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| Arabia | |
| Could Dubai become the most important city on earth? | |
| 2006-02-14 | |
It looks like a hot Grozny. On the vast invented islands offshore and in the even vaster building sites that stretch in a wide band the whole length of DubaiÂ’s now famous riviera, acre on acre of grey- faced, concrete, hollow-eyed buildings, fenced in with scaffolding and overhung by tower cranes, stare at each other across the sands. Tower blocks look abandoned rather than half-made. It is said that a fifth of the worldÂ’s cranes are now at work here. An army of some 250,000 men, largely from India and Pakistan, are labouring to create the new glimmer fantasy, earning on average GBP150 a month, and living in camps, four to a room, 12ft by 12ft, hidden away in the industrial quarters of Al Quoz. One night in one of the luxury hotels would cost six monthsÂ’ wages of one of the men who built it. Below and around their work sites, the new streets are chaotic with rubble and piles of steel. | |
| Posted by:Steve White |
| #22 For cars nobody every mentions thermal batts. Too bad! 200lbs of Molten Salt at %15 eff. is equiv to about 20 gals of gas. A good strong thermos around it (and maybe auto ejection in an accident) would be equal to the batteries at much less weight. The big problem is the injuries in an accident from molten salt burning right through bodies and bone... Again. Solvable. |
| Posted by: 3dc 2006-02-14 23:24 |
| #21 Ummmmmmmmmmm - No Next question |
| Posted by: Grinese Whomoling1222 2006-02-14 21:23 |
| #20 I expect a lot of the "new energy" in the future is going to be from bio and nano technologies. For example, that MIT genius who found an algae that when industrial CO2 is pumped through it, even in weak New England light, it converts to mostly high-quality biodiesel (with some ethanol), at an efficiency rate obscenely higher than with agri-plant matter. Basically turning waste fumes into big money at minimal cost. Corporations like stuff like that, a lot. You can even recycle the water the algae live in, while reducing your CO2 emissions by 60%. Win-win-win-profit. The nanotech is causing explosive improvement in both solar energy and battery/capacitor/fuel cell tech. And every one of those that improves takes the pressure off less efficient production and storage. Nuclear has two futures: enormous and large localized energy use. That is, typical large reactors giving massive energy to concentrated industrial consumers; and pebble-bed reactors for smaller industries and regions with little other available energy. Huge national grids will slowly become antiquated, as decentralized energy production makes more sense. Surprisingly, even in the US, de-salinization will become one of the largest consumers of energy in the future. |
| Posted by: Anonymoose 2006-02-14 20:11 |
| #19 .com, no I didn't save SDB's posts. Should have. Easily the best big picture analysis I have ever seen on energy. Agreed, the man is brilliant and a real gentleman based on my correspondence with him. Pity he doesn't seem to drop by the Burg any more. Barb, can you copy me. TIA rjs, all primary energy sources are over the medium to long term fungible. Any increase in net energy demand, which adoption of hydrogen would certainly cause, will result in an increase in demand for energy from the most elastic supply. That is and will continue to be oil (and to a lesser extent NG). So the argument we could make it from nuclear is irrelevant. It will only be made from nuclear at the expense of other more efficient ways of distributing energy. Moose, good point about desalination. With the added benefit it might make the luddite greenies, wake up and small the coffee. Plus, what mmurray said. |
| Posted by: phil_b 2006-02-14 19:51 |
| #18 Steven den Beste's new web address. http://home.san.rr.com/denbeste/web%20log/index.html |
| Posted by: SR-71 2006-02-14 19:04 |
| #17 Hydrogen is not a "green" fuel as people claim. In fact, the only way to make large industrial size batches of it now is to use Natural Gas. Strip the hydrogen atoms off. And what is left over? CO2. Tons and tons of the stuff. More than we are putting out now. Pure fantasy bullshit from the wacko environmental crowd. |
| Posted by: mmurray821 2006-02-14 15:58 |
| #16 Photoshop. Actual photo. Whatever. |
| Posted by: Phil 2006-02-14 15:30 |
| #15 And if anyone sees Steven around anywhere (he is supposedly going to get the server connected again when he settles down in Portland) let me know; I want to send him a copy of the Al Gore "Kamehameha" drawing. |
| Posted by: Phil 2006-02-14 15:29 |
| #14 I heard that MJ was too creepy even for the Bahrainis -- he's been invited out of the country, flying business class on a commercial flight, and is now slacking around Europe. He's got a important debt payment due 2/20 or it's off to bankruptcy court for Jacko. |
| Posted by: Seafarious 2006-02-14 15:26 |
| #13 #7 .com - I think I have den Besten's best saved on my home computer. E-mail me a reminder and I'll look. Just for li'l ol' you. ;-p |
| Posted by: Barbara Skolaut 2006-02-14 15:18 |
