Obama administration blocks Arctic oil drilling through 2022

Oil and Ice: The Risks of Drilling in Alaska's Arctic Ocean

Produced by The Center for American Progress

From HuffingtonPost by Chris d'Angelo

Citing environmental risks, the Interior Department called the plan the “right path forward.”

Further cementing President Barack Obama’s climate legacy, the Department of the Interior announced on Friday its intent to ban oil drilling in the U.S. section of the Arctic Ocean for the next five years, citing environmental risks.

 

 Arctic sea ice has not only been shrinking in surface area in recent years, it’s becoming younger and thinner as well. In this animation, where the ice cover almost looks gelatinous as it pulses through the seasons, cryospheric scientist Dr. Walt Meier of NASA Goddard Space Flight Center describes how the sea ice has undergone fundamental changes during the era of satellite measurements.This visualization incorrectly identifies the oldest ice as being 5+ years old, when it would be more accurate to say 4+ years old.

The plan blocks the sale of new offshore oil and gas leases in the Beaufort and Chukchi seas, north of Alaska, between 2017 and 2022.
“The plan focuses lease sales in the best places ― those with the highest resource potential, lowest conflict, and established infrastructure ― and removes regions that are simply not right to lease,” Secretary of the Interior Sally Jewell said in a statement.
“Given the unique and challenging Arctic environment and industry’s declining interest in the area, forgoing lease sales in the Arctic is the right path forward.”

The Obama administration’s proposed five-year program for oil and gas had included 13 potential lease sales — 10 in the Gulf of Mexico and one each in Alaska’s Cook Inlet, Beaufort Sea and Chukchi Sea.
In March, the White House abandoned plans to include the Atlantic Coast in the upcoming sale.

The Interior Department’s final plan, which limits drilling during the five-year period to the Gulf of Mexico and Cook Inlet, is being met with mixed reactions from environmental groups calling on Obama to use his executive power to permanently protect the fragile Arctic.

The plan is a “significant win for Arctic and Alaskan communities and a strong step towards addressing climate change” but continues to leave the Gulf of Mexico at risk, San Francisco-based nongovernmental organization Rainforest Action Network told The Huffington Post in a statement.
“This move locks the Gulf into another five years of corporate giveaways ― with decades more of climate pollution, offshore oil spills, devastation to fisheries, and health impacts to local communities,” RAN Executive Director Lindsey Allen said.
“A true transition from fossil fuels doesn’t allow for energy sacrifice zones, especially when we know the climate can’t handle further fossil fuel development.”

Carter Roberts, president and CEO of the World Wildlife Fund, applauded the announcement, saying there’s no proven technology to safely drill in the Arctic, and no way to clean up oil if it were to spill in frozen waters.
He added that he hopes more permanent protection would follow.

Earlier this week, NextGen Climate urged Obama to use his executive authority to permanently protect the Arctic and Atlantic Oceans from such drilling, noting the “dangerous agenda” of President-elect Donald Trump.
“The Trump Administration has the potential to do serious damage to our climate ― but in the last few months of his presidency, President Obama can take concrete steps to secure his environmental legacy,” NextGen President Tom Steyer said in a statement, adding it would continue to flight against “Trump’s dark vision and dangerous plans for our country.”

Such presidential executive action would be separate from the leasing program.

Unsurprisingly, the oil and gas industry is disappointed by the announcement.
The American Petroleum Institute, an industry trade group, called the move “short-sighted” and “detrimental.”
“Our national energy security depends on our ability to produce oil and natural gas here in the U.S., and this decision could very well increase the cost of energy for American consumers and close the door on creating new jobs and new investments for years,” API President and CEO Jack Gerard said.
“We are hopeful the incoming administration will reverse this decision ― consistent with the will of American voters.”

The proposed expansion of oil and gas drilling in the Arctic and Gulf would result in climate-related social costs between $58.6 and $179.2 billion, according to a Greenpeace report released in June ― enough to potentially outweigh the economic benefits of selling the energy.
The plan still requires Jewell’s final approval, and would take effect July 1, 2017.

As he has promised to do with so many of Obama’s previous actions aimed at combatting climate change, Trump will likely try to do away with Arctic drilling ban.
After all, the Republican president-elect has said he believes climate change is a “hoax.”
Trump pledged in May to pull the U.S. out of the historic Paris climate agreement.
He has also said he would cut all federal spending for climate change research, cleaner technologies and aid for communities already threatened by climate impacts.
For guidance, he has turned to climate change denier Myron Ebell and fossil fuel lobbyist Mike McKenna to help with transition work at the Environmental Protection Agency and Department of Energy.
Furthermore, Trump has said he would increase America’s production of coal, oil and natural gas, as well as do away with Obama administration regulations aimed at cutting emissions.

