Vatican To Build 100 Megawatt Solar Power Plant

Karim Y. writes "The Vatican is going solar in a big way. The tiny state recently announced that it intends to spend 660 million dollars to create what will effectively be Europe's largest solar power plant. This massive 100 megawatt photovoltaic installation will provide enough energy to make the Vatican the first solar powered nation state in the world! 'The 100 megawatts unleashed by the station will supply about 40,000 households. That will far outstrip demand by Pope Benedict XVI and the 900 inhabitants of the 0.2 square-mile country nestled across Rome's Tiber River. The plant will cover nine times the needs of Vatican Radio, whose transmission tower is strong enough to reach 35 countries including Asia.'"

Comments

Re:Just remember when you give money to the church

[Repton]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climate_refugee#The_first_climate_refugees

In 2005, half of Bhola Island in Bangladesh became permanently flooded, leaving 500,000 people homeless. The Bhola Islanders have been described as some of the world's first climate refugees. In 2007, a Bangladeshi scientist stated: "We're already seeing hundreds of thousands of climate refugees moving into slums in Dhaka." These refugees were fleeing flooded coastal areas.

The inhabitants of the Carteret Islands in Papua New Guinea are also among the first climate refugees due to sea level rise attributed to global warming and climate change. Other inhabitants of low lying islands and Island states, are also at risk. Tuvalu, Kiribati and the Maldives are especially susceptible to changes in sea level and storm surges.

Re:Don't think jupiter would do much.

[IndustrialComplex]

For some reason I think I've read that were Jupiter a star at its present size, if such a thing were even possible, at the distance to the earth it wouldn't be too horrible. The closest approach between Jupiter and Earth places is nearly twice as far as the Sun is from Mars. It might jack up the temperature by a degree and melt all the icecaps on earth, but other than that, it wouldn't be too big of a deal...

For a Brown Dwarf star, you aren't that far off. Here is how it would work:

Lets say you increase the mass of Jupiter 18-20x. It wouldn't just expand, it would actually contract. The increased gravity (and small starting volume) would cause the object to collapse inward to something near Jupiter's size. Eventually the contraction would heat up the core enough to start fusing the hydrogen. This would result in a sudden outburst of energy, and likely cause the object to expand to a volume where the force of gravity was equal to the forces pushing outward.

But here is the neat part, sure, it is technically a star, but it isn't fusing all that much material to heat up all that mass. The surface of the star could actually be below 1000C. In fact, these stars wouldn't be visible to the naked eye, the light they would emit would mostly be in the infrared spectrum.

At the distance that Jupiter is from Earth, I would be surprised if it had a measurable effect on Earth.

Re:Just remember when you give money to the church

[black_fist]

As a Catholic, I often have people remind me that many of our traditions are not mentioned in the bible. An example would be giving up something for lent. It is useful to remember that the early Christians did not have a written Bible to work off of, and so their worship practices were based off of tradition. On other words, we Catholics don't find anything wrong with continuing traditions that were established a long time ago even if they aren't in the bible. This is not an answer to your contraception question. I'm just trying to point out that just because something isn't in the bible doesn't mean that we can't practice or believe it.