Notes in the Margin

Not so fast. The claim that Rock Port is fully wind-powered may be, at best, a bit exaggerated.

The mainstream press has picked up this report from the University of Missouri Extension office (reported by Science Daily) claiming that Rock Port, Missouri is the first 100% wind-powered city. On paper it looks all well and good, but when it comes down to the specifics, it simply isn’t true (emphasis mine):

Rock Port Missouri, with a population of just over 1,300 residents, has announced that it is the first 100% wind powered community in the United States. Four wind turbines supply all the electricity for the small town.

Rock Port’s 100% wind power status is due to four wind turbines located on agricultural lands within the city limits of Rock Port (Atchison County). The city of Rock Port uses approximately 13 million kilowatt hours of electricity each year. It is predicted that these four turbines will produce 16 million kilowatt hours each year.

While it may be the case that the wind turbines will, over the course of one year, generate as much power as the community will use in one year, it simply isn’t true that the town could go “off the grid” entirely.

Wind turbines generate power on an intermittent basis. When the wind is blowing, the turbines spin and spit out a nice stream of electricity. But on calm days (or wind speeds below a given threshold), the turbines generate little to no electricity. The power output generated by a wind turbine is far from constant, and as such, it simply cannot be utilized as the only source of power for a community. In the current Rock Port setup, when the wind turbines generate power in excess of what the town is utilizing at the time, the excess power is “sold” to the grid:

Excess wind generated electricity not used by Rock Port homes and businesses is expected to be move onto the transmission lines to be purchased by the Missouri Joint Municipal Utilities for use in other areas.

Alternatively, when the wind is calm, the town does not go dark. That connection to the grid is not one way. The 1,300 residents then depend on pulling power from the rest of the grid (power not generated by wind but rather from more traditional sources) to sustain a constant flow of electricity. As such, absent the use of multiple, gigantic, expensive batteries to store the excess electricity generated on windy days to tap when the wind is calm, it cannot be claimed the city is “100% wind powered” under the current scenario.

Furthermore, such development is simply not economically viable in its current state. While funding sources have not been entirely transparent, it has been reported that the wind farm that is powering Rock Port (built by Wind Capital Group) required $90 million dollars in start-up capital. Divided among the 1,300 residents of Rock Port, that would necessitate an up-front investment of nearly $70,000 per resident to say nothing of ongoing maintenance costs.

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For more on the original report:
University of Missouri Extension (2008, July 16). Rock Port, Missouri, First 100 Percent Wind-powered Community In U.S.. ScienceDaily. Retrieved July 16, 2008, from http://www.sciencedaily.com­ /releases/2008/07/080715165441.htm

Roll Cloud Event of 06/09/08: Image captured at 8:22am CDT

Following another very active night of strong to severe convection, a beautifully-defined roll cloud passed over northeast Kansas on the morning of Monday, 06/09/08. This roll cloud followed some thick, low-hanging stratus that had lingered behind the active overnight convection. As the stratus deck retreated to the east, this roll cloud became visible, stretching from the northern horizon all the way to the southern horizon just west of our location. As this roll cloud moved east, it briefly became particularly well-defined around 8:20am CDT as shown above before slowly losing the crisp, clear edges.

Several minutes later, I captured several more photographs from a better vantage point.

Roll Cloud Event of 06/09/08: Image captured at 8:27am CDT

Roll Cloud Event of 06/09/08: Image captured at 8:27am CDT. Additional signs of instability evidenced by the faint wave clouds in the upper left portion of the frame.

I then stitched together five frames using Canon’s PhotoStitch 3.1 software that came with the Canon 30D. This was my first attempt at using this software to compose a panoramic image from several still frames, so you’ll have to excuse the imperfections.

Roll Cloud Event of 06/09/08: Composite image of 6 photographs taken at 8:27am CDT. Click for much larger image.

For more images, check out the full entry in the gallery: Roll Cloud Event of 06/09/08.

Composite Image of four photographs taken between 8:51pm and 9:51pm CST. Click on image for larger view

In sorting through a huge virtual stack of digital photographs that needed organization, I realized I never posted any of my photographs of the total lunar eclipse of February 20th, 2008. Some of these photographs have been featured on other sites, thus the watermark.

The next total lunar eclipse visible from here in the US won’t come around until December of 2010. The only wild card was the weather. Clouds are already streaming into southern Kansas in advance of a coming storm, but fortunately they held off until the second half of the eclipse. The entire first half, including the beginning of totality was still clearly visible from Kansas.

These photographs were captured during the first stages of the eclipse prior to clouds moving in right around totality. Shots taken either with a Canon 30D 70-300mm @300mm, f/5.6 exposures varying from 1/1000s to 1s or handheld through 26mm eyepiece of my Meade DS-2114LNT reflector telescope.

The first image was taken at 8:51pm, CST. Click all images for a higher resolution view.

