If I read this right, then we'll actually be unaffected on the whole. But a bit warmer...
Look, I'm all for bringing attention to bear on the fate of the world, and I'm all for everyone getting on that bandwagon and making people more aware of what's going on. What really shits me is when otherwise trustworthy, respected, and august bodies start dribbling crap and confusing people.
I don't care WHERE you live, drought and flooding are mutually exclusive. Sorry.
Australia may experience flooding in some regions and drought in others, that I can accept. We're a big country, with room for wide variation. But none of that is made clear by that article, it's just badly written and doesn't convey what may happen.
Temperatures rising means more energy in the weather systems. And there's no use saying Australia will be affected as though only Australia will be affected, the entire world is a system that constantly tries to balance itself out, and adding more energy to the system means everywhere will experience wilder weather and more extremes.
It's just that the whole article sounds like an exercise in panic-mongering, which is not as good as an exercise in gradual and coherent education would be.
Folks, batten down the hatches, because there is definitely going to be an interesting ride weatherwise in the next few years. But please don't go running around the streets bellowing "Fire! Flood! Drought! Famine! Doom and gloom!" because that will not help.
Showing posts with label earthfriendly. Show all posts
Showing posts with label earthfriendly. Show all posts
05 October, 2007
03 October, 2007
Bottler Of A Footprint
One last thought, this time about bottled water. I mentioned the sensationalist thing about using the most water per household (in indirect ways) of any country in the world, yesterday. Today, quite coincidentally, on TV was something that really DOES deserve headlines - bottled water.
They mentioned another footprint, the "carbon footprint" and I'll add two more, the "rubbish footprint" and the "greenhouse footprint." I'll readily admit, I made those two up on the spot, but they should all be forming part of our ecological awareness.
Do you know how much water/energy/material goes into making the bottles, filtering the water, and filling those bottles? Distributing them by the truckload? Displaying them in outlets and keeping them cold for you? And then, do you recycle the bottle or throw it in with the general rubbish? Are you aware how much water/energy/pollution is needed to recycle the plastic? Or that some so-called recycling plants actually just throw them into the landfill anyway?
I'll set you a thought challenge - it's not a very responsible challenge, but it should point out something to you. Collect all your rubbish for a week - including the fine plastic garbage bags - and pile it up on a fireproof surface in or around your home. Now seriously consider setting fire to it. Would you like that amount of smoke and smell and toxic fumes in your place?
I'm betting you wouldn't - yet oxidising and breaking down that rubbish in a landfill or waste disposal plant will release exactly the same amount of pollution to the ecosystem. Not only that, but between five and twenty times that much toxicity has already been released by the manufacture of those goods - that the rubbish is now the sad remnant of.
Think about that the next time you buy plastic bottles of milk, tins of foods laced with preservatives, and your week's worth of loaves of bread from a factory outlet in plastic sleeves, and carry it all proudly home in six plastic shopping bags driving your six cylinder 3.8 litre touring class vehicle. THAT'S where you'll start to make a difference!
They mentioned another footprint, the "carbon footprint" and I'll add two more, the "rubbish footprint" and the "greenhouse footprint." I'll readily admit, I made those two up on the spot, but they should all be forming part of our ecological awareness.
Do you know how much water/energy/material goes into making the bottles, filtering the water, and filling those bottles? Distributing them by the truckload? Displaying them in outlets and keeping them cold for you? And then, do you recycle the bottle or throw it in with the general rubbish? Are you aware how much water/energy/pollution is needed to recycle the plastic? Or that some so-called recycling plants actually just throw them into the landfill anyway?
I'll set you a thought challenge - it's not a very responsible challenge, but it should point out something to you. Collect all your rubbish for a week - including the fine plastic garbage bags - and pile it up on a fireproof surface in or around your home. Now seriously consider setting fire to it. Would you like that amount of smoke and smell and toxic fumes in your place?
I'm betting you wouldn't - yet oxidising and breaking down that rubbish in a landfill or waste disposal plant will release exactly the same amount of pollution to the ecosystem. Not only that, but between five and twenty times that much toxicity has already been released by the manufacture of those goods - that the rubbish is now the sad remnant of.
Think about that the next time you buy plastic bottles of milk, tins of foods laced with preservatives, and your week's worth of loaves of bread from a factory outlet in plastic sleeves, and carry it all proudly home in six plastic shopping bags driving your six cylinder 3.8 litre touring class vehicle. THAT'S where you'll start to make a difference!
02 October, 2007
Water Wail
We're bad at water conservation, if this study is anything to go by. I've had this article on the back burner for a while, until inspiration should hit me - and it finally has.
The thing here is, the hidden water costs are in things like making the fertiliser to produce the grapes or the feed for the beef, in processing those products, and then delivering them to us. But these things recycle. Eventually, all that water circulates back.
The trick for us is not to take it out faster than it can trickle back into the system. That, and the fact that a good percentage of that water that fell on the grapes or the feed for the stock, would have fallen anyway, and produced no benefit to us at all, had we not fortuitiously had a farm underneath it...
Once you realise that, the water footprint becomes a bit less of a scandal and a bit more of a "what can we do to reduce it?"
It's another example of blowing something up out of proportion. Yes a decent steak may have cost 100 litres of water to produce - but if you didn't create the demand for it by eating it, I estimate that 75 litres of that water would still have gone around the cycle anyway. So whoopee.
Those people who have a smaller water footprint are also invariably living in poverty and squalor. Don't forget that. They have no choice but to forego that steak. And if you counted how much water per person went through the aquifers and the hydrological cycle, I'm sure you'd find that this figure depends on the rainfall and water flows for the region, not the profligate lifestyles of the population.
I wonder how much of a headline that would make? "Australia has a lower population density than almost anywhere else in the world" sounds a lot less exciting that saying "AUSTRALIANS ARE THE WORST WATER WASTERS IN THE WOOOOOOOORLD!"
Sensationalising something doesn't make you an environmental crusader, just a tosser.
The thing here is, the hidden water costs are in things like making the fertiliser to produce the grapes or the feed for the beef, in processing those products, and then delivering them to us. But these things recycle. Eventually, all that water circulates back.
The trick for us is not to take it out faster than it can trickle back into the system. That, and the fact that a good percentage of that water that fell on the grapes or the feed for the stock, would have fallen anyway, and produced no benefit to us at all, had we not fortuitiously had a farm underneath it...
Once you realise that, the water footprint becomes a bit less of a scandal and a bit more of a "what can we do to reduce it?"
It's another example of blowing something up out of proportion. Yes a decent steak may have cost 100 litres of water to produce - but if you didn't create the demand for it by eating it, I estimate that 75 litres of that water would still have gone around the cycle anyway. So whoopee.
