I wanted to buy hydroponic lettuce module . Family would not allow it . I grew dry beans family would not allow any more cooking of dry beans . We have well , Family will not allow drinking of well water . We can grow and eat our own tomatoes
You are comparing apples and oranges.
Solar panels and wind turbines are the equivalent of the power plant that burns coal or oil. The big concrete and steal buildings. But you missed the point once you install solar panels for the next 25 years you get electricity with zero new materials added to the system. Wind and solar like trees literally make electricity out of thin air same a trees store solar energy for later consumption.
By the way at the end of 25 years solar panels dont simply stop working have to be thrown away they are rated to produce 80% of the orginal rated power at 25 years. I happen to know from first hand experience that solar panels made in the 80s the old brown panels with circular cells still produce the rated power today or very close because I removed a set from my uncles cabin and helped his neighbor set them up when my uncle upgraded to a new system. So yes wind and solar are totally different than the ff industry which demands you buy more of their products evertime you want to do more work. With solar panels you buy the hardware and for a lifetime you collect the energy to do work each day with no new investment. The difference between owning and leasing if you like.
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Big fan of this guys videoâs Henry but there are hundreds of videoâs discussing the same things. You can grow a head of lettuce in a pickle jar or anything that will hold liquid. You will hear people say that hydroponic food has no taste. They just arenât providing the right levels of nutrients.
Right on the head! I am very happy with my solar panels. That we live relativly north doesnot matter. At the moment we dont pay for electr. Even beter , we get payed, even with a EV. Playing rules are going to change and in 7 or 8 years we have to pay again for electr. So there is time to change to woodgas.
PV is cheap and without effort. Nobrainer.
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Mr Tom, very difficult to say this. But do you really think you can do better than nature?
No I donât Joep. I donât understand the question.
My point is not about the individual using PV or wind to produce their own power Dan. That is exactly the point. It is about the big business of such power supplies. Anything that makes a person more self sufficient is my whole existence.
You hit my issue with hydroponics on the head. I suspect anywhere that you can grow food outside in a garden the results will be better with less effort.
That said I would consider it an interesting all be it high energy demanding option for fresh winter greens. But to be honest I could probably do better with traditional growing methods there too.
On my bucket list of things to try is the methods in the book the four seasons harvest. It is written by someone in Maine IIRC who raises garden greens outside all year with very primitive shelter. I read it years ago but have never made the time to put the system into practice.
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(1) US agriculture producing mountains of unwanted grain
US (and European) farmers used to produce mountains of grain that they couldnât sell. WHY? Pizza Hut doesnât produce piles of pizza that they cannot sell. Homebuilders do not build hundreds of homes that they cannot sell. Why did US grow more grain than they knew they could sell?
The answer is - the government. The US government would buy the surplus grain form the farmers. This encouraged them to plant even more. The allocative inefficiency here is not the mountains of grain that nobody wants, but rather the loss of the resources farmers used to grow that grain. Labor, land, energy, chemicals, machinery, etc. was wasted producing something that society didnât want. The real loss are the products that we COULD HAVE HAD if farmers hadnât used so many resources producing excess grain. This is allocative inefficiency and it reduces the satisfaction that society receives from its resources. (NOTE: changes in government policy have reduced the amount of excess grain being produced.)
(b) Grocery stores: USSR
Several years ago, one of my students gave me this example. She had visited Moscow when the communist Soviet Union still existed. She said that she was surprised when she entered a grocery store and saw four employees at every cash register! What a waste of labor resources. In the US we find one, or two, workers at a checkout stand and only a few will be open. In Moscow ALL stands were open with four employees each. This is productively inefficient. Their costs are higher and since labor is being wasted, they will produce less. They are not achieving the maximum satisfaction possible from their limited resources (productive inefficiency).
http://www2.harpercollege.edu/mhealy/eco212i/lectures/5es/5es.htm
The public elect representatives who pass laws written by private interest . Regulatory agencyâs actions are determined by the companies that they should be regulating .
I do not have any push for society . I did try funding research . It got the âKansas City Shuffleâ, a misleading double bluff . I got my money back , other interest took over research .
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Tom then you are not using the term renewable correctly. Renewable energy has nothing to do with scale. It has to do with the raw materials needed to produce the energy. FF takes far longer than the human lifespan to make so it is non renewable and a finite resource with respect to the lifetime of the humans using it. Wood grows in a matter of decades so if you cut down a tree you can hope to live long enough to cut down the tree that grows to replace it. With some harvesting methods that donât involve cutting the full tree you can arguably harvest each year off the same trees but definitely you can harvest for all eternity off the same land if done at a sustainable scale.
