Whales observed in New York Harbour

Humpback whale at right, image courtesy NOAA

Anyone up for a whale watch? Let’s hop on the circle liner sometime soon and do a tour of New York Harbor and see what we see.

Whales capture the human imagination. Whales are large, intelligent and hideously ugly beasts of the sea. As a species we have written about whales, drawn whales, hunted whales, watched whales and now today we are protecting whales. Part of the majesty of whales is their mystery. Where do whales live, travel, eat and breed? How many are left? How likely is it that whales will still exist in 2100 or 2200? Everyday we are learning more and more about whales, yet we still know very little.

Recently, it was discovered that Humpback, Fin and North Atlantic Right Whales all reside near or travel near New York Harbor. In addition to the Times article linked previously, the story was also covered on NPR (click on the red speaker like button on the NPR webpage to listen to their story).



Fin whale, at right. Image courtesy of NOAA.

“To me, it’s extraordinary,” Dr. Clark said. “People wouldn’t think of going out of New York harbor to see whales.”

Of course, scientists knew that whales were passing by somewhere off New York. The endangered northern right whales migrate between New England and Florida each year, but scientists did not know if the migration route hugged the coastline or if the whales took the straight-line route from Rhode Island to Cape Hattaras via the deep ocean. “There has been a real gap in our knowledge,” Dr. Clark said.

The Cornell researchers and the New York Department of Environmental Conservation collaborated on a project that placed three recorders 13 miles from the harbor and seven more off Fire Island from March to June.

Dr. Clark put the data on the computer and started listening.

“It was like, bingo, we’ve got whales,” Dr. Clark said.

Not just a few, either. Right whales were migrating past the microphones during all three months. Not just right whales, either. Humpbacks were also passing by, and fin whales appear to be residing in the area. “We basically have fin whale singers basically 24/7 off New York Harbor,” Dr. Clark said. “That was a surprise.”

The researchers also heard blue whales, minke whales and sei whales.

These findings are important for a number of reasons. All three species of whale found in great abundance are considered to be endangered species, and shipping routes in the harbor may put these creatures at risk. By learning more about where these whales live, travel, feed and breed we can help identify regions of coastal waters that need to be protected. It’s also an important finding because it captures the imagination of New Yorkers. Perhaps people will think a bit more about the waters that surround the great city knowing that whales populate the waters that most take for granted.


For more information about monitoring of whale activities, check out this website.



North Atlantic Right Whale, at right. Image courtesy of NOAA.

The previous two posts have discussed offshore drilling for oil and natural gas. A good argument for proceeding cautiously with respect to drilling is that we don’t yet know enough about the ocean to accurately assess the potential harm of offshore drilling. (That and we don’t know how much oil or gas is actually out there, and how much it would reduce the costs of energy for consumers.) The finding of whale populations around New York City is a reminder of how little we know about the ocean. How can we asses the risk of erecting oil rigs along our continental shelves when we still do not know what the effects of such an erection might be?

New wind energy plan for Long Island

Sorry about the lack of posts last week. I am working on my PhD proposal presently, and I find it hard to do a lot of writing in one day and work on multiple writing projects at the same time.
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Another plan is in the works to place wind turbines off the south shore of Long Island, according to this blurb from News 12 Long Island.

Putting windmills in the Atlantic Ocean to generate power for Long Island is back on the drawing board at LIPA, the power authority says. After a failed try for a wind farm off Jones Beach, the company is now trying for Queens.

LIPA CEO Kevin Law told the power authority’s board Tuesday morning that he has been talking with Con Edison about the idea. Law says the aim is to reduce Long Island’s reliance on oil from the Middle East.

”We agreed that perhaps it would make sense, where we could share the cost and share the power,” Law says.

A proposed wind farm off Jones Beach was canceled last year because of concerns it was too expensive. The new proposal would include more windmills than the Jones Beach project and would be located further out -- about 10 miles from the Rockaways.
LIPA says the technology has improved since the Jones Beach plan was considered.

LIPA and Con Edison are working on determining the cost of the project and if the wind farm would end up saving Long Islanders money in the long run. If they determine the plan does not make economic sense, it will not be pushed forward.

Previous attempts to harvest the large quantities of wind power available off the south shore of Long Island failed primarily for two reasons; first the project would cost so much that the energy harvested would be prohibitively expensive and secondly the project was near to a scenic region off of Jones Beach that residents were concerned would be obscured by the project.

The new project is expected to be larger in scope than the previously proposed project, so the hope is that construction expenses per unit energy produced will be lower, thus the energy will be more reasonably priced. The news blurb vaguely makes reference to “new technology” that would cost less to install or run. Compared to a few years ago, fossil fuel based electricity is more expensive, so this project may make a bit more economic sense.

