Amazon May Know Which City it Wants to Move to, And may be Playing Us All to Get the Best Deal.

Amazon's Race to the Bottom Puts Chicago Transit at Risk

Transit has emerged as a key issue in the furious competition between municipalities to land Amazon's second headquarters. With the company placing a premium on access to rail and bus networks, cities like Chicago put transit front and center in their applications.

From article, (research by University of Texas professor Nathan M. Jensen, who recently found that in roughly two-thirds of cases, city and state-level incentives go to corporations that were already planning on moving there anyway. As Brookings researcher Richard Shearer recently argued, “There’s a very good chance Amazon already knows exactly where it would like to open its second headquarters,” adding that the ruse of a competition “is a way of inviting the place it has already chosen to foot the bill for Amazon’s new digs.”

For cities like Chicago, the risks of pledging too many public resources like transit for too little public benefit are high. Instead of offering deeper tax breaks and incentives, Chicago leaders should ask Amazon itself to make investments in transportation and other sectors that will benefit the company, its employees, and  the entire region’s residents. “If you’re talking about public goods like transit, it’s not a matter of just how a company benefits from transaction. It’s a matter of community benefits,” says CNT’s Bernstein. “Cities have been missing an opportunity to reframe these competitions as something that could be more beneficial.”

The massive corporate welfare package Chicago leaders have cobbled together may be unprecedented in the city’s history, but it’s hardly unique among municipalities seeking Amazon’s favor. Along with billions in tax breaks and land giveaways, municipal leaders nationwide have made it clear that almost any public asset can be monetized in the quest to land HQ2.

Such an aggressive race to the bottom recently prompted more than 600 leading economists and transportation experts to call on city officials “to forge and sign a mutual non-aggression pact that rejects such egregious tax giveaways and direct monetary incentives for the Amazon headquarters.)

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Tidal Power in Nova Scotia's Bay of Fundy shows promise.

Company tests tidal energy " Yale Climate Connections

The tides come in and the tides go out. To most people, it's just a lot of water sloshing around. But some see it as a source of energy. A company called Cape Sharp Tidal is developing underwater turbines that capture energy from the tides in Nova Scotia's Bay of Fundy.

From article, (A company called Cape Sharp Tidal is developing [2 MW] underwater turbines that capture energy from the tides in Nova Scotia’s Bay of Fundy.

Richard: “The Bay of Fundy happens to have the highest tides in the world. The difference between low and high tide could be up to 50 feet. And so there’s a tremendous resource.”

 Director Christian Richard says the turbines use energy from tidal currents to turn the blades. They sit on the ocean floor – underwater – so they do not create an eyesore.

Richard: “That’s one of the advantages with this technology. It’s invisible, and it doesn’t impede any naval traffic.”

Richard says testing is still in the early stages. The team is improving the technology’s cost, efficiency, and corrosion resistance. They also need to show that it won’t harm marine life.)

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Clean Meat: The new way of growing your Hamburger, may be acceptable to Vegetarians, because you are no longer killing an animal for its meat. You are growing its muscle cells in a factory.

How close are we to a hamburger grown in a lab?

The cells "start to divide and start to form new muscle tissues. ... (We) let them proliferate until we have trillions of cells," explained Dr. Mark Post, CEO of Mosa Meats, one of the earliest creators of clean meat. The process of making a hamburger patty takes about nine weeks.

From article, (The latest craze in the food industry, in vitro or "clean" meat, is produced by extracting stem cells from animals and then growing and multiplying those cells in a lab to create a piece of meat.

The cells "start to divide and start to form new muscle tissues. ... (We) let them proliferate until we have trillions of cells," explained Dr. Mark Post, CEO of Mosa Meats, one of the earliest creators of clean meat. The process of making a hamburger patty takes about nine weeks.

The FDA said in a statement, "Given information we have at the time, it seems reasonable to think that cultured meat, if manufactured in accordance with appropriate safety standards and all relevant regulations, could be consumed safely."

Mosa Meat's Post said the lengthy regulatory approval process is one of the reasons it will take a few years before we see the company's products on the market.

When that happens, clean meat might help reduce foodborne illness. "The meat that we produce is by definition sterile," Post said. Most contamination of our current meat supply happens during the slaughter process through cross-contamination with the intestines.

In vitro meat for public consumption may become a reality relatively soon. Tetrick said that "before the end of 2018 is an accurate timeline" for some products to be offered in a number of restaurants in the United States and Asia, starting with chicken nuggets, sausage and foie gras.

Other companies forecast that we're a few years away from seeing clean meat in your local grocery store. Shapiro believes we will see clean meat on store shelves by 2021.

