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Weather:Mostly sunny with a chance of rain. A slight chance of thunderstorms in the morning, then a chance of thunderstorms in the afternoon. Highs in the upper 80s. East winds 10 to 15 mph with gusts up to 25 mph. Chance of rain 50 percent. Wednesday Night: Partly cloudy with a chance of rain and thunderstorms. Lows in the lower 70s. East winds 10 to 15 mph with gusts up to 25 mph. Chance of rain 50 percent.
- Daily weather briefing from the National Weather Service in Jacksonville here.
- Drought conditions here. (What is the Keetch-Byram drought index?).
- Check today’s tides in Flagler Beach here.
- tropical cyclone activity here, and even more details here.
Today at a Glance:
County and Palm Coast offices are closed in observance of Juneteenth, but courts are in session.
Flagler County’s Technical Review Committee Meeting at 9 a.m. has been cancelled.
The Flagler County Contractor Review Board has been cancelled.
Separation Chat, Open Discussion: The Atlantic Chapter of Americans United for the Separation of Church and State hosts an open, freewheeling discussion on the topic here in our community, around Florida and throughout the United States, noon to 1 p.m. at Pine Lakes Golf Club Clubhouse Pub & Grillroom (no purchase is necessary), 400 Pine Lakes Pkwy, Palm Coast (0.7 miles from Belle Terre Parkway). Call (386) 445-0852 for best directions. All are welcome! Everyone’s voice is important. For further information email [email protected] or call Merrill at 804-914-4460.
The Circle of Light Course in Miracles study group meets at a private residence in Palm Coast every Wednesday at 1:20 PM. There is a $2 love donation that goes to the store for the use of their room. If you have your own book, please bring it. All students of the Course are welcome. There is also an introductory group at 1:00 PM. The group is facilitated by Aynne McAvoy, who can be reached at [email protected] for location and information.
In Coming Days: June 22: “Crows and Ravens: Birds of Myth and Magic,” a workshop by author and FlaglerLive culture writer Rick de Yampert, 2-3:30 p.m. Saturday June 22 at Vedic Moons – Ayurvedic Wellness, Metaphysical Shop & Herbal Apothecary, 4984 Palm Coast Pkwy NW, Unit 4-6, Palm Coast. Cost of the workshop (which does not include a book) is $20. The workshop will include a PowerPoint slide show featuring de Yampert’s crow photography and Mr. Crow art, and the handout “Five Ways to Forge Communion with Crows – both Practical and Magical.” The workshop also will feature de Yampert’s Mr. Crow art for sale, as well as his other book “Mr. Crow Haiku and Other Zen-y Writings.” A book signing (separate from the workshop and with free attendance) will be held 1-2 p.m. Saturday June 22, prior to the workshop. For information, call Vedic Moons at 386-585-5167 or go online at vedicmoons.com. Through June 22: Three Exceptional Artists: Art Show presented by Expressions Art Gallery on Colbert at Expressions Art Gallery inside Grand Living Realty, 2298 Colbert Lane, Palm Coast. Artwork created by three exceptional artists. Each with her own unique style and each using different materials: Kathy Duffy, Gina-Marie Hammer and Deborah Hildinger. The show is on display from May 9 through June 22, 2024. June 22-23: Local Ham Radio Clubs Test Emergency Capabilities and you’re invited! The local effort will include Hams associated with the Flagler Palm Coast Amateur Radio Club, Flagler Emergency Communications Association, and Flagler County ARES (Amateur Radio Emergency Service) who will gather at Hammock Community Center, 79 Mala Compra Road, Palm Coast to operate multiple Ham Radio stations for 24 hours beginning at 2 pm. Saturday, June 22nd. Local Amateur Radio operators will be representing our community in American Radio Relay League’s annual Field Day. Every June, more than 40,000 hams throughout North America set up temporary transmitting stations in public places to demonstrate ham radio's science, skill and service to our communities and our nation. It combines public service, emergency preparedness, community outreach, and technical skills all in a single event. The public is welcome to visit this local Field Day site to learn more about Ham Radio, local clubs and hams in our own neighborhoods. Opportunities will be available to operate radios under the supervision of Federal Communications Commission licensed Radio Amateurs. This event is free of charge, no advance arrangements are necessary. |
