Floyd Dominy

http://www.hcn.org/hcn/wotr/floyd-dominy-the-colossus-of-dams-dies-at-100

Eyjafjallajökull eruption: planes vs. volcano

An interesting data point about the Eyjafjallajökull eruption: the disruption of the European aviation market reduces the CO2 output by an order of magnitude more than the CO2 released by the volcano itself,

Source: http://www.informationisbeautiful.net/2010/planes-or-volcano/

Stanley Fish doesn't get it on lighting

Stanley Fish writes in the NYTimes:

But my house is now full of environmentally approved lightbulbs. They are dim, ugly and expensive, but I am told that they will last beyond my lifetime. (That’s supposed to be reassuring?) A neighbor told me today that he is planning to stockpile incandescent bulbs in the face of a prediction that they will be phased out by 2012.

Meanwhile, by the weak light shed by the virtuous bulbs, ...

Clearly he didn't read the article in his own newspaper about the importance of choosing the right CFL for each location.

Buy a higher rated CF wattage than the so-called equivalent, pick the right color, and don't give up. There are acceptable CFLs for high-usage, non-wet, non-dimmable locations. You've got to get the right one for each situation and not give up because one "cheap" size does not fit all.

Energy lost

Treehugger picked up on the great New York Times graphs of energy lost in different sectors of the US. And they also remembered the great DOE flowchart of energy through from production to use. That flowchart is fantastic, showing the which sectors are efficient with their use of energy (like the industrial sector), to those that are prolific wasters (transportation is the worst, with electrical generation not far behind). So whenever someone claims you'd solve the U.S.'s problem with importing oil by banning plastic bags, this chart can show that plastics aren't anything but a blip. Can we get some more efficient cars already? Why do we use 5mpg trucks to ship products across the country instead of using the 10x more efficient rail system? Instead of shipping Hoover Dam's power all the way to Los Angeles, can we power Las Vegas instead of moving dirty coal power from hundreds of miles to the east. Can we invest a little in efficiency, instead of building coal plants hundreds of miles north of Las Vegas? Can we start using waste heat at all power plants for other industrial uses (aka co-generation)?

Compact Fluorescents

Compact fluorescent lighting is a hot topic in the media right now. Repeated utility and environmental group campaigns have encouraged people to switch to them, and the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007 will phase out the sale of incandescents in 2012. Economically speaking, there are real incentives for consumers to switch to them. But... people who have done so often come right back to incandescents. Why is that?

1. Quantity of light. CF manufacturers are blatantly over-reporting the luminosity of the CFs. This will probably not be resolved until a lawsuit occurs over the false advertising. To get an equivalent amount of light I always recommend getting the CFL that is a step-up: so if you are replacing a 60W incandescent, buy a "75W" CF. You'll be much happier, and don't fret the increase in energy use, since you are still using less energy than before (60W vs 20W for a "75W" CF), it's still a win.

2. Quality of light. This is the most legitimate complaint, and most of it stems from failure of manufacturers to label the color temperature of their bulbs. For most consumer applications, getting the color to match tungsten (2700K) is critical for acceptance. Some of the cheaper CFs have poor color rendition: they are too pink or too green and it turns off people. This is the fault of using the wrong phosphor blends. Take a gander at this quote from yesterday's NYTimes article on CFs:

In the living room, for example, where there are four recessed lights along one wall, Mr. Chipman tested six dimmable bulbs and determined that one made by Greenlite with the same hue as incandescents worked best in certain spots, attractively lighting an exposed brick wall and maple bookshelves. A Satco brand bulb with a slightly whiter hue made a limestone-tiled fireplace in the middle of the wall look best, so he installed one above it. Mr. Chipman’s wife, Liz Diamond, 53, a theater director who considers herself even more particular about aesthetics than her husband, said investing time in trying multiple bulbs made a big difference. “There was one bulb that made the limestone look really freaky, ugly and moldy,” she said, but the Satco bulb now in place makes the space look “fabulous.” “I was amazed at how much variation there was, but you can really get a color that you like,” she said. Mr. Chipman agreed. “You really have to experiment with different bulbs to find the ones that work for you,” he said. “But they exist.”

Get the right color for your application. I use GE 6500K daylight bulbs during the day to completely match outside light--you would be hard pressed to figure out if the light from the other room was from a window or the bulb. I also have some old tube "full-spectrum" fluorescents to wake up to in the morning in my bedroom. Again, these have fantastic matching color rendition to daylight.

For nighttime, it's best to limit your exposure to blue light, as it disrupts the production of melatonin and hence your sleepiness. I switch to tungsten matching lights at night as much as possible. For matching incandescents, both the n:vision soft white and GE series match the color. The n:vision lights instantaneously, whereas the the GE takes too long to light (and has other objections below).

3. Noise. A false objection is the claim that compact fluorescents buzz like old magnetic ballast fluorescent tubes. This is just wrong--CFs haven't used magnetic ballasts for a long time. Electronic ballasts, as used in CFs, can make noise if components in them aren't physically attached as well as they can be, and if certain cheaper circuits are used. The fundamental switching frequencies are ultrasonic, so you can't hear the old buzz that magnetics do. But with the design issues mentioned you can have a variety of whines and higher frequency buzzes.

