaging and assessment system. It was essential that this process was to be a robust and as credible as possible. Many of these doctors were involved in the Senate inquiry into the repeal bill. Of the 84 submissions, 82 argued against the repeal. There is a reason the medical profession was united in support of medevac. It fulfilled one of the most basic of medical ethics to provide medical care based on need and without discrimination.

After all, one of our responsibilities as doctors is to advocate for the health and wellbeing not only of our own individual patients, but for groups and communities without discrimination.

I have had messages from doctors around the country who are aware of the state of health of the refugees who have been transferred to Australia, and of many of those who remain in offshore detention who fear what will happen as we return to business as usual.

Secrecy surrounded conditions on Nauru and Manus Island. Secrecy was demanded of health professionals working in the detention camps.

The fact that the Senate was forced to vote on a secret back-room deal a deal which the Coalition denied even existed with no information as to what that deal was and with one person making that deal in isolation from experts and then casting the key vote is a cynical desertion of our democratic principles.

There was no secret that Scott Morrison and Peter Dutton did not want the medevac legislation.

When it was passed, the government waited 14 days to make it officially law.

They then made absolutely no move to set up a process for assessment of cases requiring transfer.

This week the government took only five hours to make the visit to the governor general to end medevac. They also ended any independent medical oversight of medical transfers from offshore detention with the demise of the Ihap (Independent Health Assessment Panel).

So now we go back to politicians and bureaucrats deciding who lives and who dies, who is transferred for crucial medical treatment and when.

Through this process I have seen the best and the worst of political decision-making affecting the provision of healthcare.

Any MP or senator who voted to repeal this legislation will have to live with the consequences of that vote on their conscience forever.

In contrast, we have seen the wonderful refugee advocates, lawyers, and doctors who have selflessly given their time for these medevac transfers to happen, and for those who took to the streets in support of the people who are still held in Papua New Guinea or on Nauru. I thank them for their hard work, their compassion and for fighting against the governments indefensible decision to repeal this legislation.

To those who remain in Papua New Guinea and Nauru, please know this. There are many, many Australians of good heart who understand your plight and will continue to fight on your behalf not only for your medical care, but for a future for you in freedom and safety.

This is not over.

Kerryn Phelps is a medical professional and former independent MP for Wentworth

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To those stuck in offshore detention: we will keep fighting for you. The medevac repeal is not the end - The Guardian

Doubling NJ offshore wind power will require work, cooperation – Press of Atlantic City

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Gov. Phil Murphy, who already will be remembered for launching New Jerseys offshore wind energy future, recently more than doubled the states commitment to electricity from turbines in the Atlantic Ocean.

In June, when the state picked rsted U.S. Offshore Wind to develop its first wind farm off Atlantic City, its goal of producing 3,500 megawatts by 2030 was considered ambitious. Five months later, with climate activist Al Gore at his side, Murphy ordered the state to produce 7,500 MW by 2035. That would be enough to power 3.2 million homes.

The original goal was worthy and very timely, and this one is good too. But dont assume that scaling up New Jerseys wind energy will be easy or done well, or even at the reasonable cost of the first 1,100MW rsted will deploy by 2024.

The project off Atlantic City is expected to add just $1.46 a month to residential electric bills. But subsequent wind farms wont qualify for the substantial clean energy investment tax credit that will expire next year. Projects will have to raise prices or lower costs to offset the loss of that break. Also, the more offshore wind farms are built, the more costly upgrades will be needed to onshore transmission lines and substations.

New Jersey could reduce the grid upgrade costs by working with neighboring states to create the regional grid capacity required by the rush of all coastal states into offshore wind energy. The states should also collaborate on getting sufficient support from the fishing and shipping industries affected by wind farms at sea.

New Jersey already seems to have fallen behind in multi-state cooperation on the research and development that will cut costs and speed deployment. New York, Maryland, Massachusetts and Virginia are partners in an R&D consortium. New Jersey is conspicuously absent.

There may also be a challenge just to build all of the wind farms and turbines that states want. New York already boosted its goal to 9,000 MW. Last year started with an offshore wind commitment of just 5,300 MW for the entire U.S. With Murphys increase to 7,500 MW, that is at least 24,000 MW now (or 24 gigawatts, to put it in billions of watts instead of millions, inevitable given the industrys rapid growth).

The total capacity for federal Bureau of Ocean Energy Management areas leased to developers is just over 21,000 MW. More leases will need to be offered and secured by bidding.

The good news is that East Coast states have the potential to generate about five times as much power from ocean wind as they currently have demand for.