Clean meat will be sold at a premium when it's introduced. Though his first hamburger in 2013 was $330,000, Post claims that when it is offered to the public, it will be "maybe $11 for a hamburger."

Friedrich said clean meat "only totally supplants animal meat when it becomes cheaper."

Clean meat may also be healthier for our waistlines. Clean meat production is about growing and proliferating muscle cells. However, with certain meat products such as hamburgers, fat is an integral part of the taste and texture. 

Clean meat producers can control what type of fat goes into these burgers. Post said they can produce clean meat to contain healthy fats, such as omega-3 fatty acids, which have protective effects for the heart, among other health benefits.

Interestingly, large meat conglomerates are embracing this new technology. Both Tyson Foods and Cargill have invested in Memphis Meats.

Pasture-raised meat producers aren't as enthusiastic about this new direction for the industry.

Rebecca Thistlethwaite, a farmer for the past 10 years, is quick to point out the difference between pasture-raised meat producers and factory farmers. Many grass-fed farmers "think about what consumers want, (which is) healthier, more transparent, less chemicals, less antibiotics, lower environmental footprint," she said.)

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Voters Can be Swayed to Endorse an Unpopular Policy if it is Economically Sound.

Congress should back White House plan to use tolls to fix infrastructure

Tolls or potholes? In his infrastructure plan, President Trump Donald John Trump Accuser says Trump should be afraid of the truth Woman behind pro-Trump Facebook page denies being influenced by Russians Shulkin says he has White House approval to root out 'subversion' at VA MORE asks for support in lifting federal restrictions prohibiting interstate highway tolls.

From article, (Tolls or potholes? In his infrastructure plan, President Trump asks for support in lifting federal restrictions prohibiting interstate highway tolls. This would give states the option of imposing tolls and using the new revenues to fix their failing roads.

While states would be making their own decisions, charging tolls could generate considerable funding. In 2015, tolls accounted for a mere 6 percent of America’s $235 billion highway revenues. Increasing the use of tolls, even if only to 50 percent of existing revenues, would mean more than $100 billion in new funds.

Congress might want to consider backing the administration’s proposal, as the findings of recent transportation studies have revealed that the people’s objections to tolls are temporary for the most part. Researchers found that once tolls were implemented, the public eventually came around and approved of them.

It has been well documented in Europe that public acceptance of road pricing often improves drastically once the tolls are in place. Central London imposed its famous congestion charge scheme in 2003. The share of Londoners opposed to the charge fell from 41 percent the month before the introduction to 27 percent the month after. Similar shifts in attitudes were also found in cities in Norway, Sweden and Italy.

people suffer from a psychological burden when their behavior (driving on toll roads) and their attitudes (objecting to tolls) are inconsistent. Reducing this discomfort requires the modification of one of the two, and a change of heart often proves easier. In this regard, we are no different from Aesop’s fox who soured on the grapes he couldn’t reach.

More important, changed attitudes are more persistent than one might think. In January 2006, Stockholm implemented a seven-month experiment in which people had to pay a congestion charge before making the policy permanent in late 2007. At the beginning of the trial period, public acceptance of the charge jumped from 34 percent to 53 percent. Moreover, between the end of the trial and the toll reintroduction, public support continued to grow, reaching 65 percent in December 2007.

The moral of the story is not that public opinion doesn’t matter in policymaking. It does. But rather, you may find yourself coming around to an ostensibly unpopular policy if it’s economically sound. Economists generally agree and have been arguing for years that user fees, such as tolls, are an efficient way to fund infrastructure investment. When roads are not paid for by those who use them, “negative externalities” will be inevitable. This means too many vehicles, too few roads, and too little maintenance or repair.

 it’s convenient for politicians in the United States to reject road pricing by saying the people won’t like them. But those politicians seem to have forgotten that such a do-nothing philosophy is exactly what brought America’s infrastructure to its current, failing state. Wise politicians don’t simply follow mercurial public attitudes. They lead with their visions, and they help shape public opinion.)

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Climate Change is Coming? Only if we stand by and do nothing. Which is where BECCS comes into play.

Vast bioenergy plantations could stave off climate change-and radically reshape the planet

On a sunny day this past October, three dozen people file into a modest, mint-green classroom at Montana State University (MSU) in Bozeman to glimpse a vision of the future. Some are scientists, but most are people with some connection to the land: extension agents who work with farmers, and environmentalists representing organizations such as The Nature Conservancy.

