Heat Mining: Geothermal Answer to the Energy Crisis

So far, we’ve been able to harvest only a tiny fraction of geothermal energy resources, taking advantage of places where local geology brings hot water and steam near the surface, such as in Iceland or California, where such phenomena have long been used to produce electricity. But new oil-field stimulation technology, developed for extracting oil from sources such as shale, makes it possible to harvest much more of this energy by allowing engineers to create artificial geothermal reservoirs?many kilometers underground.

Tester calls it?”universal geothermal” energy because the reservoirs could be located wherever they’re needed, such as near power-hungry cities worldwide. Technology Review spoke with Tester about the potential of universal geothermal energy and what it will take to make it a reality.

Technology Review: How much geothermal energy could be harvested?

Jefferson Tester: The figure for the whole world is on the order of 100 million exojoules or quads [a quad is one quadrillion BTUs]. This is the part that would be useable. We now use worldwide just over 400 exojoules per year. So you do the math, and you know you’ve got a very big source of energy. - more on techreview

The photo is from another geothermal idea: ground source heat pumps.

Moon: the Life on Earth Backup Plan

… the Alliance to Rescue Civilization [is] a group that advocates a backup for humanity by way of a station on the Moon replete with DNA samples of all life on Earth, as well as a compendium of all human knowledge ? the ultimate detached garage for a race of packrats. It would be run by people who, through fertility treatments and frozen human eggs and sperm, could serve as a new Adam and Eve in addition to their role as a new Noah.

Far from the lunatic fringe, the leaders of the alliance have serious careers: Robert Shapiro, the group?s founder, is a professor emeritus and senior research scientist in biochemistry at New York University; Ray Erikson runs an aerospace development firm in Boston and has been a NASA committee chair; Steven M. Wolfe, as a Congressional aide, drafted and helped pass the Space Settlement Act of 1988, which mandated that NASA plan a shift from space exploration to space colonization, and was executive director of the Congressional Space Caucus; William E. Burrows, an author of several books on space, is the director of the Science, Health and Environmental Reporting Program at N.Y.U.

President Bush has already proposed a Moon base. ?He just needs to be told what it?s good for,? Dr. Shapiro said. Dr. Shapiro has written a number of books on the origins of life on Earth, as well as ?Planetary Dreams: The Quest to Discover Life Beyond Earth,? where he unveiled the civilization rescue project. - more on NYT

When they get there, they will find that this has been done before. The Atlanteans left quite a nice stash on the moon I hear.

Hollow Earth Evidence? New Aurora Pics and Video

Someone sent me some neat NASA videos that show the Aurora around the South Pole. Why does the Aurora seem to be “streaming out” of a single dark spot? For some, this is visual evidence that an inner sun inside our hollow planet is responsible for the Aurora.

“Check out this new clip from NASA servers of the aurora australis streaming out of the central point:

http://www.nasa.gov/mov/133778main_FUV_640×480.mov

This one is a head on view of Antarctica as opposed to the earlier clip I showed avaliable here:
http://www.nasa.gov/mov/105423main_FUV_2005-01_v01.mov

More hollow earth stuff here: http://hollowplanet.blogspot.com/

Altered oceans: Growing seawater acidity creating a chemical imbalance

As she stared down into a wide-mouthed plastic jar aboard the R/V Discoverer, Victoria Fabry peered into the future. The marine snails she was studying — graceful creatures with wing-like feet that help them glide through the water — had started to dissolve. … The greenhouse gas, [carbon dioxide] best known for accumulating in the atmosphere and heating the planet, is entering the ocean at a rate of nearly 1 million tons per hour — 10 times the natural rate. Scientists report that the seas are more acidic today than they have been in at least 650,000 years. At the current rate of increase, ocean acidity is expected, by the end of this century, to be 2 1/2 times what it was before the Industrial Revolution began 200 years ago. Such a change would devastate many species of fish and other animals that have thrived in chemically stable seawater for millions of years. … Some marine biologists predict that altered acid levels will disrupt fisheries by melting away the bottom rungs of the food chain — tiny planktonic plants and animals that provide the basic nutrition for all living things in the sea. … The oceans have been a natural sponge for carbon dioxide from time immemorial. Especially after calamities such as asteroid strikes, they have acted as a global safety valve, soaking up excess CO2 and preventing catastrophic overheating of the planet. …

When carbon dioxide is added to the ocean gradually, it does little harm. Some of it is taken up during photosynthesis by microscopic plants called phytoplankton. Some of it is used by microorganisms to build shells. After their inhabitants die, the empty shells rain down on the seafloor in a kind of biological snow. The famed white cliffs of Dover are made of this material. Today, however, the addition of carbon dioxide to the seas is anything but gradual. Scientists estimate that nearly 500 billion tons of the gas have been absorbed by the oceans since the start of the Industrial Revolution. That is more than a fourth of all the CO2 that humanity has emitted into the atmosphere. Eventually, 80% of all human-generated carbon dioxide is expected to find its way into the sea. - more