Those Pesky Scientists Are At It Again

There are many ways in which can reduce our carbon pollution, and without impacting our quality of life, too! Below, I have listed a nuber of ideas, and I have attempted to associate a cost with each item. They are listed in order of cost. Any savings is up to your usage and not included in these estimates.

1) $0 For "A/C" in the summer, open the windows at night and close them during the day
2) $0 buy recycled products if you can find them- support recycling;
3) $0 buy local products & produce- if they are not transported, that saves gasoline and also supports the local producer;
4) $0 composting turns garbage into fertilizer and prevents formation of methane, which is 23 times worse than carbon dioxide in terms of climate effect;
5) $20 use a rake instead of a leaf blower: they are quieter and provide exercise too;
6) $20 use a clothesline instead of the dryer- many benefits: cleaner clothes, clothes last longer, don't get wrinkled, and each load saves 5 kWh off of your electric bill;
7) $40 replace incandescents with CFLs- saves on A/C costs in summer too;
8) $80 use a REEL lawnmower, which you push to cut the grass and requires no gasoline;
9) $280/ton if you have a wood burning stove, try biobricks- pellets for a wood burning stove- these burn more cleanly with less ash and are easy to start;
10) $2.45/Gal. try to use biodiesel heating oil (B10 or B20) for your furnace/boiler
11) ~$100/month rent a solar-electric system for your home if you cannot buy a system. We are renting these for the cost of your electric bill, with a locked in rate!
12) $3-4000 get a solar hot water heater- fastest payback of all renewables;
13) $10,000 replace drafty windows, if you can. If you cannot, use plastic ($10) or close the curtains at night ($0) during the winter;
14) $15,000 trade in the SUV for a car or even a hybrid vehicle, if you need one

Start out with something small- try to unplug all of the adapters and Standby electronics when they are not being used: adapters all consume the same amount of power, whether the item is being used or not.

There are many possibilities, and they may seem overwhelming. Some ideas are more effective than others: #1 will work if your house is shaded.... but it depends on what you are willing to do. Start with the smaller items, and as you see how it works for you, move to larger items.
My family has done all of it (#3 and #6 are happening this spring, #10 will happen when I can find some in my area, and #11 starts next year). In doing all of these things, our electric bill is only 200-400 kWh/month, and our carbon footprint is less than half of the average American's. What is stopping you from trying to reduce your pollution? Give something small a try, see how it feels and how it works for you. If you like it, try another one!

I have to submit a rebuttal;

Item #2 about supporting recycling is bogus. You need to watch the Penn and Teller Bullshit! episode on recycling. Bottom line -- recyclers waste so much energy just picking up crap to recycle and such inefficient machines doing the recycling that by the time a recycling process is finished, energy has in fact been wasted, more pollutants are in the atmosphere, and the world is still worse off for all the trash. Paper manufacturers grow their own trees for use in making paper and send all scrap wood to be turned to charcoal, a very conservative and efficient process. Land fills are *not* running out of space, they are efficient, they are made so that trash breaks down properly, and they even use the gas produced to power their own equipment, and toxic chemicals do not leak out into surrounding land (because landfills have concrete barriers -- most of that concrete even comes from the rocks that are removed from the land they're using in the first place).

Until recyclers of plastic, paper, and metals other than copper develop processes that are much more efficient than they are today, then recycling is not a part of the solution.

Aerik, I happen to believe paper manufacturers when they say recycling paper saves 75% energy compared to using virgin pulp rather than two strongly ideological magicians. Penn and Teller are funny, but don't confuse wit with a deep knowledge about the fields they discuss.

Marc,
I would query item #7 in your list.
Before going wholesale over to CFL lamps (long useful life, low energy usage etc..) we must find someway to ensure that they don't all end up in normal waste.
As with all fluorescent lamps they contain Hg, not a lot per lamp but as with standard fluorescent tubes when you have millions you have problems.
Mercury isn't the only poison used in these lamps and their manufacture, just the best known.

Perhaps you should add to your list. "Don't leave equipment on standbye (TVs, PCs etc) each on its own is minor 1W to 5W but for a country like Great Britain if each household switched off, it would save 20W to 100MW per year. You won't save a lot on your electricty bill but every little helps".

As can example of the effect of standby power, consider the lowly microwave. Most models consume more energy running the clock/electronics than they do actually cooking food.

#1 depends a lot upon the climate. In interior Calif where I currently live it is hot and dry, using fans at night to cool the house as much as possible, cuts my summer electric bill to under half of what my neighbors pay. When I lived in the mid-west, the dewpoint was only very rarely low enough for this to make sense. So the technique can be very effective in the Western part of the US, but has limited utility for most of the rest of the country.

I have been hearing this doom and gloom from the environmentalists and 'scientists' my whole life and NOTHING has happened. I don't believe anything they say.
SEE: The boy who cried wolf

I really want to know this: if CO2 is just a small fraction of the greenhouse gasses that cause the greenhouse effect, water vapor/clouds being the largest at approx. 95% of the greenhouse total, and if CO2 production by man is only a small fraction of the CO2 that eists in the atmosphere, then how on God's green earth is anything we do going to affect the earth's warming or cooling? I'm serious, I want a scientifically based answer but in understandable terms, and I specifically don't want hype or exageration.

If you google greenhouse gases you never or rarely see water vapor mentioned or highlighted, yet it is my understanding from textbooks and scientific sources that it is indeed what I mentioned above, the largest atmospheric contributor to the greenhouse effect, which I might ad is necessary for life here on earth. So, just because CO2 is apparently deemed to be the culprit in global warming doesn't make it so, and given its small fraction both in terms of total greenhouse affect and the relative % produced by man, I am perplexed over how much anything done by man to reduce CO2 will alter the greenhouse affect. Florocarbons is another story, but not CO2.

Hey, I need some help. Anyone out there willing do donate Carbon Credits. I need them. My wife and I both drive Hummers. I have a H1 and she drives an H2. I travel 86 miles to my office and use my Hummer in sales calls. I burn about 10 to 12 Gallons of fuel a day on short days and 20 to 25 Gallons on long days. God, America is GREAT........

Art asks about CO2, water vapour and global warming.

First, man-made (anthropogenic) CO2 accounts for about 1/3 of the CO2 in the atmosphere. Anyone who tells you it is a small fraction has been lying to you (or is ignorant of the facts).

The reason for the concern over CO2 and not water vapour as I understand it (and I am not a climatologist) is that a molecule of water vapour stays in the atmosphere for a matter of days, so the water content rapidly reaches equilibrium. Molecules of CO2, on the other hand, stick around for very much longer.

Increasing the CO2 in the atmosphere increases the global temperature, which increases the amount of water vapour in the atmosphere. This in turn traps more heat, which evaporates more water, which raises the temperature, which in turn . . . finally equilibrating at a temperature much higher than that caused by CO2 alone. Think of the CO2 as a signal and water vapour as an amplification mechanism.

If the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere decreased then the drop in temperature would cause water vapour to precipitate out, reducing the temperature further, and so on. BTW, predictions are that if all human activity ceased tomorrow it would take thousands of years for the CO2 to return to pre-industrial levels.

I can recommend RealClimate.org as a source of information on climate issues, although some of the posts require concentrated study.