 From article, (The idea is to cultivate fast-growing grasses and trees to suck CO2 out of the atmosphere and then burn them at power plants to generate energy. But instead of being released back into the atmosphere in the exhaust, the crops' carbon would be captured and pumped underground. The technique is known as bioenergy with carbon capture and storage, or—among climate wonks—simply as BECCS.

As BECCS is usually conceived, bioenergy crops would be grown on unused agricultural land. In the Upper Missouri River Basin, that could mean conscripting fields set aside as part of the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Conservation Reserve Program (CRP), which pays farmers to leave fields fallow for environmental benefits. Given the right incentives, farmers could pull these lands back into production—something that has already happened in the region as demand for corn and soy have grown. "Farmers are no different than anyone else. We are profit-driven," Flikkema says.

BECCS isn't a total technological reach, either; its two components—bioenergy and CCS—are already happening to some degree today. Power plants around the world are burning biomass for energy, either alone or together with fossil fuels. CCS has been slow to take off, but dozens of projects are underway, including numerous pilots in the Great Plains, many of which pump CO2from fossil fuel power plants into dwindling wells to drive out residual oil. One of the longest-running operations is in the North Sea, where the Norwegian oil company Statoil has been separating CO2 from natural gas and sequestering it underground for more than 2 decades.

To put the brakes on climate change, however, these tools would have to be deployed on an entirely unproven scale.

 Some BECCS advocates disagree, saying that if it were done right, it could be a boon for the environment. Today, much of the abandoned farmland where second-generation bioenergy crops could grow is degraded and dominated by invasive plants, says Phil Robertson, an ecologist at Michigan State University's W. K. Kellogg Biological Station in Hickory Corners. "Generally, it doesn't have high conservation value," he says. But field studies in the Midwest suggest that planting native switchgrass, with a few other plant species thrown in for good measure, could actually help restore the grassland ecosystems that once covered the middle of the continent. With smart policies in place, Robertson envisions a world in which farmers could turn the profits from bioenergy harvests back into restoring more land. "I think it could underwrite conservation," he says.

Worldwide, there is no shortage of farmland that's been abandoned because of low productivity or fickle markets. A conservative estimate by Field and his colleagues suggests an area at least the size of India is available globally, and others suggest there is several times that—plenty to support a robust BECCS industry. 

If we are going to rely on technologies like BECCS in the future, we need to start ramping them up now, says Sabine Fuss, an economist at the Mercator Research Institute on Global Commons and Climate Change in Berlin. "It's a little bit dangerous if it's conceived as something that you just switch on." So far, only one commercial plant is doing anything close to BECCS—a bioethanol refinery in Decatur, Illinois, that each year sequesters 1 million tons of CO2 released from fermenting corn.

The researchers repeatedly try to impress this upon the audience in Bozeman—that despite its many risks and drawbacks, they should take BECCS seriously. Some amount of BECCS, or some other carbon-eating technology, is probably coming. "Even though it's very fantastical at this point to think it could happen," Poulter says, "it's one of only a few remaining options we have to deal with this problem."

BECCS would bring sweeping changes to the region, but then again, so will climate change. Indeed, among all the options the team will consider in its study, there is one it won't include: allowing the Upper Missouri River Basin to stay the same.)

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San Diego is going to Recycle Waste Water into drinking water. Sounds disgusting? (You can Relax. You're not drinking sewage! You are drinking pure, cleaned, water.) In fact Astronauts on the ISS drink recycled water, all the time, and are Healthy.

San Diego Pursues Drought-Proof Water Supply

Credit: San Diego County Water Authority The desert-like grounds around the San Diego County Water Authority offices are dressed in a water-wise xeriscape of cacti and aloe. The sky is a monotone blue and - even though it's January - the temperature is in the 80s.

From article, (One step beyond water recycling is sanitizing wastewater for drinking and it’s the next frontier of local water production. The County Water Authority expects potable reuse to provide 16 percent of local water by 2035.

 A water engineer stands near a series of ponds and a small water purification plant in western Santee. His name is Al Lau, with the Padre Dam Water District, and the plant is a demonstration project which he says is the beginning of a process that will lead to millions of gallons a day of purified wastewater.

Today the pipe that carries treated wastewater from East County to be dumped in the Pacific Ocean is just a couple miles away.

“We see all the wastewater flow past us, 14 million gallons a day, all the way to the Pacific Ocean. We see that as a wasted resource. We see the opportunity to capture that and turn that into a resilient water supply for our community,” Lau said.

At a cost of $460 million, Padre Dam wants to phase in a system that will eventually treat East County wastewater and make it clean enough to drink.

