A Convenient Truth
by midas
On Monday, Maura and I finally got out to see An Inconvenient Truth up at Potomac Mills with our good friends Jon and Ingrid. They are soon to be moving out to California, where Jon is going to study for his PhD in Oceanography, so they were excellent people to go see this particular movie with.
If you haven’t gone to see it, you should. It may very well not be playing near you, in which case you could always download it illegally off of the internet, not that I am advocating that. It is a pretty entertaining movie which boils down to basically an engaging lecture on the global warming situation, its causes, evidence, and consequences. It has a teensy bit of Al Gore biography in it, but it isn’t really an advertisement for him – if anything, it’s an advertisement for Apple Keynote. Go see it!
But this article isn’t really about the movie at all. In fact, if you are the kind of person who doesn’t believe in science or in personal responsibility, it doesn’t really have to be about global warming either. At the least, this is an article about how to save money. Add some idealism, and it could be an article about how to reduce the United States’ dependence on foreign oil. And if you are one of those lucky few who does believe in anthropogenic climate change, well, here is how to save the world.
The first thing you can do, and probably the most fun and coolest, because it involves purchasing new gadgets, is go out and buy some new light bulbs. CFLs are flourescent light bulbs that will replace your incandescent bulbs without turning your house into a hospital or a Doom level. No flickering, no unearthly skin tones – I have them now in my house, and you can’t tell a difference at all, except the shape, which is hidden behind a lampshade half of the time anyways.
So what’s the point? Why buy more expensive lightbulbs? Well, because a 15 Watt CFL puts out the same amount of light as a 60 Watt incandescent. They also last for 7 years. According to the neat little formula on the Wikipedia page, this means that over the lifetime of that ~1$ light, you will save 36$. Per bulb. Not including the cost of replacing the shorter-lifed incandescent over and over again. So let’s say I just bought 12 of these things, for 20$ (which I did). From that 20$ investment, I stand to save 432$ – or more, depending on how bad the Middle East gets. That, my friends, is a good deal.
Dodo Eggs
How does this stop global warming? Well, you are burning less power, and most of our power these days comes from gas, oil, and (mainly) coal, the dirtiest of the dirty. Another interesting fact from that Wikipedia article – if every American household switched 3 incandescent bulbs to CFLs, it would be equivalent to taking three and a half million cars off of the road. And the amazing and wonderful thing is that you can make money by doing this. There is no sacrifice to make here – it’s win-win.
Next up, you can buy a water heater blanket. This is basically a big piece of fiberglass with a vinyl cover (so you don’t get it in your eyes) that you wrap around and on top of your water heater to keep it from losing heat to the environment. I don’t have any numbers on this, but again, all this can do is save you money, especially with rising natural gas prices (or whatever you use to heat your water). I bought a blanket at Lowes for 20$. Just the top (probably the most important part) is 6$.
Kind of a pain to get installed (wear gloves), but probably a 20 minute task. You – personally – save 1000 pounds of CO2 into the air a year by doing this. Think about how much coal that is. Half a ton. And how much that costs.
Now on to the Air Conditioning. Replace your AC filter. Here is a picture of mine before and after. I had never changed it before, and I was wondering why it never got cold and why my electric bill kept going up and up. That’s why. 10$ at Lowes and you reduce your allergies, your electric bill, your sweat, and save 350 pounds of CO2 a year. Simple.
Dust is mostly dead skin and hair
Some car-related ones are as simple as making sure your tires are inflated fully and your car tuned up, which can vastly improve your gas mileage. Air is free at most gas stations. Gas is not.
Again, simple things that you should be doing anyways, plus they save you money, they save the environment, and they help America by making us buy less oil from foreign terrorists and nutball autocrats. You will not find a better deal than this.
So those are the things I have done so far. There are a bunch of others at that ClimateCrisis website. Some of them are simple, like adjusting your thermostat by two degrees, and some are more of a hassle, like using a clothesline instead of a dryer. How far you want to go depends on your conscience and/or your pocketbook.
