Saving the World & Solar Energy

[Marblehead]

Just make sure your charge controller is twice as large as you presently need. That way if you find that the one panel is not providing enough use are recharge energy you can always but another panel without spending any more money except for the additional panel.

 

(The last panels I bought were from Amazon. They had the best price/quality 100 watt panels available when I was ready to buy.)

[i am]

Thanks.

 

With the portable kits, everything on Amazon looks like terrible quality...

 

I know it would be cheaper to source and put together the parts individually...but I've completely gutted and rebuilt this camper, plus doing a lot of engine and suspension work, and I've hit my burn-out point with researching, asking questions, researching, learning, finding the best deal...buying stuff, learning how it works and how to install it, etc.

 

So I'm going with an expensive, but quality kit from a company in AZ.

[thelerner]

Me <Pope doing good things>

IB: Stay on the topic. This thread is for SOLUTIONS.

A man in power preaching tolerance, thrift, equality, ecological conservation (saving rain forest).. seems like good Saving the World stuff to me.

 

Usually I'm for bottom up solutions. What the individual can do, but when people with influence come onto the scene they can act as powerful 'pivot' points in history and do wonders. Not that I expect miracles, but its nice to see a leading religious figure acting to save the world and not just souls. Though often the 2 acts will be the same.

Edited January 2, 2014 by thelerner

[Isimsiz Biri]

A man in power preaching tolerance, thrift, equality, ecological conservation (saving rain forest).. seems like good Saving the World stuff to me.

 

Usually I'm for bottom up solutions. What the individual can do, but when people with influence come onto the scene they can act as powerful 'pivot' points in history and do wonders. Not that I expect miracles, but its nice to see a leading religious figure acting to save the world and not just souls. Though often the 2 acts will be the same.

 

You posted some photos of Pope. How do they show that he is saving rain forests?

[thelerner]

You posted some photos of Pope. How do they show that he is saving rain forests?

Please read the whole post, before you create additional comments. In this case read #6 in the post your commenting on. It talks about his work w/ the Rain Forest. If you are interested in it you could google it for more information.

 

So you don't have to go back and read, it says:

No, I won't repost it, go back and read it. There are 2 or 3 pictures then lots of words. Read them, particularly #6. If this forum was on paper, you'd make a tree cry.

[Isimsiz Biri]

Please read the whole post, before you create additional comments. In this case read #6 in the post your commenting on. It talks about his work w/ the Rain Forest. If you are interested in it you could google it for more information.

 

So you don't have to go back and read, it says:

No, I won't repost it, go back and read it. There are 2 or 3 pictures then lots of words. Read them, particularly #6. If this forum was on paper, you'd make a tree cry.

 

I do not want to jeopardize your fantasies about saving the world however, you are on a very wrong track. Saying a few good words about rain forests do not save the world. Especially, while Vatican Bank is financing many projects that destroy the world.

 

If the forum was on paper, your posts would be a competitor to "Alice in Wonderland". What a big loss for literature. But you may still print them and present them to your house party visitors.

Edited January 3, 2014 by Isimsiz Biri

[thelerner]

Again you didn't read the initial post, so now you're coming back off subject and on attack.

 

Please don't post on this thread. There's a thread 'IB Derails Saving The World' in The Pit. It was created just for you. Please write your criticisms and time tables for the worlds end there. We don't need a second IB Derails thread on the exact same subject.

 

Don't waste your time on these fantasy threads. Spend it in The Pit. You'll be happier there and so will we.

 

You can't help yourself. You have to write here. You crave attention. Sad.

Edited January 3, 2014 by thelerner

[Isimsiz Biri]

Again you didn't read the initial post, so now you're coming back off subject and on attack.

 

Please don't post on this thread. There's a thread 'IB Derails Saving The World' in The Pit. It was created just for you. Please write your criticisms and time tables for the worlds end there. We don't need a second IB Derails thread on the exact same subject.

 

Don't waste your time on these fantasy threads. Spend it in The Pit. You'll be happier there and so will we.

 

You can't help yourself. You have to write here. You crave attention. Sad.

 

http://life.nationalpost.com/2013/07/27/pope-francis-calls-for-respect-and-protection-of-environment-end-to-exploitation-of-amazon-rainforest/

RIO DE JANEIRO, Brazil — Pope Francis took on the defence of the Amazon and the environment near the end of his weeklong trip to Brazil, as he donned a colorful Indian headdress Saturday and urged that the rainforest be treated as a garden.

