29.Apr.2010 Weekly Fuel — Good News, Bad News Edition
by Jay Cox-Chapman, Design-Build Assistant
A wind farm off the coast of Denmark (NYTimes)
First, the good news: after nine years of regulatory wrangling, the Cape Wind offshore wind turbine project got the go-ahead from Interior Secretary Ken Salazar. Roadblocks remain, but there’s no question that the approval is good news for the wind industry in general. Developers favor offshore sites because of steadier winds and easier access to large coastal populations. (NYT)
And now, some bad news: a giant oil rig suffered a bad explosion and ultimately sank in the Gulf of Mexico. The really bad news? The 450-ton subsurface machinery that is supposed to cap the well in precisely this situation has failed, dumping thousands of gallons of oil into sensitive habitats. Even robots sent down to revive the valves can’t shut it off.
This photo from treehugger.com shows the scale of the accident -- each of those ships is several hundred feet long.
From the used-to-be-good-news department, this incredibly outdated ad from the Humble Energy Corp, now part of ExxonMobil. Can you imagine an energy company running this ad today? Via.
Via io9, a roundup of “weird urban ecosystems” — several of which, including Garbage City in Cairo and Subtropolis in Kansas City, have appeared here on the StackMachine. Especially intriguing are Moscow’s metro-riding dogs.
The island ghost city of Gunkanjima in Japan (via i09)
And finally, from the silver-lining department, an interesting effect of the Rhode Island floods on fisheries. Apparently the sewage and other organic matter stirred up by the floodwaters is dramatically increasing phytoplankton blooms, which is great news if you’re a Narragansett Bay fish, and therefore a Rhode Island fisherman.
The blue line means more fish food this year -- NOAA via NYTimes
