World’s largest floating wind farm will be installed in Scotland with oil money

Offshore wind has come a long way in recent years, in large part because of how heavily the UK has invested in the technology. But most of this development has been with conventional wind technology, which requires that the turbines be mounted to the seafloor or lakebed in relatively 

shallow water.

The world’s largest floating offshore wind development will be installed off the coast of Peterhead after the application has been granted a marine licence by the Scottish Government. It is expected that the Hywind Scotland development could power up to 19,900 houses.

Norwegian Statoil propose developing a pilot park of five floating 6 MW turbines which is to be located approximately 25km off the coast of Peterhead with a generating capacity of 135GWh of electricity each year.

Unlike conventional turbines, Hywind turbines will be attached to the seabed by a three-point mooring spread and anchoring system. The turbines will be connected by an inter-array of cables and an export cable will transport electricity from the pilot park to shore at Peterhead.

“The ability to leverage existing infrastructure and supply chain capabilities from the offshore oil and gas industry create the ideal conditions to position Scotland as a world leader in floating wind technology.”

“Successfully developing floating turbines could enable Scotland to secure even more clean energy from offshore wind in the future. With the right political support for offshore wind and other renewable technologies, Scotland is well placed to become the EU’s first renewable electricity nation by 2030.Floating turbines have many attractive benefits, according to Renewable Energy World.

Another benefit is that floating platforms can generally be commissioned and assembled at the quayside, without the need for heavy-lift jackup or dynamic positioning (DP) vessels, further reducing the cost and risk of deployment activities.

“Eliminating offshore lifting operations also provides for decreased weather window restrictions on installation.” 

The fact that foundations are not necessary with floating technology also means that piling activities and sea life disturbance can be minimized—greatly reducing negative environmental impacts. Moreover, reduced geotechnical requirements mean that core sampling is only needed to test the seabed ahead of appropriate anchor selection, as opposed to the necessity of core sampling at every pile site.

According to research from the Carbon Trust, floating wind turbines could reduce the price of offshore wind to less than $150 megawatt-hours (MWh), and larger projects such as Hywind may drop the price even lower to $130-145 MWh. The current average price is $172 MWh.

“Floating wind represents a new, significant and increasingly competitive renewable energy source,” A key advantage of using floating wind platforms is that they allow developers access to previously inaccessible waters where there is stronger yet less turbulent winds—helping to reduce the overall cost of wind energy.


http://ecowatch.com/2015/11/03/floating-wind-farm-scotland
http://www.offgridquest.com/energy/wind-power
https://www.pressandjournal.co.uk

2015 Nobel prize in economics Angus Deaton wins

Scottish economist is best known for his work on health, wellbeing, and economic development.
Angus Deaton, born in Scotland but a longtime professor at Princeton, has won the 2015 Nobel Prize for Economics "for his analysis of consumption, poverty, and welfare." The Scottish-born economist is best known for his work on health,consumption, poverty, wellbeing, and economic development.

Angus Deaton Photograph: Princeton

GIST of INTERVIEW

1.Inequality has gone beyond the point where it is helping us to get rich, and is now a very serious threat.

2.He cites inequality as a factor driving climate change. He’s also worried about its impact on politics and democracy.

3.I worry about a world in which the rich get to write the rules which the rest of us have to obey.

4.Deaton tells his audience in Princeton that the “great concern” is the slowing of economic growth in the developed world, even before the financial crisis.

5.That slowing growth poisons everything... particularly for those at the bottom.

6.There are many people in the rich world who are really suffering, and whose lives are getting worse. They see that as a consequence of what’s happening elsewhere.

And the consequences of that could be “very difficult” indeed, he adds.

7.Deaton also explains that his driving passion has been to be very honest with data, rather than allowing politics to intrude.

Deaton is on his feet, and looking very happy as the audience give him a thunderous ovation:

Consumption, great and small.



