Self-sufficiency . . . have you thought about it?

[digitS']

Shannon is this thread now your party?

Currently, Forbes has some news on geothermal and solar power in Iceland and then there's Bobby Fischer's burial on the island.

Reuters had a January, 2005 story on the plans by some folks in Iceland for making the country oil-free by shifting its transportation system to hydrogen sometime within the next 50 years. Perhaps, this may not be impossible in a country where 70 percent of the energy for its 300,000 people already comes from geothermal or hydro-electric sources. Iceland already has a hydrogen bus project the story tells us. Other countries are also buying buses.

ABC News' most recent story on hydrogen cars in November makes no mention of Iceland. I went ahead and checked Australian Broadcasting Corp. (made me look . Nothing to be found on those ABC news stories about hydrogen cars from September and this month on Iceland.

Hydrogennow.org's news story on Iceland's 190,000 vehicles and the possibility of the change to hydrogen power was a dead link. But, linking to MSNBC's story from May of 'o6 worked!

MSNBC talked to the same hydrogen expert in Iceland and had the same quotes as Reuters. New information was that by May of 'o6, "Reykjavik currently has three hydrogen buses." This story also notes that Honda is working on a hydrogen car and that these vehicles have only water vapor as exhaust. I recall that from other sources over the last few years.

I'm no engineer but I believe that a hydrogen car is what you mean by "running on water" - otherwise, surely this would be a nuclear powerplant in the vehicle. Perhaps that's feasible?

Correct me if I'm wrong on any of this but I think I'm all finished with my lame attempts at searching out these leads.

Steve

 

[patandchickens]

honda has a water powered car, check out the website. There has been commercials for it too.

Oh, you mean hydrogen powered <lightbulb>. That is different.

As I said in my last post, hydrogen-powered cars sound nice but the technology is not yet worked out to the point where it can be actually USED in a mass market way. When that happens, THEN we can talk.

It's rather inaccurate to call hydrogen fuel cell cars "water powered" -- what they are ultimately powered by is ELECTRICITY, since that is what you need in order to electrolyze the water into oxygen and hydrogen gas. That electricity has to come from somewhere. So swapping from gasoline-powered to electric-powered cars (be they directly powered by wall current or indirectly powered by electrically-produced fuel cells) is not really the free and easy solution you may be thinking it is.

Most places on earth are not suitable for major amounts of wind-, water- or geothermal-powered electricity generation (barring totally new technologies being developed)(not to say those power-generating sources couldn't be used more than they are!), and because of persistant technical issues, solar is not nearly as much as a free lunch as it seemed back in the seventies... it's being worked on, but the technology just isn't there yet (if it ever will be) for us to run an entire society on it.

In fact, I daresay that if at this point in world history we DID switch over to electrically powered cars, we'd just end up burning vast quantities of gas and oil to generate the required electric power

it is Iceland that has completely banned anything but HYDROGEN cars in their country.

Oh, ok, I had not heard of that. Interesting! Thank you.

Actually, though, now that I am reading up on it.... I see that Iceland has NOT actually banned nonhydrogen cars, as such

What they have done is announce plans a FUTURE ban on 'em, to take effect sometime in 20-plus years. That is a little different.

Also, as one news article said, "if it isn't possible in Iceland then it isn't possible anywhere" -- one big reason Iceland is going to hydrogen seems to be the hope of striking it rich as a major world supplier of exported hydrogen (assuming the rest of the world goes in that direction to) since Iceland has copious oodles of, here it comes again, electricity! (Iceland has massive capacity for geothermal electricity generation).

Now, please note -- by no means am I saying a shift away from gasoline is impossible or undesirable.

My point is just that it's not purely that people are lazy or stupid -- there are in fact major logistical and technological obstacles that would have to be overcome (bearing in mind that technology canNOT solve ALL the problems we'd like it to in life), and in the end it is likely to boil down to "it would really be best to just reduce energy use overall".

I noticed you are from Canada, this explains alot of your "infeasibility" issues. You don't give human kind credit where credit is due.

