Climate change

[leon]

Alex, great thread, I reckon all street lights should be timed, and at 2 am, or there about every second one should shut down.

By then most people are in bed, (Except Astronomers of Coarse) and imagine the power save, and the great images we would get, gee I'm selfish

Leon

[GiveItAGoGavo]

Great thread!

Ive just finished my honours in a biotechnology degree and a large part of that was the exploration of alternative fuels, so obviously mechanisms underlying global warming were a part of the subject...

I just want to clarify a few things that I am not sure are completely understood (keeping in mind that I am not an expert and accept healthy criticism!)...

The main cause of global warming as we know it, is carbon... generally as carbon dioxide or carbon monoxide as we all know... and these obviously are derived from things that get their energy originally from fossil fuel...

I think the part that some people miss is the source of the fossil fuel and the impact overall, referring specifically to the carbon cycle...

Carbon cycles through nature, particularly thanks to photosynthesis not only by trees, but by photosynthetic microorganisms like cyanobacteria (now Im drawing on the ancient knowledge , so the carbon is not always in the atmosphere, but spends some time stored as energy in the trees, which might get eaten by an animal, which is eaten by another, which dies and breaks down and is degraded by other microorganisms into CO2, or its just plain breathed out... whatever of the countless ways it occurs, its in a cycle, which is more or less on or above the surface of the planet...

Fossil fuels are bad because they essentially take carbon from outside of the carbon cycle, and put it into the cycle resulting in a net gain of carbon... more carbon (amongst other things) results in more heat retention and sorry polar bears...

So essentially there are 2 things I want to mention...

firstly, Solar panels may not always be the best option... now Im lacking the numbers from this but I do remember reading them somewhere... anyway long story short, they are expensive because they were not particularly easy to make... think about the ENTIRE process... alot of energy actually went into their production so when you get yourself a shiny new solar panel (or even a bike for that matter), it is already responsible for X amount of net carbon addition... I guess my point here is that for things like christmas lights, which would not draw a super large amount of power and are only used for a certain part of the year... its possible (and I stress again that I do not have the figures here so this is speculation) that there is less overall carbon output running the lights on fossil fuels, than on solar (depending on all the variables... energy input into solar panel production, amount of power required by lights, frequency of light use, etc)... so thats a consideration...

The other thing is alternative fuels... In my eyes, this is the only true way we can truly say we are doing anything for the environment... Ethanol is my personal choice (probably because I am mostly aware of ethanol production and limitations )... now alot of people say that ethanol is still bad because it still outputs carbon... thats true it does output water and carbon dioxide... BUT the carbon that it outputs came (generally) from plant material.... so its already part of the carbon cycle... you can use as much as you like and its all from the carbon cycle... now if your using renewable fuels like ethanol to produce this commercial ethanol, you can see how this is not problematic... desirable in fact...

The limitations on ethanol at the moment are (to my knowledge) cost and logistics... essentially it currently costs just under twice what a barrel of oil costs to produce for around the same energy yield (which is more than 1 barrel)... the big limiting factor is the enzymes required for the digestion of the hard to digest lingnocellulose component (cellulose or hemicellulose I actually dont remember ... in any case if a method of digesting these with ease is discovered, there are quite a few problems solved...

At the moment most ethanol is produced from sugarcane, which gives a nice high yield of simple sugars which means cheap production... but it can only be grown in certain areas like tropical queensland (EDIT*** google "fuel+brazil" for info on a country that takes ethanol production seriously)... which brings about problems of transport to places to Perth... the energy required to transport it there would make it non-effective... of course... if cheap enzymes or an alternate method of breaking down complex molecules into simple sugars were discovered... problem solved..there is literally MASSES of plant waste that can be used all around... think about how much plant material is wasted all around us...it actually counts for a huge part of all our waste and it can be used to give us energy!!!

Anyway what Im getting at is, reducing our energy usage is FANTASTIC I am an absolute advocate and supporter of it, and I try to do it myself as much as possible... but we can only slow down what we are doing because we are still far too dependant on fossil fuels...

If we are serious about it, alternative fuels are the direction we need to take... until then, I hate to say it but its either fossil fuels, or current technology renewable sources like wind-power... or the dreaded nuclear power (which actually is probably the best ecological contender considering carbon output... having said that I do NOT want nuclear power near me... Id rather add to the carbon buildup if I had a choice )

So theres my 2 cents worth... little bit of food for thought I hope... Dont flame me too hard

[glenc (Glen)]

Biodiesel can be produced from algae grown in salt water, so there is no need to ruin rain forests to grow palm oil trees or use other land that is needed for food production. Diesel engines use 30% less fuel than petrol engines too.
With hybrids the disadvantage is the cost of buying and replacing batteries and the impact of that.
To find economical cars see:
http://www.greenvehicleguide.gov.au/GVGPublicUI/ApplicationFirstStartTaskWebForm.as px
Use the Advanced Search and sort by Fuel Consumption.

