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163 comments on The geopolitics of expertise

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Dan Ur on March 17, 2006 - 7:20pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
I am glad you said number 1,  its great, if you have cities where the population might not kill another person.  

You can turn off signage, say from 11 pm til the next time of turn on, because fewer people will see the signs at night.  But you will always have some folks complaining about their advertiser dollars not getting spent right.  

Across the board we can elimnate the big nasty power hungry lights with lower wattage just as bright lights.
Solar powered advertising is a viable option, just not in high use.

But some city streets do need street lights, or some form of illumination to keep the bad people at bay, unless of course you live in a totally crime free city, then go ahead turn all the lights off.

For #2,  Totally change how houses are built, or can be remodeled. change that and you can solve a lot of the insulation and heating and cooling issues.  then go back and get the poorer or already built houses.

For #3,  revamping how our kids get to school and the whole racial bussing issue, where we don't bus kids half way across town to go to a different school we make all schools as equal as possible.  But you will find that unless you install a marshal law like system the countries departments of education will just float all your energy saving measures out the sewer drain pipe.  Even when they have to pay an arm and a leg, they are a bit slow on the up take.

Having cultured yeast and other micro-organisms, they can kill themselves off, just give them enough time.  Tropical fish breeding does have its up sides and knowledge bases.  I have been breeding tropical fish for about 15 years.

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totoneila on March 17, 2006 - 8:40pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
Hello Dan UR,

Thxs for responding. I don't claim to have the answers we need to optimally Powerdown-- just hoping to prod people along to hopefully form a workable consensus.  We all know infinite economic growth is impossible, therefore, the advertising agencies should be willing, if Peakoil aware, to turn off night-lighting of billboards.  Eventually, they will confront a cost/benefit ratio that will force them to turn off the night-lights anyhow.  Might as well get ahead of the game.  The smart companies should be PV or windmill powering their signs now.

A true Powerdown program will spread the pain equally among all people.  This is the basic premise behind ASPO's Depletion Protocols.  For example: if taxes were directly tied to total BTU usage for home, food, and car.  Below a certain BTU minimum you would get cash back to further enhance personal Powerdown, anything above this minimum would rapidly scale to be extremely punitive.  This would force people to quickly scale down the amount of personal sq. footage that requires energy to heat, light, and cool, and to minimize senseless appliance excesses.

A good practice to save energy is to do what I call the 'Stevie Wonder'.  If you declutter your house so that you can navigate safely to find things-- it is amazing how well you can do learn to do tasks with open eyes in very low wattage lighting or even darkness.  Rheostat light switches are heartily recommended by me.

My house looks dark most of the time because I try to get the major chores done while the Sun is shining.  My biggest problem is my girlfriend [who refuses to believe or even discuss Peakoil with me], but she is slowly coming around everytime the power bill comes.  Our biggest vice is the old above-ground backyard spa [220v 3-phase wiring, 300 gallons], but damn she looks good in a swimsuit-- I call it our own personal Thermo-Gene Collision! :)  :0  ;} Lights out, of course!

Bob Shaw in Phx,AZ  Are Humans Smarter than Yeast?

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sjruckle on March 18, 2006 - 4:58pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
If a rheostat light is dimmed, it still uses as much energy as if the light was all the way on. It's just that the rheostat steals some power away from the light (so the light is dimmer) and converts it into heat. There are better kinds which reduce energy consumption that use solid state electronics. Rather than waste power, they switch the light on/off really fast to cause a dimming effect. This method doesn't waste any energy in a resistance coil.

HowStuffWorks Article

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Jack Greene on March 17, 2006 - 11:34pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
Just have new homes facing south and taking advantage of passive solar, instead of making them face the conventional street which usually does not help.
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Donal on March 18, 2006 - 12:59pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
You can do both.
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Todd on March 19, 2006 - 1:00am Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
Well, here's how I deal with it:  I designed and built our house almost 25 years ago to be energy efficient(yes, I've been concerned about energy a long time).  I designed it to get 30% of its heat from insolation.  That was the reasonable maximum short of going to an active system (I live in the Coast Range Mountains of northern CA and our weather is more midwestern then Californian.  Right now I still have 6" of snow on the ground from the last storm.).  It has an R-47 roof, R-20 walls on an insulated slab.  Our windows are double glazed but I made storm windows so they are really triple glazed.  The front of the house is mostly 8' high sliding glass doors.  In the winter I cover the insides with clear vinyl sheeting so as to obtain triple glazing.

Although we are the last people on the grid in my area, we have a 3.6kW PV system and I used to have a 1.5kW wind generator.  For back-up I have an 8kW gas generator and a 23kW diesel generator and will run them on wood gas if regular fuel becomes unavailable.  All lights including the ones in the range hood over the stove are florescent.

We have solar hot water and a heat exchanger in our wood stove to pre-heat the water in the winter.  The wood we heat with comes from trees from our property that I fell, buck up and split.  We burn 2-3 cords per year for a 2,400SF house.  I did buy a gas powered splitter when I turned 60 (I'm 67 now.)rather then keep on doing it with a maul.

We grow most of our fruit and vegetables.  This includes fresh eating and preserving them via canning, freezing, juicing (mostly apple, grape and tomato) or dehydrating.  As a back-up to our electric range, we have a wood cook stove in the kitchen.

There's more but this is enough.

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Oil CEO on March 19, 2006 - 7:37am Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
If you are serious, which I doubt you are, I want to come live with you.
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Todd on March 19, 2006 - 11:17am Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
Oil CEO,

Yes, I am serious.  You must not be.

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Oil CEO on March 19, 2006 - 2:34pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
Do you have broadband or are you still using a dial-up modem?

I am serious.  I never believe this stuff because I've seen too many movies, and there is always a catch. You won't tell me what it is, so I have to figure it out.

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Don Sailorman on March 19, 2006 - 11:27am Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
Did your wind generator break? It has been my Minnesota experience that many (possibly most) wind generators purchased during the 1970s and 1980s broke and were too expensive to repair. They are hard to fix.

I am an enthusiast for old-style windmills, and that makes me a really old fart.

However, the new and very expensive vertical turbines from Finland do not break. Also, you can make your own vertical turbines that are durable--but not very efficient.

Tradeoffs everywhere . . . .

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163 comments on The geopolitics of expertise

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