Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Just a note to people who haven't seen or heard about this "movie" (more of a documentary than a movie). Anyway it is really worth seeing as most of the people here are about producing their own food sources in a more efficient and renewable way etc, it will strike a chord with you as it did for me.

Details can be found here:
http://www.climatecrisis.net/

Mainly the show is about Al Gore talking about global warming etc, but he comes across as such an energetic and intelligent speaker. It is hard to believe that Bush beat this man in the election for President...

Another good movie in boutique cinemas is "The death of the electric car", also on the same lines as above, but has an underlying conspiracy theory etc.

Anyway get a copy or go and see these anyway you can - really worth it if you care about the world that you children will live in.

Does any one have a verified good ED2K link for an inconvenient truth?

Hmmmm

Electric cars ... battery systems ..

I worked on them ...

I think the way to go is not electric cars ..

involves batteries .. which pollute! (No matter what chemical system is used , lead acid, zinc - bromine , vanadium ...)

but hydrogen power derived from sea water ...

solar driven ...

that MUST be the way forward ...

IMHO .. getting cheap photovoltaic conversion systems ... to make electricity from sea water, produce hydrogen .. must be the way to go ...

Johnnie, only problem is that electrolysis of sea water produces hydrogen at one electrode and chlorine at the other.............i'd consider chlorine gas discharge a pollution and leaves you with causic soda as the electrolyte............

much different from electrolysis of fresh water

Just to play devils advocate, why do lead acid batteris pollute? you can charge them via solar if you want to, and at the end of their service life they can be re-cycled.

current problem with the hydrogen economy is storage. to drive a car 600kms with gassesous hydrogen stored at 9bar would require a tank roughly the size of the car itself.

Even the latest ground breaking hydrogen storage tablet doesn't make sense to me it stores hydrogen in the form of ammonia and then releases it through a catalyst which seperates the hyrdogen from the nitrogen. Cool we all say, nitrogen is 70% of the atmosphere. The fuel cell is recharged with ammonia (compound of hydrogen, obtainable from electrolysis if you want, and nitrogen 70% of the atmosphere) Great, but has anyone thought of where the power comes from to MAKE the ammonia? It takes ENERGY to combine the hydrogen and nitrogen.

Don't get me wrong, i'm all for alternative energy but ofthen the NET power is not stated. Take Ethanol. I LOVE it, i only fuel up with E10 petrol. But its bantered around as the fuel of the future. Grown from sugar cane. Great. Forget for the moment the ENERGY expended to actually water the sugar cane, fertilise the sugar cane, harvest the sugar cane. Just the ENERGY required to distill the 20% ethanol from fermentation into a usable % as fuel kills the idea. and also don't forget that the fermentation of sugars into ethanol creates EQUAL volumes of CO2 per volume Ethanol.
And that even before we burn it in our cars!

Its the embodied energy thing.

I agree SOMETHING needs to be done, but the solution is far from simple. There is no such thing as a free lunch, Never has a cliche rung truer than for our energy crisis

You go guys. We'll get there, humans rock.

Hey fizzyj,
How'd bush beat Gore, well if you were a huge oil company, who would you want as president of the country that is the biggest user of oil?

Steve, I agree that there are problems with Ethanol as a fuel. But have you seen this
solar updraft tower
Wikipedia of solar updraft tower

I've seen a few people claim it was their idea and claim to have a working model, but none on a full scale yet. But it looks like a good idea.

I was told the other day that because of the energy requirements to make ethanol, biodiesel is a better option. Of course it only works if you have a diesel car

I think it is so funny seeing people with 'save the planet' bumper stickers plastered all over their cars, and yet they are driving with only one person in the car. You see so many people like that. As well as all the activists and politicians driving V8 commodores, falcons and statesmans, again with only one person in the car. Yes we have to find an alternative fuel source but we need to cut down on driving in the mean time. I know someone who drives down to mandurah for one nighters because they have a time share, now that is unessesary. I am not saying we should not have luxuries like 4WD's that never leave the metro area, 20+ foot yahts, V8 cars, massive TV's or huge empty houses, we just have to compensate greatly in other areas. If we all live like north-americans (no offence) the world can only support 2 billion people.

http://www.popco.org/irc/essays/essay-pimentel.html

Desalination will give you fresh water to then convert into hydrogen and oxygen, Submarines do it all the time, it's how they replenish the O2. Hydrogen is the waste product.
Called the machine the ogygen generator or lovingly the bomb.

Yes, submarines do do it all the time, but that is what the nuclear reactor is for. Water desalination and electrolosis on land would use a massive amount of electricity by comparison. These submarines have there own personal powerstation the electricity is always being generated, it has to be used. So we have come full circle. We need a sustainable energy source to make freshwater and produce hydrogen to power our cars.

I think the answer is surprisingly simple & yet that's what makes it all the more difficult to come to grips with.

Everyone always says that this way of life is come & here to stay, but seriously, we need a paradigm shift, a different way of living our lives. Not just alternatives to living our current lives a slightly different way (ie. biodiesel to run motors)..

Soy beans, grain crops etc are great, particularly when they'll need to encroach more & more on virgin wilderness like tropical rainforests & other types of areas. *please note sarcasm here*

Domestic sustainability starts at home. growing you own stuff, reducing consumption, reducing the need to 'own things' just for the sake of it... teaching people how to fish, rather than just giving them a fish or two.. To me, that's the key.

It all comes down to population. Yes you can teach 6 billion people to fish or to sow seeds and grow crops, but when there is only 3 billion fish to go around or when 4 out of five people do not have a backyard it makes it difficult. The truth is simple we are going to breed our selves to death. Just in Australia for example, more and more people are born, people go to schools, universities, more jobs, greater demand, more development, larger cities, urban sprawl takes over rural areas, rural areas expand into bushlands and forrests, then greater polution erosion and drought, therefore more people move to the city and have babies etc etc. its a continuing battle. You can see it everywhere, all the little nooks and crannies are being filled up with houses with tiny little backayards and people continue to do nothing but increase the population. Hurricanes, earthquakes and tsunami's are just the earth trying to balance itself out. Ask your self why do all the natural distasters happen in places where there is poverty or over population?

I have faith In Mother Earth prevailing but that will do us no good, (shrug).

Another movie well worth seeing is "the end of suburbia". A great docco about how the western worlds suburban sprawl actually came about in the first place, and where we are headed for the future.

I was under the impression that the Governments reasoning behind the baby bonus was to get us breeding??