[avandonk]

Here is a schematic of a solar air heater I have been inventing in my head. I hope to build one before next winter. The glass in the front facing the winter Sun will heat the black powder coated perforated Aluminium in the same way a solar water heater works. The air would be drawn through the perforations and be ducted inside the house by a low wattage fan. My calculations suggest that even with an outside temperature at 5 deg C say the house can be heated to 18 deg C +. Each square meter of this type of panel would produce a bit better than the equivalent of one KW of heat as warm air.

I thought I would throw this in for comment.

Bert

[acropolite (Phil)]

I have had compact flouros in my house for over 15 years. In the really early days the bulbs cost $35 each. My shack (beach house) is solar powered, water is pumped, microwave oven and lighting & TV as well as lighting & miscellaneous for a friends adjacent shack, with some cooking and the fridge run on LPG. I would be lucky to use 100Kg bottle of gas every 2 years. Our house has a reverse cycle air conditioner used primarily for heating and is fully insulated. I regret not installing double glazing at the time of construction, however the glass used has 65% of the insulating value of double glazing. Our car is a diesel and wherever possible we travel to work in my company supplied vehicle to cut down on fuel use. We opted for a 4Wd because of the rough gravel roads and the need to tow a boat. The Toyota we bought cost us a premium price but returns fuel economy that is better than most large sedans and rivals that of Subaru cars. I've measured economy from 8.4 to 9.3 litres per 100Km. We use our boat sparingly and mostly for fishing, usually we come back home with enough frozen fish to last 3 months or more. We grow some of our own vegetables.

Currently the one thing that I am doing that has the most potential to reduce (contain) greenhouse emissions is opposing the proposed Pulp Mill in Tasmania, which has the potential to emit C02 in obscene amounts (the mill will generate "green power" (their words) by burning green wood waste to produce electricity) as well as consuming C02 absorbing natural forest. The amount of C02 emitted by the mill per annum is reported to be 800 times that of all the vehicles on the states road per annum. If you can find a dirtier method to produce electricity I'd like to know about it. You can see from those figures that any small steps we make as consumers will be insignificant in the big picture.

IMO the biggest step we can take, as consumers, is to force our pollies to take notice and reduce emissions and more importantly to take the easy steps immediately ( street lights off after say midnight, turning off unnecessary lighting in businesses overnight etc), together with ceasing coal exports and embrace alternate energy generation (wind, geothermal,solar). Forget clean coal, at this stage it's a bit like Santa Clause, everyone's heard of it but no-one has actually seen it.

[xelasnave]

Originally Posted by avandonk

Here is a schematic of a solar air heater I have been inventing in my head. I hope to build one before next winter. The glass in the front facing the winter Sun will heat the black powder coated perforated Aluminium in the same way a solar water heater works. The air would be drawn through the perforations and be ducted inside the house by a low wattage fan. My calculations suggest that even with an outside temperature at 5 deg C say the house can be heated to 18 deg C +. Each square meter of this type of panel would produce a bit better than the equivalent of one KW of heat as warm air.

I thought I would throw this in for comment.

Bert

Good idea Bert and I have seen systems similar and one in particular in a house taking advantage of solar heat sinks..
I use a small solar cooker during summer ..because by the time you need a cuppa there is always one ready in the solar box.
alex

[xelasnave]

And so interesting everyones input.
Certainly the pulp mill got wonderful exposure and maybe it even caused someone not to get what they expected to get today.
I have many ideas to harness energy that otherwise goes to waste and one I reckon is to harvest the excess heat of office buildings, car parks and subways... exhaust it up the side of various office buildings..taller the better...with fans at the top to harvest the up flow of heat.... but do the numbers first I dont know how much heat is available for harvest in the cbd but it was a thought...

For me the solar panels have been great..got two about 11 years ago and they are still going well.. you can learn to live within such a system but it is different to grid power obviously cause mine is a small system.. more suitable for a boat or van set up.

Great to see how individualos are each doing their bit... maybe the are only a few of us but otheres can learn... from me as I said it is about saving money firstly and that is the point I will push because I feel many may act if they see the financial advantages...

Like the little solar box I mentioned so easy to make and when the Sun is shinning cooking is free..coffee, wheat bix, baked beans sortta during the day stuff but if I were using gas to cook with it would save a few bucks I reckon..but I use wood if I need a fire for real heat and hot water.

alex

[glenc (Glen)]

Red-hot Australia just the spot for solar energy projects
http://www.theage.com.au/news/climat...036983561.html
AUSTRALIA gleams a bright red in a map that paints a vibrant picture of how solar energy reaches different parts of the world.
America's space agency, NASA, has pinpointed the world's sunniest spots by studying maps compiled by US and European satellites.

[sailormoon]

I think that alot of people do the little saving thing and really want to help the environment. The main problem IMO is the actual businesses and the fact that all the petrol companies are refusing to accept non petrolium cars!