Great common sense comments below - Peter Lewer Put the money into covering the irrigation channels and you would go a long way to fixing the problem. Think outside the square, sorry that might be too hard for our current crop. Like · Reply · 11 · 6 hrs Marg Lavery Solar, wind, all renewables and cover irrigation channels. Not rocket science. But this mob!!!! Words fail me!!! Like · Reply · 8 · 5 hrs Anna Meister no vision Like · 23 mins Darren Gately Im not saying everyone should do this but my response has been to turn off my hot water service and bucket all my shower water onto the 3 new veggie gardens I planted to create a useful spot to put the water. Then I built two more and ran a hose out the laundry window from my washing machine. I live near the Murray but my pump hasnt worked for years so I look after my orchard and gardens with my waste rainwater and it works just fine. When I replace the chooks water that just goes on the Passionfruit. Means I double the utility of the water I use and it creates surplus product and therefore no waste at all. I can walk to the butcher and swap tomatoes for TBones. On the way I collect seeds which I pot in either milk containers or cardboard boxes which I can then sell, swap or plant and this pays for the electricity I do use whilst offsetting the carbon it creates. Like · Reply · 8 · 4 hrs Msk Bell Mega Dams are a waste of water, destroying ground water systems, killing rivers, buggering up flood management, and providing big fat evaporation ponds that send the water away with the wind. This government needs to ignore the failed farmers on the National Party benches on matters of environmental engineering and land management. They are relics of the system that nearly killed the Murray. They are of the past, serving only a minority of ultra social conservatives. Science can offer so much more than these dated flat Earth time wasting suggestions. I suggest all National Party MPs educate themselves on the new ways .... Talk to progressive farmers and stop all this nonsense. Like · Reply · 5 · 3 hrs · Edited Ruth Michell Cover the irrigation channels with solar panels and you have a win, win situation like they are doing in India. Like · Reply · 4 · 6 hrs Italo Tettoni Yes but the foreign landowners that have purchased millions of hectares of prime Australian agricultural land want their land to pay off, so a damming this government will go. Or they just might get sued once the TPP gets signed. Like · Reply · 4 · 6 hrs Darren Gately Some of the channels have been lined with plastic in my district. To begin with it was a logically poor choice for aquatic life and it turned out to be that. I havent read the data but local farmers tell me it increased evaporation. Solar is a funny one. Weve discussed it a bit and are concerned that the total energy that goes into the mineral extraction process for the components including aluminium and copper and the manufacturing and installation process also of the lead cell batteries and inverters should be subtracted from the energy produced over the life of the product. Ive not seen the analysis done but I suspect it doesnt actually produce much of a nett yield benefit and no environmental benefit of its own. So yes it could marginally reduce our damage rating to the atmosphere but we have to cause damage to save damage. The energy analysis should be the thing we undertake to see if we are truly making a sensible decision. As for covering channels there would be all the extra mining industry and transport etc for the extensive framework and they would be somewhat impractical to clean and would reduce the rate of photosynthesis for the algae which generates some of the oxygen for the food supply and related fish so Im not sure its the smartest thing we could possibly aim to do. Like · Reply · 2 · 4 hrs Robert Virtue The embodied energy of solar panels has been well studied and documented. From memory it is about 1-3 years depending on the system. There is a shedload of materials in a coal mine and power station as well. Like · 9 mins Van Beethoven Santos Santos Just saw on tv that Senator Barbarick Joyce wants to dig up the earth again for dams..how about using a big bucket yes plastic tubs everywhere you can store it..including our homes, catching all that FREE water would be an Advantage to our society..NO water bills!! Like · Reply · 4 · 7 hrs Peter Lewer What can you expect from a property owner thinks of himself and his mates not the rest of the country, or the ecosystem. Like · 1 · 6 hrs Chris Leishman There is another way thats better. some underground coal mines after they finish mining leave massive empty caves that fill with water. The ground and remaking coal acts like a big water purifier and it fills by seepage and underground rivers. Theres one if those in Newcastle from a hundred years of mining coal and it has 3 times the volume of Lake Macquarie of drinkable water in it, meaning we dont need dams or reliance on rain as much. Its hardly known about and as soon as they make the desalination plant to take out the little bit of salt in it we are going to have a lot of drought proof water. Its better than that stupid Sea water desalination plant in Sydney. Ps. I hope we dont get dumb protesters because if they fully understood it they wouldnt oppose it as the desal plant will probably run on on waste methane and wont use much energy at all. Could be a great way to get water for us Like · Reply · 1 · 1 hr · Edited Helena Mills NO! NO DAMS! Like · Reply · 38 mins Vicki Richmond Is it possible that the ordinary people know that dams stop the natural flow of water and in some cases cause droughts Like · Reply · 46 mins Wendy Ridge NO, NO, NO!!! Like · Reply · 1 hr Tullee Black David Roberts Like · Reply · 3 hrs Ian Scotty McCulloch For your information, a former Prime Minister, Paul Keating, deemed the Murray River to be a series of ponds. His picture does not appear in the news headlines there does it. So, it was already done some years or decades back now. Cover the channels with solar panels. Brilliant idea. Then employ several hundred solar panel cleaners.
Posted on: Tue, 21 Oct 2014 07:45:07 +0000