Mr. Electricity has assembled a straight-forward website full of great ideas and useful links--everything you'll need to understand, use and save electricity.
Here's what the site covers, in the words of "Mr. Electricity":
I explain exactly what a kilowatt hour is and how much you pay for one. And I show you how to calculate exactly how much electricity your household appliances use, so you know which items are guzzling the most juice (and which ones are the best targets for savings). You'll also learn exactly how to read your electric meter, if you like. . . . And I not only give you meaningful tips for slashing your electricity consumption, I give you the tools to figure out exactly how much you're saving as well. Finally, I've answered countless questions from readers about saving electricity. If you have a question, it's probably answered here already.
The site offers dozens of illustrations. Oh, and one more time, this is a site geared toward saving electricity. For example, check out this page on "vampire power" demonstrating that many appliances burn more electricity to "run the clock" than to provide the function for which you bought them (e.g., VCRs and microwave ovens).
"Mr. Electricity's" real name is Michael Bluejay.
The U.S. consumes about an almost unimaginable amount of oil every day: 20,680,000 barrels of oil per day (and see here). Keep in mind that each barrel contains 42 gallons. Thus, Americans currently use 20,680,000 barrels per day = 239 barrels per second = 10,000 gallons of oil per second.Therefore , we desperately need to maintain almost 4,000 drilling platforms in the Gulf of Mexico in order to keep drilling for oil, right? Not so fast.
Why aren’t we seriously discussing our ability to entirely eliminate offshore drilling by getting just a little bit serious about conservation? Consider the following statistics, which should be on the front page of every newspaper in the United States because
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they prove that we don't need offshore drilling but that we do need to seriously implement conservation measures for many reasons (one of which is impending peak oil):
Projecting ahead to the year 2016, the total oil production from the Gulf of Mexico will never exceed 2.1 million barrels of oil per day. Within the next 10 years, total GOM oil production is expected to exceed 1.7 million barrels of oil per day (MMBOPD), a projection based on existing shallow and deepwater operator commitments as shown in Table 2 and Figure 2. If industry-announced discoveries and undiscovered resources realize their full potential, production could reach 2.1 MMBOPD.
A few months ago one of my neighbors, a proudly conservative man, saw me carrying a package of high-efficiency light bulbs into my house. He gave me a disappointed look loudly said: “Buy some real light bulbs, Erich.” This neighbor has repeatedly made it known that that liberal concerns and proposals regarding energy are unnecessary because there is plenty of oil and coal, and we should make it our national priority to keep digging and burning these resources.
I know that my Republican neighbor is not the only “conservative” in the U.S. willing to scoff at conservation. I previously argued that this anti-energy-efficiency climate–science-denial attitude like my neighbor’s outlook has become a badge of group membership among conservatives. It has become a salient display that one believes, above all, in the alleged power and wisdom of the “Free Market,” an unsubstantiated leap of faith so incredibly bold that I once termed it the Fourth Person of the Holy Trinity (and see here and here). These free-market fundamentalists are contemptuous at well-informed suggestions for using energy resources more efficiently and for reducing our reliance on dirty and dangerous fossil fuels. Many of them consider national policy aimed at energy conservation to be totally unnecessary and ridiculously expensive. Proposals that we should be smarter consumers of energy annoy and anger them and they offer no evidence-based alternatives for peak oil (and see here and here and here ). They refuse to consider the damage being done to our environment, our health and our budget (especially our military budget) as a result of our reliance on fossil fuels .
My neighbor displays a startling lack of curiosity regarding the ramifications for continuing to attempt to drill and dig our way to energy independence. This same attitude is found in many conservative politicians, the most prominent being Sarah Palin. Based on an extraordinary video of a recent debate at Washington University in Saint Louis, this same attitude is also embraced by of the executives at the largest private coal company in the United States, Peabody Coal Company.
125,000 tons of ash and 193,000 tons of sludge from the smokestack scrubber. A scrubber uses powdered limestone and water to remove pollution from the plant's exhaust. Instead of going into the air, the pollution goes into a landfill or into products like concrete and drywall. This ash and sludge consists of coal ash, limestone, and many pollutants, such as toxic metals like lead and mercury.
