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Hydroelectricity

 

Hydro-electricity is presently the largest contributor to renewable energy worldwide; in Australia and particularly in NSW.

 

Hydro-electricity also is more desirable than wind generation because of a higher capacity factor and ability to produce power on demand.

 

But hydro-electricity is resource constrained as it is difficult to build new dams in the developed countries that are presently heavy fossil fuel consumers.

Dams flood private property and/or National parks and have many self-interested and environmentally concerned opponents.  Hydro-electric schemes interfere with natural river flows and related wildlife, particularly when they involve extensive inundation.  It has become politically very difficult to construct new dams in Australia, even when the potential energy resource is significant. 

Nevertheless in developing countries like China, India and Vietnam there are large hydro-electricity resources that remain unexploited.

 

 

 

 

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Travel

Russia

 

 

In June 2013 we visited Russia.  Before that we had a couple of weeks in the UK while our frequent travel companions Craig and Sonia, together with Sonia's two Russian speaking cousins and their partners and two other couples, travelled from Beijing by the trans-Siberian railway.  We all met up in Moscow and a day later joined our cruise ship.  The tour provided another three guided days in Moscow before setting off for a cruise along the Volga-Baltic Waterway to St Petersburg; through some 19 locks and across some very impressive lakes.

Read more: Russia

Fiction, Recollections & News

Dune: Part Two

Back in 2021 I went to see the first installment of ‘DUNE’ and was slightly 'put out' to discover that it ended half way through the (first) book.

It was the second big-screen attempt to make a movie of the book, if you don’t count the first ‘Star Wars’, that borrows shamelessly from Frank Herbert’s Si-Fi classic, and I thought it a lot better.

Now the long-awaited second part has been released.

 

Directed by Denis Villeneuve
Screenplay by Denis Villeneuve, Jon Spaihts
Based on Dune by Frank Herbert
Starring Timothée Chalamet, Zendaya, Rebecca Ferguson, Josh Brolin, Austin Butler' Florence Pugh, Dave Bautista
Christopher Walken, Léa Seydoux, Souheila Yacoub, Stellan Skarsgård, Charlotte Rampling, Javier Bardem
Cinematography Greig Fraser, Edited by Joe Walker
Music by Hans Zimmer
Running time 165 minutes

 

 

Read more: Dune: Part Two

Opinions and Philosophy

World Population – again and again

 

 

David Attenborough hit the headlines yet again in 15 May 2009 with an opinion piece in New Scientist. This is a quotation:

 

‘He has become a patron of the Optimum Population Trust, a think tank on population growth and environment with a scary website showing the global population as it grows. "For the past 20 years I've never had any doubt that the source of the Earth's ills is overpopulation. I can't go on saying this sort of thing and then fail to put my head above the parapet."

 

There are nearly three times as many people on the planet as when Attenborough started making television programmes in the 1950s - a fact that has convinced him that if we don't find a solution to our population problems, nature will:
"Other horrible factors will come along and fix it, like mass starvation."

 

Bob Hawke said something similar on the program Elders with Andrew Denton:

 

Read more: World Population – again and again

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