Er.

WHAT on earth is THAT supposed to mean?? I have been scratching my head over it for five minutes now and I cannot for the life of me imagine what you are talking about. Please do enlighten me, I would like to know.

<pause>

Perhaps you are not aware that a higher proportion of Canadians live far more 'self-sufficiently' than Americans, since a considerable number Canadians live in remote wilderness locations not (or very poorly) accessible by road.

<pause for afterthought>

Incidentally I am just as much an American citizen as most of the other folks on the list, quite possibly including yourself. I am also, though it may confound your expectations, a stay-at-home-mom, a former university biology professor, former horse trainer and riding instructor, and an avid science-fiction fan.

It is a grave error to make assumptions about an individual person based on the passport that they hold

Anyhow...

As a mom, professor, scientist, sci-fi reader, and moreover just your basic everyday reasonably well informed human being, please permit me to observe that it has always been awfully common for people to give expected future technology much MORE credit than is necessarily due. Unfortunately, just because something can be imagined does NOT necessarily mean it can ever efficiently be done (or at least, done without unfortunate side effects)... the power of the human spirit notwithstanding.

Cordially,

Pat

 

[Rosalind]

Other bad news: Hydrogen fuel cells currently cost more energy to make from various materials (including petroleum-based plastics) than they produce. And there's no technology to recharge or recycle them, plus they generate a lot of pollution to make the materials.

There is some research being done on how to generate biological sources of hydrogen from bacteria (Google "Derek Lovley"), but it's in the very most preliminary stages without so much as a decent proof-of-concept. It will take way more than 10 years to get it to a useful point.

Incidentally, Lovley is a crappy manager and can't retain decent talent, so his research is considerably held back by that aspect of his personality. I think Nuvera Fuel Cells is probably going to hand him his butt in the global marketplace for that reason. I'm just saying, if you're buying stock in hydrogen power companies, and want something closer to market...

 

[Reinbeau]

Please remember, intelligent discussion (of which there is plenty in this thread) is fine, but personal attacks and/or insults will result in the thread being closed. As I said in another thread, play nice!

(we need a wise old lady smiley for some of us around here! )

 

[digitS']

 

[nightshade]

Sorry Nightshade, but the numbers show that we are actually living in one of the "cheapest food" societies EVER -- in the world today, and in the history of mankind. (Obviously, there are still people who are not spending lotsa money on funsies who genuinely do have trouble making ends meet -- but that is NOT because food is somehow abnormally or unreasonably expensive in stores).



OKay I am not tring to sound argumentive or neive but where I live in Nepa milk has gone up nearly $2 in the last year bread $1. Meat is anywehere from $4-7+lb for even hamburg or chicken. We are in a rural area where close to 75% of the house holds are concittered low income. And the healthy fresh groceries that famlies should be buying are too exspensive for most to afford. Highly processed foods in a box are the more cost efficent then the fresh lettus or real potatoes.

We don't buy extras in our house hold, unless you concitter animal food or a new pair of boots once a year extras. We do NOT eat out or go out with friends and we rarely buy food that is not in season for our area. We spend closer to 25% of our income on food in our house hold instead of the number you qouted as the national average. Mostly because we do by fresh or as I call it "real foods" instead or processed goods. I like my tatters to smell like they have been in durt in their life time In our area it has gone up a noticable amount. Maybe not nation wide, but here it has. And it does make a differece. Two years ago my hubby and I ate large boughten steaks atleast twice a week now it is closer to once a month.


I agree that we are way way better off then most other peoples in other nations and I think the grocery thing upsets me cause the extra money they are charging is not going to the FARMERS it is going into the shipping and manufactoring of the packaging. Basily the price of potrolium products. I can't wait til the farmers markets reopen so I can buy from the source again and not in the big stores. I know in our personal experence that our wages have not gone up enough to equal the cost of inflation on goods and basic bills. I live three miles from a nuke plant ( scary in its own right) and every 6 months or so they get a rate increase of around 10% lately, it's frustrating.


