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Top green living myths

guardian.co.uk

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Re: Top green living myths

#71

Post by mmt »

jws wrote: post #39
cake wrote: post #18

2. What they tell you: Buy a greener car The perfect examples of this myth are the Toyota Prius and alike, it amazes me how wrong they are. I've read that the production of these cars is more wasteful than the usual (because of the batteries that have to be shipped), that the global shelf life of the car is poor, that it is difficult to recycle them and finally that the fuel consumption is not extraordinary low (equi…

You have been misinformed about batteries and shelf life, the mileage is variable, it depends on the driver. If you drive a prius with a thought toward efficiency it is quite good. If you are a pedal masher it won't be so good. There are other, cheaper, paths to efficiency. A tiny diesel in a tiny car will get about the same mileage as the prius, but you will have to put up with slower acceleration. Most Americans do…

If you drive a prius with a thought toward efficiency it is quite good. If you are a pedal masher it won't be so good.

I have found this to be true for any car. The question for hybrids is if it's any more or less so. That is, is the effect of a "lead foot" more or less pronounced on average fuel consumption when compared to a non-hybrid economy car?

My anecdotal experience with economy cars versus a similarly small, "sportier" car (Honda Prelude) is that efficient driving has more effect on the the latter (17 to 30 mpg, factor of 1.76) than on economy cars (25 to 36 mpg, factor of 1.44)

they would fail modern emissions tests miserably, but cheap and efficient they nailed

IIRC, the high-efficiency "HF" version of the 80s Honda Civic CRX typically got 45-50mpg, with the same caveat that it couldn't be produced today due to more stringent emissions standards and the added one that it only had two seats.

Re: Top green living myths

#72

Post by radu_floricica »

lsd5you wrote: post #64
ars wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not true. In every country where people might listen to this idea, population shrinkage is a bigger problem than population growth. The net value of a human to society is positive not negative. The problems of overpopulation is a myth.

When you say 'not true', you mean you disagree, right? Population shrinkage is certainly not a problem for the environment and it was not implied that it was not a problem in other respects. The value of a human to society is a positive? Can you unequivocally state that a world with 3 billion people is worse off than one with 6 billion? It is an idealistic claim and only true in a personal sense, and even then may we…

Well, an average person manages to pay taxes, live a reasonable life and leave an inheritance. So I'd say, yes, he makes a positive input.

An over-supply of labor is pretty good for the economy as a whole, bad as it is for the unemployed. We're not even close to the point where the over-supply is so big it causes real problems. There are still areas where there is a labor shortage, especially in skilled professions.

Re: Top green living myths

#73

Post by holygoat »

imurray wrote: post #69
holygoat wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As soon as the calendar flicks over and you switch from using the air conditioner to using your heater, your lightbulb is 100% efficient. (Indeed, if you have a furnace for your central heating, and the ductwork passes outside the heated volume of your house, it's more efficient for you to leave the TV on than it is for the furnace to heat your house, because none of the TV's waste heat escapes the heated volume.) Mo…

This is a common misconception. 1) reducing electricity consumption will reduce use of fossil fuels in power stations (in most parts of the world). Burning fuel in your own home bypasses the inefficient conversion to electricity. 2) if you are going to heat your home with electricity you can be more than “100% efficient” by using a heat pump, so you still wouldn’t want to do it with light bulbs and TVs.

How does using an electric heater instead of waste heat from electrical appliances reduce the use of fossil fuels? Same transport mechanism, same source, same efficiency.

The only way to reduce electricity consumption is improved insulation.

I agree with you if you have a wood-burning stove.

Re: Top green living myths

#74

Post by imurray »

holygoat wrote: post #73
imurray wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a common misconception. 1) reducing electricity consumption will reduce use of fossil fuels in power stations (in most parts of the world). Burning fuel in your own home bypasses the inefficient conversion to electricity. 2) if you are going to heat your home with electricity you can be more than “100% efficient” by using a heat pump, so you still wouldn’t want to do it with light bulbs and TVs.