To design economic policy that promotes welfare and reduces poverty, we must first understand individual consumption choices. By linking detailed individual choices and aggregate outcomes, his research has helped transform the fields of microeconomics, macroeconomics, and development economics.


 Methodologically, Deaton is about both empiricism and individualism, arguing for a close look at data on how specific human beings and households behave, rather than stylized models or big national-level aggregate data.

He's trying to look behind the easiest summary statistics and understand what is actually happening in people's lives — who is better off than whom, and why. That's a subject that has very broad application.  If we want to improve the lot of the worst-off people, we need to know who they are and how to measure improvements in their well-being.

Professor Angus Deaton.

The work for which Deaton is now being honored revolves around three central questions:



1.How do consumers distribute their spending among different goods? Answering this question is not only necessary for explaining and forecasting actual consumption patterns, but also crucial in evaluating how policy reforms, like changes in consumption taxes, affect the welfare of different groups.In his early work around 1980, Deaton developed the Almost Ideal Demand System – a flexible, yet simple, way of estimating how the demand for each good depends on the prices of all goods and on individual incomes. His approach and its later modifications are now standard tools, both in academia and in practical policy evaluation.


2.How much of society's income is spent and how much is saved? To explain capital formation and the magnitudes of business cycles, it is necessary to understand the interplay between income and consumption over time. In a few papers around 1990, Deaton showed that the prevailing consumption theory could not explain the actual relationships if the starting point was aggregate income and consumption. Instead, one should sum up how individuals adapt their own consumption to their individual income, which fluctuates in a very different way to aggregate income. This research clearly demonstrated why the analysis of individual data is key to untangling the patterns we see in aggregate data, an approach that has since become widely adopted in modern macroeconomics.

3. How do we best measure and analyze welfare and poverty? In his more recent research, Deaton highlights how reliable measures of individual household consumption levels can be used to discern mechanisms behind economic development. His research has uncovered important pitfalls when comparing the extent of poverty across time and place. It has also exemplified how the clever use of household data may shed light on such issues as the relationships between income and calorie intake, and the extent of gender discrimination within the family. Deaton's focus on household surveys has helped transform development economics from a theoretical field based on aggregate data to an empirical field based on detailed individual data.


MORE INFORMATION

 “To design economic policy that promotes welfare and reduces poverty, we must first understand individual consumption choices. 

“By linking detailed individual choices and aggregate outcomes, his research has helped transform the fields of microeconomics, macroeconomics, and development economics.”

His book, The Great Escape: Health, Wealth and the Origins of Inequality, argues that a more sophisticated analysis of economic data shows that while most people in the world have gained in terms of health and wellbeing from GDP growth, there are many groups that have missed out.


Economists are applauding the decision to reward Edinburgh-born microeconomist Angus Deaton of Princeton for his analysis of consumption, poverty, and welfare.

This global view is reflected in his latest research, which he says “focuses on the determinants of health in rich and poor countries, as well as on the measurement of poverty in India and around the world”.

Measuring poverty is often based on snapshot surveys of income levels, but Deaton is lauded for adopting groups or cohorts of the population and examining the improvements, or not, in their wellbeing.


Deaton, 69, was born in Edinburgh and educated at the same private school as former prime minister Tony Blair, Fettes College. He went to Cambridge where he later taught, before moving to the US and taking dual citizenship.

He is currently the Dwight D Eisenhower professor of economics and international affairs at the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton.

Ref:

http://www.theguardian.com/business/2015/
http://www.vox.com/2015/10/12
http://www.theguardian.com/business

Full Blood Moon Message

The Final Blood Moon and Lunar Eclipse

    The normal perigee full moon, or supermoon (L), and appearing red during a total lunar eclipse (R)                    over Wiesbaden, Germany  Photo: EPA/Fredrik Von Erichsen

If you saw it you can tell your grandchildren in later years. If not, have a quick scan through our gallery or through the liveblog below, and then tell the grandchildren.

Post-totality, 4:38am BST, mid-Norfolk, UK -- just before the clouds rolled in...

