Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Hey check dis out!

http://www.intrepidtravel.com/inconvenienttruth
How you can see An Inconvenient Truth for free:
Send your movie ticket stub to Intrepid Travel Ticket Offer, 360 Bourke Street, Melbourne, VIC, 3000, along with your name and address. Please allow 6 weeks for processing your payment. Maximum 2 tickets per person and based on standard cinema class. This offer is only open for Australian residents viewing the movie in Australian cinemas.

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Darrell Wade, CEO of Intrepid Travel, writes:

I was on holidays in Botswana with my family a few months back reading Tim Flannery’s The Weather Makers. To set the scene fully, I was in a camp on the edge of the Kalahari Desert. It was an absolutely beautiful place and the world felt wonderful. Unfortunately the more I read, the more I realised the magnitude of the climate change problem, and the less wonderful the world began to feel.

Flannery talks specifically of the impacts of aviation – an industry that contributes above its weight to global warming because of a strange science to do with emissions, altitude and contrails (contrails are those fluffy trails a plane leaves behind it).

I did a quick calculation and worked out in the 12 months previous I had done about 350,000 kilometres in planes – yep – around the world about ten times. All by myself I’d probably caused half an El Nino! Add to that the fact that I am the co-founder of a company that actively encourages people to get into planes and travel half way across the world just so they can have a good time, and I was starting to look like an environmental vandal of the first order.

This year Intrepid will carry 50,000 travellers and on average each will fly about 17,000 kilometres to and from their destination. That’s about 850 million kilometres. If you go to the Climatecare website LINK it also works out to about 135,000 tons of CO2. Youch.

It was time to pull my head out of the sand – fitting, as Botswana is a country made of sand – and do something. Shortly after getting back I went to a conference on environmental philanthropy (where Tim Flannery spoke, coincidentally enough) and briefed our management group.

As happens with tipping points, Al Gore’s movie was about to be launched and so went to a preview screening of that. I walked out and thought, “Well, if I do nothing else, at least I can encourage people to see that film. That alone will help to change behaviours and start to make a difference.” So we offered to refund the ticket price if people sent us their movie ticket stubs. So far about 1,500 people have – but I’m hoping a lot more will.

The inconvenient truth for Intrepid is that we still haven’t actually done anything constructive to reduce our carbon emissions or that of our travellers. Yes, we buy green energy and we now encourage travellers to carbon offset – but in reality that is just the tip of the fast melting iceberg. Ultimately we can’t actually reduce emissions without stopping people travelling and going out of business as a result. Not a very attractive option.

But we can reduce emissions and importantly we can buy carbon offsets that balances the damage we do. So we just have to work out how we pay for 135,000 tons of carbon offsets. That would cost about $2 million – something we don’t really have. But where there is a will there is a way – and I’m planning for Intrepid to become a carbon neutral travel company in the next three years. Call that an epiphany? No, just common sense and self-interest: if we want people to travel, we have to do something to ensure there is a world worth travelling in.

Is there an Australian based calculator somewhere. The one at http://www.climatecrisis.net/takeaction ... alculator/ is US specific.

Also note that things like Electic Car & Desalination are energy users, as such they can be powered by carbon burning (Oil, Gas or Coal) OR by solar/hydro/wind/geo thermal etc.

Solar Ponds
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_pond
http://www.rmit.edu.au/browse;ID=905wa9169827

Solar Helostats
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_thermal_energy
http://www.stirlingenergy.com/breaking_news.htm

The reason I list these two solar methods, is that they both use salt in their system set up.

Solar Ponds use large amounts of salt to setup their thermal gradiants.
From memory, a pond the size used by RMIT uses 4000 tonnes of salt.

Solar Helostats can use salt in the form of salt/graphite termal batteries.

Because both use salt's thermal storage qualities, they both can generate power at night. This overcome one of the percieved problems of solar power.

In a carbon unconstrained economy, these methods will always be dearer.

A carbon constrained economy is a whole new ball game.


Gnoll110

I suppose the reason it is so quiet on here tonight is that everyone is watching "The Day After Tomorrow" ?

I keep trying to work out how far up our hill the water would come

The earth is a highly buffered system. The same people that were talking about an upcomming ice age in the 70s and 80s are now talking about global warming. According to our measurements, the average global temperature is up by 1 degree C over the last century. A month ago, people were talking about how mild this winter has been in North America. Now we have record cold and snow. The weather is buffered. When you have a dry season, it is followed by a wet season, when you have a warm season, you usually have a cold season. When one year is warm, the next one will be cool. When the earth starts to warm up, it creates these things it refers to as solar mirrors, we call them deserts.

