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Burning Ice Drilled from Alaska's Slope
bagboy writes to tell us that as sources of renewable energy are being sought, BP has announced a new method of extracting natural gas from ice underneath Alaska's North Slope drilling fields. "Scientists with the federal Energy Department paid $4.6 million to drill for the hot ice just below the surface of the Milne Point well, which is situated northwest of Prudhoe Bay. [...] Now, scientists from around the world are waiting for pieces of this strange ice to conduct their own tests and determine whether Alaska's frozen grounds contain untapped, clean-burning energy."
if memory serves correctly, natural gas = CH4
so the chem reaction:
CH4 + 2O2 -> CO2 + 2H2O
Seems like a lot of CO2 for being such a clean energy source.... but what the hell do i know?
This mixture forms all over the contenental shelves. And, as pointed out here, in Alaska as well http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Methane_hydrate.
s -selling-solar.html
There has been an ongoing effort, especially by the Navy, to figure out ways to exploit these deposits. The rapid release of the methane may be a hazard to drilling and shipping and is also considered a possible cause for rapid climate change in the past.
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Solar really is clean. http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2007/01/slashdot-user
Good question. It means the right to their own land, for one thing. It means a dismantling of the terrorist, fundamentalist state of Israel and replacing it with an inclusive, secular state ( which Palestine was prior to 1947 ). It means the right of return for all Palestinian refugees - something which the Israelis have always argued Jews should have, regardless of whether they've ever actually lived there before.
As for what it has to do with oil, it's simple. Israel is funded and supported by the US to keep their watchdog in the area. If you remove the US's ability to grab oil in the Middle East, suddenly Israel becomes nothing more than a horrible liability. Once US support is removed from Israel, it will collapse, and Palestinians will be able to move forward to a just single-state solution.
Your quote from God-knows-where lacks any real connection to the issue. You are trying to point out that there are some Muslim extremists. I don't deny that. But I do point out that it is our policies which are creating these extremists, and that we also have our share of extremists. The fundamentalist Jewish position ( Zionist ) is equally as harsh against others and humanity as your quote suggests of Muslim extremists.
Israel was founded on just such principles. The dominant Palestinian position has been far more moderate, even to this day. Keep in mind that Israel carried out mass genocide against the Palestinians, and treat them as aliens in their own land. 50 years of this kind of treatment will of course create a lot of people who are angry, to say the least, with their occupiers. But it is a lie to suggest that the Palestinians want the 'total destruction and removal of a race'. What they want, and what they voted for when electing Hamas, is the total destruction of the state of Israel, which is a different thing to the destruction of a race. The racist fundamentalist state must go. The Jews who want to remain in the area can do so, but under a secular Palestinian state.
The Israelis and the US, however, are not interested in a single-state solution, but instead push for a so-called 2-state solution, which in practice has meant continual erosion of traditional Palestinian land, continual escalation of violence, continual increasing in illegal 'settlements' in Palestine, an Appartheid wall that cuts up Palestine into tiny, inaccessible islands in a sea of Israeli occupation, trade barriers, etc, etc, etc. This 2-state solution has been tried for many years under Arafat, and as failed. This is why Hamas has come to power - because Palestinians understand that there simply can be no dealing with Israel - that they will continue to erode Palestine until it doesn't exist.