Luca Zennaro/AFP/Getty ImagesPope Francis at a meeting with political, religious and civil society leaders of Brazil at the Municipal Theatre in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil on July 27, 2013.

The pontiff met with a few thousand of Brazil’s political, business and cultural elite in Rio de Janeiro’s Municipal Theater, where he also shook hands with Indians who said they were from a tribe that has been battling ranchers and farmers trying to invade their land in northeastern Bahia state.

In a separate speech to bishops, the pope called for “respect and protection of the entire creation which God has entrusted to man, not so that it be indiscriminately exploited but rather made into a garden.”

He also urged attention to a 2007 document by Latin American and Caribbean bishops that he was in charge of drafting, which underscored dangers facing the Amazon environment and the native people living there, as well as called for new evangelization efforts to halt a steep decline in Catholics leaving for other faiths or secularism.

“The traditional communities have been practically excluded from decisions on the wealth of biodiversity and nature. Nature has been, and continues to be, assaulted,” the document reads.

Several of the indigenous people in the audience hailed from the Amazon and said they hoped the pope would help them protect land designated by the government as indigenous reserves but that farmers and ranchers illegally invade for timber and to graze cattle. In fact, grazing has been the top recent cause of deforestation in Brazil.

“We got credentials for his speech and attended so we could tell the pope what’s happening to our people,” said Levi Xerente, a 22-year-old member of the Xerente tribe in Tocantins state in the Amazon, after he attended the pope’s speech. “We hope that he will help intervene with the government and stop all the big public works projects that are happening in the region.”

Xerente, speaking in broken Portuguese, said the biggest threats to Indians in the region were big agribusiness invading land and the government’s own massive infrastructure projects, including the damming of powerful rivers for hydroelectric power generation and roads being carved out of the forest, often to reach giant mines.

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Francis thanked Brazilian bishops for maintaining a church presence in the rugged and vast Amazon, which is about the size of the United States west of the Mississippi River. But he pushed church leaders to refocus energies on the region.

“The church’s work needs to be further encouraged and launched afresh” in the Amazon, the pope said in prepared remarks, urging an “Amazonian face” for the church.

He cited the church’s long history of working in the region.

“The church’s presence in the Amazon basin is not that of someone with bags packed and ready to leave after having exploited everything possible,” he said. “The church has been has been present in the Amazon basin from the beginning … and is still present and critical to the area’s future.”

Catholic priests and nuns have taken up the causes of Indians and of poor subsistence farmers in the Amazon, often putting themselves in danger. Violent conflicts over land rights are common in the region, where wealthy farmers and ranchers are known to hire gunmen to intimidate people into leaving land the government has often set aside as reserves for their use.

Also on Saturday, Francis took his message to shake up the Catholic Church to bishops from around the world, challenging them to get out of their churches and go to the farthest margins of society to find the faithful and preach.

During a Mass with 1,000 bishops in Rio’s beehive-like modern cathedral, Francis echoed the message he has delivered to pilgrims at World Youth Day all week: A radical call to renew the dusty church, which has seen its numbers dwindle in Europe thanks to general apathy and in Latin America in the face of competition from charismatic evangelical congregations.

“We cannot keep ourselves shut up in parishes, in our communities when so many people are waiting for the Gospel!” Francis said in his homily. “It’s not enough simply to open the door in welcome, but we must go out through that door to seek and meet the people.”

It was a slightly more diplomatic expression of the direct, off-the-cuff exhortation he delivered to young Argentine pilgrims on Thursday. In those remarks, he urged the youngsters to make a “mess” in their dioceses and shake things up, even at the expense of confrontation with their bishops and priests.

Francis himself is imposing a shake-up in the Vatican’s staid and dysfunctional bureaucracy, setting in motion a reform plan and investigations into misdeeds at the scandal-plagued Vatican bank and other administrative offices.

Francis’ target audience is the poor and the marginalized — the people that history’s first pope from Latin America has highlighted on this first trip of his pontificate. He has visited one of Rio’s most violent slum areas, met with juvenile offenders and drug addicts and welcomed in a place of honour 35 trash recyclers from his native Argentina.

“Let us courageously look to pastoral needs, beginning with the outskirts, with those who are farthest away, with those who do not usually go to church,” he said Saturday. “They too are invited to the table of the Lord.”

He carried that message to a meeting with Brazil’s political, economic and intellectual elite, urging them to look out for the poorest and use their leadership positions to work for the common good. He also called for greater dialogue between generations, religions and peoples.

