Top green living myths • Hacker News Board

Re: Top green living myths

#21

Post by fhars » Fri, Nov 27, 2009, 1:39 PM UTC

akamaka wrote: post #17

henrikschroder wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Only if you have electric radiators. If you heat your home in any other way, you're wasting some energy, since electric energy is the least efficient to use for simple heating.

Well, not entirely true, depending on what you're optimizing for. If it's cost, you need to see if gas bill savings + price difference of appliance If you're optimizing for CO2 emissions, and live in France, with many nuclear plants, maybe using less electricity doesn't do much. (I have ground source heating in my home, btw, and it's great for both!)

But in France the problem is that they built their houses according to the maxim "we have abundant cheap nuclear energy" to use marginal insulation and electric heaters, so these days they have to buy electricity produced in Germany's dirtiest coal power plants during winter...

Here is a (German, sorry) text from last winter: http://www.sol.de/titelseite/topnews/Strom-EDF-Frankreich-Ko...

This winter may become even more problematic, since about a quarter of their nuclear power plants are down for maintenance. http://weblog.greenpeace.org/nuclear-reaction/2009/11/france... http://www.reuters.com/article/rbssUtilitiesElectric/idUSLU2...

Re: Top green living myths

#22

Post by silentbicycle » Fri, Nov 27, 2009, 2:13 PM UTC

whatajoke wrote: post #11

To quote from the article: In particular hard cheese, which takes a lot of milk to produce, can have a bigger footprint per kilo than chicken. This is super stupid. Hard cheese contains more than double the calories of chicken. And nobody in their right minds will consume hard cheese as the main food item.

Right - They're talking about cheeses like parmesan reggiano, which are typically grated and used in small quantities. Nobody eats a pound of parm at a time, just like nobody eats black pepper by the pound.

Re: Top green living myths

#23

Post by dazzawazza » Fri, Nov 27, 2009, 2:25 PM UTC

Daishiman wrote: post #19

However well-intentioned these articles are, I think it's intellectually dishonest to focus on such ridiculously irrelevant things as heating the water for your coffee when the fact is that it won't make any difference. If you want to reduce your energy footprint, buy insulation for your house and stop driving. Really, everything else is insignificant in comparison.

You're correct but since people do 'boast' about these tiny changes to their lives turning them green it's useful for 'authoritative' sources to slap them back down.

Re: Top green living myths

#24

Post by pbhjpbhj » Fri, Nov 27, 2009, 2:41 PM UTC

Daishiman wrote: post #19

However well-intentioned these articles are, I think it's intellectually dishonest to focus on such ridiculously irrelevant things as heating the water for your coffee when the fact is that it won't make any difference. If you want to reduce your energy footprint, buy insulation for your house and stop driving. Really, everything else is insignificant in comparison.

Really, everything else is insignificant in comparison.

The problem with these sorts of statements is that nearly everything is insignificant compared to something else. The UK shouldn't bother about efficient energy use or renewable sources as China is a far greater consumer and anything we do will be insignificant. I shouldn't bother insulating my house because my neighbour owns a mansion and heats it to 25 degrees C all year and keeps the windows open. There's no point in fitting loft insulation as my car wastes more energy that that would save. There's no point turning the tap off when I brush my teeth because the tap at work drips all day and wastes just as much water ... you get the idea anyway.

Millions of people doing small things in lots of instances creates a large(r) difference. It's a sort of bystander effect that prevents such things; no-one acts because someone else could do more - like #6, if everyone signs up for the renewable then they're not going to be able to meet the demand and will have to bring online more sources of renewable energy.

The reusable nappies issue, #9, is that they assume the nappies are not reused. We bought most of ours 3rd hand on ebay (some 2nd hand) and also used moltex nappies that can be degraded completely by vermiculture within 1 year (though we simply composted them) - our second child is now using the reusables (4th hand) so that makes manufacturing cost just over a quarter (due to disposable paper liners) what they were considered to be in the study mentioned. If you use nappy liners then cleaning is easier. There are other benefits including end-of-life reuse (floor cloths) too.