“We’re going to take all of that 14 million gallons of wastewater, generate a purified water supply and pump it into Lake Jennings,” he said. “That water, once it’s in Lake Jennings, will blend with other imported water supplies, where it will be treated again…and that water will be provided to the entire community of East County.”

The City of San Diego Public Works Department is building an even bigger system of purifying wastewater. Spokesman Brent Eidson said they plan to eventually divert 100 million gallons a day from the Point Loma treatment plant and turn it into potable water. A San Diego City Council vote on the environmental review documents for the new facilities comes up in April. The cost of building phase one of the project is $1.3 billion.)

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Once we are done Moving from Earth to the Moon and then to Mars, what other places would Astronauts be happy to create other bases on?

Value Of Titan As Base For Humans In Saturn System - Surprisingly - Once There - Easier For Settlement Than Mars Or The Moon

Titan might seem an unlikely place to for humans to build settlements, and maybe eventually colonize. After all, it is so far from the sun, and extraordinarily cold, and it's a long journey to get there (at present).

From article, (Titan might seem an unlikely place to for humans to build settlements, and maybe eventually colonize. After all, it is so far from the sun, and extraordinarily cold, and it's a long journey to get there (at present). But actually, if you set aside the difficulty of getting there, which we should overcome as our technology improves - it's got more going for it than you might think. This is an idea originally developed in some detail by Charles Wohlforth and Amanda Hendrix, authors of Beyond Earth: Our Path to a New Home in the Planets

It's got many possible native sources of energy for one, including chemical, high altitude winds, some potential for hydro, and (surprisingly) a lot of potential for solar power too. It has no oxygen in its atmosphere of course, but the proposals for chemical fuels on Titan use hydrogen in place of oxygen. Those ideas come from this paper Energy Options for Future Humans on Titan which I will describe in a bit more detail later.

It has many other advantages. The thick atmosphere and the low gravity greatly simplify the process of building habitats - and eventually maybe large enclosed settlements. Habitats can be built with the same pressure inside and out (there's no problem with living in slightly higher than Earth's sea level atmospheric pressure).

It has almost no winds at ground level (you have to go up to a height of 3 km to find wind speeds of over 4 miles per hour) and little to disturb the colonists. The surface is largely ice, not that different from living in Antarctica. Any machinery can be protected from surface conditions with an airtight enclosure.

Although it is very cold, at 98 °K (−179 °C, or −290 °F), normally the main issue with a habitat is to reject heat (the ISS has ammonia circulating through giant radiators to keep it cool). Thermal insulation isn't hard to do. Heat rejection would be much easier with an atmosphere and convection. You are going to be in a thermally insulated dwelling and wear a full body suit when you go outside, enclosing your body like a wetsuit perhaps, and with an aqualung. indeed much like a diver. Probably with heating elements in the suit too to keep you warm. We know how to do thermal insulation. This outfit is far simpler, and much lower cost than a spacesuit.

 Its atmosphere gives you protection from cosmic radiation and solar storms - and from quite large meteorites too, up to meters in diameter, like Earth's atmosphere. And finally, it has abundant hydrocarbons which are great for making plastics for your settlement.

[Then there is] Callisto a far far better place to send humans if you want to visit Jupiter and beyond. It's outside the intense radiation belts, its surface is thought to be smooth close up, and it is very stable, an old surface with no changes for billions of years apart from the occasional impact crater. It's got just as much ice as Europa, indeed, more so, so is a natural source for refueling. It is not so deep in [Jupiter's] gravity well. As an old undisturbed surface, it should have received a useful 120 - 140 meters of organics and other materials from asteroids and comets. And unlike its better known cousin Europa, it has no planetary protection issues at all, and is classified as Category II, the same as the Moon. It is thought to have a deep subsurface ocean but with no communication with the surface.)

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The Model 3 ($35,000 Model) competes with top Audi, BMW, and Similar Luxury Cars. The Chevy Bolt ($36,000 Model) Competes with Small Economic Cars. Which would you prefer?

Tesla's Veiled Swipe At The Chevy Bolt

When I was going through the Q4 2017 Tesla shareholder letter for a recent article, what might seem like a minor comment caught my attention. Tesla wrote, "We incorporated all the learnings from the development and production of Roadster, Model S, and Model X to create the world's first mass market electric vehicle that is priced on par with its gasoline-powered equivalents - even without incentives."

 From article, (When I was going through the Q4 2017 Tesla shareholder letter for a recent article, what might seem like a minor comment caught my attention. Tesla wrote, “We incorporated all the learnings from the development and production of Roadster, Model S, and Model X to create the world’s first mass market electric vehicle that is priced on par with its gasoline-powered equivalents – even without incentives.”