“Between selfish indifference and violent protest there is always another possible option: that of dialogue,” he said in a reference to the protests that have wracked Brazil in recent weeks. “A country grows when constructive dialogue occurs between its many rich cultural components: popular culture, university culture, youth culture, artistic and technological culture, economic culture, family culture and media culture.” He added that religion plays a critical and unifying role.

He delivered the remarks at Rio’s grand municipal theatre, where he was welcomed with a standing ovation and shouts of “Francisco” and “Viva o Papa!” (Long live the pope).

On a few occasions, he looked up at the gilded theatre boxes almost in awe from the stage and seemed charmed when a few dozen young students of the theatre’s ballet school, all with their hair in buns, sat down around him. At the end of the event, the little ballerinas all swarmed around Francis for a hug and a kiss.

Claudina Rosa, a 32-year-old secretary from Minas Gerais state who waited outside the theatre in a downpour to catch a glimpse of the pope, applauded his call for dialogue.

“We don’t have any way of accessing our leaders. They don’t listen to us at all, so it’s excellent that the pope call for dialogue in this way,” she said.

Later Saturday, Francis lunches with the region’s bishops and then presides over an evening vigil service on Copacabana beach that is expected to draw more than 1 million young people.

He returns to Rome on Sunday after the final Mass.

The Associated Press

For everybody reading the posts, please find the original post of thelerner that he claims I did not read. (Without photos)

I mentioned the activities of Vatican Bank, but thelerner is silent about that. It seems he did not read my post.

[i am]

I've found that on most forums, good and bad, you can't say "it's a beautiful morning!" without someone arguing with you...

 

Anyway...

 

My solar panels are on their way! Along with a small inverter. Who knows how long the payoff will be before I'm saving money...but I don't really care. Being able to park my rv and not move for weeks at a time is worth it.

[Marblehead]

My solar panels are on their way! Along with a small inverter. Who knows how long the payoff will be before I'm saving money...but I don't really care. Being able to park my rv and not move for weeks at a time is worth it.

Yeah, I doubt you will worry too much about break even on the savings/cost. Just having it and reducing your needs for fossil fuel is satisfaction enough.

 

Have fun installing it.

[i am]

Yep.

 

Cool thing about this kit is that all you do is hook the jumper cable attachments to the battery terminals, aim the panel toward the sun, and you're done.

[Marblehead]

Hehehe. What an easy life you have.

 

 

Oh! BTW I had enough sunshine to run the entire pond system as well as charge the Honda after going out for lunch. I love sunny days but I also need rain now and then too.

Edited January 3, 2014 by Marblehead

[thelerner]

Sometimes saving the world means leaving it, and heading off grid.

Here is an interesting site: Off Grid World

Great link on hydroponics. http://www.offgridworld.com/simple-aquaponics-system-for-growing-your-own-food-fish-at-home/

At Burning Man I attended a lecture from a man with a similar but more difficult system raising trout this way. Trout being a much much fussier fish needing colder water, but worth more per pound.

 

A $2000 400 Square foot solar powered home, sleeps 6(!) and generates its own electricity. Very cool, it could probably use some tanks for water catching. Very inspiring http://www.offgridworld.com/how-to-build-a-400sqft-solar-powered-off-grid-cabin-for-2k/

 

The whole site has many gems: http://www.offgridworld.com/category/off-grid-news/

Looking a little further, some of the gems might be counterfeit or a little overly optimistic. Thus reader beware, still some decent how to and inspiring information and youtubes there.

Edited January 9, 2014 by thelerner

[Marblehead]

Yes, as always, buyer beware. Do the research and don't rely only on seller's advertisements.

[thelerner]

Researching alternative energy, there's lots of pie in the sky claims. Some simply aren't feasible at full size, others are scams. Yet I think the future has to lie in that direction. The progress has been amazing, but there's a long way to go and many dead ends along the way.

[Marblehead]

Well, I just went outside to turn the pumps off for a break and was pleasantly surprised. Tuesday I moved some batteries around hoping to make the solar system more efficient. Yesterday I had a day of full sun so the batteries got a good charge on them while solar was powering all the pumps.

 

When I turned the pumps (3 of them) off a few minutes ago I still had a strong 12.2 volts on the batteries. End result is that I was totally solar at the ponds over the past 24 hours. As the days grow longer the more I will be able to rely on only solar except for totally cloudy days.

 

Yea! More money to spend on things I don't need. Hehehe.