As per the visual impact of the project, it should be similar, as both projects were expected to be 10 miles off the coast. There may be a difference in public perspective however between “off of Jones Beach” and “off of Queens.” People may have been protective (overly so?) of their parkland view.

A very unscientific poll by News 12 Long Island found 87% (521 self selected respondents) of people who self-surveyed themselves were in favor of building the wind turbines off the coast of Queens, and only 13% (72 self selected respondents) were opposed. This ratio is likely to change when the costs of the projects are announced.

So it seems that the public is now strongly in support of the initiative, whereas only a few years ago they were skeptical of a similar project. It is unclear if this is due to a shift in public opinions of alternative energy sources, or if it is a result of the project being moved away from Jones Beach. What do you think?

Big Turbines in the Big Apple

Okay, today’s post will be much shorter than yesterday’s…that was too much text for any mere mortal to enjoy.

Big Turbines in the Big Apple?
Yesterday we discussed why large, industry standard 1.5 mega Watt turbines would not work in New York City. Today we’ll talk about a proposal to have large, industry standard 1.5 mega Watt turbines in New York City. As we discussed yesterday wind turbines need a lot of space. They are massive structures. They create noise not suitable for residential locals, and they can throw ice chunks great distances. Where in New York City is there space enough for giant wind turbines? Answer according to the New York Times: the United States largest landfill; Fresh Kills in Staten Island.

Having spent decades persuading the city to close the giant Fresh Kills landfill, Staten Island officials are now arguing that the vast site would be the perfect home for the energy-creating windmills that Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg has proposed as a way to make New York City more sustainable.

Wow turning what the Staten Island Borough President refers to as “one of the country’s worst ecological nightmares” into New York City’s first wind farm would be quite an environmental coup. Unlike the failed Long Island offshore windfarm, this endeavor may be economically viable (much of the cost with the Long Island had to do with construction and maintenance of an offshore site, a land based construction would be much more economical.) Lost in the Times article is that the project is just part of a major rehabilitation process for the landfill, including the creation of large areas of parkland and nature preserves.

A question arises, will the public have access to parts of the park where the wind turbines are located? Short term exposure to the noise generated by the turbines is not a serious concern, so long as care is taken during icy periods to avoid ice throw, hopefully the public will have full access to the region.

Will Small Turbines Work?
A second article in the Times discusses the utility of smaller turbines, the type that Mayor Bloomberg proposes to deploy across the city on rooftops, bridges and other structures. Do these small turbines produce enough energy for their expense?

These tiny turbines generate so little electricity that some energy experts are not sure the economics will ever make sense.
By contrast, the turbines being installed at wind farms are getting ever larger and more powerful, lowering the unit cost of electricity to the point that they are becoming competitive with electricity generated from natural gas.
The spread of the big turbines and a general fascination with all things green are helping to spur interest in rooftop microturbines, creating a movement somewhere on the border between a hobby and an environmental fashion statement.

The article seems to insinuate that at present the cost of instillation is not made up by the meager energy produced. Instead instillation is being driven by a desire to be green or be trendy. The article attempts to differentiate between smaller stand alone wind turbines and roof based, small turbines, noting that the smaller yet independent wind turbines do indeed produce enough energy to pay for themselves, whereas the roof based ones do not.

One assumes that technology will at some point overcome the technological and manufacturing challenges and produce inexpensive rooftop turbines. But the article notes that there are some major concerns with the urban wind environment in general.

But many experts caution that rooftops, while abundant, are usually poor places to harness the breeze. Not only are cities less windy than the countryside, but the air is choppier because of trees and the variation in heights in buildings. Turbulence can wear down a turbine and make it operate less efficiently. This is particularly problematic for houses with pitched roofs.

New York is a winder environment than most cities (windier in fact than the so called “Windy City” of Chicago), but the presence of sky scrapers does introduce a frictional drag decreasing the wind speed. The building induced turbulence is not a problem that technology will solve any time soon.

So the city faces major technological challenges to its desire to harness wind power upon rooftops. Only time and technology will show if this ambitious project is feasible.

Concerns About Wind Power in an Urban Enviroment

(Aside: Thanks to everyone who has e-mailed me about Science Debate 2008. I am planning on writing a few posts about how this years crop of politicians have performed on issues relating to the environment in October. Until then, you can stop e-mailing me about this :-).)

Avid reader, master strategist and all around great guy Chris John noted this concern about implementing wind power in an urban environment:

If an art exhibit (Olaf Eliasson's [sp] waterfalls) under the Brooklyn Bridge almost killed two kayakers, I dread to think of the mess we're going to have to clean up from wind turbines.

So lets take a few minutes to address wind power, and to think about how well suited it would be for a major urban region like New York City.

