Past time to go big

Block Island Wind Farm

Old Higgins Farm Windmill, in Brewster, Mass., on Cape Cod. It was built in 1795 to grind grain. Many New England towns had windmills.

“By partnering with our neighbor states with which we share tightly connected economies and transportation systems, we can make a more significant impact on climate change while creating jobs and growing the economy as a result.’’

-- Massachusetts Gov. Charlie Baker

Massachusetts, Connecticut and Rhode Island and the District of Columbia have signed a pact  to tax the carbon in vehicle fuels sold within their borders and use the revenues from the higher gasoline prices to cut transportation carbon-dioxide emissions 26 percent by 2032. Gasoline taxes would rise perhaps 5 to 9 cents in the first year of the program -- 2022.

Of course, this move, whose most important leader right now is Massachusetts’s estimable Republican governor,  Charlie Baker, can only be  a start, oasbut as the signs of global warming multiply, other East Coast states are expected to soon join what’s called the Transportation Climate Initiative.

The three  states account for 73 percent of total emissions in New England, 76 percent of vehicles, and 70 to 80 percent of the region’s gross domestic product.

The money would go into such things as expanding and otherwise improving mass transit (which especially helps poorer people), increasing the number of charging stations for electric vehicles, consumer rebates for electric and low-emission vehicles and making transportation infrastructure more resilient against the effects of global warming, especially, I suppose, along the sea and rivers, where storms would do the most damage.]

Of course, some people will complain, especially those driving SUVs, but big weather disasters will tend to dilute the complaints over time. Getting off fossil fuels will make New England more prosperous and healthier over the next decade. For that matter, I predict that most U.S. vehicles will be electric by 2030.

Eventually, reactionary politics will have to be overcome and the entire nation adopt something like the Transportation Climate Initiative.

Todd McLeish: Looking at sea life's sensitivity to underwater electric cables

Skates apparently move differently than they usually do near electromagnetic fields.

From ecoRI News (ecori.org)

Little is known about how marine life will respond to the electromagnetic fields emanating from the spiderweb of cables carrying electricity from the Block Island Wind Farm and the many other offshore wind-power installations planned for the East Coast. But a new series of studies by a team of oceanographers at the University of Rhode Island suggests that some organisms will definitely be impacted.

“The concern is that DC [direct] currents generate permanent electromagnetic fields, and we don’t really know how organisms will relate to them,” said John King, a professor at URI’s Graduate School of Oceanography. “We know that some organisms, like sharks and skates, are sensitive to these things. So the question becomes, if you build offshore power facilities, will migratory organisms cross the cables or not. Will it affect eels that migrate to the Sargasso Sea or lobsters that have an onshore-offshore annual migration?”

To find out, King and postdoctoral research fellow Zoe Hutchison conducted a series of field experiments around the Cross Sound Cable that carries electricity from New Haven, Conn., to Long Island, N.Y. They attached acoustic tags to skates and lobsters and placed them in an enclosure around the cable. An array of hydrophones in the enclosure detected the animals’ movements. Additional animals were placed in a second enclosure farther from the cable to compare the results.

“We definitely saw effects in behavior in both lobsters and skates, though it was more dramatic in the skates,” said King, who serves on the Rhode Island Coastal Resources Management Council’s Habitat Advisory Board for offshore wind development. “The skates liked to spend time in the areas that had the highest EMFs. Their swimming behavior was definitely altered as they approached the cable. We didn’t see any evidence that a single cable is a migratory barrier, but they could definitely detect it and reacted to it.”

“The skates moved slower around the cable but also moved more often and covered a longer distance,” Hutchison said. “They did a lot more turning, like an exploratory behavior, as if they were looking for food.”

Sharks and skates have a sensory ability to detect the electromagnetic fields (EMF) generated by the circulatory system of their prey, according to King, and they may also use it to find mates.

“They might think the cable indicates a food source, so they spent time around the cable thinking they’re going to get fed,” he said.

The experiment found that lobsters moved less freely around the cable, but the electromagnetic fields didn’t prevent them from crossing it.

“The lobster response was much more subtle than the skates,” Hutchison said. “They had an increased exploratory behavior, too, but it wasn’t as pronounced as the skates. We know that spiny lobsters in the Caribbean use the Earth’s magnetic field to orient themselves and to figure out where to go, so we postulate that American lobsters may have a similar ability to detect magnetic fields.”

King and Hutchison will conduct a similar study with migratory eels this fall, to assess how they are affected by the cables. (They attempted it last year, but little electricity was traveling through the cable at the time.)

Rather than placing the eels in an enclosure around the cable like they did with the skates and lobsters, they will release tagged eels to see how they behave as they cross the cable on their way to the Sargasso Sea, where they spawn.

“Previous studies have shown that eels slow down and investigate every cable they cross,” King said. “One study found that when eels had to cross multiple cables, they slowed down every time. So we wonder if they have a whole bunch of cables to cross, does it slow them down enough that they never get to the Sargasso Sea.”

