BF2S Forums My personal top ways to save the environment

On my house, we have Solar Tubes which heat the house and provide all hot water.

Guess how much it cost us to heat our house last winter?

$3.00

Flaming_Maniac wrote:

Kangaroos? Do you have any personal experience? They're treated like pests in Austrailia, there must be a reason why, not to mention the problems with moving species around to places they are not meant to be. As an an environmental advocate you must know that.

yes i do, some are treated like pests, some arent. they eat farmers crops so we shoot them, but in other places theyre fine.
the meat is like 100% no fat
tastes good too

Kangaroo isnt too bad, it is stragne at first cause it looks like beef but has a very differnt texture.

I found it eatable and I am the pickiest eater I know.

Kangaroo burgers... *om nom nom*

CapnNismo wrote:

3) Solar technology - it's becoming cheaper and cheaper. There is a cell phone coming out with built in panels to charge itself. You can buy various models of solar chargers that are portable and connect to mp3 players, phones, etc. Numerous governments are giving out subsidies to citizens that buy solar panels for their homes. The technology is only getting better.

Flaming_Maniac wrote:

Solar panels on small gadgets aren't going to make a lick of difference on a large scale. Home solar systems are a little better, but the only time solar energy is really efficient enough is on solar farms.

Not nessicilarly, my dad has a friend who solar paneled his home and ends up selling energy back to the energy company for extra cash.

Last edited by theit57 (2008-07-04 22:36:19)

theit57 wrote:

CapnNismo wrote:

3) Solar technology - it's becoming cheaper and cheaper. There is a cell phone coming out with built in panels to charge itself. You can buy various models of solar chargers that are portable and connect to mp3 players, phones, etc. Numerous governments are giving out subsidies to citizens that buy solar panels for their homes. The technology is only getting better.

Flaming_Maniac wrote:

Solar panels on small gadgets aren't going to make a lick of difference on a large scale. Home solar systems are a little better, but the only time solar energy is really efficient enough is on solar farms.

Not nessicilarly, my dad has a friend who solar paneled his home and ends up selling energy back to the energy company for extra cash.

Flaming_Maniac wrote:

First of all, the cost for a solar system is still very, very high, namely in the battery storage necessary. Second, though at peak production times you may be able to sell electricity back to the grid depending on your setup, you don't have any production at night or on poor weather days. Without government subsidies solar energy in the residential sector isn't feasible, and even with subsidies the cost is still high.

woo reading

To Godfather, even if there is little weather to worry about, there is still 12 hours of zero production at night. I don't know about you guys, but I'm sitting here typing this at 1:13, and I know my computer, our dishwasher, and our air conditioning are all on.

Burn plastic, Drive blown V8's, Breed cows and leave every light on in house. Get that shit over and done with.

Flaming_Maniac wrote:

max wrote:

I'd rather have fusion reactors, but sadly they don't exist in real life.

Fusion reactors very much do exist in real life, outside of stars.

yeah, we call them nukes

max wrote:

of course they are. All you ever hear are horror stories. Add to this that people have no idea how nuclear fission works. It's natural to be scared of things you don't understand. Hardly anyone does what I do. I STFU if I don't know know how something works. That's why I'll never tell you how to knit properly...

Nuclear power plants are still a risky business, look at Chernobyl, and closer to home, Three Mile Island. I agree Nuclear power is at the very least one way, if not the primary way forward in electricity production from alternative energy, but it is stupid to not recognize its downfalls.

True. Since then reactor designs have evolved a lot. With modern reactors these accidents could be avoided. I'd certainly rather have the first world continue develop new designs instead of the Chinese, the north Koreans or the Iranians while we me futile efforts to set up a couple of windmills. In the end we need a something that can provide us with loads of reliable energy. With our technical knowledge you can either burn something or use nuclear power. All other sources won't solve our problem and themselves aren't without drawbacks. I would rather run the low risk of the Nuclear Plants than to burn coal with their huge environmental impact.

Pubic wrote:

Maybe we should put treadmill generators in our cellars, so that our daughters can do something productive during the day rather than just sitting round getting fat?

daughters locked up in cellars. I like your thinking

That basement thing has already been pioneered here in Austria ...



That link for the cars was the only one I could find. The Hummer and the Discovery are both used interchangeably a lot with that discussion. Now that the Hummer H1 is no longer in production, the Discovery is Greenpeace's latest target. I wish I could find the original report that I found, because it is rather interesting. But comparing the actual operational lives of the two vehicles is what they did. It's not my fault that the blogger that wrote that summary is a fucking idiot.

Kangaroo meat is ten times healthier than beef. Like a member said, virtually no fat. They can be considered almost "100% Natural" under the various government regulations because they're a free roaming animal. They're not kept in barns and cages and whatnot. Just turn them loose onto the field and let them run around and just live. It's also not only manure where all the gases come from. Cattle fart a lot and they do produce more than your average animal.

