Peter Scott wrote:


The overall efficiency of sunlight to fuel is still crap so its still
needs land area in country sized chunk, or sea area in country sized
chunks.


The short answer to renewable energy is that here isn't enough free
energy in sunlight to actually satisfy anyone's needs, and if you try,
you end up with structures of country sizes, that totally modify the
environment more than CO2 does.



Peter Scott



I have noticed that you tend to think that we are looking for a single
answer to our energy needs, and vilify anything that can't do that. In
your case its nuclear. Like oil, whichever non-renewable fuel you opt
for *will* run out. I agree that we need nuclear but we also need as
wide a range of energy sources as we can make work.

No we don't. This is another renewables fallacy.

I think you should buy a computer made out of germanium transistors.
And wire your house up with iron wire, not copper.

We need one source that works, and is cheap. There is no reason
whatsoever to have sources that don't work and aren't cheap just because
of 'diversity'

Its not a bloody biosystem.



The sun is an
obvious source, even if not to you.

That because I can Do Sums, understand entropy and complicated things
like overall systems analysis. It obvious to ME that its pointless to
even try, in the same way I understand that a lithium battery powered
airliner will never make it across the Atlantic.


You don't have to have a degree in engineering and electrical sciences,
but it helps..


When you think of solar methods you
assume they will be stuck in the present.

No I simply have to assume they will not break the laws of physics.


We are at the Newcomen steam
engine stage of solar - very poor efficiency

20% is as good as any steam loco ever got, and we are close to that.on PV.


and rather expensive at
present.
and for all time.

It'll never fly!

Actually pure solar powered aircraft have flown.

But there is a survival imperitive

There is. and nuclear is the answer to that one.

and lots of
money to be made,

Indeed, but only by giving solar a guaranteed subsidy we cant afford,
which does nothing to actually reduce our energy needs in any other way.

o you can be sure that the solar methods in twenty,
perhaps even ten, years time will be greatly better than now. What we
need is a wide mix of sources, with as high a percentage of renewables
as is feasible.

No we don't. renewable energy is not usable energy at any scale. Its
pure fantasy to pretend it ever could be.

It only exists because of the incredible lack of education and sheer
intellectual laziness of people like you, who have simply failed to run
the numbers and consider the real implication of what - say - pulling
30% of the sunlight off the face of the UK would do to e.g. plant life.
And indeed the climate.


All renewable energy has a massive impact on the environment by its very
nature. It requires huge structures to *alter* the natural flow of
sunlight, tidal power rainfall or wind. Because the energy density is so
low.

By contrast a nuclear set is tiny. It has virtually no impact at all.