Seawater has a higher density, about 2,5% according to Wikipedia. So 40m of water column fresh water vs seawater would be equal to 1m water column fresh water. 400m would result in a 1 bar pressure difference.
Reverse osmosis systems (like the one speculated with a membrane) has operating pressures between 40 and 82 bar when using seawater. The ocean is pretty deep but having a 16 kilometer pipe straight down seems like it has its own engineering problems.
It's probably a Belgian television news item that initiated this, was all over the news today. +1000 clips were leaked to the reporter, who found some addresses in the clips, and went to these locations to confront the people living there.
They also had some Google employees anonymously speaking about the things they hear: identifiable information, private conversations or actvities...
Nothing shocking really, if you are a bit into IT stuff, but apparently most people aren't.
Plus: the value of the power (energy) is variable throughout time: solar produces energy synchronously and tends to drive power prices down due to a very low marginal cost (hence negative power prices when there's a lot of wind and solar in Germany e.g.). When there's no wind and no solar, combined with a high demand (e.g. low temperatures in Europe), prices will be much much higher. So the remaining 70% of your capacity factor is worth more than the first 20%.
This was a topic in the Belgian news a couple of days ago. The issue is not as much whether the isopropanol will be used for chemical warfare, nor if it should be regarded dangerous or if it is on a list with restricted substances, but more that these companies would/should have known that exporting it to Syria is a big risk given the current context. It was more of a moral question rather than a 'scientific' one.
Tons of isopropanol were destroyed in Syria by UN workers when trying to destroy all chemical weapons and precursors.*
That doesn't necessarily mean that the element is poisonous per se. Many good/healthy substances are poisonous at high levels,e.g.:
Vitamin A poisoning [0]
Water poisoning [1]
"Consider that if all of the energy coming from wind movement through a turbine was extracted as useful energy the wind speed afterwards would drop to zero. If the wind stopped moving at the exit of the turbine, then no more fresh wind could get in - it would be blocked."
One could - from a narrow perspective[1] - argue that diesel engines on plant oil would be carbon-neutral but not that they are emission free. In fact: (older) diesel engines are being banned from cities (e.g. Antwerp, Belgium) not because of CO2-emissions but due to emissions of particulates (and NOx). CO2 is a global problem, but particulates and NOx are local problems (and hence more likely to trigger local political action).
[1] it is often argued that biomass/biofuel is not entirely carbon-neutral due to several reasons: the inherent lifecycle means some CO2 is in the atmosphere at any point; production is often based on CO2-emitting processes ...
Secondly some other issues pop up as well: (indirect) land use change, competition with food ...
I think that's why poor countries suffer so much. Our rulers don't understand basic economy and money. Look at Venezuela right now or Brazil. Our rulers think they can just print money and distribute it.
But the truth is: money is just a tool, a way to get something.
In your example, there's no point in giving a million dollars to the homeless, it would make much more sense to make the $3 loaf cost 0,3 cents. Now everybody can buy it.
But if you just drop money in the lap of somebody that doesn't know how to produce value and change this value for money, those who produce the real value and owns the means to produce it will still making more money from those who can't produce.
To solve that: take the homeless, provide basic care and opportunities for him start to produce value. Then the money will come.
The situation in hyper-inflation like in brasil in 80s is different than helicopter money. We can use helicopter money to eliminate poverty. Its just one way of many.
The world doesn't need most of the people to work. Today what you actually consume is produced by <20% of people working. Most products are produced by machines and not labor.
The homeless don't need to work, because society can provide for them even if they don't.
No it won't. Assuming the stuff we have in US is the same, increasing the amount of money 10 fold will increase prices 10 fold. The difference will be that the ratio between the median and the top 0.1% will become more equitable.