Those people who have a smaller water footprint are also invariably living in poverty and squalor. Don't forget that. They have no choice but to forego that steak. And if you counted how much water per person went through the aquifers and the hydrological cycle, I'm sure you'd find that this figure depends on the rainfall and water flows for the region, not the profligate lifestyles of the population.
I wonder how much of a headline that would make? "Australia has a lower population density than almost anywhere else in the world" sounds a lot less exciting that saying "AUSTRALIANS ARE THE WORST WATER WASTERS IN THE WOOOOOOOORLD!"
Sensationalising something doesn't make you an environmental crusader, just a tosser.
27 September, 2007
Environmental IDIOTS Block - Wind Power?
Bad words! No <g> rating! You have been warned!
Stories like this one make me so ashamed to be known as "environmentally conscientious."
Their concerns that "400-foot turbines would loom over an adjacent wilderness area" is such a load of shit that I am just about struck speechless.
Really, when people act like total assholes like this I depair, and I think maybe we deserve to go extinct. Would they prefer a nice tail of nuclear fallout from another melted-down power plant "looming over" their precious effing wilderness area?
How about all the other wilderness areas in the world, they should all get placed under pollution stress because these dickheads are worried about one wilderness area being "loomed over?"
Pack of NIMBY assholes, I hope someone shits in your gardens and buries you and your fucking dog in oil sludge and soot and greenhouse wastes!
And to my regular readers, I sincerely apologise - but I hope that just ONE of these people reads this article and gets their head out from up their arse long enough to realise what a pack of pettyfogging shitheads they look like to the rest of the world...
24 September, 2007
Get More From Your Solar Array!
I've just posted an article to the Zencookbook Dot Com site which is hopefully the first of many, this one concerns an improvement that can be made to most solar array installations to produce a bit more output from both new or existing installations. I've also asked for someone to sponsor me with this and other experiments, so if you can help please contact me.
I've taken the step of just putting the whole idea online because right now, anything that gets more energy out of existing technology and thereby makes it cheaper to own, is desperately needed, and I'd rather see this idea in use than argue and fight with (so far) dozens of stupid company people who should know better but are all too tight-arsed to reach in their pocket and help develop an idea...
So it's public domain for non-commercial use, and if you find it useful maybe you can sponsor me or donate something I can use for further development.
I've taken the step of just putting the whole idea online because right now, anything that gets more energy out of existing technology and thereby makes it cheaper to own, is desperately needed, and I'd rather see this idea in use than argue and fight with (so far) dozens of stupid company people who should know better but are all too tight-arsed to reach in their pocket and help develop an idea...
So it's public domain for non-commercial use, and if you find it useful maybe you can sponsor me or donate something I can use for further development.
09 September, 2007
Jatropha. New fuel crop or regrettable mistake?
Keep an eye on jatropha - if this is half as good as they say, I'd say we'd be fools not to look into places where it can be planted. A lot of our farmers here in Western Australia in the last few years have discovered how much the drought can suck.
I'm not advocating turning a whole property over to jatropha production - again, as for the Mali farmers, food production should not suffer for fuel crop production - but in a drought, a crop that can produce income without needing the guaranteed rainfall might not be a bad idea...
Now for the negatives. Haven't we learned from cane toads and rabbits and tilapia? But apparently the Mali farmers manage to grow it between rows of crops, and that gives hope that it would be controllable. Also, I'm thinking of one other "weed" that I've found a use for.
Growing wild over enormous amounts of the land here are these small yellow melons, which are treated like a weed and which grow pretty much anywhere, unassisted. You can cook them into a pretty flat tasting melon pie, but the real value of them is in the seeds.
See, the seeds are similar to pumpkin seeds, and when dried and roasted, are a snack that seems to be rich in antioxidants and may possibly be an addition to the Body Friendly Zen Cookbook diet. Pumpkin seeds are one suggested food that helps our bodies to reverse cancer, but the seeds have tough outer shells and that means either nasty chewy splintery bits when roasted, or a lot of hard work hulling the seeds before roasting.
The pigmelon seeds have thinner outer coverings. Also, with pumpkins, you need to get the seeds when pumpkin is being processed, or grow pumpkins especially for seed. These pigmelons are pretty much good for nothing else but their seeds, except that the pulp and stems and leaves would make a good return to the soil of organic matter - since you're extracting the seeds, you can be pretty sure the plant won't get away under your crop because there's no seeds to grow from.
So it makes sense to me to grow some of the things that don't need precise rainfall and pH and NPK ratios, during the worst years of drought, and revert to mostly food crops and a bit of "insurance cropping" during the better years. And if demand for these products grows, who knows we may open up a whole new belt for more eco-sensitive farming.
I'm not advocating turning a whole property over to jatropha production - again, as for the Mali farmers, food production should not suffer for fuel crop production - but in a drought, a crop that can produce income without needing the guaranteed rainfall might not be a bad idea...
Now for the negatives. Haven't we learned from cane toads and rabbits and tilapia? But apparently the Mali farmers manage to grow it between rows of crops, and that gives hope that it would be controllable. Also, I'm thinking of one other "weed" that I've found a use for.
Growing wild over enormous amounts of the land here are these small yellow melons, which are treated like a weed and which grow pretty much anywhere, unassisted. You can cook them into a pretty flat tasting melon pie, but the real value of them is in the seeds.
See, the seeds are similar to pumpkin seeds, and when dried and roasted, are a snack that seems to be rich in antioxidants and may possibly be an addition to the Body Friendly Zen Cookbook diet. Pumpkin seeds are one suggested food that helps our bodies to reverse cancer, but the seeds have tough outer shells and that means either nasty chewy splintery bits when roasted, or a lot of hard work hulling the seeds before roasting.
The pigmelon seeds have thinner outer coverings. Also, with pumpkins, you need to get the seeds when pumpkin is being processed, or grow pumpkins especially for seed. These pigmelons are pretty much good for nothing else but their seeds, except that the pulp and stems and leaves would make a good return to the soil of organic matter - since you're extracting the seeds, you can be pretty sure the plant won't get away under your crop because there's no seeds to grow from.
So it makes sense to me to grow some of the things that don't need precise rainfall and pH and NPK ratios, during the worst years of drought, and revert to mostly food crops and a bit of "insurance cropping" during the better years. And if demand for these products grows, who knows we may open up a whole new belt for more eco-sensitive farming.
20 August, 2007
Green is the new stupid
No apologies to using a hackneyed paraphrase. This is a hackneyed subject, no matter what. When I first saw the original article appear, my first reaction was "what a pack of eedjits!"
