ClimateBabes

community around concentrated solar power. It is meant as a project hub for people that actually want to build a simple, low cost but effective concentrated solar power plant with their community. This page will function as a reference page to products and proprietary information. Become a member today! 

The Four main components

1. The Dish

Our simple design has a fixed dish reflector that can be build using sand, concrete and plaster. The easiest way is to build a mount of sand, or dig a pit of the right shape and make it smooth according to the design. This can be low or no cost if the community pitches in.

2. The mirror

The mirror surface and shape used influences the efficiency of the reflector, but when cost is considered there is a range of options to meet the requirements of each project. We hope to develop specific mirrors that are both very cheap and effective for this design.

3. The reciever

The design has a tracking reciever. Its structure varies with the application of the collected energy. Manufacturing the reciever is not far beyond basic mechanics. The parts of the reciever lend themselves for cooperation in terms of production and design.

4. Downstream utilization

The energy collected with the concentrator can be used as heat, steam pressure or be converted to electricity. Different options can be developed with the community.

Cost

Cost depends on the availability of manpower and materials. The more people help for free, the cheaper the plant becomes. Sub 1 usd/Watt cost are possible. Cooperation through this site can make clear where the design and building process can be made more cost effective.

An old Foe

Stemrust is a historic fungus affecting wheat since biblical times. Recently in 1999 a new strain popped up in Uganda, hence the name UG99. This strain wipes out 100% of the corps affected, and has caused serious crop losses in Africa, Syria, Iran, Asia. This fact showd up in the news in june 2008, and now seems to be raised again.

Wheat use

Wheat consumption rose since the 70´s because
of low carbohydrate diets, and is now on the rise again since 2000.
Wheat also competes with corn for feeding livestock when its quality is
low or corn is not yet available. Major markets are Sub-Saharan Africa,
Egypt, Pakistan, Algeria, Indonesia, the Philippines, and Brazil. Wheat is staple food in India, a country likely to be hit soon according to below scenario. More on wheat use here.

UG99s Spread

UG99 spreads easily as its spores clings to exported materials. Experts agree it is only a matter of time until it will reach the US. To counter it a new strain of wheat must be developed, but that requires time (usually about 12 years) and has not been succesfull until now. If the fungus hits it can wipe out 80% of a harvest, perhaps the next harvest. This means there is not much time to find alternatives, if they exist.

What if

What if wheat drops would fail 100% due to infestations with the ug99 wheatrust? Most investors worry about the increase in commodities prices. It fuels speculation, which can be even more destructive to supplies. It also creates a (financial) dependency on the genetically modified crops, e.g. the companies that make those. A plague of ug99 would mean less food supply in the US, but also much less food supply in the regions mentioned above. If it where necessary to quickly replace this source of nutrition one could look to the sea.

Seaweed and Algae

This could be a chance to introduce more widespread use and farming of seaweed and algae. They can be used as feedstock, food, fertilizer and fuel. Production can be ramped up in months and the nutritional value of algae and seaweed is excellent. For more on growing algae and seaweed look here.

I have a concentrator, now what?

We see a lot of examples of people building a dish mirror in their garden, proving the concentrating power by buring a piece of wood in the focus. That is usually where it ends, sadly. In order to take the next step one has to look into the wat concentrated solar heat can be used.

First: Why concentrate solar light?

It is important to know that concentrated heat is actually pretty high grade. Entropy laws dictate that energy always degrades, eventually to its lowest form namely diffuse heat. As long as we are talking light however, we can easily focus it and create a high temperature spot with lots of potential. Solar rays are like any fuel, if you concentrate it it packs greater force..

In the video below the girl talks about ammonia storage, something she is working on. She says however that it is 'not yet commercial'. Who decides that is a mystery to me, I guess you and I would. It is code for 'the people working on it today would like you to postpone use until they have had a chance to patent the whole thing'. This is the type of ábuse of science by commercial interests I thoroughly loathe, because it is cousing environmental degradation ona gigantic scale.

More info : Solar Thermal Directory

Australians will get very thirsty unless they wake up to their options quickly. Their problems are mainly caused by their own inaction. In far North Queensland, near the northern tip, 2,200 km away,
there is abundance of water, even regular flooding.

A proposed pipeline however would of course deminish the power of both the water and energy companies. In terms of CO2 emissions, desalination is expensive.  

Instead of doing the obvious : building a pipeline that brings the flooded north west water to the drought stricken southern regions, they opt for energy consuming desalination, although some inspired plans will be implemented (using wave powered desalination).

Nobody seems to calculate the agricultural gains along the stretch of the pipeline which will far outweigh the cost eventually. If they want to fight global warming, how about greening as much as Australia as possible and planting it full of trees?

