This is a must watch for all of us. Could not say it better.
A Fisherman’s Perspective about Offshore Wind
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Category Archives: rising sea levels
Climate and Real Estate
GUESTWORDS in the East Hampton Star
January 1, 2020
There is already evidence of a real estate slump in the United States. A housing recession is predicted for 2020. The average price of luxury home sales is falling, as is the number of sales. Long Island specifically is suffering as sales decrease and homes lose value. This is rather astonishing given that the rest of the economy is still on steroids.
What are the reasons? The following have all been suggested.
First, baby boomers from New York are downsizing and moving to lower-tax states. Second, millennials seem to have a distaste for buying second homes and would rather rent. Third, bonuses on Wall Street fell 17 percent in 2018 compared with 2017.
Fourth, the tax changes brought on by Donald Trump: a cap of $10,000 on the amount of state and local taxes (SALT), including property taxes, that can be deducted from federal income tax. For an expensive home with property taxes of $50,000 per year, this means that $40,000 can no longer be deducted.
Fifth, as mentioned by some real estate professionals: chronic flooding, which threatens the values of houses here. According to Aidan Gardiner writing for The Real Deal, a website focusing on New York real estate news: “Chronic flooding threatens to sink the value of Hamptons homes. Hamptons homes are very likely to lose value given that they’ll face chronic flooding as climate changes and sea levels rise over the coming years, according to Bloomberg. Behind only central California, the area has the second-highest level of its property tax revenue at risk among U.S. municipalities with a high likelihood of chronic flooding in the next 12 years. Climate change is expected to bring constant floods that would tank property values, erode infrastructure, and sink tax revenue, all of which will make it harder to fund projects to battle the rising seas.”
You can check for yourself on ss2.climatecentral.org, where you can find a “risk zone map for surging seas.” See the figure appended below. You can input anything from “unchecked pollution” to “extreme carbon cuts,” depending on how you predict future policies will rein in carbon emissions.
I assumed unchecked carbon emissions along the lines of our present-day emissions, and I asked for maps of a 10-foot water level rise. The program produces maps with dark blue shaded areas that will be underwater. Here are some of the highlights for the not so distant future (2050 to 2100).
Montauk will become an island, the Napeague stretch will be underwater, and much of downtown Montauk will be too, including Route 27. Flooding of Route 27 across Napeague will start with just a three-foot rise in sea water levels, shutting down access to Montauk.
Homes all around Accabonac Harbor will be flooded. Gerard Drive and Louse Point will be submerged. Maidstone Park, Sammy’s Beach, and Cedar Point will be gone. Barcelona Point and the Sag Harbor Golf Course will become an island.
Beach homes in Amagansett, homes along Two Mile Hollow Beach, homes around Hook Pond, Georgica Pond, and Wainscott Pond will all be underwater. Indeed, a few homes on Beach Lane in Wainscott will be submerged. That is where the cable from the South Fork Wind Farm is proposed to come ashore and where some of its opponents own property.
Much of Sag Harbor Village will be underwater, and North Haven will be a real island.
Up and down Long Island, the homes close to the South Shore will be underwater, and Fire Island will no longer exist.
The North Shore, too, will be flooded, and Greenport will be on an island.
Kennedy International Airport will be underwater.
It is not just someone else’s problem. Loss of value of high-end homes means loss of significant local business and loss of jobs, and it spills over, resulting in loss of the value of your own property regardless of whether it is in particular danger of flooding.
Showtime’s “The Affair” recently wrapped up its final season, and part of it was set in mid-21st-century Montauk, with warming temperatures and rising seas. The show forecasts what life will look like in 34 short years, including mass transit that routinely short-circuits because of flooding, coastal communities plunged into near-total darkness, and shoreline towns without basic municipal services.
We had better support clean energy (including offshore wind) and work to decrease our carbon footprint. It is urgent.
David Posnett is a member of the Steering Committee of Win With Wind.