I haven't changed my mind, either. Let's assume, for this scenario, that black backgrounds really do save energy. (They don't on some monitors, by the way.) So how long do you typically spend on the serach engine results page? An hour a day in total? That's under 5% of the day. Assuming that your monitor uses 20% less power on that black screen, that's a saving of 5% of 20% of total power use, or 1% power saving. I could save that by hitting keys slower when working, so that my body doesn't produce as much heat load for the air conditioner to have to move...
Then too, the penetration of LCD monitors means that the backlight stays on at the same level, and switching pixels to black could actually increase power consumption. Also, on some older tube type monitors, clamping the EHT power supply down rather than switching it off can sometimes be used to produce black. Again, those monitors actually use more power when displaying black.
And of course, while the penetration of LCDs is estimated at 75% in the Google blog article, most of those are in a work environment, many home computer users still have tube type monitors. So the work related monitors are at best not going to experience a practical difference displaying black, and besides, most workplaces pretty much discourage keeping a search engine with a black background open instead of a crisp white document, so these will typically spend much less than an hour a day with that page on top, anyway.
And the homes users, they may use a search engine, but only to find new crisp white pages to read and crisp white games to play.
Best way you can save energy with your monitor is to turn it off when not using it.
I haven't changed my mind, either. Let's assume, for this scenario, that black backgrounds really do save energy. (They don't on some monitors, by the way.) So how long do you typically spend on the serach engine results page? An hour a day in total? That's under 5% of the day. Assuming that your monitor uses 20% less power on that black screen, that's a saving of 5% of 20% of total power use, or 1% power saving. I could save that by hitting keys slower when working, so that my body doesn't produce as much heat load for the air conditioner to have to move...
Then too, the penetration of LCD monitors means that the backlight stays on at the same level, and switching pixels to black could actually increase power consumption. Also, on some older tube type monitors, clamping the EHT power supply down rather than switching it off can sometimes be used to produce black. Again, those monitors actually use more power when displaying black.
And of course, while the penetration of LCDs is estimated at 75% in the Google blog article, most of those are in a work environment, many home computer users still have tube type monitors. So the work related monitors are at best not going to experience a practical difference displaying black, and besides, most workplaces pretty much discourage keeping a search engine with a black background open instead of a crisp white document, so these will typically spend much less than an hour a day with that page on top, anyway.
And the homes users, they may use a search engine, but only to find new crisp white pages to read and crisp white games to play.
Best way you can save energy with your monitor is to turn it off when not using it.
03 August, 2007
1918. Hmmm 2018 is not far away.
It killed more people than several world wars, then vanished. The one year outbreak in 1918 - 1919 killed what was initially thought to be 40 million (!!!) to 50 million people but a more recent revision of these numbers says that figure is approximately double what was initially thought. Spanish Flu could very well have been the closest the human race came to a mass extinction event in recorded history. Let me put this into perspective for you. It is now believed that between 80,000,000 and 100,000,000 people lost their lives to that microscopic killer. That's between four and five times the population of Australia...
The Spanish Flu (or "La Grippe" or "Swine Flu" as it was also variously known) was one variant in the dance between predators and prey, and we weren't the predators in that round... That variant is still latent within the structure of today's viruses and can emerge again, and of course there are any number of other variants which could become even more efficient infectors. It produced extreme symptoms that masked their activity and caused the virus to be misdiagnosed by the much lesser medical knowledge of the time, puzzling doctors. One of the killers was the bacterial pneumonic and bronchial illnesses that resulted from the way the virus acted.
And I'm mentioning that because I believe that I've just survived the great great grandchild of that virus. As you may know, here in Western Australia we have had four young lives cut short by the virus and the bacterial infections it engendered, and in Queensland now, another child has lost the fight. And no-one has checked on how many of the older and more infirm have passed on from pneumonic infections this flu season, and how many of those were attributable to this new virus strain. I'm not even a little sure of any of this, because I am not an epidemiologist, but I think it should be investigated by one.
All I have to go on is the fact that I have never had a flu lay me low for over three weeks, almost four weeks in fact. And five children have been killed by a flu. And an unknown number of seniors. It may not be the global pandemic this year that Spanish Flu was back at the start of last century. But it's early days, and certainly the last 20 years have marked an ever increasing virulence...
One last thought: If anyone is a medical person out there, can the blood of person who has fended off a virus be used to produce an antibody that can be grown and used to inoculate those most at risk? Because if so I need to get me to a laboratory.
The Spanish Flu (or "La Grippe" or "Swine Flu" as it was also variously known) was one variant in the dance between predators and prey, and we weren't the predators in that round... That variant is still latent within the structure of today's viruses and can emerge again, and of course there are any number of other variants which could become even more efficient infectors. It produced extreme symptoms that masked their activity and caused the virus to be misdiagnosed by the much lesser medical knowledge of the time, puzzling doctors. One of the killers was the bacterial pneumonic and bronchial illnesses that resulted from the way the virus acted.
And I'm mentioning that because I believe that I've just survived the great great grandchild of that virus. As you may know, here in Western Australia we have had four young lives cut short by the virus and the bacterial infections it engendered, and in Queensland now, another child has lost the fight. And no-one has checked on how many of the older and more infirm have passed on from pneumonic infections this flu season, and how many of those were attributable to this new virus strain. I'm not even a little sure of any of this, because I am not an epidemiologist, but I think it should be investigated by one.
All I have to go on is the fact that I have never had a flu lay me low for over three weeks, almost four weeks in fact. And five children have been killed by a flu. And an unknown number of seniors. It may not be the global pandemic this year that Spanish Flu was back at the start of last century. But it's early days, and certainly the last 20 years have marked an ever increasing virulence...
One last thought: If anyone is a medical person out there, can the blood of person who has fended off a virus be used to produce an antibody that can be grown and used to inoculate those most at risk? Because if so I need to get me to a laboratory.
23 July, 2007
Quick Easy and Cheap Nut Sheller
A quick trip to Instructables and I found that their design can be made a bit cheaper by using nursery plant pots, or three similar shaped pots in three different sizes. I won't add to the designs, it's easy enough to pick up the idea from that and the second article there, and then instead of "expensive fibreglass mold" substitute the words "cheap plastic plant pot" instead... Also see my comment down the page, explains in a bit more detail.
Also note that you can probably use this to crush the shelled nuts if you adjust the spacing closer. In fact if you get two tapers that are not quite identical you could conceivably mill cracked wheat and possibly adapt the idea to a fairly efficient flour mill too...
