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Domain: mg.co.za

Stories and comments across the archive that link to mg.co.za.

Comments · 53

  1. You've got the physics and chemistry wrong by Spamalamadingdong · · Score: 3 · on Carbonate The Ocean
    The only thing that is new here is the fact that they want to stimulate further absorption by injecting it. The only problem with this is that they will have to pump it *very* deep to get to water that is cold enough to make this process as efficient as possible.
    It's not the cold, it's the pressure. At high pressure, water will hold many times more CO2 than it does at sea-level atmospheric (think about bottled soda for a second). With the combination of cold water and high pressure, the mixture of CO2 and H2O is more dense than the water and it will tend to sink and stay sunk. (It would be much easier to get rid of the stuff for the long term if CO2 formed a clathrate (a solid crystal) with water as methane does, but we can't always be lucky.)

    Soda water on the bottom of bodies of water can present a danger, as the unfortunate people living near Lake Nyos in Cameroon can attest. However, the water in the deepest parts of the oceans probably cannot be churned easily enough to present a short-term threat.

    Even carrying this out with stunning efficiency, it is doubtful they will *ever* be able to pump enough CO2 out of the atmosphere to make a tiny dent globally... and NO, this will also never be enough to disrupt the highly buffered pH of the ocean.
    Want to place a small bet on that? I seem to recall recent articles about stresses on coral reefs which included the increase in global CO2 concentrations driving the buffer system away from CO3-- ions to HCO3- ions. As the coral animals require carbonate to build their skeletons, this deprives them of an essential nutrient (and the increased CO2 concentration tends to dissolve what they've already built, by converting CO3-- + CO2 + H2O -> 2HCO3-).
    --
  2. Educate South African President Thabo Mbeki... by alienmole · · Score: 2 · on Drug Companies Put Profits Over Lives
    The problem is the leadership. Until fairly recently, AIDS education was virtually nonexistent, due to a complex set of cultural beliefs, e.g. "AIDS education encourages promiscuity". President Mbeki has also famously questioned the link between HIV and AIDS, even invoking the US CIA as a co-conspirator in a global conspiracy.

    Now Mbeki wants to blame the drug companies. Regardless of the moral issues of drug company pricing strategies, South Africa's problems will not be solved until its leadership faces them head on and stops trying to allocate blame and make excuses. Lack of leadership on this issue is the major reason that 1 in 9 South Africans are infected with HIV, and 1 in 5 pregnant women in Soweto township are HIV positive.

    Thabo Mbeki is a big part of the problem. It's a pity that the African National Congress (ANC) couldn't find a more worthy successor to Nelson Mandela.

  3. An update... by thelocust · · Score: 2 · on African Optical Backbone "Ring of Fire"

    This article says that it's actually a 80GB cable, a $600mil deal, and due in 2001... however, this could just be for South Africa's bit of it. Personally I think it's the best thing since sliced bread. A start towards a truly world-wide web. Yippee!