Global security leaders have warned Trump that failing to fight climate change could prove disastrous to national security, leading to increased risks of violent conflict and economic instability.
Retired Maj. Gen. Paul Eaton, managing director of the Vet Voice Foundation, applauded Obama’s decision as a win for national security.
“Encouraging oil and gas development in the Arctic would compromise our national security by placing additional demands on our military and undermine one of the globe’s most pressing national security concerns ― climate change,” he said in a statement to HuffPost.

The proposed final plan makes available more than 70 percent of the economically recoverable resources, which Bureau of Ocean Energy Management Director Abigail Ross Hopper said is “ample opportunity for oil and gas development to meet the nation’s energy needs.”
The bureau said a number of factors went into the decision to remove the Arctic from the plan, including “ecological conditions, environmental risks and recent changes in industry interest.”
Jacqueline Savitz of Oceana said the announcement “demonstrates a commitment to prioritizing common sense, economics and science ahead of industry favoritism and politics as usual.”

Links :

• Washington Post : On its way out, Obama administration moves to slam the door shut on Arctic drilling
• BBC : Obama bans new oil drilling in Arctic Ocean
• Christian Science : Obama bans Arctic drilling. Will Trump let it stand?
• Bloomberg : Obama's Offshore Oil Plan Forces Drillers to Focus on Gulf
• Eco Watch : Obama Takes Historic Action, Protects Arctic Ocean From Offshore Oil Drilling

Revolutionary weather satellite blasts off

The GOES-R series, NOAA's next-generation geostationary weather satellites, is a game changer. These satellites, beginning with the launch of GOES-R, will provide continuous imagery and atmospheric measurements of Earth’s Western Hemisphere, total lightning data, and space weather monitoring to provide critical atmospheric, hydrologic, oceanic, climatic, solar and space data.
These measurements will lead to significant improvements in the detection and observations of meteorological phenomena that directly affect public safety, protection of property and our GOES fleet in the GOES-R era nation’s economic health and prosperity.

 From The Verge by Loren Gush

An Atlas V rocket was all set 2 days ago to launch from Cape Canaveral, Florida, sending a NASA-built weather satellite into orbit.
It’s the GOES-R probe, and it’s being touted as a game changer for weather forecasting.
The spacecraft, which will also be operated by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, is supposed to provide incredible real-time images of developing storm systems, better than any satellite that has preceded it.

GOES-R will keep an eye on Earth’s weather as it orbits 22,000 miles above.

But how does your local weather forecaster know what GOES-R sees?

Learn how GOES-R’s data is used for your local weather forecast in this animated video.

GOES-R even has a lightning mapper on board

To do this, GOES-R — which stands for Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite-R — will scan Earth’s skies five times faster than the other GOES satellites currently in orbit, with four times the spatial resolution.

“This means we’ll have better quality data at high resolution far more often than we do today,” Joe Pica, director of the Office of Observations at NOAA, said at a NASA press conference.

Such information will allow NOAA scientists to see developing weather systems in unprecedented detail, which will improve our tracking of tornadoes, hurricanes, and wildfires.

GOES-R even has a lightning mapper on board, meant to help forecasters know which storms are more severe than others.

The information the satellite receives will help refine seasonal and weather predictions, improve warning times before storms, as well as help plan the best flight routes for airplanes.

A rendering of GOES-R.

NOAA Satellites 

While GOES-R will tell us more about the climate of Earth, the satellite is also equipped to give us more information about what our Sun is up to as well.

Specifically, the probe will be able to measure the intensity of solar flares, which are responsible for causing “space weather” around Earth.

A flare is often accompanied by something called a coronal mass ejection (CME) — a huge burst of charged particles that shoots out from the Sun.

These CMEs can clash with our planet’s magnetic field, causing geomagnetic storms that mess with our satellites, communications systems, and even our power grid. GOES-R will be able to tell scientists whether a potentially problematic geomagnetic storm is headed our way.

In order to get all of this high quality weather information, GOES-R is headed to a geostationary orbit — a circular path about 22,000 miles above the Earth’s equator.

This is a preferred orbit for many communication satellites, because spacecraft moving along this path follow the rotation of the planet.

That way, they appear to be in the same spot in the sky at all times.

Once it gets to geostationary orbit, GOES-R will be renamed GOES-16 and begin its science operations in about a year.

Links :

•  CNET : New GOES-R satellite features a camera that will provide near real-time high-resolution imagery
• CNN : New satellite will vastly improve your weather forecast
• Forbes : The GOES-R Weather Satellite Launches Saturday: 4 Reasons It's A Game Changer

2016 deadliest year in the Mediterranean

2016 - Deadliest Year in the Mediterranean from Migrant Offshore Aid Station

From MOAS

Despite tireless efforts to save lives by both civil society and European navies, MOAS crews are witnessing search-and-rescue efforts in the Mediterranean becoming more challenging than ever.