Also note that you can probably use this to crush the shelled nuts if you adjust the spacing closer. In fact if you get two tapers that are not quite identical you could conceivably mill cracked wheat and possibly adapt the idea to a fairly efficient flour mill too...
04 June, 2007
These Do Grow On Trees!
http://thesecomefromtrees.blogspot.com/ - good message but how about printing up your own? I'm all for conservation and ecological responsibility but I don't see how charging for stickers benefits the environment, whereas each person who wants to campaign printing their own, will spread the activism.
I'll see about some artwork for stickers that doesn't tread all over the copyright above and post it here.
Please remember if you do print your own stickers that the paper you print them on also comes from trees and be sparing with yours. And there are dozens of places where such stickers come in handy other than just paper towel rolls:
I'll see about some artwork for stickers that doesn't tread all over the copyright above and post it here.
Please remember if you do print your own stickers that the paper you print them on also comes from trees and be sparing with yours. And there are dozens of places where such stickers come in handy other than just paper towel rolls:
- Try placing a sticker wherever there's a street stand giving away free advertising papers or real estate sheets, anything people will tend to pick up from boredom.
- Your work's photocopier and the cabinet where the paper is kept.
- Ditto, for the office printer.
That's only a few more places where these stickers would help, you will find more as you go about your daily routine.
Go get 'em!
03 May, 2007
Yahoo Serious Would Be Stoked!
CANBERRA, Australia - Scientists and Australian beer maker Foster's are teaming up to generate clean energy from brewery waste water — by using sugar-consuming bacteria.
The experimental technology was unveiled Wednesday by scientists at Australia's University of Queensland, which was given a $115,000 state government grant to install a microbial fuel cell at a Foster's Group brewery near Brisbane, the capital of Queensland state.
Now here's an energy source that is about as Australian as you can get, as desirable as you can get, and takes care of a bunch of pressing Australian problems.
As we know, our beer is made from beer, we are experiencing a drought, and we are trying to find ways to cut greenhouse gas emissions. The cell mentioned is perfect, if it does all that it claims. It digests the beer making wastes, produces 2000 watts of electricity, and the byproduct is clean water.
If the 2Kw is enough to actually power the device with some left over, that means it can also power the fridge that will hold the beers and cold water - dunno what you'd do with all that cold water though. Ah maybe the dog will appreciate it...
Also - only $115,000? Ah yeah I forgot John Bonsai Howard is serious about this isn't he? Come on Australian Government, put some DECENT money towards clean energy research!
The experimental technology was unveiled Wednesday by scientists at Australia's University of Queensland, which was given a $115,000 state government grant to install a microbial fuel cell at a Foster's Group brewery near Brisbane, the capital of Queensland state.
Now here's an energy source that is about as Australian as you can get, as desirable as you can get, and takes care of a bunch of pressing Australian problems.
As we know, our beer is made from beer, we are experiencing a drought, and we are trying to find ways to cut greenhouse gas emissions. The cell mentioned is perfect, if it does all that it claims. It digests the beer making wastes, produces 2000 watts of electricity, and the byproduct is clean water.
If the 2Kw is enough to actually power the device with some left over, that means it can also power the fridge that will hold the beers and cold water - dunno what you'd do with all that cold water though. Ah maybe the dog will appreciate it...
Also - only $115,000? Ah yeah I forgot John Bonsai Howard is serious about this isn't he? Come on Australian Government, put some DECENT money towards clean energy research!
24 April, 2007
Subsistence Gardens
I have a few things on the go, for the high vege prices expected soon. Let's say - if you could grow some of your own veges with minimum hassle - would you? If so I may have an answer. And as long as you have a balcony or north-facing window, you too could be reducing your food bills.
I'll try and write up these instructions and get them online in the next few weeks, as I am experimenting as I go which always makes for slow going.
At the moment I'm making up a small frame to test how well it goes, and will try and keep it going through this winter as well. (As this should be able to produce vegetables all year around, otherwise we might as well shop at Woolies and pay top dollar for poor produce...)
Yes it will be Zen and no there will be no GroLites - you're welcome but the amount of speculation you'll put yourself up for is not worth the hassle... hehehe...
I'll try and write up these instructions and get them online in the next few weeks, as I am experimenting as I go which always makes for slow going.
At the moment I'm making up a small frame to test how well it goes, and will try and keep it going through this winter as well. (As this should be able to produce vegetables all year around, otherwise we might as well shop at Woolies and pay top dollar for poor produce...)
Yes it will be Zen and no there will be no GroLites - you're welcome but the amount of speculation you'll put yourself up for is not worth the hassle... hehehe...
18 April, 2007
Where The Bloody Hell's Yer Head At?
I love a good solution to a water crisis, I really do. But this isn't it. Look, it was enough of a worry that we are looking at smaller and smaller dam water volumes every year, to the point where we may yet have to forego our great Suburban Icon, the Green Lawn. Politicians and spokespeople for the tourism and hospitality industries quite correctly point out that if we lose the Green City image and acquire a Brown City image, we will lose a significant amount of hospitality-related income. And I agree - that way lies a slow slide into the dustbowl. Less appealing city, less people. Less people, less rates and incomes. Less money, less resources to throw at the water crisis... Repeat until ghost town status is achieved...
So why is Mr Derry's plan not the answer then? After all he's right - the Kimberley has vast reserves of groundwater. Okay then let's examine the alternatives. I have a pretty green bias as most of you will know, and it will show in the following paragraphs.
My favourite plan(s):
Yarragadee aquifer / Collie dam / Desalination.
I recently had occasion to spend an evening at a BBQ with an engineer whop has been involved with establishing whether or not the Yarragadee aquifer would be viable and ecologically sound. His (totally off the record, totally honest - he had no idea I'd blog about it) summary is that the plan calls for 45GL of water to be drawn off the Yarragadee annually, and that this would reduce the amount of overflow from the Yarragadee from somewhere between 200GL and 340GL per annum to 155GL to 295GL - in other words, the aquifer would remain overfull at all times and continue to run off excwess water into the sea.
That kind of makes a hash of all the "ecologically unsound" protests which are being touted as the reason to refuse to do this. Combining this with Mr Derry's plan to blend saltier Collie water would produce a far cheaper source of water for the urban area. That's around 90GL extra water per year, at what turns out ot be the lowest cost, and the lowest impact on the environment. In combination with desalination plant, this can actually make the desal plant idea look good too.
Desal plants.
These are not desirable, not because of direct impact on the environment, but because of the energy bill. Energy bills have to be paid for with greenhouse gas emissions, unless someone can make solar/wind energy do the entire desalination process.
