turboplanner

I don't think you need that much fall. There's plenty of examples of small (1 - 20 household) hydro generators using a relatively minor fall from an existing river or stream..

We must remember a huge amount of our electricty bill is the distribution cost of sending the power huge distances over expensive and now so called "gold plated" infrastructure. It is incredibly inefficient and expensive. The more they spent on poles and wires the more the regulator allowed them to charge- so they invested on it for no actual gain except the ability to charge a hell of a lot more. Without this stupidity our bills may be 50% lower. Add in the fact we privatised so instead of cost recovery plus a small dividend to government we have dozens of layers of corporate greed all wanting a big slice of profit and holding a gun to our heads to get it.

This is the biggest impediment to affordable cost and we need to move away from it.

The Atlanteans are reported to have had a power system where power was projected to residences and vehicles from central generating points, in a similar concept to our radio and TV transmissions, and Nikola Tesla was able to replicate this in an experiment where he was able to power up lights 18 miles away.

A better solution might be to design self contained residence by residence systems, then there's no transmission cost.

I was listening to one of the smartest solar guys in the world on ABC one night- a professor from UNSW solar team (world leaders for over 30 years) and his super cheap solution for storage. It is ........................WATER. All you do is have a smallish dam on a hill and a nearby solar plant with a dam. Any excess power generated is used to pump the water up to the dam. Small town sized systems are now becoming quite common and typically produce a heap more power during the middle of the day than can be used to allow for the needs later in the day when everyone comes home etc. All excess power is pumped up the hill into the dams- and allowed to flow with gravity through small micro turbine water wheels to generate power when needed. That can be at night, cloudy day, whenever needed.

 

WE are not talking massive dams either, he used examples that most farmers are used to in scale for the farm. He has run the economies on this and the scale issues and it works extremely well from very small scale to mega scale for a large city. It is all about making the power where it is going to be used or nearby and scaling for the actual needs. Your town growing? Just ad some more solar and build another couple of small dams. Not big mega dollar dams - little ones.

Unless you are talking about the few genuine alpine towns we have in Australia, this would need spectacular break throughs in turbine design and physics; are there any links to this process?

Storage technology is improving so fast that power companies are installing batteries to supply the grid overnight.

TP, I have several gay friends and work colleagues and they are not "wired wrongly". Well, I guess you did start with "I don't have anything against gays...", yeah right!

Option A:Heterosexual parents with mum and dad are available to raise child. Both are heroin addicts and unemployed. Dad with history of domestic abuse. Both with long criminal history of drug abuse. Father has previously introduced a 17 year old girl to her first ever heroin shot.

 

Option B:

 

Homosexual parents with two guys are available to raise child. Both with impeccable character references, well liked in community. One employed in well paid professional job and the other also fully employed. Both willing to adjust work to share full time parenting. Desperately want kids.

 

Solution? Put the child only with the mum and dad in option A? Put the child into string of foster homes? Anything but option B?

 

Fact for the curious.........Mrs Dutch knows both of these situations. One (the drug users and the 17 year old daughter) she dealt with as a GP. The other (gay blokes with kid) are friends of hers.

 

At some point, you just need to be thankful that there are two respectable people out there who are willing to do everything for this kid, which will ensure the child grows up in the best environment possible and ends up a happy, responsible adult.

Option A

Both parents are doing something illegal; I know that's simplistic because, as a society and as a country, we should have fixed this but we've failed, and the ice epidemic is tearing the country apart, particularly out in country areas.

We have an obligation to solve the drug problem, and your example is one of the reasons.

Option B

I only gave the clothing example because the rest was too painful to revisit, but your comments were typical of the patronising "solutions" I used to be given by relatives and friends of the family.

There are always going to be children who for some reason or other are best cared for by foster parents; they should not be condemned to a single sex development?

The ones I had in mind in particular were those where two females decide one of them will have a child naturally, so they can be "parents".

I don't have anything against gays; I know it's not their fault that they were wired wrongly; I have two long standing gay couples as valued friends, but I wouldn't want them to inflict a single sex upbringing on children, any more than I should be allowed to psychologically abuse a child.

Just to add to the insanity, I see in todays paper that female homosexual couples are unhappy that there can be only one mother on the birth certificate of a child. They want the law changed so that both can be mother.What we must do is change the whole language, so that it will be legal for anyone to call anything whatever they want and the remainder of the population must understand what they are saying.

