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International Byhålenytt Thursday 2010-01-07

Australia-based EnviroMission Ltd recently announced plans to build [1]two solar updraft towers that span hundreds of acres in La Paz County, Arizona. Solar updraft technology is generating hot air with a giant greenhouse, channel the air into a chimney-like device, and let the warm wind turn a wind turbine to produce energy. each plant would consist of a 720 meter (2,400 foot) chimney over a greenhouse measuring 10 km² (four square miles).

The project costs $750 million and will produce about 200 megawatt.

http://www.inhabitat.com/2010/01/06/enviromission-plans-massive-solar-updraft-towers-for-arizona/

200 megawatt is like 1/8 of a modern nuclear plant (Like http://www.power-technology.com/projects/Olkiluoto/ in Finland) but the nuclear plant costs €3.2bn = $4.6 USD which is 6 times as much. The maintenance costs are unclear, but at least the solar plant doesn't need fuel to run.

You're not human!

About 8 percent of [1]human genetic material comes from a virus and not from our ancestors, according to an article by University of Texas at Arlington biology professor
Cédric Feschotte:
http://www.uta.edu/ucomm/mediarelations/press/2010/01/genome-biologist-reports.php

Note that we share about 98-99% of our genome with Chimpanzees... You do the math, virus!