A lost decade for climate. We can’t afford a repeat
The 2010s were a lost decade for climate. We can’t afford a repeat, scientists warn.
By Sarah Kaplan Jan. 1, 2020 at 3:45 p.m. EST. The Washington Post: Science
At the start of the previous decade, Kallan Benson was 5 years old, her favorite story was “The Secret Garden,” and Earth was in the midst of its warmest year on record. Benson had heard about climate change (her mother is an environmental scientist), but she didn’t know world leaders had just signed an agreement calling it “one of the greatest challenges of our time.” She cared about Earth, but she trusted adults to protect it.
She doesn’t feel that way anymore.
By the final year of the decade, the planet had surpassed its 2010 temperature record five times. Hurricanes devastated New Jersey and Puerto Rico, and floods damaged the Midwest and Bangladesh. Southern Africa was gripped by a deadly drought. Australia and the Amazon are ablaze. Global emissions are expected to hit an all-time high this year, and humanity is on track to cross the threshold for tolerable warming within a generation.AD
The 2010s were a “decade of disappointment,” said Benson, now 15 and a national coordinator for the youth climate organization Fridays for Future. If the world is to stave off further disasters, the next decade must be one of unprecedented climate action, she said.
“This decade that we’re going into now will be the most important of our lives,” Benson said. “We’re kind of running out of options. And we’re running out of time.”
Ten years ago, the United Nations released its first “emissions gap” report detailing the disparity between commitments made by nations to reduce greenhouse gases and what is needed to meet global temperature targets. It estimated that countries should be curbing emissions about 3 percent per year.
But that hasn’t happened, said Surabi Menon, vice president for global intelligence at the ClimateWorks Foundation and a steering committee member for the U.N.’s emissions gap reports.AD
“We’ve left ourselves with a very narrow window to take the kind of action that needs to be taken,” she said.
The 2015 Paris climate accord — the first-ever global agreement to limit warming to “well below 2 degrees Celsius” — was important, Menon said. But the promises made at that meeting fell short. According to the latest emissions gap report, temperatures can be expected to rise 3.2 degrees Celsius above preindustrial levels by the end of the century, unless the world’s top emitters increase their Paris commitments.
Dangerous new hot zones are spreading around the world
Right now, most aren’t on track to meet even their most modest targets. The world is already about 1 degree Celsius warmer than it was before humans started burning fossil fuels. Global annual emissions have increased 4 percent since the Paris agreement was signed. And the average concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere — a number that ultimately determines our fate, in the words of Phil DeCola, who chairs the science team for a World Meteorological Organization greenhouse gas initiative — is the highest in human history.
Meanwhile, improved scientific models found that even 2 degrees of warming — once thought to be a reasonable target — could be practically intolerable in parts of the world. To get on track to achieve a less disastrous 1.5-degree temperature rise, a landmark U.N. report found that nations must nearly halve emissions by 2030.
The United Nations’ 1.5-degree analysis provoked widespread alarm after it was published in 2018. Politicians referred to the report at rallies; teenagers quoted it during school walkouts.AD
“If we don’t do something by then,” 14-year-old climate activist Alexandria Villaseñor said in February, referring to 2030, “it will be the end of my world.”
But climate scientists caution against treating 2030 as a deadline and 1.5 degrees as a threshold for extinction.
“Climate change is not a cliff. It’s not a pass-fail course,” Georgia Tech researcher Kim Cobb said. “If we meet the 1.5 target, there may still be tons of ugly surprises. And if we don’t meet it, it’s not that everybody’s going to die.”
According to Cobb, the report is better understood as a road map for navigating the perilous path to sustainability.
“Our decisions over the next 10 years will affect the magnitude of climate change for centuries to come,” she said. “I don’t think it can get more sobering than that.”
