Another big NE wind project approved.

  • Active since 1995, Hearth.com is THE place on the internet for free information and advice about wood stoves, pellet stoves and other energy saving equipment.

    We strive to provide opinions, articles, discussions and history related to Hearth Products and in a more general sense, energy issues.

    We promote the EFFICIENT, RESPONSIBLE, CLEAN and SAFE use of all fuels, whether renewable or fossil.
  • Super Cedar firestarters 30% discount Use code Hearth2024 Click here
(broken link removed to https://news.yahoo.com/early-hurricane-season-forecast-suggests-165226990.html)

And now my rant

Any politician in the SE particularly Florida is not going to admit it, but those states regard hurricanes as an economic boost. A big one turns over the older housing stock and also the population. Old and frail people in nursing and assisted living homes are rarely big funders of campaigns and if voting laws are crafted carefully they do not vote. There has to be an illusion of giving a crap about the old folks in nursing and assisted facilities to give new retirees heading to the state some sort of rational that when they get old and sick there will be someone to take care of them. Across the board I here from retired folks who winter in Florida to make sure that they get medical work done up north before they head south as the hospitals are not great for those who dont have the money to go private.

Connected developers will grab the ruined buildings, cart them off with disaster money and build high rises to attract younger retirees and the cycle repeats over and over again. The fundamental problem is that the insurance companies are all pulling out of the state as they know the end cycle is near. Any building built prior to Hurricane Andrew rarely was inspected to the weak building codes in place. Much of it was in rural counties who had no inspectors. Post Andrew, stronger regs and inspections help with wind damage but cant do much about flooding and storm surge and if you look at the high rises being installing in Florida, they have two stories of non occupied space down low with the mechanical equipment on at least the second story. They tend to survive quite well initially but in a salty environment there is need to do ongoing maintenance and in most cases the management cut corners on this work until they can sell out to a condo board and eventually a high rise collapses due to under maintenance.

Babcock Ranch is brought up a lot as the ideal new Florida, grampa and grandpa with enough money to afford a trailer in a trailer park probably cannot afford the low end 400K to high end 900K plus costs for individual homes or 300K for a single unit of a muti-unit. Talk to anyone familiar with that area of Florida and it gets incredibly hot and stagnant for six months a year as its too far way from the coast to get any coastal breezes, that is how they could find land to develop from scratch as most regarded it as not worth developing. Grandma and Grandpa also probably do not like being isolated 20 miles from the shore. No mention of local taxes or special assessments. Not bad for a second home investment where the owner heads north during the summer not so good for someone to live there full time. Take a look at the Fort Myers area and you would have seen mobile and modular homes crammed in on narrow lots along coastal rivers that frequently were dredged or even dug so that what they dug out could be piled up to meet some minimum elevation. Those were the areas nailed by the hurricane and no doubt they will get redeveloped.
 
  • Like
Reactions: sloeffle
Weather and the climate are complex. There are many factors involved, some which are not all that apparent until they disrupt our daily routines. This is an interesting phenomenon that is currently happening.
I agree with your statement. But I don't think the phenomenon currently happening is an example of that - it appears to me that this is quite well understood.
Not all occasional events in a complex system are perplexing. (Of course this does not mean that forcasting them is easy, due to the complexity of a system - but in hindsight it's often quite well understood, as in this case.)
 
Didn't mean to imply it was perplexing or not understood. I just said these systems are complex. That's what I like about the article. It didn't overstate the phenomenon.
 
  • Like
Reactions: stoveliker
When I took introduction to Oceanography years ago it sounded so simple ;)
 
lol. My perspective is that it's all thermodynamics, and for many physicists that was harder than quantum mechanics...
 
  • Like
Reactions: EbS-P
REnewable Energy is providing an ever larger chunk of grid power. There's still a long way to go, but it's noteworthy and encouraging.

CLIMATEWIRE | Renewable energy is breaking records across the U.S.

Wind and solar accounted for 76 percent of electricity production in Texas’ primary power grid last Friday. The next day, New England set its own record, with 45 percent of its power coming from wind, solar and hydropower.

Within the last month, grid operators have reported record solar generation in the Midwest, record wind generation in New York and record renewable generation in the mid-Atlantic, according to data collected by GridStatus.io, a website that monitors electricity markets around the country.

The milestones represent a snapshot in time, a mere hour of a day when renewable generation surges on one of the country’s regional electric grids, all of which remain firmly dependent on fossil fuels.

But together they paint a picture of an evolving power system. Wind generated almost twice the electricity as coal last year on the grid managed by the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, which serves about 90 percent of the state's power demand. Rooftop solar regularly tops generation in New England on sunny days.

 
  • Like
Reactions: EbS-P