Against the backdrop of the fraudulent US and UK banking system, an arms flailing US federal reserve, slumping industrial output and shift of international power to China many worry about the economic future. One beneficiary of all this is nature. It will have time to catch a small breath and provide some with time to reflect on the depletion oriented economic model that has been practices until today. Hopefully the coming realization will allow the emergence of a real economy and a sustainable one..

Today, a post in the Scientific American was higlighting a deteriorating vital resource, phorsphor. It stated a few bullets:

• Mining phosphorus for fertilizer is consuming the mineral
  faster than geologic cycles can replenish it. The U.S. may runout of
  its accessible domestic sources in a few decades, and few other
  countries have substantial reserves, which could also be depleted in
  about a century.
• Excess phosphorus in waterways helps to feed algal blooms, which starve fish of oxygen, creating “dead zones.”
• Reducing
  soil erosion and recycling phosphorus from farm and human waste could
  help make food production sustainable and prevent algal blooms.

This analysis is politicized. It wants to ensure perpetuation of the current approach to the use of phosphor and related industrial cycle. In the proces it damages the image of the most viable solution.

Minings Future

Mining operations are big business, whether it is gold, zinc, aluminium, you name it. People often forget mining operations are hugely energy intensive. If the price of oil increases or oil runs out, many mining operations other than for coal will become a problem. In all there should be a moratorium on any extraction form the earths crust of materials that can not be kept out of the ecological system (that get lost in it), starting with carbon.

The big mining companies however make materials easily available, and whatever it is, it all ends up in the oceans. Because all ores and minerals in the ground will eventually run out mining has no long term future.

Dead zones and Aglae Blooms

In the chain of cause and effect the order is : incresed phosporization > algae growth > oxygen reduction > dead zones. The negative factor here is the phospohor in the waterways, not the algae, in fact, algae can be harvested and minerals can be extracted from them. Large algae/seaweed are used as fertilizer. A smart shift of the mining companies would be to grow seaweed to fuel, fertilizer and food. This would also replenish the oxygen and reduce the acidity of the oceans. 

Soil Erosion

The irony is that mining compnaies strip entire mountains of their soil. Industrialization has reduced the amount of moisture in the air because of dust and sooth particles, making the environment dryer. THis has led to less growth and easier erosion.

Connecting Algae blooms may be functional because algae blooms have a negative sentiment attached, but it politically prevents future benefit from algae and seaweed. The matter should be seen seperately, to much mineral runoff in the oceans is just a bad thing.

The smart thing to do

To future proof agriculture there should be a push to harvest the algae or seaweed that so abundantly grows due to lots of phoshor. That growth means it absorbs it, so instead of mining the ground one could mine the oceans.

Intrigue

It seems the algea community is captive by a group that is not interested in running production, only on doing research. Like the guy in the video says, the idea and proof of concept is around for many years now. I suspect that to prevent the algae and seaweed markets from disturbing international oil based relations, for little money front companies have been set up to make algae appear high tech, difficult, immature and 'being looked into'. Main purpose: Stalling production. There seems to ba geopolitical angle.

Climate deucebag

I visited an algae company Algaelink in Holland. They told me their technology was not fit to scale up, it was over designed, yet they where spending millions on a pilot plant for KLM. Petrosun is no operating its plant. Greenfuels are out of business (sold its patents). It is necessary the investment speculators are weeded out and the 

Negative points in the above video (why I think he is a shill)

1. Telling people internal combustion is the best engine

2. Telling people the bioreactor is the best, it is not (to dependent on CO 2)

3. Talking about deep pond (that is only for power plants)

4. Pretending a lot of research is to be done

5. Moaning about not getting subsidies (millions)

6. Wanting an unscalable pilot plant!!

7. Promoting nuclear energy

Do it!!

1. Use manure run off

2. Calculate total profit, not only oil yield

The cost effective way to run algae for any purpose is and saline, deep ocean nutrient fed open pond system with local species in a third world (low wage country). The cost of selling the cake (catle feed, fertilizer) covers the possible loss of selling the oil.

Are we seeing the world decending into Mad Max state? Perhaps, but to the benefit of the environment. The Amazoninans are fighting the sellout by Alan Garcia, forcing them to fight their own police force. Mr. Garcia responded by suspending the constitution, instead of granting the people of the region sovereignty.

Q'orianka Kilcher

The exploitation of the rainforsts is meant to provide exporting companies with oil, soy and minerals to be used in the current usurper states, helped by the IMF, World bank and satellite criminal bank organizations. The indigenous tribes are not taking it lying down.

The dispute originated from a free trade agreement with the US in which the local population was ignored. There is a hint of Nigeria situation as well in the sense that oil is won in thinly populated areas. Below a very informative explanation of the issues..

Deforestation is the biggest single source of carbon emissions in the world. The balck earth or Terra Preta below it is a major reservoir of carbon which is realeased excaserbating the emissions evenmore. This is a good reason to not allow a single rainforest tree to be felled for any reason whatsoever.