The first and most important step will be reducing fossil fuel consumption, experts say. According to the latest emissions gap analysis, the past 10 years of inaction have more than doubled the rate at which emissions must fall; to meet the 1.5-degree goal, emissions must be cut by 7.6 percent each year.AD
Such action would require “unprecedented” transformation of society the report acknowledged.
But many of the solutions needed — both economic and technological — already exist. The report called on the global community to replace coal power with renewable energy, decarbonize transportation and manufacturing, and help developing nations build green infrastructure to meet their growing power needs.
Ending subsidies for fossil fuels could reduce global emissions 10 percent by 2030, the U.N. has found. And eliminating “short-lived” greenhouse gases — including methane, black carbon and fluorinated gases, which linger in the atmosphere less than carbon dioxide but trap more heat — over the next 20 years could help Earth avoid between 0.3 and 0.8 degrees of warming by 2050, research suggests.
How a 7th-grader’s strike against climate change exploded into a movement
Menon draws hope from progress that has been made on the ground in the past decade, even as global leaders fell short. Global renewable energy capacity has quadrupled since 2010, largely because of improved technology and falling costs, she noted. People increasingly see climate change as a threat; a Washington Post poll this year found that 76 percent of American adults view the issue as a “major problem” or a “crisis.” This year’s global climate strikes, led by teenagers such as Benson and Swedish activist Greta Thunberg, were among the largest environmental protests in history.
“We know what we have to do,” Menon said. “And we know there are pathways, there are policies, and there are people willing to do it.”
The rate at which greenhouse gases are removed from the atmosphere must also increase, said Tufts University climate scientist William Moomaw, a contributor to the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Natural systems currently absorb more than half the carbon people produce, and a 2018 study found that conservation, restoration and improved land management practices could reduce the United States’ net emissions by as much as 21 percent. But cutting down forests, dredging wetlands and polluting the coasts reduce that capacity.AD
“If we don’t actually reverse the rise of carbon dioxide, so that we are lowering the concentrations in the atmosphere, it’s just going to go on getting worse and worse,” Moomaw said.
In the bleak report released this August, the United Nations forecast the consequences of inaction on land. Warming beyond 1.5 degrees will lead to high risk of drought, wildfires, destructive hurricanes and outbreaks of agricultural pests, scientists said. Increased atmospheric carbon dioxide levels could lower the nutritional quality of crops and raise grain prices. Millions will be at risk of losing their homes, livelihoods and lives to natural disasters, and countries will be destabilized by mass migrations.
Many parts of the world are already experiencing this extreme change; a Washington Post analysis this year found roughly 10 percent of the globe has surpassed 2 degrees of warming since the preindustrial era.AD
Quiz: How much do you know about climate change?
“The stakes are high. The climate impacts are severe. And people almost everywhere in the world are experiencing that and waking up,” Menon said. “That gives me hope.”
It’s when she considers the political decisions needed to fight warming that she feels pessimistic.
At the recent COP 25 climate talks in Madrid, the world’s leading emitters, including the United States and China, failed to increase their commitments to cut emissions. Officials deferred until next year the task of establishing a global carbon trading system.
“It felt like betrayal,” said Benson, the 15-year-old activist, who lives in Annapolis. “But for me, it means that I have to keep doing what I’m doing. Keep soldiering on.”
On a chilly Friday in December, shivering through her weekly climate strike at the Capitol, the teenager tried to imagine what the next 10 years might look like. But the normal life milestones — dates and dances, college, a job — were hard to picture. Until the global climate outlook changes, Benson can’t envision doing anything but activism.AD
It all depends on what happens to the planet. And that depends on what people decide to do.
Finally, Benson sighed. “I really can’t predict the future,” she said. “There’s so many ways this decade could go.”
Correction: An initial version of this article misstated Phil DeCola’s title. He is science team chair for the Integrated Global Greenhouse Gas Information System, an initiative of the World Meteorological Organization’s Global Atmosphere Watch program.