Sorry if I am beating a dead horse but language has meaning. If we donât agree to the meaning of the words we canât come to a common understanding of what we mean.
I agree that grid scale power keeps people dependent on the owner class in our society. Which I think was your point. But self sufficient and renewable are two entirely different things. For example if I happened to live in coal country there is a good chance I could be self sufficient while burning coal to heat my home but it wouldnât be a renewable energy source. Once I dug all the coal out of the land I owned it wouldnât grow back in my lifetime.
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I think this has something to do with not being able to guarentee that the crop you plant will actually be harvested. Look at the floods this last fall in the bread basket of the midwest. I forget the states but entire communities where flooded and the crops lost. I would hate to think what the world would look like today if other farms had not planted a surplus of food to cover the lost crops last year.
The same is true with any industry you look at that demands 100% fulfillment. We build massive redundancies into our power grid because failure is not an option.
I for one an thankful that the farmers insure there is a surplus of food in the grocery stores I wouldnât want to know what would happen if major cities where told sorry the fields flooded so there is no grain for your city this next year. Better luck next time.
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This quote was from economics class from over twenty years ago .
Hey All,
Been kinndaâ wet here. Six Pacific raining storms in the last few days.
Now too warm with four more stacked up storms to endure.
Puddle/slow flow flooding now.
Was at 1 acre-feet. Just went to 2 acre-feet with the last 12 hours.
At four acre feet I then get a little concerned. Over tops my access property 3 foot diameter culvert. Overtops the county roads culverts coming onto the property.
Ha! Ha! Weâll get none of Mike Gibbs floated in-migrating fish thoughâŚ
Weâre too high with one hellaciuos rock channeled falls above the salmon and steelhead fish streams.
Been kinndaâ wet here. Six Pacific raining storms in the last few days.
Now too warm with four more stacked up storms to endure.
Puddle/slow flow flooding now.
Was at 1 acre-feet. Just went to 2 acre-feet with the last 12 hours.
At four acre feet I then get a little concerned. Over tops my access property 3 foot diameter culvert. Overtops the county roads culverts coming onto the property.
Ha! Ha! Weâll get none of Mike Gibbs floated in-migrating fish thoughâŚ
Weâre too high with one hellaciuos rock channeled falls above the salmon and steelhead fish streams.
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Iâm an 83 year old fart and I have seen a lot. I HATE mega farms. They wouldnât be if not for government intervention. Solar and wind turbans would have never gotten off the ground, in not for the gov. You are concerned about that little 'o flood. What was lost was a drop in a bucket compared to all the new acres that are being put into farming each year. Recycling is a joke. Glass collected wonât recoop the cost of shipping to locatipns that can re-use it. Plastics are filling up the ocean. All this talk is flogging the wrong horse. The whole problem is â OVER POPULATION. TomC
Iâm willing to give up my spot Tom. I heard that in heaven gasifiers donât make tar and everyone gets a new Harley. Sign me up.
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We have had the 2nd wettest start of the year in recorded history.
1 3/4â on the 2nd and 3.2â by the 3rd. Creek is flooding but no salmon yet.
I drove my 95 F250 about 15 miles on the 3rd. Good performance and burned 3 - 5 gallon buckets of mostly alder at 15% or less MC.
The surprise was when I drained the monorator (3 quarts), and the condensate tank, (2 quarts). This was probably double the normal amount of liquid from a trip to the airport.
100% humidity air and quite a bit made it through the burner into the cooling rack.
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The swamps are starting to fill up. We need it after a dry summer. Nice and warm, upper 30âs (F), for January. I hope we get a good freeze, so I can do some work in the bush, skid some fiber out.
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A 100 mile DOW ride today to do some snow raking at mother-in-lawâs.
It was -10C today and my hopper alarm warned me a little too late. When I opened up to refuel my poker didnât hit char until past the restriction. I didnât bring any, so I had to excercise the gasifier and make some smoke at the road side after refuling.
A stranger stopped his car and was very interested in what was going on. It turned out he resently bought a WW2 chunker, but he didnât yet have a gasifier.
When we finally finished talking it turned out his name was Jan Olsson 
We traded numbers and will keep in touch.
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Happy new year. Here is a vid that you will send to eevrybody.
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