"You cannot oppose them all"

[phantom power]

Speaking unofficially, he told BBC News that this meant that Britain could face blackouts in 2016 - when coal and nuclear stations are phased out.

"There is a worry that in 2016 there might not be enough electricity. My guess is that what the market might do is fix that problem by making more gas power stations, which isn't the direction we want to be going in," he said.

"So we really should be upping the build rate of the alternatives as soon as possible."

Professor MacKay blamed the public for opposing wind farms, nuclear power, and energy imports, whilst demanding an unchanged lifestyle.

You cannot oppose them all, he said, and hope to have a viable policy on energy and climate change.

"We've got to stop saying no to these things and understand that we do have a serious building project on our hands," he said.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8249540.stm

[joshcryer]

1. I saw a documentary that claimed a 10 km^2 tidal farm off of west UK could power the whole UK.

Tidal isn't mentioned in this article, but I thought it was being considered.

Natural gas is no "solution" to "unclean energy." What makes anyone think it is, I just don't know what to say. Have to hand it to natural gas people, if they did anything, they succeeded in making its image look clean.

[phantom power]

2. One thing I know for sure -- everybody continues to burn carbon by default.

[pscot]

3. All bullshit aside

That is the essential point.

[excess_3]

7. environmentalists are not offering an alternative

one solution would be for greenies to
go out and simply build an
alternative electric power plant, .

don't count on that happening as
they will never lift a finger
or spend a penny of their
own money toward that effort

[kristopher]

9. That statement reeks of ignorance about the nature of the problem.

And how the solution will unfold.

[OKIsItJustMe]

4. Tidal power is still in its developmental stages

In the meantime, wind, solar and geothermal work well enough, right now.

[TheWraith]

5. Those statistics are usually misleading.

It's like the claim that a "hundred miles square" solar farm would power the entire US. People envision a hundred square miles, when even that statistic (which underestimates by at least 4x) means a square a hundred miles on a side.

In this case, capturing all the wave energy in a ten square kilometer area might or might not meet the UK's power demands, but actually capturing that energy is a lot easier said than done. We haven't figured out even as efficient a means to capture wave energy as we have with wind.

[NNadir]

6. "Could" talk is generally useless, and has been useless for the last 50 years.

It is nothing more than avoiding reality.

[Massacure]

8. Your post reminds me of a marketing class I took in high school

One of things we spent some time on is what the teacher referred to as "Weasel Words". Words like "could" or phrases like "up to" are used to leave open a backdoor for marketers when their claims don't materialize for the average Joe.

[kristopher]

10. Weasel words for who?

This isn't a marketing issue. This is a technological potential issue. The fact is renewable CAN deliver the energy. The qualifier is added because we have to rely on a political process dominated by a triumvirate of petroleum/coal/nuclear special interests that have done and continue to do everything possible to ensure that the technological potential of renewables never threatens their stranglehold on the world's energy supply.

[OKIsItJustMe]

11. In the immortal words of Groucho Marx

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DBI5mC0h-jg