Ocean energy and the law of the sea: The need for a protocol
Although fossil fuels are the overwhelming source of energy for the world, and will continue to be so for the foreseeable future, demographic, environmental, political, and economic factors indicat...
OTEC: electricity from the ocean
OTEC is an attractive candidate as a contributor to U.S. energy self-sufficiency. It is a renewable source of base-load electricity, though limited in its geographical availability to the Gulf Coast and to island territories (Hawaii, Puerto Rico, and Pacific dependencies). The grazing concept for producing energy intensive products has a much wider area of siting--there are some 20 million square miles of suitable tropical waters near the equator. Furthermore, for tropical third-world countries, OTEC offers a valuable resource, if capital funding can be made available by the more developed countries. OTEC is environmentally benign and does not consume fossil fuels which are needed for other purposes (such as petrochemicals). No technological problems have been uncovered which will kill the OTEC concept; the engineering challenges appear to be those of scale rather than of technological difficulty. The materials are available; the construction methods are known. A leading design for an OTEC plant is a vertical, semi-submerged spar-shaped structure--comparable in size to off-shore oil plants. Its configuration makes it insensitive to wind and wave turbulence. Held in place by a single mooring line and weight anchor in tropical oceans, its electrical power would be taken to shore by cable. Two crews ofmore » about 30 persons each would be required to operate an OTEC plant. Power from the first commercial OTEC plant is expected by 1986.« less
The Value Base of Social Work
Abstract Values may be conceived along three basic dimensions which would account for the major value orientations shared by social workers and related to all aspects of their professional practice. These are: preferred conceptions of people, preferred outcomes for people, and preferred instrumentalities for dealing with people. Distinguished from “knowledge,” and adequately refined, these categories of values might constitute a guide for planning and action in social work practice and education. The predictability of professional behavior which might then result would also define the expectations of clients and society with respect to what the social work profession stands for and what it does.