Notably: Here’s a little-talked about fact of the Charlie Hebdo massacre by two Algerian brothers on Jan. 7, 2015, a massacre that took the lives of 12 people and wounded 11. Most of those killed and wounded were in an editorial meeting together. And in that meeting was the editor, Charb (Stephane Charbonnier), and Franck Brinsolaro. Who was Franck Brinsolaro? He was from France’s Protection Service, Service de la protection. He was a bodyguard. He was assigned to Charb, since Charb and others often got death threats. They’d been firebombed out of their previous offices. They’d been working from an unmarked office at 10 Rue Nicolas-Appert. Brinsolaro was armed. Brinsolaro took out his gun as the two brothers started shooting. And Brinsolaro was killed, as was Charb. Here was a trained bodyguard whose only job was to protect the man he was assigned to, who was trained to handle firearms, to shoot in high-stress situations. And he was killed. I am not being critical of Brinsolaro. Hell no. But I am thinking of all those smug, right-thinking people who thinking arming school employees can make a difference–who think even armed deputies inside a school can make a difference. You’ll never hear the name of Franck Brinsolaro at an NRA rave or anywhere two or more gun fetishists are gathered in ammo’s name because Franck Brinsolaro demolishes everything they stand for, starting with that obscenity they still love to peddle, the good guy with a gun myth. There’s no such thing. There are only bad guys, and bad guns.
—P.T.
Now this: The Larry david Fatwa (because Charlie Hebdo is all about satire).
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The Live Calendar is a compendium of local and regional political, civic and cultural events. You can input your own calendar events directly onto the site as you wish them to appear (pending approval of course). To include your event in the Live Calendar, please fill out this form.
Free For All Fridays With Host David Ayres on WNZF
Flagler and Florida Unemployment Numbers Released
Blue 24 Forum
‘Crows and Ravens: Birds of Myth and Magic’ Workshop by Rick de Yampert
Local Ham Radio Clubs Test Emergency Capabilities June 22-23
Coffee With Flagler Beach Commission Chair Scott Spradley
Flagler Beach Farmers Market
Book Sale at the Palm Coast Branch of the Public Library
Grace Community Food Pantry on Education Way
Gamble Jam at Gamble Rogers Memorial State Recreation Area
For the full calendar, go here.
Sitting behind him, Laurent Léger, whose tall figure and discreet smile masked worry about a new crusade against an abuse of power or a corrupt practice. Franck Brinsolaro, Charb’s bodyguard, seemed to be listening distractedly to the words and tirades, and looking at his face I wondered once again what he must think of all the bullshit flying around the table, since that was what we were there for: to bullshit. To say whatever came into our heads, to yell at each other and have fun without worrying about propriety or competence, without being reasonable or knowledgeable, not to mention wise. We talked to wake ourselves up. […] In the distance, framed by the door through which Franck Brinsolaro had disappeared, his gun in his hand, I saw Patrick Pelloux appear. He was our editorial companion and an emergency physician. He looked at me and said: “Here’s Philippe. He’s wounded in the jaw!” I no longer know, to tell the truth, whether he said my name. But I remember that I clung like an anchor to his familiar face, tense with the need to act and already crumpled by the rise of sorrow; he too seemed to me already to come from another world, that of people who could stand and who hadn’t undergone, as I had, something that they would have to live with from now on.
–From Philippe Lançon, Disturbance: Surviving Charlie Hebdo (2018).
Ray W. says
On the climate science front, I stumbled across a 2020 press release.
“OptiFuel Systems, LLC, with the support of Cummins Inc., recently secured U.S. EPA, Tier 4 Rail Certification for the first ever rail internal combustion engine to emit 0.00 g/bhp-hr NOx and PM. This revolutionary breakthrough for the rail industry will simultaneously deliver the lowest California Tier 5 emissions objectives while providing customers a greater than 50% fuel expense reduction.”
Apparently, the conversion from diesel locomotives to natural gas is feasible and relatively inexpensive. If diesel fuel constitutes a large portion of a rail freight company’s overall expenses (my younger son told me once that BNSF devoted 24% of its operating costs to diesel fuel), then the savings from switching to this new fuel injection system and type of fuel can save much in the costs of transporting goods by rail around the nation. In another part of the press release, the company announced that it had contracted with UPS to deliver 6000 natural gas-powered trucks using their technology by the end of 2022.
