Number 5. Fox News. Whale of a lawsuit threatens Biden green energy agenda.
It’s the concrete wind generator versus the North Atlantic Right Whale.
The Biden administration has given the green light to the Virginia Offshore Wind green energy project. It calls for 176 turbines in a 25-mile stretch of coastal water off Virginia Beach.
Because I am a math whiz, I can tell you that that means 7 turbines in every mile. Because each turbine’s 3 blades are each 300 feet long, that means if they were in a straight line, there would only be 150 yards of free air from one spinning propeller to the next. Which could make it tough for geese to maintain formation when they have to thread the needle.
But this is an article mostly about whales, not birds, even though the phrase “birds that get chopped up by the windmills,” in the fourth paragraph sort of grabs one’s attention.
The 300-foot-long blades, which do the avian chopping, will be on structures some 600 feet tall. This should make for an idyllic and picturesque seascape scene.
The Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow, the Heartland Institute and the National Legal and Policy Center have teamed up to file a lawsuit to stop the project. On the other side are the U.S. Interior Department, the Commerce Department, the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, the National Marine Fisheries Service, and Dominion, the company with the contract to build out the wind generators.
It seems that in the last 8 years or so, over 50 Right Whales have washed up dead on the Atlantic coast. This is about 15% of the entire North Atlantic Right Whale population. There are only 70 females capable of reproducing, putting the future of the Right in jeopardy.
Maybe a way to fix this problem is to trans some of the currently male Rights so that they could… well, never mind. I think I’m off-topic.
Making the Virginia Wind Power project more relevant to the development of wind energy on the east coast is that there are 30 other wind generator projects planned, spanning the entire coast from Maine to Georgia.
The plaintiffs claim that this quantity of underwater concrete structures will seriously endanger the Right Whales. Further, they claim that there has been no comprehensive study of the cumulative effect of such development along the entire coastline.
Which sounds like something I might say if I wanted to stop a project like this. But the sheer volume of underwater structures — although no one has yet said how many total wind generators are planned — sounds like an actual danger to only 350 whales.
And here is a rabbit trail fun fact: The Right Whale got its name from 19th century whalers who hunted this species almost to extinction before harvest limits were placed. The whalers needed a whale that would float to the surface after it was harpooned. This particular species did so, and thus they were “the right” whale.
As it happens, the Right Whale lives in shallow coastal waters, not deep ocean. They range up and down the east coast of the U.S. as part of their annual mating ritual.
And as it happens, shallow coastal water is exactly where the wind generators need to live.
What a conundrum. It almost makes you re-think why it is we need the wind generators in the first place, doesn’t it. This article stops there. Only a cynic would ask further questions like:
How much of the expense for this project is directed to Chinese entities?
How often does the 50 gallons of oil in each of 155 generators (total = 7,750 gallons) need to be changed?
What is the life-span of a blade?
Where do the non-biodegradable non-recyclable blades go when they die?
How many miles of copper wire will be required to transport the electricity generated? and
Would this project pay for itself in electricity if there were no government subsidies involved?
Number 4. CNN Style. Germany to redesign Adidas soccer jersey amid Nazi controversy.
Here is one from the “Wow, I wish I had thought of that sooner” department.
Sports fashion meets fascism. The German Football Association, which for some reason plays soccer, not real football, and for some reason uses the initials DFB instead of the obvious GFA, has commissioned Adidas to produce team jerseys for both men’s and women’s uniforms.
As in all sports, Adidas encourages sports fans to order their own jersey with the number of their favorite futbol star on it. Numbers 1 through 26 are generally used, but some enterprising social media commentator ordered 44. In the unique font Adidas uses, the double 4s appear to have a double meaning.
If you watch an old WW2 movie featuring Gestapo uniforms, you will see the collar of the tunic sports a patch with double lightning bolts. They each look like a stylized capital S.
They also look like the number 44 in the font Adidas uses for their jerseys, the same jerseys which can be ordered by any civilian with any number displayed.