And the local impact? As measured in the fairly enclosed area of Cockburn Sound where our first desal plant has been running at 105% of nameplate capacity (around 155ML per day) for the last two or three months as a shakedown run: The plant returns saline water and the extracted salt back into the sea, and from there it disperses extremely rapidly. The extra salt was undetectable at any point 50m or more from the discharge pipe, that is, within 50m all that extra salt is redistributed by even the feeble currents in the Sound.
So if you combine blended water with desalination, you have three extra sources of water for Perth, the Collie Dam, Yarragadee, and desal water which will ensure that we have a chance of water supply continuing even if some mechanical failure strikes, it will rarely disable all three sources AND the existing dams.
Kimberley Pipeline:
The Kimberley has huge reserves it is true, but the point at which the water is to be taken up, but in reality it has not that much more overflow capacity than the Yarragadee aquifer. The same issues will apply there too - putting them a few thousand kilometres away from Perth doesn't make any difference to that. Yes there may be a few less people to be affected if anything goes wrong, but then where do you draw the line? How many people's votes does it take before you shy away from a plan? Because of course that's what it all boils down to...
But. With that said, we already have a prodigious pipeline carrying water, to Kalgoorlie. We know the technology of pipes works, and hey - will you look at that - we are actually one of the biggest iron ore resources in the world! Our politicians have for decades played vote-pandering with the idea of a smelter to produce iron locally. We don't have any such value-adding because everyone can find reasons not to start doing something productive. In truth, we could have a Government-subsidised smelter in the middle of the state near Karratha or someplace, and manufacture that iron into steel pipes, and then use those steel pipes to bring water down. Right past the plant, so that it can darw process water from the pipeline eventually, and because we're producing it here, the Kimberley Pipeline can suddenly become a cheap alternative.
Once in production, the pipeline will have the least environmental impact, and the dependence on Yarragadee and Collie water can be reduced, and in fact those pipelines can then carry water in the other directions if needed due to further climate drying.
The Derry Tanker Plan:
As I said, environmental footprint is my major concern. Building and operating a fleet of supertankers and coastal loading and unloading facilities is not an environmentally sustainable plan at all, I'm sorry. Come on! Several million tons of fuel oil burned every year just to push a tanker back and forth, and remember that one direction is totally unladen as you can't in all conscience carry anything else in a tanker meant to carry drinking water back up the coast, so that immediately wastes half the fuel, and means that the plan has generated two loads of pollution per tankerload of water we receive.
Building a supertanker costs hundreds of millions and well into the billions, especially since we would need to develop the tankers specifically for carrying potable water and making sure it stays potable all the way down the coast. You conceivably need at least two of them, and probably would need a fleet eventually. You need to set up a water loading and unloading facility and harbout for the tankers. In addition to the energy bill for hauling it and hauling the empty tanker back, you also have an energy bill to load the water, and another to unload it. And I realise Mr Derry is proposing to use oil supertankers but in all seriousness can you imagine the cost of just cleaning those tanks to make the drinking water safe, let alone re-lining them? Have you ever seen or smelled crude oil? Its main component is decomposed dinosaurs and trees, remember....
And there's maintenance. Ships are notoriously hard on maintenance costs, because there's a lot to go wrong. A pipeline, be it from the Yarragadee or the Kimberley, just has pumping stations along the way, and you can power those from wind and solar energy at each station, and if we do the clever thing and make the pipe locally, we have plenty of spares - eventually one could even build a redundant line to use while maintaining existing sections.
Conclusion:
I strongly urge every one of you who reads this to consider what we want. We don't want a quick fix, and we definitely don't want to create an environmental disaster. And right now, taking water from aquifers outside our immediate region may seem a radical thing to do, but increasing our consumption of fossil fuels is the best thing to do. There's no point in establishing a new water source if we're going to ignore the reasons why we have a water shortage in the first place, and exacerbate those very causes.
For those of you who question why an ecologically-minded person would countenance a plan to build a smelter - I am also aware of how much more dearly it costs us to mine the ore here, ship it overseas, then ship the finished product back. These things all have an energy cost as well, and it is an energy cost that's more than the cost of smelting and processing locally.
Lastly, I urge everyone who reads this article to start thinking not about the dollar cost of solutions, but the energy/pollution costs instead. Once you start, you'll automatically become more economical...
.
So why is Mr Derry's plan not the answer then? After all he's right - the Kimberley has vast reserves of groundwater. Okay then let's examine the alternatives. I have a pretty green bias as most of you will know, and it will show in the following paragraphs.
My favourite plan(s):
Yarragadee aquifer / Collie dam / Desalination.
I recently had occasion to spend an evening at a BBQ with an engineer whop has been involved with establishing whether or not the Yarragadee aquifer would be viable and ecologically sound. His (totally off the record, totally honest - he had no idea I'd blog about it) summary is that the plan calls for 45GL of water to be drawn off the Yarragadee annually, and that this would reduce the amount of overflow from the Yarragadee from somewhere between 200GL and 340GL per annum to 155GL to 295GL - in other words, the aquifer would remain overfull at all times and continue to run off excwess water into the sea.
That kind of makes a hash of all the "ecologically unsound" protests which are being touted as the reason to refuse to do this. Combining this with Mr Derry's plan to blend saltier Collie water would produce a far cheaper source of water for the urban area. That's around 90GL extra water per year, at what turns out ot be the lowest cost, and the lowest impact on the environment. In combination with desalination plant, this can actually make the desal plant idea look good too.
Desal plants.
These are not desirable, not because of direct impact on the environment, but because of the energy bill. Energy bills have to be paid for with greenhouse gas emissions, unless someone can make solar/wind energy do the entire desalination process.
And the local impact? As measured in the fairly enclosed area of Cockburn Sound where our first desal plant has been running at 105% of nameplate capacity (around 155ML per day) for the last two or three months as a shakedown run: The plant returns saline water and the extracted salt back into the sea, and from there it disperses extremely rapidly. The extra salt was undetectable at any point 50m or more from the discharge pipe, that is, within 50m all that extra salt is redistributed by even the feeble currents in the Sound.
So if you combine blended water with desalination, you have three extra sources of water for Perth, the Collie Dam, Yarragadee, and desal water which will ensure that we have a chance of water supply continuing even if some mechanical failure strikes, it will rarely disable all three sources AND the existing dams.
Kimberley Pipeline:
The Kimberley has huge reserves it is true, but the point at which the water is to be taken up, but in reality it has not that much more overflow capacity than the Yarragadee aquifer. The same issues will apply there too - putting them a few thousand kilometres away from Perth doesn't make any difference to that. Yes there may be a few less people to be affected if anything goes wrong, but then where do you draw the line? How many people's votes does it take before you shy away from a plan? Because of course that's what it all boils down to...
