RSS - Posts
A light earthquake occurred at 10:56:59 PM (PDT) on Saturday, August 16, 2008.
The magnitude 4.6 event occurred 14 km (9 miles) NNW of Trinidad, CA.
The hypocentral depth is 17 km (11 miles).
Anybody else fill out those did you feel it forms??
The other dirty little secret is environmentalists wanted higher gas prices, to encourage us to conserve. This was to be done using higher taxes. Well now we have had high energy prices, and people are going nuts about it. We are supposed to be living under a free market type system. That doesn’t happen, on one hand you have regulations, making it more expensive to produce energy, refine it, transport it, etc. A good look is gas prices within and outside California. The other hand you have energy manipulators.
Lets get back to present day, energy prices went up, with the worldwide lack of sources(see peak oil), and ever increasing demand. Market forces actually worked, consumption decreased. While some would have you believe conservation will solve all our woes with out drilling, and other will have you believe drilling is the answer. The reality is we need a three prong attack. 1) We must drill, it will take a while, to find the useful deposits, get it to consumers, but it won’t last long. 2) We must conserve. Relying on people to do so is foolish. The problem is get in a trap of yes it is more fuel efficient to tune up the car, but if you don’t have the time because of two jobs, or can’t afford it, it doesn’t get done. If it doesn’t get done there is no savings in fuel. 3) We need to develope new alternative energy, and implement it. This also takes time. This takes time due to planning, regulations, lawsuits, and just getting the material. People think think solar/wind is unreliable due to looking at one site. The reality is there is many good sites over the United States. By creating a large mix of different energy supplies, spread out, you create a stable grid of electricity. Look at it this way, while the wind may not be blowing in one spot, it is in another spot. Same with solar.
I don’t like the idea of oil shale, due to the need of water to transport it in pipelines. I don’t like nuclear, due to disposal issues.
Filed under: Humboldt | Tags: china, Costco, environmentalism, Home Depot, Pierson, Wal-Mart
We keep hearing the war cry, of we don’t need cheap Chinese goods, such as Wal-Mart, Home Depot, etc serves. No Port, we don’t need cheap Chinese goods!
They don’t tell you good quality goods come from China, such as the Wii. They also don’t tell you that the poor needs the cheap as in price goods such as CF Bulbs, like I saw at Costco in Eureka today, nor about the LED bulbs that can be bought at Pierson’s, also in Eureka, or CC Crane in Fortuna, all from China. You don’t hear them praising Wal-Mart’s role in promoting CF Bulbs. Just the negative bits about China, and the big box stores.
In the war in environmentalism, it is often the poor who suffer with higher prices. Yet the poor are the ones who need the most efficient items, yet the most efficient items, are the most expensive items, most the time. Dear consumer, conserve, we say, catch 22 says the poor. Yet we look at these big box stores as always the villain, pushing down prices. A ten pack of CF bulbs for about twenty bucks at Costco. All from China. Might be affordable to the poor. Yet for the rest of us, the price has gone down and the price of energy has gone up to the point where we will buy them. Think of the large amounts of CF Bulbs we have bought, to reduce our cost, and benefit the environment. This has resulted in a large decrease in energy consumption. We should be thanking China for improving quality of life here by reducing pollution, by reducing energy usage over here because of products manufactured over there.
Thanks to gCaptain for the heads up. Makes it easy to find these gems.
At least 185 non-native aquatic species have been identified in the Great Lakes, and ballast water is blamed for the introduction of most—including the notorious zebra and quagga mussels and two species of gobies.
This week, the U.S. Saint Lawrence Seaway Development Corp. will implement new rules designed to reduce Great Lakes invaders. Ships will be required to flush ballast tanks with salt water before entering the Seaway, a practice corporation officials describe as an interim measure, not a final solution.
Meanwhile, Congress is considering legislation that would force freighters to install costly onboard sterilization systems to kill foreign organisms in ballast water. The systems use filters, ultraviolet irradiation, chemical biocides and other technologies, and can cost more than $500,000.
The U-M ballast-free ship concept offers a promising alternative that could block hitchhiking organisms while eliminating the need for expensive sterilization equipment, said Michael Parsons, professor of naval architecture and marine engineering and co-leader of the project.
“There is no silver bullet. But the ballast-free ship has the potential to be an economic winner while addressing the ballast problem in a serious way,” Parsons said.
Ships take on ballast water for stability when they’re not carrying cargo. They discharge ballast when they load freight, expelling tons of water and anything else—from pathogenic microbes to mollusks and fish—that’s in it.
Instead of hauling potentially contaminated water across the ocean, then dumping it in a Great Lakes port, a ballast-free ship would create a constant flow of local seawater through a network of large pipes, called trunks, that runs from the bow to the stern, below the waterline.
“In some ways, it’s more like a submarine than a surface ship,” Parsons said. “We’re opening part of the hull to the sea, creating a very slow flow through the trunks from bow to stern.
“You’re continuously sweeping water through the ship and out,” he said. “So you’re always filled with local sea water, not hauling water from one part of the world to the other.”
The U-M ballast-free ship concept was conceived in 2001 and patented in 2004. It is intended for new-vessel construction only.
With funding from the Great Lakes Maritime Research Institute, Parsons and his colleagues recently built a 16-foot, $25,000 wooden scale model of an oceangoing bulk carrier to test the concept.
The work is underway at the U-M Marine Hydrodynamics Laboratory’s towing tank, the oldest facility of its kind that is owned by a U.S. educational institution.
