Forrest didn't watch very much TV these days, being so busy like what he was, plotting coups, analysing failed coups in other places, shining new light on the history leading up to the 'old' Pearl Harbour, looking at the 'New Pearl Harbor' in the light of older events, and doing carbon sequestration consultancy. It was just as well his absolutely capital Wind Farms of the Dispossessed kept him in clover, running sort of automatically like they mostly did, for there was so little time and so much to do.

Last night Forrest had seen an ad, one that would probably make Belly, and many others, in the light of the recent conduct of oil companies in the land of Oz, very angry indeed.

The ad was on behalf of Chevron Oil. It was touting how that corporation was already making enough electricity to power, was it 7,000 homes, or the needs of 7 million people? A lot anyway, but the important thing was that they were claiming to be doing it from a geothermal heat source! The implication was that it was hot dry rock geothermal energy.

A trans-national oil corporation in electricity supply in Gert-by-Sea. Just what we all need!

You really have to give it to the new Iemma and his team of ever so willing 'game lifters', one little touch from the Rudder and they are right back on course for a privatising sell-out of NSW electricity distribution that would open the floodgates to the likes of Chevron and their oily associates to soak the Ozzians to the hilt for electricity. At least the 'game lifters' weren't selling the NSW public out to just anybody, they'd picked the internationally most rapacious group of corporates to do it for. Unbebloodylievable!

"Better have another look in my WHIRLYGIG future-viewer", thought Forrest in disgust, "and try to see some way of speeding up the quite constitutional coup in Oz". Forrest knew he didn't need to fly any planes into buildings to effect this coup. Just adhere to old Sun Tzu.

Yesterday's little display preferences glitch on OLO seemed to have resolved itself. The rain from the Brisbane storm that had got into the OLO servers and prevented at least one user from being able to select 'display 20 topics, one quarter back' and then order this list by 'last post', must have dried up. Forrest had actually been thinking earlier that the site might have been hacked by the Federal Thought Police!

Forrest could see the reasoning of the Federal Thought Police, faced as they were by the problem of OLO and the unrestrained opinions of the opinionators. Something had to be done, because there were just so many opinionators, and sites like OLO had so enabled them that they were getting to be a regular cacophony of disbelief. (Why, there was even an OLO user named 'cacofonix', a dreadful unbeliever if ever there was one.) The voices of the Media Moguls and their parliamentary factota were getting to be drowned out, not only by criticism, but worse, by laughter. Make it hard for users to get to these old topics and the laughter might abate, the Thought Police thoughtfully thought. It would all be as if it had never been, all that terrible laughter and public disbelief.

The pride of the Factota had undoubtedly been hurt, so some of them had begun to lash out at anything that moved, so to speak. The internet moved. "Let's censor the internet!" shouted a factotum called Steven, his face fairly shining with righteousness and conviction as the rest of the congregation of the Factota looked upon him in wonder. "Let's create gaps in the internet through which these political pornographers, these peddlers of public ridicule that so offend our Dignity, can fall", Steven implored.

His own little clique responded with dutiful but hushed 'Yes, Ministers'.

Censorship!

On the periphery of the claque, some who were not of Steven's clique irreverently speculated as to the prospects of there soon being a stoning. One called Malcolm got ready to hold some coats.

Power without pride!

Forrest was still on topic.

For another rant about NSW politics, read "Jeff Kennett: NSW harmed by 'politically criminal' culture" by Rick Wallace, at http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,24667522-2702,00.html

The article is principally about Kennett, but Keating also gets a brief mention. These days the Murdoch media regularly attempts to resurrect yesterday's failed and discredited politicians as supposed 'elder statesmen' in order to lend weight to its own sociopathic world view.

Kennett wants NSW to adopt a five point plan to supposedly restore the health of NSW's economy.

According to the report:

"Mr Kennett said whoever spearheads a revival in NSW must be prepared to face protests in the street while they cleanse the state of rorts, waste, incompetence and a 'politically criminal' culture."

In other words, carry out economic shock treatment in the interests of the NSW corporate sector for which it had never obtained any electoral mandate in the face of popular grass roots protests.

Of course, the fact that the kind of 'reforms' that Kennett would introduce are typically opposed by the order of 79% or more of the NSW public as in the case of electricity privatisation is ignored.

The Australian has shown on this and on almost innumerable other occasions is little more than a propaganda outlet for Rupert Murdoch and his corporate mates.

Another 'elder statesman', of course, is former NSW Treasurer Michael Costa whose rants also regularly feature in The Australian these days.

The Australian's facade of superficially decent reporting on a few token issues and its championing of some fashionable 'bleeding heart' left-liberal causes doesn't alter this underlying reality.

