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[Ulfarr]

I find it as amusing as it is disturbing that someone read some regulations about the minimum standards of sanitation and their response is "I'm not allowed to fling my shit on the road! Help, I'm being oppressed!"

[wierd]

I suppose that is one way to look at it, but that would be incorrect.

Rather, if you look into what is "legit", like a sewerage lagoon,  it is literally "Yeah, we just flush it out into this big open-air pit. Because that's so much better than a septic tank at preventing it from getting in the ground water. /s"

The detail is that you had to grease a local inspector to approve it, and you have to keep having them come out to inspect your hole in the ground. 


This is not the same as "Help, I cant just shit on the ground! I'm being oppressed!".  It is "The lagoon I built meets all your requirements, except having been dug by a certified contractor, and has not had some inspector come out to inspect it every year."

But the hyperbole is great. Keep it up.

[Il Palazzo]

In any case, your argument about the evil big brother systematically preventing people from going off grid is tenuous at best. What you're actually saying is: 'Buying land costs money and it's the Man's fault I ain't got enough'.

[wierd]

Well, that kinda is; Income inequality is a real problem.

The implied statement you are making though, is that such a view is a paranoid conspiracy theory.  Nothing so complicated as that though; More, the lowest common denominator is that industry lobbies government, and industry selects for rules and regulations that discourage competition, and maximize their own profit and longevity.  It is not explicitly overt, and does not have to be. There is no secret cabaal going "Oh noes, they might escape our clutches!"  It is more "Hey, we can't trust those people not to fuck up." combined with "We lobbied to have exclusive authority to review and approve new constructions, and you did not pay us."

[TD1]

How much would a plane cost? 15k? Presumably you could sell it on afterwards too.

Or maybe just rent a plane? Flying lessons recommended, but everything takes effort

[wierd]

More.

https://www.trade-a-plane.com/search?s-type=aircraft&amphibious=t&s-page=3

Note-- those are USED.

(NEEDS to be amphibious, due to a lack of runways.)

You are thinking more "Ultralight", which does not have sufficient range.


Now-- I cannot afford such a thing. What I MIGHT be able to afford, is a gasoline powered snow mobile, that has a converter kit to run on syngas (Specifically, solid fuel converted through thermal gassification), and a gassifier, installed.


I could then operate the snow mobile on the same pellets used by the pellet stove.


While it sounds exotic, it is actually rather old and primitive tech.
https://www.lowtechmagazine.com/2010/01/wood-gas-cars.html

A snow mobile does not have a terribly large engine, and so should not need a terribly large gassifier. (As opposed to a car, which has a large engine, and requires a lot of energy to move the heavy frame of the vehicle, and thus needs a big honking tank gassifier on the back.)  It will however, reduce the efficiency of the vehicle (woodgas has less energy in it than does petroleum fuel), and requires special filtering consideration (pyrolized tars and other products can make it through with the syngas, which is bad for the engine. You have to catch those in a filter.)  The cargo/towing capacity of the snowmobile would be reduced accordingly.

[Ulfarr]

That doesn't sound that eco friendly but if that's how you actually want to live who am I to stop you.. In a sunnier place you might be able to ease on that fuel consumption with a solar furnace.

[wierd]

The idea is to go there and stay. However, that means getting enough kit there to do that. That means transport.  There are no gas stations.  Deadfall wood is carbon neutral. The pollution output is smoke particulates only.

There is an option though- Better than the snow mobile.

There are ATVs that are suitable for this, like the can-am defender (Price is full retail, I would buy used.)  There track conversion kits for these, allowing them to traverse heavy snow, AND all-terrain mud. (EG, no roads, which is what I would need.) This model has a back-porch style rack in the back, and with modification, can be fully enclosed.  This means I can buy and install one of these (which are meant for a vtwin style engine-- like this has-- but meant for a generator. Just drive slow and sure.)

I could attach a suitable trailer.  This would let me haul limited amounts of equipment to the site. (saw horses, saws, axes, hammers, nails, plastic PVC tubing, etc.)