Ray W. says
To continue with the theme of improvements in locomotive technologies, on January 12, 2024, Railway Gazette International published an article about OptiFuel Systems, LLC.
The company unveiled plans to test its newly designed renewable natural gas (RNG) powered locomotive. Renewable natural gas is captured at landfills where biogas is created as biomass breaks down. The captured gas can be pressurized or liquified and tenders that accompany locomotives can be filled.
The engines, developed in part by Cummins, are modular. The 5,100-horsepower engine package uses 10 510-horsepower modular engines that are mounted on the locomotive frame. A battery pack that captures electricity from the locomotive’s regenerative braking system can provide a short-term boost of 500 horsepower. The engines drive generators that provide electricity to the motors that drive the wheels.
Cummins has also developed a 530-horsepower modular engine, if use specifications call for more power.
If one of the 10 engines needs maintenance or repair, it can be pulled out and a new one plugged in. Maintenance and repair costs are expected to be lower than that for traditional diesel locomotive engines and the engines are expected to last longer. The engines are rated to last 30 years.
Each tender that carries the fuel for the locomotive also has a Cummins engine package that provide another 2,500 horsepower.
OptiFuel expects that if its locomotive achieves the necessary ratings approvals, the production locomotive will sell for around $5.5 million dollars. With the expected 50% savings on fuel expenses and lower repair and maintenance costs, the locomotives should be cost-beneficial for rail freight carriers.
In addition, the engines produce zero NOx emissions and zero particulate emissions.
Initial year-long testing of the prototype is to begin in January 2025 at the Federal Railroad Administration’s Transportation Technology Center. After this, 10 locomotives and five tenders will be tested in real-world conditions in different areas of the country for two years over 1.6 million miles. Full-scale production can begin as early as 2028.
Ray W. says
OptiFuel Systems, LLC, in a June 13, 2024, press release, published the following:
“By assessing natural efficiencies unique to the rail network and utilizing existing resources and tools, a clear path to decarbonizing rail with revolutionary optimization emerges. Post-World War II, the US developed a 3-million-mile natural gas network alongside railways, establishing the most efficient fuel distribution system conceivable for railway operations … With pipeline transport, refueling locomotives and tenders with RNG (renewable natural gas) is actually more straightforward than refueling with diesel.”
If I read the paragraph correctly, after WWII, the US allowed natural gas pipeline companies to bury natural gas pipelines alongside rail lines in the railway rights-of-way beside the tracks. Three million miles of natural gas pipelines. Pipeline spurs can be tapped into the existing pipeline network at every marshalling yard, where natural gas can be diverted to be liquified and loaded onto tenders. When a locomotive pulls into a marshalling yard to drop off or pick up freight cars, it can drop off an empty tender and pick up a full tender to seamlessly go on with its travels.
The press release continues:
“Society will always produce waste, which naturally emits surface-level methane into the atmosphere as it decomposes. This organic waste can be used as feedstock to produce renewable natural gas. RNG is NOT a fossil-based fuel and is the only renewable fuel with a negative carbon intensity. RNG takes a product that is negatively impacting the environment — organic waste — and creates a clean, reliable energy resource that is fully compatible with our current rail infrastructure and operations, serving a productive role in the clean energy transition. Readily available RNG from landfill sites with a CI (carbon intensity) of +40 can easily be blended with 400 million DGEs (diesel gallon equivalencies) of RNG with a CI of -350 from agriculture waste to provide 3 billion DGEs of final locomotive fuel with a CI of 0 or less for all 25,000 line haul locomotives in the Class 1 fleet.”
If I read this correctly, using current freight rail traffic numbers, there exists enough renewable natural gas that can be captured at landfills all across the nation to be mixed with renewable natural gas captured from currently existing agriculture waste to provide clean non-fossil fuels sufficient to power the entire national fleet of Class 1 locomotives (3 billion gallons of diesel fuel equivalencies per year), and there are pipelines already in place to transport that mixed non-fossil fuel to locations that are advantageous to refueling the tenders that accompany the locomotives.