If you follow the money trail with those that promulgate the environmental scares, you will usually trace them to people who are more interested in pulling money from successful people and nations than in actually solving any problems.

I am a conservationist, but not an environmentalist. I think we should use our resources wisely, but some of the proposed draconian measures don't help nearly as much as they cost. For example, with the outlawing of freon in favor of more "environmentaly friendly" refrigerants, most of them are only slightly less "ozone depleting", while they are less efficient in power consumption. Therefore, when you power them with a gasoline engine (for your car air conditioner) or from coal (for your home electric air conditioner), you may be acutally producing more "greenhouse gasses" than with the older refrigerants.

The problems that scientists have found with the ozone layer thinning in the arctic and antarctic circles is another of the things that seem calculated to scare rather than inform. Ozone is produced by high-energy photons striking an oxygen molecule to break it into monatomic oxygen, a highly reactive substance, which may combine with another monatomic oxygen to make O2, or with an O2 to make O3, ozone. The ozone has a few benefits; one is it absorbs the high-energy photons (UV rays) due to both its higher density, and the fact that where the UV hits the O2, it absorbs that photon. During the winter, the arctic circles have little or no sunlight. This means that the natural decomposition of the O3 overpowers the natural creation of the ozone. In other words, you have a thinning of the ozone, possibly even a hole. But, when the sun starts to hit the oxygen, it creates ozone faster than the natural decomposition of it, and the ozone layer thickens, (just in time to absorb the additional UV rays from summer). Chlorine does act as a catalyst in breaking down O3, therefore it is looked on as an "Ozone depleting" substance. The refrigerants (R12 & the like) are more stable, than chlorine, therefore they can act as a catalyst longer than Cl2, that's why they are considered more environmentally unfriendly than others.

Mankind does have the ability to pollute his environment; but the environment has the ability to break down the pollution better than we give her credit for. Several decades ago, (I think it was) Lake Erie was tremendously polluted. So badly that environmentalists predicted that it would take hundreds of years to clean to a level where life could live in it again. Conservationists and environmentalists got together to reduce the pollutants being dumped into it. Within 5 years, there were fish living in the lake again. It didn't take hundreds of years because nature has bacteria that can consume these pollutants too. Once the toxins and pollutants were reduced to a point where mother nature could clean it up, she did.

We have seen countless examples of nature cleaning up. Volcanos produce incredible amounts of chlorine, CO2, etc. But the Kyoto accord did not have any provision to fine them. Kyoto liked to point out that the US and other developed countries use more resources per capita than developing, 3rd world contries. It is ignored though that the polution per capita is much higher in the 3rd world countries. Cleaning up after yourself takes more energy than wallowing in your squallor.

While I agree with much of what environmentalists say, I also disagree with some of their premises. I recently moved. I ended up in a more expensive house, but went from driving 30+ miles each way (50+km) to driving 4.5 miles (8km). We also cut lots of other driving due to the move - we now fill up each of the 3 cars about every other week, (versus nearly twice a week). I am interested in raising my own veggies and fish. I wish I could raise chooks for the eggs and meat, (not gonna happen in our neighborhood). But I still commute to work by myself, in a 7-passenger van, (my daughter takes my econo-box to school, since she travels farther). Could I use less energy? Yes. Is the guilt trip placed on me by the environmentalists going to make me do it? No. In fact, like the kid who is being nagged not to put beans in his nose, it annoys me that people keep telling me that what I do is so wrong.

(Steps off the soapbox and ducks the incomming barrage)

I take it you did not vote for Gore? Heh heh

Good of someone who can intelligently argue to make the point. Thanks

No ducking required Greenedo. Each is entitled to their own opinion and you are not alone. I think you make some good points esp when you say that when we reduce our pollution levels to an acceptable level, the earth can rebuild. But if we don't, what happens then?

dt- what was your first cue?

Monya- The earth is a highly buffered system. It will be able to recover from more pollution than we can live through.

Personnally, I don't want to asphixiate, so I am doing my part, but the alarmists who are trying to use the maternal instincts in us to grab our money, without nearly as much concern for the earth as for their revenues, tend to raise my bloodpressure.

Whenever you hear a politician, or any public figure start talking about doing something "for the children", you can guarantee it's going to cost you an arm and a leg!

LOL

I agree about the highly buffered system, I agree about the ability of the earth to survive beyond our lifetimes, but I wonder about the quality of life of my great grandkids in 80 years time, but I suppose I won't be around to see it so why worry right? That is some people's attitudes anyway. I think we are thinking along the same lines. Ignore politiciaqns aiming to grab our votes. Our PM is only now treating it as a mainstream issue as we enter an election year. Ignore alarmists, butr be aware of the consequences of our actions.

