Having been born in the eastern hills of Kentucky, the grandson of a coal miner on my mother’s side and a gentleman farmer on my dad’s, I frequently visited those mountains and hollers.  Hollers are the valleys between the mountains in Appalachia.  These Appalachian Mountains contain a magic and beauty that only ancient beings can attain.  For these mountains are alive.  But because of greed of large corporations, these manifest ranges are being leveled.

Fog in the Valley-Beech Mountain-Gregory Colvin Photography

This kind of destruction continues throughout the planet.  Forests clear cut in Brazil to grow cattle.  Oil, its exploration and pumping have lead to massive leaks that soil our shorelines and disturb migrations of wildlife necessary for the existence of Native American tribes in the north .  This will lead to a path that will create a planet that our children will find hostile and uninhabitable.

Yet the answer to sustainable energy is so close.  There exists all the energy that we need in the nature that surrounds us every day.  It can be harnessed, harnessed without the need to destroy this precious gem orbiting in a vast universe. A nightmare that haunts me is one where the earth becomes another cold, barren rock circling the sun.

We must do what can be done to preserve this space capsule we live on.  It is all we currently have.

“This we know: the earth does not belong to man, man belongs to the earth.  All things are connected like the blood that unites us all.  Man did not weave the web of life; he is merely a strand in it.  Whatever he does to the web, he does to himself.” Chief Seattle  Suquamish Native Americans

Google always on alert to new markets announces that it will invest in offshore cables for wind farms.

This from National Public Radio
Google is making a huge investment in a massive off-shore cable that would eventually carry power from off-shore wind farms to cities along the Atlantic seaboard. The Atlantic Wind Connection will lie 15-20 miles off shore and run from New Jersey to Virginia. Google says the cable will be able to carry 6,000 MW of wind power. The aim is to make off-shore wind farms feasible and cheaper to build. Farms that are built closer to shore, like the Cape Wind project off the coast of Massachusetts, face objections from people who fear the turbines would clutter the ocean view. Farms miles off-shore would barely be visible from the coast.

The eventual cost of the backbone cable will be in the billions. Google and Good Energies are both investing 37.5% of the initial costs of the project, but are expected to bring in other investors.

Google announced the project last night on its blog, saying:

Why offshore wind and why the Mid-Atlantic? Many coastal areas in the United States have large population centers on an overstretched grid but limited access to a high-quality land-based wind resource. These coastal states can take advantage of their most promising renewable resource by using larger wind farms with larger turbines that can take advantage of stronger and steadier winds offshore.

Even before wind farms are built, when complete the cable would take power from Southern Virginia, where it’s cheap, to New Jersey, where it’s expensive. It would also bypass an area where the electrical grid is already congested.

In Florida and the lower eastern US, the partial eclipse will begin at around 3:00am EDT.  And the greatest eclipse will coincide when the moon is setting at around 5:30 am EDT, creating the effect known as the Moon Illusion.

The Moon Illusion is called this because, as the moon nears the horizon, either rising or setting, it has the horizon and either buildings, trees, hills or some object as a reference point to compare it with, making the moon appear larger.

Because of this affect, the view of the eclipse in the southern regions of the United States will be spectacular, as the moon will exhibit a reddish glow.  This glow is created by the sun’s light passing through earth’s atmosphere, where it is scattered when passing through particles contained in the atmosphere.  The amount of particles that the sun’s light must pass through, determines had red the glow.  With recent volcanic eruptions we have experienced this may well be worth the effort of getting up early.

The next lunar eclipse will be on December 21, 2010.

For more information visit the National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s Eclipse website.

Related Blogs

• 5.6-magnitude earthquake hits Cuba, 21st March, 2010 | ParamLowe.com

We’ll also explore advances in alternative energy sources to power our vehicles and other forms of transportation. Energy sources like electric cars, bio-diesels, and the use of algae in creating fuels.