an Eco-Hutting we will go…

I’ve been having  a ball these last few weeks. The Port School kids wanted to have a go at the Eco-Hut challenge.

Guess who got roped in – and I’ve been thoroughly surprised, it’s become the high-point of my week!

You get to know the kids, of course, and they’re a great bunch. Willing workers, enthusiastic, thinking about it….

They chose straw-bale, which I have no experience of – and to make matters interesting, they have a $100 budget. We’re up to $13 so far, thanks to a lot of generous folk (I won’t thank them here – the kids and the School will do that in their own way). It’s been a ton of fun. A priviledge, really.

You can see what we’ve been up to on the School website:

http://www.portchalmers.school.nz/eco_hut_challenge_2009.html

As I write this, the mesh-covering of the bales, and the plastering photos, are not up, so keep visiting.

Copenhagen

I guess we had to mention it at some point!

Tim Groser made an interesting comment on Morning Report – he’s a slippery fish. He tried to align the ‘Greenies’ with supporting the Third World, or at least, the impoverished. That sounds, on the face of it, fair, but in reality, it is only to a very qualified point.

The fact is that there are too many people on the planet, and we are indeed in ‘overshoot’. It stands to reason that the more resourced will out-survive the less-so, which means that we will continue doing what we are currently doing to those on the African continent, and elsewhere.

They are but pawns in the game, at this point. The developed countries – and New Zealand is still in that camp- want to carry on business-as-usual (which is actually growth in business as usual) while paying as token a tithe as they can get away with. They also worry about the relative advantage they may or may not get over other advantaged countries.

All of which is so in denial of the other major issues, it makes you weep.

Fact:  we cannot afford to run this experiment on a global scale, with no Plan B, and no physical chance of enacting one.

Fact: If we address it, standards of life (if measured in consumption rates) will reduce substantially.

Fact: There is not the physical ‘Sink’ on the planet, to absorb what we emit, and peak oil will just be displaced by coal, if the Brownlee types keep attempting ‘business as usual’.

Fact: the Third World will be forced to be a carbon sink (we’ll give them money to plant trees, somebody other than the indigenous folk will pocket the money and ‘manage’ the forest, while the displaced folk will have nowhere to grow food…

Yes it will be ugly, but it was always going to be ugly, regardless of climate change. Overshoot makes it ugly.

Is climate change one way for politicians and financiers to obfuscate the end of growth?  I doubt it – they need to believe in growth themselves. That would just be a lucky spin-off.

Copenhagen is starting to show the inevitable standoff between USA and China – one I’ve long predicted. USA has the problem that they did the emitting so-far, and that even with that boost, are irretrievably broke. China, if it follows projections (it can’t) would have emitted by 2050, more C02 than has been emitted since the Industrial Revolution.

Clever argument from Uncle Sam, but the irony of counting a yet-to-be-emitted liability against an already-emitted one is worth thinking upon.

I still think we will go into a permanent fiscal tail-spin, before the effects of chemical change become behaviour-altering. The peak of readily available oil, the depletion of arable land, and other depletion factors, suggest there will be a scrap – a physical scrap – over the remainder.

NZ is a little unprepared for that. Rudd sees it coming. Hope he brown-tongues Uncle Sam enough to be looked after, and that we ride shotgun on that. He could, on the other hand, end up like Poland….

Will a deal come from Copenhagen?  Of course not. Nor will anyone abide by any real limits. They (and our lot certainly think like this) think they can just pay someone else to offset their emissions, and can grow on regardless.

Which won’t happen. Lack of land and presence of corruption, will see to that.

this is a goodie – hat tip to Greg

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/dec/10/ocean-acidification-epoca

Gerry Brownlee Phil Heatley and Mike Moore – keeping the faith

There we go again. Mike Moore has a lightweight diatribe in today’s ODT – the gist of which is that environmentalism is a religion (but of course he gets the science of carbon….)

Back at you, Mike Moore. Environmentalists deal with the real planet, with its finite resources, it’s finite capacity to absorb impact, as dealt to it by us.

You of course, believe in a wholly man-made construct, called economic growth. If you could demonstrate that it can be had without impacting the physical environment, fine.

But if Gerry Brownlee’s assault on the DoC estate, and Phil Heatleys on the sea, are any indication, you can’t.

So rather than asserting that environmentalists are religious in their views, take a look in the mirror.

They are aware of a finite planet, finite resources, a species (us) in overshoot, and a need to hit the brakes before impact.

You of course, don’t believe there will be one. You believe in a man-made construct, called ‘economic growth’. Don’t worry, you’re not the only one as stupid – Phil Heatley actually mentioned ’sustainable economic growth’ in his splurge about marine farming. Think on that, Mike. He is touting an unlimited construct – an exponential one – as a reason for impacting a finite geographical resource. How oxymoronic is that?  Do we need the ‘oxy’ part of the word at all?

Gerry, same day, comes out with a remedy for the electricity sector – chopping around the state sector players (bet the advantage goes to the outsiders) and promoting ‘competition. Same old, same old.

I’ll tell you where the bankruptcy is – it’s in the tired ideology you lot worship.

I guess a previous creed mentioned little children suffering, but we actually have the information to do better.

Pity you three are too stupid – and I chose the word with care – to learn.

We are pleased to announce…. Parengo’s new Pelton wheel.

Well, finally. Mark four, two years is the gestation, and in the end so simple. We started out with a Rainbow (Aust) pelton wheel (they call them ‘runners’)  made of plastic. We mounted it on a car alternator, used a stainless shower-tray, and positioned three nozzles.

