Wind-Power Politics

By MARK SVENVOLD

Published: September 12, 2008
The New York Times

“The moment I read that paper,” the wind entrepreneur Peter Mandelstam recalled, “I knew in my gut where my next wind project would be.”

I was having lunch with Mandelstam last fall to discuss offshore wind in general and how he and his tiny company, Bluewater Wind, came to focus on Delaware as a likely place for a nascent and beleaguered offshore wind industry to establish itself. Mandelstam had been running late all morning. I knew this because I received a half-dozen messages on my cellphone from members of his staff, who relayed his oncoming approach like air-traffic controllers guiding a wayward trans-Atlantic flight into Kennedy. This was the Bluewater touch — crisp, informative, ever-helpful, a supercharged, Eagle Scout attentiveness that was part corporate style, part calculated public-relations approach. It would pay off tremendously in his company’s barnstorming campaign of Delaware town meetings and radio appearances to capture what he had reason to believe would be the first offshore-wind project in the country’s history.

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NOAA Set for Larger Policy Role Under First Female Chief

By Juliet Eilperin

Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, March 21, 2009; Page A06

Jane Lubchenco, the newly confirmed head of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, decided to dedicate her life to the sea 40 years ago when she became fascinated with a tiny species of mud-burrowing clam.

Lubchenco, then an undergraduate at Colorado College, was taking a summer course on invertebrates at Marine Biological Laboratories with a group of graduate students. She was given a chance to study why the Yoldia had a small, mysterious structure attached to the edge of its body.

"I was blown away by this world I didn't know existed," she said of studying invertebrates, adding that she was amazed "by the incredible diversity" of forms and functions among mollusks, arthropods and other small creatures.

Now, after devoting her career to academia, the former Oregon State University professor will become the first woman to lead the agency of roughly 12,500 employees that provides weather and climate forecasting, monitors atmospheric data, manages marine fisheries and mammals, and maps and charts all U.S. waters.

Lubchenco (pronounced LOOB-chin-ko) takes the helm of NOAA at a time when the agency is poised to play a more prominent role as the Obama administration tackles the issue of climate change. The agency's fiscal 2009 budget stands at nearly $4.4 billion, but under this month's stimulus allocation, NOAA will receive a nearly 20 percent boost -- an additional $830 million. The legislation includes $170 million for climate change research as well as $230 million for habitat restoration, navigation projects and vessel maintenance, along with another $430 million for the construction and repair of NOAA facilities, ships and equipment, improvements in weather forecasting and satellite development.

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Exxon Valdez oil-spill recovery still is work in progress, 20 years later

Twenty years after the Exxon Valdez oil spill, pockets of oil — an estimated 16,000 gallons — remain buried in small portions of the intertidal zone. And herring, a cornerstone species of Prince William Sound's ecosystem, is one of two species "not recovering." The herring population's failure to rebound has emerged as among the most perplexing ecological mysteries of the spill's legacy.

By Hal Bernton
Seattle Times staff reporter

Twenty years ago, Cordova fisherman John Renner was poised for the spring herring harvest in Prince William Sound. He had a 50-foot seiner packed with nets and fuel, and the galley loaded with deer, moose and other fixings to feed his four-person crew for up to a month.

Each day, he monitored reports from state biologists for word that the herring's sac roe -- a fish-egg delicacy in Japan -- had ripened.

"The herring fishery was the pinnacle of seining," Renner said. "It was the Super Bowl of fishing. The best, most competitive guys."

The harvest was canceled after the Exxon Valdez ran aground March 24, 1989, on Bligh Reef, spilling nearly 11 million gallons of oil -- enough crude to fill 125 Olympic-sized swimming pools. Instead of netting herring, Renner spent the spring picking up dead birds off the beach and running a shuttle service for the gargantuan cleanup effort.

Today, on the 20th anniversary of the largest oil spill in the nation's history, Renner again will be on shore during the spring harvest due to a prolonged collapse of the herring stock.

The plight of the herring underscores how much of the Prince William Sound recovery remains a work in progress.

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Setback for climate technical fix

By Richard Black
Environment correspondent, BBC News website

The biggest ever investigation into "ocean fertilisation" as a climate change fix has brought modest results.

The idea is that putting iron filings in the ocean will stimulate growth of algae, which will absorb CO2 from air.

But scientists on the Lohafex project, which put six tonnes of iron into the Southern Ocean, said little extra carbon dioxide was taken up.

Germany's environment ministry had tried to stop the project, which green campaign groups said was "dangerous".

Leaders of the German-Indian expedition said they had gained valuable scientific information, but that their results suggested iron fertilisation could not have a major impact, at least in that region of the oceans.