It had been interesting to learn that Desertec Australia (http://www.desertec-australia.org/ ) also opposed the sale of NSW electricity generation and distribution assets. See this page on their rather extensive site: http://www.desertec-australia.org/content/nsw.html It was a bit of a pity that Desertec had not been a bit more specific as to the reasons it opposed the sale of NSW electricity assets, but at least it was encouraging seeing its opposition to a sell-out right up front.

Forrest liked the way that Desertec Australia also seemed to look on the bright side of life. He wondered whether they did it always. You could learn a little more about Desertec here: http://www.desertec-australia.org/content/about-desertec.html

What was interesting was what Desertec did NOT say in relation to Hunter region renewable resources. No mention was made of the development of cost-effective solar pondage in conjunction with reduced-pressure seawater desalination brine disposal. The seawater desalination is envisaged as being powered by the waste heat from the existing coal-fired power stations, which are seen as remaining in operation for quite some time yet before renewables come on stream in preponderant measure.

Solar pondage, which collected solar radiation in a dense layer of brine insulated by a blanket of fresh clear water kept separate from the brine by a membrane, was not only cost-effective, but was also both capable of overcoming the intermittency of solar energy availability and was in large measure of relatively low-technology construction requirement in nature.

Forrest saw power generation from solar pondage heat storage as being a very logical augmentation or enhancement of any hot dry rock geothermal power that may come to be undertaken in the Hunter region, but one that would stand on its own feet even if HDR sourced heat did not take off in the region. Much the same thing was already being done using hot artesian water at Birdsville in SW Queensland.

Low technology renewable energy collection and storage could be built and funded by Australians, for Australians.

FG wrote, "Solar pondage, which collected solar radiation in a dense layer of brine insulated by a blanket of fresh clear water kept separate from the brine by a membrane, was not only cost-effective, but was also both capable of overcoming the intermittency of solar energy availability and was in large measure of relatively low-technology construction requirement in nature."

Every technology, whether alternative or mainstream, has an ecological cost.

The principle ecological cost in regard to solar pondage would seem to be acquiring sufficient land close enough both to a source of salt water and to the human population who would consume the fresh water.

Has anyone worked out how much land would be necessary to produce sufficient water for, say the additional 1,000,000 that the government of the 'smart state' actually wants to encourage to move to Queensland by 2026?

If we kept strictly to the the austere target of consumption of 140 litres per day per person under water restrictions, not take into account the needs of industry and utlities which provide services such as electricity, we would need 140,000,000 litres or 140 gigalitres per day.

How much land would be required by solar pondage to fully meet that additional demand, or even just to significantly contribute to meeting that additional demand?

Would the be enough suitable land in SEQ?

By all means we should examine all the available technologies, but the real solution to this problem must lie in not creating the need to use such artificial means of obtaining fresh water in the first place, and that means not needlessly encouraging population growth in order to line the pockets of land speculators, property developers and bankers at everyone else's expense.

daggett,

It appears I have not described clearly enough that part of the 'bundled' proposals for ongoing Hunter region NSW government power generation relating to the desalination of seawater. As a consequence you have appeared to think that the production of the desalinated fresh supply capable of arising therefrom is related to the land area available for solar pondage. This is not so.

The requirement for solar pondage space only relates to the desalination of seawater inasmuch as it provides an opportunity for the concentrated brine produced in the desalination process, one that uses the waste heat at the location of an existing coal-fired power station, to become a valuable product in its own right, rather than a disposal problem associated with desalination.

The concentrated brine by-product is envisaged as being piped to sites suitable for the construction of solar ponds. The brine becomes the collection and storage medium for solar radiation. It is permanently held as it is progressively accumulated over the remaining operational life of the coal-fired station. It is never used up.

The overlying insulating blanket water in the pondage is subject to being 'used up', however, due to evaporation, and consequently requires replenishment. It does not strictly need to be fresh, simply clear and less dense than the collecting layer of brine. It could be clean seawater.

Whilst in the NSW setting some of the power stations are adjacent to a source of seawater, in SE Queensland this is not so. This very scenario in regard to using waste heat from coal-fired stations to produce desalinated seawater for SE Queensland was the subject of a discussion with Peter Ravenscroft on the 'What is a bone-dry city worth?' comments thread, see: http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=5616#75523 as a good place to start.

In the NSW context proximity of a source of seawater, available waste heat, and a reticulated, short supplied water demand already exists, thus meeting your stated requirements. Pipeline is the cheapest transport for brine, which transport is usually the greatest cost in solar pondage creation.