It sat around for a long time – as projects hereabouts can do. Often it is because the manifestation of the idea is somehow wrong, and it’s left aside to be cogitated upon some more.

Mark two was a second-hand commercial metal runner, built in small numbers by a fellow in Roxburgh, a couple of decades ago.

Ish mounted a small stepping-motor on it, and it certainly spun. We have a little vid clip of it, and will get it up on Youtube shortly.

It’s problem was a fall in voltage when you applied any load.

So to mark three. The well-popularised Smart-Drive F&P motor, chopped-down from a second-hand washing-machine. Ish did an excellent job of the machining, but it looked too big for the runner, and the  mounting and waterproofing looked difficult.

Another pause, and a visit to Mike Laba, who builds vertical-rotor wind generators. He shows me a Gentle Annie WM motor, a General Electric , all-metal, permanent magnet motor, and the penny dropped.

I left with one in the boot (thanks Mike) and now own a dozen.  With a kit circuit-board from Oatley Electronics (Aust) it looked the berries.

We mounted it on an aluminium ladder, which held it over the creek and above flood-level. Voila, it spun and charged. We are nudging 2 amps now, not much for most folk, but more that we use by a good margin. I think there is scope to double that, certainly in winter, when we get least sun.

It appears to  rev 3-4 times a second – which is a good speed, not one likely to wear the bearings out. Nor is it neighbour-noisy, not that we have any within earshot!  It started charging a very flat (4.6 volts) 12 volt battery, and started out at 36 volts. Over time, it dropped to meet the battery at 13.6. Just fine.

So – Eureka. Ish, of course, has bagged the Smart Drive, and turned it into a windmill.  We’re on a growth path…..

I think we’ll redesign the cowling, to have three good nozzles,  good f low, and no release friction.

Watch this space – we’ll get a couple of youtube clips up shortly.

Monbiot – worth a read.

http://www.monbiot.com/archives/2009/12/01/the-urgent-threat-to-world-peace-is-%E2%80%A6-canada/

this From the late Donella Meadows – perhaps one of the best intellects we’ve ever had.

Pity so many self-important folk rubbished her contribution – including the odd tax-proposaller….

http://www.thesolutionsjournal.com/node/419

She doesn’t fade with time, eh?

John Key – credit where credit’s due. (while there is still credit).

John Key has decided to go to Copenhagen. Good call.

This – however the impacts pan out, is one of the big global issues of our time.

Maybe he’s going for the wrong reasons, but being there will only make him a better leader.

Which should be his overriding goal.

Well chosen, JK.

Now this is good

http://www.japanfocus.org/-R_Taggart-Murphy/3265

hat-tip to ‘Waymad’ on Interest.co.nz.     An excerpt below:

In the Eye of the Storm: Updating the Economics of Global Turbulence, an Introduction to Robert Brenner’s Update

by R. Taggart Murphy

Introduction

Out in the academic cemetery to which avatars of market fundamentalism thought they had consigned their intellectual and political opponents, one can hear today the unmistakable scrape of coffin lids opening. And climbing out of their graves are the bodies of those who contend that the reductionist assumptions of neo-classical/ rational choice orthodoxy are not simply inadequate but flawed in the most fundamental sense.

The reason may seem obvious: the financial catastrophe of last year and the failure of so many established thinkers to see it coming. But there is more dogging the luminaries of mainstream finance and economics than the simple inability to have read the tea leaves properly – to their blindness, for example, in the face of the rise in U.S. housing prices to the point they no longer bore any relation to the earnings streams of much of the American population or to the fantastic assumptions about default rates built into the business models of too many Wall Street houses. To be sure, a few non-mainstream analysts did get these things right before the fact — Nouriel Roubini, for example, or Michael Lewis. But it was in the way the crisis took the entire policy establishment by surprise that we see signs of broader, systemic conceptual failure. Policy makers in Washington, London, Frankfurt and Basel were, after all, advised by intellectuals and analysts privy to the most supposedly up-to-date thinking about markets, about finance, about economic reality. That they could get things so very, very wrong points to deliberate, self-induced myopia over the complexity of and interrelationships among economic and political realities – a myopia that surely contributed to the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression.

The only thing it doesn’t address is the resource question, but this fellow gets the exponential function, that’s for sure.

Australian Liberal Party – and the sun is shining…

Short post this morning, sun is shining and Zeb and I are off into the garden…

Fascinating amchinations over the Tassie yesterday. My contact says big money behind the moves, and big stakes. This was a push that makes Peter Shirtcliffe’s effort (to bias our voting system to business advantage) look like Kindy.

Abbott is a lightweight – you can hear it in his voice – not good enough to go the distance. He – interestingly – says he ‘gets’ the science, so we can expect something from him, sometime after Xmas, and before Rudd re-puts the ETS vor approval.

Expect to see more floor-crossers, and perhaps a Green deal with the Govt. Don’t expect Abbott to last long.

Ultimately, Rudd’s effort isn’t enough, nor is anybody’s. We will see a ramp-up in short order, which will overtake and render obsolete, all the current ETS attempts.

I’m a bit more concerned with how much of the ‘commons’ will be left public, at that point. Clearly, resource constraints (and opportunity constraints) are creating a scrap over what’s left. In the past, they’d have used swords – but this time round fiscal muscle seems to be the weapon. At some point, you have to challenge that – either by attempting to win over minds, or by physical protest. I’ve always favoured the former.

Meantime, we’re off to hang out the washing, chase tennis-balls down the paddock, and do some gardening. Another post later – brain may be in gear…..