

Scott Adams: How I (Almost) Saved the Earth  - flybrand
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704868604575433620189923744.html?mod=WSJ_hpp_sections_lifestyle

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kleiba
Interesting article. However, there's one aspect that I find a bit puzzling. I
currently live in Germany and Adams' summary of tips how to build a greener
house is pretty much a description of how houses have been built here for
ages. I mean - the regular houses, not the ones considered particularly green.
The general topic seems to be very big in this country, and apparently caters
to a huge market. Almost everybody building a new house these days, not only
the Earth savers, is trying to implement as many energy efficient measures as
possible - that's because Germany, unlike California, is not a very warm place
and to save on heating costs means to save big time. I don't actually know
what it means, but the term "zero energy house" is a marketing term you see a
lot here. Solar energy in private homes is heavily subsidized, too. And
Germans don't move as much as Americans, they tend to build their houses to
settle and grow old in them, so sustainability is a logical value.

~~~
jvdh
It seems that the art of building efficient houses is contained only in
Europe.

The houses in the US all seem to be made of wood, without much insulation.
"Problems" that that causes are all dealt with using "efficient" heating or
air conditioning systems. From what I've seen the same is true of Australia
and New Zealand though. There you see a whole lot of portable electric heaters
being used for the winter, which are probably the most inefficient way to
generate heat.

The way typical Americans treat "energy conservation" is also an affront to
people from Europe. Nobody in the US seems to think about conserving water in
any way. Just look at the toilets, they flush a _massive_ amount of water
compared to the ones in Europe. Or the amount of ice that is used in drinks,
the amount of water that is served and thrown away in restaurants.

It's all the little things that make a huge difference, and there seems to be
a huge gap in the way these things are treated in Europe and in the US.

~~~
sasmith
I really would like to write a more articulate reply, but it's late and I'm
tired, so I'll leave you with:

I don't believe you.

Portable electric heaters can be incredibly efficient, since they only heat
the room in question. I don't know much about building materials, but the
article suggested that most heat loss is through windows, so worrying about
wood building seems unnecessary.

Water conservation discussion need to be very localized. Lots of places in the
US have very low population densities and plenty of water. Conservation is
silly in this case. Whether your toilet uses a lot of water or a little, the
same amount of poop and same amount of water are going to end up back in the
river. Besides all this, toilet flushing and ice in drinks is peanuts compared
to agricultural usage. They are little things and do not make a huge
difference.

Please site your sources. Here are some of mine:

[http://greenliving.lovetoknow.com/Energy_Efficient_Space_Hea...](http://greenliving.lovetoknow.com/Energy_Efficient_Space_Heaters)

<http://www.toiletabcs.com/toilet-water-conservation.html>

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_resources>

~~~
ajb
I'm not sure that this is what jvdh had in mind, but any pure-heating device
is by definition 100% inefficient. Any physical device which does work
produces heat as well (well eventually. The energy may feed into other
processes before it ends up as heat). A 100% efficient device is one that
produces work equal to the amount of heat (I think - my thermodynamics is a
little rusty). A pure heater produces heat without doing any work whatsoever
with the energy. The most efficient heating would be done either by a heat
pump (backwards air conditioner), or by doing some work with it.

Your point about heating only the rooms required is quite true, though.
portable heaters may be more efficient than other extant kinds of heater. One
other disadvantage is that many of them are air heaters, and the human body is
more sensitive to radiant heat than air temperature. (It feels a lot better to
be warmed by the sun, than to breath warm air).

There are portable radiant heaters, though far less of them around than there
used to be. I think people see them as less safe, which I guess they are.

~~~
dspeyer
An electric heater is inefficient if the electricity was generated
inefficiently.

Inefficient: burn methane at a central point running a steam engine generator,
dumping tons of waste steam into the air, run the electricity to your house
and turn it into heat there.

Efficient: pump methane to your house and burn it there.

More efficient: burn the methane at a central location running a steam engine
generator, carry both the steam and the electricity to your house, heating it
and running appliances.

The moral: live densely enough that steam pipes are practical.

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ghshephard
Alternatively you can move to a location with a decent year round climate
(Redwood City, CA) and move into an apartment.

My PG&E Bill for 29 Days ending 4/21/2010: $5.00 - 40 Kwh @$0.11877. Easily
the most massive energy consumer was the refrigerator - I would have cut that
energy use by 2/3 if I could have figured out how (conveniently) to do without
a fridge. My Hot water came from the building, but, at 97 degrees, and
northern california water pressure, I know I was probably in the lower 5% of
consumers in that space as well.

Just hitting the breaker to all your wall warts / WiFi when you leave to work
has a very significant impact on energy consumption.

Scott Adams touches on one very, very good point - Having Northern exposure
(in an apartment not on the top floor) means (in Redwood City) that from about
April through late September you will never be uncomfortable. Apartments have
awesome insulation - though I guess it's possible I was leaching heat during
the winter from five of my neighbors and the hallway. I never bothered turning
on (or even figured out how to) the central heat.

It's amazing how much a difference your apartment orientation can make to your
quality of life.

~~~
notauser
I lived in an apartment in Northern England one winter.

In about January I found out that I hadn't understood the thermostat and the
central heating had never turned on. I went through the whole of December
oblivious (and warm) thanks to the surrounding apartments providing heat
through the walls, floor and ceiling.