When we talk about this new generation of electric cars, we’re generally happy to highlight that we can now get relatively affordable electric cars that have relatively long driving range on a single charge. Depending on how you evaluate this, the Renault Zoe might have been the first such car (in Europe). If your requirement is over 200 miles of real-world range and/or you are focused on the North American market, the first car to offer this combo was the Chevy Bolt EV.

Yet, basically in reference to this key crossover point, Tesla claims that the Model 3 is “the world’s first mass market electric vehicle that is priced on par with its gasoline-powered equivalents.”

Tesla is implying one or two things in that line. It’s implying that the Chevy Bolt isn’t priced on par with its gasoline-powered equivalents and/or it’s implying that the Bolt isn’t a “mass market” electric vehicle. If Elon and crew gave it much thought — which I think they must have — it’s probably a two-point knock.

The Tesla Model 3 competes with the Audi A4, BMW 3 Series, and similar vehicles. That’s the class it’s in. However, the Model 3 beats them on most key points — acceleration, efficiency, autonomous-driving tech, cargo space, and more. Some BMW fans, Audi fans, or other conventional car fans may still prefer these other models over the Model 3, but there’s no denying these vehicles compete with each other.

As many commenters have pointed out (no matter what side of the EV transition they’re on), the Chevy Bolt EV doesn’t compete with premium-class cars in many regards. It’s basically comparable to a Chevy Sonic. The hatchback, FWD version of that car starts at $16,170 MSRP, whereas the Chevy Bolt EV (which is not listed under Chevrolet’s “Cars” category on its website, just under the “Electric” category) starts at $36,495 MSRP.) 

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Is Tesla Profitable? And, Do other Car Manufacturers really want to Produce Electric Cars?

Tesla's Veiled Swipe At The Chevy Bolt

When I was going through the Q4 2017 Tesla shareholder letter for a recent article, what might seem like a minor comment caught my attention. Tesla wrote, "We incorporated all the learnings from the development and production of Roadster, Model S, and Model X to create the world's first mass market electric vehicle that is priced on par with its gasoline-powered equivalents - even without incentives."

From article, (Some people might be inclined to step in here and say that Tesla isn’t profitable so is also losing money on the Model 3. That’s disingenuous and those people know it, or they have hugely inflated expectations of the cost of Tesla batteries and other components. It also assumes CEO Elon Musk is lying to shareholders, which is a crime. Tesla isn’t profitable because it is pumping money as quickly as it can into growing the company — new products, new factories, more sales channels, more service and charging centers, etc. If Tesla wanted to sit back and stop growing, it could start making a profit fairly easily. But it wants to grow, and quickly, and its shareholders want the same from it.

the Model 3 is set to be the first mass market electric vehicle that can outcompete comparable gasmobiles. That means, in part, that Tesla is doing a better job at designing and manufacturing electric cars in a cost-effective and compelling way — while expanding its critical Supercharging network. Combined with comments from large automaker executives about the costs of producing electric cars, all of that also implies Tesla will continue to grow its leading position in the electric vehicle market for at least the coming few years — until these other automakers are producing mass market electric cars that strongly compete in their classes according to people who don’t care about these notable electric benefits.

I recently heard from a former GM exec that he expects the electric + hybrid market in the US to remain quite small. He doesn’t expect there is actually that much demand on the market for the Model 3, even before you het to his skepticism about Tesla’s ability to build it at the fast pace targeted. Furthermore, he indicated that large automakers don’t want to produce and sell very many electric cars because they lose money on them. If you’ve got companies that feel like they can’t make money on a product and don’t really want to sell it in high volumes yet, and then you’ve got a company that can make money on the same type of product and does want to sell it in high volumes, what do you think is going to happen in that market?)

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On long Space Missions, Posting to Facebook may be one way to Relieve Stress and still feel Connected to Humanity.

When Elon Musk sends people to the moon there may be a mobile network so they can check Facebook

When people start taking a vacation to the moon, there might be a mobile network to let them post their pictures on social media. German space firm PT Scientists, along with Finnish network equipment-maker Nokia and British mobile carrier Vodafone, are gearing up to launch a telecoms network on the moon in 2019.

From article, (When people start taking a vacation to the moon, there might be a mobile network to let them post their pictures on social media.

German space firm PT Scientists, along with Finnish network equipment-maker Nokia and British mobile carrier Vodafone, are gearing up to launch a telecoms network on the moon in 2019.

It would mark the first private space mission to the moon, if successful. The group of companies is aiming to send Audi lunar quattro rovers to the landing site of NASA's Apollo 17 mission — when man last set foot on the moon in 1972.

