NewEnergyNews: NJ LAUNCHES OFFSHORE WIND EXPLORER

NewEnergyNews

Gleanings from the web and the world, condensed for convenience, illustrated for enlightenment, arranged for impact...

YESTERDAY

  • Saturday Video: Colbert Solves The Gas Price Problem (With Puppies)
  • Saturday Video: What Is Solar Energy And How Can It Be Put To Work?
  • Saturday Video: Wind, A Climate Change Solution

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    THE DAY BEFORE

  • TTTA Friday- THE GREEN TRANSITION SCOREBOARD
  • TTTA Friday- BIG MONEY WANTS BIG WIND
  • TTTA Friday- FIRST SOLAR WOES AND SLOWS
  • TTTA Friday- THE CYBER SECURITY BIZ

    • THE DAY BEFORE THE DAY BEFORE

  • TODAY’S STUDY: NUCLEAR’S NEWEST SCHEME TO BEAT ITS BAD ECONOMICS
  • QUICK NEWS, March 1: UTILITIES PLANNING FOR SMART GRID; BP WIND’S 1,000TH TURBINE; AZ UTIL TO STORE 1.5MW OF SUN

    • THE DAY BEFORE THAT

  • TODAY’S STUDY: HOW WIND AND NAT GAS CAN MAKE EACH OTHER BETTER
  • QUICK NEWS, February 29: CHINA SHOPPING FOR U.S. WIND; BETTER BIPV; THE POWER OF BUILDINGS

    • AND THE DAY BEFORE THAT

  • TODAY’S STUDY: HOW TO OPEN UP NEW ENERGY ON WESTERN PUBLIC LAND
  • QUICK NEWS, February 28: SAVING NEW ENERGY IN THE EU; SIEMENS WIND TO MID-AMERICA FOR MIDAMERICAN; A NEW GENERATION OF PV MANUFACTURING

    • THE LAST DAY UP HERE

  • TODAY’S STUDY: HOW IBM WOULD SPREAD THE WORD ON THE EFFICIENCY
  • QUICK NEWS, February 27: PRES WANTS PERMANENT PTC; FEDS BACK SUN R&D; THE DONALD (TRUMP) VS. OCEAN WIND

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    Anne B. Butterfield of Daily Camera and Huffington Post, is a biweekly contributor to NewEnergyNews

  • Taken for granted no more (February 5, 2012)
  • Anne Butterfield (Daily Camera via New EnergyNews)

    It's been an explosive week for women's reproductive health with two events reaching new depths of outrageousness and a third prompting pundits to call on a silent voting bloc to defend its practices on contraception.

    The biggest story of the week was the Susan G. Komen Foundation stripping Planned Parenthood of its grants for breast cancer screening on the stated reason of Planned Parenthood undergoing a Congressional investigation. Komen's new vice president, Karen Handel, is a known conservative political force who swore opposition to Planned Parenthood for its 3 percent of services going to abortion.

    Yet, before week's end we who were outraged at Komen and vocal about it saw a reversal of the decision. Komen announced that their new policy will sanction only those facing "criminal and conclusive investigations."

    If only Republicans advocating for smaller government would heed such pared down parameters. In five state houses Republicans have passed laws that should make critics of Obamacare blush: requirements for vaginal-probe sonograms on women on the day ahead of abortions. This is rationalized as an informed consent measure, though I for one have not seen this degree of intrusion before for my two lung surgeries, and a call to an abortion counselor (asking to be unnamed) revealed that the vast majority of abortions have no medical need of a vaginal ultrasound (as topical ultrasounds are routine). So this measure smacks of the long arm of the law reaching into a woman's most private place to deliver ideology, with the doctor also being used against medical tradition and practice. American women, ask: whose uterus do these small government folks think it is -- the woman's or the state's?

    Since this drama has reached Kafkaesque absurdity, state senator Janet Howell of Virginia attached a protest amendment to a sonogram bill moving through her state house, a measure requiring men also to undergo a bodily probe ahead of getting erectile dysfunction medication. Her amendment lost by an impressively small margin with 13 male senators in support.

    All's fair in love and war, so social conservatives are also feeling the pain, due to the Obama Administration's Department of Health and Human Services having stated that Catholic institutions serving and employing the public must adhere equally to rules of the Affordable Care Act granting women equal access to birth control with no co-pays.

    The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops had asked for a conscience clause, complaining that they cannot be made to pay for birth control. Meanwhile 98 percent of sexually active Catholics are said by the Guttmacher Institute to use birth control, meaning that the laity and the clergy of the church have radically opposing views of how to populate a family and maintain women's health.