A couple of years ago I was lucky enough to win the Evan R. Liblit Scholarship. I was honored to be chosen as the Evan R. Liblit Scholar, since Mr. Liblit was an environmental hero, championing the cause of recycling and responsible waste management on Long Island during the 1980’s and 1990’s. (People are so passionate about Evan Liblit, that they are even willing to row the length of the Yukon River to raise awareness and money). As part of the Scholarship I was to attend the New York State Solid Waste and Recycling Conference in Lake George. Admittedly, I wasn’t particularly excited about this – who wanted to spend a week learning about garbage? But my talk was well received, which was great and I got to see a presentation session on Wind Power in New York State, the content of which has stuck with me ever since.

As it turns out, wind power is becoming a big business in many parts of New York State, especially those regions that abut the Great Lakes. The regions downwind of the Great Lakes are (as we discussed before) in a region with great wind power potential, and also are suffering from a still stagnant economy that began its decline in the late 1980’s. As such many municipalities are investigating whether allowing utility companies to construct wind turbines on farmland and other open terrain would be beneficial to the communities. I can’t recall this with much certainty, but I do recall someone citing at the conference the example of a small town that had reduced its school and property taxes to zero by contracting with a major utility.

To me, one of the most surprising aspects of the wind power craze in Central and Western New York State, was the degree to which lawyers needed to be involved in the process. Here I will try to speak as simply as possible to avoid displaying my legal ignorance (much like Sarah Palin should avoid speaking in public about polar bears, global warming and ANWAR – ZING!). Small rural municipalities were very much so dependant upon two firms (one in Albany one in Buffalo) to draft complicated lease agreements with utilities as well as to craft appropriate zoning regulation that protected the health and welfare of residents along with allowing for economically reasonable utilization of wind energy. This process is much more involved than you think, due to the impacts of ice throw and noise pollution generated by wind turbines (actually it is so complicated that there is a legal blog dedicated to issues regarding wind power).

Ice Throw

Ice throw occurs when wind turbine blades become coated in ice, generally from freezing rain or from freezing fog. As winds pick up after the storm, the blades begin to rotate and in the process the ice that has accumulated on the blade can be thrown over large distances. The figure to the right, taken from this non-peered reviewed source, shows the distance ice can be hurled. Along the ordinate (x-axis) is shown the width of the turbine blades in meters. The y-axis shows the distance that ice chunks have been thrown. The color of the dots show the mass of the hurled ice chunks. Smaller chunks of ice have been shown to be thrown lengths in excess of three football fields. Larger chunks of ice, coming in at about 1kg or 2.2 lbs have been shown to be thrown 25m! Well take those results with a grain of salt, since they don’t come from a peer reviewed source, but none the less it is evident that wind turbines cannot be sited in densely populated regions, or even in regions with large amounts of infrastructure. It doesn’t need to be said, but obviously chunks of ice flying off of 50 story buildings in Manhattan would probably be frowned upon by local residents.

It should be noted that by my recollection, none of the speakers at the conference considered ice throw to be a major issue. They noted that technology was improving, reducing the capacity of ice to be thrown and that the amount of ice accumulation was relatively small in general and limited to short periods of the year. They also pointed out the lack of observed injuries related to ice throw, suggesting that either this is not a serious issue or that people have done a good job citing turbines.

Noise Pollution
A second major concern that requires the attention of zoners, is that of noise generation. Turbines when operational generate a low frequency humming noise. Although not altogether an unpleasant sound, the volume (which gets higher as the turbines speed up) accumulated over time can injure local residents long term hearing.

Here is a video of a large industrial wind farm, documenting the noise that the giant turbines make:



The amount of noise will vary based on the design of each turbine, the wind speed and local topography. Each community needs to assess how much noise each turbine in their town is expected to put out, and make zoning regulations that make sense for local resident’s health. In the case of New York City, it is unclear whether or not a wind turbine would produce noise in excess of the current noise levels. Massive wind turbines, like those shown on the above video are also not possible in an urban environment. One imagines that a smaller turbine built for rooftop use would have a much smaller noise impact.

Aesthetic impacts
The visual presence of wind turbines is thought to have a potential negative aesthetic impact. This is true in many pristine environments, but in other environments some folks actually enjoy the way the wind turbines look. I wish I had a reference to back this up, but I heard once that in Europe property values of locations with wind turbines.

In the case of the Long Island Windpark, concerns over property value were paramount. Additionally folks were very worried about the impact of wind turbines on the view from regional beaches and tourism.

Bird deaths
To be frank, I think that this issue is overstated. The number of birds killed by feral cats at Stony Brook University outnumbers the total number of birds killed by wind turbines in all of New York State I would guess. This issue seems to be something of an “ecco-myth” and probably stems back to antiquated technology. Some new wind turbines come equipped with “whistles” that emit sound on a wavelength that birds can hear (humans however cannot hear the sound) and find annoying.

