Any environmental conspiracy was first of all to prevent the inception of clean and renewable technology, before any countries became heavily industrialised,

and nowadays to supress it, tho' the supression today is mostly all informational, the technologies themselves and methods, are in operation all over the world.


full title of post, in case it was too long to show up :

bio-fuels, hemp, solar wind geothermal hydro, grey-water recycling, compost toilets, rainwater collection, cloud-busting, organic biodynamic permaculture no-dig, earthships, the list goes on and on

Some of the best ways to handle our problems are completely natural, composting for one. Works right along with nature. Mankind does the most destructive things. He throws his food scraps in a plastic bag, and it gets thrown in a dump, hindering it's return to the earth. Human waste is supposed to decompose and get returned to the earth. But it gets thrown into a water treatment facility, gets chlorinated, and all that stuff. A composting toilet might seem gross to some, but it is nature at work. I think nature allready has the recycling system set up.

Troy

Yeah, it sux.

I don't bother with newspapers, but there was one I saw the other day and some reporter was commenting that he had a friend who was an "extreme" environmentalist because they put their fish supper wrappers in the recycler............that isn't extreme, it's normal! Imagine anyone existing that is still so unevolved that they don't throw their rubbish in the proper bins, and they are still trying to make it seem as if that is in any way extreme, with their mind-control propaganda words in their dodgy ink rags.

They just write those kinds of things so that anyone who is normal and would just put the rubbish in the recycler anyway, and any of that other related kind of stuff, will stop and think that they are being too eager, and that other people will say nasty things to them about it, and that they will be stigmatised as greeny pinkos or whatever............it's total social engineering mind control language they are using. Pathetic.


Newspapers - waste of trees.

Do a goggle search for LEED certification of buildings. Nothing is beings "supressed" it is an economic issue based on poor understanding on real contruction costing.

I wonder sometimes why vehicles don't at least have better gas mileage, despite the computer age, and the time to advance. You might think 30+ miles per gallon is good, but cars were doing that in the 70's. Are oil companies stopping cleaner technologies?

Originally posted by duff beer dragon
Any environmental conspiracy was first of all to prevent the inception of clean and renewable technology, before any countries became heavily industrialised,

Actually, the forms of energy that we had before industrialization were niether clean nor easily renewable. London had some horrendous smogs that killed lots of people, and pollution made many cities and their rivers a dangerous place to live. In areas with lower rainfall, trees were cut down for fuel without regard to how long it took for them to grow. Climate change caused by deforestation added to local problems and pollution.

And then there's the cut and burn technology that farmers had.

No, we started out as polluters.

and nowadays to supress it, tho' the supression today is mostly all informational, the technologies themselves and methods, are in operation all over the world.

Hardly.

It's generally a problem of cost and conversion and accessibility. There's a ton of information on the Internet. I've been following the solar energy stuff, myself but the truth is that the costs still aren't down to the range where Joe Average can put up a solar array on his or her roof and cut down considerably on the electric bills. By the time you add in the cost of materials and getting this alternate fuel source hooked up, it takes 10 - 20 years to recoup the investment -- and by then the tech will have gotten better.

There's lots of initiatives out there which could be explored and are often being explored by individuals. It's cost effective for someone to tinker until they can get their car to run on waste kitchen grease. But it's not cost effective for the Ford Motor Company to do that (redesign entire plants, retrain people, and try to find enough grease to power every possible car.)

True, there will be a cost. But I think auto manufacturers could, at least for now, push even more vehicles to run 60+ MPG. Untill the better fuels can be more readily available. And push vehicle "add ons" that you can place on your existing vehicle to boost fuel economy.

I'm also still not so sure that oil companies aren't somehow slowing progress toward better fuels.

Troy

Good points.

Scraps of food are acidic and might help to disolve the bag it is in over time. My scraps go into a can for composting.

Grease/oils, each city can only produce enough to run the school busses and a few other vehicles, but thats a start and a good thing. The more modes of transportation we move away from fossiles the better. We could possibly come up with other fuel sources to cover trains and delivery vans then 18 wheelers. This would cover a large segment removed from fossiles leaving the driving public. The answer to that might be in photovoltic surfaces on the upper surfaces, would hinder the finish colors a little, but a stash a few watts in the cells while it bakes in the sun. At home you could charge it from your solar roof, wind turbine, bio-gas plant, sterling generator etc. This is possible now for some of the population that makes commutes and their home is mostly vacant during the day and their auto sits in the rays all day both soaking up power to be used later.

Hydros' about tapped out, unless new ways to harness it from flood zones can be exploitec.
Some greywater projects are underway. A local chicken plant will divert it's potent waste water to a downhill aquafilter. If they harvest the reeds from it through a thinning process, then that can be converted to compost for fertilizer. Tank your bath/shower water, filter it and pump it out to a flower/pocket garden (maybe not veggies, collect rainwater for them).

Originally posted by cybertroy
I wonder sometimes why vehicles don't at least have better gas mileage, despite the computer age, and the time to advance. You might think 30+ miles per gallon is good, but cars were doing that in the 70's. Are oil companies stopping cleaner technologies?

Um, no they weren't. In '79 my car was getting 12 mpg. I could fill up for 15 buck though.

