BETHESDA'S

LOCKHEED MARTIN

READIES

LIGHTNING MAPPER

THAT WILL REVOLUTIONIZE

WEATHER FORECASTING

Satellite Module will Provide More

Accurate Tornado Warnings

Bethesda-based Lockheed Martin is conducting final tests on a new addition to its long-deployed GOES weather satellite.

The Geostationary Lightning Mapper (GLM) will record all cloud-to-cloud and cloud-to-ground lightning activity over the entire Americas.

In other words, the whole enchilada: every single lightning strike will be detected by this near-infrared device.

That in-cloud lightning activity is critical to giving as much as thirty minutes' warning of a tornado spawning. The complete scan will reveal an individual storm's "jump signature," a sudden acceleration of cloud-to-cloud lightning activity. This will also reduce false alarms.

Lockheed has scheduled final thermal and thermal vacuum testing for the coming months.

The Goddard Flight Center right here in Maryland helps manage development of GOES instruments.

Deployment of this advanced storm detection can't come a minute too soon, as unusual tornado activity continues to wreak havoc across the nation's southern and midwestern regions.

STUDY:

MARYLAND'S PROPOSED

OFFSHORE WIND FARM

VULNERABLE TO

HURRICANES

Maryland media missed an important study on offshore wind farms and hurricanes released this week.

The study - by engineers at Pittsburgh's Carnegie Mellon University - posits that offshore turbines, like those proposed to be built off the coast of Ocean City, are vulnerable to hurricanes of Category 3 and higher.

Computer simulations showed that high, sustained winds would tear off the massive turbine blades, and send them spinning through the air like massive shuriken. The towers supporting the propellers would be damaged and potentially collapse.

Ocean City lies between two of the "riskiest" areas to build offshore wind farms, according to the report - Atlantic City and the Outer Banks of North Carolina.

I cannot recall state officials discussing the issue of hurricanes in public debates about the turbines. So I'm surprised that local and state media have not pursued this story.

Skeptics have already noted the threat to wildlife posed by the turbines, as well as the incredibly-inefficient power they generate.

I have opposed them for those reasons, and for the fact that - until these towers are built - the offshore view from Ocean City is the same today as it was when Native Americans ruled the land. Also, wind power creates fewer jobs than it destroys in fossil fuel industries (however, the effect is naturally-limited by the fact that wind can only create a small amount of electricity).

Finally, the sheer inefficiency of wind is a clue that it is not the energy source of the future. That source, I believe, has yet to be discovered.

Money going to wind power would be better spent on the search for that new energy, and on NASA. If America doesn't get to the vast resources surely available on other moons and planets, China and Russia will be glad to help themselves.

Just as we should not spend tax money on biofuels that raise the price of food on the world's poorest inhabitants, we should not jump to spend scarce revenue on power sources simply because they are the only ones immediately available.

The fuel of the future will be highly efficient, potentially infinite, and have little impact on the environment and the cost of living.

Why do we want to postpone the future for empty "achievements" today?