A so-called base station that will be the basis of the mobile network will be launched as well. It will allow the rovers to connect to the 4G mobile network and live-stream images back to Earth.

The rovers will explore the Apollo 17 site, but the spacecraft will land about three to five kilometers away, so a mobile signal is needed.

Past missions by NASA have allowed rovers to transmit images back to Earth, but not in a continuous stream. Instead, they explore, gather images and video, stop, then send them to Earth.

But that is inefficient, said Robert Bohme, the CEO of PT Scientists.

"First of all, the bandwidth is really, really low, it takes really a lot of energy... you don't have enough energy," Bohme told CNBC in an interview earlier this week at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Spain. The CEO explained that it would drain the battery of the rovers very quickly.

"With LTE, you have a technology which transmits data over just a couple of watts of energy over multi megabits over very great distance," Bohme said. LTE is a standard of 4G mobile internet.

The aim of setting up a mobile network is to have infrastructure in place for future missions. Musk has previously said there needs to be a base on the moon. The PT Scientists mission could help achieve that.

"If Elon Musk really wants to send humans to the moon... if he sends them to Apollo 17, these guys can probably check in on Facebook using the Vodafone network," Bohme said.)

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It May Surprise You, but most States have Modest Wind Resources. It is Politics that keep them from being used.

Wind Power Resources In America Are Abundant & Underdeveloped

Wind power might seem like a fringe source of electricity to some, and critics certainly have gone after it aggressively at times, but it's now a large source of electricity in the United States and many other countries.

 From article, (Almost all of the state has modest wind resources, but there is a very thin band of land along the coastline which has very good wind potential. North Carolina has been a conservative state for quite a while, and the GOP has tried to stop wind power development. “Days before the start of operations, Republican legislative leaders appealed to the incoming Trump administration to block the farm, claiming turbines nearly 500 feet tall would interfere with military radar in Virginia.”

North Carolina does have excellent offshore wind resources. “The winds off North Carolina’s coast powered the Wright Brothers’ first flight in 1903, and they’ve been going strong ever since. In fact, just over 100 years after the first flight, converting just a fraction of the winds off our shores to energy could provide all of North Carolina’s energy needs.”.

Georgia is another conservative state which does not have excellent wind sources to develop, relatively speaking, and yet its wind power potential is over 90,000 MW. Georgia currently does not have a single wind power farm built. “We’ve got more than a power plant worth of wind blowing off our coast and a shallow continental shelf that could make a wind farm easy to install. I hope Gov. Deal and other state leaders heed this wake-up call and start aggressively pursuing offshore wind in Georgia,” explained Jennette Gayer, director of Environment Georgia.

Most of Georgia’s wind power potential may very well be from offshore resources, “A study from Geo-Marine, Inc. indicates that Georgia has about 14.5 gigawatts of feasibly developable offshore wind energy potential–enough to meet about a third of Georgia’s annual electricity needs at today’s consumption rates. Shallow seas and strong breezes help reduce the costs associated with building offshore wind farms in Georgia. According to the Energy Information Association (EIA), Southeastern states (including Georgia) are some of the lowest cost construction sites for offshore wind compared to the rest of the country. Developing our offshore wind potential would mean big economic benefits to the state, including job creation in the construction, manufacturing, transportation, logistics, and shipping industries.”

Though most of Georgia’s onshore wind speeds are not excellent for wind power, using taller turbines might be a suitable option. One source has stated the onshore resources may be better than previously assumed. “In the past five years, wind turbine technology has greatly evolved. Wind turbine towers can reach up to 459 feet (140) meters in height. Taller turbines and longer blades are capable of capturing more wind, thus harnessing more electricity and reducing wind energy prices. As turbines increase in hub height, Georgia contains a much greater area of land viable for development. Approximately 2,500 MW of onshore wind potential currently exist in Georgia.)”

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What does Texas, Iowa, and California have that is Priceless?

Wind Power Resources In America Are Abundant & Underdeveloped

Wind power might seem like a fringe source of electricity to some, and critics certainly have gone after it aggressively at times, but it's now a large source of electricity in the United States and many other countries.

From article, (Texas has been oil and gas country for such a long time it might be shocking to find out it is also the US state with the most wind power. The state is so big it has its own grid system, and the capacity of wind power there could reach 28,000 MW soon.

Wind power in Texas is not being supported because of favorable local political views. In fact, Texas has been a Republican stronghold for a very long time, so wind power has flourished there despite a general attitude that is not typically “green.” Economics are driving wind power installations in Texas, not environmentalism.

