Engineering Ethics, Seaworthiness and the Right of Clients to Kill Themselves
I had only been working as a graduate engineer for a few years and was minding my own business working for a yacht designer when my boss asked me to get in touch with a person who was looking for engineering analysis. I called the number and arranged for the person to meet me at the office.A few days later a tall very athletic man walked up the stairs and introduced himself as Ned Gillette. He unfolded a drawing with a design for a rowboat, and said he intended to use it for a row from South America to Antarctica.I was young, but sufficiently surprised to answer somewhere along the lines of: “And you are obviously suicidal.”“Far from it”…
Arctic Oil 'Undrillable' amid Global Warming -UN's Ex-climate Chief
An architect of the Paris climate agreement urged governments on Tuesday to halt oil exploration in the Arctic, saying drilling was not economical and warming threatened the environmentally fragile region.Christiana Figueres, formerly head of the U.N. Climate Change Secretariat when the Paris accord was reached by almost 200 nations in 2015, told Reuters by telephone "the Arctic has been rendered undrillable."The past three years have been the hottest since records began in the 19th century, and Figueres said the heat was a threat to everything from…
Asia oil refiners hungrily eye 300-item global oil smorgasbord
Asia's oil refiners can choose from a sprawling buffet of over 300 crudes from every continent except Antarctica as a combination of cheap freight and rising supplies leaves buyers overwhelmed by the variety of oil grades on offer. The lifting of the 40-year-old U.S. crude export ban in December 2015 means North American supplies are now competing for Asian buyers along with the barrels sent from the Middle East, Russia and elsewhere. As the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries prepares to meet next week to discuss a potential output freeze, the possibility of U.S. supply eating into their market share lurks in the back of their minds.
ATCM Reaffirm Commitment to Ban on Mining in Antarctic
The 29 countries party to the Antarctic Treaty unanimously agreed today to a resolution at the 39th Antarctic Treaty Consultative Meeting (ATCM) stating their “firm commitment to retain and continue to implement…as a matter of highest priority” the ban on mining activities in the Antarctic, which is part of the Protocol on Environmental Protection to the Antarctic Treaty (also called the Madrid Protocol). The resolution was initiated by the United States to commemorate the 25th anniversary of the 1991 signing of the Protocol. In addition to commemorating the 25th Anniversary…
Burning All Fossil Fuels could Thaw Antarctica, Raise Seas-Study
Burning all the world's fossil fuel reserves could thaw the entire Antarctic ice sheet and push up world sea levels by more than 50 metres (160 feet), over thousands of years, an international study said on Friday. Such a melt, also eliminating the far smaller ice sheet on Greenland, is a worst case of climate change that would inundate cities from New York to Shanghai and change maps of the world with much of the Netherlands, Bangladesh or Florida under water. "Burning the currently attainable fossil fuel resources is sufficient to eliminate the (Antarctic) ice sheet," the scientists wrote in the journal Science Advances.
Arctic Sea Ice Sets Record Low Extent at Winter Maximum
Arctic sea ice has set a new winter record by freezing over the smallest extent since satellite records began in 1979, in a new sign of long-term climate change, U.S. data showed on Thursday. The ice floating on the Arctic Ocean around the North Pole reached its maximum annual extent of just 14.54 million square kms (5.61 million sq miles) on Feb. 25 - slightly bigger than Canada - and is now expected to shrink with a spring thaw. "This year's maximum ice extent was the lowest in the satellite record, with below-average ice conditions everywhere except in the Labrador Sea and Davis Strait," the U.S. National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) said in a statement.
USCG 9TH District Commander Honors 75 Yrs Auxiliary Service
The Coast Guard 9th District honored 75 years of service from the Coast Guard Auxiliary in a ceremony at the Coast Guard Cleveland moorings today. What began as fishermen and private boaters reporting sightings of U-boats in American Coastal waters has evolved into the Coast Guard Auxiliary. The Auxiliary was established in 1939 to facilitate the operations of the Coast Guard. Starting out as the Coast Guard Reserve, it was split into a military reserve branch and auxiliary operation in February 1941. During WWII the volunteers provided search and rescue support, patrol and picket duties, port security, and limited aviation patrols.
The History of Offshore Energy
Offshore exploration is a history of man v. Prospecting for oil is a dynamic art. From a lake in Ohio, to piers off the California coast in the early 1900s, to the salt marshes of Louisiana in the 1930s, to the first “out-of-sight- of-land” tower in 1947 in the Gulf of Mexico, the modern offshore petroleum industry has inched its way over the last roughly 75 years from 100 ft. of water ever farther into the briny deep, where the biggest platform today, Shell’s Perdido spar, sits in 8,000 ft. of water. As a planet, we have two unquenchable thirsts – for water and for oil. Everybody knows oil and water don’t mix.