Greta Thunberg and George Monbiot make short film on the climate crisis
Greta Thunberg and George Monbiot make short film on the climate crisis: Protect – Restore – Fund.
Please watch this short video (3:40 min).
Vote for people who defend nature.
Offshore windfarms ‘can provide more electricity than the world needs’
Supplies from turbines will prove to be the next great energy revolution, IEA predicts – International Energy Agency (IEA)
Jillian Ambrose Energy correspondent
In the Guardian, Fri 25 Oct 2019 04.23 EDT First published on Thu 24 Oct 2019 14.45 EDT
“Offshore wind currently provides just 0.3% of global power generation, but its potential is vast,” the IEA’s executive director, Fatih Birol, said.
The study predicts offshore wind generation will grow 15-fold to emerge as a $1tn (£780bn) industry in the next 20 years and will prove to be the next great energy revolution.
The IEA said earlier this week that global supplies of renewable electricity were growing faster than expected and could expand by 50% in the next five years, driven by a resurgence in solar energy. Offshore wind power would drive the world’s growth in clean power due to plummeting costs and new technological breakthroughs, including turbines close to the height of the Eiffel Tower and floating installations that can harness wind speeds further from the coast.
The next generation of floating turbines capable of operating further from the shore could generate enough energy to meet the world’s total electricity demand 11 times over in 2040, according to IEA estimates.
The report predicts that the EU’s offshore wind capacity will grow from almost 20 gigawatts today to nearly 130 gigawatts by 2040, and could reach 180 gigawatts with stronger climate commitments.
In China, the growth of offshore wind generation is likely to be even more rapid, the IEA said. Its offshore wind capacity is forecast to grow from 4 gigawatts to 110 gigawatts by 2040 or 170 gigawatts if it adopts tougher climate targets.
Birol said offshore wind would not only contribute to generating clean electricity, but could also offer a major opportunity in the production of hydrogen, which can be used instead of fossil fuel gas for heating and in heavy industry.
The process of making hydrogen from water uses huge amounts of electricity but abundant, cheap offshore wind power could help produce a low-cost, zero-carbon alternative to gas.
In the North Sea, energy companies are already planning to use the electricity generated by giant offshore windfarms to turn seawater into hydrogen on a floating “green hydrogen” project, backed by the UK government. The clean-burning gas could be pumped back to shore to heat millions of homes by the 2030s. The UK has committed to reaching net zero carbon emissions by 2050.
The overlap between the UK’s declining oil and gas industry and the burgeoning offshore wind sector could offer major economic benefits for the UK, Birol said.
“Offshore wind provides a huge new business portfolio for major engineering firms and established oil and gas companies which have a strong offshore production experience,” he said. “Our analysis shows that 40% of the work in offshore wind construction and maintenance has synergies with oil and gas practises.”
We have some news… about how we will respond to the escalating climate crisis – we will not stay quiet. This is the Guardian’s pledge: we will continue to give global heating, wildlife extinction and pollution the urgent attention and prominence they demand. The Guardian recognises the climate emergency as the defining issue of our times.
Our independence means we are free to investigate and challenge inaction by those in power. We will inform our readers about threats to the environment based on scientific facts, not driven by commercial or political interests. And we have made several important changes to our style guide to ensure the language we use accurately reflects the environmental catastrophe.
The Guardian believes that the problems we face on the climate crisis are systemic and that fundamental societal change is needed. We will keep reporting on the efforts of individuals and communities around the world who are fearlessly taking a stand for future generations and the preservation of human life on earth. We want their stories to inspire hope. We will also report back on our own progress as an organisation, as we take important steps to address our impact on the environment.
The Guardian made a choice: to keep our journalism open to all. We do not have a paywall because we believe everyone deserves access to factual information, regardless of where they live or what they can afford.
We hope you will consider supporting the Guardian’s open, independent reporting today. Every contribution from our readers, however big or small, is so valuable
This is not Normal!