I was 8 when my mother died and grew up without the female component of the marriage, who fills out the feminine part of parenting, such as social skills, etc. Even now it's not unusual for me to arrive at a function in inappropriate clothing etc.

There are always going to be unavoidable cases like mine where a mother or father are missing, but it's just plain wrong to put a child into a family without the male/female balance.

We eradicated killer diseases like smallpox from our planet and came very near to getting rid of perhaps the cruellest of all: polio...and religious nutters stopped it!

Sheep are capable of conceiving and arguing abstract concepts??

Yes

If that's the case we're related to stud rams.

It has only become, in recent times, safe to declare that you are an atheist. Even in my time in the workforce , saying this might have cost you a job or a promotion. This could cost you many thousands of dollars.But I have never actually met a true believer... does such a person really exist? There are plenty of untrue believers, they fill jobs like at religious schools. But true ones? Well I would like to meet one.

If reality gives no comfort, invent a belief system based on a non-existent entity because it makes you feel comfortable to think that there is more to life than life. Who doesn't want an eternal daddy to look after us?Next, try to get everyone around - especially kids, they're more impressionable - to to believe the same thing. There's safety in numbers and you can get constant reinforcement of your belief system.

 

Build monuments and churches. Print books and pamphlets. They will make everything more real.

 

Use twisted logic to convince and reinforce wherever possible. There must be a god because monkeys can't make watches by shaking the parts around in a bag.

 

Above all - assume and loudly proclaim, that because you believe in something intangible and implausible, so does everyone else. Look, I have a nose and so do you. Therefore, we are the same and you obviously believe in something too.

 

If you try hard enough, you can even deduce (using twisted logic) that not believing in something is actually a form of belief.

 

I love it!

"Observable" does not necessarily mean that something is directly observed by the human eye, for example many of the recently discovered planets around stars cannot be directly observed but through an understanding of gravity astrophysicist can deduce that there must be a certain amount of mass because of the wobble it imparts to the star. There are many processes that we can not directly observe but we can observe the effect and make future predictions.

"Measurable" - Radio carbon dating??????? - we understand the process by which carbon 14 decays and the speed at which it decays. We know the rate at which sediments are laid down and we know that certain fossils are found in certain sedimentary layers. The established paleontological history is not controversial amongst scientists, although it is perhaps amongst those who feel that if they could cast doubt on it , then suddenly people would become believers.

 

Has anyone seen god? anyone? any measurements?

Handling bodily functions and sex is not religions strong point. Nev

It's a free world; amuse away!

Another one with no idea.

What I can't understand is how the religious have to have church services andglorify God when there has been a disaster. When Christchurch had the earthquake and the cathedral was knocked down, nearly the first thing done was to have a church service to get over it. I would have thought that an earthquake was a work of God and he, it whatever should be the last person, thing to glorify and pray to.The old saying that you can fool some of the people all of the time or all of the people some of the time. Religion falls in the former category.

PPPPast

 

Parlimentarians'

 

Perks

Only sometimes, in evidence like the popemobile, could you see their lack of belief shining through.I'm not saying that they are honest in their lack of belief, gosh its not something they would even think about, but when offered bulletproof glass instead of relying on the Archangel Gabriel for protection, they sometimes choose the bulletproof glass. ( not the current pope apparently)[/quote

 

I haven't seen it written anywhere in the ancient texts that God will protect you if you don't take due care, so why wouldn't a cautious pope use bullet proof glass?

You're no doubt right Turbs, but have there been any independent studies done?

Has there ever been an independent costing of the impact of sacking experienced public servants and replacing them with private consultants? Methinks neither side of politics would like the results.

Gnarly, I have just noticed that you don't believe in global warming. Does that mean you will take me up on my bet?Here's my bet: Every day the temperature is UNDER the long-term average, I will donate $10 to a charity of your choice, which could even be Gnu retirement. Every day it is OVER the long term average you will donate $9.50 to this site. We total the results after a year and the loser forks out the difference.

 

If, as you say you believe, there is no global warming, you will on average gain 50 cents every other day and get $182 from me for the year.

 

Every time I offer this bet, the previously hairy-chested warming denier has turned into a wimp and said things like how the measurements are dishonest.

 

I'm hoping you are made out of sterner stuff. And I reckon you would have done well this last month for Adelaide... gosh it's been cold.

That pretty much sums up atheist view; and underlines the level of knowledge of atheists.

A presumption that the room has a light switch and/or electricity.

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And it's at that critical point where the scientists realise they should not have skipped the first year classes which explained what a light switch was.