Engineered wetlands: questions and answers.

Wouldn't it be equally naive not to have an understanding of gene-environment interactions and population dynamics when dealing with ecosystems?

In thermodynamcs you quantify energy terms first, then apply integral operators like the Hamiltonian to get different levels of dynamic solutions. Given the appropriate boundary conditions you can predict gene environment interactions and any other desired dynamics.

Cost of EWBs?

Metropolitan stormwater fixtures are costing about $1-2 million. I suspect a lot of this is pork barrelling at the moment. With wide spread construction the cost should be about $500,000 each. Further, Community support for solving water issues is phenomenal across all social boundaries. I expect that every EWB installation could have up to 100 citizens donating time and equipment. This could cut costs and completion times dramatically. What a wonderful XTREME way to really feel part of this nation! Pencil me in for Lake Eyre. It would make Clean Up Australia look like a boring day out. Sorry Ian!

Do EWBs disrupt coastal ecosystems?

Each EWB will be custom designed to fit the pollutant load, hydrology, flora and fauna of its locale. It will shield all areas downstream from that pollutant load. This is a significant IMPROVEMENT on EVERY current situation.

Would EWBs hog precious farm waters?

No, after the 100,000 saddle points have been identified, EWBs would be implemented from the coasts inward. Progress of EWB construction inwards will depend on the creation of NET new rainfalls in expansion areas.
There will be exceptions to this in areas that already contain self sustaining wetlands and in Sth Australia's salt lakes where EWBs can be implemented immediately. Salt lakes can have patchwork EWBs using solar desalinated seawater. Some salt lakes are below sea level, minimising pumping costs. Also, the use of highly specialised shadecloths and native plant and animal species will allow optimum heat conversion in extreme desert scenarios. This is important in attracting coastal-rain-bands inland.

Mosquitoes, plagues and bad smells?

Network-Engineered-wetlands are ENGINEERED. For all circumstances they are effectively ultra-efficient-solar-powered-bio-reactors that are network-wide-designed to handle sufficient pollutant loads to halt REGIONAL climate changes.

A new discussion paper released on Sunday morning 5/3/2006,by the Australian Conservation Foundation titled "Out of the Blue", says the existing PATCHWORK of marine laws is not adequate to properly protect the oceans and plan for their future use.

http://www.smh.com.au/news/National/Call-for-streamlining-of-marine-laws/2006/03/05/1141493536688.html

The ACF appears to be reading this forum and are stepping up what is new territory for them marine laws.

Based on what I have been proposing on this forum to mitigate cimate changes in Australia's REGIONALAL area, I agree with this move.

However I urge the ACF to consider:

* that healthy oceans come mainly from healthy river catchments

* Doing what Ian Keirnan does and clean up your own 'backyard' by placing EWB bioreactors at all pollution collecting saddle points across Australia. 100,000 1-5 acre EWBs treating sewage, mining, agricultural, urban and industrial run offs WILL work a lot better than what exists now in keeping rivers and thus oceans clean and healthy.

* Remembering that unhealthy oceans are not caused by climate change ... they are part of a string of harmonic events that CAUSE climate change.

* Remembering that in Environmental matters if you aren't part of the solution you are probably part of the PROBLEM.

KAEP,
one bloke piddling in the ocean and then catching as much fish from it as he is able isn't much of a problem.
When (if) the world wakes up to itself and realises that six and a half billion people trying to do that same thing could be a bit different - only then might there be hope for humanity.

Colinsett,

ASSUMING EACH PERSON HAS AN ENVIRONMENTAL FOOTPRINT FACTOR OF 10x (I think its around that) DUE TO AGRICULTURAL, INDUSTRIAL AND OTHER INFRASTRUCTURE OVERHEADS THEN:

That means the equivalent of sixty five billion people are pissin' in the pond. That's a truck load of shifted Entropy that wasn't being shifted until very recently. Kind of like building huge dispersed REGIONAL bombs around population and mining centres really. God, we are so efficient at waste disposal. Pity about the catastrophic climate changes it causes when the 2LoT creates Prigigone dissipative structures to iron out the consequent entropy gradients.

OOOOPS!

You want to take bets on how long it will take the IPCC to wake up from here?

KAEP,
assuming that your scales of possible efficiencies are correct.
Assuming that they not only can be, but will be, implemented immediately.
Assuming that the present attitude to human reproduction continues and similar inefficiencies are maintained in relation to control of malnutrition, water-born diseases, aids, malaria, etc., and warfare's contribution continues (i.e. population increase is maintained at 1.3% annually for the world).
Then the doubling time for world population is about half a century.
Then the 650 million mark is, on the very edge of extreme of optimism, not to be reached in less than two centuries.
By then, Homo sapiens might have had enough time to develope some sense in relation to reproductive matters and change its rabbit-like habits.
If I don't think about what the place will be like to live in by then, - well, maybe you have given us hope??

Berkshire Hathaway is the largest writer of mega-catastrophe reinsurance in the world. In his 2005 letter to shareholders, just released, chairman Warren Buffett writes:

"It’s an open question whether atmospheric, oceanic or other causal factors have dramatically changed the frequency or intensity of hurricanes. Recent experience is worrisome. We know, for instance, that in the 100 years before 2004, about 59 hurricanes of Category 3 strength, or greater, hit the Southeastern and Gulf Coast states, and that only three of these were Category 5s. We further know that in 2004 there were three Category 3 storms that hammered those areas and that these were followed by four more in 2005, one of them, Katrina, the most destructive hurricane in industry history. Moreover, there were three Category 5s near the coast last year that fortunately weakened before landfall.

"Was this onslaught of more frequent and more intense storms merely an anomaly? Or was it caused by changes in climate, water temperature or other variables we don’t fully understand? And could these factors be developing in a manner that will soon produce disasters dwarfing Katrina?

"[We] don’t know the answer to these all-important questions. What we do know is that our ignorance means we must follow the course prescribed by Pascal in his famous wager about the existence of God. As you may recall, he concluded that since he didn’t know the answer, his personal gain/loss ratio dictated an affirmative conclusion.

"So guided, we’ve concluded that we should now write mega-cat policies only at prices far higher than prevailed last year – and then only with an aggregate exposure that would not cause us distress if shifts in some important variable produce far more costly storms in the near future."

- http://www.berkshirehathaway.com/letters/2005ltr.pdf