A number of East Hampton residents have noticed increased flooding! It’s apparently due to a rise in the ground water level.
Please send us your pictures and we will post them here!
caterogers.winwithwind@gmail.com
You should be interested because…as reported on June 26, 2018:
Chronic flooding threatens to sink the value of Hamptons homes
Hamptons homes are very likely to lose value given that they’ll face chronic flooding as climate changes and sea levels rise over the coming years, according to Bloomberg. Behind only Central California, the area has the second highest level of its property tax revenue at risk among U.S. municipalities with a high likelihood of chronic flooding in the next 12 years, the outlet reported. Climate change is expected to bring constant floods that would tank property values, erode infrastructure and sink tax revenue, all of which will make it harder to fund projects to battle the rising seas.
If you are thinking of buying a house in the Hamptons, take a look at this risk chart! Within 60 years you might be 100% sure to suffer severe flooding!
This is a really cool site where you can check the risks of your own home being flooded or under water for the rest of the century. For example I checked my neighborhood (Lionhead and Hog’s creek). By the time there is a 10 foot increase in sea levels my house will be water front property and most likely have a flooded basement. The marina (depicted above) will be under water much sooner. It is located by the inlet to Hog’s creek. There are 2 fresh water ponds (see below in green). They will fuse with the salt water ocean after a 4-5 foot rise in sea levels.
Trump’s Windmill Hatred
The following article appeared verbatim in The New York Post (not exactly a left wing rag).
Donald Trump’s windmill hatred is a worry for booming industry
By Associated Press, September 30, 2019
BLOCK ISLAND, R.I. — The winds are blowing fair for America’s wind power industry, making it one of the fastest-growing US energy sources.
Land-based turbines are rising by the thousands across America, from the remote Texas plains to farm towns of Iowa. And the US wind boom now is expanding offshore, with big corporations planning $70 billion in investment for the country’s first utility-scale offshore wind farms.
“We have been blessed to have it,” says Polly McMahon, a 13th-generation resident of Block Island, where a pioneering offshore wind farm replaced the island’s dirty and erratic diesel-fired power plant in 2016. “I hope other people are blessed too.”
But there’s an issue. And it’s a big one. President Donald Trump hates wind turbines.
He’s called them “disgusting” and “ugly” and “stupid,” denouncing them in hundreds of anti-wind tweets and public comments dating back more than a decade, when he tried and failed to block a wind farm near his Scottish golf course.
And those turbine blades. “They say the noise causes cancer,” Trump told a Republican crowd last spring, in a claim immediately rejected by the American Cancer Society.
Now, wind industry leaders and supporters fear that the federal government, under Trump, may be pulling back from what had been years of encouragement for climate-friendly wind.
The Interior Department surprised and alarmed wind industry supporters in August, when the agency unexpectedly announced it was withholding approval for the country’s first utility-scale offshore wind project, a $2.8 billion complex of 84 giant turbines. Slated for building 15 miles (24 kilometers) off Martha’s Vineyard, Massachusetts. Vineyard Wind has a brisk 2022 target for starting operations. Its Danish-Spanish partners already have contracts to supply Massachusetts electric utilities.
Investors backing more than a dozen other big wind farms are lined up to follow Vineyard Wind with offshore wind projects of their own. Shell’s renewable-energy offshoot is among the businesses ponying up for federal leases, at bids of more than $100 million, for offshore wind farm sites.
The Interior Department cited the surge in corporate interest for offshore wind projects in saying it wanted more study before moving forward. It directed Vineyard Wind to research the overall impact of the East Coast’s planned wind boom.
Interior Department spokesman Nicholas Goodwin said offshore energy remains “an important component” in the Trump administration’s energy strategy. But the strategy includes “ensuring activities are safe and environmentally responsible,” Goodwin said in a statement.
Wind power now provides a third or more of the electricity generated in some Southwest and Midwest states. And New York, New Jersey and other Eastern states already are joining Massachusetts in planning for wind-generated electricity.