Birds have a large number of threats to their well being to be sure, high tension wires, high rise buildings, automobiles, domesticated invasive species – I’m not so sure that wind turbines are of the order of impacts as the previously listed problems.

Yikes this post is getting long, probably past the point that anyone is still reading. So let me conclude with a wildcard. Everything we have been discussing so far has pertained to the traditional wind turbine. Colossal, gigantic, tall, massive – these are all adjectives that could be used to describe the turbines. These are not the sorts of turbines that would be practical in New York City.

Rohit Aggarwala, the director of the city’s Office of Long-Term Planning and Sustainability, said that turbines on buildings would likely be much smaller than offshore ones. Several companies are experimenting with models that look like eggbeaters, which the Bloomberg administration says could be integrated into the spires atop the city’s tall buildings. “”You can make them so small that people think they are part of the design,” Mr. Aggarwala said. “If rooftop wind can make it anywhere, this is a great city,” he said. “We have a lot of tall buildings.”

Such new turbines would have to be designed to not produce any icethrow, and regardless of the size of the particles or how far they are thrown, ice chunks falling from sky scrapers would not be acceptable. Noise concerns must be taken into account, but I’m not entirely confident that wind turbines would be appreciably louder than air conditioner units currently housed on many rooftops, nor would they be louder than the ambient city noise levels. Bird kill in New York City may be a serious problem as many birds congregate on city rooftops. Furthermore, birds in New York City are notoriously stupid and their termination may be a blessing in disguise…just kidding.

New York: Alternative Energy Capital of the World?

Great article in the New York Times yesterday about how New York City aims to provide renewable energy to the city in the next few years.

In a plan that would drastically remake New York City’s skyline and shores, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg is seeking to put wind turbines on the city’s bridges and skyscrapers and in its waters as part of a wide-ranging push to develop renewable energy.

….

“When it comes to producing clean power, we’re determined to make New York the No. 1 city in the nation,” Mr. Bloomberg said as he outlined his plans in a speech Tuesday night in Las Vegas, where a major conference on alternative energy is under way.

Sounds good. My initial response to this news is that even though this plan may never see the light of day, it’s great that New Yorkers are hearing that alternative energies can be generated in their backyards. It’s important that New Yorkers put their money where their mouth is, and try to develop energy sources locally, rather than importing energy from California and Arizona. Mayor Bloomberg agrees:

“In New York,” he said in his speech, “we don’t think of alternative power as something that we just import from other parts of the nation.”

Oh but Mr. Bloomberg good sir, I’m afraid we do. A similar project, although smaller in scope, was proposed off the south shore of Long Island. It was rejected handily by Long Islanders mostly due to cost considerations (i.e. it would be really expensive per watt of energy produced), but there was also sizeable objections to obscurations to the view off of Jones Beach.

So what makes the mayor so confident that building wind turbines off of Queens and on top of the George Washington Bridge will not face similar challenges?

Rohit Aggarwala, the director of the city’s Office of Long-Term Planning and Sustainability, said that turbines on buildings would likely be much smaller than offshore ones. Several companies are experimenting with models that look like eggbeaters, which the Bloomberg administration says could be integrated into the spires atop the city’s tall buildings. “”You can make them so small that people think they are part of the design,” Mr. Aggarwala said.
“If rooftop wind can make it anywhere, this is a great city,” he said. “We have a lot of tall buildings.”

Well it’s a start I guess. Certainly less visible turbines would be easier for New Yorkers. who are quite proud of their skyline, to accept.



But if New York State has any source of alternative energies, it is wind power. As the figure above shows, the waters off of Long Island and Lake Ontario are considered to be near the highest classification of wind power. Likewise on shore, the Southern Tier, Tug Hill Plateau and nearly all lands downwind of the Great Lakes are good spots for wind turbines as well (not shown).



Contrast that with solar energy. As you can tell from this figure (taken from this fantastic textbook by Botkin and Keller), New York State as a whole ranks very poor in terms of potential solar energy. Of course any one who’s lived here for a winter could tell you that just as easily without a fancy picture -- but none the less solar energy as a future power source in New York will be dependent upon technological advances.

New York City has long done well in thinking ahead of environmental problems and Bloomberg’s administration has been no exception (in fact Mayor Bloomberg has espoused some rather progressive environmental views, at other points during his tenure.). New York City has adopted an aggressive policy of purchasing and preserving land surrounding their extensive reservoir system in an attempt to control water quality. As a result, the city is saving money long term by avoiding the high costs of energy and chemicals for water purification. As an affective bonus this land is preserved from development and adds to the impressive quantity of land preserved in the Catskill State Preserve. But the achievements in the Catskills would be dwarfed by the prospect of the United States largest city developing alternative energies enough to power itself.