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The Forum > Article Comments > Waste not, water not > Comments

Waste not, water not : Comments

By Don Aitkin, published 14/8/2018

Why is the public broadcaster, of all entities, employing its diminishing coin in enjoining us to enter the war on waste as private soldiers?

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Virtue signalling needs no justification.
Posted by Shadow Minister, Tuesday, 14 August 2018 8:13:21 AM
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Well, they aren't “hammering” me because I don't watch War On Waste or anything except fictitious entertainment on the ABC, and there is precious little of that.

If you are still watching the ABC, you are a left wing twit, a masochistic, or someone who wants something to whinge about. I have no sympathy for anyone still complaining about the ABC because it means that they are still watching it or listening to it.
Posted by ttbn, Tuesday, 14 August 2018 9:38:09 AM
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ttbn,

I listen to ABC Classic FM all the time, every day. It helps distract the tinnitus that plagues my wife. To me it is familiar background music, but I don't 'listen' to it — rather, I hear it. I get five minutes of news as well, plus the promos, and it it was the promos about the war on waste that finally got to me.
Posted by Don Aitkin, Tuesday, 14 August 2018 10:01:27 AM
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I agree with your argument about farmers needing to be realistic, Don, but I do think we have arrived at a new climate normal that will tip a lot more farmers out than in the past.

We need to support them in their exit, rather than their staying on the land which, if aggregated, may be viably farmed by larger entities. It's tragic, but that's business.
Posted by Luciferase, Tuesday, 14 August 2018 10:47:49 AM
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Glad to hear that, Don. I never had you pegged as an ABC tragic, nor as one of the types I mentioned. There is still some decent BBC escapist material to be seen on ABC1.
Posted by ttbn, Tuesday, 14 August 2018 11:44:54 AM
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While I can agree with some of your points, Don. I have to take issue with a few others, and spare us the history lesson every farmer knows as family history!

Some of which include strong men and women breaking and tragically ending their own lives and possibly others?

Something your tasteless article glosses over as being of no moment.

Or like saying we've always had an unusual proportion of rural drought-related suicides as if it were merely irrelevant academic fact or dry history. And presented with your highly credentialled wisdom as if it was all a fait acompli, we none of us could do little about?

And this is where I differ from the coal-fired acidemic enthusiast and draw his academic attention to homegrown Aussie two tank innovation that turns organic wastes into biogas able to power the average Aussie domicile 24/7, with the waste product being thoroughly sanitised reusable nutrient-rich, (millions of annual litres) of water for crops or fodder factories or this or that industrial, process, the other being annul tons (millions) of carbon-rich soil improver. Which improves moisture retention!

If this gas is both scrubbed and used in super silent, ceramic fuel cells? It includes a 50% or better salable surplus of home-generated power or storable gas.

Waste and supermarket practises and preferred marketing are here to stay! No question!

Plastics can be recycled up to 7 times, then baled and used in place of coal in carbon dependant coal smelting. Or with waste rubber turned into crude oil! energy dependent technology, able to be deployed for job growth in dirt-poor rural communities.

As opposed to ABC's curiously favoured presenter agonising over it from a greenies political perspective?

[ I also draw your attention to the nuclear waste article, below yours and the numerous like-minded, science-based, lucid replies, which include mine.]

Adding in (the ABC')s waste as per their regurgitated article on food waste would dramatically increase the biogas production!

And for mine indicates every home should have a mandatory Insinkerator!
Alan B.
Posted by Alan B., Tuesday, 14 August 2018 1:12:10 PM
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AS your article included water, I insert the following into the discussion.

We need to ensure all water that can be possibly retained in the landscape is, to ensure still healthy flows, years into drought events like the current climate change related anomaly. That all irrigation be introduced via underground tapes to halve the water usage and double production areas.

Yes, I know it'll cost! But we could find billions to save the Murray/Darling! Why not the average drought-ravaged farm and or farmer!?

That we mandate on the second driest continent on earth, no effluent can be flushed to sea or into a seaward bound river system, but only ever piped inland to ground, which is at times, is below sea level, with all who want some, be able to draw an allocated share for a suitable, profit-free fee!

Further, that this scarce resource be only used on hilled ground which has biodegradable film placed on it both control weed infestation, produce an earlier harvest and eliminate as much as possible, all non-essential evaporation

. As it does all that, cost-effective farming/cropping! With the seed drilled directly into the film and in the small valleys between hilled ground, so all rain collects at the root system of the crop and not where the weeds normally predominate?

Find the money, off budget, then allow massively increased production pay for it!
Alan B.
Posted by Alan B., Tuesday, 14 August 2018 1:42:53 PM
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Alan B I was going to take you to task for suggesting water saving infrastructure that would cost trillions. However I thought again and perhaps we should start attempting this anyway. If we start outwards from water courses it would start some mediation of the environment and we have to start somewhere.
I read of some adventurist in South Australia who thinking rain was coming planted wheat in the desert and made a pile. They did it the next year too. Third year climate back to normal lost their seed and walked away. Of course we need a proper BOM to assist this not some left wing glee club!
Finally plans for turning NSW and Queensland rivers inland, your opinion?
Posted by JBowyer, Tuesday, 14 August 2018 2:34:54 PM
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Good Idea JB and could be applied to dammed Dawson and Richmond rivers?