Along with the US shale oil boom, the rise in wind and solar is helping cushion oil supply shocks like the recent attack on Saudi oil facilities.
But the Interior Department’s pause on the Vineyard Wind project sent a chill through many of the backers of the offshore wind boom. Critics contrast it with the Republican administration’s moves to open up offshore and Arctic areas to oil and gas development, despite strong environmental concerns.
“That I think is sort of a new bar,” for the federal government to require developers to assess the impact of not just their projects but everyone’s, said Stephanie McClellan, a researcher and director of the Special Initiative on Offshore Wind at the University of Delaware. “That worries everybody.”
Thomas Brostrom, head of US operations for Denmark’s global offshore wind giant Orsted and operator of the pioneering Block Island wind farm, said that “the last three, four years have seen unbelievable, explosive growth, much more than we could have really hoped for,” in the US, compared to Europe’s already established wind power industry.
Given all the projects in development, “we hope that this is a speed bump, and certainly not a roadblock,” Brostrom said.
Wind power and the public perception of it have changed since America’s first proposed big offshore wind project, Cape Wind off Cape Cod, Massachusetts, died an agonizing 16-year death. Koch and Kennedy families alike, along with other coastal residents, reviled Cape Wind as a potential bird-killing eyesore in their ocean views.
But technological advances since then mean wind turbines can rise much farther offshore, mostly out of sight, and produce energy more efficiently and competitively. Climate change — and the damage it will do these same coastal communities — also has many looking at wind differently now.
Federal fisheries officials have been among the main bloc calling for more study, saying they need to know more about the impacts on ocean life. Some fishing groups still fear their nets will tangle in the massive turbines, although Vineyard Wind’s offer to pay millions of dollars to offset any harm to commercial fishing won the support of others. At least one Cape Cod town council also withheld support.
A rally for Vineyard Wind after the Interior Department announced its pause drew local Chamber of Commerce leaders and many other prominent locals. Massachusetts’ Republican governor, Charlie Baker, has been traveling to Washington and calling Interior Secretary David Bernhardt to try to win his support.
At Cape Cod Community College in West Barnstable, instructor Chris Powicki’s Offshore Wind 101 classes and workshop have drawn nuclear and marina workers, engineers, young people and others. People are hoping wind will provide the kind of good-paying professions and trades they need to afford to stay here, Powicki says.
“Cape Cod has always been at the end of the energy supply line, or at least ever since we lost our dominance with the whale oil industry” after the 19th century, the community college instructor said. “So this is an opportunity for Cape Cod to generate its own energy.”
On land, the wind boom already is well established. By next year, 9% of the country’s electricity is expected to come from wind power, according to the US Energy Information Administration. The wind industry already claims 114,000 jobs, more than twice the number of jobs remaining in US coal mining, which is losing out in competition against cleaner, cheaper energy sources despite the Trump administration’s backing of coal.
The Trump animosity to wind power has gone beyond words in some states, especially in Ohio. A Trump campaign official was active this summer in winning a state ratepayer subsidy for coal and nuclear that also led to cutting state incentives for wind and solar.
But despite the steady gales of condemnation from the country’s wind-hater in chief, wind is booming most strongly in states that voted for Trump.
Then-Texas Gov. Rick Perry, now Trump’s energy secretary, pushed his state to one of the current top-four wind power states, along with Oklahoma, Kansas and Iowa.
In Iowa, home to nearly 4,700 turbines that provided a third of the state’s electricity last year, wind’s popularity is such that Republican Sen. Chuck Grassley had a drone film him as he sat, grinning, atop one of the country’s biggest wind turbines.
Grassley had no patience for Trump’s claim in April that wind turbines like Iowa’s beloved ones could cause cancer.
“Idiotic,” Grassley said then.
On the East Coast, many developers and supporters of offshore wind politely demur when asked about Trump’s wind-hating tweets and comments.