"There's been hope that one could remove some of the excess carbon dioxide - put it back where it came from, in a sense, because the petroleum we're burning was originally made by the algae," said Victor Smetacek from the Alfred Wegener Institute in Bremerhaven.

"But our results show this is going to be a small amount, almost negligible."

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The Cove

There's a new documentary out you might want to check out:

In the 1960's, Richard O'Barry was the world’s leading authority on dolphin training, working on the set of the popular television program Flipper. Day in and day out, O'Barry kept the dolphins working and television audiences smiling. But one day, that all came to a tragic end. THE COVE, directed by Louie Psihoyos, tells the amazing true story of how Psihoyos, O'Barry and an elite team of activists, filmmakers and freedivers embarked on a covert mission to penetrate a hidden cove in Japan, shining light on a dark and deadly secret. The mysteries they uncovered were only the tip of the iceberg.

The Cove, an intelligent/action/adventure/Ocean’s Eleven-like horror film wrapped around a tale of redemption and ultimate revenge – oh, and it’s a documentary.

Watch the trailer

Changing Climate: Ecologist now leads NOAA

LA Times
Greenspace

Pity the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. It has certainly suffered insults over the years, beginning in 1970 when President Nixon decided to tuck the newly formed agency inside the Commerce Department. Why? Because he was miffed at Walter Hickle, his man in charge of the Interior Department.

The oceans and atmospheric agency has grown over the years to make up 60% of the Commerce Department budget, and federal officials have resisted calls to make it a separate agency. Its multi-syllabic name commonly gets shorted to an acronym. But even the colloquial NOAA gets lampooned, as shorthand for "No Organization at All," or "National Organization for the Advancement of Acronyms."

The slights grew more serious during the presidency of George W. Bush. Scientists and policy wonks working on global warming or protecting rare and endangered whales and fish increasingly found their work questioned, delayed or altered because it ran afoul of official White House policy.

Now it appears that NOAA may shed its reputation as the Rodney Dangerfield of federal agencies. President Obama made a point of appointing the new head of NOAA along with other key science advisors. The U.S. Senate confirmed Jane Lubchenco as the new NOAA administrator on Thursday, making her the first marine ecologist to ever run the agency that oversees America's vast oceans.

Nancy Sutley, chairwoman of the White House Council on Environmental Quality, underscored that point in a statement released late Thursday: "Dr. Lubchenco joins a distinguished group of scientific leaders in the Obama administration that will ensure that science plays its proper role in shaping policy."

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Lubchenco’s Goals on Oceans and Climate

The New York Times
Dot Earth
By Andrew Revkin

Jane Lubchenco, a zoologist focused on oceans and climate at Oregon State University, is now undersecretary of commerce for oceans and atmosphere and administrator of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

She had been unable to speak with the press while her nomination was being weighed by the Senate but has now answered a few questions.

There’ll be a lot more here from Dr. Lubchenco and other members of the Obama team on climate, energy and the environment — hopefully including answers to questions posed recently by Dot Earth readers. (John Holdren, the new science adviser to the president, has posted an interesting video message on his priorities.)

Q. Did you have any second thoughts about the jump to government from a leading role in academic research?

A. I never had envisioned doing this. I’m not sure I would’ve done it for any other president. I truly believe that this is a different time. The opportunities are enormous, despite all the economic and other challenges.

Q. What’s high on your to-do list?

A. First and foremost is establishing a real juggernaut of a team to be the senior leadership within N.O.A.A. that will work closely with all of the 13,000 individuals that do much of the real work.

Also, working closely with John Holdren [Dr. Holdren is the new science adviser] on interagency policies to insure that we’re taking advantage of the best possible science and ensuring that this is a welcoming place for scientists.

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The Fall and Rise of the Right Whale

ST. SIMONS ISLAND, Ga. — The biologists had been in the plane for hours, flying back and forth over the calm ocean. They had seen dolphins, leatherback turtles, a flock of water birds called gannets and even a basking shark — but not what they were looking for.

Then Millie Brower, who was peering with intense concentration through a bubblelike window fitted into the plane’s fuselage, announced “nine o’clock, about a mile off.” The plane made a stomach-churning lurch as the pilots banked left and began to circle. And there, below, were a right whale mother and her new calf, barely breaking the surface, lolling in the swells.