And would change the climate?

Moreover, some of the northern Queensland surplus, metres of annual rainfall/water could be injected by gravity into the Great Artesian Basin to transport all the way to northern S.A.

Further to that, a retired driller informed me that every other bore, around half, had to be capped due to either salt or mineral contamination, even in spite of quite healthy flows some of which used to flow quite prodigiously into the Murray.

Anyhow, these water sources could be put through deionisation dialysis desalination and used as domestic water and or in fodder sheds, what have you? Or if healthy flows are there, then as in the aforementioned underground applications for say, cotton or salt, frost and drought resistant native wisteria?

To one, grow a ready to use as is biodiesel and high protein crushed meal that outperforms grain, if used in temporary feedlot situations. Also supports fish farms, where a farm the size of Eagle Farm runway, produces more cash flow than thirty acres of grass. Ditto chicken and pork production?

Finally, we could do an inland canal from our northern W.A. and the Gulf of Carpentaria, where much of the proposed V route is already below sea level.

Therefore would not be much of an engineering challenge with cuter dredges, high-pressure water monitors and ultracheap energy. And possibly cheaper than a couple of dams that are always reliant on diminishing rainfall a far out as the eye can see!

Lake Eyre could then serve as permanently full, transport hub for fast turnaround roll on roll off shipping? And a continuous source of constantly flushed salt water which is child's play to turn into cost-effective desalinated broad scale irrigation for desert wasteland!

The key to that is Thorium and safe as houses, MSR technology couple to four times cheaper deionisation dialysis desalination. And as the crops grown with that, virtually recharge rain-bearing clouds to drop water far further inland.
Alan B.
Posted by Alan B., Tuesday, 14 August 2018 5:15:51 PM
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Yes, it would cost trillions J.B!

But we have trillions in our own super funds and need only an instrument to see it invested here in failsafe income earning energy production and continuously reliable income earning potable water (95%) supply!

And doable as tax-free, government guaranteed, self-terminating, thirty-year infrastructure bonds.

Sadly, the current crowd of no-hopers and naysayers in charge are never ever going to allow it and the cooperative capitalism that would turn this nation into a single, us against the world, unit!

And predictably, a period of unprecedented prosperity that would flow from that, it would seem, given that would hurt pollie's coal-fired dividends/ambitions?

And that my friend is, I believe, far more important than real tax reform or visionary nation building or even genuine self-reliant self-defence!?

We are far more easily ruled as a nation divided against itself! Ditto the sale of our national heritage and or economic sovereignty!?
And not a vocal shot fired by our media nor serious disputation by the seriously divided rabble, on the back bench!

Royal commision into energy? Hahahahahaha!
Alan B.
Posted by Alan B., Tuesday, 14 August 2018 5:43:03 PM
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Meanwhile, India, with the world's fourth largest deposits of Thorium, is building reactors to use this fuel.

Australia, with the world's largest deposits of Thorium, is apparently doing zilch.
Posted by Is Mise, Wednesday, 15 August 2018 12:39:15 AM
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"Meanwhile, India, with the world's fourth largest deposits of Thorium, is building reactors to use this fuel."

Yes, India has said that it'll have a small scale test thorium reactor available next year. OTOH, they've said that every year for the last decade. So far the only thing they generated is subsidies, which, I suspect, is the real aim of the project.

Still, if they do build one, that'll mean they are a mere 50 years behind the US who abandoned the concept back in the late 1960s because of all the problems it entailed.

Even so, if the Indians do build such a reactor, it merely means they are on course to have a commercial model available in 2050 which is their current projected date.

The Chinese on the other hand are projecting a commercial reactor around 2035 IF IF IF they can overcome the myriad problems they currently encounter with their testing.

Doing zilch seems to be a rational approach. Burn coal, not hot air.
Posted by mhaze, Wednesday, 15 August 2018 3:43:39 PM
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Approximately 90% of all plastic in the oceans comes from just 10 rivers, none of which are in a western country.

Approximately 1% of all plastic in the oceans comes from the USA.

Approximately 1% of that 1% (0.01%) is plastic straws.

Australia's plastic waste is approximately 1/20th the size of the USA. So approximately 0.005% of all plastic in the oceans is Australian straws. At most.

Why are the eco-nazis trying to force us to do something (get rid of plastic straws) which is entirely useless. Because that's their job, their mission, their raison d'etre.

All the big pollution battles are long since resolved. But organisations devoted to fighting those battles never declare peace. There's never an end.

First they came for the plastic bags , and I did not speak out—
Because I used calico.
Then they came for the straws, and I did not speak out—
Because I drink my Solo like a man.
Then they came for my plastic 'doob tubes' (http://www.sfgate.com/news/article/Garbage-from-Washington-state-s-booming-pot-13155835.php) and....well, who cares man!!
Posted by mhaze, Wednesday, 15 August 2018 4:08:48 PM
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