The number of deaths this year has risen to almost 4,300 exceeding death tolls of past years.

While the number of people crossing the Mediterranean as a whole has decreased when compared to previous years, it must be noted that the number of people attempting the Central Mediterranean route – from Libya to Italy – has remained largely unchanged.

MOAS has seen its humanitarian efforts overwhelmed this year, largely due to the changing approach of smuggling networks. Whereas in past years, crossings were organised in more manageable trickles, perhaps a few a day, this year our crews have seen departures organised in large waves.

MOAS research and analysis suggests that this change in approach might be both an attempt to maximise opportunity and meet demand on the part of the smugglers.

The smuggling networks appear to be industrialising, with increased competition representing a new challenge for them in procuring enough rubber boats, engines, and fuel containers to meet the demand.

This is leading to unprecedented numbers of migrants and asylum seekers being placed on unseaworthy rubber boats.

“The combination of heavier loads and inferior quality is a recipe for disaster”, said MOAS Head of Operations Ian Ruggier.

“Rescue assets have had to deal with increased challenges. There is no doubt that the vessels are built to last a few miles to see people beyond Libyan territorial waters”.

As a result, it is almost certain that the true death toll is much higher than the recorded figure as it is highly likely that many boats sink without ever being reported.

It is now more challenging for rescuers to spot all the boats being sent in one wave, and then manage to rescue everyone.

There have also been incidents in which our crews have spotted vessels at night that had been at sea since the early morning, suggesting many other migrant boats may go unnoticed.

Over 30,000 people have already been saved since MOAS launched its first life-saving mission in 2014, and almost 19,000 have been rescued and assisted since June 2016 alone.

“Crossings in the Mediterranean will not be stopped by creating more borders or building walls and fences. There is no force based solution to migration. People will always find a way to come to Europe. There is an urgent need to manage the phenomenon rather than try to hide behind razor wire. For this to occur European leaders must stand up and be counted”, said MOAS director Pete Sweetnam.

MOAS continues to call for the creation of safe and legal routes to end the needless loss of life at sea and to guarantee protection and dignity for human beings in search of a better life.

Links :

• GeoGarage blog : Mediterranean migrant deaths reach record level in 2016 / Fire at sea (trailer) : shows horror of refugee crossings /European Union authorizes military action against people ... / Migrants can't be left to die in the seas of Europe / SAR crisis in the Mediterranean – commercial vessels ... / The millionaires who rescue people at sea / Lampedusa, the Italian Island thousands are dying to reach

The future of sailing

Links : 

• GeoGarage blog : Vendee Globe : the foils user manual /Flying the course : a game changer / Stable flight - foiling's holy grail /

8 tools we used to navigate the world around us before GPS and smartphones

 Do you know how the early sailors navigate the oceans?

The technology today makes it real easy to navigate the oceans.

But it's very interesting to know how the early sailors managed to navigate without it.

There's a lot of history on it.

From The Atlantic CityLab by Megan Garber
(from original article The Atlantic)

A new Smithsonian exhibit takes on the history of "getting from here to there."

Type an address into your phone, and up will pop a step-by-step route from where you are to where you want to be.
This is, in its way, magic -- magic that has, at this point, been rubbed and polished into a simple fact of life.
The ease with which we machine-carrying humans make our way through the world, though, is quite new.
And it's the product of a long, painstaking history: of people plotting a course, getting lost, and finally finding their way.
The newest exhibit at the Smithsonian's Air and Space museum, "Time and Navigation: The Untold Story of Getting from Here to There," opened this weekend, shares the story of human route-charting -- in the seas, in the sky, on the street, and in space.
And it's largely a story of failure.
The first spaceships we sent to the moon either missed their destination completely or crashed into it.
Amelia Earhart was very likely lost due to poor navigation.
Columbus and his ships were, famously, misdirected.