In summary, if today’s fleet of 25,000 Class 1 locomotives consume 3 billion gallons of diesel fuel per year, and if the national average price of subsidized diesel fuel for rail companies is $3 per gallon, we are talking about $9 billion already being spent by rail companies each year. If the infrastructure to capture the naturally produced methane from landfills and from agriculture waste can be constructed for less than $9 billion per year, then it becomes a simple question of how fast the rail companies can switch over to the new generation locomotives. All other things being equal, if fuel costs can be cut by half, the answer is simple. Change over. Locomotives age out all the time anyway. Old-style diesel-powered locomotives are already being built to replace the worn-out locomotives. The company is proposing that it bear the costs of delivering the fuel and providing the updates to the marshalling yards to fuel the new tenders as a package deal. It offers to deliver a package of 250 locomotives at one time, complete with tenders. Even if the company sells four such packages per year, the transition would tae 25 years, which means the transition would be gradual. Assuming the transition occurs at a pace of 1000 locomotives and tenders to accompany them, then the plan might make sense. 25 years to shift over to locomotives that cost less to operate and are less expensive to repair and maintain. We might have a winner here.
The company claims that with currently existing incentives, such as EPA RIN credits to offset transition costs, it can sell a $5.5 million 5,600 horsepower “RNG Hybrid Line Haul Locomotive” for as little as $1.1 million if bought in batches of 250 locomotives. That might be just the enticement for those rail companies that buy locomotives in buk each year to replenish that portion of their stock that ages out each year after 20 or 25 years of service. There are four national rail companies that fit that description.
As an aside, my younger son who used to work for BNSF once told me of a recurring problem. If a freight company, for whatever reason, needs a locomotive, it is a common practice among all freight companies to rent a locomotive to another company. Suppose a train out of Los Angeles uses two new locomotives to pull the train over the mountains. Engineers know the weight of the entire train and they know the horsepower of the locomotive. Simple math tells them how many new locomotives they need to pull a train up the steepest grade. If one of the two locomotives breaks down near a BNSF marshalling yard, the company will contact BNSF to rent a locomotive from BNSF in order for the train to continue to its destination. It will drop off the rented locomotive later and pay BNSF for the rental. My son told me that Union Pacific had a propensity to try to save money by renting the oldest locomotive it could find. BNSF engineers would repeatedly tell Union Pacific engineers that the old locomotive, rated at 8,500 horsepower when new, did not produce near that much horsepower when old. They would tell Union Pacific that it would need to rent two of the older locomotives to pull the train up the mountains ahead. Union Pacific would insist on renting one locomotive anyway and the train would stall in the mountains, blocking all rail traffic until a second locomotive could be sent to the stalled train. The three locomotives would then pull the train over the mountain passes. My son said it happened over and over again, yet Union Pacific kept renting underpowered trains in hopes it would all work out and the cheaper rate. BNSF engineers knew which locomotives were worn out. They would use three on their own trains where three were needed. If they had two brand-new locomotives, they would use two.
This press release language all seems a little fantastic to me. Pipelines would still have to be built from each landfill to nearby rail rights-of-way to hook into the existing natural gas pipelines. On the other hand, anyone who has every dropped off trailerfuls of trash and yard waste at a landfill has seen the large numbers of metal pipes sticking up into the air from the landfill trash mountains. The methane generated by decaying waste, therefore, does exist, so that part seems feasible to me. But the imagined piles of agricultural waste needed to produce other types of methane is not yet collected from where the produce is grown and transported to locations where the methane can be biologically generated and harvested and sent to blending points where it can be mixed with the landfill-generated methane. I see problems there. But if enough of the agricultural waste fuel can be produced and if the renewable landfill fuel can be produced, both at a price point of less than half the cost of diesel fuel, you are talking about billions of dollars of potential profit each year by the company and billions of dollars in fuel savings for freight rail companies.
Laurel says
Ray W.: I have had a lifelong love of trains, from my Lionel set, with the locomotive that puffed out smoke, to the actual rides I took myself, like the eighth grade trip to Washington D.C. and the numerous trips to Grand Central and back home again. I doubt I’ll ever let go of my love of the rocking sounds and the back roads of America going by. So, I will continue to invest, and believe! Thanks for the info.