Has Texas wind power already gone mainstream enough that it transcended the “enviro” category? Well, it appears that it has. “Wind power, by one important measure, surpassed coal last month to become the second-largest electricity source in Texas, yet another milestone in the state’s march toward greater reliance on renewable energy.” One sourcestated that the 20,000 MW of wind power capacity Texas has right now is enough to provide electricity to about 5 million homes.

An Energy.gov page contains an astonishing figure: potential wind power capacity in Texas is over 1.3 million MW. If 20,000 MW can power about 5 million homes, then one million MW would easily provide electricity for everyone in state and well beyond — when there is adequate wind.

Iowa is another leading wind power state and is not nearly as conservative as Texas, but it has been leaning that way recently. By 2020, it could generate about 40% of its electricity from wind power. An Energy.gov source contains an estimate that Iowa’s wind power potential is 279,000 MW, which would be far more than it would need to provide all the state’s electricity.

California is a state which has been a stronghold for Democrats for years. Environmental awareness and state policies supporting renewable energy are common. Wind power is utilized at a large scale in this state and California is also a clear leader in this form of renewable energy.

Reportedly, the state’s wind power potential is 303,00 MW. At the moment, the installed capacity is about 6,000 MW. In other words, California has massive wind power potential, and wind power there could become a leading source of electricity eventually. (California also has considerable solar power potential and has already made a lot of progress installing solar power systems as well.) If we go back to the NREL national map, we see that California’s wind resources are not nearly as good as the ones in the central states, yet California winds could still eventually be tapped from hundreds of thousands of megawatts of capacity (theoretically).

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New York City shows it can be a Popular and Good City for Technology Companies to Prosper in.

Google expansion plans helping to turn NYC into tech hub

NEW YORK - As New York City waits to hear whether it's been chosen as the site for Amazon's second headquarters, recent moves by another tech giant, Google, to expand its footprint in the city are helping to legitimize New York's claim to be Silicon Valley East.

 From article, (As New York City waits to hear whether it’s been chosen as the site for Amazon’s second headquarters, recent moves by another tech giant, Google, to expand its footprint in the city are helping to legitimize New York’s claim to be Silicon Valley East.

Google is reportedly close to a reaching a $2.4 billion deal to add a landmark Meatpacking District building to its already substantial New York campus.

The building, a block-long former Nabisco factory named after its ground-floor upscale food mall, Chelsea Market, sits across the street from Google’s current New York City headquarters, a massive, art deco, former shipping terminal that also occupies an entire city block.

Google already leases space in Chelsea Market, which also contains offices for Major League Baseball and the local cable news channel NY1, among other tenants.

If the sale goes through, it would be among the priciest real estate transactions for a single building in city history. It would also give Google a remarkable Manhattan campus to supplement its still-growing main headquarters in Mountain View, California.

Representatives for Google did not respond to requests for comment about the company’s New York expansion plans.

Google already occupies another former Nabisco cookie factory just west of Chelsea Market. And, across the street from that factory, it has also announced plans to lease another 320,000 square feet of space at Pier 57, an office and retail complex built on a pier over the Hudson River.

A New York Post real estate writer this week dubbed Google’s slice of Manhattan “Alphabet City,” a reference to the name of both Google’s parent company and a neighborhood on Manhattan’s east side.

The pending Chelsea Market deal was first reported by the real estate publication The Real Deal.

The Google expansion comes as other tech companies, including Amazon, Facebook and Spotify, are also growing in the city. In addition to considering New York among the 20 finalists for its new eastern U.S. headquarters, Amazon recently signed a deal to bring 2,000 employees to a building, formerly occupied by The Associated Press, on Manhattan’s far west side.

New York has been pitching itself as an alternative to Silicon Valley for years. And while tech many never rival financial services and Wall Street as the most important private-sector employer and economic driver in New York, it has established a legitimate footprint that goes beyond a few big-name companies.

A report by state Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli found that New York City had 7,600 tech firms in 2016, an increase of 23 percent since 2010. The report found that the average salary for tech employees in the city was $147,300.)

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The Electric Economy (Cars, Trucks, Planes, and Ships) is Coming.

Electric cars are changing the world and they're just getting started

Singapore - Global interest in climate change - its effects on the environment and society more broadly - is probably at an all time high. Countries around the world, with the glaring exception of the US under President Donald Trump, are increasingly acknowledging the shift that's needed from a fossil fuel-driven economy to one that is sustainable, green and attempts to mitigate climate change.

 From article, (A growing number of countries, including Austria, Denmark, Japan, Korea, the Netherlands, Spain and Portugal have established targets for electric vehicle sales. The UK and France want all new cars to be electric and produce zero emissions by 2040.