225 pounds of arsenic, 114 pounds of lead, 4 pounds of cadmium, and many other toxic heavy metals. Mercury emissions from coal plants are suspected of contaminating lakes and rivers in northern and northeast states and Canada. In Wisconsin alone, more than 200 lakes and rivers are contaminated with mercury. Health officials warn against eating fish caught in these waters, since mercury can cause birth defects, brain damage and other ailments. Acid rain also causes mercury poisoning by leaching mercury from rocks and making it available in a form that can be taken up by organisms.
Tons of hazardous and acidic waste which can contaminate ground water. Strip mining also destroys habitat and can affect water tables.
Again, how much coal did you burn today? If you live in an area where most of the electricity comes from coal, the amount of coal you burn will astound you. Your family burned 30 pounds of coal today. And you'll burn another 30 pounds tomorrow. And the next day.
The average household in the U.S buys, on average, 900 kWh of electricity per month, roughly every 30 days. If we multiply 30 days times 24 hours, we find that there are 720 hours in a month. The average household, therefore, is responsible for consuming 1.25 pounds of coal per hour (900 kWh = 900 pounds divided by 720 hours). (Note: your mileage may vary, as we are assuming an ‘average’ house here. Check your utility bill for the past 12 months for your actual kilowatt-hour usage.) There are 8,760 hours in a year, so if we multiply 1.25 pounds by 8,760, we find that the ‘average’ house using 100% coal-generated electricity is responsible for the burning of 10,950 pounds of coal for the electricity they consume per year. That’s nearly 5.5 tons!
The question, then, is why we don't work harder to be more energy efficient? We could construct buildings that are close to carbon neutral (and see here). We could massively reduce our energy use without reducing our quality of life. Each of us could help in dozens of easy ways. Consider, too, that peak coal is approaching; don't believe the hype that there are many decades of cheap coal left. With all of these problems with coal, why does the U.S. Department of Energy website tout the virtues of coal without disclosing the dangers? Why doesn't the DOE discuss energy conservation as a means of drastically reducing the amount of coal we burn? The logic is indisputable: Those areas of the country that depend heavily on coal could cut the trainloads of coal they burn in half if they cut their use of electricity in half. There are easy ways to cut the our use of energy (and see here).
We could live smart, if only we had the will, if only we would take the time to consider that there are far better options. If only we thought about it, we would realize that our energy-wasteful habits are killing American industry. Unfortunately, we live in a country that doesn't know how to stop bad things from happening and to make good things happen. We are squandering our future. It's pathetic for a country that talks such a big game to fail so miserably.
Isn't it time to start writing a happier ending to this sad story? Here's how. Talk to your friends and neighbors about the dangers of coal. Take the time to learn more about coal. Read this Sierra Club publication: The Dirty Truth About Coal. And when you're trying to decide who to believe, remember that the Sierra Club isn't trying to make a profit, unlike those who want to burn ever-larger amounts of coal.
As Washington D.C. gets record snowfall, climate denialists cackle with glee. It was a cool summer, and now a cold winter. So, they wonder, where is this global warming?
"People," I want to condescendingly say, "look at the sun." Weather girls of all genders and persuasions are mentioning that this is the coldest winter in 11 years. Notice that? Are they unaware that there is an 11 year cycle of solar warming and cooling that corresponds to -- and can be measured by -- sunspots? So it's like saying with implied importance that this is the coldest month since 12 months ago. The spots are just starting up, much like the days getting longer at the end of December. Here is a nice look at the sunspot phenomenon.
It is intuitively confusing that dark spots mean more heat. But the pair of images here shows visible and ultraviolet views of the same scene. Those dark spots are tunnels into the gamma-hot regions of the sun. Our eyes can only see one octave on the spectrum. Both hotter than blue and cooler than red ranges are invisible. Dark. Red hot is the coldest temperature that gives off light. (Read about Black Body Radiation if you want to know how this is known.)
Another detail that climate denialists get wrong is the meaning of heavy snowfall. If you get heavy precipitation, it implies much moisture aloft. That is, many more megatons of water are evaporated. By heat.
So before you point to a low local current temperature as evidence against global warming, please look at the time scale that climatologists use, like the Temperature record of the past 1000 years, or even for the last century and a half:
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