But. With that said, we already have a prodigious pipeline carrying water, to Kalgoorlie. We know the technology of pipes works, and hey - will you look at that - we are actually one of the biggest iron ore resources in the world! Our politicians have for decades played vote-pandering with the idea of a smelter to produce iron locally. We don't have any such value-adding because everyone can find reasons not to start doing something productive. In truth, we could have a Government-subsidised smelter in the middle of the state near Karratha or someplace, and manufacture that iron into steel pipes, and then use those steel pipes to bring water down. Right past the plant, so that it can darw process water from the pipeline eventually, and because we're producing it here, the Kimberley Pipeline can suddenly become a cheap alternative.
Once in production, the pipeline will have the least environmental impact, and the dependence on Yarragadee and Collie water can be reduced, and in fact those pipelines can then carry water in the other directions if needed due to further climate drying.
The Derry Tanker Plan:
As I said, environmental footprint is my major concern. Building and operating a fleet of supertankers and coastal loading and unloading facilities is not an environmentally sustainable plan at all, I'm sorry. Come on! Several million tons of fuel oil burned every year just to push a tanker back and forth, and remember that one direction is totally unladen as you can't in all conscience carry anything else in a tanker meant to carry drinking water back up the coast, so that immediately wastes half the fuel, and means that the plan has generated two loads of pollution per tankerload of water we receive.
Building a supertanker costs hundreds of millions and well into the billions, especially since we would need to develop the tankers specifically for carrying potable water and making sure it stays potable all the way down the coast. You conceivably need at least two of them, and probably would need a fleet eventually. You need to set up a water loading and unloading facility and harbout for the tankers. In addition to the energy bill for hauling it and hauling the empty tanker back, you also have an energy bill to load the water, and another to unload it. And I realise Mr Derry is proposing to use oil supertankers but in all seriousness can you imagine the cost of just cleaning those tanks to make the drinking water safe, let alone re-lining them? Have you ever seen or smelled crude oil? Its main component is decomposed dinosaurs and trees, remember....
And there's maintenance. Ships are notoriously hard on maintenance costs, because there's a lot to go wrong. A pipeline, be it from the Yarragadee or the Kimberley, just has pumping stations along the way, and you can power those from wind and solar energy at each station, and if we do the clever thing and make the pipe locally, we have plenty of spares - eventually one could even build a redundant line to use while maintaining existing sections.
Conclusion:
I strongly urge every one of you who reads this to consider what we want. We don't want a quick fix, and we definitely don't want to create an environmental disaster. And right now, taking water from aquifers outside our immediate region may seem a radical thing to do, but increasing our consumption of fossil fuels is the best thing to do. There's no point in establishing a new water source if we're going to ignore the reasons why we have a water shortage in the first place, and exacerbate those very causes.
For those of you who question why an ecologically-minded person would countenance a plan to build a smelter - I am also aware of how much more dearly it costs us to mine the ore here, ship it overseas, then ship the finished product back. These things all have an energy cost as well, and it is an energy cost that's more than the cost of smelting and processing locally.
Lastly, I urge everyone who reads this article to start thinking not about the dollar cost of solutions, but the energy/pollution costs instead. Once you start, you'll automatically become more economical...
.
13 April, 2007
More Energy Thoughts
Time to start laundry days again, and get rid of energy-wasting lights and replace them with low voltage CCFL and CFL lights. I keep harping on this subject, I know. But come on - a cheap solar installation of two panels and regulator/batteries coupled with low voltage lighting will reduce your house's energy use by anywhere between 10% and 35%. Just switching to CFL globes will reduce your energy use (and associated greenhouse gas emissions and pollution) by between 5% and 10%. And either way will help rebalance our climate and environment. [note 1]
I'm still also urging city commuters to get onto their Member of Parliament about legitimising the REVA and other all-electric cars, and let's also see if we can't get a few local solar businesses to put some money into designing a "solar carport charger" for such cars. Think about it - you get a reasonably cheap little car, you get a reasonably cheap little solar installation, and you get to save the estimated $2250 a year in fuel costs as well as saving the environment! [note 2]
Oh - on the subject of electric and hybrid cars - one more snippet you may be interested in knowing: A certain well-known hybrid car that is widely perceived as very green, and in fact Ms McTiernan drives one, has a little conundrum attached to it. Because the car is produced on a production line same as all the other cars produced by that manufacturer, the basic petrol engined car costs as much in greenhouse gases and emissions as any other car to produce. That very large polution load by itself would be enough to render the relatively small advantage of the car irrelevant.
But wait - there's more! Because the car has to have batteries and electronics and electric drive motors as well as the fossil fuel components, it in fact costs far more in pollution load to produce, than it will recover over the life of the car...
One possible solution is for car manufacturers to switch their plant to environmentally friendlier power sources, use less steel and more easily produced plastics, and to stop dicking around with fossil fuelled cars and start seriously developing electric-only, biodiesel, and electric/biodiesel hybrid cars. (Electric-only cars, while the electricity still has to be produced by a power plant somewhere, at least don't use another lot of dirty fossil fuel, and thus have a lower impact on pollution load than petrol hybrids. And biodiesel is a cleaner and more "now" energy, you extract it from biomass that got the energy from sunlight in the last year or two, so there's no million-year-old energy being dug up and put back into the atmosphere, and it also burns considerably cleaner than fossil fuels.)
NOTES:
1. I'm averaging between calculated power usage for houses which have 60W filament globes, an inefficient refrigerator, a tumble dryer, and in about 45% of cases some form of air conditioning, and houses that just have a basic refrigerator, and that and the lights form almost all the power usage. I'm basing this on observations of houses around Perth, as air conditioning is pretty easy to spot, and so are things like average affluence and therefore likelihood of having the latest 4 energy star fridge versus a new 52" TV, etc.
2. I am basing this on our usage in an average six cylinder sedan, and including only the trips within the city for work and shopping that an electric car would be used for. We spend another $1000 a year on country trips and longer trips. If we had a biodiesel hybrid electric instead, we might conceivably use about a quarter of the fuel, a tenth of the cost, and only produce about a quarter of the pollution load.