Working swiftly to harvest some of that clean energy potential is good policy. Doing it cooperatively with other states to help ensure efficiency and cost-effectiveness would be good government.

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Doubling NJ offshore wind power will require work, cooperation - Press of Atlantic City

Trump quietly provides offshore drilling industry sweetheart giveaway – Salon

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Interior Secretary David Bernhardt was condemned Monday for a proposed policy shift on offshore drilling panned as a "sweetheart giveaway" for a former client.

The new extraction-encouraging proposal was announced last month in a report(pdf) by the Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement (BSEE) and Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM), two agencies within the Interior Department and occurred, according to transparency group Western Values Project, "under the cloud of impeachment."

Bernhardt's announcement followed longstandingfearsthat the former lobbyist would use his position in the federal government to serve the interests of the fossil fuel lobby above those of the American people and public lands. The recommendations laid out in the report pertain to royalties for offshore leasing and drilling.

"Federal officials," as Louisiana's Houma Todayreported, "are offering oil and gas companies a discount on the fees they pay the government to drill in the Gulf of Mexico's shallow waters."

If enacted, the policy to "ensure maximum resource recovery" would benefit the oil and gas industry National Ocean Industries Association (NOIA), on whose behalf Bernhardt previously lobbied, said Western Values Project.

Also noteworthy, said the advocacy group, is that the report was co-authored by BSEE Director Scott Angelle, who also has ties to the fossil fuel industry. Western Values Project said that, during the government shutdown, Angelle who has NOIA's stamp of approval for his current position green-lit 53 permits for offshore drilling for companies that sit on the board of directors for NOIA.

"Since day one, Secretary Bernhardt has operated as though Interior was his own personal lobby shop by doling out favors for his former clients with impunity. This offshore royalty rate reduction deal is short selling our shared resources and ripping off taxpayers," said Jayson O'Neill, deputy director of Western Values Project.

"With Trump's own corruption dominating headlines," he continued, "Bernhardt probably thought this sweetheart giveaway to his former oil and gas client would slip by unnoticed."

Oil giants like Chevron and Shell are already taking advantage of a loophole in federal law to avoid paying at least $18 billion in royalties on oil and gas drilled in the Gulf since 1996, the New York Times reported in October, citing a report from the Government Accountability Office.

The possible policy shift sparked environmental worries from New Orleans-based advocacy group Healthy Gulf, whichcalled the proposal "a recipe for disaster" in a tweet last month.

"This administration wants to lease areas of the Gulf for 'high-risk, small-upside opportunities' to smaller oil companies who don't have the resources to handle spills," the group said. "This proposal is as illogical as it is dangerous."

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Trump quietly provides offshore drilling industry sweetheart giveaway - Salon

A $39 Billion Wind Company Bets Hydrogen Is Key to Climate Goals – Bloomberg

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Raffinerie Heide's oil refinery in northern Germany is part of a pilot project with Orsted to produce green hydrogen.

Photographer:Raffinerie Heide

Photographer:Raffinerie Heide

One of the worlds biggest developers of offshore wind farms thinks its massive turbines could be key to the production of hydrogen in a greener way and ultimately, stemming climate change.

Over the past decade, offshore wind has pushed from a frontier technology to amulti-billion-dollar industry that provides green power cheap enough to compete with fossil fuels.Orsted A/S, a Danish company, anticipates that the scale and efficiency of wind farms at sea can play a crucialrole to supply heavy industry with green hydrogen.

Hydrogen is important because its one of the few fuels that can burn hot enough to make steel and cement, two of the most polluting industries. At the moment, most hydrogen is derived from natural gas and causes greenhouse gas emissions. Getting the element from electrolysis driven by wind farms would make it a zero-emissions fuel, since no carbon dioxide comes with hydrogen in the combustion process.As long as these heavy industries rely on polluting fossil fuels, it may be impossible to achieve the goals in the 2015 Paris Agreement on climate change.

You cannot do it without hydrogen, Anders Nordstrom, head of hydrogen at Orsted, said in an interview. Everything that can be electrified, you should electrify, but that leaves a substantial part of de-carbonization where hydrogen is the second-best option because electricity isnt feasible.

Orsted's Walney offshore wind farm off the coast of the U.K.

Photographer: Orsted/Orsted

Manufacturing is responsible for about 10% of global carbon dioxide emissions because it relies on high-temperature furnaces that mostly run on fossil fuels such as coal and oil. Some processes like cement require chemical reactions that throw off CO2 in addition to the emissions from burning fuels.

