Tunneling for a Pumped Storage Power Plant

Thank you, John. Whenever I made wilda$$guesses, I figured the trip from Zurich to Geneva (one of my faves) was in the range of a few hundred CHF. It appears I wasn’t too far off. Swiss train travel is truly a marvel. I looked into touring the newest control center in Olten & found it was not possible. I bet it would put even ATC centers in the US to shame.

Is anything in California without controversy?

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The Ludington Pumped Storage Facility in Michigan was the largest in the world when it was built. It was also not without controversy, concern about fish deaths and sand dunes iirc, while it was being built

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Now outdone by China:

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Just one really good example of many over the last 50 years

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Another issue is the revolving door civil dis-service:

Dismantling the aristocracy, the West has lost long-reaching pragmatic accountability - and instead got an ivory tower theocracy. This theocracy might be intelligent, but it’s delusional - and there’s no closed accountability loop where those propagating nonsense get enough downside to stop.

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The old aristocracy was the very definition of “linked to the land”. They were part of the ruling class because they owned land and the physical assets on & under it. Their personal interests to some extent corresponded to the interests of the ordinary people.

Today’s Ruling Class has no such link to the country which they control - the country in which us peons live and on which we depend. This is yet another of the baleful effects of financialization.

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