I'm still also urging city commuters to get onto their Member of Parliament about legitimising the REVA and other all-electric cars, and let's also see if we can't get a few local solar businesses to put some money into designing a "solar carport charger" for such cars. Think about it - you get a reasonably cheap little car, you get a reasonably cheap little solar installation, and you get to save the estimated $2250 a year in fuel costs as well as saving the environment! [note 2]
Oh - on the subject of electric and hybrid cars - one more snippet you may be interested in knowing: A certain well-known hybrid car that is widely perceived as very green, and in fact Ms McTiernan drives one, has a little conundrum attached to it. Because the car is produced on a production line same as all the other cars produced by that manufacturer, the basic petrol engined car costs as much in greenhouse gases and emissions as any other car to produce. That very large polution load by itself would be enough to render the relatively small advantage of the car irrelevant.
But wait - there's more! Because the car has to have batteries and electronics and electric drive motors as well as the fossil fuel components, it in fact costs far more in pollution load to produce, than it will recover over the life of the car...
One possible solution is for car manufacturers to switch their plant to environmentally friendlier power sources, use less steel and more easily produced plastics, and to stop dicking around with fossil fuelled cars and start seriously developing electric-only, biodiesel, and electric/biodiesel hybrid cars. (Electric-only cars, while the electricity still has to be produced by a power plant somewhere, at least don't use another lot of dirty fossil fuel, and thus have a lower impact on pollution load than petrol hybrids. And biodiesel is a cleaner and more "now" energy, you extract it from biomass that got the energy from sunlight in the last year or two, so there's no million-year-old energy being dug up and put back into the atmosphere, and it also burns considerably cleaner than fossil fuels.)
NOTES:
1. I'm averaging between calculated power usage for houses which have 60W filament globes, an inefficient refrigerator, a tumble dryer, and in about 45% of cases some form of air conditioning, and houses that just have a basic refrigerator, and that and the lights form almost all the power usage. I'm basing this on observations of houses around Perth, as air conditioning is pretty easy to spot, and so are things like average affluence and therefore likelihood of having the latest 4 energy star fridge versus a new 52" TV, etc.
2. I am basing this on our usage in an average six cylinder sedan, and including only the trips within the city for work and shopping that an electric car would be used for. We spend another $1000 a year on country trips and longer trips. If we had a biodiesel hybrid electric instead, we might conceivably use about a quarter of the fuel, a tenth of the cost, and only produce about a quarter of the pollution load.
18 March, 2007
Carbon Myths and Carbon Truths
You read about "carbon offsetting" and perhaps you wonder if it's all rubbish. Well, there are some figures around and some facts around and some myths around - and a LOT of predators who will bend you over for carbon credit input dollars. Here's my take so far:
To clear your carbon debt for the year, some articles claim that you'd have to replace 111 lightbulbs with CFL bulbs. They say you'd have to switch to smaller hybrid cars for X years to clear the debt for one year, and so forth.
In reality, every light bulb you replace with a CFL or CCFL bulb is immediately reducing your carbon debt. If you put the petrol-guzzler in the back of the garage and the scooter and the Prius near the front, you are immediately reducing your carbon debt. If you set your air conditioning to two degrees warmer in summer and your heating to two degrees cooler in winter, the effect is immediate, you use less fuel and create less pollution. If you put water pressure reducing discs in your shower heads and take shorter showers, that is something you can do right now which takes effect right now.
"But," I hear you say, "that only reduces the carbon debt, I want to cancel it!"
Well, you can offset all you like by adding trees or other activities like that but the sad truth is that just by living you add to the debt, it's unavoidable. And you can plant a tree to offset your carbon debt now but it won't produce any benefit for a few years, and even then it is a bit of a gamble if it will balance your carbon debt or will be way behind the curve.
Also, the carbon debt you acquire is out there and then you add an input, but the unavoidable thing is that for some period oif time, your pollution load *is* added to the atmosphere for a certain period, it's like injecting yourself with snake venom and then a shot of antivenene later - the venom will have been there for some period and killed certain nerve and muscle cells and no amount of antivenene will repair that damage.
So cast a jaundiced eye on the companies that say they will repay your carbon debt because A) they need money to survive and B) they don't generally care about global warming beyond how many dollars they can extract from you and C) they will want more than just "a little" money for their version of "saving the world..."
I'm not saying that inputs are bad, I'm saying that you will need to look carefully at what methods you should use, whom you should trust - and in the meanwhile, reduce your debt now so that there will be less to balance later.
To clear your carbon debt for the year, some articles claim that you'd have to replace 111 lightbulbs with CFL bulbs. They say you'd have to switch to smaller hybrid cars for X years to clear the debt for one year, and so forth.
In reality, every light bulb you replace with a CFL or CCFL bulb is immediately reducing your carbon debt. If you put the petrol-guzzler in the back of the garage and the scooter and the Prius near the front, you are immediately reducing your carbon debt. If you set your air conditioning to two degrees warmer in summer and your heating to two degrees cooler in winter, the effect is immediate, you use less fuel and create less pollution. If you put water pressure reducing discs in your shower heads and take shorter showers, that is something you can do right now which takes effect right now.
"But," I hear you say, "that only reduces the carbon debt, I want to cancel it!"
Well, you can offset all you like by adding trees or other activities like that but the sad truth is that just by living you add to the debt, it's unavoidable. And you can plant a tree to offset your carbon debt now but it won't produce any benefit for a few years, and even then it is a bit of a gamble if it will balance your carbon debt or will be way behind the curve.
Also, the carbon debt you acquire is out there and then you add an input, but the unavoidable thing is that for some period oif time, your pollution load *is* added to the atmosphere for a certain period, it's like injecting yourself with snake venom and then a shot of antivenene later - the venom will have been there for some period and killed certain nerve and muscle cells and no amount of antivenene will repair that damage.
So cast a jaundiced eye on the companies that say they will repay your carbon debt because A) they need money to survive and B) they don't generally care about global warming beyond how many dollars they can extract from you and C) they will want more than just "a little" money for their version of "saving the world..."
I'm not saying that inputs are bad, I'm saying that you will need to look carefully at what methods you should use, whom you should trust - and in the meanwhile, reduce your debt now so that there will be less to balance later.
01 March, 2007
27 February, 2007
Are you thinking of buying a new car?
Read this first...
In this article, Sam Abuelsamid lays out the reasons we won't see electric cars anytime soon, and he gives it from the established carmakers' point of view. Too hard to retool, too many years from concept to factory floor, I have heard these whinges before somewhere. Now where could that be?
Oh yes, lightbulb manufacturers. For about the last ten years they have been selling small quantities of CFL light globes and large volumes of inefficient incandescent light globes, because while they tacitly admit in their advertising how much more energy efficient and ecologiccally sound the CFLs are, they have more invested in the old production equipment and haven't squeezed the last dollar of value from the incandescent light globe yet, and to Hell with the enviromment hey?
