Scott Adams: How I (Almost) Saved the Earth

Post by [deleted] » Sat, Aug 21, 2010, 3:31 PM UTC

jerf wrote: post #26

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 w…

Post by pjscott » Sat, Aug 21, 2010, 3:50 PM UTC

yummyfajitas wrote: post #23

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…

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.

Post by rywang » Sat, Aug 21, 2010, 3:58 PM UTC

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…

Post by dspeyer » Sat, Aug 21, 2010, 5:43 PM UTC

ajb wrote: post #25

sasmith wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Post by anamax » Sat, Aug 21, 2010, 6:24 PM UTC

lotharbot wrote: post #5

Houses in the developed world simply aren't designed to be "green". Painting your roof, reducing the number of windows, and adding insulation are all band-aid solutions to a much deeper issue. All the common "green" solutions might cut your energy consumption in half, but half of a large amount of energy is still a large amount of energy. I've seen some extremely green homes, and they're far more bizarre looking than…