U.S. to boost geothermal energy use on federal lands
The U.S. Interior Department said on Wednesday it would make more than 190 million acres of federal lands in 11 western states and Alaska available to energy companies to develop geothermal energy resources for generating electricity.
“These federal lands … hold a huge energy potential,” said Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne.
He said the geothermal areas that will be leased could provide 5,540 megawatts of electric generation capacity by 2015, enough to meet the power needs of 5.5 million homes.
Tax breaks for geothermal energy that were passed by Congress this month will help support the use of the renewable energy source.
Its difficult to say at this point if this is good news. The Bush administration has weakened environmental impact reviews. The areas opened to development would not include lands within the National Park System, i.e. Yellowstone or Monument Valley National Park. Any revenues generated by the geothermal energy would be shared with the state – you know spreading some of that wealth around – that states could use for things like education, law enforcement, etc.
Study: Da Vinci Codex old but not moldy
Fears that mold has infiltrated Leonardo da Vinci’s Codex Atlanticus, the largest collection of drawings and writings by the Renaissance master, are groundless, officials said Tuesday.
The Biblioteca Ambrosiana, where the roughly 1,120-page Codex is housed, said a microbiologic analysis of the document excludes “a biological onslaught.”
Some scholars warned last year that the Codex, which contains drawings and writings from 1478-1519 on topics ranging from flying machines to weapons, mathematics and botany, had been infiltrated by mold.
But studies showed that black stains that appeared to be mold were in fact caused by mercury salts added as a disinfectant to protect the Codex from just such a “biological and microbiological onslaught,” the library said in a statement.
And the black stains were detected not on the Codex itself, but on outer paper added as support in 1970-73.
The American Museum of Natural History has an on-line exhibit of the Codex here. I have some prints of Leonardo’s drawings that I’ll post over the next week or so.
tangledwing 