In addition to helping fine tune the design, results from the latest round of tank tests and computer simulations suggest the ballast-free ship will deliver an unforeseen benefit. The design appears to provide a significant savings—possibly as much as 7.3 percent—in the power needed to propel the ship.
For a 650-foot bulk carrier hauling 32,000 metric tons of cargo from the Great Lakes to Europe and back, that translates into a roundtrip fuel savings of roughly $150,000. A report on the latest test results, including their economic implications, will be published next month in the Transactions of the Society of Naval Architects and Marine Engineers.
In upcoming towing tests, tentatively set for late June, the naval engineers will try to confirm and explain the unexpected power savings. Most of the improvement is likely due to the fact that water expelled from the stern-end of the trunks “smoothes out the flow” into the propeller, allowing it to operate more efficiently, Parsons said.
“It’s a huge power reduction, a hard-to-believe improvement in power, and we have to convince ourselves that all of it is real,” he said.
Building an oceangoing bulk carrier can cost $70 million. The added construction costs of the ballast-free design—for extra hull steel, trunk-isolation valves, piping and welding—would be more than offset by eliminating the filtration system and the ballast tanks.
The researchers conclude that the new design would result in a net capital-cost savings of about $540,000 per ship. Combined with the expected fuel savings, total cargo transport costs would be cut by $2.55 per metric ton.
“It seems that, compared to other ballast treatment systems, it’s a viable alternative,” SUNY Maritime College engineer Miltiadis Kotinis said of the ballast-free ship concept.
“We have proven that the technical part is feasible and that it can be applied to new vessel construction,” said Kotinis, a collaborator on the project and a U-M alumnus. “And we have also shown that, regarding the economics, it can reduce the operating cost and reduce or even eliminate the introduction of non-indigenous aquatic species.”
Let’s see here, since this was about the biased forum. The toxic lady, drives a car, on asphalt roads. She didn’t cover the pollution from the roads, increased need to repair them since the railroad is shut down, with the great oil based asphalt, oil for her tires, which wears down, and pollutes the watersheds, oil in the car, the older it gets, more likely it pollutes. She probability doesn’t a EV. Don’t forget the impenetrability of the roads to water, increasing the flooding potential. It is great, go to their web site for pictures of “poison poles” known in the real world as utility poles. The dirty diesels, at the balloon track.
Yet lets look at the railroad, the so called toxic ties, that people like to steal for landscaping. If they are so toxic, why do people use them for landscaping?
No mention of the alternatives to the ties she hates Concrete would last 50 years. Ties are what hold the tracks in gauge. Name a road that would last 50 years. Why if the ties are so bad, isn’t the eel river also polluted? It is much more length of track along side it.
No mention to the modern locomotives, that would reduce pollution, in all area, air, sound, and reduced fuel usage. No mention that those locomotives are not owned by the NCRA. No mention that those locomotives could be converted over to green goats or the road version. or otherwise upgraded.
The rail don’t have to be replaced except due to wear, unlikely breakage, or needing to upgrade the capacity. You know what happens on replacing because of wear? You switch positions of the rail. It is mainly the inside corner of the rail that gets the worst wear due to the flanges. By switching it, you have a new inside corner. Steel shaving are not considered toxic.
The railroad unlike the road or the trail, is open, allowing water to seep through, reducing flooding.
Now the so called baykeeper. There is already ships coming in. Yet increasing frequency automatically makes it 100% chance of a spill. These same large ships also pump ballast water in and out.
CA ballast water regulations Notice article 4.6 is not under proposed regulations.
Section 2284. Ballast Water Management Requirements
(a) The master, operator, or person in charge of a vessel that arrives at a
California port or place from another port or place within the Pacific Coast
Region shall employ at least one of the following ballast water
management practices:
(1) Exchange the vessel’s ballast water in near-coastal waters, before
entering the waters of the state, if that ballast water has been taken
on in a port or place within the Pacific Coast region.
(2) Retain all ballast water on board the vessel.
(3) Use an alternative, environmentally sound method of ballast water
management that, before the vessel begins the voyage, has been
approved by the commission or the United States Coast Guard as
being at least as effective as exchange, using mid-ocean waters, in
removing or killing nonindigenous species.
(4) Discharge the ballast water to a reception facility approved by the
commission.
(5) Under extraordinary circumstances where compliance with
subsections (a)(1) through (a)(4) of this section is not practicable,
perform a ballast water exchange within an area agreed to by the
commission in consultation with the United States Coast Guard at
or before the time of the request.
Oil spills. A three million gallon barge supplies most of our fuel, and comes in every month to month and a half. We have boats, that at one of the harbor meetings was said, you can stick you foot through and sink it. We have oil leaks from cars, and trucks, etc. We have had heavy port traffic in the past, and little spills. The oyster growers at the meetings were in support of of the harbor development. Yet we are worried about potential spills?
Filed under: Arcata, Humboldt, McKinleyville, Railroad, bicycle, trails | Tags: A&MR RR, bridge, Hammon Trail, Hammond Lumber Company
Unfortunately I didn’t have the cash on me to get the paper. Still though, what was it about? Are we unable to afford the upkeep of the bridge? If we are unable to afford the upkeep of this, how are to afford the additional trails, the three in a row bridges across the the Mad River for the A&MR RR trail?
Ok, I was right. Jack posts under his photos of the bridge:
Capdiamont,
The Readers’ Digest version of the Hammond Bridge story is that it’s rusting away and may eventually need to be replaced. Personally, I think if they do nothing the bridge will last for at least 50 more years. So when I’m 90, I’ll get concerned.