But not on Block Island.
“We’re very fortunate that we got it. Very fortunate. It’s helped us,” McMahon, the retiree on Block Island, said of wind energy. “And don’t worry about the president. He’s not a nice man.”
Support for South Fork Wind Farm
First there is this report “Labor, Environmental Organizations, and Long Island Residents Voice Strong Support for Critical Offshore Wind Development” released by the Sierra Club.
…and then this very poignant personal letter submitted at the PSC hearing on June 11th in East Hampton:
June 11, 2019
My name is Michael Hansen. I live in Wainscott.
Today is my wedding anniversary.
But I am here today instead… (my wife understands) because I am acutely aware that we are in a climate crisis. And it’s happening right now. It’s happening on Long Island. It’s happening in the Township of East Hampton.
1. The docks at Shelter Island need to be raised because of a rising sea level.
2. We are paying to shore up the infrastructure in Montauk because today’s “typical nor’easter,” is not typical at all.
But the opposition to wind power on the East End wants you to know, and they have said it many times, that they are, “for renewable energy, they are for solar power, they are for wind power… but not now, it’s too expensive, somewhere else, not in my backyard.”
We are paying for climate change right now. Our tax dollars are going to those docks in Montauk. Today.
We are in a climate crisis and I am here today to speak for my children. My daughter is eight and my son is six.
My family has been on the East End for over three hundred years—as I am sure many of the families in this room have been—and my family and yours will continue to live here. And a wind farm, that is part of a comprehensive plan, is key to our children’s future.
A final word on Wainscott. The cable landing should be there. It will be least disruptive to East Hampton Town. And, ya know, Wainscott is tough. We can take it. We endured Suffolk County Water digging up our roads to provide us with clean water.
We can endure one lane of digging for clean energy.
Rally for the South Fork Wind Farm – June 11, 2019
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Why all the fuss?
This is a cross section (a real piece) of the existing Block Island cable for their wind farm, consisting of 5 wind turbines that produce all the energy for the island with surplus energy for the state of Rhode Island. It is on my kitchen table. It measures 7 inches in diameter. It is similar to the cable that will bring energy from the South Fork Wind farm ashore.
“Carbon-free New York by 2040” is the overriding goal. Period.
If the urgency of achieving this goal is not apparent to any readers, just look at the most recent local news: “Higher tides force Shelter Island Ferry to rebuild ramps” This is a very real cost of sea level rise here on the South Fork! Check it out via Newsday.com.
And this is just the beginning.
On the other side of the issue we have loud opponents of the South Fork wind farm:
1) wealthy homeowners, with mansions on the Wainscott beach, who oppose any cable coming ashore in their vicinity, clearly a case of NIMBY
2) fishermen that have been whipped up with scare tactics. I note that there are only 2 commercial fishing boats out of Montauk that fish in the Southfork wind farm area (OCS-A 0486, near Cox Ledge) which is closer to Rhode Island and Martha’s Vineyard than to Montauk. From Montauk it takes 5 hours to get there by boat and 5 hours back.
For all those worried about a disruptive cable running under the sea bed and coming ashore somewhere, I would point out that a larger electric cable already feeds power in to Long Island coming all the way from New Jersey. This dates back to 2007! Like a giant extension cord, this transmission cable, named Neptune, stretches 50 miles underwater from Sayreville, N.J., comes ashore at Jones beach and has been plugged into Long Island for all these years without any nefarious effects on, or off shore. It is a 10″ cable and provides 660 megawatts.
Likewise LIPA imports power from New England on the 330-megawatt Cross Sound Cable, which runs underwater from Connecticut. Two older cables, the 600-megawatt Y49 cable and the 599-megawatt Y50 cable, also run under the Sound to the Island.
Initial concerns about the effects on the shell fish industry were apparently not a problem over all these years.
Read more here:
WIN WITH WIND 