At 28 minutes before air time, an assistant is lint-rolling Father Zakaria Botros' cassock, polishing the pectoral cross...Botros, an Egyptian, will host the live show about to be broadcast via Cyprus-based satellite channel Al-Hayat, which will last 90 minutes and may have an audience of up to 60 million viewers across the Arab world and beyondfrom the Middle East to Europe to North America to Australia. And most of the viewers who sit down to watch the televised ruminations of a 75-year-old Christian will be Muslims....Twice authorities jailed him for preaching the gospel to Muslims, once in 1981 for one year, and again in 1989. A judge sentenced him to life in prison but ordered him released on the condition of forced exile: He had to leave Egypt and never return. By that time he had ministered in Cairo for over 30 years but moved to England with his wife where he ministered in a Coptic church for 11 years before he said he "retired" to begin the television and internet ministry.
#2
In his last year of high school he had a Muslim teacher who regularly challenged him for worshipping "a dead God." Botros said he realized, "If I answered him from the Bible it would be no good. I had to read the Muslim books and the Quran itself." Throughout his university years, he said, he read all the teachings of Muhammad as a way to answer Muslim questions about Christianity.
Indeed. And then about Islam itself. A very clever and insightful man. Are the Muslim authorities still claiming six million are converting to Christianity annually?
Don't know enough about this to judge how promising this technology is, or how well researched the article is - but, this part caught my eye:
The US military has plans to build a plant off Diego Garcia, their base in the Indian Ocean, which should have an output of 8MW and be running by the end of 2011; another project is underway to build a 10-20MW plant off the coast of Hawaii. The US government granted $600,000 to Lockheed Martin, a company well known for their aeronautics research, in hopes that the technology will eventually lead to a plant capable of producing 500MW of power.
#1
Some years ago, the MMGW crowd were bemoaning that very deep, very cold water current patterns were slightly warming and changing, and beyond a certain threshold would no longer continue, radially altering world weather patterns.
Well, some ingenious individual came up with a brilliant solution to that problem.
There is a time bomb of sorts under large areas of the world's sea floors. Methane clathrate, or methane ice, if warmed just a few degrees, can explode, converting into hundreds of thousands of tons of methane gas, erupting into the atmosphere.
So, the theory went, why not start mining this undersea methane ice, and use its energy to chill coolant inside a large, metal pipeline that cuts across the deep sea current?
All it has to do is cool it a degree or two over the course of years, acting like a big stick of ice in a drink, and not only would be dangerous methane ice be dissipated safely, but the deep water current would be slightly chilled to its optimal temperature.
#2
This technology requires an enormous amount of pipes, all of which have to be resistant to corrosion. It also requires heat exchangers which are incredibly efficient and durable. It requires lots of other stuff too.
My hats off to any engineering group that can pull this off.
#3
The science is well-known and used extensively in other applications. Once you build the apparatus to extract the power, the power is essentially free and very clean. Geothermal works on the same principle and with a much larger temperature differential and should be even more efficient. The question is economics. It seems like the costs should be able to be determined to a considerable degree of accuracy. So why don't we have a these things all over the place?
Posted by: Richard of Oregon ||
12/07/2008 9:58 Comments ||
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#4
Geothermal requires high cost wells with even more extremely corrosive fluids. But you can drive your pick-up truck up to the bulk of the pipes and equipment to maintain them. The pressure and temperature changes associated with the energy extraction would simultanously 'exctract' minerals from solution, which should tend to plug up all the tubing with scale. Hmmm.
#5
So why don't we have a these things all over the place?
Because all the costs are up front. I have one at my house, but it added about 4% to the cost of the house and there is nothing you can see to brag about. It also required 1/4 acre of lawn. But I have about a $75 per month heating and a/c bill for a 4,000 sq ft house in PA. That will go to $100 or $125 when they dereg electricity in two years, but it will still be cheaper than oil.
#7
So, the theory went, why not start mining this undersea methane ice, and use its energy to chill coolant inside a large, metal pipeline that cuts across the deep sea current?
#9
The materials tech for such a project would have to be leading edge and the same for the tech required to maintain it. The petroleum industry has developed a lot of it already but are we there yet with the economics? Only the Engineers know.
Note that the two sites they are discussing are islands with a LONG logistics train and a requirement for power not subject to interruption. Cost is probably secondary. I wonder how they would defend the complex from underwater attack?
#11
"OTEC is basically a large tube running one kilometre into the ocean off a floating power plant; but ocean currents put a huge amount of stress on the pipe and the power plant... A 100MW plant might require a pipe 30 feet in diameter, which would be very difficult to anchor and install."
30 FEET IN DIAMETER! Take it from this mechanical engineer, friends, it ain't gonna happen.
#15
How about 6, 5 foot pipes, no make that 7, (Bundles easier, allows for friction)
That's doable.
Posted by: Rednek Jim ||
12/07/2008 20:28 Comments ||
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#16
It would take a bundle of 36. And the bundle's diameter would be a bit larger than 30'.
Posted by: ed ||
12/07/2008 20:36 Comments ||
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#17
long pipes are very flexible, a pipe-lay barge will make you realize just how flexible. Stainless Steel is even more flexible, but a project like this would warrant a new product, like a composite or a nano material. The theory is sound, but capitalizing it will cost someone a fortune, and nowdays people don't seem to want to tolerate the inevitable failures that would occur along with the successes to develop something like this.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
