From Wikipedia:
I'SOT, which stands for In Search of Truth, is a Pentecostal/Bible-based offshoot Christian religious group...
Criticisms
Allegations of physical and sexual abuse brought against members by clients of I'SOT's Group Home/Foster Home during the late 1980s prompted an investigation by State of California Department of Social Services Community Care Licensing Division. The final report was filed July 26, 1991. That Investigation found a preponderance of the evidence that members of I'SOT had physically and sexually abused residents of the group home between 1978 and 1990. I'SOT's application for renewal of their license to operate the Group Home was denied, after which they appealed the decision and lost.
Your tax dollars are going to these people?
Yes - and with good reason.
Cascading use of geothermal energy sees support in the U.S.
..."Part of a new U.S. Department of Energy grant for innovative geothermal technology is going to fund a project that could help small towns and mid-sized cities generate low cost local power, cut their carbon footprint, create new green jobs, and even develop local sources for fish and produce. The technology is called "cascading" geothermal because it uses and re-uses the same fluid in a series of applications.
Cascading Geothermal Technology: Oddly enough a religious community called I’SOT (yes, that I’SOT) in Canby, California provides a textbook example of a cascading geothermal project, which is under development in partnership with the Department of Energy and the National Renewable Energy Laboratory. In 2006 the community began operating a geothermal heating system that provided heat and heat and hot water for 34 buildings, but the effluent from that operation was simply filtered and discharged to a river. Under the new project, the highest-temperature fluid will be used to generate electricity. After that, energy can still be extracted for additional space heating and hot water, operating up to ten acres of greenhouses, heating up to four 30-foot diameter aquaculture tanks, and for melting snow. The system may also provide enough energy to operate a new food storage and laundry facility.
A cult with extraordinary power over its members is probably an ideal workshop for developing such technology. One could as well extend that to any communal grouping but the lessons learned are hardly confined to cults, communes, monasteries, what have you nor is there any reason to confine the discussion to small, isolated rural communities.
There is nothing really new in any of this except the re-use of water and the generation of electricity from low temperature geothermal.
In the past I have diaried the growing of tropical fish and alligators in Idaho as commercial ventures and even bananas in Iceland that have been considered for a business venture. Aquaculture in Brooklyn is being modeled for backyard do-it-yourselfers.
And at Lightning Dock, New Mexico [.pdf], in the state where EGS began its ill-starred ascent to crowd out real achievement with dreamy research, a world-class tilapia nursery and sizable geothermal greenhouse complex will soon be powered by low-temperature geothermal if all goes well.
Meanwhile AltaRock is planning to fix what ails the Newberry Volcano dud near Bend, Oregon:
"What we are moving towards here is being able to develop geothermal technology that can be used anywhere," said AltaRock President Susan Petty.
Guess nobody informed Susan that geothermal is available anywhere on the planet Earth now.
New technology will be used at Newberry to introduce clean water to create cracks in the rocks and create a flow of liquid that can be used to generate electricity. But with new technology, comes new concerns.
"How do you deal with an unknown process of fracturing and where that may go," asked another person at the meeting.
Oh golly, person, you shouldn't ask fracking questions like that. It's like asking how you gonna contain the heat of nuclear fusion.
Geothermal continues to fight all kinds of headwinds and not the least is unrealistic expectations for EGS but oddly it is the poorer countries where the best progress is being made.
Iceland issues call at UN for poorer countries to harness potential of geothermal energy
"Geothermal will of course not on its own solve the climatic problems, but in some parts of the world it could, however, make a huge difference," Mr. Skarphédinsson said.
"In East Africa the utilization of geothermal potential could free the people of several nations from the bondage of energy poverty. They do, however, lack the geothermal expertise – and the finance for the infrastructure.
"Iceland, therefore, has formally engaged in discussions with some of the big nations operating, for example, in East Africa, to form a partnership for a geothermal drive in countries with unused potential. Iceland would put up the expertise. The partners [would put up] the necessary finance. This initiative could enable some countries to escape from energy-poverty, industrialize without undue emissions, and embark on the road to prosperity."
A bankrupt cripple leading an army of paupers [including China BTW] to the Promised Land. Not bad, not bad at all.
Best, Terry