Re: Top green living myths

#25

Post by lsd5you » Fri, Nov 27, 2009, 2:46 PM UTC

Daishiman wrote: post #19

However well-intentioned these articles are, I think it's intellectually dishonest to focus on such ridiculously irrelevant things as heating the water for your coffee when the fact is that it won't make any difference. If you want to reduce your energy footprint, buy insulation for your house and stop driving. Really, everything else is insignificant in comparison.

Or elect to not have a child - something even more significant. Though arguably that is essentially 'freeing up' a permit for someone else.

It conflicts with our view of family values and wholesomeness, but in general a wasteful consumeristic childless individual is going to be more ecological in the long run than pretty much anyone with several kids.

Re: Top green living myths

#26

Post by whatajoke » Fri, Nov 27, 2009, 2:48 PM UTC

jules wrote: post #13

whatajoke wrote: post #11

To quote from the article: In particular hard cheese, which takes a lot of milk to produce, can have a bigger footprint per kilo than chicken. This is super stupid. Hard cheese contains more than double the calories of chicken. And nobody in their right minds will consume hard cheese as the main food item.

From the Volkskrant (newspaper): cheese takes more kg of food for the cows to produce per protein than chicken. For vegerarians cheese is an important source of protein.

For vegerarians cheese is an important source of protein.

Sorry, but the vegetarian you talk of is doing it wrong.

My primary source of proteins is pulses. Especially the red kidney beans contain the same amount of protein as chicken, 24 gm out of 100 gm.

Reference:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicken_(food)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_bean#Red_or_kidney_beans

Re: Top green living myths

#27

Post by LucaDuval » Fri, Nov 27, 2009, 2:49 PM UTC

As usual the single most important advice is missing:

* Don't have (more than one) child. *

We could build an everlasting eden for humankind if we could persuade everybody to limit themselves to one child for couple for the next two or three generations and then switch to two children for couple.

Lacking that we are doomed to damnation.

Re: Top green living myths

#28

Post by dtf » Fri, Nov 27, 2009, 3:08 PM UTC

silentbicycle wrote: post #22

whatajoke wrote: post #11

To quote from the article: In particular hard cheese, which takes a lot of milk to produce, can have a bigger footprint per kilo than chicken. This is super stupid. Hard cheese contains more than double the calories of chicken. And nobody in their right minds will consume hard cheese as the main food item.

Right - They're talking about cheeses like parmesan reggiano, which are typically grated and used in small quantities. Nobody eats a pound of parm at a time, just like nobody eats black pepper by the pound.

Being the UK, I would imagine we're talking about cheddar, which occupies the lion's share of UK cheese production. Give me a good cheddar (Montgomery's is excellent), a nice bottle of wine, packet of biscuits and the complete series of The Thick Of It on BBC iPlayer and I'll do my level best to get through that pound.

Re: Top green living myths

#29

Post by chandler » Fri, Nov 27, 2009, 3:12 PM UTC

whatajoke wrote: post #11

To quote from the article: In particular hard cheese, which takes a lot of milk to produce, can have a bigger footprint per kilo than chicken. This is super stupid. Hard cheese contains more than double the calories of chicken. And nobody in their right minds will consume hard cheese as the main food item.

Moreover, all these calculations of how much energy is required to grow meat fall flat when you consider grass-fed beef & pastured chickens (a la Saladin); unlike corn-fed beef, grass-fed beef can be self sustaining & actually rejuvenate the land.

Choosing veganism over corn-fed carnivory is the lesser of two evils, only because veganism requires less monocropping. However, at best it can only slow--never reverse--environmental destruction (without animals, the NPK source is petroleum).

From an environmental standpoint, the disease is "growing crops without animal input," and corn-fed beef is merely a symptom.

Ironically, the only way to turn veganism into a closed system is to avoid the large-scale monocropping of grains and re-introduce animals for a nitrogen source.

Re: Top green living myths

#30

Post by dtf » Fri, Nov 27, 2009, 3:14 PM UTC

Maybe one thing that could help cut domestic energy consumption in the UK is the introduction of decent real-time meters. Getting a massive bill through the post once every three months doesn't really help you understand where your money's going, especially as they usually have confusing terms (kW/H, BTU etc) and strange pricing structures.

Look at these new ones from British Gas:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/8375711.stm

If you could see how much you were spending each minute, do you think that would encourage you to optimize your usage?