But the important thing to remember is this: that website or this article could easily be a website (or article) about how to save money at home, and it would have the exact same content. Or it could be an article about how to save America. Plus, if civilization does end up being destroyed by the greenhouse effect, you can at least go out with a clear conscience.
I think these are very good ways to be frugal and conservative. I am reading Ben Franklin’s autobiography and he describes Londoners waking up 3hrs after sunrise and chusing to live much of the night by candlelight, and yet complain, quite absurdly, about the high price of a wick and tallow.
I recommend the entire auto — and I also give kudos to Phish’s lead singer for admitting to being an “environmental hypocrite” (for flying around the country on tour). It’s modest, reasonable statements, just like the win-win argument, that change hearts and minds!
i’m pretty skeptical about how real/extensive global warming is and how much it is caused by humans; however, i am pretty concerned about what we are doing to the earth in order to take the resources we are using- deforestation, removing entire mountains of coal, etc. i’m also all for independence from the personal level to the national level. and i’m all for saving money. so, these types of things are very interesting to me even though i’m still not sold on the global warming mumbo-jumbo. good work, midas.
midas, you might want to check in your air handler to make sure there isn’t a second air filter- this is somewhat common in houses and a lot of people have no clue it’s there. it would most likely be where the return air duct connects to the fan enclosure (very bottom of mine). not only is poor air circulation innefficient, but it can also damage several different components of the system (important/expensive parts) (this includes shutting too many vents trying to cool certain areas). you might research long-term filters- i think there may be some that are around $50-60 that say they can last a year. even if it doesn’t save you money, at least you don’t have to remeber it as often. also, at some point, you might want to have the fan and coil cleaned.
you can also update your thermostat. i’ve been wanting to do this. especially for 9-5ers, with new ones you can have it one temperature from 9-5 and then another after that and you can have it change for the weekends. automatic is where it’s at. of course, you don’t want too much of a swing in temps or you spend more energy ramping up than you saved (there’s a balance somewhere).
that’s a good idea about the water heater, although it seems like you’d want it to be very snug. it makes sense, though- when you touch it, it’s hot, which is basically pure wasted power/money dumping into your house (which you’re trying to cool this time of year).
i’m amazed at how innefficient stuff is made. it’s like the car engine we’ve been talking about some lately. water heaters, refridgerators, hvac systems all have drastic room for improvement. i just opened my air handler all up the other day and had this conversation with some co-workers about how stupid some aspects of it are. it’s amazing. even the age-old lightbulb- old and busted.
This is awesome stuff, I’m sure a website exists for these kinds of thigns?
I think I will do all three this week (or get my wife to since she is on summer vaykay).
Here is a link to a site that is about conserving and what not, it is good, but very british.
as you said, one thing you can do for your water heater is to wrap it in insulation, just be careful if you have a gas water heater to not get it too close to the pilot light. You can also purchase timers for your water heater so that it is not heating the water when you won’t be there to use it. Or, if you would really like to invest some dollars you could go tankless. These in-line water heaters heat the water as it passes through them. Depending on your use it will save money, but you have to do some research.
while the water heater suggestions are nice, newer high efficiency models see almost no improvement from either timers or added insulation. My gas water heater is pretty old, and even it is cool to the touch because it is already so well insulated, so a blanket is going to do me much good. But I am considering going tankless.
I think my dad thought about going tankless in his new house, but for some reason decided not too. Maybe he thought about adding an additional inline unit to the jacuzzi or something. That tankless idea is sweet because you don’t have a ton of water just sitting in your house waiting to ruin everything.
