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Scott Adams: How I (Almost) Saved the Earth

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Re: Scott Adams: How I (Almost) Saved the Earth

#21

Post by sasmith »

jvdh wrote: post #19
kleiba wrote: post #11

Interesting article. However, there's one aspect that I find a bit puzzling. I currently live in Germany and Adams' summary of tips how to build a greener house is pretty much a description of how houses have been built here for ages. I mean - the regular houses, not the ones considered particularly green. The general topic seems to be very big in this country, and apparently caters to a huge market. Almost everybody…

It seems that the art of building efficient houses is contained only in Europe. The houses in the US all seem to be made of wood, without much insulation. "Problems" that that causes are all dealt with using "efficient" heating or air conditioning systems. From what I've seen the same is true of Australia and New Zealand though. There you see a whole lot of portable electric heaters being used for the winter, which a…

I really would like to write a more articulate reply, but it's late and I'm tired, so I'll leave you with:

I don't believe you.

Portable electric heaters can be incredibly efficient, since they only heat the room in question. I don't know much about building materials, but the article suggested that most heat loss is through windows, so worrying about wood building seems unnecessary.

Water conservation discussion need to be very localized. Lots of places in the US have very low population densities and plenty of water. Conservation is silly in this case. Whether your toilet uses a lot of water or a little, the same amount of poop and same amount of water are going to end up back in the river. Besides all this, toilet flushing and ice in drinks is peanuts compared to agricultural usage. They are little things and do not make a huge difference.

Please site your sources. Here are some of mine:

http://greenliving.lovetoknow.com/Energy_Efficient_Space_Hea...

http://www.toiletabcs.com/toilet-water-conservation.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_resources

Re: Scott Adams: How I (Almost) Saved the Earth

#22

Post by relix »

vl wrote: post #18
relix wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except you're just turning the problem around. While now, if it's hot outside, the fridge heats up the air in the house, just like you said. With your system, if it's cold outside, the fridge cools down the air in the house (since the heat extracted from inside the fridge comes from the air inside the house, which is heated by your central heating system). You're losing energy either way.

Yep, it's not ideal in the cold weather, but presumably split-system fridge itself is well insulated and thus not cooling the house interior significantly. And house heating system is capable of delivering heat to the right places more efficiently than in the case of traditional fridge "we heat the kitchen because that's where the back wall of the fridge is." But of course only real modeling and prototyping will tell…

Agreed, heating is much more efficient than cooling anyway, so you'd still get a profit with your system, even though your heating exoenses might rise just a bit.

Re: Scott Adams: How I (Almost) Saved the Earth

#23

Post by yummyfajitas »

jvdh wrote: post #19
kleiba wrote: post #11

Interesting article. However, there's one aspect that I find a bit puzzling. I currently live in Germany and Adams' summary of tips how to build a greener house is pretty much a description of how houses have been built here for ages. I mean - the regular houses, not the ones considered particularly green. The general topic seems to be very big in this country, and apparently caters to a huge market. Almost everybody…

It seems that the art of building efficient houses is contained only in Europe. The houses in the US all seem to be made of wood, without much insulation. "Problems" that that causes are all dealt with using "efficient" heating or air conditioning systems. From what I've seen the same is true of Australia and New Zealand though. There you see a whole lot of portable electric heaters being used for the winter, which a…

US toilets may flush more water per flush than EU toilets, but a single flush gets the job done.

I will grant, however, that Europeans do seem to save a lot of water on showers.

Re: Scott Adams: How I (Almost) Saved the Earth

#25

Post by ajb »

sasmith wrote: post #21
jvdh wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems that the art of building efficient houses is contained only in Europe. The houses in the US all seem to be made of wood, without much insulation. "Problems" that that causes are all dealt with using "efficient" heating or air conditioning systems. From what I've seen the same is true of Australia and New Zealand though. There you see a whole lot of portable electric heaters being used for the winter, which a…

I really would like to write a more articulate reply, but it's late and I'm tired, so I'll leave you with: I don't believe you. Portable electric heaters can be incredibly efficient, since they only heat the room in question. I don't know much about building materials, but the article suggested that most heat loss is through windows, so worrying about wood building seems unnecessary. Water conservation discussion nee…

I'm not sure that this is what jvdh had in mind, but any pure-heating device is by definition 100% inefficient. Any physical device which does work produces heat as well (well eventually. The energy may feed into other processes before it ends up as heat). A 100% efficient device is one that produces work equal to the amount of heat (I think - my thermodynamics is a little rusty). A pure heater produces heat without doing any work whatsoever with the energy. The most efficient heating would be done either by a heat pump (backwards air conditioner), or by doing some work with it.

