Hi

 

I’ve just read ‘The Great Disruption’ by the ex-Greenpeace director Paul Gilding.

 

He makes the point that we are not heading for Climate Change – we are already there. And if we press on as we are now to 9 billion people – millions will suffer + if the climate collapses, so will out economies.

 

Jock Wishart & his team rowing  to the North Pole from Canada last week, seems an indicator. Hurricanes in Wall Street – what’s next?

 

The ‘enemy’ or target is the 1 degree war – 2 degrees of temperature rise & the consensus is that much of humanity will be seriously effected. Previously a group or an individual have got us together to battle the ‘enemy’ of the day – Churchill? Today I sense our leaders are too busy looking over their shoulders at balance sheets & opinion polls – & like the Arabic countries ‘dominoes’ , the change will come from the ground up – from the people – & the Internet. That’s you and me.

 

I don’t totally agree with all of Paul’s list of actions below, that we need to take to avoid this – what do you think & what would you  suggest? – why not email this to your list of contacts & your MP? After all we put them there to design our future – they need to know our thoughts, they are hardly psychic!

 

Paul Gilding:

 

1    Cut deforestation & other logging by half

2    Close a thousand dirty coal power stations within 5 years. (The Chinese are already doing it)

3    Ration electricity. get ‘dressed’ for war – add insulation, solar water heaters hi eff lights

4    Erect solar power or a wind turbine in every town of > 1,000 people.

5    Retrofit 1,000 coal power plants with carbon capture & storage

6    Create huge wind & solar farms in suitable places

7    Let no waste go to waste – reuse it like in WWII.

8    Ration use of dirty cars – cut transport emissions by half.

9    Prepare for bio power with combined carbon capture & storage

10    Strand half the world’s aircraft by 5 years time.

11    Capture or burn ethane

12    Move away from carbon unfriendly protein

13    Bury 1 gigaton of CO2 in the soil. Grow loads of plants

14    Launch a government – & community – led “shop less, live more” campaign

 

What are WE doing? – looking for a site up in the hills to put a 10 star efficiency compact bungalow – (with a spare room!) with zero fuel, electric or water bills. Maybe convert Margi’s son’s old Lancer to electric & power it off the solar panels. Maybe grow our veg (chemicals free!) & Barramundi there in Aquaponics tank s. Trial an old 2 stroke scooter – to see how far it goes on a cylinder of compressed air –  then if OK have a new camshaft made for the Bristol to make it a 2 stroke& fill its boot with carbon fibre compressed air cylinders ( > V16  & more torque – boys toys!). If it does the equivanlent of 27 mpg that will be 50% better & renewables powered… Convert a trailer sailor Tri to compressed air to make it self erecting & with an air outboard.

 

 

Looking for Fiat to make a Punto 6″ lower & maybe a monocoque like the old Rochdale Olympic but of epoxy: carbon, with maybe a 1L engine to get 90 mpg? on 100% vegoil (free injector swops ea 20km…)?

 

Pressing on to try & find Joint Venture partners – somewhere! – for www.windways.com.au & www.waterboatman.com.au.

 

“Just plus, up & tomorrow” – little to be gained by looking back now. As they say in the west country “Worry don’t work, so work don’t worry!” Lets get stuck-in.

Our trip to our friend’s wonderful Hindu wedding in Nepal was quite an eye opener in every way.

 

One of the poorest places on earth – mean pay $240 pa … & horrendous water problems – as below. 13,000 children die pa from bad water.

 

1. River Pollution

Drainage is a significant problem in Kathmandu. Due to an inadequate and technically unsound

drainage system, water backlogging is very common in many areas of the city. In most places,

both storm water drainage and sewerage has been combined. Many illegal sewerage connections

into the storm water drains are common. At this time, there is no mechanism for KMC or other

municipalities and the Department of Sewerage to check these illegal connections. Although

there are some waste water treatment systems in Kathmandu Valley, these are not functional and

as a result waste water from the drains and sewers are discharged directly into the Bagmati,

Bishnumati, Dhobi Khola and other rivers of KV without treatment. Along with an increase in

population and unplanned and haphazard urbanization, the city is becoming an example of a

terribly polluted city with open sewers and unhygienic disposal of waste leading to the pollution

of all the existing rivers in Kathmandu.”

 

While they have substantial rainfall & 3 medium sized rivers flowing through the town. People are streaming in from the countryside – the population 10 years ago was 988,341 & now it is 1,442,762. The place is bursting, & its only 30 km square.

 

I suggest boatmen fitted with the simple thermal still, driven by a vertical axis water turbine under the hull – powered by those currents. They may be sluggish, but that amount of water moving at any speed represents power – which can be extracted by a suitably matched turbine. And they could discharge their fresh water to containers on the shore for the water to be collected. We often saw people carrying containers of water on their backs & heads.

 

They do have substantial Katabatic winds of up to force 6 twice a day – but not till you get out to Mustang, up n the hills 200km away from Kathmandu. The winds in Kathmandu are light.

 

Since the polystyrene block thermal still – assembled by the buyers will be a small fraction of the cost of the equivalent RO or VC unit, if I can get the output up to a quarter of theirs, we will have a product. We’ll see how near I have got by the time we meet at the end of the month.