Good link (Danish Windpower), robomatic. I don't have time to look it over thoroughly now, but I will later. On the 32%, I was quoting the figure given by "Svend Auken, Deputy Speaker of Danish Parliament, leader of the opposition, and former Danish Minister for Energy and the Environment"on the program I listened to. Here, incidentally, is a link to the program: CLICKY.

"Cogeneration." That was the word Svend Auken used.

On the electric car ("up to" 500 miles/charge), that was one of the cars that Alan Alda drove, in Germany, I think. It was a fairly small car, about the size of a Toyota Corolla or Prius. The power pack was on a tray under the floorboards. The plan was that you could either charge the batteries yourself (plug it in) or, if you were on a long trip, stop at a service station and swap your exhausted tray for a fresh one. Existing service stations could supply such, once enough cars are out and around. I'm no electrical or automotive engineer, so all I have to go on is what they said on the program.

Incidentally (same program with Alan Alda), Iceland runs a lot of cars on hydrogen. With lots of geothermal power available, they generate the hydrogen right at the service stations.

The science fiction writer who made the comment about burning oil was Jerry Pournelle (who is quite conservative politically, by the way, but apparently disenchanted with the current administration, now refers to himself as a "paleo-conservative."). He said it directly to me, but he may have put it in one of his non-fiction articles later on. I knew him in the Sixties. We used to sit in Seattle's infamous Blue Moon Tavern, wet our noses, and argue politics and such. At the time, I didn't know he was even interested in writing, and I didn't find out until a few years after he and his wife left for California. I saw his stories starting to appear in Analog and his books on drugstore paperback racks. Jerry was an exasperating but highly enlightening debating partner; he could bury you in facts and figures, and he was generally right. What we often wound up quibbling about was the interpretation of those facts and figures. He tended to think in grand concepts. It's no wonder he turned his hand to science fiction. Last saw him in 1985 when he and Larry Niven were here on a book-signing tour (Footfall). Incidentally, after the book signing, no less an SF writer than Frank Herbert dropped into the bookstore, and he took Jerry, Larry, and my wife Barbara and me out to dinner at Ivar's Salmon House. That was one helluva memorable evening. Frank Herbert died shortly thereafter.

But I digress. . . .

The power plant in the desert idea was explained to me over coffee in a pizza joint by a guitar student of mine named Doug Johnson. He was a mathematician. He was thinking mostly of supplying power to a permanent moon base, but said the same thing would work here on earth, especially in the southwest. Direct sunlight during the days, cold nights.

Don Firth