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Energy

The shocking truth about LEDs

The shocking truth about LED lights!

We recently learned that one LED light can save you money and cut your CO2 emissions. Question is… what happens if we replace ALL the lights in our house with LED lights?  Glad you asked.  I calculated a few numbers for you and put the results into some handy tables and graphs.  But first, a little bit of background info is required. According to an interesting blog post by a lighting company in Florida, the average house has 47 light bulbs.  So we’ll look at numbers for three different sized houses: a small house or apartment (24 bulbs), a typical family home (47 bulbs),… Read More »The shocking truth about LED lights!

man installing solar panel on roof

Debunking Climate Change Denial Myths

Climate change denial is shifting from denying that it’s real, to saying why the fixes can’t work. Four common denial myths are debunked here. I was reading an interesting article on the Discovery Magazine website about the almost non-existent snowpack in the Pacific Northwest this spring after a really warm winter.  I was surprised by the ignorance of the comments left there by readers who are supposedly drawn to a magazine website about science. Among the steady stream of ridiculous rants, one caught my eye.  A gentleman there had managed to string together one false statement after another.  He seems pretty… Read More »Debunking Climate Change Denial Myths

How to Save a LOT of Money While Saving the Environment (Hint: Use LED lights!)

  I remember responding to a reader comment left in an article about the phasing out of compact fluorescent lights (CFL) due to their mercury content.  The commenter was saying how the government shouldn’t regulate the market and tell him that he can’t use CFL bulbs.  He likes the light from his CFLs and thinks they’re just fine. I don’t entirely disagree, but I think the irony was lost on him because incandescent bulb production was phased out in 2014 by — you guessed it — “the government”.  Maybe he was a youngster, not old and grizzled  like the Doc.  Anyhow, it struck me as… Read More »How to Save a LOT of Money While Saving the Environment (Hint: Use LED lights!)

Divest and have a Happy(er) Valentine’s Day!

Today, just a quick post to say that Global Fossil Fuel Divestment Day has begun.  So why not take a look at your investments and see if you can switch to something less destructive.  Even if you are not an investor, there are still ways you can help. Check out these posts… Why Divest From Fossil Fuels – un-burnable fossil fuels, stranded assets, and corporate welfare Carbon Budgets Explored – how much can we safely burn?  I made some easy to look at graphs to help visualize this. Peak Oil Predictions — Only 50 Years Left?! – thoughts on fracking, Saudi Arabia, and just… Read More »Divest and have a Happy(er) Valentine’s Day!

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Carbon Budgets Explored

As you may recall from a recent post about fossil fuel divestment, fossil fuels will soon become a stranded asset, meaning we can not afford to pull it out of the ground and burn it. The concept of carbon budgets was explored in depth in a report by the Carbon Tracker Initiative and the Grantham Research Institute, called “Unburnable Carbon 2013:  Wasted capital and stranded assets,” which we went over in detail in a earlier post. As discussed before, a carbon budget is not hard to figure out, because the relationship between how much carbon is burned and the increase in temperature is relatively well know. ( Data from Carbon… Read More »Carbon Budgets Explored