Australia's vast geothermal energy resources represent thousands of years worth of untapped power
Australia is sitting on top of some of the world's most potent geothermal energy sources, according to government estimates. Just one percent of the hot rock energy less than 5 km under the surface would be enough to meet the whole country's entire power needs for 26,000 years if it was tapped. So why aren't we seeing more movement on it?
Geothermal energy is a very handy, virtually inexhaustible clean energy source for those areas lucky enough to find themselves on top of it. Massive amounts of hot rock just below the Earth's surface can be used to heat water and drive steam turbines for reliable electricity generation with virtually no emissions or environmental impact.
Where wind and solar tend to generate power at inconvenient or uncontrollable times, geothermal can be easily regulated and is ready to go 24/7. Surveys testing the available heat in existing bore holes down to a depth of 5 km (3 miles) below the surface indicate that Australia is sitting on some seriously large hot rock resources, as shown in our lead image.
So why is this enormous resource apparently so underdeveloped?
Asteroids: a future source of energy materials
In a plot seemingly out of a James Bond movie, a startup that is backed by Google folks Larry Page and Eric Schmidt and X-Price creator Peter Diamandis plan to mine asteroids for valuable materials. But one of the really surprising things about that wild idea is that it could actually lead to valuable energy resources for the future of batteries, fuel cells and other electronic devices.
Named Planetary Resources, the startup is embarking on a bold (some would say crazy) venture to explore and extract materials such as water and platinum, nickel, iron and other metals in asteroids that fly near Earth. The company’s emergence marks a moment in history when there is a serious attempt to find resources in space because the resources on Earth are depleting.
Activist and author praises 'courageous' invitation by Pope in face of fossil fuel industry's power"In a world where profit is consistently put before both people and the planet, climate economics has everything to do with ethics and morality."
That’s a bigger problem than it sounds as fires in the Arctic affect the permafrost whose total carbon content would be double what’s currently in the atmosphere.
As for the emergency meeting last night between the Bank of Greece, Greek banks and other representatives of the Athens government, that decided banks today will be subject to the same restrictions as last week (no transfers of funds abroad, a €60 limit on withdrawals from cash machines, a third of branches to open so older people can get their pensions).
But those restrictions expire at the end of today. Which means there will be another meeting of the banks and the authorities tonight to decide how and whether the banks can operate tomorrow.
“…the egocentric effect of anxiety cannot be explained by the combination of negative valence and high arousal alone; rather, it seems that feeling anxious uniquely led to an increased reliance on one’s own egocentric perspective, to the detriment of
understanding others’ viewpoints.”
I am getting a lot more national media ever since I’ve been running for president. But even with all of the national media I’ve been getting, what’s always shocking to me is that still half the American people don’t know who I am—which talks about not me in particular, but just about political
consciousness in general. I can tell you what is more of an indication: We have by far now what I think is the most successful Senate Facebook page—I think [more than] 1.2 million people who are part of our Facebook network and, on any given day, there might be a million people or more talking about us. So there is no question but that there’s a significant part of the population that follows what we’re doing—and that has been following us for years.
The remote islands – roughly halfway between Australia and Hawaii – were deemed sufficiently distant from major population centres and shipping lanes, and in 1948, the local population of Micronesian fishermen and subsistence farmers were evacuated to another atoll 200 km away.
In total, 67 nuclear and atmospheric bombs were detonated on Enewetak and Bikini between 1946 and 1958 – an explosive yield equivalent to 1.6 Hiroshima bombs detonated every day over the course of 12 years.
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