 History of Navigation

But the story of navigation is also one of gradual knowledge and readjustment, of looking to the constant objects of the physical world -- the sun, the moon, the stars -- and using them to understand, ever more precisely, how to find our way in the world.
"Dead reckoning" (positioning oneself using time, direction, and speed) has now given way to global positioning using satellites.
And that, in turn, is giving way to atomic clocks that can keep time within three billionths of a second -- clocks that may soon make it to our phones.
So it's easy to imagine that, given our tools, we have made getting lost obsolete.
But that's to take the luxury of location-based living for granted. "Navigation was the great scientific challenge of our time," an animated 19th-century British "admiral" notes in a video tour of navigation's history.
And it was the challenge on which many more challenges hinged.
As explorers ventured off into distant, unknown lands, they needed above all to know where they were going -- to be, as they say, on the right path. Navigation was in many ways a leap of faith.
It's just that the faith in question concerned calculations. 
Now, though, thanks to the man-made stars we navigate by, "the whole world is synchronized." We humans are synchronized.
The problems faced by those early explorers have been solved using that time-honored combination: ingenuity, and math.
"Time and Space" is one of the most ambitious exhibits Air and Space Museum has yet put on -- in part because it involved a collaboration among curators at different Smithsonian institutions (Air and Space as well as American History), but also because the exhibit is so theoretical in its topic and scope.
It's not so much about a particular time or trend, but about, you know, space and time ...
and humans' place between the two.
So one particular challenge the curators faced was to make the story of navigation -- a story, ultimately, about mathematical calculations -- accessible to the range of people who come through the museum every day.
They tackled it well.
The tale is arranged chronologically, but also in sections: navigation in the sea, navigation in the air, navigation in space, navigation in the contemporary world.
We see models of clocks designed by Galileo.
We see Charles Lindbergh's sextant.
We see the updated sextant used by Apollo astronauts to navigate using the stars.
We see a GPS-guided glide bomb.
We see a duplicate of the Mariner 10 space probe, the first craft to reach Mercury.
We see Stanley, the early self-navigating car.
Below, courtesy of the Smithsonian, are some of the artifacts featured in "Time and Navigation." For more, here's the online version of the exhibit.

Bond Chronometer.
This timekeeper was the first American-made marine timekeeper taken to sea.
William Cranch Bond, a 23-year-old Boston clockmaker, crafted it during the War of 1812.
This artifact is part of the National Museum of American History's collection.

 Bygrave Position-Line Slide Rule.
Celestial navigation requires complicated computations.
Performing these calculations in cramped open cockpits with low temperatures and wind speeds of over 160 kilometers (100 miles) per hour was part of what made navigation difficult in the early years of aviation.
Thankfully, Capt. L. C. Bygrave developed this handy slide rule shortly after World War I.
It provided the best shortcut method of speeding up celestial computations at the time.

 Ramsden Sextant.
Navigating in the sea: this sextant was one of the navigation tools invented in the 18th century by British mathematical instrument makers that permitted mariners to find their position much better than ever before.
The sextant became the most essential instrument for celestial navigation, used to find the angle of a celestial body above the horizon.
Jesse Ramsden, who made this sextant, also devised a machine to divide the scale on the sextant very precisely.

 Apollo Sextant and Scanning Telescope.
Navigating in space: to determine position in space, an Apollo astronaut located a specific star using a single-power, wide-field telescope and then took a fix using a sextant.
While this instrument does not look like a traditional sextant, the basic procedure is descended from centuries-old methods used by navigators at sea and in the air.

Dutch Pendulum Clock.
In the 17th century, several inventors were trying to make an accurate clock for finding longitude at sea.
In pursuit of a sea clock, Christiaan Huygens, a Dutch mathematician, changed timekeeping forever when he patented the first working pendulum clock in 1656 and later devised a watch regulator called a balance spring.
Pendulum clocks immediately became the best timekeepers for use on land, but they didn't work accurately on a heaving ship's deck.
Huygens worked with several Dutch clockmakers, including Johannes van Ceulen, who made this table clock around 1680.
It is one of the earliest clocks with a pendulum.

Longines Sidereal Second-Setting Watch.
Before 1927, watches used with sextants for celestial sightings could only be set to the minute.
A watch error of 30 seconds caused a navigational error of up to 12 kilometers (7 miles).
In 1927, P. V. H. Weems devised a watch with an adjustable second hand that could be set using radio time signals.
This was one of his personal navigation watches.
Sidereal refers to the watch running on a celestial day (about 23 hours, 56 minutes), rather than the 24 hour solar day.

Lockheed Vega 5C Winnie Mae.
Wiley Post's Winnie Mae circled the globe two times, shattering previous records.
The first time was in 1931 with Weems associate Harold Gatty as lead navigator.
The second was a solo flight in 1933 assisted by "Mechanical Mike," one of the world's first practical autopilots.

Stanley Autonomous Vehicle.
This autonomous vehicle, named Stanley, was developed by the Stanford Racing Team.
Stanley is a 2005 Volkswagen Touareg modified to navigate without remote control and without a human driver in the seat.
Stanley won the 2005 Grand Challenge, a robot race sponsored by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), by successfully navigating 212 kilometers (132 miles) across desert terrain.

Links :

• GeoGarage blog : Hōkūle'a: The dangers of sailing around the world / Polynesian navigators revive a skill that was nearly lost / Book World: 'Lost Art of Finding Our Way' explores the ... /Farewell Greenwich Mean Time /GPS back-up: World War Two technology employed /
    Circumnavigate the globe without instruments?