Some of the smaller cars were getting around 30 miles per gallon in the 70's weren't they?

I know the larger engines suck gas and some still do. Thinking back to dad and moms newer Cadillac, the gas mileage wasn't too bad considering the large engine it had.

I guess I'm still a bit disappointed with the gas mileage numbers of some newer cars.

Dad was telling me that years ago when he worked at General Motors or Ford Motors (he had worked at both) that there was a carburator built by a man that would do 50 miles per gallon. This would have been around the 1960's. (at least that was the time when dad actually worked at one of these manufacturers) GM bought it and threw it away in Lake Michigan. Anyone familiar with this story?

I remember my cousin had a fixed up older mustang that he said got something like 30 miles per gallon. He had a bunch of performance parts, and it had something like 300 horses under the hood. Maybe a performance ignition system helped with the gas mileage?

Troy

Great, a big gay pirate avatar is trying to tell me that technology started out as dirty.

It didn't. Water powered cars are even older than the updated petrol ones. Watermills and windmills are a bit older than that again.

And,

If it wasn't supressed, then it would actually feature in all instances of such topics being discussed, or written up in various news media, or being on the news, or on TV in general. It would also show up as jobs needing done.

Those things tend to not happen,

go to your local super or hyper market, or 7-11, or whatever - how much of that produce is organicly grown, proper organic? Are they using strip lighting in the store still? Are they using photovoltaic roof tiles, or any kind of back-up or always-on power source that is renewable, or do they get their power from the renewable-only sources on the grid - if you even have those over there (you are in the USA?).
How much of sewage is composted properly?
How much of rubbish is recycled if it could be, or - re-used?
How much of electronics and machinery are correctly stripped, so that the working parts (usually - most of them bar one resistor.....) can continue to be used, and the broken ones repaired if possible?
Is your water treated correctly, is it even spun at all?! before it gets to your home.
I could go on about this, is this, is that, cause it covers just about everything that exists.


Uh, I know about building regulations, not heard of LEED specificly, but - as with above, I don't see what you are trying to imply by that. Even if new buildings are trying to meet proper environmental considerations - there are still loads of building projects that are happening in areas where they shouldn't, most homes are nowhere near enviro friendly, and frankly I doubt - without even looking it up at all - that the regs you mention will have things that would come up to the standard of installing compost loos for example. They probably leave all the lights on when there's no-one around to use them too.
Why are so many old buildings not restored, some of them are absolute gems.
That BBC Restoration TV show - the govt. should pay to do all those buildings up, you shouldn't be able to build anything new unless you can prove you really can't find anywhere that already exists to use.

Does LEED include off the grid energy sources, rainwater sollection systems and grey water recycle - ie, the actual things mentioned in the title of this post? What part of it's regulations did you feel would cover the various things raised here?

t's cost effective for someone to tinker until they can get their car to run on waste kitchen grease. But it's not cost effective for the Ford Motor Company to do that (redesign entire plants, retrain people, and try to find enough grease to power every possible car.)

Actually ford wouldnt need to do anything as long the vehicles where diesel engine ones ( which are the only ones to run on vegatable oil to my knowledge) Currently there are tons of people running thier vehicles on waste veg oil with no modifications to thier vehicles what so ever. The only time you need a mod is in low temps and thats to keep the veg oil a liquid so basically you hook up a small heater to your fuel tank.

That's pretty cool minniescar I never heard about diesel cars and vegetable oil. Vegetable oil is renewable too. How clean is Vegetable oil to burn?

Troy

There's a lot of different bio-diesel fuels,

some countries have been using alcohol as a car fuel too.

I think someone mentioned something about hydro there that isn't quite true - hydroelectric doesn't need reservoirs or large volumes of water in the fill sense, it is like a watermill - it needs running water. There are wave versions too that make use of tides.

Like batteries and turbos and heat-exchange systems, water powered systems like that, or any liquid really, could also be designed so that a return of flow would keep the system itself going.

( with batteries I mean feedback circuits )

Aqua fuel, that seems pretty interesting. I put the links in my "Favorites" so I can take a look at them more later.

Thanks,

Troy

i've been looking into the bio diesel- but i live in Colorado and already having issues with regular diesel gelling up in colder weather. When i was in Greenland they did have propane gas tank heaters but i can't find anything about it online- any one have a source for a gas tank heater?

i already have a block heater but i think even that is a little undersized for my engine and considering some additional heat sources like for instance an oil heater. Its a pretty big truck i use all the time 2002, 7.3 ltr turbo diesel, F-350 crew cab, 4x4, dually, long bed- and gets amazing gas milage for anything near that size- over 25mpg! My much smaller (though still large) gasoline (petrol for the Brits) powered 2 dr Chevy Tahoe i had barely made 17mpg unless i had slick tires on it.

i am pretty "shop orientated" and recycle nearly everything- i have a plactic injection molding machine and all those plastic bottles become something else.

i also made my own aluminum foundry and all those cans/ old aluminum engine parts get cast to something else- forget taking them down to the recyclers for pennies- ever try and build something out of aluminum and have to pay the big $$$ for the material??

Anyone else interested in doing their own recycling for usabel goods look up David Gingery on Amazon - he's got lots of great books and ideas- even making a milling machine and lathe from recycle aluminum!!!