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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.'"
...about the Father, the Sun, and the Holy Ghost here.
Rock is dead. Long live scissors and paper!
Holy megawatts Batman!
~~"Of course, that's just my opinion. I could be wrong." ~~Dennis Miller
Now that we've dealt with that...
So, how exactly are we planning to run them six million over budget, here?
If they need extra power on certain days, they could just have the sun stop in the sky for a while.
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Putting Jesus through college?
God got tired of Satan bragging about his "all naturally-environmentally-powered controlled climate system" so he upped the ante a bit.
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As I recall (and Wikipedia backs it up, FWIW), Vatican Radio may not be such a good example of a successful, well-received project. It takes a lot of juice to pump a radio signal from Italy to Asia, and from what I've heard, the folks who live nearby aren't too happy about it. Take the debate over cell phone (non-ionizing) radiation, and multiply it by a few megawatts.
OTOH, maybe it's a final solution to the problem: buy out everyone living near the tower, and replace the whole swath of land with solar concentrators. It's, um, brilliant!
Stressed? Me? Of course not. Stress is what a rubber band feels before it breaks, silly.
Asia is not a country, you silly people! You're thinking of Africa.
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I'm guessing that Vatican City is connected to Italy's power grid - passing the collection plate isn't the only way to make $$.
Or, we could RTFA, and find:
Solar PV is one of the least efficient ways to take money and make the world greener. As a charitable organization, the Vatican could get 50x the MWH offsets per buck by giving away efficient lighting, or if that is too abstract it could get 3x the MWH offset per dollar by buying new fridges for the poor who have old fridges from 1990 and earlier. Those fridges from the past use 2-3 times the energy per year that a modern one does, and so it is much greener if the Vatican buys them for the poor and uses grid power itself rather than putting up wasteful solar panels.
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There will be a lot more people dying prematurely from starvation and other avoidable causes if global warming isn't checked. That aside, its hardly as if the Roman Catholic Church is uninvolved in feeding or providing medical care to the needy. On the more general "platform" issue, one could RTFA:
The Catholic church is widely regarded to be the most wealthy organization in the world, by a long shot.
Personally, I'm happy to see them put it to work a bit, especially after seeing the Cuzco Church of Santo Domingo literally COVERED in gold and silver and the royal grandeur that is Saint Peter's Square. Add together the rest of the real estate, hard assets, art, donations, low cost of labor, etc, etc and you have a truly mighty organization that can do a lot more than it is. I swear, I saw both Cuzco and the Vatican years ago, and the wealth still boggles my mind.
Personally, I'm happy to see that money actually doing something other than contributing to opulence. I think they should be doing much more of this investment.
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Of course, with the pope's uncanny resemblance to Emperor Palpatine, I can't resist the thought of hearing, upon completion of the 100 MegaWatt facility, the words: "NOW YOU WILL WITNESS THE POWER OF THIS FULLY OPERATIONAL BATTLE STATION!"...
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Proof?
There's an Oasis in Egypt that's drying up. (Siwa? Can't remember exactly) Once it's gone, all the people living there will either have to move or die.
There's plenty of proof out there. Global warming may not be globally bad, but it sure is shitty for quite a few countries. If you can't see that, you're a buffoon.
> 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.
For only 6 million dollars more they can add an option to generate power from the conversion of pure evil.
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You and the GP are both looking at it wrong. It costs $660 million dollars now, but it cuts the Vatican's power bill to zero, and the spare power can be sold to Italy at the market rate, resulting in a significant financial win for the Vatican. The money saved is money that can then be spent on humanitarian projects around the world. Over the expected life of the panels, the money the Church could spend should be far greater and can do far more good than spending the $660 on humanitarian causes up front.
It's like the people who suggested that the Church should sell all its properties (which some have estimated at on the order of $1-2 trillion dollars) and spend the money on the poor. The problem is that there are an estimated 963 million people in the world who are hungry, so even if you could feed them all for a net cost of only a dollar a day, the assets would last only about 3-6 years. Given the scale involved, a more realistic cost estimate would put that closer to 6 months. And, of course, when the money runs out, those hungry people would still be dirt poor, but there wouldn't be any more money coming in without congregants putting money in the collection basket every week. Thus, beyond a very short term view, that would be a foolish thing to do.
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This is the Vatican we're talking about. What the hell are you doing telling them 'there's no proof of this'? It's never stopped them before.
Real Daleks don't climb stairs - they level the building.
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...
You don't live near the coast, do you?
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The only way the Catholic Church is worth a hundred billion of anything is when you calculate its worth in Lira.
Sorry, but nope. Catholic church is very wealthy... here's a pic of the solid gold alter in Cuzco... the picture does it absolutely no justice ... and there's probably 5 times more gold than in this pic and an equal amount of silver (this pic is not mine; I don't know who this pic belongs to; they don't let you take pics inside the church, so this person committed a bit of sacrilege by taking this)
And I'd say the items contained in this photo are worth a few bucks.
In terms of net worth, they are very clearly rich.
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It's something I often wonder about, actually: what's their excuse for anything beyond utilitarian buildings and equipment?
I'm sure it's fun having huge chunks of gold around the place, but when their religious text contains categorical denunciation of wealth it strikes me as odd.
BOLGIAS 8 AND 9, Rome, Monday — The Vatican intends to build the biggest renewable energy plant in Europe, running solely on guilt.
"Now is the time to strike," said Cardinal Giovanni Lajolo, governor of Vatican City. "The financial crisis has unleashed huge and renewable sources of guilt, which in the long run will reap incomparable rewards for the Church."
Italy has a binding target for renewable energy consumption of 17 percent. The Vatican will export energy to Italy, powered by raw guilt from the largely Catholic populace. "So far it's proven indefinitely renewable."
Pope Benedict XVI has been outspoken on environmental issues. "The destruction of the environment, its improper or selfish use and the violent hoarding of the Earth's resources cause grievances, conflicts and wars, precisely because they are the consequences of an inhumane concept of development. You should FEEL BAD about that. And give us money."
The plant will be topped up at night by Dante-esque treadmills walked by priests sent back for kiddy-fiddling. "We feel terrible, terrible," said Fr O'Pederast. "I mean, we got caught."
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Repton.
They say that only an experienced wizard can do the tengu shuffle.
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.
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No, no, no... this is the Vatican we're talking about here. You're thinking of D.C.
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Not yet... :)
"Action without philosophy is a lethal weapon; philosophy without action is worthless."
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.