Your point about heating only the rooms required is quite true, though. portable heaters may be more efficient than other extant kinds of heater. One other disadvantage is that many of them are air heaters, and the human body is more sensitive to radiant heat than air temperature. (It feels a lot better to be warmed by the sun, than to breath warm air).

There are portable radiant heaters, though far less of them around than there used to be. I think people see them as less safe, which I guess they are.

Re: Scott Adams: How I (Almost) Saved the Earth

#26

Post by jerf »

ugh wrote: post #20

“Don't brag to me about riding your bicycle to work; a lot of energy went into building that bicycle. Stop being a hypocrite like me.” That doesn’t make any sense, does it? Making something will always require energy, what matters is whether something needs more or less energy than the alternative. (Making a bike needs less energy than making a car, riding a bike needs less energy than driving a car.) Scott Adams’ wr…

"what matters is whether something needs more or less energy than the alternative"

Does it? Does Mother Earth care whether your pollution came from a car or bicycle? You're just another polluter, you big bad polluter you.

More seriously, I think the reference here is to the idea that you can somehow objectively measure your negative impact and that anything above zero is bad. Since I pretty comprehensively disagree with that statement (impact to something as dynamic as the ecosystem can not be measure concretely, most people's metric of "impact" are incoherent when you really examine them, zero impact isn't a useful metric in light of these things, and I have at least as much "right" to exist and impact an environment as a beaver), I tend to agree with you. My point here is that it depends on your point of view and there are common points of view that disagree with you, and the piece was very clearly invoking this "radical" green point of view very often.

Re: Scott Adams: How I (Almost) Saved the Earth

#27

Post by jerf »

sasmith wrote: post #21
jvdh wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems that the art of building efficient houses is contained only in Europe. The houses in the US all seem to be made of wood, without much insulation. "Problems" that that causes are all dealt with using "efficient" heating or air conditioning systems. From what I've seen the same is true of Australia and New Zealand though. There you see a whole lot of portable electric heaters being used for the winter, which a…

I really would like to write a more articulate reply, but it's late and I'm tired, so I'll leave you with: I don't believe you. Portable electric heaters can be incredibly efficient, since they only heat the room in question. I don't know much about building materials, but the article suggested that most heat loss is through windows, so worrying about wood building seems unnecessary. Water conservation discussion nee…

"Water conservation discussion need to be very localized."

I live in Michigan. Tomorrow my car is going into the dealership to be examined to see if the flood it was in last week damaged it in any subtle ways, then it needs to be cleaned up since I wasn't quite able to get it dry enough to avoid it smelling.

This snapshot gives you a reasonably accurate idea of our relationship to water around here. (I'm smart enough to live where it won't flood, unfortunately my work office is built in a flood plain, albeit on stilts so the main office won't flood, I was out to lunch, bit o' rain pops up, bam.)

Re: Scott Adams: How I (Almost) Saved the Earth

#28

Post by Symmetry »

nowarninglabel wrote: post #2

Just as a counter-point, I recently visited a friend in Prague who is both earth-loving like Mr. Adams and an architect. She and her husband recently rebuilt their home, and it looks fairly nice for the area despite being quirky for the energy savings. They have a grass roof which I was told was actually low maintenance once they had it in. That said, they weren't 'idiots' and didn't buy into photovoltaics. Your mile…

Solar hot water heating is probably a much better deal than photovoltaics.

Re: Scott Adams: How I (Almost) Saved the Earth

#29

Post by colomon »

notauser wrote: post #16
ghshephard wrote: post #7

Alternatively you can move to a location with a decent year round climate (Redwood City, CA) and move into an apartment. My PG&E Bill for 29 Days ending 4/21/2010: $5.00 - 40 Kwh @$0.11877. Easily the most massive energy consumer was the refrigerator - I would have cut that energy use by 2/3 if I could have figured out how (conveniently) to do without a fridge. My Hot water came from the building, but, at 97 degrees,…

I lived in an apartment in Northern England one winter. In about January I found out that I hadn't understood the thermostat and the central heating had never turned on. I went through the whole of December oblivious (and warm) thanks to the surrounding apartments providing heat through the walls, floor and ceiling.

I once made it a month into the cold season here in Michigan before realizing that my house's only heating was coming from my computers...

Re: Scott Adams: How I (Almost) Saved the Earth

#30

Post by Symmetry »

Solar cells are expensive now, but production of them has been going up at something likely 20-30% a year for a decade. You got to figure that a lot of the price of a cell is going to the rapid ramp-up in manufacturing capacity, and that at some point the supply will have increased enough that the price will drop.
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