4. Time to light
Many CF bulbs take a delay to light. This is annoying and a common complaint for many brands of bulbs. I've found that GE's Soft White 20W(75W) has a 1/2 second light time that drives me insane.

In addition, every CF I've ever owned takes time to warm to full brightness. I don't mind a short delay. I've had no problem with the the warm-up time, but in hotels I've seen lights that have taken literally minutes to light up to full brightness.

5. Short lifetimes
A lot of people have reported the CFs aren't lasting as long as claimed. I can believe this, especially if they bought by price. The compact fluorescents also are very intolerant of cycling--don't use them in closets and places you don't need the lights on for hours at a time. The lights are also sensitive to overheating--so don't stick them in unventilated fixtures, or recessed ceiling cans, or in general any upside-down fixture.

Now for long life. In 1991 or so I bought a very early CF. It was underpowered--I think it's a 7W. I used it for a few years and then went to college. It's still sitting in my old room at my parent's place, and I use it whenever I visit. Granted, this means it doesn't have many hours on it, but that CF bulb is older than many people I know.


My own specific recommendations are to get N:Vision soft white CFs for general use. I can say they are as close to an incandescent as I've seen in CFs.

I built an awesome "halogen torchiere killer" that I'll describe in another post.

End of the year non-review, #1

A non-review, since I didn't post about things I saved in "starred items" in Google Reader. So, some quick posts about them.

Grist complains Senator Harry Reid is defending the 1872 Mining Law, which is still on the books. Parts of it are stupid; we should hold profitable companies to clean up their messes and begin to increase the tiny rates charged for minerals on public lands. But in parts of Nevada mining is all that keeps the area inhabited. Reid comes from a down and out mining town to the south of Las Vegas that I've spent plenty of time in; and no one would argue it was having a too-hot economy. Reid also gets re-elected by the will of the people of Nevada every six years, and to be honest, it can be a close vote every time. Reid is not perfect; a true politician as I found when I talked with him years ago; but he's fantastic for Nevada--holding off the results of the "Screw Nevada" bill and deflecting the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste dump as long as possible, despite the efforts of many in both parties. He works well with Senator Ensign on nonpartisan issues for the state like smart planning on wilderness and auctioning federal lands in southern Nevada. All these things would be much worse off if he were defeated--there would be no Mining Law reform, no wilderness declarations, no effective attempt at ending the bureaucratic environmental disaster that Yucca Mountain will be.

National Energy Policy

Sam, Colin and I were talking about biodiesel last night as walk-home talk fodder. It's a great thing--a no-modification substitute for fossil fuel diesel. Every gallon of biodiesel does nothing for carbon or pollution emissions or energy use, but reduces our dependance on Middle-East oil by a gallon. Naysayers complain about its sluggishness in cold weather, but this is standard behavior for #2 diesel, and complaints from Minnesota about it are related to poor-quality vendor biodiesel. Get companies that care about (or are forced to) producing a quality product and the clogs will stop.

The New York Times is reporting that President Bush will be talking about national energy policy in tonight's State of the Union. As usual, instead of dealing with proven strategies for increasing efficiency, he will argue for more pie-in-the-sky ideas that are far off. Far off enough to dump large subsidies into corporations for research of bad ideas, like the hydrogen car. Remember the hydrogen car? Instead of increasing today's automobiles' gas mileage by a few MPG by raising the CAFE requirements and getting the huge exemption of SUVs into the fold, he dropped them and asked for research into a non-proven, non-existent technology. Drop the idea of fuel-cells for cars. Stick them in houses, where they would actually work great.

It's a standard technique--drop funding for some project that could work but isn't on their party's agenda (cough hybrids cough). Claim that you have to use that money to research for something in the future like the hydrogen car. Watch as corporations use that R&D money to do nothing important. Quietly drop funding a few years later, claiming hydrogen cars weren't feasible. Congratulations! You've killed funding for the thing the other party wanted, without people noticing. Sound familiar, NASA? Drop science funding for "Manned space exploration of the Moon". Quietly kill that in a few years. Science funding never comes back.


The government should do three things for the energy security of the United States.
1. Spend on Research and Development, and avoid throwing money at corporate welfare. Science is very important for the long-term future, and its funding should never be in jeopardy.
2. There is nothing inherently wrong in nuclear power--it's cleaner than coal (yes, a point for another post). We need new energy sources as use naturally increases with time, and it's the most efficient way.
3. Reprocess nuclear fuel and recover the huge amounts of wasted U-235 and Plutonium that are just left to rot. Reprocessing would drop the need to immediately build Yucca Mountains every twenty years.
4. Encourage inexpensive solar energy development. Why haven't we powered Las Vegas, Los Angeles, San Diego, or Phoenix via solar power yet? Just using simple solar water heaters is a cheap and great start. My family heated our water for years with solar--why can't everyone in the southwest do this?
5. Biodiesel is a great option to immediately encourage--a direct replacement for diesel, especially in warm climates. Subtracting the national cost of supporting Middle-East oil, it becomes cheaper than you think.
6. Increase the efficiency of cars, and continue tax credits for all hybrids, including popular ones, but don't let the manufacturers trade efficiency for power.