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Sustainability

Jun 15
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Relative Humidity, by Socks and Jeans

By Energy Efficiency, Energy Rant, Sustainability No Comments
It is mid-June, and strangely here in the northern Midwest we have experienced virtually no warm, humid weather yet this year.  The weather can flip like a switch from a pattern of rain and clouds of the past several weeks to one that is hot and humid with little precipitation.  Now is a good time to talk about relative humidity and moisture. Relative humidity is something everyone knows about but hardly anyone understands.  How many times have you heard “It was 100 degrees with 99 percent humidity?”  I guarantee these conditions are 100% impossible, at least in the ambient outdoors,…
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Mar 17
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Energy Storage v Storing Energy’s Benefits

By Energy Efficiency, Energy Rant, Renewable Energy, Sustainability, Utility Stuff 4 Comments
As we march along with the nation’s rather massive build-out of renewable energy resources, questions emerge for how to fill the gaps when the sun sets and the wind stops blowing – i.e., when it’s nice to be outdoors, especially in the summer.  So there you have it – turn off the lights, grab a drink and go out on the deck to hang out with your friends and family.  Now there is a behavior program to get behind!  Patent underway.  Unfortunately, the discussion is focused on energy storage rather than “quality time”, a term that predates “work-life balance”. Once…
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Jun 04
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Cah Tawk

By Energy Efficiency, Energy Rant, Sustainability 2 Comments
This week’s feature presentation is one of my favorites for saving energy: automobiles.  Let’s take this recent post from Fuel Fix and dive right in. The first one I read is “make sure your gas cap is broken or missing.”  That’s right.  You can save 3 cents per gallon if it is broken or missing.  I think they need some proofreading.  I suggest using a well-oiled and fully functional gas cap.  Where they get the 3 cents per gallon savings, I have no idea.  That’s like saying a 20 minute power walk will reduce the energy content of a milkshake…
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Mar 12
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The Smoking Gleick

By Energy Rant, Government, Sustainability One Comment
Last week I described a hypothetical, unethical scam to achieve a desired outcome, which leads up to this week’s rant, which I didn’t have space for last week. I first came across this in The Wall Street Journal editorial page.  The Heartland institute, which I had never heard of, or at best I forgot about, is a global-warming-crisis skeptic.  From the horse’s mouth, they believe global warming is real, that man contributes, but they are skeptics of the alarmism and the magnitude of man’s impacts. They are a privately funded non-profit and yes, they get money from big oil just…
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Nov 21
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Peer Review This, Please

By Energy Efficiency, Energy Rant, Renewable Energy, Sustainability No Comments
This week I provide my own analysis of raw data to nail this Jell-O to the wall, and I’m done.  It’s all good.  Does anyone know what the “O” stands for?  Orama?  Jell Orama? First a recap from last week from which I got some blowback.  But would you believe it if I told you I received substantially more support and backslapping from critics of climate change?  As with any highly charged issue, readers/observers tend to attack on a hair trigger anything that challenges established positions and assign you to a broad group of in-duh-viduals to which you do not…
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Sep 26
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Beware the New Guy

By Energy Efficiency, Energy Rant, Government, Renewable Energy, Stimulus, Sustainability No Comments
One thing I’ve learned many times over with approaching or ongoing energy efficiency projects with clients, mostly end users, is that when the decision maker is replaced for whatever reason – the guy took a different job, retired, moved to a different place in the company – you name it, it is time to pull over to the side of the road. The most common thing a new guy (androgynously) does upon taking over the helm of whatever ship he’s driving is say no, to everything.  I’m not sure why this is but I think it possibly has something to…
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Jun 07
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Machete to Sustainability

By Sustainability No Comments
This Geography guy really needs to get out of the classroom and the city for that matter once in a while.  Modern agriculture is probably demagogued and more poorly understood than energy efficiency, and since this opinion piece addresses both I will dispense with its shredding. I grew up on the farm 30 years ago in southern MN and northern IA, and I stay in touch spending a week each year reliving my childhood farming days.  My elder brothers still run the place.  They grow maybe 2,500 acres of corn and soybeans and raise and market maybe 25,000 hogs per…
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Sep 14
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Is Theodore Nugent Vegan?

By Energy Efficiency, Energy Rant, Sustainability 2 Comments
The EPA since the beginning of time, when I was born maybe, has provided city and highway mileage ratings for light vehicles.  Who among us users of the antiquated medieval English unit system of measurement doesn’t understand miles per gallon?  Who doesn’t know exactly what a mile is and exactly what a gallon is?  I would challenge you to rods, chains, cubits and ells.  My father used to estimate lengths in rods in the farm field.  All I figured out is that a rod x a half mile is an acre.  Very logical. EPA to the rescue, again.  They are…
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Jul 20
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A Frivolous Novelty

By Energy Efficiency, Energy Rant, Government, Renewable Energy, Stimulus, Sustainability 9 Comments
For this week’s publication, I was trying to think of an expensive, short-lived, duplicative, inconvenient, limited use, frivolous novelty.  Did I mention expensive?  After a half-hour of wonderment, the best I could do is a Homer Simpson bottle opener.   But really the Homer Simpson bottle opener will last longer and at least be useful (note, I didn’t say serve it’s purpose, which is to make people laugh) probably for a far longer period than the electric car. Twenty years ago “they” were talking about developing electric cars, I guess to save us from carbon dioxide, but I don’t recall the…
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Jun 22
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LEED and Immortality

By Energy Efficiency, Energy Rant, Government, LEED, Sustainability No Comments
I was recently reading a letter to the editor in The Wall Street Journal where the reader blasted ag biotech companies like Dow Chemical and Monsanto for creating “superweeds”.  Monsanto transformed crop farming with the development of Roundup herbicide, which kills practically anything with roots but is otherwise quite benign (oxymoron alert).  They later developed genetically modified seeds for plants that are immune to the weed killer.  But weeds, like bacteria, have morphed to become immune to Roundup.  The letter goes on to compare the superweeds to antibiotic–resistant organisms.  Except, nobody is going to be killed by a superweed.  So…
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We talk a lot about energy – from the serious to the satirical.

All things energy. That’s our jam.

We talk a lot about energy – from the serious to the satirical.

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