japie said...Elcoco, good that you have an opinion but think this through.
The technology for green renewable power is already there and has been for years. This country is sitting on a mine of energy that is so vast and so easily accessible that the mind boggles.
http://www.geodynamics.com.au/irm/content/gdyanimforweb/GDY_AnimV03_webversion.htmlI watched a program on this on the ABC back in the early nineties. How simple is it, drill two holes, inject water under pressure and harvest free energy, forever, no emmissions.
There has to be a reason that it still has not been done and the only one I can think of is that it is not in the interests of the people who hold the purse strings.Imagine if you could get it off the ground then! With free energy we would control the worlds steel markets, smelters at the mine sites.
That would make the coal loader at Newcastle obsolete. They might stop dredging the river and killing the prawns
Dream on
"There has to be a reason that it still has not been done and the only one I can think of is that it is not in the interests of the people who hold the purse strings."
That's right, but probably not for the reason you think.
The reason that it is not being used is because there are serious doubts on it's long term viability.
The problem is that the long term energy output from the system is determined by the thermal conductivity of the earth into which the water is forced.
That is, although when you first drill the hole and squirt water down it, lots of steam comes out, once the rock is cooled, the amount of energy available is hugely diminished and it is recharged at a very low rate because earth and rock is a very effective insulator. That's why caves maintain a constant temperature.
The system can work under rare conditions where there is magma close to the surface and the rock is sufficiently porous to allow the water to permeate down close to the molten rock where there is a constant high rate of heat transfer. There are a few places where this occurs naturally but it's certainly not common.
I don't think this is going to save the planet.
The only long term solution is some form of nuclear fusion.
I would be happy to pay a carbon tax, a petrol tax, any tax, provided the entire amount was spent on research into this.
If it's just going to be recycled back into the community to compensate us for paying the tax then the whole exercise is pointless and nothing more than a money go round. All that does is make the people who run the 'money go round' very rich.