The researchers, from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the Georgia Wildlife Trust, are part of an intense effort to monitor North Atlantic right whales, one of the most endangered, and closely watched, species on earth. As a database check eventually disclosed, the whale was Diablo, who was born in these waters eight years ago. Her calf — at a guess 2 weeks old and a bouncing 12 feet and 2 tons — was the 38th born this year, a record that would be surpassed just weeks later, with a report from NOAA on the birth of a 39th calf. The previous record was 31, set in 2001.

“It’s a bumper year for calves,” Richard Merrick, an oceanographer for NOAA’s fisheries service, said in an interview. “That’s a good sign.”

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Scientists discover new species of coral in Northwest Hawaiian Islands

Scientists have identified seven new species of bamboo coral discovered thousands of feet below the ocean surface.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration says six of the seven species may represent entirely new genera, which it called a “remarkable feat,” given the broad classification a genus represents.

The coral was discovered in the Papahanaumokuakea Marine National Monument using a submersible research vessel in 2007. Scientists expect to identify more new species as analysis of the samples continues.

The mission also discovered a coral graveyard. Scientists estimated the death of the community occurred several thousand to potentially more than a 1 million years ago, but did not know why the community died.

UW biologists: New fish species is psychedelica

The Seattle Times
bySandi Doughton

There are 320 known species of anglerfish, and Ted Pietsch can describe each one down to the number of spines on its dorsal fin.

So, when the picture from Indonesia flopped into his e-mail, his pulse started pounding.

"I pretty much freaked out," the University of Washington fish biologist said.

With its flattened face, undulating stripes and turquoise-rimmed eyes that peer straight ahead, this fish looked like something out of a fever dream — and like nothing Pietsch had ever seen before.

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Too-friendly Hawaiian monk seal to be relocated

Honolulu Advertiser

A Hawaiian monk seal with a propensity for swimming, playing and otherwise interacting with people on the Big Island — getting a lot of food handouts in the process — will be relocated to the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands, federal officials said.

The juvenile female seal known as R042 was relocated four times, and now is in a pen at Marine Corps Base Hawaii at Kaneohe Bay.

"Each time, she found her way back to populated areas where she could pursue interacting with humans," the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Fisheries Service said in a release.

The seal, born in late spring of 2007, now is 300-plus pounds and the interaction with humans poses a possible threat to safety, NOAA said.

"Seals that depend on humans for food and safety lose their natural ability to forage and fend for themselves, making them dependent on humans to survive for the rest of their lives," the agency said.

NOAA said the relocation decision was not made lightly, given that it is removing a female "with reproductive potential from a rich and relatively stable environment" in the main Hawaiian islands.

The Coast Guard will transport the seal to the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands.

Increased federal funding planned for endangered Hawaiian monk seal

By Coco Zickos - The Garden Island

LIHU‘E — In response to conservation efforts for America’s most endangered marine mammal, Hawai‘i is expected to receive some $5.7 million for fiscal year 2009 to support the NOAA Hawaiian Monk Seal Recovery Plan.

The funding marks a $3.6 million increase over last year’s amount.

Monk seals are currently “red listed,” said Dr. Mimi Olry, who heads the Marine Mammal Stranding Network on Kaua‘i and serves as the island’s Hawaiian monk seal coordinator.

The listing means they are a critically endangered species and face an extreme risk of extinction, she said.

With only about 1,100 remaining, unless greater efforts are taken the Hawaiian monk seal may soon follow in the footsteps of the Caribbean monk seal’s untimely extinction.

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Obama Suspends Bush Rule on Endangered Species

The New York Times
Green Inc.
by Kate Galbraith

President Obama today asked federal agencies to consult with wildlife biologists over decisions that may affect threatened or endangered species.

The memorandum effectively suspends a December 2008 rule issued by the Bush administration, which waived requirements that agencies like the Army Corps of Engineers consult with experts at the Fish and Wildlife Service or the National Marine Fisheries Service when undertaking projects like building dams.

Today’s decision did not throw out the Bush administration rule, which had prompted lawsuits from California and a number of environmental groups. Instead, Mr. Obama asked that the secretaries of commerce and the interior “review” the Bush regulation and determine whether new rules are needed.

“Until such a review is completed,” Mr. Obama wrote, “I request the heads of all agencies to exercise their discretion, under the new regulation, to follow the prior longstanding consultation and concurrence practices” involving the Fish and Wildlife Services and the National Marine Fisheries Service.

The Sierra Club reacted with unmitigated joy.

“These midnight regulations represented all the disdain for science and political trumping of expertise that characterized the Bush administration’s efforts to dismantle fundamental environmental laws,” said Carl Pope, the Club’s executive director, in a statement.

“Our wildlife are clearly in much better hands now,” he continued. “President Obama is bringing science back into decision-making.”