Again, the idea is to eventually park it, and never use it again (hopefully.) 

[Trekkin]

At that point it might be simpler to just make your personal contribution to solving the climate problem outweigh the carbon cost of the infrastructure you use.

[Ulfarr]

Assuming that there is enough deadfall wood in a forest year-long to sustain you, which it isn't unreasonable for a big enough forest. How long until you consume all that is near your home and you have to use your vehicle to haul wood from further away? And then what happens if you reach the point that hauling said deadwood consumes more energy that it will provide?

Trees do need quite some time to grow so you are bound to run out of nearby deadwood eventualy and you will constantly need more, due to the harsh temperatures + everyday needs (cooking, disinfecting/melting water, washing). Are you going to cut down living trees then?

[wierd]

At that point it might be simpler to just make your personal contribution to solving the climate problem outweigh the carbon cost of the infrastructure you use.

I get where you are going there Trekkin, but you are not really thinking that through.

The average american motorist produces 4.6 metric tons of CO2 in a year. With just their car.
https://www.epa.gov/greenvehicles/greenhouse-gas-emissions-typical-passenger-vehicle

You would realistically only need to stop driving, and live off grid for a few years to completely break even on the carbon footprint of the materials used for the house, (which would be the minimal necessities for plumbing and pals.) The proposed vehicle would release CO2, but is carbon neutral. (the carbon was previously in the air already before the tree turned it into cellulose and lignin. Most of that CO2 would be re-released into the atmosphere ANYWAY by natural decomposition.)

Assuming that there is enough deadfall wood in a forest year-long to sustain you, which it isn't unreasonable for a big enough forest. How long until you consume all that is near your home and you have to use your vehicle to haul wood from further away? And then what happens if you reach the point that hauling said deadwood consumes more energy that it will provide?

Trees do need quite some time to grow so you are bound to run out of nearby deadwood eventualy and you will constantly need more, due to the harsh temperatures + everyday needs (cooking, disinfecting/melting water, washing). Are you going to cut down living trees then?

You can put more than just wood into a pelletizer.
http://www.biopelletmill.com/grass-pelletizer-machine.html

If it contains cellulose and lignin, it can be made into a dense pellet.

[Trekkin]

At that point it might be simpler to just make your personal contribution to solving the climate problem outweigh the carbon cost of the infrastructure you use.

I get where you are going there Trekkin, but you are not really thinking that through.

That's not really the argument I'm making, though. I'm not arguing about the feasibility of reaching zero carbon emissions by living on your own; I'm saying that assuming your best bet for minimizing your environmental impact is purely to minimize cost involves precluding any possibility of doing anything beneficial. You're effectively asserting that you can be of no benefit to anyone, so your only recourse is to minimize cost at the expense of any possible benefit -- and at some point finding new ways to run away is going to take more effort than planting trees or getting involved in the development of new carbon capture technologies or some sort of activism or some other incremental change that could have a positive impact and wouldn't involve totally overhauling your life.

I mean, do you really think you're so useless that the best way you can help society is to leave it entirely? I really hope not, but it really sounds like you're predicating your plan on that.

[wierd]

No, I am asserting that I do not justify my existence by how much I enrich others. I do not need to enrich others to have value for myself.

If I enrich others, it is because I choose to, not because society forces me to. A human life is not measured in GDP.

[Trekkin]

Okay, I can understand that. But then why leave? Why not just assert that your climate impact is worth the value you assign to your own existence?

I'm just trying to figure out how you worked out that not existing as far as the rest of us was concerned was your best option.

[wierd]

The neccesitated expenditure of finite life spent producing value for the society (at financial gunpoint), is very vexing to me.

As I pointed out previously to Arx, I would rather deal with the harsh, but ultimately fair (all organisms have the same value, without uneven consideration) mistress of nature,  than deal with the fickle and purposefully unbalanced calculus of modern society.

The latter is what is driving the endless exponential growth of energy consumption, and wasteful allocation of resources that will ultimately spell the death of humanity if it is not stopped. I want no part of it.  The best way to do that, is to have no part of it.