Water power

[cronus]

Places like Mexico could become net exporters of power. The Sahara could bloom with desalinated water produced by plants powered by sunshine.

Deserts are ecosystems in themselves. Destroying them by making them bloom is NOT environmentally friendly.

Scrumple approves of this stance.

[Trinity]

Carlisle may be slightly unusual but several rivers flow through it and in fact meet the larger River Eden here or near here. I walk along the banks of several of them from time to time.

A number of these small rivers, no more than 30 to 50 feet wide have been 'managed' in places to regulate their slopes and as a result there are a good half dozen weirs (a sort of made made waterfall) of less than five feet I would say. The volume of water going over these weirs is considerable and I found myself wondering how much electricity they would generate using some form of simple turbine and without any other infrastructure, e.g. a damn, to raise the water level.

Seems to me you might provide power for a good few hundred houses. A neglected source of power perhaps.

Some of you engineery types have any idea what sort of wattage we might be talking about?

Yes, but what about the little fishies?

There's a small river some miles from me which has an Archimedes screw made especially for the fishies. Beautiful to look at and no casualties

[Thinking Aloud]

Places like Mexico could become net exporters of power. The Sahara could bloom with desalinated water produced by plants powered by sunshine.

Deserts are ecosystems in themselves. Destroying them by making them bloom is NOT environmentally friendly.

Covering deserts or mountainsides in solar panels has consequences beyond that too. There's a VAST area of under-utilised rooftops to harness before we start shading nature beneath our quest for energy.

[JimC]

Places like Mexico could become net exporters of power. The Sahara could bloom with desalinated water produced by plants powered by sunshine.

Deserts are ecosystems in themselves. Destroying them by making them bloom is NOT environmentally friendly.

Quite right.

However, in north-west Victoria, there are many thousands of acres of arid land ecosystems that have, unfortunately, been bulldozed over the last 80 years to grow wheat. Some of those farms are becoming very marginal, due to climate change.

Ideally, what I would like to happen is that a substantial amount of this land be used for large-scale solar electricity production, with a commitment by the companies to restore a certain proportion of the land they take up back to the native Mallee vegetation. Probably some sort of collaboration between government and private enterprise. Win-win...

[Cormac]

Places like Mexico could become net exporters of power. The Sahara could bloom with desalinated water produced by plants powered by sunshine.

Deserts are ecosystems in themselves. Destroying them by making them bloom is NOT environmentally friendly.

You can't make an omelette without breaking some eggs.


(Edit for spelling error. I think I might be getting early onset something or other).

[Svartalf]

Places like Mexico could become net exporters of power. The Sahara could bloom with desalinated water produced by plants powered by sunshine.

Deserts are ecosystems in themselves. Destroying them by making them bloom is NOT environmentally friendly.

Go tell the JWs that... or any number of fundy chretins.

[Cormac]

Places like Mexico could become net exporters of power. The Sahara could bloom with desalinated water produced by plants powered by sunshine.

Deserts are ecosystems in themselves. Destroying them by making them bloom is NOT environmentally friendly.

Covering deserts or mountainsides in solar panels has consequences beyond that too. There's a VAST area of under-utilised rooftops to harness before we start shading nature beneath our quest for energy.

Agreed.

However, placing large scale arrays in the countryside doesn't necessarily imply wholesale enviromental destruction.

For example, if they are elevated, and spaced adequately, even the ground underneath them will still get sufficient light to allow the local ecosystem to continue. Of course, elevation implies a higher construction and maintenance cost.

Other benefits would include the creation of highly skilled jobs in remote areas, with the added benefit that such jobs would result in higher local spending.

Also, by accepting some damage locally, overall, we'd significantly reduce damage by reducing the release of harmful or simply dirty materials into the environment.

And, as regards the notion of greening the Sahara, well, there is vidence that in relatively recent history it was relatively green. There are pictures painted by humans of such scenes. So, perhaps we had a hand in the desertification in the first place. There are very few places on earth untouched by human influence. Many areas we consider to be pristine wilderness actually require human intervention and maintenance.

[JimC]

Simply covering as many human buildings as possible will go a long way, without disturbing anything......

Think of all those bloody huge factory roofs...

[Gawdzilla Sama]

I have little sympathy for three lizards and a beetle in a furnace.

[Thinking Aloud]

I have little sympathy for three lizards and a beetle in a furnace.

Is that different from having little sympathy for big wild dogs in hilly woodland?

[Gawdzilla Sama]

I have little sympathy for three lizards and a beetle in a furnace.

Is that different from having little sympathy for big wild dogs in hilly woodland?

In terms of life forms living there, yes. If those three lizards were displaced by a herd of deer I'd be fine with that.

[Thinking Aloud]

I have little sympathy for three lizards and a beetle in a furnace.

Is that different from having little sympathy for big wild dogs in hilly woodland?

In terms of life forms living there, yes. If those three lizards were displaced by a herd of deer I'd be fine with that.

Why would you irrigate the desert and fill it with deer? Can we replace wild wolves with some other life form too?

[Gawdzilla Sama]

I have little sympathy for three lizards and a beetle in a furnace.

Is that different from having little sympathy for big wild dogs in hilly woodland?

In terms of life forms living there, yes. If those three lizards were displaced by a herd of deer I'd be fine with that.

Why would you irrigate the desert and fill it with deer? Can we replace wild wolves with some other life form too?

You would have a problem with replacing a parking lot with a forest?

[Thinking Aloud]

I have little sympathy for three lizards and a beetle in a furnace.

Is that different from having little sympathy for big wild dogs in hilly woodland?

In terms of life forms living there, yes. If those three lizards were displaced by a herd of deer I'd be fine with that.

Why would you irrigate the desert and fill it with deer? Can we replace wild wolves with some other life form too?

You would have a problem with replacing a parking lot with a forest?

The Sahara Desert is a parking lot?

[Gawdzilla Sama]

No, it actually has less life per acre than a parking lot.