Hydrogen can be used as an alternative fuel in many of those processes. The issue is getting the gas without making more CO2.

Machines known as electrolyzerscan create the hydrogen by splitting it out of water molecules. And when it burns, hydrogen leaves only water vapor behind. If the whole process is powered by a wind farm, no emissions are involved.

To Orsted, it makes sense to pair offshore wind farms with hydrogen electrolyzers. Wind turbines are bigger and run more often when theyre sited at sea instead of on land -- often enough that they sometimes spin when the grid cant absorb more power.

Hydrogen factories could take that power and turn it into a gas. That would deliver another benefit in that they can store that energy for use later -- something thats more difficult when the energy comes in the form of electricity.

Industry accounts for a fifth of the world's annual CO2 emissions

EPA 2016

As the industry pushes to rapidly expand offshore wind in Europe, electrolysis may also help balance the variable generation rates of wind farms. When the wind doesnt blow that strongly, electrolyzerscould be turned down. When the wind picks up, the hydrogen production could be scaled up.

Since 2018, Nordstrom has run a small team of people at the Danish energy company thats focused on hydrogen. During 2019, the company unveiled a pair of pilot projects in the U.K. and Germany. A failed bid for an offshore wind farm off the coast of the Netherlands also included plans to incorporate green hydrogen. Orsted is continuing to develop hydrogen projects in the country and has a pipeline of other projects around northwest Europe, Nordstrom said.

The major challenge is cost. Green hydrogen costs between $2.50 and $6.80 a kilogram to make, due to the relatively high costs of renewable-powered electrolysis, according BloombergNEF. That would need to fall below $2 in order to make renewable hydrogen competitive with coal, and to around 60 cents to beat the cheapest natural gas-based production, according to BNEF.

That cost could come down to be competitive with fossil fuel by 2030, according to Nordstrom. A number of factors would need to fall into place to achieve that, such as increased scale of electrolysis projects, cheaper and more efficient electrolyzersand a higher carbon price, he said.

The executive sees a parallel between hydrogen and offshore wind in terms of their level of development. Just a few years ago, offshore wind was more expensive than nuclear power. Now it rivals coal on cost in some places.

We are where offshore wind was 10 years ago, Nordstrom said. Its the same cost journey we need to take.

Green hydrogen will also have to contend with competition from natural gas, which can be used to make hydrogen as well. That method produces carbon dioxide in the process.

By 2025, Orsted will move beyond studies and have electrolyzerprojects up and running, including a 30-megawatt project its part of in Germany, Nordstrom said. Beyond then, scale and potential is hard to forecast.

Its quite difficult to predict where well be in 10 years, Nordstrom said. Theres an exponentialfeelto whats happening at the moment.

Before it's here, it's on the Bloomberg Terminal.

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A $39 Billion Wind Company Bets Hydrogen Is Key to Climate Goals - Bloomberg

2020 Offshore World Championships Will Be Start of 2024 Olympic Campaigns – Afloat

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World Sailing has sent a shout out to its member countries to take part in the 2020 Offshore World Championships, to be held in association with the Middle Sea Race in October 2020. The prospect of the new Olympic class has already developed a pool of Irish interest.

Most sailing developed nations will regard this event as the opening of their 2024 Olympic Offshore campaigns. The event will be a mixed two-handed offshore race, of approximately 4 days/3 nights duration. (same as that proposed for the 2024 Olympic Games)

Entering nations will have to qualify for the limited fleet event. 20 L30 yachts will be supplied to competitors, but the organisers have not yet determined the event(s) that will qualify for the championships.

Ireland has a burgeoning interest in this offshore scene with forays on the international offshore circuit already carried out by a crop of talent such as David Kenefick, Tom Dolan and Joan Mulloy in Le Figaro Race. More recently, in June 2019, there were2024 declarations made by Conor Fogerty and Susan Glenny.

World Sailing is awaiting to determine the interest level before finalising the qualification events, but they have determined the principles on which they will be based. They say:

The intention is to hold all Qualification Events in Europe for 2020. By hosting the 2020 Qualification Events in one European venue and with one fleet of boats World Sailing believes that sailors and MNAs will have a unique opportunity to fast track their knowledge of this exciting new event.

World Sailing believe that it will be possible to develop Qualification Events for the Offshore World Championships in all continents from 2021 onwards.

Countries can express their interest by submitting the pre-entry fee of 2,500 to World Sailing no later than 20 December 2019.

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2020 Offshore World Championships Will Be Start of 2024 Olympic Campaigns - Afloat