The Natural Philosopher wrote:
Tim Watts wrote:
On 13/05/10 18:44, Tim Streater wrote:
In ,
wrote:


These are all good points, which, ISTM, apply to most of these types of
power generation. I just felt that the tidal power had at least some
advantages:

1) no "windless" days
2) max power output (when tide is flowing strongest) varies from point
to point so that if enough were installed you'd get a more even power
generation
3) capacity can be added bit by bit (unlike tidal barrage, say)
4) as it's underwater, visual impact is less.

Of course, all these methods have the major drawback of needing a lot of
extra transmission capacity, which is why I favour nuclear anyway.


Right now we need some serious gigawatts - so not building a few nukes
would be foolish. But, in the medium term, I think the tidal stuff and
some offshore wind farms[1] offer a good solution.

If we dont build the nukes, there is no medium term.


There is no sustainable society that can ever exists.

There is no society that ever did many of the things we do. Your idea that we
look back, see that previous societies were not sustainable, and throw up our
hands strikes me as rather facile.