And, according to a report just released by BP, global oil demand will peak in the 2030s. This will be primarily because of a 100-fold increase in sales of electric vehicles, capturing one-third of the car market.

Two countries are leading the way when it comes to electric cars and hybrids which contain both internal combustion engine and an electric motor. One is Norway, where more than half of the new cars sold in 2017 fell into these categories. The other is China, which leads the world in electric vehicle sales and whose market keeps growing. In 2017, more than 600 000 electric vehicles were sold, 71% higher than 2016. Sales increased every month in 2017.

Electric cars will form an important part of China’s “war on pollution”, and it has been aggressively adjusting its policies accordingly. For instance, by 2025, 20% of cars sold in the country must be electric vehicles. Volkswagen has responded by announcing a $10 billion investment in China for developing relevant technology and plans to manufacture 1.5 million electric vehicles by 2025.

It is not only vehicles that are going electric. Norway plans to make all short-haul flights of 1.5 hours or less using electric planes. Avinor, the public operator of Norwegian airports, is planning to launch a tender to test a commercial short-haul route by an electric-powered plane in 2025. Zunum Aero, a start-up partly financed by Boeing, plans to have an electric plane available by 2022.

Airbus, Rolls Royce and Siemens are working together to develop a hybrid model which may make its maiden flight as soon as 2020. These developments will reduce greenhouse gas emissions and also reduce noise levels by half.

There’s also been some progress in “electrifying” maritime transport. Passenger and cargo ships and ferries are developing hybrid and electric alternatives to reduce reliance on diesel and heavy fuels. YARA International, a Norwegian chemical company, is working with high-technology group Kongsberg to produce a zero emissions electric ship that could be operational later this year.)

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10 years? Almost 50 successful launches of the Falcon 9.

The Falcon 9 rocket may reach 50 launches on Tuesday

SpaceX launched its first Falcon 9 rocket less than a decade ago, in June 2010. Early next week, the California-based rocket company will go for its 50th launch of its workhorse booster. The launch attempt will come as soon as early next Tuesday, 12:33am ET, from Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

From article, (SpaceX launched its first Falcon 9 rocket less than a decade ago, in June 2010. Early next week, the California-based rocket company will go for its 50th launch of its workhorse booster.

The launch attempt will come as soon as early next Tuesday, 12:33am ET, from Kennedy Space Center in Florida. SpaceX will attempt to launch the Hispasat 30W-6 communications satellite to geostationary transfer orbit. The mission has a two-hour launch window.

 Whether SpaceX will attempt to land the first stage of the Falcon 9 rocket is not clear. The satellite weighs slightly more than six metric tons, which is about half-a-ton heavier than any Falcon 9 payload bound for geostationary orbit that the company has tried to land before. Therefore the rocket will expend nearly all of its fuel to get into a proper geostationary transfer orbit—making any return to Earth hot and fast.

Assuming the Hispasat mission launches next week, SpaceX will have reached its 50th launch fairly quickly for an orbital rocket, taking seven years and nine months. By comparison, the Atlas V rocket took nine years and seven months, while the space shuttle took 11 years and five months.)

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What if the Challenger Disaster never happened? Would SpaceX have even been created?

The Falcon 9 rocket may reach 50 launches on Tuesday

SpaceX launched its first Falcon 9 rocket less than a decade ago, in June 2010. Early next week, the California-based rocket company will go for its 50th launch of its workhorse booster. The launch attempt will come as soon as early next Tuesday, 12:33am ET, from Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

From article, ([W]hat might have happened with the space shuttle program had it not suffered the fatal Challenger accident on January 28, 1986[?] NASA had flown the shuttle nine times the year before, and the space agency had already launched one space shuttle mission in 1986. It is conceivable that NASA could have doubled its 1985 total in 1986, especially with an additional launch site coming online in California.

"If the Challenger disaster never occurred, military and intelligence payloads might have not moved over to expendable launch vehicles as quickly, especially in light of the Air Force being on the verge of expanding shuttle operations for its own purposes from the West Coast," Robert Pearlman, editor of the space history news website collectSPACE.com, told Ars.

Without the accident, the White House might also have allowed the space shuttle to continue launching commercial satellites for paying customers. This means Lockheed Martin and Boeing probably wouldn't have moved forward with development of modern version of their Atlas and Delta rockets.

"Without those moves in place, it is questionable if there would have been a market to sustain the Atlas and Delta flight rates as they came to be," Pearlman said. "And lacking a foundation for a commercial space launch market, one then wonders if SpaceX would ever come to be—or at least be as aggressive in their development as they are today.")

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