| #12 Speaking of Boom Towns, here is a topical song for the subject of Dubai, courtesy of Greg Brown: "Boomtown" Here come the artists with their intense faces, with their need for money and quiet spaces. They leave New York, they leave L.A.. Here they are - who knows how long they'll stay - [chorus:] It's a Boomtown got another Boomtown and it'll boom just as long as boom has room. Here come the tourists with their blank stares, with their fanny packs - they are penny millionaires. Something interesting happened here long time ago. Now where people used to live their lives the restless come and go. [repeat chorus] Nice to meet you, nice to see you in a sheepskin coat made in Korea. Welcome to the new age, the new century. Welcome to a town with no real reason to be. [repeat chorus] The rich build sensitive houses and pass their staff around. For the rest of us, it's trailers on the outskirts of town. We carry them their coffee, wash their shiny cars, hear all about how lucky we are to be living in a ... [repeat chorus] The guy from California moves in and relaxes. The natives have to move - they cannot pay the taxes. Santa Fe has had it. Sedona has, too. Maybe you'll be lucky - maybe your town will be the new... [repeat chorus] |
| Posted by: Alaska Paul 2006-02-14 15:09 |
| #11 As mentioned on another thread, Qatar and maybe Saudi is planning to go peaceful nuclear full steam. It would not surprise me if Dubai did the same. Other than having lots of power for their energy needs, it also means that they can desalinize huge amounts of water. Extrapolated some years in the future, imagine a "greened" Arabia, and the effect it would have on their regional climate. In worked in the American west. Other things to look forward to are the building of a massive petro-chemical infrastructure. If the oil is not going for fuel, use it to make all sorts of other synthetic products for export. That alone would keep their shipping docks full. Last but far from least, some of these oil-wealthy nations have in past very proudly invested in education. They are well-suited to having immense universities for an international clientele, enough so that some poorer countries might subcontract their students to them. |
| Posted by: Anonymoose 2006-02-14 14:10 |
| #10 Isn't Michael Jackson said to be moving there? I'm not saying, I'm just saying... |
| Posted by: eLarson 2006-02-14 14:02 |
| #9 Every time someone mentions H2 as a fuel I have to ask myself just how are you going to store, transport and more importantly generate it from H2O or CH4 (methane). Either way it has problems. Myself I would prefer to see sufficently advanced battery tech that increases range and reduces charge times to something similiar to the fueling times for gasoline. Rather than use the electricity to manufacture H2 from water or methane use electrity as the end product itself. But then with our luck the Gulf States and the Saudis will go into the solar energy business |
| Posted by: Cheaderhead 2006-02-14 11:29 |
| #8 phil_b you oil analogy only works if oil is used to create the hydrogen in the first place. If you use nuke power the lost energy is the same, but not as costly, pollutant, or used to fund maddrasses. I still think electric cars have more of a future than the hydrogen cars now that Toshiba has those superbatteries that can recharge up to 80% within a couple of minutes. Battery recharging problems are the only reason people seriously considered hydrogen at all. |
| Posted by: rjschwarz 2006-02-14 11:24 |
| #7 Lol, phil_b. Hey, you didn't happen to save off the excellent collection of energy posts from USS Clueless, did you? The site's gone away completely and I can't find 'em, though I thought I had saved them. I miss den Beste like a smarter-than-me best friend. Sigh. |
| Posted by: .com 2006-02-14 08:03 |
| #6 Sigh! Hydrogen is not a primary energy source. You have to make it by consuming another energy source and wasting more than 50% of the primary energy source in the process. A hydrogen powered vehicle is equivalent to starting with 2 barrels of gaseoline, puting one in your car and setting fire to the other. |
| Posted by: phil_b 2006-02-14 07:59 |
| #5 I've been to Dubai. The climate is sheer hell in the summer, which lasts most of the year. All those people investing there, more power to them. I wouldn't invest $0.50 there because I believe 1)oil is on its way out as a primary fuel source; the supply is too uncertain, and 2) the whole south-side Persian Gulf idea is unsustainable because they can't even feed themselves, much less supply anything else. EVERYTHING has to come from someplace else. So until Glenn Reynolds' favorite fantasy, nanotech, arrives with its ability to make anything from anything else, the Gulf will always be a place that produces nothing but sand and oil and with a horribly bad climate to boot. I've always thought that if we in the West could switch to hydrogen tomorrow the Gulf Arabs would never see anyone from the West again. I only went there because someone paid me a hell of a lot of money and it would take more than it cost the first few times for me to consider going back. Dubai the most important city on Earth? Let's try Dubai the latest rendition of the South Sea Bubble tune. |
| Posted by: mac 2006-02-14 06:00 |
| #4 :-) |
| Posted by: gromgoru 2006-02-14 05:46 |
| #3 Nice double-entendre, lol. |
| Posted by: .com 2006-02-14 01:57 |
| #2 Oil boom town. |
| Posted by: gromgoru 2006-02-14 01:52 |
| #1 Or not. Hell, if they don't stop trying to play both sides of the street at once, it could become the least important smoking hole, too. Has about the same odds, methinks. |
| Posted by: .com 2006-02-14 01:07 |