I mean think about if you water heater suddenly let loose all of its water. Man that would be so bad.
obviously i meant to say “a blanket is NOT going to do me much good”
the advise i have heard (from excellent sources) is that tankless is bad with electric, but good with gas.
also, you should have a tray that the water heater is in with a pipe to somewhere so that it will drain. if it totally fails and all of the water pours out all at once then you’re screwed (does this happen?). just as big of an issue is having an air handler somewhere like an attic. or washer/dryer upstairs. really, if you think about it, if the tankless unit busts you will also have an unlimited amount of water pouring out of it.
nic, about the blanket… i was assuming midas was using gloves bc of the heat (?), so it was probably a good idea for him if his was too hot to touch.
as a side note, i have heard it would be a wise investment to buy huge supplies of R22 (freon-22) now bc starting in 2010, production will decrease significantly (R22 for new equipment banned by big brother), which will cause insane price jumps.
i have also heard you could make a living by following hvac repair guys with a video camera- supposedly, it’s a $27,000 fine to release R22 into the air, and a $10,000 for turning someone in (with evidense) for doing so. apparently, most repair guys do this all the time. find out if it’s true for yourself.
oh, also, be wary of the tankless. read the fine print. many say “whole house” and later say “for 1 major appliance at a time.” so don’t plan on taking a shower while the dishwasher or washer is going. of course, you can go bigger and better (and more expensive and more energy consuming).
oog. this is all so complicated i might just live in a cave. that’s pretty enviro-friendly eh?
changing your lightbulbs out isn’t complicated! there’s a whole range of simple to complicated and cheap to expensive and yatta yatta yatta. i’d hate for anyway to be so intimidated as to do nothing.
Wolf is absolutely correct. And just remember, that using less energy also saves you money! Shrink wrap your windows, change over to energy efficient lightbulbs, make sure your filters are clean, etc, etc. There’s tons of small, simple changes you can make with minimal research or effort on your part. Don’t just give up.
The POWER IS YOURS!!!
wolf!, kid!, max!… with your powers combined I AM CAPTAIN PLANET!
I just finished reading “The Consumer’s Guide to Environmental Choices: Practical Advice from the Union of Concerned Scientists”:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/060980281X/103-3611111-6639802?%5Fencoding=UTF8&v=glance&n=283155
For number lovers, it’s awesome. You can see the environmental impact of practically everything you buy with a giant chart in the back. But more importantly, it helps you focus on the decisions you make that DO have a large environmental impact (mostly driving and eating), and those that don’t actually matter much (paper vs cloth diapers, paper vs plastic grocery bags, even recycling).
Let me know if you want to read it and I’ll pass it along.
here is a dissenting view on the movie.
and here is a story on those CFLs, not sure that it says anything new though
the gloves were for the fiberglass handling. on my package, the last instruction was “make sure you wore gloves for the last three steps!” so i thought i would point it out to people who are like me and read the directions as they do them instead of before they do them :).
i was just in ireland staying in b&b places, and one had tankless heaters in the showers. it was kind of wierd and made a loud noise like a robot when you turned it on. also it had a “start” button instead of a knob to twist. nuts. water was nice though.
seriously though, i think the main thing from this article is the lightbulbs. to me, it is the easiest, most effective, funnest, and cheapest thing you can do to start saving money / usa / the environment, whatever you want. there’s a million things you can do, but the trick to remember is that some of them are so easy you would be crazy not to do them.
LOOK WHAT I FOUND IN THE COMMENTS AWAITING MODERATION!!! QUANTIZEDPUNK!
GO CORE FOUR!?!?!
I purchased a new central air conditioning system. The technician ‘recycled’ the old R22 by letting it blow into a bucket of hot water. He said that the freon combines with the water and becomes safe.
I didn’t believe him and after surfing the net I can find no information about this ‘method’.
Anyone have opinions?
Phil
that’s from the epa (http://www.epa.gov/ozone/title6/phaseout/22phaseout.html).
i mean i don’t know anything but it sounds like he should have captured it, if for no other reason than to use it again or sell it. i mean it doesnt sound like it ever goes bad. if it reacted with water to become harmless, why doesnt it react with the water vapor in the air and become harmless?
again, i dont know anything.
Here is an article, that I haven’t read, about whether buying local really does help out the ol’ enviornment:
http://www.csmonitor.com/2006/0724/p13s02-lifo.html
Core Four Represent! Yes!