What I claim in my article is that we need to plan electricity supply 
around human need, which should be uncontroversial. I'm all in favour 
of investigating ways of storing electricity, but right now they are 
not practical on a large scale. 

Banker wrote:
JG: Please, call me communist.
>
>...""luddite" is, and always has been, the idiotic put-down"
>What's idiotic is wanting to get rid of current forms of
>electricity provision without putting anything credible
>in its(sic) place....
      Something that nobody in the world (except--perhaps--for
the late Pol Pot) has ever proposed.

JG: All comes down to how we understand 'credible'.
>
>"Electricity can be stored"
>...I think you're confusing electricity with energy.  Not
>even the most utopian environmentalists are suggesting
>that we can store electricity for general use. Hence the
>Californian shortage...

Only a banker could say that.  Everyone else knows there was
and is no "shortage"--just market manipulation by the banker-controlled
energy conglomerates (Enron et.al.) and politicians (Davis et. al.)

JG: Ah yes, if only I controlled more energy conglomerates. Then I 
could cut everyone's energy off to make more money?!  But seriously, 
there are real supply issues in California, not least because of 
limited gas transmission capacity.

>...Electricity...can be used to make hydrogen to be burned
>in fuel cells...

What ignorance!  
JG: That's what I like about you Shane - you don't mince your words.

>"A tiny fraction of our planet's aeolian resources would
>be sufficient"
>...Animal farts would provide a lot of energy too.  But at
>present we don't have the ability to harness either
>efficiently...

Wind farms right now are efficiently producing substantial
amounts of electricity in many European countries--including the UK.

JG: Not very efficiently, as it happens. And more to the point, 
electricity storage is an issue here too, because wind is erratic. If 
an electricity grid relies too much on wind power then supply cannot be 
guaranteed when wind is low or when demand peaks.  This paper explains 
some of the difficulties well:
http://www.ifr.ing.tu-bs.de/forschung/downloads/papers/Sustainable_Energy_Supply.pdf

--James

James 'the ignorant banker' Greenstein