I agree Monya. I make biodeisel in my shed out of used cooking oil for 2 reasons. 1. because I can 2. I believe we should do what we can to both extend our oil supplies and minimize the waste we return to the system

Do you get the oil from fish and chips shops etc? That is a double benefit I reckon

I read this whole thread at a shot, so there are a few seperate points I want to make. Sorry for the length.

I used to be an advocate of zero population growth. Then I realized what the outcome would be. There's actually a new movie that has just been release on DVD called Idiocracy. It's a Mike Judge film that's funny/stupid-funny/makes-a-great-point. The premise is that in 500 years the dumb people have outbred the smart people and took over the planet. Population trends are the kinds of things that take generations to change OR very invasive governments.



To those who were talking about how much energy it takes to grow corn for ethanol or whatever, you have to remember the laws of thermodynamics. Yeah, energy is conserved, but any organized system tends towards entropy. In English, all systems have loss. So it will always take more energy in to get energy out. The only question is what form that energy will take, and how can it best be utilized. As a quick example, the gasoline/petrol for your car contains a lot of energy. It goes into the combustion chamber in your car, the spark plug ignites it, and it releases that energy in heat and pressure which moves the piston which turns the cam, which eventually turns the wheel. The energy put into the gasoline was a LOT more. Dinosaur ate plants and other dinosaurs/small mammals for years, died, was buried by weather patterns, was compressed by gravitational force for a hundred million years, broken down by bacteria, liquified, and turned into oil. Oil was then pumped (with lots of equipment), refined in another big piece of equipment, and then distributed.

Some of these energy forms cost us money and time, some don't. Eventually, everything we have comes from the sun and other former stars. Hence Sagan's "We are all made of star stuff." So we have to create systems that are lossy as they must be, but efficient in the resources we care about.

This is why solar power is so popular as a theory. The sun is effectively an infinite energy source. Even though the best photovoltaic panels are only in the 35-40% effective range. And commercial panels are usually much lower. But with current technology and a 30 year equipment life, the ammortized cost per kWh is more than traditional fossil fuel generated power (by about 80%). So there's no economic incentive. Wind farms are competitive, but only in high wind areas. Nuclear fuel is cheaper, but there's political/popular will against it in most places because of the risk and the waste challenge (I say build a space elevator and push it into the sun).



I think it was TimC who brought up carrying capacity. This is what I love about aquaponics in an urban environment. We can vastly increase the carrying capacity of, say, a multi-story building because we can use aquaponics in a 3-dimensional manner. Multiplying the effective use of a square area by the number of times we go up or down in height.

I live in Atlanta, Georgia in the US which is the fastest spreading human settlement in history in terms of geographic area. Right now the effective use of the 200 km diameter circle I live in is almost 0. We have trees and grass which serve as CO2 scrubbers, but that's about it. Very little in the way of farming/grazing/raising food of any kind.

Urban aquaponics can change that in an extremely dramatic fashion. Which is why part of my goals for designing my system is to create a modular, low-maintenance form that can be prefabbed for an urban environment. I want anyone who cares enough to be able to order a package cheaply, set it up with almost no skill, and turn out fish and veggies regularly.

And yes, there are finite resource arguments to be made about building such systems in enough scale to have an impact. But that's what asteroid mining is for!

OK, I'm done for now. Feel free to totally ignore my ramblings

yeh, oil from fish a chips shops. The only draw back so far is I get a flock of seaguls following me wherever I go

LOL, good work Mark, if you would like to write a quick synopsis of how you make the biodiesel I would be interested in reading it. It's gonna be 40 here today, so I have plenty of spare time!

Tamo, ytou are amongst like minded people.

This is the site I've used for all my methods:
http://journeytoforever.org/biodiesel_make.html
1. Collect waste oil. In Dubbo they are charged $15 per drums to dump it at the tip, so they're happy to give it to me. Heat it enough to pour, and measure out 15 litres, filter out solids as you pour. Use a cooking thermometer and apply heat. It will get to 100 degrees C, boil and pop as water comes off, then the temp will jump. Allow to cool. Titrate to calulate amount of NaOH, and dissolve NaOH in 20% by volume of methanol. Add this to oil. I've got a big drill with a paint mixer mounted to the side of my shed with a timer on it. Mix for 1 hour. Pour off biodeisel. Waste is glycerin which is biodegradable. Wash biodeisel. Heat to remove any more water. Allow to sit. Use it in the ute...can be blended or used strait. Enjoy the aroma of a fish shop!!

excellent