And I am not saying we are the norm, my Dh makes a decent wage but he also has to drive 45 mins each way to get that wage, and have plenty of extra training to have it. In our area this is life. Unless you are willing to drive to work a conciterable way, you are making minum wage and nothing more.

I have to admit I concitter ourselves lucky no matter how tight some months may be. I watch my gram at 78 on SS income only struggle just to keep food on the table and pay her bills and never ask for help. (but we all do anyway)

We are able to have our animals, we can grow some of our food and our animal feed to help offset the costs. Unlike our friends we don't have the huge morage or credit card bills that they do so half a our pay check is not going there. The way I see it is we may not have the things our friends have, the big house or new cars, but we also don't have the bills to go with it. And what we have we own. So if I deside to save up $100 or 2 to buy a horse at auction or a couple new goats, it may take me three months to skim it off the top of extra money we have each month but I can and it wont kill is or lose our house.

But then again how many out there would seriously, if you lived in a trailer home deside that you would wait the additional 2-3 years to get your house so you could build med sized a horse barn and a 10x10 root cellar instead. Because you knew once you had that morage the extra money for such things would be none exsistent?:/




After re-reading all that I have just said and all the previous posts I really think alot of our problem as a socity today is our : the I deserve it, instant gradifaction frame of mind. And the plastic instead of actually saving up for something you want and then paying for it.

Just the fact that we all are having these conversations on this thread means every one is not lost to the fact that things need to change. We need to become if not self-suffecent atleast sistainable and sel-reliant as a people and a nation

 

[nightshade]

I'd like to become more water self sufficient. Here in Texas we seem to have drought for at least part of every year. If I every get the chance to build my crunchy-granola dream home, it will have a rain water collection system. I think that in addition to oil dependence and impending scarcity, the western US is facing serious water issues, especially as the southern migration continues. Rain on my rooftop could provide all the water needs for my family, even here. . . .

Are you sure, Karen? I'm not trying to contradict, just curious if someone has done the math.

We have less than 20 inches of precipitation here and most of that comes as snow. If I caught ALL of it and applied that water as irrigation at the rate of 1 1/2 inches/week (as is customary in my gardening), I wouldn't make it thru 14 weeks of the growing season. That might fill the need for most vegetables BUT my garden covers many, many more square feet than my roof does.

Now, this is assuming that I use a composting toilet, drink not one drop of that water, and never wash my clothes or bathe . . .

Steve

I read somewhere online that a 1000 sq foot roof in an inch of rain runs of 600 gal of water.

 

[momsgarden]

I found a link for amount of water per square foot. I found that for my family we would probably come up short, unless we had a large storage system before we switched over. In Austin where we have an average rainfall of 32 inches, a 1000 sq. ft. roof would yeild about 20,000 gallons a year. Using the largest number on the average usage chart my family uses about 58,000 a year. It is interesting though. A single story house with 2000 sq feet would come a lot closer.

Here's the link:

http://www.greenbuilder.com/sourcebook/RainwaterGuide1.html#capacity

Just for curiousity sake I looked at some old water bills. My water bills, unless I'm reading them wrong, show much higher water usage than 58,000 per year; even if I use the winter months when we don't water as the basis for averaging out the year.

Here's another link for an average family's water use:

http://www.cityoftulsa.org/CityServices/Utilities/WaterUsage.asp


I'm under that in the winter months, over in the summer.

 

[quadcam79]

thought about it? yeh I have a whole forum dedicated to it.
it's down at the moment, changing domain names but it focuses on combining self sufficiency with technology, things like aquaponics, solar, wind, alternative fuels etc.

i'm hoping to be off the grid one day and providing at least 50% of our food

 

[1acrefarm]

For those saying rainwater will not meet your needs it can come closer than you think. If rain catchment is combined with a greywater system and good conservation it will go alot further. My family of three used 2k gallons last month through very strict conservation. We have about 2 dozen animals as well. If I setup a greywater system to flush the toilet we can use even less.