At this writing, Adidas has removed the customized jerseys from their website. Funny how symbols live on. That war was over 79 years ago.
Number 3. USA Today. Rescue of California hiker dangling from cliff.
A hiker in California’s Golden Gate National Recreation Area fell off the trail, which is sort of like falling off a cliff. He slid 60 feet down a steep incline toward the ocean.
Finally able to stop himself just 40 feet above the water, he clung to what looks like crumbling rock and dirt until a rescue helicopter found him after nightfall using thermal imaging.
A Tactical Flight Officer got to him, hooked him up with a harness, and had him lifted back onto the trail where EMTs attended him.
I’ll bet that was an interesting ride down the face of the cliff.
The article does not say how long the hiker remained on the cliff face before help arrived. I expect he might have been thinking something like, “I have the rest of my life to figure out how to keep from sliding down into that surf.”
Number 2. The Mirror. Exact time to catch total solar eclipse over North America.
Don’t miss Monday’s big event. Your next chance will be August 23, 2044. By that time, Social Security will have gone bankrupt, the Dow will be at 800,000 and we will still be talking about Donald Trump.
The total eclipse follows a rolling time schedule from south of the Baja Peninsula to Prince Edward Island. In Dallas, it will start at 12:23 PM CDT and reach totality at 1:40 PM for 4 minutes. Done at 3:02 PM CDT.
In Caribou, Maine, it will reach totality about 3:32 PM CDT, which I think means 4:32 PM EDT.
If you can find a spot along the path from Dallas to Little Rock to Paducah to Buffalo, where there is not a local travel emergency declaration in effect, you might be able to park beside the highway and enjoy the dim.
Arm yourself with a pair of 3x5 cards and a pushpin. Make a tiny hole in one card, hold it horizontal to the ground, and hold the other one parallel a few inches below it. Look at the image presented on the lower card.
Because this is 2024, not 1974, I am probably obligated to tell you not to look directly at the sun, and also do not swallow the pushpin.
Number 1. The Conversation dot com. For the Maya, solar eclipses were a sign of heavenly clashes.
The last eclipse was in October, barely 6 months ago. To an ancient Mayan, two eclipses in less than a year would have signified… something… and would probably have called for some sort of sacrifice to appease the gods.
The Mayans lasted for a long time, long enough to track multiple eclipses and compose books with records of when they occurred.
The Dresden Codex is a hieroglyphic folding book made from fig bark paper, and dating to the 11th century. The Mayans created tables identifying when eclipses had happened. They recognized these occurred in cycles, and they used the data to predict future eclipses.
This is the sort of thing you can do when you don’t have Netflix.
Their sun god Kinich Ahau travelled across the sky every day and crashed into the underworld every night, probably to die. He was always born again the next morning. His arch enemy was a fellow named Chak Ek, which we may know as Venus, and who fought with Kinich Ahau for domination of the sky.
Like Lucy with Charlie Brown’s football, Kinich Ahau won that fight every single day.
When there was an eclipse, however, it was because Kinich Ahau was weak, and Chak Ek was winning some battle or other.
The Dresden Codex documents a couple of occasions in the distant past when Chak Ek actually came out of hiding near Kinich Ahau while the sun was darkened.
This all portended some unspecified Bad Thing for which Mayan kings had to make an offering of drops of blood. Where sacrifices are concerned, being king was a good thing. For the commoners, it was probably much more threatening.
Any time Kinich Ahau got dim and weak, it meant he was dying. The priests had to leap into action immediately and make some sacrifice to strengthen him back to life. Amazingly, their sacrifices worked every time, because in a matter of only a few minutes, there he was again, good as new. And ready to descend into the underworld once again, where he would die that night as usual, and then be re-born the next morning…
It’s all very confusing. Maybe we’d better just sacrifice a virgin next Monday to be on the safe side.
And that is The Alligator News Roundup, Solar Eclipse Edition, for Friday, April 5, 2024. Get those 3x5 cards ready. And if you are a virgin, you might want to stay indoors.
Have a good weekend!
The Alligator News Roundup