8:51pm CST. Canon 30D, 300mm f/5.6, 1/1000s, ISO-200. Click on image for larger view

9:08pm CST. Canon 30D, 300mm f/5.6, 1/1000s, ISO-200. Click on image for larger view

9:26pm CST. Canon 30D, 260mm f/5.6, 1/400s, ISO-200. Click on image for larger view

9:27pm CST. Clouds now becoming visible. Canon 30D, 1/2s, ISO-200. Click on image for larger view

9:51pm CST. Clouds streaming in from the south. Canon 30D 1s, ISO-200. Click on image for larger view

The claims against anthropogenic global warming skeptics are often the same: they’re all shills for big oil or other industry wishing to poke holes in the ‘consensus theory’ of global warming (which isn’t a consensus at all). Under the so-called “politicization of science” program, George Soros’ (the favorite fundraiser of many democrats) has reportedly given as much as $720,000 to Hansen to help package his alarmist claims and get them pushed by the mainstream media (The Soros Threat to Democracy):

How many people, for instance, know that James Hansen, a man billed as a lonely “NASA whistleblower” standing up to the mighty U.S. government, was really funded by Soros’ Open Society Institute , which gave him “legal and media advice”?

That’s right, Hansen was packaged for the media by Soros’ flagship “philanthropy,” by as much as $720,000, most likely under the OSI’s “politicization of science” program.

So he got some big paychecks from Soros - but was there a quid pro quo? The evidence certainly indicates as much:

That may have meant that Hansen had media flacks help him get on the evening news to push his agenda and lawyers pressuring officials to let him spout his supposedly “censored” spiel for weeks in the name of advancing the global warming agenda.

Hansen even succeeded, with public pressure from his nightly news performances, in forcing NASA to change its media policies to his advantage. Had Hansen’s OSI-funding been known, the public might have viewed the whole production differently. The outcome could have been different.

Did Soros’ funding pay off? You be the judge. Do a quick google search on James Hansen to read any of the thousands of mainstream media stories touting Hansen’s claims of censorship by the Bush administration. This wouldn’t be the first time credibility questions have been raised regarding Hansen and his alarmist claims [see "When does 1,400 Media Interviews = Muzzled" (03/20/07)].

[Update 12:51pm CDT]  This document pulled from the George Soros website devoted to his “Open Society Institute” admit his affiliation with James Hansen and his media blitz (see page 15):

…The Government Accountability Project, a whistleblower protection organization and OSI grantee, came to Hansen’s defense by providing legal and media advice.

But the alarmist’s favorite poster-boy James Hansen is hardly the only benefactor of Soros’ funding designed to get more media play for politicized topics important to the left - check out the full article for more on the non-disclosure disclosures regarding immigration and other big topics of the day.

This morning’s total lunar eclipse was a spectacular one, as viewed from northeast Kansas. The reddish-copper hues were much more vibrant than during the partial eclipse of 03/03/07.

While I was not able to document the full range of the eclipse from start to finish (it lasted several hours), I was able to grab a few shots during totality. First, an image of the full moon as seen the evening before (08/27/07) around 8:45pm CDT (click image for a larger view):

The moon entered totality around 9:52 UTC (4:52 am local time). The first images I captured were around 10:35 (5:35am CDT) and the best images during totality were shot around 5:44am (click for a larger view):

5:46am:

By5:55am CDT even the western sky was just beginning to brighten as sunrise was looming at my back and the moon threatened to quickly be eclipsed by a neighbor’s roofline (click for a larger view):

By 6am, we were ready to pull the camera in and venture out for our morning 4-mile run. I opted to leave the ipod at home this time and enjoy the serenity of the morning with the eclipsed moon guiding us out as we ventured westward for the start of our run. It actually provided surprisingly little light and was fading fast as it approached the foggy, hazy horizon, quickly losing contrast in the brightening sky.

It was a beautiful sight as the first rays of twilight began to brighten the eastern sky. Sunlight quickly seeped past the Earth, once again finding the moon. The moon quickly began returning it to its familiar bright yellow shades as it emerged from beneath the Earth’s shroud. The top of the moon was first to brighten and the rest quickly followed. As the moon set, it began to look much more like its familiar self, although it did not fully emerge from the eclipse until after it had dropped beneath the horizon in our location (just before 7am).

As was the case with the last eclipse photo shoot, I’m still not satisfied with my ability to manually focus the 300mm IS USM to infinity in low light (auto focus is no good in darnkess). I have since upgraded to a much better tripod (Bogen/Manfrotto Wilderness 3221) which was used this morning, although I haven’t put the cable release to work yet and probably should have. As you can see by the full moon photo, the lens is perfectly capable of a much clearer shot of even an eclipsed moon, but my ability to work the lens into the proper range has been elusive. Fortunately I only need to wait a few months for my next chance.

The calendar is already marked: Total Lunar Eclipse of February 21, 2008. For much more information, including many graphics friendly to even casual observers, check out the NASA Eclipse Page.

Even more spectacular than next year’s lunar eclipse will be the Total Solar Eclipse of 2017. It will be perfectly visible from Northeast Kansas… just ten years from this month. Check out the detailed path and other information regarding the eclipse of 2017 on a great new resource: NASA’s Google Earth Eclipse Mapping Page.

See more images from this event in the Notes In The Margin Gallery (here’s a direct link to the Lunar Eclipse of 08/28/07). For still more images - and many much more spectacular than those shown above, check out the invaluable SpaceWeather.com galleries for the Eclipse of 08/28/07.