~~~
colomon
I once made it a month into the cold season here in Michigan before realizing
that my house's only heating was coming from my computers...

~~~
jberryman
Lived above a restaurant for two years, which kept me comfortable in a sweater
in the winters.

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ugh
_“Don't brag to me about riding your bicycle to work; a lot of energy went
into building that bicycle. Stop being a hypocrite like me.”_

That doesn’t make any sense, does it? Making something will always require
energy, what matters is whether something needs more or less energy than the
alternative. (Making a bike needs less energy than making a car, riding a bike
needs less energy than driving a car.)

Scott Adams’ writings always seem very shallow to me. He says something that
sounds sorta good if you don’t pay too much attention.

~~~
jerf
"what matters is whether something needs more or less energy than the
alternative"

Does it? Does Mother Earth care whether your pollution came from a car or
bicycle? You're just another polluter, you big bad polluter you.

More seriously, I think the reference here is to the idea that you can somehow
objectively measure your negative impact and that anything above zero is bad.
Since I pretty comprehensively disagree with that statement (impact to
something as dynamic as the ecosystem can not be measure concretely, most
people's metric of "impact" are incoherent when you really examine them, zero
impact isn't a useful metric in light of these things, and I have at least as
much "right" to exist and impact an environment as a beaver), I tend to agree
with you. My point here is that it depends on your point of view and there are
common points of view that disagree with you, and the piece was very clearly
invoking this "radical" green point of view very often.

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nowarninglabel
Just as a counter-point, I recently visited a friend in Prague who is both
earth-loving like Mr. Adams and an architect. She and her husband recently
rebuilt their home, and it looks fairly nice for the area despite being quirky
for the energy savings. They have a grass roof which I was told was actually
low maintenance once they had it in. That said, they weren't 'idiots' and
didn't buy into photovoltaics.

Your mileage may vary depending on if your wife is an architect.

~~~
Ras_
Grass roof... they have a slightly bigger one at Ford Rouge River:

"The roof of the 1.1 million square foot (100,000 m²) Dearborn truck assembly
plant was covered with more than 10 acres (40,000 m²) of sedum, a low-growing
groundcover. The sedum retains and cleanses rainwater and moderates the
internal temperature of the building, saving energy. The roof is part of an
$18 million rainwater treatment system designed to clean 20 billion gallons
(76,000,000 m³) of rainwater annually, sparing Ford from a $50 million
mechanical treatment facility."

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lW0G6zNStTE>

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vl
One house item which shows no progress on the green side is the refrigerator.
Obviously it should be a split system: fridge is inside and heat exchange
outside the house. If it's hot outside, I don't want fridge to heat up air
inside the house so then my AC has to cool it (an you know, my house has quite
limited AC capacity). If it's cold outside, I don't want fridge to consume
energy - just dump excessive heat outside. It puzzles me for years why with
all this green movement I haven't seen a single split fridge yet.

~~~
cool-RR
I thought about this too. It would be really nice if there was a central
compressor that will pump that cold gas into ACs and refrigerators of multiple
homes. I think that will be a lot greener than the other stuff suggested by
Scott Adams.

~~~
Kliment
Finland is now doing that for industry and warehouse refrigeration, and for
some large retailers too. It might eventually find its way into homes too.

~~~
Ras_
Finnish retailers are also converting en masse to refrigeration units which
have a cover/door. It is a big investment to convert, but it also saves about
35% of the energy.

All new installs are of course with the doors.

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lotharbot
Houses in the developed world simply aren't designed to be "green". Painting
your roof, reducing the number of windows, and adding insulation are all band-
aid solutions to a much deeper issue. All the common "green" solutions might
cut your energy consumption in half, but half of a large amount of energy is
still a large amount of energy.

I've seen some extremely green homes, and they're far more bizarre looking
than the example given in this article. Homes designed around sunlight, earth
(for insulation and heat regulation), and airflow turn out looking VERY
different from homes that have had energy-saving features tacked on.

~~~
m_eiman
Depending on the climate, they don't have to look too futuristic. Here are a
bunch of "passive houses" in Sweden (houses without a dedicated source of
heat, instead surplus heat from cooking, showering, people etc provide enough
heat due to good insulation):

[http://www.google.se/images?um=1&hl=sv&safe=off&...](http://www.google.se/images?um=1&hl=sv&safe=off&client=firefox-a&rls=org.mozilla%3Asv-
SE%3Aofficial&tbs=isch%3A1&sa=1&q=passivhus+site%3A.se&aq=f&aqi=&aql=&oq=&gs_rfai=)

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stcredzero
Arrgh. Scott sometimes mistakes his ignorance for wit. He could've outfitted
his home with heat-pipe solar thermal collectors, like the Thermomax ones.
These things work well, even in the winter, even in cloudy, chilly old
England, where they were designed. I suspect they'd do a pretty bang-up job in
California. Connecting those up to the hot water heating the floors would've
taken a _big_ chunk out of his carbon footprint, even if he couldn't heat his
home completely with them. They're worth it just for the hot-water preheat.

<http://www.thermomax.com/>

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erik
There is a short and entertaining TED talk on this topic.

[http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/catherine_mohr_builds_gree...](http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/catherine_mohr_builds_green.html)

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alecco
Smaller houses consume less resources and are more efficient. (In most cases.)

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Symmetry
Solar cells are expensive now, but production of them has been going up at
something likely 20-30% a year for a decade. You got to figure that a lot of
the price of a cell is going to the rapid ramp-up in manufacturing capacity,
and that at some point the supply will have increased enough that the price
will drop.

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WiseWeasel
Scott Adams, 2012! For a better America.

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HNer
"As a rule, the greener the home, the uglier it will be. I went into the
process thinking that green homes were ugly because hippies have bad taste.
That turns out to be nothing but a coincidence."

:)