Solar is very feasible. There are more efficient nanotech models running through testing and advanced R&D at the moment. The CEO of Google (or maybe his 2nd, but pretty sure the CEO) is helping to fund a lot of it. That stuff is supposed to bring up the efficiency of the systems by a rather high number ... I really need to keep these magazines or sites where I am reading this crap ...

Once again, when you don't have favorable weather, you have BATTERIES. Or you can fall back on a city grid if you can't meet your own energy requirements for a short time period. But the Sun is pretty much always there. And in the night, how much of those 12 hours are you really using electricity??? Come on, you may not be producing, but you're not using it, either.

And the fact that you can sell the energy back to the rest of the community alone is worth something, dude. That helps pad the expense of the solar panels. Not only do the subsidies help, but there are tax breaks along with it. Like when the various hybrids came out in the USA the US govt was handing out rather large tax breaks in the beginning to folks who bought them. But the cost of new technology is always high. Look how expensive a PC used to be back in the day. Now they're so cheap that if it breaks, just take it to the local recycling center and go buy a new one!

Why does it have to be a single apartment building to harness the power of a windmill or a river? You build one thing that a whole group of people can live off of. Most settlements are all built around running water, chief. Hell, it's not like the Dutch are really doing anything with theirs at the moment ...

When this townhouse/apartment I am referring to is finished, I'll remember to compare the costs of the house I live in compared to his and we'll see what they're like.

max wrote:

Flaming_Maniac wrote:

max wrote:

I'd rather have fusion reactors, but sadly they don't exist in real life.

Fusion reactors very much do exist in real life, outside of stars.

yeah, we call them nukes

lol
Agreed with the rest though.

CapnNismo wrote:

That link for the cars was the only one I could find. The Hummer and the Discovery are both used interchangeably a lot with that discussion. Now that the Hummer H1 is no longer in production, the Discovery is Greenpeace's latest target. I wish I could find the original report that I found, because it is rather interesting. But comparing the actual operational lives of the two vehicles is what they did. It's not my fault that the blogger that wrote that summary is a fucking idiot.

AOL is a stupid blogger?

CapnNismo wrote:

Kangaroo meat is ten times healthier than beef. Like a member said, virtually no fat. They can be considered almost "100% Natural" under the various government regulations because they're a free roaming animal. They're not kept in barns and cages and whatnot. Just turn them loose onto the field and let them run around and just live. It's also not only manure where all the gases come from. Cattle fart a lot and they do produce more than your average animal.

I would like to see how little fat the kangaroo has and how much it farts when kept in a ranch. Big lifestyle difference.

CapnNismo wrote:

Solar is very feasible. There are more efficient nanotech models running through testing and advanced R&D at the moment. The CEO of Google (or maybe his 2nd, but pretty sure the CEO) is helping to fund a lot of it. That stuff is supposed to bring up the efficiency of the systems by a rather high number ... I really need to keep these magazines or sites where I am reading this crap ...

A stamping method has gotten the efficiency to around ~40%, up from around 10% on a typical solar panel. That efficiency is still very low, and panels with higher efficiency usually have a prohibitively high production cost.

CapnNismo wrote:

Once again, when you don't have favorable weather, you have BATTERIES. Or you can fall back on a city grid if you can't meet your own energy requirements for a short time period. But the Sun is pretty much always there. And in the night, how much of those 12 hours are you really using electricity??? Come on, you may not be producing, but you're not using it, either.

You have to have batteries in the system no matter what, I said that in this thread, but batteries are very expensive. Falling back on the grid is fine for what most people are looking for, but the new alternative source of energy can't just "fall back" on coal power plants.

We actually do quite a bit after dark, the whole family is usually watching tv, lights on, computers on and such until at least 9. Last night I had my computer on until 2. During the winter we usually haven't even eaten dinner by the time dark falls.

CapnNismo wrote:

And the fact that you can sell the energy back to the rest of the community alone is worth something, dude. That helps pad the expense of the solar panels. Not only do the subsidies help, but there are tax breaks along with it. Like when the various hybrids came out in the USA the US govt was handing out rather large tax breaks in the beginning to folks who bought them. But the cost of new technology is always high. Look how expensive a PC used to be back in the day. Now they're so cheap that if it breaks, just take it to the local recycling center and go buy a new one!

I really, really doubt he is getting that much money back from the power company. Significantly less than $100. If not, he must have very sunny conditions and moderate weather so his heating/cooling isn't running very much.

PCs are still expensive, the half decent ones. I don't know about you, but if mine broke, I would definitely try to fix it.

CapnNismo wrote:

Why does it have to be a single apartment building to harness the power of a windmill or a river? You build one thing that a whole group of people can live off of. Most settlements are all built around running water, chief. Hell, it's not like the Dutch are really doing anything with theirs at the moment ...

Good luck convincing the urbanized countries of the West to move people out into villages to "harness the power of a windmill or a river"