The perigee full moon, or supermoon, appears red besides a spire of the Cologne cathedral  Photo: EPA

The partially eclipsed blood moon over Las Vegas  Photo: Reuters

The blood red moon over Glastonbury  Photo: Getty

Super Blood Moon in its partial phases over #Iowa.

'Super Blood Moon' sits over Kelpies

Observers in the British Isles have to wait until the morning of Monday, January 21 2019 for the next total lunar eclipse visible from these shores, but it will only be a "normal" one.
Eclipse facts
The supermoon, where Earth's satellite is near its minimum distance from our planet, means that the Moon will appear 7-8% larger in the sky.
The moon may look rust-coloured during a total lunar eclipse - giving rise to its nickname Blood Moon. This is because the Earth's atmosphere scatters blue light more strongly than red light, and it is this red light that reaches the lunar surface
During the eclipse, the Moon lies in front of the stars of the constellation Pisces

Rare supermoon lunar eclipse began at 1:10am (BST)
• Clear skies over much of the UK allowed fantastic views
• The celestial event had not occurred since 1982 - and will not be repeated until 2033.
Stargazers in Scotland have been treated to a good view of Sunday night's lunar eclipse and "supermoon".
A supermoon occurs when the Moon is in its closest part of orbit to Earth, making it appear larger in the sky.

In the beginning there was total love, unity and perfection. The universe was complete within itself, a unified field of Being. There was no awareness of itself, it merely was. It encompassed everything but was nothing. Then there was a sudden change: a spark of desire was ignited — the desire was to know itself. This desire propelled the forces of the universe to separate into two contrasting parts. These two parts are known as the masculine and feminine energies, the Masculine being of will and expansion and the feminine of nurturing and receptivity. And thus duality was born.

During this journey of expansion and exploration, the universal consciousness could only learn about itself through direct experience — by experiencing all aspects of what it can be. So, during the recent cycles we have been experiencing, we – the universe – have been learning about the different aspects of ourselves through separation. We have experienced the feminine without the masculine and the masculine without the feminine. During these times, we have embodied one of the other, and collectively learned to suppress the energy of the opposite. A perfect example of this is matriarchal versus patriarchal times. During the times of matriarchy, we lived in harmony with the earth and nature, we built our societies on the understanding of nurturing and receptivity, but we did not expand our collective selves or direct our will toward new directions. This left the masculine energy suppressed and wounded, and that suppressed energy rebelled. More recently, we have lived under patriarchal rule, where our will and direction has been prioritized, suppressing the divine feminine and her nurturing nature and wounding the feminine energy of the earth in the process.

We all carry within ourselves a deep wound and sense of lack rooted in that original separation; that formation of duality. This feeling is what propels us to explore in the search for completeness and perfection. However, that feeling that can only be fulfilled through the balance of the feminine and masculine energies within ourselves. We are now at the point in our evolution where we are finding the missing parts of ourselves. Many of us have been soul-searching and healing these wounded parts of ourselves, loving and forgiving all aspects of ourselves. Through our devotion to the wisdom of this inner unification, we have begun bringing balance and harmony into our lives. This is the reunion of the feminine and masculine, a process through which we will continue to expand in new directions (masculine) while nurturing (feminine) those around us and the Earth we are a part of.

With the Full Blood Moon and Lunar Eclipse in Aries (new directions), the final blood moon of the tetrad, we are being offered a new beginning. It is time to embody the unified masculine and feminine within ourselves, and to begin manifesting it into our world; through the philosophies we embody (Saturn in Sagittarius), the decisions we make (Mercury Retrograde in Libra), the structures we build in our lives (Pluto in Capricorn), and the influence we choose to have on the world around us.

Donald Urquhart captured images of the "supermoon" and eclipse over Dumfries

Donald Urquhart

NOTE--This phenomenon of the lunar eclipse and "supermoon" together was last observed in 1982 and will not come again until 2033.

Ref: http://raisingvibrationsastrology.com

        http://www.bbc.com/news