[thelerner]

I found this very interesting. How introducing 70 wolves back into Yellow Stone Park after 70 years of absence, changed the eco system drastically, even to the point of changing rivers. Nice optimistic piece on how when nature is given a chance for balance does surprisingly well.

 

kind of dove tails on how a huge disasters be it volcanic eruptions or even nuclear disasters can help the environment because mans presence tends to have such a negative effect. Remove man for a while, and nature .. finds a way.

 

[Marblehead]

Yes. A success story. I try to keep up with this.

 

I would like to see more information about the attempt to re-establish the Florida panther (cougar) in my state. The population was so low that they had to bring in cougars from out West to prevent in-breeding of the few remaining and eventual extinction.

 

There is a series on TV (Science Channel?) titles "Life After People" that discusses the likely evolution of various parts of the planet over time if there we no people effecting the natural evolution. The program presents some excellent considerations regarding attaining a natural balance of all life on the planet.

[i am]

I heard his ted talk. He strikes me as someone who is far from an expert on the issue, but has read a lot of experts opinions. He overstates a few things and misspeaks a few times, but overall he has the right idea.

[i am]

Actually after listening to it again he has most things right. I think he just doesn't know the difference between a deer and an elk.

[thelerner]

SoG mentioned this site and I wanted to put it in here for later views. A free 72 hour online course on Permaculture, interconnecting gardening, recycling, building- creating Intelligent Holistic Systems.

[Marblehead]

And the fact still stands: No matter how many solar panels one has, if they get no sunshine they put out very little energy.

 

And while I'm stating facts, another fact that still stands is: No matter how many mistakes one makes trying to accomplish something, as long as we keep trying and don't keep making the same mistake over and over again we will eventually find the correct way of doing that whatever.

[thelerner]

I thought this was impressive. Great solutions have to be found looking at nations that do the best job.

 

http://www.hindustantimes.com/world-news/99-of-sweden-s-waste-reused-more-imported-from-other-european-countries/article1-1261185.aspx?htsw0023

 

excerpt:

99% of Sweden's waste reused, more imported from other European countries
Last Updated: 15:30 IST(7/9/2014)

Around 99% of Sweden's garbage is now recycled and the country is so efficient at managing waste they are importing it from other European countries.

The Scandinavian country has 32 waste-to-energy (WTE) plants, where garbage is incinerated to produce steam, which in turn is used to run generator turbines and produce electricity.

 

The Swedish generally waste as much as people in other countries - around 461 kilogrammes per person each year - but only one% of that is ending up in landfill, thanks to the country's innovative recycling programme, the Huffington Post reported.

The country imports garbage from the UK, Italy, Norway and Ireland to feed its waste plants, a practice that has been in place for years.

 

"Waste today is a commodity in a different way than it has been. It's not only waste, it's a business," said Swedish Waste Management communications director Anna-Carin Gripwell.

 

Sweden uses a programme that involves incinerating over two million tonnes of trash per year.

The process also converts half the country's garbage into energy, the report said.

 

The programme involves a waste-management hierarchy designed to curb environmental harm: prevention (reduce), reuse, recycling, recycling alternatives (energy recovery via WTE plants), and lastly, disposal (landfill).

 

Before garbage can be trucked away to incinerator plants, trash is filtered by home and business owners; organic waste is separated, paper picked from recycling bins, and any objects that can be salvaged and reused pulled aside.

 

- See more at: http://www.hindustantimes.com/world-news/99-of-sweden-s-waste-reused-more-imported-from-other-european-countries/article1-1261185.aspx?htsw0023#sthash.gNk0zUFO.dpuf

 

<me: Course devils in the details. Some trash to energy units just end up sending there pollution elsewhere in the form of smoke. Still, it seems like they're doing something very right.

[Marblehead]

Yes, that is very impressive. I especially like the waste-to-energy solution to the waste as well as the energy problems around the world.

 

I have seen a couple documentaries where small companies are trying to open that industry up here in the USA but so far the government hasn't put any effort forward in order to make it become a reality.

 

Just this morning I scanned an article where in India potable water tankers are being hijacked because the water is worth a lot of money.

 

And speaking of water, I finally today got a good rain and I managed to fill all my barrels. That will make me good for at least ten days. My Utility Authority is going to give me another rate increase for water and sewage within the next couple months. They just can't seem to get enough of my money.

[thelerner]

Out West and in Florida its common to see the term Grey water, and it's widely used in irrigation. Here in the US Midwest such unclean for human drinking but fine for plants water is ignored and relatively unknown. Pity.

Edited September 7, 2014 by thelerner