The researchers noted that just because the behavior of the animals they tested was affected by the cables, it doesn’t necessarily mean they were negatively impacted by them. They are, however, worried about the cumulative impacts of the electromagnetic fields from the numerous cables that will likely be installed for many offshore wind turbines in the future.

“There’s going to be hundreds or thousands of turbines off the East Coast, so it would be nice to understand these effects and how it translates into impacts before they get built,” King said. “Right now the government is pushing full speed ahead to get these things built, and I don’t think they really care that much about their impacts. The environmental reviews are being done really fast.”

King is also worried that the results of his studies are being downplayed by the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, which funded the research, because of political pressure.

“They hired a consulting company to produce a public document about our studies, and they minimized EMF as a concern and misinterpreted our study,” he said. “We didn’t say that we saw something that needed to be addressed immediately, but we also didn’t say that what we saw is OK and not to worry about it.”

King believes more studies need to be done before any conclusions can be drawn about the effect of electromagnetic fields from power cables on marine life.

“From a marine spatial planning context, it probably makes sense to have cable corridors rather than randomly distribute the cables all over, and that would probably have different results than studies of just a single cable. So we still have some questions to answer.”

Rhode Island resident and author Todd McLeish runs a wildlife blog.

Tim Faulkner: Right-wing and anti-wind types blame wind farm for whale's death -- without proof

A humpback whale breaching.

Via ecoRI News (ecori.org)

JAMESTOWN, R.I.

There is nothing yet linking the Block Island Wind Farm to the death of humpback whales, but that hasn't stopped anti-wind and conservative groups from making the connection.

The recent stranding and death of a 32-foot juvenile humpback whale in Jamestown triggered speculation, and in some cases unsubstantiated assertions, that noise from the first U.S. offshore wind farm caused this and other whales to die. As the HuffPost recounts, the claim was first made by the conservative Web site Daily Caller and through a conservative news wire has been republished and rewritten in various forms by national new outlets such as The Blaze and through local anti-wind groups and press reports that inferred the link. The Newport Buzz names the five-turbine wind farm as the prime suspect.

None of the anti-wind articles offer a scientist as a source for their claims or research that deduces that the wind farm, owned by Providence-based Deepwater Wind, caused the whale to beach itself. Only the HuffPost quoted a marine biologist, at Cornell University, who said wind turbines contribute to the cacophony of underwater noise from boats, ships and barges, and that this mix of manmade noise — which can also include sonar, fossil-fuel drilling and military exercises and testing — can disorient but isn't likely to kill marine life.

Jeff Grybowski, CEO of Deepwater Wind, told ecoRI News that the five turbines are simply not to blame. "There is absolutely no evidence that the wind farm is in any way connected to this whale," he said. "The wind farm does not create any special risks to marine life. In fact, marine life is thriving near the project.”

As part of its approval process, the wind farm and its transmission system received a finding of no significant impact for acoustic impacts by the federal Bureau of Ocean Energy Management.

Deepwater Wind has a lot riding on the emerging offshore wind industry. The wind and solar developer has several wind farms in the works between New York and Massachusetts. The wind-rich region has also attracted developers from Norway, Denmark and other countries with established wind industries.

Here's what is known about the death of the Jamestown humpback whale:

A necropsy was performed by Mystic Aquarium at the site of the stranding at Beavertail State Park. Tests to determine the case of death were sent to a laboratory and aren't expected for weeks.

The Rhode Island Department of Environmental Management (DEM) won’t say where the carcass was buried. In 2005, a 50-foot finback whale found dead on Newport’s Brenton Point State Park was buried at the Great Swamp Management Area in West Kingston.

There has been a spike in humpback whale deaths along the East Coast between North Carolina and Maine. Since January, 48 humpbacks deaths have been reported. Although ship strikes and entanglements with fishing gear are the main killers of humpback whales, the recent increase in humpback deaths has been classified as an unusual mortality event by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). An investigative team will review data, study samples from future strandings and decide what, if any, action to take.

NOAA also lists sonar, military testing, resort development and increased boat traffic as threats to humpback whales and their habitat.

The Jamestown whale death coincides with a surge in humpback whale sightings between mainland Rhode Island and Block Island, according to DEM. The whales are likely drawn to a growing food supply — the small, eel-like forage fish, called the American sand lance — DEM said.

Humpback whales are protected under the federal Endangered Species and Marine Mammal Protection acts. They grow to about 60 feet in length and have a lifespan of about 50 years. They are the most popular marine mammal for whale watching in New England, because of their habit of breaching and slapping the water surface with their tails.

Tim Faulkner writes frequently for ecoRI News. {Editor's note from Robert Whitcomb, co-author of Cape Wind: Whales and other marine mammals are primarily threatened by boats running into them, fishing nets, human overfishing of fish eaten by some marine mammals, fossil-fuel and other manmade pollution, and  acidification and other seawater changes caused by a human-caused increase in greenhouse gases caused by burning fossil fuels. Offshore wind turbines are  not implicated in whale deaths. Many conservative and anti-wind people have close economic ties to the oil, natural gas and coal industries.}