You know what bites me hard

Delete-

 

My pet peeve - any global climate change denier. It is completely irresponsible and selfish.

 

OT for pet peeves, but 'this just in' from PNAS. How to save a bit of energy, and survey indications that the American public does not quite know.

 

shocking! but these 'well designed efforts' have been going on for years. people know about them, they simply choose to ignore them. if it doesn't make life better or easier, there is a large segment of the population that just isn't interested.

 

Smoking wastes energy?
You're really stretching things here.
How about people who choose to live in inhospitably cold climates ,then create an artificial warm environment by consuming huge amounts of energy.
Then traveling to the tropics in fuel gulping jets.Driving everywhere in gas guzzling 4wds.
If you dish out sh!t,then you should eat Sh!t as well.

 

Or live in hot climates and run air conditioning. Your examples are all good. All of us make decisions and trade-offs about where and how we live, most of which influence our consumption of energy. Unless we revert to fireless hunter-gatherers it will always be that way.

Probably the key point is to think about our actions and their consequences so as to make intelligent trade-offs. If you want to smoke, then smoke, but do so knowing that you are hurting your health and burning some resources in the process. If you want to fly south for vacation, great, but make sure it fits into your personal plan about resources and global climate change.

The bigger problem is that many people are in denial, or simply clueless. Without knowledge we are doomed to bounce through life like a ball in a pinball game.

Tom

 

Notice all of the common curtailment items accepted by the respondees are free to use, while the efficiency items suggested by the experts require one to purchase new lights, cars, appliances (and the old stuff?). I love the idea of LED lighting, but until my CF bulbs stop working...


On topic, dog excrement on the sidewalks is pretty high on my peeve list, it's like a mine field out there.

 

I'm sorry, but you are way off base here. It is fundamentally easier to keep warm than it is to "get cool" . Energy conservation to keep warm starts with proper clothes, and ends with well designed buildings that use comparatively little energy. Most energy use in a cold climate, in a well designed house can (and is use multiple times) For example, the heat from your oven, directly reduces you heating load in the house because the BTUs lost from the oven escape into the house.

The opposite is true in hot climates, where A/C is used. Nearly all energy used added to the A/C load. Heat the oven, warm the room, cool the air. Additionally, "making cold" A/C is very expensive, difficult task, more so than "making warm" (The partial exception is hot water heat recovery from heat pump systems, which dump the waste heat into DHW systems).

Additionally, passive and active solar heating is a viable energy source (as is geothermal) in most climates, but I know of very few solar "cooling" systems.

So net/net on an annual basis, it would be curious to see who uses more BTUs in energy in total, a resident of Tucson, or Calgary.

 

You know what really burns my butt ?

A flame about 3 feet high.

Thanks to my meds, nothing else seems to bother me much. Love my 2010 IV !!!

 

What bothers you about the flag or eagle? Do they bother you on other vehicles? I guess I don't see the correlation.

 

It's probably not the flags or the eagles. More likely it's the implied attitude.

Tom

 

I'm not sure what that attitude is other than supporting your country. it would be like putting a "my son goes to yada yada high school" and supporting that organization.

 

I think the logic goes: patriotic on the surface, but wasting fuel, thus adding to the need for oil wars. The FSPs bother me, the bumper stickers not so much. Even the FSPs are fine if mostly used near capacity.

 

hmm...well someone will need to tell me what FSP means....sorry that one is new to me.

 

Our H.O.A. has this to say:
"Except with the written permission, no solar collector panels or similar devices maybe placed on or around any Dwelling"

And of course: no rain barrels allowed either...

 

On a reasonable sized vehicle that has good fuel economy, no. I was in the service (Army, FA) so I'm down with people being patriotic... but they have to be able to think too. Blind patriotism is the enemy of democracy. People who drive massive vehicles that consume massive amounts of petrol are doing a huge disservice to this country and putting all the patriotic bumper stickers on their ridiculous vehicle just makes it more absurd.

 

Ooh, don't piss them off or they'll take your house and sell it to line their pockets... In Texas, HOAs rule supreme. So much for the land of individual rights.

Texas has some pretty hardcore image issues (it seems that it's everything there).

 

I respect your opinion. I guess I don't see it that way. Maybe they have 3 kids and need an Sequoia to get their stuff where it needs to go. Not saying they all do, but I would be slower to make the judgment I guess. The other thing I would say is we can't all take up every cause. The Sequoia driver may be using more gas per capita than Prius drivers (or may not be depending on the number of people in the vehicle), but maybe he/she has donates substantially to Feed the Children or the Red Cross, or even environmental groups. I guess it just never crossed my mind to look at someone driving a Hummer with a patriotic bumper sticker and think they're disingenuous or just bad people.

 

Not "bad" per se, but "misguided" perhaps?