How does using an electric heater instead of waste heat from electrical appliances reduce the use of fossil fuels? Same transport mechanism, same source, same efficiency. The only way to reduce electricity consumption is improved insulation. I agree with you if you have a wood-burning stove.

If you use a standard electric heater, like a bar heater, I agree with you.

Heat pumps can out-perform heaters (they seem to have >100% “efficiency”) by working in a different way. Rather than spending 1kWh to heat a room, you spend 1kWh to move 4kWh of heat from outside into the room.

Re: Top green living myths

#75

Post by ars »

pbhjpbhj wrote: post #58
ars wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"ask for paper bags at the store" Actually don't. Paper bags are MUCH worse for the environment than plastic. Paper bags are not just an example of a waste of effort, but actually have negative value! (Reusable is good of course, and on that note plastic is much easier to reuse as a trash bag than paper, but even if you don't, plastic is better.)

Paper bags are reusable and [can] come from a renewable resource. You have a citation on your claim?

Paper bags are barely reusable. And they do not come from a renewable resource. The wood does, but there is a lot more invested in a bag.

There is all the energy AKA oil used to make them. From driving the machinery used to cut the tree, then transport the tree, mill it, process it, bleach, then color it, then you have to dry it (heat), and finally transport it. And paper is big and bulky and uses a lot more energy than plastic does to do all that.

Then you have the real problem: water. It takes a lot of water to make paper, and there is a MUCH bigger shortage of water compared to oil.

But even if you want to look at oil alone, paper bags use more oil than plastic ones do.

Some numbers I posted: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=965694

Re: Top green living myths

#76

Post by ars »

evgen wrote: post #66
ido wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am interested - why is plastic better even if the bag isn't reused?

A plastic bag uses very little oil (a quarter teaspoon or so) and some of them can even be made from renewable resources. The real problem is that paper bags are bulky. It takes a lot of energy to move those bags from where they are manufactured to where they are consumed. For the energy cost to get that stack of paper bags to your local grocer you could probably make and transport a hundred plastic bags.

Here are some numbers for you: http://www.reusablebags.com/facts.php?id=7

Paper uses more than 4 times as much energy as plastic. And releases much more pollution, and more water, and takes 85 times as much energy to recycle.

It looses in every way except litter.

Re: Top green living myths

#77

Post by Daishiman »

imurray wrote: post #69
holygoat wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As soon as the calendar flicks over and you switch from using the air conditioner to using your heater, your lightbulb is 100% efficient. (Indeed, if you have a furnace for your central heating, and the ductwork passes outside the heated volume of your house, it's more efficient for you to leave the TV on than it is for the furnace to heat your house, because none of the TV's waste heat escapes the heated volume.) Mo…

This is a common misconception. 1) reducing electricity consumption will reduce use of fossil fuels in power stations (in most parts of the world). Burning fuel in your own home bypasses the inefficient conversion to electricity. 2) if you are going to heat your home with electricity you can be more than “100% efficient” by using a heat pump, so you still wouldn’t want to do it with light bulbs and TVs.

What? Power stations are far, far more efficient at converting fuel to energy than home heaters. Large turbines are incredibly efficient, and their design has efficiency as a top priority. Power plants are designed to burn fuel efficiently and transmit as much energy as possible.

Re: Top green living myths

#78

Post by nomoresecrets »

ars wrote: post #48
LucaDuval wrote: post #27

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.

No you couldn't. Instead you would doom billions to death and starvation, because during the transition time you need young people to support the old. And who exactly would operate this "everlasting eden"? Just about every single technology we have only exists because there are so many people in the world, which makes the cost of the item bearable.

"Instead you would doom billions to death and starvation, because during the transition time you need young people to support the old."

Not if we kill them when they reach the age of 30.

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