- on the unsurprising fact that we use less water when it rains (unsurprising but nevertheless a demonstration that we’re paying attention, and not just blindly watering our bermuda grass)
- T. Boone is bringing his wind-powered carnival to Albuquerque next week
The Times-Picayune
No power, no printing presses, but they keep on publishing. There is no more heroic news organization than the New Orleans Times-Picayune.
Should I Turn That Light Off?
In this week’s energy tip, Al Zelicoff answers the question that won’t go away: Is it better to turn the light off if I’m only going to be out of the room for a few minutes?
Tyler Cowen on Climate Models
Make of climate models what you may, there is lots of evidence that a) biodiversity is being hammered, and b) climate change will bring desertification, drought, and possibly coastal flooding to many parts of the world, among other dilemmas. I don’t have a lot of faith in the exact predictive powers of climate models, or for that matter economic models, but uncertainty about outcomes should make us worry more not less. Uncertainty usually has two tails, not just one.
Free Iris
It took about 10 minutes from the time Lissa put up the “free iris” sign this morning until the first neighbor drove up to grab a bag.
The iris bed has gotten a little out of control, and Lissa and I skipped our Saturday morning walk to work on it. She scored some cheap fountain grass at Home Depot, so she ask for my help in clearing some space among the iris for them.
Mostly, I played with her new camera and sat on the front porch with the laptop, making excuses about my knee and trying to spot the woodpecker we kept hearing in the locust tree, but the fiction of working together is pleasant.
The sunflowers are still out, and we’ve been getting little goldfinches – the only bird small enough to really eat them. The first clumps of yellow are appearing on the cottonwood across the street, and the wind has a cool edge even though it’s a sweating hot morning (the few times I actually leaned into a shovel to help confirmed this fact).
Last Sunday we went to the last Isotopes home game of the season, a warm Sunday evening that cooled off more quickly than a summer night should, but which was still warm enough to feel like baseball weather.
The free iris season is one of the best indicators of fall at our house, and I do love the fall.
How I Use Twitter
Watching my young friend Kelsey’s feed for the Gustav evacuation order. (So far, so good.)
update: evacuation order has been issued.
Stuff I Wrote Elsewhere
On DOE’s new “branding” effort.
Clotheslines and Really, Really Big Houses
It’s easy to make fun of the good folks of Southamptom for having a law against clotheslines (messy, you understand). But is it not admirable for them to sacrifice for the greater good, allowing clotheslines for the sake of energy conservation? From Bloomberg:
Even amid such affluence, clotheslines are finding fans among residents seeking to conserve energy after the price of oil rose this year, peaking at a record $147.27 a barrel last month. Southampton’s board wants the community to be “a model of sustainability,” the measure repealing the clothesline ban said.
Or, how about reducing your energy consumption by not living in a giant mansion?
Water Heater Math
I love a good calculation. So does my friend Al Zelicoff, who offers us a doozy of a set in today’s Journal energy tip, providing the back-of-the-very-large-envelope calculation on how much you can save by turning down the thermostat on your water heater:
320 pounds of water X (140 – 60) = 25,600 BTUs or about 1/4 of a “Therm” which is what you are billed for on your bill (currently about $1.20 per therm with tax). This would be the amount you would use per day (and add a little bit because gas water heaters can not be 100% efficient since some heat MUST go up the flue) if you used 40 gallons of 140 degree hot water. So, in a month (30 days) figure about 8 therms for hot water heating in this scenario.
Al’s bottom line: don’t spend a lot of money on a fancy new high-efficiency water heater. Just turn the damn thing down, and use your energy-saving investment dollars elsewhere.
The Robins
If I was a robin, here’s what I would do on a cool, late summer dawn in Albuquerque, as I was headed south. I’d get my friends and fly up to the highest tree in the neighborhood, that big elm over there, and flutter around a little bit to keep warm as the sun just reached its top-most branches.