On Sat, 26 Sep 2009 22:38:24 +0100, The Natural Philosopher
wrote:


Only in a few places does geography favour you and allow cost effective
pumped storage to work.

I dont know of an and I cant think of any possible new sites.

Obviously the head of water needs to be up a mountain.

The lake at Dinorwic was built in a disused quarry.

A disused quarry on top of a mountain, that's something everyday you
don't see. And how many of these did you say we would need ?

Total reliqance on renewables would have an impact on the landscape more
or less akin to that which happened when the ice age retreated and
humans settled here and totally deforested the place. It would be
industrialisation of the landscape on a scale so massive it would be
completely unrecognisable. Forget trees, wilderness and beauty spots.
The whole landscape would be covered with power grids, windmills, solar
panels and every mountain would have to have a lake and a dam.

David reckons ten percent of the land area would need to be covered with
SOMETHING. at 100% efficiency.


All such "Wastelands" currently have a sparse population eeking out a
miserable,very basic existence, but surviving.

What incentive could we conceivably offer them for them to accept all
this crap electrical generating hardware, when all they have by way of
compensation is a beautiful unspoiled environment, so that we in the
cities 300 -600 miles away can live comfortable (nay luxurious) lives
with 9 to 5 desk jobs in "marketing" with electric cars and electric
central heating with air conditioning.

Now currently 23% of te land is used for agriculture. So what happens
when another 20% goes to develop power generation?

Or 100 nuclear power stations on coats and estuaries. Yup, we can
deliver electricity to supply the whole countries TOTAL energy needs
with 100 large nuclear power stations.

You tell me which makes more sense.


What would have made more sense would have been for the politicians
not to have paddled us up this **** creek to keep green**** and the
other ultra lefties happy for the sake of clutching on to their vote
as a drowning man would clutch at a straw ...

Derek