Please rank the relative cost or trade-off of
When you rank, consider things like
What were your criteria? Were they different than they were a few months ago? (more…)
Andrew Revkin linked this video on his DotEarth blog, today. I had a moment when I realized that this was the low end estimate for one day.
It occurs to me that we need more of the kinds of visual displays of quantitative information as promoted by the famous Edward Tufte book of the same name.
So, keepin’ it real, there is very little scale here, very little magnitude, and a lot more fun than much else.
But it worked for me.
In a couple cases recently, I have heard people talking about how the Jevons Paradox will undermine efforts to use energy more efficiently — and it certainly seems like it would fit, but it doesn’t apply to our current energy problems for several reasons: conservation, and improved efficiency are still our best options.
Or, so started a post that I began writing a couple weeks ago. Then, in some sort of karmic mind-meld, Peter Troast at EnergyCircle.com wrote a post about Jevons, with almost the same conclusion as I was going to draw. Yeah, right, I hear you say.
So anyhoo, I think this topic is important to the larger discussion of energy, especially renewable energy, so here’s a link to Peter’s post on energy efficiency, which already has a nice thread of comments and observations — take a look, it’s a good read — and, add your thoughts!
(I wrote this on May 28th, but never published. I am publishing now because I think things might have changed enough).
I have an opinion about just about everything, including opinions. Daniel Weiss did a nice post on the Climate Progress blog showing how dramatically public opinion has shifted in the month or so since the oil spill started.
In short, people don’t think offshore drilling is such a good idea any more, and they’re willing to trade off economic development for environmental protection.
In my opinion, this shows how little value there is in the opinions of people. I am not trying to be negative, or get attention by being contrarian, smug, or elitist.
Instead, I think we’re at some rather great risk of self-destruction if we keep making policy opportunistically, and avoiding discourse and action until the time is right. (more…)
