energy conservation
gregladen | September 15, 2010There are two quick and fairly easy approaches to reducing US emissions of CO2 by several percent. These reduction would be at the household level, possibly decreasing the household cost of energy by between 20 and 30 percent (or more, depending on the household) and decreasing national total CO2 emissions by around 10% or so.
But these approaches are nearly impossible to implement. Why? Because people are ignorant and selfish.
The two methods are: 1) Replace existing technologies with more efficient ones and 2) Use energy less. I'm not talking about replacing technologies at a…
ddobbs | June 16, 2009
What we know, Bill speaks:
I already knew, from my own modest experience installing and paying for installation of insulation and other energy-saving upgrades in my house, that such work is highly labor-intensive -- and so employs a lot of people per dollar spent. When we had our basement insulated, the material cost was perhaps $400; the total bill over $3000. Some of the difference was in equipment, but that was probably fairly modest. The big cost was clearly in paying two or three guys to make racket spraying goop in our basement for 3 or 4 days.
So it stands to figure that a good way…
esiegel | April 11, 2008So, what's the deal with this one? startswithabang.com reader Scott Stuart asks the following question:
I was reading "The First Three Minutes" last night and came across an
interesting section about blackbody radiation and energy density. The
author states that as the universe expands, the number of photons
running around (in the CMB, for example) is unchanged, but their
wavelengths get stretched. The energy in a photon is, of course,
inversely proportional to its wavelength, so the energy content of a
photon decreases as its wavelength increases. That seems to mean that
the total energy…