We've heard the same things from carmakers for decades. A load of crap of course, they have so much invested in fossil fuel vehicles that they just plain won't stop before global weather change has tipped past the no return point - and then they'll be right there saying their loyal customers gave them no mandate to change technology and it's all our fault for buying FF vehicles.
The world won't go with a bang, nor with a whimper, but with a bunch of greedy manufacturers all busily blaming everyone else except themselves for it. On the Last Day, there will be some advertising guy with a respirator putting up a billboard that says "XXXX autos, we made clean cars before the others ever did! So buy XXXX..."
Can I give you my readers a quick clue? The quickest way to force car manufacturers to re-evaluate their positions is to not buy the bloody things. Make your current car last for another year or two, and then buy an electric or hybrid so that your FF car can sit in the garage for maybe another two years doing very few miles, and believe me after just one year of silent treatment they would get the bloody idea! By the time you'd be ready for a new major manufacturer's car, you'd actually have some choice.
Are you in the market for a new car then? Well just imagine if you and 19,000,000 other Australians all don't buy a new vehicle for a year. All it would cost you is one more year in your old car. Go on, do it for our climate!
In this article, Sam Abuelsamid lays out the reasons we won't see electric cars anytime soon, and he gives it from the established carmakers' point of view. Too hard to retool, too many years from concept to factory floor, I have heard these whinges before somewhere. Now where could that be?
Oh yes, lightbulb manufacturers. For about the last ten years they have been selling small quantities of CFL light globes and large volumes of inefficient incandescent light globes, because while they tacitly admit in their advertising how much more energy efficient and ecologiccally sound the CFLs are, they have more invested in the old production equipment and haven't squeezed the last dollar of value from the incandescent light globe yet, and to Hell with the enviromment hey?
We've heard the same things from carmakers for decades. A load of crap of course, they have so much invested in fossil fuel vehicles that they just plain won't stop before global weather change has tipped past the no return point - and then they'll be right there saying their loyal customers gave them no mandate to change technology and it's all our fault for buying FF vehicles.
The world won't go with a bang, nor with a whimper, but with a bunch of greedy manufacturers all busily blaming everyone else except themselves for it. On the Last Day, there will be some advertising guy with a respirator putting up a billboard that says "XXXX autos, we made clean cars before the others ever did! So buy XXXX..."
Can I give you my readers a quick clue? The quickest way to force car manufacturers to re-evaluate their positions is to not buy the bloody things. Make your current car last for another year or two, and then buy an electric or hybrid so that your FF car can sit in the garage for maybe another two years doing very few miles, and believe me after just one year of silent treatment they would get the bloody idea! By the time you'd be ready for a new major manufacturer's car, you'd actually have some choice.
Are you in the market for a new car then? Well just imagine if you and 19,000,000 other Australians all don't buy a new vehicle for a year. All it would cost you is one more year in your old car. Go on, do it for our climate!
19 February, 2007
Another WA Source for Alternative Energy Products
I've added The Solar Shop to the address list, they seem to have a comprehensive range of alternative power products. Please support my efforts and let them know that you found them through my zencookbook site, then they may be tempted to sponsor me in my research! hehehe nothing like networking...
I've looked at the site, and the O'Connor shop apparently will be opening as a shopfront very soon now, so stay tuned. Goodies on the site include solar regulators and electric scooters, wind turbines, and - grid-connect aware hardware. That is the payoff, that you can sell your surplus back to the electric utility and actually recoup a portion of the installation cost.
The Solar Shop look like they've installed a few decent sized projects and you might do a lot worse here in Perth for your alternative power installation. And once I develop one of my ideas in particular a bit more and start producing it, you'll find that with my device installed your installation will develop even more power than quoted, and I'm betting that The Solar Shop will be one of the cutting edge who will start providing this as a standard part of their future installations, allowing you to make a smaller installation do more. This really is a killer idea, and it can be added to most installations at any stage, including installations that have been up for years.
I'm also still looking for anyone wishing to contribute to the development effort, if you know anyone who might be able to assist in any way please direct them to this page.
I've looked at the site, and the O'Connor shop apparently will be opening as a shopfront very soon now, so stay tuned. Goodies on the site include solar regulators and electric scooters, wind turbines, and - grid-connect aware hardware. That is the payoff, that you can sell your surplus back to the electric utility and actually recoup a portion of the installation cost.
The Solar Shop look like they've installed a few decent sized projects and you might do a lot worse here in Perth for your alternative power installation. And once I develop one of my ideas in particular a bit more and start producing it, you'll find that with my device installed your installation will develop even more power than quoted, and I'm betting that The Solar Shop will be one of the cutting edge who will start providing this as a standard part of their future installations, allowing you to make a smaller installation do more. This really is a killer idea, and it can be added to most installations at any stage, including installations that have been up for years.
I'm also still looking for anyone wishing to contribute to the development effort, if you know anyone who might be able to assist in any way please direct them to this page.
15 February, 2007
REVA Revs And - Creeps Away?
The Solar Shop (who are opening a shop here in Perth in March if their website holds the latest news) apparently brought a REVA electric car into Adelaide. I LOVE the idea of electric cars - after all, what better partnering than our long sunshine (and solar electricity!) filled days, a solar battery charger, and an electric vehicle?
So it's disappointing to see the stupid political pissing contests that this one little car is provoking. Come on you stupid bastards we are all going to die together if the climate destabilises, and no-one will give a pink and purple spotted shit whether you stuck to the right side or the wrong side!
I promise to vote for whoever legislates and has brough into Law that these vehicles are glorified motor scooters and thus subject to no more rigorous testing than my VMoto scooter was. Also, the 200W limit on electric scooters is totally laughable - are you afraid people are going to perform terrifying feats of annihilation on anything more powerful?
Please - if you want the law changed leave a comment, I'll bring them all to the attention of my local MP because this kind of bullshit is what's holding back the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions and we can't afford for this to get much worse.
So it's disappointing to see the stupid political pissing contests that this one little car is provoking. Come on you stupid bastards we are all going to die together if the climate destabilises, and no-one will give a pink and purple spotted shit whether you stuck to the right side or the wrong side!
I promise to vote for whoever legislates and has brough into Law that these vehicles are glorified motor scooters and thus subject to no more rigorous testing than my VMoto scooter was. Also, the 200W limit on electric scooters is totally laughable - are you afraid people are going to perform terrifying feats of annihilation on anything more powerful?
Please - if you want the law changed leave a comment, I'll bring them all to the attention of my local MP because this kind of bullshit is what's holding back the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions and we can't afford for this to get much worse.
03 February, 2007
Check This Site!
Darren who commented on a previous post also had this link to another energy activism site. Please go there and look around...
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