    Catholic leaders doth protest too much in squawking on behalf of their religious freedom, suggests Jon O'Brien of Catholics for Choice -- whose stand is that the conscience of women rules. The church has failed to convince Catholics in the pews, so the clergy should own that failure rather than attempt to control distribution channels that impute extra costs to insured women who are often not even Catholic.

    On the politics, Chris Matthews on "Hardball," said that Catholics like him are swing voters and Obama has blown his chance with them. However Jon O'Brien says his group and its allies "expended a huge amount of resources mobilizing the public on this pivotal issue" of no co-pay birth control. And with Joan Walsh of Salon advising fellow Catholics to "preach what they practice" and defend the president, we shall see if Catholics defend their widespread practices or remain hiding in the shadows.

    Crises are times for taking action when comfortable practices can no longer be taken for granted. Planned Parenthood was gifted with nearly a million dollars in 24 hours of the Komen news, and also won a reversal -- good. More importantly we all need to see that protecting women's health where it intersects with reproductive freedom (not to mention a sound doctor-patient relationship) is no longer a spectator sport. We need to be activists, because as the right wing dreams of personhood amendments, flirts with banning birth control, and legislates body probes, we see that the American Taliban wears a prim sweater vest and expensive suits, with hopes to attract million-dollar super PAC's.

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    Anne's previous NewEnergyNews columns:

  • Taken for granted no more (February 5, 2012)
  • The Republican clown car circus (January 6, 2012)
  • Twenty-Somethings of Colorado With Skin in the Game (November 22, 2011)
  • Occupy, Xcel, and the Mother of All Cliffs (October 31, 2011)
  • Boulder Can Own Its Power With Distributed Generation (June 7, 2011)
  • The Plunging Cost of Renewables and Boulder's Energy Future (April 19, 2011)
  • Paddling Down the River Denial (January 12, 2011)
  • The Fox (News) That Jumped the Shark (December 16, 2010)
  • Click here for an archive of Butterfield columns

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    Some details about NewEnergyNews and the man behind the curtain: Herman K. Trabish, La Crescenta, CA., Doctor with my hands, Author with my head, Student of New Energy with my heart

    email: herman@NewEnergyNews.net

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    Your intrepid reporter

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      A tip of the NewEnergyNews cap to Phillip Garcia for crucial assistance in the design implementation of this site. Thanks, Phillip.

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    Pay a visit to the HARRY BOYKOFF page at Basketball Reference, sponsored by NewEnergyNews and Oil In Their Blood.

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    • Friday, April 30, 2010

    NJ LAUNCHES OFFSHORE WIND EXPLORER

    Cape May wind-energy firm launches data buoy off Atlantic City
    Michael Miller, April 29, 2010 (Press of Atlantic City)

    "Fishermen's Energy launched a weather and whale buoy…three miles off the coast in the race to build New Jersey's first offshore wind farm…Anchored in 40 feet of water…[it] will spend the next two years gathering weather data such as wind speed and barometric pressure…

    "Fishermen's Energy…has a head start on its competition, Garden State Offshore Wind and Bluewater Wind [to build the first offshore project], because Fishermen's Energy is building a 20-megawatt demonstration project in state waters where there is less red tape."

    click to enlarge

    "This smaller project 2.8 miles off Atlantic City will help determine the viability of Fishermen's Energy's larger 350-megawatt project planned for 10 miles off the coast. The buoy will record the sounds of passing whales, dolphins, birds and bats. Studies have shown that bats are especially vulnerable to windmills, which create areas of low pressure between their spinning blades that can kill the small flying mammals.

    "The four to eight windmills just off the coast will be just as prominent to beach and Boardwalk visitors as the five turbines spinning at the Atlantic County Utilities Authority…[and] should bring more jobs to Atlantic County…"

    click to enlarge

    "The state Board of Public Utilities has invested $12 million to help the three companies erect meteorological towers along the Continental Shelf. BPU President Lee A. Solomon said it is too early to tell how much more public money may be spent bringing this alternate energy to New Jersey electricity customers…[O]ffshore wind farms need to be big to be economical…But the steady breezes off New Jersey should provide a reliable source of power.

    "The state's energy master plan calls for providing 3,000 megawatts from offshore wind by 2020. The projects proposed by the three companies represent just one-third of that goal…[ The New Jersey chapter of the Sierra Club, Environment New Jersey and Clean Ocean Action] applauded [the] buoy launch…[and] endorsed the wind projects."

    posted by Herman K. Trabish @ 6:01 AM

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